Whose side is Eamon Gilmore on?

by Con Lehane Sun Mar 15, 2009 20:24

-The General Secretary of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union, Owen Wills, said he was “dismayed” with the decision by Minister for Finance to appoint Dr Alan Ahearne, one the country’s leading economists, as an adviser....

.. Mr Wills said Dr Ahearne had been advising “some of the most rabidly anti-union employers in the country in sectors such as construction and electrical contracting on how to squeeze more out of their workers.

“In fact he appeared as an expert witness for employers in the electrical contracting industry last January, where he supported their application to the Labour Court to have the Registered Employment Agreement for the sector cancelled,” he said.

“Admittedly the Department of Finance is sadly lacking in expertise on banking, as it has demonstrated repeatedly during the presence crisis. But what message is the Minister sending out to trade unionists and PAYE workers generally by appointing a champion of pay cuts and a race to the bottom to his inner council"-
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0315/...9.htm

A right-wing ideologue and anti-working class bigot is now ensconced as the main adviser to the Minister for Finance.

by old dog on road Sat Mar 14, 2009 23:33

The question at the head of this thread is: Whose side is Gilmore on? My answer is he is on the side of a coalition after the next election. This has been the prevailing policy of all Labour Party/Lucht Oibre leaderships regardless of their stated go-it-alone public statements during years of opposition. The only way for Labour to get into government is to do a post-election deal with the major partner Fine Gael.
Gilmore won't buck this trend; FG is financially more conservative in its instincts than FF; so Labour will agree to fiscal rectitude, with a few concessions towards social welfare and bank accountability. Whether we have continuing Fianna Fail government or an alternative coalition, belt tightening measures will be the order of the day. Those outside the mainstream parties will have to continue defending the economic interests of those on low incomes in Ireland, I am afraid. The outlook is unhappy.

by Edge Worth Sat Mar 14, 2009 21:26

Alan Ahearne has now been appointed by Lenihan as his advisor.
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/top-economist-....html

Ahearne did his ph.d under Finn Kydland, a nobel laureate in economics. Allan Meltzer, a rightwing ideologue, was however one of Ahearne's professors at Carnegie Melon university. Ahearne also worked for Ayn Rand acolyte, Alan Greenspan, at the Federal Reserve in Washilngton.

-That is the way it must be if the market economy system is to function properly. As Allan Meltzer, my old economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh used to say: "Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin -- it doesn't work." -Ahearne
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/despite-the-tu....html

So expect the attacks on the working class to intensify, especially in the coming 'austerity' budget. And beware weak-minded so-called socialists who are impressed by Ahearne's credentials, and ignore the rightwing intellectual culture from which he has emerged.

by L.O.C Sat Feb 28, 2009 01:45

"The result, he warns, could be bank losses at Anglo Irish and other banks that supersede the Irish government's promise to guarantee all liabilities in the banking sector. What would follow would be a run on the banks, an inability of the Irish government to finance its 12 percent budget deficit and, ultimately, a bailout by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund or both. "That is the optimistic scenario," Professor Morgan Kelly

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/27/business/wbirish.php

by Tom Edgeworth Thu Feb 26, 2009 01:31

"Irish investment of €13.9 billion was put into European property deals last year. In contrast, the Irish business sector does not even get a total of €200 million in venture capital investment."- The year referred to is 2007.
So the Irish vulture capitalists took 14 billion euro of the surplus created by Irish workers and put it into property in Europe. An amount less than 2% of this was venture capital investment in Ireland. Enterprise culture my ass.
http://www.finfacts.com/irishfinancenews/article_101279...shtml

The attack on the working class by the two vulgar economists at the Labour Party conference disgraces the Labour party.
Rank and file workers are driving the union bureaucracies towards taking strike action against the assault by the rulers on worker living standards. Lets hope that the Labour Party is pushed by its own rank and file towards defending workers politically. And that the party of James Connolly cease and desist from giving platforms to anti-working bigots posing as 'economists'.

by lulu Wed Feb 25, 2009 19:25

One answer is to build decent Council housing.

by Puca Wed Feb 25, 2009 18:20

Ireland is too expensive. Much of this can be blamed on the housing bubble which has driven the cost of accommodation for workers through the roof. But another factor is the cartel and license capitalism that amounts to business culture in Ireland. The mainstream political parties and FF in particular, as they've been in power for so long, take a very short term and telescoped view of whats good for the country. It coincides with whats good for them and their allies. These include the banks and developers but it also includes public sector workers who are a reliable resevoir of votes for FF. That, combined with the high cost of living in Ireland, goes some way to explaining why those workers are paid well above their private sector comrades and relatively more than other Public sector workers in Europe.

People here are right though, pay levels for workers are a far less serious problem that the cronyism and corruption of business and politics in the country. By any measure of mainstream economic thinking this factor has completely undermined Irelands competitiveness. Its a small economy that depends on selling things to others either through a race to the bottom or by making things that can add value and be sold for a premium. Instead of promoting this (the so called knowledge economy) the ruling gangs have concentrated on building and selling houses to each other. This is insane. Even orthodox economics knows that asset bubbles end in tears but when housing prices started to inflate the Irish government threw tyres and petrol on the fire by encouraging speculation through tax policy.

The same people want us to believe that this crisis is a result of the global credit collapse. But this was on the cards and the crash had started well before Lehman bros broke. There is no prospect of any kind of improvement in job creation until the cost of living and of doing business comes down in Ireland. If the general price level falls then wage deflation is less painful. When house prices are still 8 or 9 times the industrial wage then further falls are necessary and inevitable. This is a whole area of the debate that is being ignored in Ireland. Right now the government are trying to drive down their own wage bill by stuffing public sector workers. IBEC and the developers are trying to drive down the wages of private sector workers by appealing to patriotism, you can tell they are full of shit because the appeal to patriotism. Already huge numbers of private sector workers have lost their jobs or taken big wage hits. But there is no strategy to deal with the cost of living in Ireland, that is a problem for the plebs so nobody in power even thinks about it.

by Arm-a-Gedden Tue Feb 24, 2009 22:59

Wake up you dead of Ireland.

Hunger,insecurity,fear, home loss,job loss,maratial breakup, and I could go on these are all horrendus situations for any human being to find themselves faced with but a lot of our fellow citzens now find themselves in these circumstances.

It was NOT the Shell 2 Sea campaigners that got them into these horrible situations but are trying to help to get them out of it.

It was the rotten deal done by Burke,with the authority of the then Government.

F/Fail just like Shell are just that Failures.

Keep on burning the leather, keep the information flowing everywhere and anywhere, make the citzens aware that this is our way out of this enormous mess created by scheisters, who were given full authority by Wee Bert to hijack our country.

This is our childrens, and G/Childrens inheritance,we must ensure that they get what is rightfully theirs.

by margaret Tue Feb 24, 2009 22:12

Just what is it that the citizens of Ireland dont understand about the GAS and OIL giveaways? Recent finds off the west coast are massive .Reclaim our RIGHTS.No one explains it better than Colm Rapple.http://colmrapple.com/?cat=7.No more giveaways.

by Blacbloc Tue Feb 24, 2009 11:29

I don't think that there is any danger of many posters here voting for Fine Gael but there are a lot of mistaken people out there who think they will somehow be a bit nicer, or more efficient - or less corrupt. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both FF and FG should be annihilated at the next election. While I agree with what Pat C says about Labour, the next election will be vital. A massive shift in votes to the left of the spectrum would send the clearest mandate. Unless the socialist parties put a credible grouping together between now and then, the only choice we have left is Labour and Sinn Fein. Though these parties are weak as water and quite likely to sell us out, they will be marginally less inclined to do so on the back of an incnotrovertible mandate to stay the hell away from the ideology of either FF/FG. That's the 'choice' we have. If we did elect a Sinn Fein and Labour coalition (the Greens are in the political dustbin marked 'scum'), workers would have to be prepared to flex their muscle to make sure they kept to their mandate.

Above all, the message must be got about: don't vote for EITHER FG or FF. FG will be worse but there is a real danger that they will scrape into government with a rainbow coalition and then we will be straight back into PD style neocon economic policies. FG are taunting the government with the accusation that social partnership is a failure, not because of IBEC and the corporate rapists but because of the influence of the unions!!!

I'd given up on voting again but this time, there might be some advantage in aiming for a strong tactical vote, no? And then take things from there? It seems at the moment that left unity is impossible and we are not going to get libertarian socialism in the near future, so tactical voting seems to be the only option left. Meanwhile continue to expose the true causes of this crisis for what they are. It's a major opportunity for consciousness raising - for grassroots activism which so many people are already involved in.

We need to rehabilitate the word socialism and reclaim its true meaning: fairness.

by pat c Tue Feb 24, 2009 10:35

But the problem is that the message which came from the meeting associated the Labour Party with 30 - 50% cuts in pay. That was the heading of the report in the Irish Times. Almost half of the article was about Ahern and most of that was about the need for dire cuts.

I don't care what qualifications Ahern has, you shot yourself in the foot by having him along. You should have known that he would target ordinary people as those who have to pay for the crisis,

Dehumanisation? Well those economists have dehumanised us. They have declared war and I say we fight back. Richard Tol wrote: "It would be nice to look after the vulnerablebut its more important to look after wealth creators". There should be no place in civilised society for the vermin who want to cut welfare payments.

If Tol, Fitzgerald and the other rabid hyenas in the ESRI are in unions then they should be expelled. Privatise the ESRI and let them work for their real masters rather than being for by the public.

by C. Antillon Tue Feb 24, 2009 01:14

Orthodox economics as espoused by Ahearne and Lucey, and by the ESRI, is riddled with ideology, right-wing ideology. That's why their policy conclusions are always attacks on the working class.

Cloaking their view in pseudo-scientific jargon may fool people like Gilmore, and may even fool themselves, but the working class is not so easily fooled as evidenced by the rising militancy.

The anti-worker conclusions they derive from their analysis are implicit in that analysis itself. Which is why Mr. O'Toole's belief that the analysis can be 'correct' but the conclusions mistaken, is silly. They attack the working class because they are right-wing ideologues-albeit ones with impeccable academic credentials.

That the Labour Party has seen fit to allow such anti-working class bigots address its members is now exposed as the retrograde step it surely is.

by Lar Dunphy Tue Feb 24, 2009 00:11

Professor Brian Lucey at the same conference called on the government to introduce 'vicious' policies
against the working class.
What we are witnessing is a vicious attack on the working class by academic bigots who are being given a platform by the Labour party to spew their right-wing views.
If the Labour party disagrees with the full-scale attack being mounted against workers living standards they should not promote the anti-worker views of Lucey and Ahearne.
As for academic qualifications: well the U.S is full of right-wing economists, many of them Friedmanite monetarists who infest the Federal Reserve.
Allan Meltzer, under whose guidance Alan Ahearne received his Ph.D. is a leading conservative American economist. He is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Thatcherite think-tank. He is also the first recipient of the Irving Kristol award. ( Kristol is the founder of the neo-con movement).
Impressive economic credentials may impress Eamon Gilmore, but only some of us are fooled and his right-wing trajectory will continue to be exposed.

by Arm-a-Gedden Mon Feb 23, 2009 21:57

Labour, on the other hand, is prepared to enagage with people with whom we disagree as well as those whose views we share

This has got to be some sort of sick joke, an area that I'am very familiar with is that of our Natural Resourses.

Are the Labour party aware that such resourses exist?

When was the last time The Labour party engaged with the Shell to Sea campaign?

Is the labour Party aware of the value of these resourses?

When was the last time they brought this to the floor of the Dail?

It appears to me and many other citizens of this State that those who rule in this Bannana Republic could not care less about anyone or anything as long as they have the power and the big benefits that go along with this.The labour Party abandoned the people of North mayo to their own devices and allowed the forces of this State to hammer the lives out of them, never heard Labour complaining about this.

Michael D made a brief appearance in Mayo gave a bit of a pow wow, then rode off into the sunset.

Now give me something to believe that the Labour Party is worth supporting. I have to say the Eammon Gillmore is probably a decent enough guy but he is carrying a lot of out dated and useless baggage along with him,and on the other hand where was he on Saturday that said I retract my preevious statement about him bit confusing really.

by Desmond O'Toole - Labour Party & PES activists Dublin Mon Feb 23, 2009 19:38

Hi Pat. Thanks for your comments and for the questions you raise.

Alan Ahearne was invited to the seminar that the Labour Party and Party of European Socialists jointly hosted because of his considerable academic expertise in international finance. It doesn't mean we agree with him, especially with respect to his proposals for how to address this crisis, but it does demonstrate our view that if we are to understand this crisis and formulate a credible policy that will chart a way out from it we need to talk with a wide range of opinion. If we limit our conversations only to those with whom we agree then we will fail both to understand the problem or to produce solutions which can succeed and which the Irish people will support.

Here is a link to the NUIG website which describes Ahearne's qualifications and illustrates why he was invited to the seminar:

http://www.nuigalway.ie/staff/alan_ahearne/

I too would share your contempt for the falied group-think mentality of economists that bought into the neo-Liberal worldview that collapsed so spectacularly in September when Lehman Brothers fell. I don't think that they are "rodents" as I don't buy into the dehumanising language you have used. But I do believe they catastrophically misunderstood how the real economy works and the truly extraordinary danger that unregulated global financial capitalism presents.

People like Ahearne do, however, possess a wealth of knowledge about globalised capital markets. In addition, Ahearne was one of those economists who, several years ago, warned about the unsustainability of the property-speculation fuelled bubble that has conpounded the crisis in Ireland and seen it escalate to truly frightening levels. While Ahearne's prescriptions for how we manage this crisis may be suspect, his input to understanding the scale of the task that confronts us is very valuable indeed.

by pat c Mon Feb 23, 2009 12:01

Its good to hear yout point of view but you might explain why you had Alan Ahearne at the conference. His blood-curdling speech on how the IMF was going to come in and impose wage cuts of between 30 - 50% had only one purpose - to terrify the working class into accepting the present cutbacks.

Why are Labour indulging these economists whose only solution is immiserate ordinary people? These economists such as Ahearn, the odious Richard Tol,and even John Fitzgerald have declared Class War on the ordinary people of Ireland.

Well we should declare Class War back on them, they are like the Landlords Agents of the 19th Century. There should be no place for these economists among any group who claims to be progresive.

Many of these economists have formed a rats nest in the ESRI. They believe in privatisation so lets privatise the ESRI! No matter what the economic conditions the rodents of the ESRI have always called for wage restraint or wage cuts. They say the public sector is 30% overpaid well let them go to the private sector and take their 30% cut!

Desmond as long as Labour entertain the rodent economists then you will be looked at with suspicion.

by Desmond O'Toole - The Labour Party & PES activists Dublin Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:35

I was at this Seminar that was jointly sponsored by the Labour Party and the Party of European Socialists (PES) on Saturday. The OP is incorrect, this seminar took place on the morning of the ICTU march, not a day after it. That's not all that the OP is wrong about.

The real strength about Indymedia for me is the platform that it provides for voices that often do not get a hearing on a national scale. That's why it is required reading for me. The major weakness of Indymedia, however, is that many people here are only interested in talking amongst themselves, that is, only with people who share their particular analysis. And that's a real shame. If the only people you engage with are those with whom you agree then the resultant output is going to be very threadbare indeed. This is a large part of the reason why Anarchist and Marxist parties/groups cannot attract anything other than the bare minimum of support from the Irish people.

Labour, on the other hand, is prepared to enagage with people with whom we disagree as well as those whose views we share. Alan Ahearne had some important things to say about the current crisis, and in particular about the structural issues around government debt. There was no support for his wider prescriptions of how to address this crisis, but it was important that his views exposing the scale of our banking and debt exposure were heard. Far more important than listening to what sometimes passes for ill-informed economic analysis on these pages.

However, the Seminar also heard from Eamon Gilmore, Joan Burton, Brian Lucey (of TCD) and Ruairi Quinn and the keynote address was given by Poul Nyrup Rasmusen, President of the PES and former PM of Denmark. The political contributions were the real meat of the seminar and demonstrated that the mainstream Left in Ireland and across Europe has a workable alternative to the confusion and disbelief that now typifies the reaction of the European Right to the literally overnight collapse of their neo-Liberalist ideology.

As Paul Sweeney, Economic Adviser to ICTU, said at the seminar, "Just like the Berlin Wall, a whole ideology has collapsed overnight."

The response of some, like the OP, to this challenge is to make snide comments about the manstream Left. The response of Labour and the PES is to work to fix the problem, and make the case that there is a real and workable alternative. To do that, of course, means engaging with people with whom we do not agree. That's why the mainstream Left challenges the Right for power across Europe, while at the margns sit those who talk a great fight, but who, in reality, deliver nothing.

by Frank Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:36

The next election, if the electorate were really interested in shaking things up, they should vote ONLY for independent candidates ( and not just ones who have 'become independent' by leaving a sinking FF ship).
I'd love to see every FF, FG and Labour TD join the queues at the Dole office.
They've been too long in the Dail and failed to govern or keep in check the government of the day.
Almost any bunch of independents would have to do a better job. No party whip, no party loyalties. They'd just have to work it out.
At any rate, the electorate have to be a lot more demanding of the candidates, and be much more militant than we have been in recent years.

by Richard Nixon Mon Feb 23, 2009 01:10

Oh poor Eamon has lost your favour now in the long line of has beens.

by Joe Timmons Sun Feb 22, 2009 22:15

James Connolly is turning in his grave