The special one has given his considered verdict. FF and the Green’s dirty work has been cued up for them. When social welfare cuts hit or SNA’s disappear,the line minister will simply say that they’re following advice. Recently when Mary Harney was being questioned about Crumlin Hospital she defended herself by saying that she had to stick within financial guidelines. Sure we all know that you can’t print money (well most parties anyway!) but being in office is about priorities. Releasing McCarthy’s report ahead of the report on taxation psyched the people up for cuts as opposed to looking at income. The use of words like snip suggest that what's being cut won't really be missed in to the future. Like the other snip, a vasectomy, it'll have no effect on your general health or life's outcomes. Never could you be so wrong! Like a vasectomy there'll be no going back to where Ireland was once the government sets about implementing any of its proposals. Unnoticed this week the PD's are finally officially wrapping up their project and when the Dail resumes Mary Harney is officially an independent. Gone from the stage when their vision is within their grasp but handing on their values to FF and The Greens. 
Margaret Thatcher invented the acronym TINA, “there is no alternative”. The reality is that she was wrong, there is always an alternative. Some could be significantly worse than where we are now but some could be better.
I believe we should look at what money there is and how to raise revenue. Charlie Chawke seems to have enough spare cash that he considered launching a bid of €100M to buy an average English soccer team. Our tax exiles, god bless the modern Wild Geese, from JP to Bono to Dinny O’Brien who trade on the national image of sport, arts and chancer’s from Doncaster to the Dorchester need to be pursued to loosen their pockets in this time of national crisis. Has the time come to look at our nationality laws once more and make the issuing of an Irish passport dependent on being tax compliant within the state?.
How would that affect the Good Friday Agreement and the right of those born in the north on the island but outside the jurisdiction the right to Irish citizenship? Can a form of words be found by which citizenship can be dependent on tax compliance within this state for any earnings made within the state?
Ireland is now entering a dangerous stage in its history where decisions are being farmed out to the very group of people who got it spectacularly wrong in the last 10 years; FF, economists and bankers. The spin is that the green shoots of recovery are already there and all we need is to cut a bit more and building will start again. This promise is being held out to divert the real thrust of what Fianna Fail along with the Greens hope to achieve, the re-casting of our society into an economy where the only sin is losing money; so up the price of electricity to create false market for power, cut back spending on hospitals or schools, introduce charges for water while at the same time handing over the provision of water to a quango, bring in road tolling close rural railways and bus services, and if you can’t charge for a police service reduce it. Make no mistake about it the new Irish right are waiting to reclaim the ground that the PD's vacated. This is where McCarthyism will take Ireland. Let’s not go there, There is an alternative!
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