Colette Browne, a columnist on the Irish Independent wrote on the Apple tax case yesterday. I am going to ignore her comments on tax itself, although it's worth going to read them for illustration of how weak some of Ireland's and Apple's arguments really are. Instead I am interested in her ethical arguments. As she says:
Irish politicians may well find themselves subject to this populist backlash as they try to negotiate tough new pay deals with public sector unions, or impose a new water charge on the populace, and have the €13bn Apple ruling thrown back in their faces.
After the Apple tax decision eventually winds its way through the European courts, it may be that Ireland can successfully defend its tax treatment of the company. However, this will just be a legal victory. Morally, we are bankrupt.
This is emphatically true.
What a sorry state for a nation wanting to feel proud of itself a century after the Easter Rising.
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I worry about bulge-bracket banks moving to Dublin as Britain leaves the EU: the regulatory environment is more than just ‘accommodating’ its ‘moving in and doing the laundry and the cooking for you’.
Depressing isn’t it and I say this as someone who was born and bred in Dublin. I’m no great fan of the Irish Independent which is a very tabloid in its coverage. I’m not sure if you have seen Fintan O’Toole’s piece in the Irish Times, it is a few months old, but he is always worth reading: “We will hurt only ourselves by appealing Apple ruling” http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-we-will-hurt-only-ourselves-by-appealing-apple-ruling-1.2780302
Agree with all that – and on Fintan’s piece
Morally bankrupt – how appropriate for a Catholic country.
I love Eire and the people (I have two brothers living over there) but in reality it is a mismanaged place too heavily dependent on inward investment. People there used to tell me that the place (Eire) was ‘shite’ until the EU started to pump money in and I can vouch for how poor the infrastructure was/is in certain parts of the country.
Eire’s problem now is the Euro – once again money that is printed elsewhere and not indigenously produced in sufficient quantities to invest internally.
I wonder what those who fought and died for a free Eire would make of its current crop of politicians all top willing to sell the country to the lowest corporate bidder?
Hi PSR
Ireland is an interesting place. The infrastructure used to be rubbish. I remember the first flyover; classic motorway type being built in 1974 outside the Belfield campus of UCD (I was an undergraduate there at the time). The infrastructure is a lot better now, with hundreds of miles of motorway for example; better than Northumberland in any event where the A1 is not even dual carriageway for large sections. It is now considerably better than NI.
If you’ve been to Dublin recently it is like a city on steroids again, many miles of new tram track going in for example (the Geology makes an underground very expensive).
I’m not sure how the Euro will pan out – it has certainly been a mixed blessing for Ireland. I disagree that Ireland doesn’t produce sufficient money to invest; it is not as rich as the headline GDP per capita figure would suggest but still similar to most of western Europe. Inequality (Gini coefficient) is a lot better than the UK, as is the education system (consistently better PISA scores). OK Ireland will never have a top 10 university (unless Trinity and UCD merge – bit that’s a bit like NI and Ireland merging). The Irish do however envy the NHS.
I know many of the people who fought and died for Ireland and regularly used to attend funerals of grand uncles when I was a child who were given military funerals. My grandmother was very socialist and used to be very involved with Constance Markievicz (the first female MP). Sadly none of that generation is left. De Velera very much hijacked things and they would be appalled.
When Apple set up in Ireland Charles Haughey was Taoiseach. He was a notorious wheeler and dealer. My mother who knew him well from UCD know him well and turned him down when he propositioned her. He was also one of my three TDs (MPs) for a while. He was notorious back in the late 1070s for his land rezoning (buying agricultural land and then reclassifying it as building land). When I challenged him about this in the Green Goose pub in Dublin during one of his re-election campaigns he walked off saying “He didn’t come here to be insulted” – still got a pint on him as he put a tenner behind the bar. Sorry rambling a bit. A bit of Yeats to finish
“What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave”.
Yeats may be right – he often was – but Ireland still has something going for it
The sense is of identity. Maybe it was born in oppression. Maybe prosperity does challenge it. But emigration still leaves the sense of oppression hanging over the place
Maybe too it was Catholicism – but not any more
And maybe it’s just you could meet the TD in the pub. I certainly have
The headline to this thread is harsh but justified in the context of the Apple Tax ruling case. I could say the Americans are morally bankrupt for voting Trump with considerably more justification; but I know many decent Americans who wouldn’t have voted for Trump even under torture. I could be unkind to the English also; there is a stratum of English society whom I find repugnant, displaying racism, extreme selfishness and contempt for others. I also know many great English people. The Brexit referendum was horrific; not just the outcome but the quality of the debate particularly on the leave side was repugnant.
Ireland is a small country. It is not quite the case that everybody knows everybody else but the degree of separation is small – quite possibly one and if one meets an Irish stranger very commonly a do you know “so and so” hits the jackpot. This gives a very strong sense of identity and also a feeling of being all in it together.
There is little respect for aristocracy as such but respect for people. I’ve met many of the old Anglo-Irish who are nearly always delightful. During the land war the house of any toff who was not up to the mark or treated his tenants in any was shabbily had their house burnt down.
The Act of Union (1800) was a disaster for Ireland and consigned it to be a colony to be bled dry. Ireland was quite wealthy in the 1700’s one has just to look at the Georgian buildings, particularly in Dublin which was at the end of the 18th century when it was the 2nd city of the British Empire.
The famine didn’t help either.
Catholicism was very dominant, but it is a broad church. Our family was very much on the left wing. Indeed I have a Franciscan Uncle and Aunt. The Aunt in particular has been successful. She has lived in Malaysia since 1954 and is the equivalent of a Knight and regularly appears on the top 10 list of founding mothers of Malaysia. Less talented members of the family became things like University Professors. The Catholic Church can be a force for good rather than evil. The sex scandals have done for it in Ireland for now at least. People forget also that West Germany was a strongly Catholic county and even after reunification there is a Catholic majority (if only just). There is a myth of Protestant superiority which I simply don’t buy.
The politicians are much more approachable. Two prominent ones I used to meet regularly were Connor Cruise O’Brien (during family holidays) and Garret Fitzgerald in UCD in my undergraduate days. But there were many others.
There is very little iron ore or coal in Ireland. I thought England was very fortunate in that regard. I was however assured the exact opposite when I came to the University of Sheffield. It may have brought tremendous wealth in the past but nearly all the jobs would disappear causing untold consequences for large communities. There is still “the sense of oppression” hanging over large parts of the North of England.
Sorry this is getting a bit long.
Imperfect as it is a few similarities and contrasts to England.
The per capita wealth is similar (even though GDP Capita is much higher on paper in Ireland), but is spread more evenly.
There is a much stronger feeling of “us” as you say a sense of identity.
There is little industrial wasteland in Ireland (though a considerable amount in NI)
Because of emigration there is much greater appreciation of open borders and a much more tolerant approach to foreigners (now a considerably greater fraction of the population than the UK).
The politicians are not great but at least in Ireland there is a PR system and they at least represent us
There is a written constitution in Ireland; very useful would help the UK a lot at present
The influence of the xenophobic EU hating right wing press is very low. It used to be non existent but the English papers such as the Mail and Telegraph are sold there but in small quantities.
The Irish know too well the corrosive effects of narrow nationalism; years of oppression and not being top dog. Maybe Brexit if it goes disastrously wrong for the UK will ultimately make the English a better people.
Thanks Sean