Alan Dukes interview… February 22, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.5 comments
A very interesting interview with Alan Dukes in the Mail conducted by Jason O’Toole which sort of provides a run-down of just what things will be like after the election.
Chairman of Anglo Irish, Alan Dukes has gained a reputation as the prophet of doom whose predictions on the collapsing state of our economy have been frighteningly accurate. When Fianna Fáil Finance Minister Brian Lenihan appointed the former Fine Gael leader as a public interest director on the bank’s board – in December 2008 – he wasted no time in getting to grips with the problem. He marched into the Department of Finance and warned the mandarins their prediction that €1.5billion would be needed to recapitalise Anglo was a ridiculous under-estimate. He insisted that an additional €2.5billion – at least – was needed. They scoffed that he was ‘exaggerating the figures’. And they were wrong. His latest prediction – that an additional €15billion will be needed, along with a doubling of Nama’s budget to €75billion, for our banking system – is being similarly criticised.
Duke’s isn’t too worried about saying it like it is.
The politicians who balk at his predictions are really ‘talking out of both sides of their mouths’ and will have to ‘eat their words’ after the General Election, the straight talking chairman tells me when we meet at his plush office on the fifth floor of Anglo’s HQ on Burlington Road.
And…
The conversation quickly turns to the 65-year-old’s alarming predictions about the need for an additional €15billion, which prompted an outraged Enda Kenny and Leo Varadkar to categorically state that ‘not another cent’ would be pumped into our ailing bank system. ‘Well, I think that they are responding to a kind of emotional movement in public opinion, which I fully understand, but in a way which I think is not very wise. And I make this point about political parties in general. They seem sometimes to forget that people are going to remember some months down the line what they said during the course of the election. And a lot of words are going to have to be eaten. ‘And I don’t say that with any pleasure or vindictiveness, but if you make resounding statements on a less than fully informed basis they’ll come back to bite you. I find that the level of information in all the political parties about the mechanics and the implications of the banking scene is less than perfect.’
The problem is, though, that Dukes seems to accept that this is the way it is and this is the way it’s going to be…
Dukes not only stands over his assessment that a mind-boggling additional €15billion will be needed, but goes even further and states that it may be even more again. He explains: ‘While it may be a difficult message to sell to the public, I think we’ve seen enough of the way this crisis has moved to be able to say that any figure given can be subject to change – either up or down. To the good or to the bad. ‘But as Groucho Marx’s said: “Forecasting is very difficult – especially when you’re talking about the future”. Anybody who claims to be able to put a figure on what this is all going to cost is taking a punt. ‘Now, some of them may be better informed punts than others but they are all punts.’ Pardon? A punt? Dukes painstakingly explains that it’s all down to chance because the continuous drop in the price of property means that the value of the loans given out by the banks also continue to fall, and because of this the ‘impairment gets bigger and bigger as we go through it’. Worryingly, he believes that property prices could plunge further. ‘I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the property price fall. And we won’t know that we’ve seen the end of it until prices start to move up again. And I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.’ He is therefore critical of the outgoing Government’s decision, last September, to put a definitive cost of €50billion on the banking crisis, saying it is too soon. ‘
So we see the costs of all this rise and rise. Remember when the Budget deficits were the hot-button issue? Well, we haven’t seen anything quite like this before….
Even more alarmingly, Dukes maintains that the incoming government might have to go back to the ECB and IMF with a begging bowl for additional funding on top of the already crippling loan of €85billion we have taken out. ‘I don’t think we can rule that out completely,’ he says.
A way out of this? He tilts towards one…
And he warns that ‘without wanting to scare the horses’, all options need to be examined at ‘eurozone level’ – including the possibility of default.
But backs away…
He says: ‘Default is one of the things that will certainly be looked at in terms of public policy. But whatever course of action is taken – and the eurozone seems to be against that particular one – I think it has to be taken at the eurozone level. ‘Personally, I think that there’s an awful lot more work that has to be done at the eurozone level. A resolution has to be found at that level. And if that means that all of the options have to be carefully examined at eurozone level, that’s fine. But it has to be done at that level. ‘A potential problem like this in any part of the eurozone is a problem for the whole eurozone. And we’re part of that. So far, the approach to that has been partial.
As for culpability?
…he believes it is important to state that it’s ‘too easy a narrative’ to simply point the finger of blame at Seán FitzPatrick and David Drumm because ‘Anglo wasn’t the only bank that had those particular problems’.
Maybe it’s me, but that seems to too sanguine a view. The issue was a culture in Irish financial circles (though not restricted to them). But he’s not averse to a little finger-pointing either.
He puts a considerable proportion of the blame for Anglo on the Financial Regulator of the time. ‘There were serious problems in the way the regulatory system worked. I was appalled, shortly after arriving here, when I saw from the inside the amount of reporting that banks do to the regulatory system, and reflected that the regulators had never taken the action that was required to stop over concentration.
Indeed, and who would disagree with him? But the Financial Regulator and the regulatory system were the product of the political context, one where the private sector sought to minimize regulation (indeed up until a year or two ago there was a government task force directed to further deregulate the financial sector – quietly shelved for some reason though in more recent times).
‘When the public interest directors got here, this bank had broken through every conceivable potential limit of concentration by sector or by borrower or by group. ‘And all of that information was available to the regulators because even though we called it ‘light-touch regulation’ the amount of information that goes to the regulator from banks is huge. And they certainly had enough to see what was building up. And I can find no evidence that they made any real effort to stop it.’
What he doesn’t seem to notice is that the regulator had no real regulatory teeth, as noted here, precisely because of a political/economic approach rooted in neo-liberalism. This wasn’t just light-touch, this was no-touch – deliberately crafted as such, and while the Regulator was at fault, how much more so was the broader political system, a right of centre one at that, which allowed this to happen, hand in glove with the private sector.
Some might find this averting of his eyes to that small detail curious given that he was the man who in the late 1980s sought to reposition FG as a ‘social democratic’ party… but there you go.
He finds it ‘laughable’ that former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is in denial when it comes to accepting his responsibility for the crisis. ‘One evening sometime after Bertie had left [as Taoiseach], I saw a headline on the front of the Evening Herald, where Bertie said, “Everything was grand when I left”. And I nearly creased myself laughing. ‘I thought, “Either that man had no clue what was going on all around him or else he’s rewriting history”. I think his protestation that nobody told him what was going on in the banks are absolutely laughable. Those are the kindest words I can use about it.’
And he gets a bit confused here…
…he also rubbishes some of the arguments that were put forward by his old party Fine Gael and by Labour about how they would have handled the banking crisis. ‘There have been contradictory and rather ill-judged statements about what should have been done. For example, Fine Gael, at one point, wanted every bank to be broken into a good bank/bad bank and given a year to prove whether the good bank could work. I think that kind of timescale was utterly unrealistic. ‘ He says: ‘The Labour Party objects to the State having taken on the debts of private banks and yet says they had wanted to nationalise all the banks. I don’t think those two things square together.
Well, aren’t those two rather different issues? Leftists, and I’m not entirely certain of LP policy in regard to bank nationalisation, seek banks run in the public interest, which would lead – at the least – to a rather different configuration as regards banking structures. So the elision of the two points of view Dukes purports to put out seem to me to be a bit askew.
However, even though he understands there’s an appetite among the public for reckless bankers to get prison sentences, he admits he can’t envisage it coming to pass. ‘There are several investigations. They’ve been going on for rather a long time. I can understand that the authorities want to know that there’s a good prospect of succeeding if they take prosecutions. I don’t know whether that will happen and if it does whether they’ll succeed. ‘And the most unsympathetic, or apparently unsympathetic thing I can say, is that there isn’t any way in 2011 we can jail people for having committed a crime that we define in 2011 but that they allegedly committed in 2007 or 2006. ‘Retrospective legislation of that kind just doesn’t work. And I’m afraid that to a certain extent, being an imprudent banker or an incompetent civil servant are not crimes.’
Which neatly avoids placing the blame on the actual socio-economic approach cheerled by ‘imprudent’ bankers, their political allies and a range of media and other sources.
The last Irish Times poll of the election – sort of vaguely familiar as it happens… February 22, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.20 comments
Consider this. The core votes for the parties are as follows:
The core vote for the parties (before undecided voters are excluded) compared with the last poll was: Fianna Fáil, 13 per cent (up one point); Fine Gael, 30 per cent (up four points); Labour, 16 per cent (down three points); Sinn Féin, 9 per cent (no change); Green Party, 1 per cent (no change); Independents/ Others, 12 per cent (up one point); and undecided voters, 19 per cent (down three points).
The result in the Irish Times last poll of the election once undecideds are reallocated are as follows:
When people were asked who they would vote for if there were a general election tomorrow, the figures for party support (when undecided voters were excluded) compared with the last Irish Times poll on February 3rd were: Fianna Fáil, 16 per cent (up one point); Fine Gael, 37 per cent (up four points); Labour, 19 per cent (down five points); Sinn Féin, 11 per cent (down one point); Green Party, 2 per cent (up one point); and Independents/Others, 15 per cent (no change).
Now note that we can assume some slippage from the current polling numbers of the political parties – I base that on the fact that for example SF was polling around 9 per cent in 2007 before the General Election of that year and fell back a couple of percentage points. And while it isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that FG will run away with the vote this election I’d wonder if there won’t be some element of buyers remorse come polling day. Before the purchase – so to speak.
The last Irish Times/TNS poll before the May 2007 General Election saw the party strengths as follows:
The adjusted figures for party support are: Fianna Fáil 41 per cent (up five points); Fine Gael 27 per cent (down one point); Labour 10 per cent (down three points); Sinn Féin 9 per cent (down one point); Greens 6 per cent (up one point); PDs 2 per cent (no change); and Independents/others 5 per cent (down one point).
It’s also useful to look at the core votes for the parties:
The core vote for the parties is: Fianna Fáil 39 per cent (up four points); Fine Gael 21 per cent (down one point); Labour 8 per cent (down two points); Sinn Féin 8 per cent (no change); Greens 5 per cent (up one point); PDs 1 per cent (down one point); Independents/ others 4 per cent (no change); and undecided voters 15 per cent (no change). When voters were asked which of the alternative coalitions they would like to see forming the next government, the Fianna Fáil-PD coalition had moved into a six-point lead over the Fine Gael-Labour alliance, with the possible support of the Greens.
A couple of observations. That IT 2007 poll was extremely good in terms of predicting final voting tallies, though note that the larger disparities were for the smaller parties and all within the margin of error and given the large enough number of undecideds the mapping of their vote onto the parties was also extremely good.
The actual election result saw the following:
Fianna Fáil at 41.6%, Fine Gael at 27.3%, Labour at 10.1%, the GP at 4.7%, SF at 6.9% and the PDs at 2.7%. All others were 6-7%.
Past excellence in prognostication is no guarantee of future success – as they say, but that would tend to make one less rather than more dubious about the overall indicative use of this poll, particular because it seems to be of a piece with other polling data over the weekend.
On the evidence of this FG is likely to win in or around 35 per cent plus. Fianna Fáil one might hazard a bit better than 16 per cent. Labour perhaps at or under 18 per cent. Sinn Féin 9 per cent or so. The GP one or two per cent and others less than 15 per cent.
Now consider this.
The results of the 2009 Local Elections saw Fine Gael on 32.2% of the FPv, Fianna Fáil on 25.4%, Labour on 14.7%, Sinn Féin on 7.4%, PBP on 0.8%, the SP on 0.9%, the GP on 2.3%, The WP on 0.3% and Independents on 15.9%.
The divergence in this poll is a weaker FG, a considerably stronger FF, a somewhat weaker LP and SF and an Independents bloc in or around the same point.
I’ve always argued that Local elections provide little or no basis for assessing General elections, the context is after all local rather than national, there’s a plethora of Independent candidates whose chances of being elected are considerably greater due to the greater number of contests, etc and so on.
And yet, this election sees the largest number of Independent and smaller party candidates in a generation or more. In an odd way due to the removal of economic sovereignty in part due to the ECB/IMF ‘deal’ there’s the potential for more national concerns to be refocussed on the local.
And the supposed ‘fear’ of Independents being coalition makers seems strangely at odds with the reality of that 15% for the Independents, a figure sufficiently large that both the Green Party and Sinn Féin could comfortably be subsumed within it with room to spare. Unless the dynamic is that this isn’t just a refocussing on the local, but that there’s an aversion to the national.
None of which is to suggest that the results at the weekend are going to mirror the Local elections, but I would not be at all surprised if that undecideds vote of 19 per cent streams at least part the ways towards 2009 figures for FF and others. I think it’s too big a call for FF to make it much over 20 per cent, but they might just make it to 20%.
Which would suggest that talk of an FG return close to a majority may be a little premature – though by any measure they are set to have their best result since the early 1980s (who would have thunk it, Enda Kenny may outdo GFG’s electoral prowess…).
If this is the best Martin can do, though, what sort of catastrophe would FF have been facing under Brian Cowen?
Interesting to read Michael Marsh’s analysis in the Irish Times today which suggests that:
…that Fine Gael will win 72 seats, Labour 35, Fianna Fáil 26, Sinn Féin 11, Greens two and others 19.
As with all such estimates, there is a defined band here of a few seats either way, so the Greens could very easily get no seats. What may prove significant in this election is the dramatic change in the attractiveness of each party to voters casting a second preference.
Dotski’s analysis is as usual excellent and far more comprehensive than these ramblings above and can be found here…
Adrian Kavanaghs equally useful thoughts can be found here…
Looking Left next Friday … February 21, 2011
Posted by irishelectionliterature in The Left.Tags: 2011 election
59 comments
Just thought I’d get a list of Left candidates together before the election. I know classifying who is ‘Left’ can be tricky and may cause some debate. (Its almost like the disputes as to which band were really metal I had in my youth, It used to gall me terribly to have ‘Europe’ and their ilk described as Heavy Metal).
Who have I left out?
To avoid the SF /Labour Left debate …Labour candidates can be found here and Sinn Fein candidates here.
Carlow Kilkenny: Conor Mac Liam (SP -ULA)
Cavan Monaghan:
Clare:
Cork East:
Cork North Central: Mick Barry (SP -ULA), Ted Tynan (WP)
Cork North West: Anne Foley (PBP -ULA)
Cork South Central:
Cork South West :
Donegal North East:
Donegal South West: Thomas Pringle
Dublin Central: Malachy Steenson (WP), Cieran Perry, Maureen O’Sullivan, Christy Burke
Dublin Mid West: Rob Connolly (SP -ULA) , Mick Finnegan (WP), Gino Kenny (PBP -ULA)
Dublin North: Clare Daly (SP -ULA)
Dublin North Central: Finian McGrath , John Lyons (PBP -ULA)
Dublin North East: Brian Greene (SP -ULA)
Dublin North West: John Dunne(WP), Andrew Keegan (PBP -ULA)
Dublin South: Nicola Curry (PBP -ULA)
Dublin South Central: Joan Collins (PBP -ULA)
Dublin South East: Annette Mooney (PBP -ULA)
Dublin South West: Mick Murphy (SP -ULA)
Dublin West: Joe Higgins (SP -ULA)
Dun Laoghaire: Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP -ULA)
Galway East:
Galway West: Catherine Connolly
Kerry North Limerick West: Mary Fitzgibbon
Kerry South:
Kildare North: Catherine Murphy
Kildare South:
Laois Offaly: Raymond Fitzpatrick (ULA), Liam Dumpleton
Limerick: Seamus Sherlock
Limerick City: Cian Prendiville (SP -ULA)
Longford Westmeath:
Louth:
Mayo:
Meath East:
Meath West: Seamus McDonagh (WP)
Roscommon South Leitrim:
Sligo North Leitrim: Declan Bree (ULA)
Tipperary North:
Tipperary South: Seamus Healy (WUAG-ULA)
Waterford : Joe Tobin(WP) , John Halligan
Wexford: Seamus O’Brien (PBP -ULA) , John Dwyer ,
Wicklow: Nicky Kelly
Party and socialism in the 21st century… February 21, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in The Left.8 comments
I don’t necessarily agree with every aspect of this piece by Garibaldy on his blog, though I agree with more than enough, but I have to admit it’s a comprehensive run through of issues that concern many of us on the left/progressive spectrum.
Well well worth a read and I’d be very interested in others responses.
Left Archive: Go Fourth and Multiply – The British Left in 1983, Prunella Kaur [John Sullivan] February 21, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Online Document Archive, Irish Politics.5 comments
This document on first sight doesn’t appear to have much relation to the Irish Left, the title alone indicates that it deals with the British Left. However, turn to Part IV if you want an overview of one Irish formation very familiar to many of us here, under the heading ‘Neighbours’.
Other than the main feature of this pamphlet, produced in 1983 and revised later as ‘As Soon as this Pub Closes’ is that it remains an affectionate and often insightful overview of the British Left written in an explicitly humourous and sardonic fashion.
John Sullivan, from an Irish/Scottish background, was a fascinating individual and you’ll find an overview of his life and work here.
The text is available online but as ever it seems somehow more appropriate to view this in the original printed format.
As it says on the front cover…
You are at a party and someone calls you a workerist – how do you reply? Could it be true? Yet your boyfriend says you an ultra-left while your sister claims you have Pabloite tendencies so you don’t really know what t say. Such social embarrassment can now be avoided with the aid of this guide. Now you can hold your own in the sub world of the left. Who knows, one of the groups might suit you. You might even spot a gap in the market coverage and form your own group.
Enjoy.
Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week February 20, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.add a comment
I see that WBS has stepped in to rectify my tardiness. Thanks to him. As for me, better late than never I suppose. WBS noted that this week’s should be a doozy given the election in the offing, and many of the stupidest quotes regarding it have been picked up in the comments there already. However, Carol Hunt doesn’t need the election to put up a strong contender this week.
In a bout of teutonic self-righteousness, Germany is doing to us what France and Britain did to it after the First World War. You’d think they’d know better, wouldn’t you?
You might think, recalling Delaney’s comments last week about gypsies for example, that a Sunday Independent columnist hinting at the rise of a Hitler-type figure in Ireland over the next decade and a half would be happy at the prospect, but there you go. You might also think that someone needs to draw more appropriate analogies, but that’s just not the Sindo way, is it?
Speaking of ignorance of history, Marc Coleman seeks to top that.
In good times, FG and Labour can work. These are, sadly, not good times and the conditions facing a Fine Gael/Labour government in coming years will be far more like those of the Eighties than those facing them in the Nineties. And unlike the Eighties, Labour will have to look over its shoulder at Sinn Fein and the United Left Alliance. In terms of stability, the prospect of more than 100 TDs jostling for power in a government with the largest majority — and the largest ideological divide — in Irish history, does not bode well.
Lack of self-awareness of the week goes to a certain former Minister for Justice.
Labour appears to have come off worst in its scrap with Fine Gael and the “Gilmore for Taoiseach” posters are going to become collectors’ items — just as the famous 1969 Labour poster “The Seventies Will Be Socialist” became iconic symbols of over-reaching ambition.
Nothing worse than that over-reaching ambition, eh Michael?
[Not quite] Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week – Election Special February 20, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.26 comments
Okay, no idea where today’s post on this has gone, and given the proximity of election day it should be a doozy, but in the meantime all contributions gratefully accepted…
Thought this was good…… February 19, 2011
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.Tags: 2011 election, Irish Politics
13 comments
… although a pity they left out the ULA.
More polls… … and Poles February 19, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.11 comments
As noted by David Cochrane on P.ie…
Confirmed by the SBP
SBP Red C poll: FG: 39% (+1), Lab: 17% (-3), FF: 16% (+1), SF: 12% (+2), Grns: 2% (-1), Ind: 14% (nc).
Compared with Sindo poll (figures were wrong earlier) by Milward Brown for tomorrow which have been confirmed by the Sindo:
FF 16% (+4), FG 37% (-1) Lab 20% (-3) Grn 1% (-) SF 12% (+2) Ind 14% (-2)
If accurate some preliminary thoughts, and more over the next few days. SF is holding up. Interesting. So are the Independents. But dear oh dear, Labour is not doing so well.
No wonder the rhetoric is now getting so heated. FG is almost, just about, convinced that they can go it alone, or with like-minded Independents. And who really believes the Shane Ross’s of the world, or the Lowry’s will present too much of a challenge to government formation without the LP?
Fine Gael remain buoyant. Fianna Fáil still within the band that they have effectively made their own. And the Green Party is nowhere to be seen.
Apologies for the abysmal quality of the photograph at the top of the post, but in a way doesn’t it sum it up. Not everybody is voting le cheile for FG, but enough. Enough.
*Just added in the Varadkar photo someone sent me today. Thought it was good. (AK)
What a strange next Dáil this is going to be.
ADDENDUM: Particularly if these projections by dotski and Adrian Kavanagh are correct.
DUBLIN COUNCIL OF TRADE UNIONS: Calls for Left led Government February 19, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.13 comments
Press Statement
The present economic crisis having its roots in international capitalist contradictions was accentuated by decisions taken by the Fianna Fail government serving the interests of bankers, speculators, and developers. The Fianna Fail solution to solve this crisis was by imposing austerity measures on social welfare recipients, low and middle income earners. These measures must be vigorously resisted and reversed.
The four year Fianna Fail plan approved by the IMF/ EU and supported in broad terms by Fine Gael promises more austerity. This policy will solve nothing. This agreement must be renegotiated with the minimum demand to uncouple the bank debt.
The trade union movement is now under sustained attack. Wages and working conditions in the public and private sector are in the firing line. Registered Employment Agreements, Joint Labour Committees, Employment Regulation Orders are prime targets. The race to the bottom is being signposted. Fine Gael is a party to this attack. In fact the very future of the trade unions is under threat. The ideology and practice of Michael O’Leary and Ryan Aer are hovering like vultures. Remember the Lisbon treaty and the promise that the Charter of Fundamental Rights would protect the right of workers to organise, Where is that promise now? It will require legislation in Dail Eireann. Which party or government can deliver that?
The key issue is still job creation and the protection of existing jobs. The restoration of the minimum wage and social welfare cuts will help this process, but the big issue is the immediate and massive state investment in urgent infrastructure projects like schools, transport, broadband and water. The use of pensions funds public and private could provide that investment. A key role for our semi-states like the ESB BORD NA MONA BORD GAIS in the energy field is essential. Fine Gael on the other hand wants to privatise these companies along with DUBLIN BUS.
We are at an economic and political crossroads. The result of this election will determine the future of the country for generations. Can we build a more equal society or must the rich become richer to entice them create jobs and make bigger profits. This is the road to greater exploitation of working people. The question to be answered is which political party will carry out policies that meet the needs of trade union members and their families and social welfare recipients who were the workers of yesterday.
Parties who are on the political left fulfil these aspirations. A left led government is still the desired option.
We therefore call on all trade unionists in Dublin to work for left unity and vote Labour, SF, and other parties and independents of the Left and transfer accordingly.
