General Irish politics discussion thread

Did you miss where I called for sanctions on SF over their expenses lapse? No excuses made, no deflection.

The problem here is the constant deflection to SF whenever the government are in trouble. It has of course just happened again when the Greens continued support for a government party and Minister who ignored the fact that they were doing something they knew was illegal and their callous disregard for survivors of M&BH's was the topic of a post.

'but SF' is not the answer.

Yes, we actually did miss it, because you spend a lot of time just copying and pasting news items of the day from Twitter and having a go at the government. Tomorrow it will be another tweet about something else.

Not really much of a discussion now is it.

I have some respect for Michael Martin even if i disagree with him. Instead of trying to winkle out of this by claiming he didn't know about it, he looks like he is going to defend it. We'll see how that fares out.

But as these personal stories begin to tumble out it is going to be an uphill battle to not ship a lot of electoral damage.

The performance of the public finances continues to astound. A surplus of €2.8 billion in one month is fantastic.

When you consider also that the numbers on the Live Register continue to fall, huge credit must go to the government for the way they have managed the recovery from the pandemic.

Last year they made a surplus, put money into a reserve fund, brought down debt and introduced some one-off measures to address the cost-of-living issues. You can't ask for much better than that, and it is far better than governments in the past have done.

That is some debt all right, it is considerably higher than the UK national debt per head of population and most countries around the world. Incidentally, the N. Ireland share of the UK national debt would be about 75 billion (assuming in round figures say 1.9 million people by €39,200 debt per capita). In the hypothetical event of a United Ireland we would I am sure inherit the Norths share of the UK national debt. ;) Will cost another few billion a year just to service that.

I heard other news on the radio this morning about all the marches around the country against the immigrants, like the demonstration in Mullingar last night in Mullingar. An anti-immigration protest was staged outside Columb Barracks in Mullingar against the planned relocation of 120 asylum seekers to tented accommodation inside the former military installation over the coming weeks. 300 people, made up of mostly local people but with a strong Dublin contingent, marched from the barracks shortly after 7pm and made their way through the centre of the town, halting traffic and chanting. Imagine if our emiogrants in the 50s and 60s were met with demonstrations like that wherever they went, hordes of people shouting no foreigners etc. I have relations who went to England many many decades ago, they say they never came acrosss any anti Irish discrimination at all. If the Ukranians were bombing pubs and hotels here I wonder what it would be like.

The biggest problem with this statement is quite apparent if one only looked at who the governments of the past were, Blanch.

Hardly a shining endorsement to say, 'well they're not quite as sh*te as they were'.

As always, my caveat that I certainly don't think SF are the answer, least of all when it comes to the economy applies.

So ireland is different to other countries, sez you, we can afford a higher debt burden than most other countries sez you. That reminds me of people saying in 2007 we would not have a property crash, sure Ireland is different...."its not a concern".

€1 in every €4 of all tax collected is now from corporation tax payments. The concentration of these receipts within a small subset of firms, in an even smaller number of sectors, adds to the concentration risk. Over half of corporate tax receipts in 2021 were paid by ten large payers, primarily in the pharmaceutical, ICT, and financial sectors. These multinationals who are so critical to the economy are ditching employees, while the other EU countries still allow them to launder foreign profits through Ireland / witness those brass plaques in the docklands?

Very fragile situation - give it a few years when SF and their comrades may be in power and taxing "the rich". At least at the last crash we had low levels of debt but now, when the next crash hits, we won’t have the room to borrow for everyday expenditure. Even with the prudent government we have had these past decade or more. All SF do is lambast the Government for not spending more. Will SF encourage more of the rich to flee? Since 9/11 Americans have little time for terrorists and their apologists, especially left leaning ones. Can SF even come clean and tell the truth about even simple things long before they are elected? Was G.A in the IRA? Were the Columbia 3 bird watching? Would you trust them to run the country?

You have hit on a real problem. There is a real risk that Sinn Fein will scare the pigeons so to speak, and they will fly away.

The resulting crash will have been all of our own making, which makes it worse than any previous economic shock, which were all due to external factors.

Of course, we are in a democracy, and if people want to vote for that potential car crash go ahead, it will certainly be a wild ride but a bit like getting into a car with a drunken driver, you might get home quicker and safely, but that ditch looms larger.

I don't think it will surprise anyone that the AG has found in favour of the government here. This will cause more anger and damage to the government IMO

If my 'agenda' is being a voice for those callously treated by the state, happy with that agenda TBH.

I don't need to like a politician to appreciate something they do.

hahaha reducing premiums, hahaha, yea right!

27% fall in the last five years

SF wouldn't countenance allowing people with highly questionable histories be part of their party, right...