CONFRONT STATE CORRUPTION:
1. Rescind and re-negotiate the Shell deal on the basis that it was flagrantly un-Constitutional and/or a fraud on the Irish people.
RESTRUCTURE THE BANKER BAILOUT:
2. Separate the bank part of the bailout.
From the FT during week beginning 7 February:
“The European Central Bank has warned that Greece and Ireland should not default on their debts or impose penalties on senior bondholders. “However, investors will not be hoodwinked and see the chances of Ireland Greece eventually defaulting as fairly high,” said Brooks of Forex. “By dismissing fears about this prospect, instead of trying to come up with an orderly mechanism for default, the European authorities are causing market jitters.”
Consider also a recent OECD report:
“Whatever solution winds up being adopted, the authors conclude, Greece and Ireland would be better off defaulting while they still have the luxury of falling back on their bailout packages to cushion the blow.” See article.
The OECD paper also is scathing about the alarmist idea that a default will exclude the defaulting country from capital markets:
“One red herring often brought up in respect to restructuring is that such action will exclude the country from borrowing in international capital markets. However, this is not the lesson of history. Markets will buy debt that has been restructured, if the restructuring is perceived as enabling the issuing governments to service their obligations in the future.”
See page 23 of the report.
This measured view flies in the face of what we’re being told by FF/FG and by our generally un-reflective and un-critical national media.
3. Rein in the bankers: there needs to be a clear division between investment banking and retail banking. Investment banking's blinkered myopia and self-interest has degraded the culture of high street banking. Previously, banking operated to a de facto split between retail and investment bankers. Banking may have been a slightly stuffy profession; but there was considerable merit in that very dullness. Prudence used to be retail bankers' watchword. However, over the last 2 decades, bankers lost the run of themselves. No longer content to be prudent guardians of your money, they saw themselves as "players" on the international markets (with your money). We need investment bankers, but we need to recognise and address the fact that bankers (unlike other reviled professions such as estate agents, lawyers and politicians) have the power to wreck entire economies for private gain. Our complacent “party-first” parochialism allows the internationalist bankers to run amok (ask a backbencher to define a "contract for difference" and listen to the umms and errs). Politicians by themselves don't understand world banking and are not empowered to rein in the bankers. This should be a comprehensive structural reform, with full legal and accounting separation and restrictions on job mobility between both sectors.
STOP THE NEXT PROPERTY BUBBLE:
4. Make it illegal for lenders to provide residential mortgages >2.5 times your annual salary.
5. In line with mainland Europe, introduce statutory protection for long-term tenants. Currently, married couples who wish to provide "location stability" for their families effectively are forced to buy. The alternative is to be forced out at a landlord's whim on a month's notice. This deliberately-tolerated housing insecurity helps create a house-buying mania that would mystify the average German.
ADDRESS THE "FUNERALS AND POTHOLES" CULTURE:
6. Slash the number of TDs. There's 166. We need a real Mayor in Dublin, 2 TDs in Dublin (one for each planet); and maximum 1 each for each other county.
WIDEN THE TALENT POOL:
7. Reform how political parties are funded (the current system favours incumbent parties).
8. Separate the Executive from the Legislature: The current Irish system ensures that inexperienced people rise to the top. We do not need Ministers to be drawn from the ranks of elected TDs. Provided their actions are subject to parliamentary scrutiny, I’d suggest that it’s better that Ministers are not themselves elected. That way, we could get people with real-world experience in each ministerial area (not yet more teachers and lawyers); and they would be under less pressure to make populist and self-serving decisions.
GROW UP:
9. Stop lying to the electorate about the EU. The EU can work; but only if there is full political and fiscal union first. Trying to build a unified currency on the back of fiscal and political division is delusional at best, dishonest at worst. If Ireland wants "sovereignty", fair enough, but leave the EU. If Ireland and the EU want long-term prosperity, ditch the illusion of national sovereignty.
The current politically-correct Irish policy on the EU is a mealy-mouthed "have your cake and eat it" one. We want the benefits of full EU membership, but we have to maintain the fiction of independence.
DO SOMETHING POSITIVE:
10. Draw up a New Deal for Ireland: for instance, send a deputation of engineers to Japan (take off the blinkers and try not to slavishly copy the US and the UK on everything) and learn how to build and run a high-speed rail network covering the entire island.
