Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week

Brendan O’Connor is talking this week about the possibility of EU fiscal union and devaluation. He offers us this, now that Greek devaluation has made Ireland more central.

Fortunately, assistance will not be the much-vaunted cash handouts available to uncompetitive regions of nation states. Experience shows that, while these treat the symptoms, they make the disease more malignant.

I’ve no idea what he’s on about. I suspect he doesn’t either, apart from the fact that Ireland must lead the way by cutting costs and increasing efficiency. Haven’t we been doing that with “success” since the crisis started?

Conor McCabe has exposed, in his book and in LookLeft, the fallacy of the idea of a property-owning gene in Irish society. It seems we have a replacement, according to successful internet entrepreneur Ray Nolan.

Irish people are genetically pre-disposed to be in tech. Our small economy necessitates that we are pleasant, pragmatic, copped-on problem-solvers. It’s in our genes.

One of the most endearing/crazier things about the Sindo is its unshaking belief that it is inconoclastic. Brendan O’Connor demonstrates this stupidly perfectly.

There was a certain class, of the Dublin anti-establishment political establishment, who were furious about Gallagher. These people are the new Official Ireland. They are centred around politics and media; they worship Michael D and Michael Moore. They like the Leviathan political cabaret and the talking tents at festivals; they buy all those books about what happened at Anglo, about Bertie and the downfall of the country. This crowd was always appalled by Gallagher. They were appalled by his connections to Fianna Fail, yes, and they were appalled by certain complicated aspects of his business (show me the businessman without a complexity here and there). But mainly this crowd was appalled because Gallagher happened without its permission. It was a rural thing. They didn’t understand it, they didn’t predict it and they didn’t like it. They didn’t like this gauche culchie and his new wife.

Yep, there is a sinister cabal running the country, the real establishment, which just appears powerless, and economic, social and political power in the Republic just appears to be in the hands of speculators and bankers. I await David Icke’s new Sindo column with interest.

Carol Hunt has shown signs during the crisis of realising the faults of neo-liberalism. However, today, it seems those effects have worn off.

We don’t have a Bernie Madoff in Ireland. Some of us may point to any number of bankers, auditors, regulators, government ministers, and accuse them — perhaps rightfully in many cases — of gross dereliction of duty, but that is about it. Our crisis was not caused by criminal behaviour.

Or at least none that we have discovered so far. And we’ve found out a lot. Our crisis, in the main, was caused by incompetence.

I’d have thought lying to the government about your debts was one example of criminal behaviour, and there are many others. But we know that the crisis was not caused by incompetence, but by the nature of the system itself. Anyone who can’t see that is being wilfully blind. Then again, this is the Sindo.