Political World
Unseasonal budget a relative success – if still something of a shot in the dark
Political World with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
It’s the middle of October and we should be thinking of leaves turning brown and the season of mellow mistfulness as the clocks go back at the end of the month. Instead, unseasonably, we are talking about the Budget.
It just seems strange. That event is always associated in my mind with dreary December and the shortest days and all the darkness before Christmas twinkles us out of it permanent.
But we have had an October Budget this year. Why? Well, it’s got nothing to do with us, Gov. It’s Europe and its bureaucratic ways. Part of the price for going into the European Stability Mechanism was that there was more uniformity and predictability about how European Union member States were running their affairs. And that mean that all EU countries must present their budgets in October.
We had a Budget in October once before. That was in 2008, when new Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his new Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan realised the jewel they had inherited from Bertie Ahern was really a fake.
In an act of panic, they introduced an early Budget with a lot of crude cuts. Most were tolerable. But the one that really riled the citizens was the decision to remove the automatic right of over-seventies to hold a medical card.
It provoked an outrage and for the first time ever the gates of Leinster House were being stormed by a silver-haired and blue-rinse mob.
So, after that experience, there was understandably not much appetite to repeat an October budget.
But now we have had one foisted on us. It must be said the atmosphere has changed markedly since then and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge and a lot of money has flowed out of the Exchequer.
As it happens, for the second year in a row, the Minister for Health James Reilly has tightened up the conditions for over-seventies to hold medical cards and thousands will now lost that right.
But is there an outcry this time? Not much, if any. So many groups have been hit hard by successive austerity budgets that the well of sympathy – so evident in 2008 – has dried up almost completely.
The worst thing is that the Government has made a budget for 2014 based on an incomplete picture of how 2013 has fared out. At least with a December budget you have almost all the details that are required.
Before this week’s document was drafted we knew what money the State had taken in and spent for the first nine months but not the last three months. For example, the returns for the self-employed are filed at the end of October and November (if online) so we can’t say at this stage if the news is good or bad. Ditto with corporation tax, where November is also a very big month. And the CSO figures that tell us how the economy is faring overall (whether it’s growing or in recession) only take us to the end of June.
We will not know until long after the Budget has been announced if the country was in recession in the second half of the year.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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