Ireland on the turn? Political and economic consequences of the crash

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 67, 2011, Pages 5-39

  Finn, Daniel ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 79951598792     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Friedman, 'Follow the leapin' leprechaun', New York Times, 1 July 2005;
2. Osborne, 'Look and learn from across the Irish Sea', The Times, 23 February 2006.
3. Leader: 'Was it for this?', Irish Times, 18 November 2010. Some Europhile intellectuals have been unable to absorb the evidence of their own eyes, so reluctant are they to discard a benign view of the European Union. A striking example was Colm Tóibín's response to the Irish Times editorial: 'There are two things which have happened in my lifetime which I still feel a sort of reverence for. One is the Good Friday Agreement, and the other is the European Union' - 'Thus when the Irish Times on Thursday mentioned "the German chancellor" I did not automatically feel that this person was in some way a malignant force in the world. Instead, I saw someone rational and prudent, sensible and deeply intelligent. So, too, when the Irish Times mentioned "a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor on the side", I didn't feel any shame at all. I noticed in the past week that the tone of the British chancellor has seemed both sympathetic and reasonable.'
4. Colm Tóibín, 'Looking at Ireland, I don't know whether to laugh or cry', Guardian, 20 November 2010.
5. David Hegarty, 'Framework for the evaluation of the Structural Funds in Ireland', National Development Plan/Community Support Framework Evaluation Unit, Dublin 2003.
6. David Hegarty, 'Framework for the evaluation of the Structural Funds in Ireland', National Development Plan/Community Support Framework Evaluation Unit, Dublin 2003.
7. Fintan O'Toole, After the Ball, Dublin 2003, p. 162.
8. Kieran Allen, Ireland's Economic Crash, Dublin 2009, p. 36.
9. Peadar Kirby, Celtic Tiger in Collapse: Explaining the Weaknesses of the Irish Model, Basingstoke 2010. p. 35.
10. See Allen, Ireland's Economic Crash, p. 44;
11. Kirby, Celtic Tiger in Collapse, p. 41. Employment in financial services rose by 43 per cent over the same period, while industrial employment contracted by 9 per cent.
12. Morgan Kelly, 'If you thought the bank bailout was bad, wait until the mortgage defaults hit home', Irish Times, 8 November 2010.
13. Peadar Kirby, 'Globalization, the Celtic Tiger and Social Outcomes: Is Ireland a Model or a Mirage?', Globalizations, December 2004, p. 216.
14. OECD Public Management Reviews, Ireland: Towards an Integrated Public Service, Paris 2008, pp. 15-16.
15. Eilis O'Hanlon, 'Man of cloth recast as just a jobsworth', Sunday Independent, 21 March 2010.
16. In Fintan O'Toole, 'Popular thinking on crisis swept aside', Irish Times, 13 April 2010.
17. Dick Walsh, The Party: Inside Fianna Fáil, Dublin 1986, p. 3.
18. Fianna Fail candidates have usually received more working-class votes than the whole of the Irish left. In the 1977 election-admittedly a good year for Fianna Fail-its shares of the skilled and unskilled working-class vote were 54 and 47 per cent respectively, while the Irish Labour Party managed 11 and 16 per cent. Paul Bew, Ellen Hazelkorn and Henry Patterson, The Dynamics of Irish Politics, London 1989, p. 167.
19. This compares to 1920s figures of just under 15 per cent for Norway, 14 per cent for Scotland and 11 per cent for Sweden. See Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922-2002, London 2004, p. 10. Brown notes: 'The continuous Irish diaspora, under way since the Famine, kept the population of the country as a whole almost stable throughout most of the modern period.'
20. These have averaged three years per decade in the post-war period: 1948-51; 1954-57; 1973-77; 1982-87; 1994-97.
21. An excellent account can be found in Niamh Puirseil, The Irish Labour Party 1922-73, Dublin 2007. After abandoning its anti-coalition stance and serving in two Fine Gael-led governments, Labour's share of the national vote fell from 17 in 1969 to 6 per cent in 1987-with a plunge from 28 to 7 per cent in the nation's capital.
22. Bew, Hazelkorn and Patterson, The Dynamics of Irish Politics, p. 142.
23. In 1981, under 40 per cent of the electorate had no fixed party attachment; by 2002 this had risen to 75 per cent. See Allen, Ireland's Economic Crash, p. 31.
24. It has been suggested that the electoral system itself is responsible for the current predicament: 'If the boom-bust cycle of the last 30 years has taught us anything, it is that nothing will ultimately change until we move away from the multi-seat constituencies that foster parish-pump politics, sacrificing the wider public good for narrow, vested interests. Dumping our electoral system . . . would bring about a real revolution in how politics in this country operates.' Shane Coleman, 'Politicians are a part of the solution', Sunday Tribune, 12 December 2010. It is quite true that Irish politicians are often assigned the role of making representations on behalf of individual constituents to state agencies, and possibly the electoral system reinforces that narrowing of horizons, its proportional character being more competitive than firstpast-the-post systems. The PR-STV model - multi-seat constituencies, with 'surplus' votes of successful or eliminated candidates transferred according to specified preferences - was introduced by the British in 1920 (as in South Africa's transition from apartheid, the protection of minorities was then considered imperative). There may be a case for electoral reform on its own merits; but linking that case to the economic meltdown is a brazen con intended to divert attention from the relationship between political and economic notables: there were no bankers or property developers waiting in local constituency offices asking for favours from Fianna Fáil TDs.
25. Bob Rowthorn and Naomi Wayne, Northern Ireland: The Political Economy of Conflict, Cambridge 1988, p. 94.
26. Jim Smyth and Andreas Cebulla, 'The glacier moves? Economic change and class structure', in Colin Coulter and Michael Murray, eds, Northern Ireland after The Troubles: A Society in Transition, Manchester 2008, p. 180.
27. Like its southern neighbour, the Northern Irish economy has benefited from EU support, receiving £1.7 billion between 1989 and 1999: proof enough that funding from Brussels is insufficient to remedy long-term structural weaknesses without the aid of other stimuli.
28. Rowthorn and Wayne, Northern Ireland, pp. 98-9.
29. Smyth and Cebulla, 'The glacier moves', p. 188.
30. It has been calculated that the poorest 40 per cent of the population will lose more than 5 per cent of their net income as a result of tax and benefit changes to be introduced between 2010 and 2015. See Institute for Fiscal Studies, 'The Impact of Tax and Benefit Reforms to be Introduced between 2010-11 and 2014-15 in Northern Ireland', London 2010, p. 9.
31. Smyth and Cebulla, 'The glacier moves', p. 185. The same authors recall a survey which identifies 36 per cent of Catholic households as 'poor', while placing 25 per cent of Protestant households in the same category.
32. Bell, The British in Ireland: A Suitable Case for Withdrawal, London 1984, p. 72.
33. Members of the Assembly are elected on the PR-STV system used in the Republic, although Northern Ireland continues to elect eighteen mps to the House of Commons on a first-past-the-post basis.
34. This motif was entirely subordinate to the sectarian triumphalism and fearmongering which was Paisley's stock-in-trade for most of his political life, and should not be mistaken for any sort of progressive class analysis.
35. Ian Wood, Crimes of Loyalty: A History of the Ulster Defence Association, Edinburgh 2006, p. 269.
36. Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the ira, London 1997, p. 239.
37. Eamonn McCann, War and Peace in Northern Ireland, Dublin 1998, p. 155.
38. Thatcher was responding to the report of the New Ireland Forum, an assembly of non-violent Irish nationalists convened by the Dublin government in the 1980s with the explicit purpose of isolating the Provos. Its proposals for constitutional change - a unitary Irish state, a federal state, or joint sovereignty between London and Dublin - were dismissed out of hand by the British government, with Thatcher's customary talent for sugaring the pill very much in evidence.
39. Jonathan Tonge, The New Northern Irish Politics?, Basingstoke 2005, p. 264.
40. 'Forces are a threat: McGuinness', BBC News, 6 March 2009.
41. Cory Collusion Inquiry Report: Patrick Finucane, London, 2004, p. 109.
42. Anne Lucey, 'Europe "amazed" at steps taken in budget: Lenihan', Irish Times, 27 April 2009.
43. Helena Smith, 'Athens protest: "We are at war with them, as they are with us"', Guardian, 10 February 2010. I have heard a variation of the same point from a trade unionist who told a meeting: 'I'm sure you've all heard the joke: what's the difference between Iceland and Ireland? One letter and six months. Well, here's the real difference: they brought down the government and we didn't.'
44. Stephen Collins, 'Fianna Fail facing meltdown', Irish Times, 16 December 2010.
45. As one Fianna Fail sympathizer has noted: 'It appears that the anti-establishment anger or mood for change in some sectors of the electorate, particularly the young, is looking increasingly beyond the Labour Party for other alternatives . . . Candidates from the "fourth bloc" polled more than half a quota in over a third of the 43 constituencies in 2007, which means the swing required for a real breakthrough is not massive.' Noel Whelan, 'SF and left-wing independents set to burst out of blocs', Irish Times, 11 December 2010.
46. A number of prominent ANC leaders have visited Belfast to give their support to the Sinn Féin leadership at crucial stages of the peace process; this continues a relationship that dates back to the 1980s and has been a constant source of irritation to conservative politicians who believe that the 'statesmen' of the ANC should be meeting them instead.
47. One of those figures - the chair of Dublin Sinn Féin - has recently published a fascinating commentary on republican and left-wing politics in modern Ireland, notable both for its coded criticisms of his party and stimulating reflections on the travails of the Irish Left: Eoin Ó Broin, Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism, London 2009.
48. TASC, Response to Budget 2011, Dublin 2010, pp. 3-4.
49. David McWilliams, 'Bailout will sink Ireland before we can even swim', Irish Independent, 1 December 2010;
50. Wolfgang Munchau, 'Will it work? No. What can Ireland do? Remove the bank guarantee and default', Irish Times, 2 December 2010.