Drink! Feck! Arse! Budgets!

It’s a budget that Fr Jack would be proud of. If Carlsberg could do budgets they’d do this one! Drink prices hit the floor, the millionaire’s G&T drop in price as VAT & excise duty are reduced. The bill is picked up by the public servants and those on social welfare.
I debated the budget in South East Radio with Michael Wall (SIPTU), Michael O’Leary (a local financial services expert) & Cllr Michael Sheehan of Fianna Fail just hours after the speech. Dan Walsh did the needful and chaired the debate. Every year South East Radio has a budget debate and this is the second time I’ve done it. It’s an example of public service broadcasting that you don’t often hear in local radio. The response from the listeners was hugely critical of the budget, and I’m not surprised. As a budget, I must say that I’m still in shock. I’m shocked that Fianna Fail could walk all over vast swathes of people to appease the bankers, builders & IBEC so blatantly. If Labour tried a fraction of what FF & the greens pushed through there would be a schism.!

Lets punch through the noise and set Budget 10 in context. All the money saved last year has been channelled into the banks by the back door off balance sheet and not a cent of it was mentioned today. Its not as though we’re through the worse, the worse hasn’t started yet. There’s no stimulus here, SME’s are looking for credit, they won’t get it today and it won’t happen because the CEO of the Bank of Ireland gave away the game when he said that capitalisation will only lead improving the balance sheet of the banks, no mortgage holders or businesses need apply. Employment is the only way out of the slump.

We’ll soon be out of recession but we’ll be in depression then! By then anincreasing number of families relying on social welfare will be paying prescription charges per item, carbon taxes to heat their way out of fuel poverty, struggling to meet mortgages. against a backdrop of the ending of the embargo on repossessions.
How can you expect people who get less to spend more in an economy? The sub-text to the agenda is emigration, cut jobseekers assistance for young people and that will act to drive young people out. The other subtext from FF & the greens is that there is no alternative to cuts and that the rich should keep their heads down and let ordinary people carry the can.
On the way home I must confess I only stopped to fill the tank with petrol At home I saw Eamon Ryan on “Prime Time” tonight. I couldn’t help wonder if he regretted not running in the 2004 presidential election. Surely his chance of the park is now as real as Kenmare Hospital. The Green Party’s endless spin on the green or knowledge economy is running the risk of getting the word knowledge a bad name. The only green jobs created are for green senators counting frogs. That’s why the budget will get through. It won’t revive the economy it’ll knock it out. Once that happens emigration will start. In the end, Craggy Island may well seem more populous than John Bull’s other one

ICTU spell it out to FF & the Greens

The ICTU rally in opposition to cuts in government spending in Waterford saw about 8,000 union members from the south east march in fine dry weather to let the government now exactly how they feel. Nationally almost 80,000 took to the streets to put Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan on notice that they expect the government to pursue those who made most during the boom years to pay up when it comes to finding the money to keep public services going.

It’s unfair to describe the protest as a public sector protest about avoiding pay cuts. Notable in attendance were community workers from FAB in Wexford opposed to cuts in funding to the CDP budgets.
FAB is funded under the RAPID scheme and does valuable work within estates where unemployment is high and there is a huge reliance on social welfare and funding to maintain the community. These women were there because they know that funding cuts will set them back years while those who have made a fortune in this country will still hold on to their cash oblivious of the real need in their country. But it wasn’t just about workers it was about retired workers too, some of whom I met and spoke to.
I was delighted to meet so many of my Labour colleagues from around the region, Cllrs Denis Landy, Seamus Ryan and Tomás Walsh all marched behind the Labour banner. My ASTI colleagues were out in force as were INTO, IMPACT, UNITE, TUI, INO and of course SIPTU. I was delighted to see the entire Wexford SIPTU office at the rally afterwards at The Glen. Pleased also to see Rory, fellow Wexford blogger flying the Wexford flag and the red flag from the same pole.
Led by a band from The Glen, the march went along the Quays and back via Ballybricken. There was a strong show of firemen and ambulance workers to underpin the depth of feeling in the 24/7 group of workers. As I passed the garda station at Ballybricken I thought for one moment I saw the “Super” give us the clenched fist from his 3rd floor office! There was a clear message from the platform from ICTU, Mayor Halligan of Waterford and other union speakers that ordinary workers are being put to the pin of their collar and didn’t deserve what was being done to them. Those who run Irish society were setting worker against worker.
As one speaker from TEEU said; first it was self-employed worker against employed worker, then it was private sector worker against public sector worker, after that it was worker against unemployed and recently he’d heard someone try to divide the long term unemployed against short term unemployed. What’s next; young unemployed against older unemployed? Teachers have an unpalatable choice, oppose pay cuts and the government will sack your younger teaching colleagues and your working conditions will deteriorate. Accept a pay cut and the very colleague who you feel should keep their job will find the mortgage payments a difficulty. That’s the reality, just 2 years after being told by Bertie Ahern that anyone who was sceptical about the boom should commit suicide. Some Republic!

Are we all really in this together?

Can you believe it’s nearly a year since Brian Lenihan’s call to patriotic action? Fianna Fail’s instant mantra became “We’re all in this together”. Parotting this were the IBEC’s, the banks and the builders. The sums have been simplified to one of Social Welfare versus Pay versus The Rest must square off against tax revenues. The latest ESRI report says that the public service pay exceeds comparable private sector pay by over 20%. The government has indicated that a 5% pay cut for the public service will be introduced in the 2010 budget.
Public sector pay is being pruned to avoid tax increases. I accept that public sector pay is relatively high but private sector pay for many is at a low base. There’s many in the private sector who benefit from the minimum wage and few in the public sector. To me that is telling.
But before we charge headlong down the road of setting public against private sector lets ask ourselves why is public sector pay pay higher. For a start most public servants are unionised. Secondly and more importantly the key driver for wages in Ireland for me has been the need to get on the property ladder. In Wexford property prices were increasing at 1% per month about 3 years. There’s nothing to indicate that this figure was at the time exceptional on a national basis. One colleague who bought a house then still pays €1,300 per month (and will continue for another 27 years!) for a bed Semi D as part of the 100% mortgage scam that the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank turned a blind eye.
It is blatantly obvious that pay increased because people were buying houses irregardless, as to whether they were public or private sector. Buying housing was the national sport and lets be clear about it when some were fed up buying them here, Mick O’Leary provided cheap flights to where houses could be bought for even cheaper. If you think times are bad now, just wait till Ryanair cut flights to where the second or indeed third homes are and then tune in to Liveline!
But lets get back to the average couple who had just one house, and the way prices went it had to be 2 wage earners to afford a house. Most of these people could only afford houses miles from where they worked.
The long commute, the breakfast roll grabbed on the way to work at a service station, the sandwich dropped to the work station and the take away or €10 Tesco meal with the bottle of wine when they arrived home in time to watch “Fair City”. This was their life. Now the wine may be home brewed and the sandwich home made but the mortgage is still to be paid and to make matters worse interest rates will soon rise again. The fear of loosing the house through re-possession and unemployment strikes terror into the heart of many home owners.
But there’s more. Much to my surprise it seems that the real inequity according to the ESRI is at the bottom end of the pay scale. The real people to be cut are the lower grades of clerical staff like the CPSU members who went on strike earlier this year. One striker told me that she worked advising on social welfare entitlements and that some of her clients would get more than her. What now will she make of this threat to her income?
We’e not all in this together, some of us are more in it than others, and some of us are not in it all. 3 years ago we could boast 33,000 actual millionaires in this country. That didn’t include those so called ethical businessmen who sent their wives away to live abroad so that they could collect a rebate on a deal. Eamon Gilmore said the right thing today when he said that public sector pay should not be cut. The private sector relies on the public sector’s spending, would reducing spending power in the economy be in the interest of the private sector? I doubt it

Time for cuts in education

This is one cut I’m proud of! Wexford’s newest school opened today. That’s me cutting the ribbon along with the pupils. Educate Together officially opened their primary school at Summerhill today. It was a great day for all concerned. I was delighted to be asked to do the honours and cut the ribbon. It’s been a rapid rise for the school from drawing board to reality but last September saw the school open. The school now has 15 pupils and 2 teachers and numbers will rise further next September. The school provides a new option for parents in Wexford in terms of patron, ethos, mix of sexes and provides a non-denominational school to the town for the first time. At a time when much of the news is negative it makes days like today more important. The reality is that future citizens of our town will be shaped by this school. It’s a sign of the diversity and recognition that the type of homogenous society that Ireland once was is now no more.

The Chairperson of the Board of Management Catriona Staunton had a vision of opening a school based on equity, democracy and one that would be child centred. I’ve met her bag packing, leafleting and lobbying in aid of her aspiration and you cannot be anything but enthused by her energy. The school is located in the former School of Music. This is a beautiful building with gorgeous plasterwork, fireplaces and really high ceilings. The Principal Maria and her teacher had put a huge amount of work into the opening day. All the pupils were excited at the prospect of the adults being in school, The highlight was when they sang Satchmo’s “Wonderful World” and “Sé mo Laoch mo ghile mhear” on the steps of the school.
Amy Hyland put today’s opening in the present context when she said that Educate Together didn’t visualise any further school openings this year. Other patrons such as the churches have said that they are happy to transfer patronage of some schools to other patron bodies if that is what parents wish. Clearly it’s change is coming in the area of schools in our country and I’m pleased Wexford will benefit from this change.
Unfortunately positive images like today’s get quickly forgotten in the media. I hope this school prospers and grows. May cuts like today’s live long in the memory of the school community

O’Keeffe’s special needs cuts hit the vulnerable again

A cut is not a cut if it’s indefensible decision. It seems that this government have given cuts such a bad name that now they deny that they are cutting. All they do is merely allocate scarce resources in a more equitable way! Nonsense, this is not about improving a child’s life chances, it’s about accountancy. Such an indefensible cut is the decision announced by Education Minister to remove some special needs education assistance from primary pupils using as bogus cover advice that the pupils benefit more by being in an ordinary class, even one that will be more over crowded from next September. It reminds me of the excuse offered by Minister Hanafin to justify her removal of disability allowance from 17 & 18 year olds. She said it prevented their entry into the workforce and claimed she was acting on the recommendation of voluntary groups.
Batt O’Keeffe has asked people not to cloud the issue with emotion. I agree so let’s deal with facts not ministerial spin. He rubbished the suggestion of his decision as being a cut. The pupils concerned are described by the Minister’s term “mild”. The type of child the minister is thinking about can have slow speech and language development, poor memory, limited attention span, emotional disturbance and visual or auditory impairment. Minister O’Keeffe finds it hard to believe that the INTO could want a teacher for just 3 or 4 such children. What he clearly doesn’t understand is that a teacher has a choice in classroom, either ignore these children and teach the class in which case they make no progress or else spend as much time with these children as possible and as a consequence the work and development of the class slows down.
The department already allocates funds through the General Allocation Model for each school with pupils who need learning support. The suggestion of schools being all the same and all doing the same thing is wide of the mark. Schools cannot be all things to all people, schools are encouraged by the Minister to specialise and provide services in their community. Indeed some schools who wanted to provide for pupils with either learning difficulties or for those who are gifted, experienced their own difficulties and were refused by the department citing duplication as some schools already provided that service in the community, some ironically now on the list released on Friday for a reduction in staff. Many of the schools on the list are schools that would be well known for their focus on helping pupils with a learning disability. I particularly note St Senans NS in Enniscorthy. This school has a fine tradition of providing for pupils with learning difficulties. Schools like this don’t need the Minister’s folksy potted logic on possible learning outcomes in already overcrowded classes. They need the Minister’s support. In reality these schools could have avoided these cuts if they ignored the needs of their pupils in the first place. In short they’re being shafted because they achieved and the Minister doesn’t want to pay the price and he’s hiding behind a report, just as Minister Hanafin hid behind the voluntary groups.
If a school can fill a class with 11 such pupils then the funding will remain in place. In total there’s 128 classes nationally with number below 11 with over 800 pupils involved and 128 teachers facing dismissal. Minister O’Keeffe denies that this cut is due to budgetary reasons, a claim backed up by Minister Willie O’Dea on radio over the week-end. This claim is mere spin and an insult to the parents, teachers but most of the children involved. In fact the bar, set at 9 by the Department of Education, has now been raised by the Minister to 11.The schools that identified the need for teaching pupils in a targeted approach must retain these supports.
Minister O’Keeffe has not published the advice on which he claims he’s working on. Minster O’Keeffe should explain why it is that classes of less than 11 are not in the pupil’s interest while those of 11 or more remain of benefit and schools with such will keep their allocation. He should also explain what will happen at second level schools that similarly target resources for pupils with mild learning difficulties. Will he now move against learning support and Special Needs Assistants in these schools too?
This cut is indefensible, the Minister must reverse it.

I fought Finance and Finance won.

To paraphrase Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has been bowled over by the new wave of fiscal rectitude. He looked across Stephen's Green towards the Department of Finance and promptly hid in the basement when it came to budgets.
The Clash rose to prominence with their warning to British society in the late 70’s as to where urban alienation would take them. Sure enough along came Margaret Thatcher to prove them right in a brutal summer of 1981 that saw Strummer’s “Guns of Brixton” acted out for real 2 years after he recorded it. The implicaiton is clear, stringent policing, short sharp shock was the cliche, cut funding to commumities and the results were disastrous. The nature of policing in any community is esential towards holding together citizens by re-inforcing their stake in society through their security.
Suddenly it seems we’re going to do a u-turn on spending on garda numbers. Dermot Ahern has flagged that today that numbers are going to drop. I’m worried that it will see a reduction in the work that gardaí do that is time consuming and perhaps do not grab the headlines. I’m worried that it will see rural areas without a garda presence even more than at present. I’m worried that it will mean a town like Wexford where gardaí are stationed in a building built in the 1930’s won’t get their new station. There’s a dogmatic left view of the garda that they represent authority, don’t live in the area they police and as a consequence should not be trusted. It’s not a view I’m inclined towards seeing as I do how they operate on the ground. Policing is a bit more complex than the classic scientific analysis from a sociological textbook. To be fair the PSNI has significantly changed in its approach and culture over its RUC predecessor. I’d like to think that An Garda could move on too. But for this they need money.

I’ll give you just 2 instances; community policing and juvenile liaison officers (JLO) but I could give you more. Is it not more effective to deal with problems first where they arise rather than allowing a problem fester? Both these approaches work and I think many councillors would like to see these schemes extended. They are very effective because they embed the garda in the community where they should be. In the 80’s people complained that gardaí were in squad cars and as a result some communities in particular in inner city areas were effectively thrashed by gangsters running a black economy in heroin. The response is to patrol on foot with officers who are known to the community. This works very well, slowly but surely gardaí on foot and on mountain bike are reshaping how policing is seen in communities. In Wexford we have a number of community gardaí. They are well received in the allocated areas and I’m always looking for more. However now I’m expecting to hear the management on the ground to predicate suggestions with “where resources will allow”. Not their fault, I’m the first to accept that.

You see communities hopes were built up when Fianna Fail were elected to power on a promise of zero tolerance. The notion caught on even though the Garda Commissioner at the time poured cold water on the whole idea as a gimmick rather than an effective policy. FF sold the idea to voters who were fed up with the rise in violent crime and the apparent ineffectiveness of legal measures to stamp it out. Garda numbers were promised to go to 15,000 by 2010 and 16,000 by 2012. Dermot Ahern campaigned on this at the last General Election 18 months ago. Only Fianna Fail can look you straight in the face and tell you that for the next step forward you must take 2 steps backward! That’s why the New Year holiday is used to announce reductions in garda numbers. I think that there’ll be zero tolerance shown to this type of spin in the 2009 local elections.

Batt’s Man U week-end no compensation for 70,000 education protesters

Yesterday while 70,000 protested in Dublin against the education cuts, the minister responsible was far from the maddening crowd enjoying the delights of the Sretford End! It seems that Minster O’Keeffe had a long standing commitment to watch Sunderland play Manchester United. Sunderland were of course managed by former Cobh Ramblers star, Roy Keane until Thursday and while all politics is local, once Keane had resigned as manager, you’d have thought there was no need for the Minster’s attendance.
Last June, I was on holiday in Manchester too. My family spent a wonderful afternoon at MOSI. This is the museum of science and industry. Central to the museum work is the importance of encouraging a child’s imagination. Our youngsters loved the art in the original Manchester railway station, the world’s first. The emphasis is on hands on learning and activity. It’s fabulous! The teachers I met were aghast to hear that there was nothing with such an imaginative curriculum in south eastern Ireland. They may find it even stranger that Minister O’Keeffe has abolished financial grants to schools that teach chemistry or physics.
Is it too much to expect that Minister O’Keeffe might visit places like MOSI and come back invigorated for his brief? Somehow I think I it is, he seems more intersted in the nation's finances every time he talks!

Molesworth St was chock a block last night as thousands of parents, teachers, and some pupils gathered to vent their frustration and indeed anger at the budget cuts that Minister Batt O’Keeffe is determined to roll out in schools around the country. The demonstration was organised to coincide with Labour’s motion condemning the cuts most notably the impact on Pupil Teacher Ratio, the disadvantaged and special needs education. The meeting was addressed by the leaders of teacher unions, patrons and parents associations, as well as Labour leader Eamon Gilmore and Fine Gael’s Education Spokesperson Brian Hayes.

Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe is determined to press ahead full in the knowledge that the greens are on board despite their agreement prior to entering government to increase the spending on tackling disadvantage and reduce further the PTR. It is clear that FF & the Greens have the numbers to see off the opposition and will hang together rather than hang separately. As a teacher I take exception to the minister claiming that teacher unions are hysterical and scare mongering of the highest order. The facts are that school bus fees will rise to €300 per annum, Education for Special needs will be ignored and that English teachers will be limited to 2 maximum. Add to that the cuts in funding for LCVP, LCAP and Transition Year and the ban on substitution for colleagues absent on school business. This farcical plan will mean teacher reps unable to attend VEC meetings. I’ve already refunded money to 2 classes who had hoped to travel to a college laboratory in January. The suggestion that its only going back to 2007 is ludicrous, I remember 2007 very well, it was the year my soccer team won the Wexford Wicklow League Cup, in 2009 there will be no such competition, there'll be n soccer team. It is teams like this that make school tolerable for some pupils. when I go to watch Wexford Youths I take pride at how many ex-pupils play in the League of Ireland.

However the motion will further embarrass the Greens and FF. It is clear that next week will see farmers outside the Dail and this is a group that is well organised and will get a similar number to the gates of the Dail. In the back ground there’s also the possibility of protests by the disabled and I get the idea that for weeks to come the budget cuts will be a hot issue. Once Christmas is over and the fiscal position tightens even further as the banks call in the guarantee scheme and unemployment rises, I believe a supplementary budget is inevitable. Lets be clear it’s going to be like this all the way to the local elections in June. All the bluster about greens pulling out is just that, aimed at shoring up what’s left of their credibility.

Ask yourself this, if there was a general election and the greens succeeded in holding a number of seats who’d take them serious in any negotiations to form a government? Could you keep a straight face if sent to negotiate with Paul Gogarty? That may be in the future but what’s certain is that in the short term the issues that brought about 12,000 people onto the streets last night persist.

I was delighted to see a good representation from Co Wexford. The piece of video shows a number of parents from North Wexford marching immediately outside Leinster House. It was good to meet so many Labour colleagues; Cllr’s Michael Conaghan, Aodhán Ó Riordáin, Seán Ó HArgáin, Ged Nash and soon to be Cllr Maria Parodi as well as Roisin Shorthall, Eamon Gilmore, Ciaran Lynch and Michael D. Fianna Fail and The Greens may have inadvertently brought back to the Irish people a sense of community and collective concern. I wondered for an hour or 2 on budget day if Ireland had lost its sense of outrage as a result of economic affluence. Thankfully I was wrong. I’m barely audible with the noise from the demonstration. You can listen by clicking, unfortunately the FF & Green government is not for listening. On another note, I was pleasantly surprised as I drove up to Dublin to see that the hills around north Wicklow had a covering of snow. I'm dreaming of a white Halloween !

Mighty Mouse in the constituency but Mini Mouse in Dail Eireann

The late Jim Kemmy once brought howls of laughter to the Dail when he used the above to describe the ceaseless posturing of Willie O’Dea. I am reminded of that gem because I’m worried that some government TD’s may be suffering from nausea after their endless U-turning on Budget ’09. I’m not surprised Brian Lenihan now looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights as a week ago FF back benchers gave him a standing ovation on TV while now they are queuing up to call RTE Radio for a review of the proposed abolition of medical cards for over 70’s.

I’ve always valued FF voters as most are from lifelong FF families. They don’t change their minds often. As someone who wouldn’t change his own vote, I really appreciate if an FF voter says they’ll back you. It’s something I could never say back to FF. I don’t think I’m the only Labour councillor who is getting that type of feedback lately. That’s why I admire Joe Behan and what he did, He’s turned his back on the politics of speaking out of both sides of the mouth. I note Joe Behan mentioned education cuts when he took what is a brave step in slamming the FF door shut behind him. However the focus has deliberately been taken off his courageous action by the smoke and mirrors of other FF backbenchers happy to say anything on the national airwaves on Over 70’s med cards to get the media off their back about every other cut in the budget package.

A week on from the budget and other than1982 I cannot remember a budget that has been as controversial. Medical cards for Over 70’s and the 1% levy grabbed the headlines but as a teacher I always look at education estimates and budgets. What struck me straight off was the clinical shafting of everything that schools try to do. I have never seen such a blatant attack on the majority of second level schools. Cutting every school means that well funded schools lose a little but poorly funded schools lose a lot.

There’s 32 cuts. They include grants for Home Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Equipment for Resource Teachers, Paid cover for teachers out of school on school business, Centre for Talented Youth, Educational Disadvantage Committee, 1,200 second level teaching posts and 200 other primary posts are gone. Funding for English language support teachers, secondary school buildings, LC Applied Programme, LC Vocational Programme, Transition Year, Back to Education Allowance, school libraries, school transport, IT, youth services, traveller education programme is cut. To be fair to FF & The Greens, something’s have gone up. Student Registration fees up to €1.5K, Pupil Teacher Ratio, the retirement age for some teachers and the price of books in disadvantaged schools.
If there’s one that really is beneath contempt it is their decision to postpone the EPSOM Act. This act is a commitment from 2003 and the national euphoria following the Special Olympics in Croke Park. It was a promise to those children with special needs that they would have a right to an education plan for their developmental needs. This act wouldn’t cost a bob but its funding implications for schools and services would presumably put a strain on FF and the Greens need to cut stamp duty for commercial developers or the remove value for money criteria for public contracts for Tom Parlon’s buddies. The reality is that childhood development is not like infrastructure, you cannot delay the emotional development of a child and expect that when resources allow you can come back and start up where you left off. What FF and the greens are going to learn is that school kids are not like bicycles that can be parked in a shed on a wet day and taken out when it’s sunny. This government need grinds on education and I think they’re about to get it! Next week Labour table their motion on class sizes and lets see FF TD’s support their local schools.