Flight of the Job Market

Our democracy, our economy, our country is being managed by incompetent idiots. There really is no escaping this fact any more.

Not only are the masters of our destiny not that bright, they are woefully unqualified to lead us out of the sticky mess that they've gotten us into.

On what basis do I make this bold claim?

There are examples far too numerous to list, but lets take the handling of the rapidly unravelling Hangar Six debacle at Dublin Airport for some further analysis.

On February 26th 2009, shortly after SR Technics announced that they were pulling out of Dublin Airport, Michael O'Leary contacted Mary Coughlan and told her that he would provide 500 jobs if the DAA would lease or sell Hanger Six to Ryanair.

Imagine how easy your job as Tánaiste would be if people kept offering to create 500 jobs: For one thing you wouldn't have to jet off anywhere on Patrick's day under the pretence of looking for jobs.

However Ms. Coughlan, our Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, in her infinite wisdom and with the good of country always in mind, simply ignored it.

One might argue that Mary was playing a game of Russian roulette with the future of 500 families in the north Dublin region, but her supporters will probably counter that she was playing Mick O'Leary at his own game.

After all, Michael is used to having people at his beck and call, asking "how high?" when he shouts "JUMP". Let's call his bluff and see what happens...

Effective? Not so much. Whether the minister was engaging in a bold new strategy, or just criminally incompetent, it didn't work.

O'Leary, a businessman used to governments pulling out the stops when he offers them 500 jobs, was unimpressed.

So 200 of the jobs were lost to Glasgow, but O'Leary persevered, in no small part out of a desire to embarrass our government.

He again offered 300 jobs, but made it public. The man loves some cheap publicity and he is the best in the European market, if not the world, at the PR game.

However, the government refused to play ball because in the intervening period they had leased out Hangar Six to... Aer Lingus.

The Aer Lingus who is interested in creating 500 jobs in Ireland?

Or the Aer Lingus that is about to make 1,200 cabin crew redundant and will then hire back only 970 on reduced terms and conditions? Ah yes, that's the one...

So rather than leasing out the hanger to a company that wanted to create 500 jobs, they leased it out to a company that is making 230 people redundant, and reducing the wages of a further 970.

The logic in all of this? The government "can't tear up a legal agreement with one company to facilitate another".

After all, this is the party that puts business before the little people and hasn't that strategy paid dividends for us all?

Well, I'm glad they have their priorities in order.

But it still doesn't explain why they entered into the agreement in the first place, given that they already new that they could get 500 jobs in the Fingal area by renting it to Ryanair, rather than renting the space to Aer Lingus.

And as arguments go, Cowen's claim has one fatal flaw. The devil, as always, is in the detail

When Aer Lingus was privatised (and as always happens when this governments sells off state assets, think Eircom, lots of ordinary Irish punters lose money on an over-priced former state company) the government kept a 25% stake in the company.

We were told the reason for this 25% stake was 'to protect the national interest.' Sound logic so far.

Ryanair, unscrupulous corporate raiders that they are, own 29% of Aer Lingus, the single largest shareholder in the company.

To make things simple for our Taoiseach and Minister for Enterprise, I'll do the maths.

29 + 25 = 54.

So between the two of them, they have a massive controlling stake in Aer Lingus, 54%. Well over and above the amount required to pull the strings.

Aer Lingus wants Hangar Six and to cut 230 jobs. Ryanair wants Hangar Six and to create 500 jobs. Between them, Ryanair and the government can solve the problem, with no fallout.

But the government don't want to. Despite the fact that it is in-arguably "in the national interest."

W.C. Fields said that "Comedy is tragedy happening to someone else."

The rest of the world must be laughing up their sleeves at Ireland.

Good Money After Bad

An interesting thing happened yesterday; AIB's share price rose by %2.5. Not the good news story it may initially seem though.

The rise was on the back of the company announcing that they made a €2.6 billion pre-tax loss in 2009.

In Ireland in 2010, a €2.6 billion loss by a bank is good news!

It's a cautionary tale of the topsy-turvy times we live in when announcing a €2.6 billion loss is seen as a positive business story, enough to generate a 2.5% price increase.

It's like feeling positive about the fact that your taxi-driver is only twice the legal limit for alcohol, as opposed to six time the legal limit. Wrong, oh so wrong.

And all the time NAMA rolls on, more jobs are lost every day and Mary Coughlan responds by getting a makeover.

Awesome...

Government Efficiency

There's been a lot of discussion over the past few weeks about the mysterious assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai and the use of fake Irish, British, French & German passports by the assassins.

Despite their fulsome denial; "Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies", lets call a highly organised assassination by Mossad a highly organised assassination by Mossad. The Israeli government did it.

There are a lot of ethical questions raised by this case, not least about state sponsored assassination and the identity theft of passports by a foreign government.

But we'd have to be incredibly naive to believe that governments around the world don't do bad things and break international law whenever it's in the interest of their country. That's what governments do.

The Americans do it; the British do it; the French certainly do it. And however many rules of ethics they may breach on a daily basis, you have to give it to the Israeli secret service: they're efficient.

However for some reason I can't imagine Mossad agents being turned into a worldwide movie franchise like MI6 assassin James Bond.

But lets imagine for a second that the Irish government were to decide that it was going to willy-nilly bump off those who threaten it's interests and indulge in some international sabotage/ skulduggery/ assassination.

Then lets say, hypothetically speaking of course, that the former Minister for Justice and False Sworn Affidavits (his official title) Willie O'Dea, hired a young man and sent him on a mission to rid the earth of Ireland's enemies, to banish them to Hades, shuffle them off this mortal coyle.

How do you think that would that work out, given the known-knowns that we now know about the Irish government and how it operates?

Why don't I tell you (hypothetically speaking of course)?

Unlike the Israeli's, the Irish Secret Service would first fail to train their agent sufficiently (cutbacks don't you know.) But sure the Irish are a quick-thinking bunch; "ye'll be grand" they'd say.

They would first send their agent to a bear colony in Alaska; them to a ship building yard in Malta (after all former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern pointed out that our economy was ruined by the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns.)

On the discovery of their mistake and gross ineptitude, their agent would then be sent to the Appalachian mountains to see if there's any truth in the rumour that "there's money in them thar' hills."

After all, Lenny says the coffers are running a bit low at the moment and the government is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to generating revenue and jobs.

As it turns out the Irish Secret Service's intelligence was severely flawed and the agent would spend the guts of a week trying to evade capture and violation by a crowd of banjo playing, toothless rednecks.

Finally our wonderfully efficient government would send a telegram (the civil service computers being on a work-to-rule at present) asking their agent if he could visit a quarry in the Ukraine to "see how much rock-salt you can get for €78. Stop. Gormley says it's going to snow again soon. Stop."

Once the agent returned to Dublin, broken physically, mentally and spiritually; a mere shell of an individual incapable of doing anything worthwhile; he would be deemed sufficiently trained to take up a position in the HSE

This is all hypothetically speaking of course. I'm not suggesting that I've been on a state-sponsored assassination attempt/wild goose chase for the last three weeks. Oh no.

I could tell you where I've been. But then I'd have to kill you.

George Lee's Resignation

More on this to follow, but for now here's the full text of George Lee's statement:

"I wish to announce that I have resigned from the Fine Gael Party and from my seat in Dáil Eireann today Monday 8th February 2010.

It has been a very difficult decision, but it is one that I have taken after a great deal of reflection on my position and on the role that I have been playing in Fine Gael since I joined that Party in May last year.

The nine months since then have been a period of enormous economic upheaval. Throughout that period I have done my best to play a positive role in contributing to the national debate and to efforts to find a solution for many of the country’s economic problems.

The reality, however, is that despite my best efforts I have had virtually no influence or input into shaping Fine Gael’s economic policies at this most critical time.

The role I have been playing within the party has been very limited and I have found this to be personally unfulfilling.

When I entered politics last May I made it clear that I was doing so because I wanted to try to play a new role contributing to economic policy formulation. After nine months of trying within the political system it is now my considered view that the role available to me within Fine Gael is not a role I am happy to play.

I would like thank most sincerely all those who campaigned for me, for all of their efforts and support. I would also like to thank my Secretarial and Parliamentary Assistants for all of the help and work that they have provided to me.

I particularly want to thank the electorate of Dublin South who voted for me in such large numbers last May. It has been a great privilege and an honour to serve on their behalf.

However, I do not believe I would be serving the electorate honestly if I were to continue allowing my efforts and mandate to be used to promote and market economic policies into which I have had no input"

Watching the Detectives

It's very rare that I'm in favour of our government spending money (our money, remember).

It's a feeling that precedes the 'current economic climate' (or whatever the latest euphemism is for the crap we find ourselves in.)

It's not that I don't believe in state administered roads, hospitals, social welfare etc: On the contrary, given human kinds inherent selfish, illogical nature, important services can't be left to chance or, goodness forbid, the market.

It's just that I don't trust the current administration to do it well.

I'd love to see a Scandanavian model of government in Ireland, but sadly decades (if not centuries) of 'sticking it to the man' has left Ireland a country where backhanders, brown envelopes and bent politicians are the norm and centralisation leads to expensive flops.

When you couple that with government ministers who are 'entitled' to be treated like Marie Antoinette, you get a bankrupt country with eff all to show for it.

If you think I'm overstating the fact, I'd ask you to consider just three of many decisions: the e-voting fiasco, the decentralisation debacle and the PPARS disaster.

In three short moves that's well over a billion euro wasted, on badly thought out, ill costed decisions. Lets be honest, it's merely the tip of the iceberg as well.

That the Irish people have little faith in the institutions that have run this state since independence, whether they be politicians or the church, it's hardly surprising.

So the news that we need to invest in yet another costly computer system couldn't come at a worse time.

The head of the Garda inspectorate Kathleen O'Sullivan said that her team were "really stunned" when they discovered the antiquated systems in place in Ireland. At present Garda management don't know:

• How many calls are being received
• The nature of the calls
• The geographic spread of calls

So while it's as clear as a truncheon to the head that the Gardaí badly need a new computerised dispatch system, I worry about how it will be implemented in this grand little country of ours.

After all, the last system for An Garda Siochana (Pulse) didn't exactly work out fantastically. The white elephant cost over €61 million, is available in less than half of Garda stations around the country and if you believe what many Gardaí say about it, it doesn't really work.

I hope to goodness that this system is implemented soon as it's clearly desperately needed and that it's done at reasonable expense to the taxpayer because we simply can't afford yet another white elephant.

But I won't hold my breath. How did George W Bush put it again? Something about fool me once...

Whitewash

So there we have it: We're going to have an enquiry into the banking crisis, but most of it will be held in private.

Over the next few weeks the Opposition parties will be accused by FF and the Green's of making political capital out a serious national issue, in an effort to deflect criticism of their flaccid investigation, but Labour and FG are right to point out that this is a whitewash.

As John Gormley explained to Pat Kenny on the Today programme this morning, it will take four months to come up with the terms of reference of the enquiry. Four freaking months!

According to Brian Lenihan they can't have a public enquiry because it would be too expensive:

"I've seen a big demand for a public inquiry, but let's be frank about it; if you want me to sign a cheque for €150 million now for the next 10 years and set up a tribunal of inquiry, that's what's going to happen if we go for a public inquiry"

Playing the 'Tribunal' card with the Irish people is a handy one for government politicians; we're all sick of Tribunals and the amount they've cost and how long they've lasted; but what they fail to point out is that it was Fianna Faíl who set up the various tribunals that we're now lumped with.

There are precedents for having cost-effective, efficient, fast investigations in public, but the government are having none of it, ostensibly because it doesn't suit them.

The reason we can't have a Daíl enquiry, in public as they did with the brilliant and cost effective DIRT enquiry, is that an Oireachtas sub-committee "did not have the right to make judgments about disputed issues of fact."

Well call me an old fashioned stick in the mud, but surely that's what legislation is for? If there's a problem with the current legality of an Oireachtas committee, then why not pass legislation to give an Oireachtas committee a legal grounding?

Then again, passing legislation is not what this government is good at: After all they only sat for 90-odd days last year. Where would they get the time between Easter, Christmas, half-term or New Year breaks to Malta!?

(Now that I mention it, can anyone think of an important piece of legislation passed since the last general election? The Blasphemy Bill doesn't count. Answers on a postcard/comment please.)

What will now happen in that all of the witnesses, whether they be the former Minister of Finance Brian Cowen, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the former Chief Executive of the Financial Regulator Patrick Neary or the Bank Executive's who spent so much time in the Fianna Faíl tent, will give evidence in secret, behind closed doors.

By the time the private reports end and are published in 2011 it will have been three years since our banking enquiry spiralled into meltdown. As of yet, who has paid for it? Apart from the Irish people, that is.

In the US those involved in massive financial irregularity and fraud are in jail. In Ireland corrupt politicians, crooked bankers and any other white collar criminal will never do a perp walk.

The politicians, bankers, civil servants and other who caused this crisis are untouchable in modern Ireland.

Today John Gormley drew comparisons with the Murphy enquiry when questioned about why the enquiry was being held in private. It's unbelievable the level to which the Green Party have sunk since they got into bed with Fianna Faíl.

The reason the Murphy report was held in private was to give anonymity to victims of clerical child sex abuse. What justification can there be for holding the majority of this report in secret? To spare the Taoiseach's blushes? Spare me.

Anywhere else in the world white collar crime is taken seriously. In Ireland, we put people in jail who don't pay their TV licence.

If you want to know what's gone wrong over the last decade read Shane Ross's excellent book The Bankers. You won't find it out from the government's private enquiry, whenever that finally reports. Fianna Faíl and the Greens make the FAI look like professionals.