Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week

Crisis? What crisis? Marc Coleman comes close to asking. In a piece that argues that things are better than they might appear with some quite interesting figures, we also find this.

This is directly related to the huge jump in the savings ratio in the last two years, from four to 11 per cent. And that is linked to the third trend: the crippling fear and lack of confidence in our economy, caused in no small part by a celebrity-driven narrative of fear and crisis.

I had been the only person making this point, but on Friday morning I was joined by Brendan Keenan of the Irish Independent, John Corrigan of the NTMA, economist Charlie Fell, Mark Fielding of Isme, Danny McCoy of Ibec, Austin Hughes of KBC bank, David McRedmond of TV3, David Murphy of RTE, Denis O’Brien of Digicel, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, Padraig O Ceidigh of Aer Arann, and Senator Feargal Quinn. We all agreed that our country is still on a brink of sorts. But we also agreed on doing our best not to talk ourselves over it.

So the reason people are saving money and scared of losing their jobs is because Pat Kenny, Ryan Turbidy, or Joe Duffy or whoever say they should be. The simple explanations are the best, eh?

Speaking of which, the public sector is once more in the firing line. Tough decisions to be made, we must all share the pain etc. Funny how articles with those phrases rarely if ever talk about the tax dodgers, or special one of taxes on the most well-off in the country or the like. Why bother when you can make a token reference to the bank bailout before coming out with the like of this from Eamonn Blaney.

Considering 453,000 of us are on the dole it is time for public servants to recognise that they do not have a birthright to the job they now hold. We are your employers and we have no money to pay you. Ireland has changed forever and the rules that used to apply cannot do so anymore. We as a nation have effectively sold our souls to the devil in the form of the money lenders from abroad and we must now pay the price. That means all of us, no exceptions.

There must be redundancies, and I suggest that the Government offers the first 50,000 public servants who voluntarily resign now the opportunity to be the first in line when the public service starts to take people on again when things get better. Those who cannot, or will not, make this effort on behalf of the country which pays their wages, should be excluded from consideration as employees in the future. The selection of the remaining 50,000 who must be let go should be modelled on exactly the same system used in the private sector ie assessment of their suitability for the position. This should be carried out over the next year, at most. It would be a hard choice to make if you worked in the public sector. But at least you would get a choice, whereas the unemployed never did.

You’d have thought that was a dead cert to be this week’s winner. But Brendan O’Connor has other ideas, luxuriating in his devotion to a certain former Minister for Justice.

And when he has gone through the stagnant pool that is Irish politics like a bottle of Domestos, then he can retire again, his unfinished business finished, he having been true to himself and his country and ideals of his hero, Collins.

Lenihan and McDowell. The hero and the reformer. I’d vote for that. Wouldn’t you?

Em. No.