Deja Vú all over again!

Oh dear, the silly season has arrived once more. I’m certain it’s here as the latest word is that Brian Cowen is to be challenged in the autumn by Brian Lenihan who when he wins is going to call a general election. And if Brian isn’t well enough he’s going to support Mary Hanafin who’ll win and call a general election too. Its not for me to prejudge the Irish electorate but on present form, I’d suggest for any FF leader who’s going to take over and then take us into an election not to go to bed as they’ll likely miss their short time in office.

Its not too long ago that Brian Cowen was winning the accolades that Brian Lenihan now accepts. In the last few days of the Ahern era Cowen’s ratings in the opinion polls were similar to the regard that Lenihan now is now held. Cowen single handedly turned the 2007 election around on the last week-end. There are many FF TD’s who owe their seats to Cowen. The fact that Cowen was complicit in the economic slump is neither there nor there for many FF TD’s. The fact that Brian Lenihan has prolonged the chaos and has thrown good money after bad will not in time be seen as a positive.

Brian Lenihan is now getting the plaudits of the media for what exactly?
· 2 years ago Lenihan promised that as we were first into recession we’d be first out, That forecast was wildly inaccurate.
· Lenihan forecast NAMA will make a small profit over its lifetime, we now know based on the haircuts proposed that it’ll never make a profit
· Lenihan’s bank guarantee scheme bailed out subordinate bondholders sucking cash out of schools, hospitals and the economy
· The jaded old boys network that controlled Irish banking was replaced with…eh… a jaded old boys network that controlled Irish banking!
· Do you know any SME who’s got a loan lately?


I’ve always felt that Lenihan is a triumph of style over substance since I heard him tell an audience in Wexford 2 years ago that things are never as bad as they look and never as good as they seem. Lenihan has deflected the criticism over the lack of regulation to the Financial Regulator. True, the regulator has a responsiblity for what was happening here and we know that the economic collapse was home grown, but what was going on in the Central Bank and more importantly the Department of Finance Summer 2 years ago when they spun a line that banks were doing ok when Lenihan was putting the finishing touches to his re-adjustments? . Cowen's own disastrous tenure as Finance minister was peppered with references to soft landings that we now know to be guff. I once said on local radio in Wexford that it takes 10 years to find out what is going on today in this country. Time will prove me right that Lenihan is no superman when our ountry stagnates under the strain of his ank bail out when other econmies flourish.
My take is how near are we now to recovery? I‘ve concluded that when you take away the hype the answer is; no nearer than 2 years ago. The only chance that FF and the greens now have is if they can point to an economic stabilistion in 2012. The country wouldn't wear another FF unelected Taoiseach until then. Regardless of where we might be at in 2012, the political retribution on a 2nd unelected FF leader posing as Taoiseach may be significantly worse than on Brian Cowen no matter when a General Election is called.

We are at the bottom of the pit and there is no sign that any recovery will happen in the near future. Emigration will see the return of non-national immigrants. The typical image of this sub-group is that they are mostly young, living in rented accommodation, single and mobile. These people will never return. Not too far behind and already going are young Irish people once they see better paid jobs elsewhere although the US and UK seem for different reasons unlikely to be the destinations, unless you want a job building an Olympic Village. These are people with the ability to spend more of their income than people with mortgages which are now climbing while incomes are dropping. When I hear the government talking about stimulating demand and consumer spending, I don’t know where the increase in spending is going to come from.

Lenihan should bare in mind his won maxim of "we're all in this together" and ask if that exteds ot each member of the FF parlaimentary party. More to the point if you believe the polls and I don’t put a huge meas on them as a guide to a final result, who’d want to lead a government for 4 weeks and an opposition for 8 years? Given how the FG move against Enda Kenny colapsed and the derision that the plotters earned, who'd willingly conspire in FF? Explain that one Phoenix!

UKIP’s dirty work in Ireland pulling the Legge.

Soon you can look forward to getting a letter from something called UKIP asking you to vote No to Lisbon. Someone who wants you to vote No is one of their MEP’s William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, MEP.
William wants to restrict the right of EU citizens to go and work in Britain. Since independence over 1 million Irish have found a better life in the UK than this republic could offer. Willie doesn’t have to worry about moving abroad to eke out a living as he’s the 10th person to hold the title and he owns a pile somewhere in Yorkshire and even if that goes belly up he’s connected to Barbara Cartland and the Late Princess Diana so there’s a few bob there to tide himself over the downturn just as there was for his 9 predecessors to the title since 1710.
Necessity is the mother of invention and who’d have imagined that a relative of the Princess Diana who had more blue blood than her ex husband, would now be standing shoulder to shoulder with Sinn Fein in opposing the Lisbon Treaty? What would Lord Mountbatten or the Republican icon Bobby Sands make of that? More to the point what would Sinn Fein voters make of it too? As far as I can make out SF still opposes the introduction of the Euro and prefers the pound sterling despite the sneering at the protestant community in the north that they were more loyal to the half crown than the crown? How far can you wrap yourself up in nonsense and who in the end, do you please? If Europe’s Far Right Lite see Lisbon off talking blarney with an English brogue where does that leave Sinn Fein or the Socialist Party?

2 contrasting policies in 2 different jurisdictions see SF arguing for an All-Ireland economy yet opposing moves to a single currency. What perplexes me is why will the Republican Movement stand shoulder to shoulder beside some of the most unsavoury element of European politics just to oppose continental bureaucrats? The logic of the community is that Britain should join the Euro and be at the centre.
Nigel Farage isn’t the person to lead them there. Former public schoolboy Nigel was a money man, not of course that we need another money man to tell us how our economy should be run. Nigel is a keen supporter of the Better Of Out (BOO) campaign an anti EU grouping of British MP’s that includes Lord Tebbit, Ian Paisley, Author and former Wicklow resident Frederick Forsyth and a number of right wing Northern Unionist and Tory MP’s. Some of these people like Christopher Chope oppose the minimum wage while claiming expenses from the British taxpayers to cover furniture vital to the UK economy like their sofa, or Bob Spink UKIP and former Tory MP who wrote in 2001; “What bit of sending them back do you not understand, Mr Blair?” or Ann Winterton MP who lost her front bench post for cracking racist jokes! These are the intellectual powerhouses lining up on the No side, our problem in this country is that they’ve gained a credence they don’t deserve because those leading the Yes campaign are so discredited.

Later this week Nigel will be in Dublin to debate Lisbon with David Begg. He’ll sit alongside Mary Lou McDonald. Nigel boasts he’s not anti-Irish but pro-British. What interests me about the UKIP intervention is who is paying for the mailshot? Have they registered with SIPO and who’s paying for their campaign? We’ve had Coir YD getting dollars in the past, Libertas with their own funny money and now the party that thinks all Ireland is part of the UK according to their Banner is spending more than a few half crowns getting its snout in. Shades of Yeats’ greasy till about this lot. Failte go h-Eireann agus Slán abhaile.

Mary washs her hands of Pharmacists and medical card holders

For the past week many medical card holders in the state have had significant difficulties collecting prescription medicines because of a dispute between the Department of Health and the pharmacists association (IPU). Effectively the minister has unilaterally cut payments to those chemists who administer drugs to medical card holders. Nobody likes when a unilateral cut in income has been imposed by a minister, as any public servant paying the pensions levy will quickly tell you. Minister Mary Harney has been her own worse enemy on many matters for some time and she has lost the confidence of the people because she has no mandate from the people.
However that does not necessarily mean that the chemists have the full support in the community. For a few weeks I’ve watched from the sideline while their medical card patients have had to endure great hardship to get medication. Essentially the patients have been used in a row about money to see who’ll blink first and come to the table. The facts are that the state has got poor value for money from administering, purchasing and dispensing drugs to medical card holders. It seems that for a long time the gravy train chugged along merrily. At one stage restrictive practises prevented competition between chemists and pharmacies had to be located a minimum distance from one another serving a verifiable need.
The market has changed hugely since towns have expanded and farming has reduced somewhat. The increase in competition from chains like Boots or McCaughley’s, increased rents on Main St and the establishment of a new school of pharmacy increasing the number of entrants to the market have led to extra outlets in the business. To set up a chemists shop needs compliance with the law in terms of premises location as well as the need to provide a qualified pharmacist on site. There are enormous costs but as long as the population climbs there’s something there for everyone. As part of the business mix, toiletries, drugs to medical card holders as well as non holders of cards and veterinary medicines will contribute to the chemists income. A pharmacist is a business person first and foremost.

However it is not sustainable to continue funding the drugs scheme as it is. Other professionals providing services to the state have seen professional fees cut and in some cases payment deliberately retarded. Pharmacist revoked their contracts to provide medical card holders with drugs, as is their right, to protest against how the department had treated them. If teachers had gone on strike when the pension levy was brought in, we’d have been accused of holding the children’s future hostage (as we were once accused by a parent’ rep). Chemists say that their income will be cut by 34%. I accept that they have overheads, staff to pay and so on but any chemists who I’ve passed by in the last few weeks are doing very little business as most of their customers are down in Boots getting their medication. How sustainable is it to tell the bank that is itself crucifying business by refusing to release money that you’re paying staff the same amount to do less work on an ongoing basis? Chemists feel that they have the department by the throat and that to set up an alternative outlet dispensary the HSE must locate enough qualified chemists and suitable premises to comply with the law. A hard job for the department, but not impossible. During the 2001-02 teachers dispute the Department of Education found a way round our threats on substitution and supervision and I would argue that teaching has suffered since. Chemists should learn from the mistakes of others before they irreversibly damage their industry. Once changed it’ll never return to the way it was before.

My sympathies are entirely with the patients on this one. As long as the stand off continues the more likely it is that chemists will lose good customers and that rationalisation of the industry will see the consolidation of chains at the expense of family run pharmacies in Ireland. There are other issues such as the use of generic drugs in place of branded one and the relationship between the industry and the HSE but these won't get discussed during the dispute. It’s time for the pharmacists to re-open, take up their contracts again and offer to negotiate with the minister. Anything else causes hardship to those who need it least.

Holy God, I’m stumped!

Set against a back drop of record unemployment, a hole in the public finances, corruption in banking and an uncertain future what do you think the country needs most? Yes you’ve guessed it a blasphemy act! And the act has arrived courtesy of a government guillotine in the Dail right on time for another wave of claims of supernatural religious phenomena.
25 years ago we also lived through a previous wave of social uncertainty and claims of Marian apparitions. Interesting the initial sighting of moving statues all those years ago was not too far from the town of Rathkeale at Asdee. The wheels were coming off Ireland in the mid eighties. The death of Anne Lovett, the Kerry Babies Tribunal, church state conflicts over abortion, contraception and divorce acted as the back drop to the last Marian sightings in Ireland. Most sightings were rural and south of the border despite an obvious need for divine intervention in the mind of northern Catholics who were engaged in a bloody tribal war.
In Rathkeale locals felling a tree in a church-yard with a chain saw claim that the shape of the vascular bundle tissue of the heart wood of the felled tree is the outline of the Mother of God holding an infant. They also claim that this coincidence has a supernatural meaning and are holding candle light prayer vigils late into the night.
I don’t believe that there is anything supernatural about the coincidence but I’ll admit to being a sceptic about all apparitions. It’s easy to file this story as the silly season. Ballinspittle for the new millennium. Limerick is traditionally regarded as the most conservative county in Ireland. Rathkeale is about 15 miles from the city. 100 years ago the city’s Jewish population were run out of town after a pulpit inspired pogrom. I remember Jim Kemmy being witch hunted out of office because he supported abortion. Frank McCourt chronicles the hard lives led by the working class in his work and the religious repression. The city is at present the site of a turf war between some of the most vicious drugs gangs in the country. Rathkeale is unique in the country having the highest percentage of settled travellers. Travellers have a strong tradition of religious devotion. Famously it is said of the town that of all the places visited by Daniel O’Connell it was only Rathkeale where he found it impossible to get a woman!
I go to church most Sunday’s. I believe in respecting another’s right to hold a view no matter how incredible it may seem. This doesn’t make it true nor does it put you beyond ridicule when you claim that discolouration of a tree’s heartwood probably caused by a bacterial or fungal infection has a religious significance. The phenomena of these sightings was hilariously sent up by Dermot Morgan in Fr Ted who filmed about 40 miles away from Rathkeale. I’ll put my hand up to being a practising A la Carte Catholic. It’s got to be the scientist in me. If you cannot record or monitor and get measurable evidence then you cannot substantiate claims. Second hand evidence or something you cannot check don’t count in my book. So in short it’s a case of move along there’s nothing to see but lots to explain. I hope I’ve tried! I'll reurn to the Blasphemy Act another time, that's if I haven't been rounded up based on the above seditious thoughts!