FT.com / Europe - Resignations hit Irish government majority.
Ireland got into its current staggering mess by promoting a banking model that has for all practical purposes failed and an economy built on the myth of economic activity which was just a giant tax scam.
The model that got it into the mess has failed.
Now it's pionerring the deep cuts model of getting out of the mess. And that's failing too:
The Irish government may have to rely on the vote of the speaker to secure key legislation after two backbench members of the populist Fianna F?°il party resigned the whip in a dispute over health cuts.
The resignations of Jimmy Devins, a former junior health minister, and Eamon Scanlon represent the first sign of backbench unease over budget cuts as Dublin seeks to stabilise public finances and rescue the stricken economy.
Mr‚ÄâCowen‚Äâon Thursday made clear he expected both parliamentarians to vote with the government on key issues, saying he hoped “in the current economic circumstances they will be in a position to continue to support the government”.
However, Mr Devins said he would “look at every vote on its merits”.
The closure of breast cancer facilities in his Sligo constituency, which took place on Wednesday, has been a hot local issue for more than a year. Some campaigners against the health cuts dismissed the politicians’ moves as an attempt to protect their seats should a general election be called before 2011.
Nonetheless the defections are further evidence of the faltering discipline inside Fianna F?°il.
That's not faltering discipline: that's profound disquiet with the new prescription from the failed neo-liberal economic model that puts all the pain of the failure onto Irish people and perpetuates the corporate tax abuse that undermines Europe's tax system and fails to deliver thereturn the Irish people should expect from capital.
The same will happen here when the Tories try to cut: it just won't be possible because people won't have it, even if they're conned into voting for it.
Have no doubt: politically we're in for a rough ride and the Left will win in the end - because people want what only the state can provide.
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I’ve thought for a long time that the prosperity of the ‘Celtic tiger’ was, like so much else in the neo-liberal economic model, an unsustainable charade; I heard recently that until the banking crisis some people in Dublin were getting mortgages at 14 times annual income – insane!
Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and of course, just as in the UK and the US, the pain is being borne not by the perpetrators of this idiocy, but by society as a whole. Socialization of risk, privatisation of reward.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of people object to this, hence the resignations noted above. I hope to God you’re correct that the Left will win in the end, because if they don’t we’ll end up as a 3rd world kleptocracy. As your blog on the Tories and tax havens shows, there’s not a hope in hell they’ll sort out the rotten financial system.
My family are of Irish descent. They mostly left because life was hard there and they didn’t want to be farmers.
In the absence of financial arbitrage, Ireland is always going to be poor. It’s an island, for a start, so can’t export on a level playing field with the European mainland. It’s not big enough for an economy to support itself. At least now it’s bankrupt it will be able to start exporting its charming young people again.
Richard,
because people want what only the state can provide
Does this list of wants, which only the state can provide, include: televisions, clothing, refrigerators, cars, shoes, coffee, food, carpeting, windows, light bulbs, furniture, cutlery, beer, crockery, belts, watches, socks, ice-cube trays, soap, razors, deo, toothpaste, salt-shakers, lawn-mowers, bicycles, prams, luggage …. ?
These are the things the left wants the state to provide? Only the state can provide these wants?
Georges
You can see from the internet what people want. Pornography, sport, free music. There’s only one government in the world that provides even some of that, and people wonder why Berlusconi is popular.
I believe there is a rude awakening around the corner. “People want what only the state can provide” is somewhat simplistic. Trouble is, having been brought up to know all of their rights and none of their responsibilities too many people just “want” and are not interested in what they could do for themselves or in contributing to society. Richard says take it from the rich and close down the tax havens but I believe he vastly overestimates the yield of doing this. Too few rich and too many grasping open hands unfortunately. The truth is that we (meaning the developed west in general) are bankrupt of finance and ideas having lived beyond our means in a fools’ paradise for the last 20 years at least. We have devalued our currencies and replaced our mixed economy with far too much large government. Take the MOD for instance. More pen pushers than when we had huge armed forces and an empire to defend. Or the BBC with executives on nearly a million a year. What nonsense! It could be brushed under the carpet while finance and insurance were providing the taxes but Oh Dear, that money was just an illusion. Quangos and pen pushing bureaucrats earn us nothing and yet cost long millions which the hard pressed and fast declining private sector has to pay for. Are we to print money and borrow our way to hell? I am all for paying the people at the public service front line a good salary but I would draw that front line fairly narrowly. Whilst I am a big supporter of small government and free enterprise I would say that some of those who benfited most spectacularly from the huge Ponzi scheme that was the banking/insurance boom are beyond the pale. They should be brought to book, have assets confiscated and made bankrupt if necessary. After all, that is precisely what they did to their companies and to all intents and purposes to their countries. Surely, many knew exactly what they were doing to obtain those bonuses and any who didn’t were guilty of culpable stupidity – like their bosses and boardrooms.