Fianna Fail circus heads for the knackers yard

Fianna Fáil seems to be travelling in a parallel trajectory to that of the Ulster Unionist Party and are as likely to end up in the same long-term predicament. Lapses in political judgement and common sense this week illustrate how dislocated FF has become from its centre of gravity, its duty accountability and responsibility and, even, its raison d'etre. 

The carry-on was reminiscent of a badly produced circus and a crass attempt at the crudest political expediency for which no price seems to be too much to pay. Do Brian Cowen and Mary Coughlan really think that voters are gormless fools who will tolerate well paid individuals walking away en masse from important roles before the job is complete, leaving the conduct of government like a ghost housing estate? Were those who fled really team players, or merely a collection of eccentrics, oblivious to the public interest but with an exclusive focus on suiting their own whims, personal priorities and preferences?  A master craftsman who starts a job is expected to finish that job – not hand it off to a novice apprentice.

Have there not been enough episodes of atrocious governance, both within and beyond the political system, not to have a situation arise where there was a major lacuna in the control of the most important departments of State - justice, health, enterprise and public transport? 

Fianna Fail could have made a case to the electorate on the grounds that much has been learned from their lousy economic policy judgement and atrocious leadership of the economy from 2003 to 2007 but, instead, this week’s events demonstrate the opposite with Brian Lenihan and Mary Hanafin talking from both sides of their political mouth about Brian Cowen as though he is a fig roll – ‘I like him as a biscuit, but not as a bar’!

Ireland has made no political progress or accomplished any greater maturity towards stability than was the position when Rody Molloy drove home from his chief executive’s office in his FAS owned car for the last time - with the blessing of the Department of Finance.

NAMA and the Irish hotel industry

I am cringing with horror and revulsion at the report in the Irish Independent on Friday, 23 July that Mary Hanafin TD, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport is to meet NAMA to discuss ‘the problems’ in the hotel industry.  Their industry spokesmen concurrently attempt to blackmail and browbeat the citizens of Ireland by telling us that their demands to eliminate unwanted capacity  would cost less than the welfare costs in the event of the subsequent, but inevitable, meltdown of this industry.  She must not cave in to this delinquent posse and they must endure the total impact of the unmitigated consequences of their own decisions.  You must especially stamp on their demand that those who benefited from €1 billion in tax foregone should be let off the hook in meeting all obligations and conditions attaching to this.  Jimmy Deenihan, the Fine Gael spokesman on tourism is quoted in the article as saying – you “must show leadership” and so must he.

Public confidence in the NAMA enterprise is sceptical and uncertain, at best, and if it is demonstrated that NAMA is prone to heavy-handed political manipulation at the highest level the public will be extremely distressed and angry.

Hoteliers exist in a capitalist system which functions on the basis of risk and reward, as is the case with our economy as a whole.  Nobody forced them to increase capacity by 18,000 rooms since 2003 and this reckless expansion occurred without any commercial rationale, or informed foresight,  whatsoever to justify it.  The hotel industry had already expanded by 60% between 1997 and 2003 at a cost to the taxpayer of €140 million in taxes foregone.  This vested interest was therefore totally indifferent to risk and acted as though the only price on risk is that paid by the State with our money.

They also have the audacity to demand a State-sponsored ‘high-level’ committee to gerrymander their industry by selecting which hotels would be eliminated and which would be maintained for strategic posterity, featherbedded, of course, by impoverished and stressed taxpayers who have contributed €1 billion in taxes foregone since 2003 to create massive unwanted capacity.  

While the EU Commission approved the accelerated capital (depreciation) tax allowances as a legitimate State aid on 23 December 2002, Commissioner Monti did point out that “the Commission regrets that Ireland put the aid in question into effect, in breach of Article (88)3 of the Treaty.”

When hoteliers successfully lobbied the Department of Finance they argued that these very generous tax allowances would induce speculators (should I have said investors?) to build hotels at regional locations where there had never been a hotel before - and which saw very few customers subsequently.  When the EU Commission wanted these allowances guillotined on 31 July 2006 the Department of Finance persuaded the Commission to extend them to 31 July 2008 on a tapering-out basis  “because there was a very large backlog of pipeline projects and the rush to complete construction would inevitably lead to short-term overheating of the Irish construction sector” – not because the State aid was yielding positive results in the form of viable sector at remote regional locations.

The hotel industry speaks of the importance of its economic contribution to the State.  A critical illustration of economic stature is money in the bank.  Central Bank data indicates that hotels and restaurants increased their bank deposits since 2003 by only  €115 million to a total of €655 million in 2010 – less than one third of 1% of the total deposits in banks by Irish residents.  That is equivalent to less than €9,000 for each of the industry's 60,122 rooms.  But the very prudent and far-sighted Irish banks lent the industry €4 billion since 2003 to build the unwanted capacity and the average indebtedness in respect of each of the unwanted rooms is now over €350,000.  The tourist industry as whole owes the Irish banks over €10.9 billion - €1 for every unit of integrity and intelligence quotient that exists in the top-level of our banks.

The hotel industry lobbyists hum like choir boys about the €10 departure tax as though it was a red-hot poker impediment to their prosperity.  Their cute-hoor mentality, of course, precludes any suggestion as to who will provide the revenue were this tax to be eliminated.  The old-age pensioners and the infirm would bear the burden, I presume.  I suppose their next melodic aria will be to lobby the relevant authorities to increase the UK minimum wage from £5.80 per hour and the US minimum wage from $8 per hour to enhance the prospects of filling their bedrooms and meeting the exorbitant charges from time to time – ‘because these markets are so important’.

The hotel industry is the author of its own catastrophe havoc with the connivance of the State, the EU Commission and its ever-friendly bankers.  They tell us that it will recover in five years if it is kept breathing through one nostril with relief from local authority rates and additional large dollops of cash from our national debt.  Recovery of the incumbent regime is a most unlikely prospect and there is certainly no evidence to support a 5-year time frame.

The vacuum that is created by the destruction of this industry will be filled in due course by a new generation of hoteliers whose understanding of capitalism, providence and insight will hopefully be better honed that the current generation of losers and the Minister of the day might even have the possibility of presiding over an industry that is viable and functional while NAMA will have reached the geriatric stage of its natural life uncorrupted by political meddling.

Dirty, dilapidated and jaded Dún Laoghaire

Has the ‘get-up-and-go’ of Dún Laoghaire simply ‘got-up-and-gone’?

Centre of Dun Laoghaire

 

There is something unique about being out and about early on a Sunday morning. No traffic, vehicular or pedestrian and little noise or bustle to thwart one’s perception. Shortly after daybreak this morning I walked along the High Street of Dún Laoghaire – Upper and Lower Georges Street, Cumberland Street, and Crofton Rd.

A High Street is a metonym for the primary business district of a town – typically its principal retail zone which ought to reap the economic benefit of its hinterland.  It could be regarded as the vital organ, beating heart, or smiling face of a confident community; a community with a definite sense of purpose; a community with a clear identity and an awareness of its potential as well as its past.

Champs Élyées serves this purpose in Paris as does Newbury Street in Boston, Oxford Street in London, 5^th Avenue in New York and Castle Street in Dalkey. Dún Laoghaire has its share of poverty and distress but it is not an economically deprived ghetto wasteland!  Yet a Martian could form that opinion by strolling along its High Street.

Dún Laoghaire is the county town of county of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, a county with its own 28-member council and an electorate of over 150,000 persons. 

Dún Laoghaire occupies a unique position in our national makeup. The first railway in Ireland was opened between Dublin and Dún Laoghaire in 1834. Its magnificent granite harbour took 42 years to complete and has been an important gateway to Ireland for passenger ferries and ships since 1859. The modern harbour has been the recipient of much investment – several marinas, four active yacht clubs and a newly developed terminal used by Stena Lines for its fast ferry service to Holyhead.  But it is the High Street that radiates the soul of a place.

The town itself expanded in the Victorian and Edwardian era as a desirable residential suburb. It continues to be a much sought after location in which to live, offering plenty of amenities, long established and well thought of schools and most agreeable coastal scenery and other attractive natural resources.

But there is now a plethora of dirty, litter-laden, vacant retail premises in this vicinity with chewing gum embedded on the adjacent footpath. The High Street seems to attract nothing other than hucksters outlets, discount stores, fast-food outlets, charity shops and various transient enterprises, mostly offering low-value junk. There is hardly a brand name over a shop front that would be recognised in an adjacent postal district.  The epicentre of retailing never reached this town. Nowadays, nearby Dundrum has overtaken and overshadowed it with its modern town centre the main showpiece.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is not deprived of political influence. Its two Fianna Fáil TD’s include a cabinet minister (Mary Hanafin) and a Minister who attends government meetings (Barry Andrews).   Twenty of the 28 council seats are filled by Fine Gael and Labour members – the parties who aspire the form the backbone of the next government. The current Cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is Marie Baker.  She has represented the Blackrock Ward since 2004 and managed to spearhead an increase in her party’s share of the poll in the most recent local elections from 27% to 39%.  That vote of confidence now needs  be reciprocated with effective leadership and genius.  There is also an active Chamber of Commerce whose mission is to promote the town, but can it do no more than make a silk purse from a sow’s ear?

It is surprising, given this ambition, that Fine Gael and Labour don’t demonstrate a capacity to govern effectively at local level. Nothing demonstrates such a capacity more than the vitality of the High Street. Robert Mugabe would be embarrassed by the High Street of Dún Laoghaire.

I was saddened and surprised to observe 
two large Fine Gael local election posters, now obsolete for 4 months, adorn one of the litter-laden, spider infested vacant shops. What a gesture of civic indifference!  Come on, have they no pride?

Delinquent banks and economic recession have made their mark but there is no relationship between using a yard brush to clean a High Street premises and water to wash its facade with the economic downturn. Owners who neglect High Street properties ought to be heavily fined.  Political indifference is a symptom of a lazy, myopic, indolent culture. How could an electorate be convinced that those who control the country council are fit the govern the nation when the jewel in the county crown is a heap of neglected shit? ‘A fairer Ireland’, how are you!

The fact that this morning I passed the body of a dead man lying face down on the footpath outside the entrance of St Michael’s Hospital on Crofton Road merely added to the overall spectre of a town that itself is dead and awaiting a shroud.

There are several excellent public buildings in town.  The original County Hall has been skilfully extended and the old and new structures are seamlessly integrated – as it the case with the Boston Public Library on Boylston Street. 

The Harbour Authority occupies an outstanding landmark headquarters overlooking the Harbour..

 

 

The new ferry terminal is magnificent, as is the newly constructed headquarters of Irish Lights.

But my vote in the next general election will be influenced by the party, or parties, that demonstrate a convincing capacity to govern. I am no longer won over by hysteria, shibboleths or clichés!  My litmus test will be the vitality of Georges Street.