Archive News
LetÕs clear our national debt by checking down back of the couch
Date Published: {J}
So now we know there are two ways to solve our debt crisis – one is to put the issue to a referendum like the Greeks in the sure and certain knowledge that even the criminally insane will reject it. The second is to double-check whether we’re in crisis at all by checking for loose change down the back of the couch.
After all, we’ve already found €3.6 billion this week simply by sharpening the pencil and adding the sums to find that we’d paid the equivalent of the Tesco online shopping bill twice.
So it’s time to check the bottom of that handbag you last used for the Oyster Festival Ball to see if there’s either loose change or a raffle ticket for a prize you forgot to claim because you were queuing at the bar or the toilet.
Check the inside pockets on the suit you wore to the young fella’s Confirmation – you might find your own money or some of the cash that the happy lad gave you to mind and you forgot to give back to him.
Have a look down the side of the car seat because there’s always money there, and check your desk drawer at work in case you threw your coppers in there and forgot all about it.
Best of all, search your bedside locker for foreign currency from your last holiday outside the euro zone – that sort of money is invaluable in the current climate and might well be worth more now that it was when you came back from Kusadasi in the first place.
All of these scenarios are, of course, ludicrous – but none more ludicrous than the ‘accounting error’ which miscalculated our national debt by a staggering €3.6 billion.
And while that may be somewhat brushed off by the explanation that it amounts to just two per cent of our bill, it can equally be challenged as a multiple of what was required to keep our hospital wards open, our care assistants in employment and at least some of our emigrants at home.
The Department of Finance explained it all away by pointing out that the National Treasury Management Agency had made both the Department and the Central Statistics Office aware that there was a change in their relationship with the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) that has an impact on the accounts of the two entities.
It said that previously the NTMA had acted as agents for the HFA.
"The Department of Finance is responsible for the calculation of General Government Debt. The NTMA raised the issue (of potential double counting) with the Department of Finance on a number of occasions from as far back as autumn 2010," said a mandarin.
Since late 2010 the NTMA have loaned directly to the HFA and these loans appear as assets in the NTMA accounts and liabilities in the HFA accounts.
"The liabilities of the HFA are included in general Government debt; the corresponding assets of the NTMA have been included in the ‘liquid assets’ of the NTMA, which are also part general Government debt – effectively a double count.
"Removing the impact of this double count reduces the estimate of 2010 general Government debt by €3.6bn or 2.3% of GDP," our learned friend concludes.
So there you have it – clear as mud.
And yet, even though Daddy found a wad of notes down the back of the armchair….no kids, we’re still not going away on holidays this year because Daddy ran up a big bill at the bookies and they have first dibs on our new found non-poverty.
We will still face the same austerity measures as we were heading for before our stroke of good fortune – unless we follow the Greeks’ lead and put the issue to the people in a referendum.
After all it would give the Government the chance to throw in the Abbeylara question once again and, just as we did with all previous referendums, we would vote it through this time.
But there’d be no need for tallymen to test the water on the debt question because you’d be set for the first unanimous rejection in the history of democracy across the planet.
Unless of course you got the heads from the Department of Finance to check the numbers – in which case we might find that, yes, the referendum was approved once they found the extra 3.6 billion votes in those mislaid boxes from the islands.
And everything is well with the world after all.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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