General Irish politics discussion thread

Thing is though

If they are increasingly processed as failed asylum seekers,they are getting no state protection,money or accomadation and cannot legally work

Once that realisation beds in at home,why would they still be coming ? They'd want to be right eejits

Agree with a shorter processing time. It must be difficult enough to wait months and not know what might happen. More staff needed for the IPO obviously.

I've asked a few people how the AS process actually works as I don't know, but nobody I asked knew the answer. So do people make an application at the airport/port first and are then moved to various places around the country eg hotels etc to wait for a decision? Or does every AS have to present themselves at the Ipo in mount str first (hence all the tents) and once the application is made, then they are placed in hotels and b&b's.

90 days? Fast-track?

I would call 90 mins fast-track.

Albanian, Georgian = straight away refusal, back on aircraft tomorrow.

Most of the blame for this situation really should go to Fianna Fail. This all started long before Enda Kenny took office.

Yeah, there's a reason every lobby group in Ireland says "we only spend x% of our GDP on our pet project, which is below the EU average, blah blah" - well of course it is.

Irish GNI per capita is the sixth highest in the world so your point doesn’t mean anything. The question still stands, where does all this money go?
1)Bermuda: $125210
2)Liechtenstein: $116600
3)Norway: $95520
4)Switzerland: $95492
5)Luxembourg: $89200
6)Ireland: $79730

GNI does not account for the tax haven methods either. GNI* (GNI Star or Modified GNI) is a specifically Irish figure which does attempt to account for "leprechaun economics" (and is somewhat successful in doing so). Using GNI* would move us quite a few rungs down the ladder

It works like this:

A country's GDP is a measure of total economic activity in the country. Ireland's GDP is distorted because it includes the activity of companies that are tax-resident here but whose economic activities are conducted largely or wholly outside Ireland, and whose shareholders also reside largely or wholly outside Ireland. The connection of these companies with Ireland is essentially a bookkeeping exercise.

(This is true to some extent for virtually every developed economy, but it's true to a huge extent for Ireland. This doesn't mean that Ireland'd GDP figure is meaningless, but it does mean that simple comparisons between Irish GDP and the GDP of other countries can mislead.)

So, then you have GNI (gross national income). This differs from GDP by excluding income that is received from abroad, and also income that is sent abroad.

But that still doesn't solve the problem. GNI, as the name suggests, looks at income but not at changes in the value of assets. Certain assets with very high depreciation are held in Ireland in large amounts by foreign companies — principally intellectual property (patents) and leased aircraft. These assets are not employed in production in Ireland or, if they are, the resultant income is sent abroad. Because GNI doesn't account for changes in the value of assets, Irish GNI is inflated by the location of these assets in Ireland.

So we have GNI*, or modified GNI. It's GNI, but adjusted by depreciating the value of those intellectual property and aircraft assets.

It's a bit more than that; there are a couple of other technical adjustments to exclude factors that are represented in GNI but that, in the Irish context, don't actually correspond to any real activity in the domestic economy Ireland.

In essence, GNI* is an attempt to measure real economic activity in Ireland. It essentially represents (a) all the compensation received by Irish workers, plus (b) the profits of Irish-owned enterprises, plus (c) taxes on products. It's not an exact equivalent to the GDP of other countries, but it's much closer to it than Irish GDP is.

You're not going to find her having said anything different when they were on Mount Street though

McGuirk, Professor Nepobaby and so on won't have made a noise about it back then