106 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 34 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 2/18/16

Irish Elections and Austerity

By       (Page 1 of 3 pages)   No comments

Conn Hallinan
Message Conn Hallinan
Become a Fan
  (10 fans)

Reprinted from Dispatches From The Edge

Irish Voters to Grade Austerity

Enda Kenny, Michel Martin, Gerry Adams & Joan Burton debate the Crime Issue prior to the 2016 Irish General Election.
Enda Kenny, Michel Martin, Gerry Adams & Joan Burton debate the Crime Issue prior to the 2016 Irish General Election.
(Image by Dexmusic)
  Details   DMCA

What looked like a smooth path to electoral victory for the Irish government has suddenly turned rocky, and the Fine Gael-Labour coalition is scrambling to keep its majority in the 166-seat Dail. A series of missteps by Fine Gael's Taoiseach [prime minister] Enda Kenney, and a sharply critical report of the 2008 Irish "bailout," has introduced an element of volatility into the Feb. 26 vote that may end in a victory by an interesting, if fragile, coalition of leftists and independents.

The center-right Fine Gael and center-left Labour Party currently hold 99 seats, but few observers see them maintaining their majority. Fine Gael has dropped from 30 percent several months ago to 26 percent today, and Labour is only polling at 9 percent. That will not translate into enough seats to control the Dail, and putting together a ruling coalition will be tricky, particularly when polls indicate that the independent bloc that has picked up 3 percent and is now the number one vote getter. In general, the independents are left or left-leaning.

The country is in the middle of an economic "boom," but that is a relative term. Ireland is still reeling from years of European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed austerity that doubled the rate of childhood poverty and saddled working people with onerous taxes, painful rate hikes and high unemployment. Wages have fallen 15 percent. Since 2008, almost 500,000 Irish -- the majority of them young and educated -- have emigrated from the country in search of jobs.

The government's trouble began in December, when torrential rains swamped parts of the country and Kenny slow response to the disaster angered rural voters. Flood victims blamed the government for failing to invest in flood control, an infrastructure improvement that fell victim to the austerity regime.

Then the Fine Gael-Labour coalition was hit with a double whammy: a report by in-house auditors for the European Union and an Irish parliamentary study of the collapse of Irish banks from 2008 to 2010. The EU study found that the European Central Bank (ECB) had pressured the Irish government not to impose losses on "senior bondholders" and, instead, put the burden on taxpayers. According to the parliamentary study, the ECB threatened to withdraw emergency support for Irish banks -- thus crashing the economy -- if wealthy bondholders were forced to take losses. All of this came as news to most of the Irish.

The center-right Fianna Fail Party was in power when the great crash came in 2008, a crash that had nothing to do with government spending or debt, but was instead, the result of real estate speculation by banks and financial institutions. Irish land values jumped 800 percent, which should have warned the banks that a bubble was inflating. But the bondholders, speculators and banks did nothing because they were making enormous amounts of money. When the bubble popped, Irish taxpayers were forced to pick up the $67 billion tab.

Fianna Fail was crushed in the 2011 election, losing two-thirds of their deputies, and Fine Gael-Labour took over.

Part of the government's problem is that for the past five years it has been saying that it had no choice but to enforce the savage austerity regime of the ECB, but it is now trying to take credit for the recent improvement of the economy.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Must Read 1   Valuable 1  
Rate It | View Ratings

Conn Hallinan Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Conn M. Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, à ‚¬Å"A Think Tank Without Walls, and an independent journalist. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He (more...)
 
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Iran Sanctions: War by Other Means

Israel and Syria: Behind the Bombs

Japan Vs. China: Smoke or Fire?

Marching On Moscow

Iran: Rumors Of War

Iran, Israel and the U.S.: The Slide To War

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend