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    Trusty Sean Barrett (now Ceann Comhairle) offers a conventional FG rightist perspective in pre-election Village

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    Interview: Seán Barrett: Still telling it straight.  By Derek Owens Fine Gael’s trusty Sean Barrett, spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, with 37 years in electoral politics,  champions the market and the European project. “You cannot make commitments like that to anybody… Governments don’t create jobs”, insisted Sean Barrett. He looked evenly at the studio audience (and particularly at a student, who’d asked how Fine Gael could ensure he’d have a job in four years) as he continued over the interruptions of his fellow Frontline panellists. “They create the environment where people can organise their business and create jobs”. The remark was as close as any candidate on the programme – a special episode devoted to the General Election in the Dun Laoghaire constituency – came to a succinct outline of their political philosophy. It was also the first time many viewers have seen a politician turning to a voter and flatly refusing to make a promise. Barrett’s performance on the programme was praised, even by sometime constituency rivals, as “assured” and “mature”. Where he stood out from other candidates in what Pat Kenny dubbed the “group of death”, though, was in his willingness to disagree with members of the audience – he had a back-and-forth challenge with the job-hungry student, and seemed to relish outing a different audience member as a supporter of another candidate – even as others fell over themselves to agree with all but the daftest contributions. The approach was distinctly old-school and, strangely perhaps, refreshing. If Barrett’s style in campaigning seems to belong to a different time, that’s probably because the 66-year-old first entered politics back in the 1970s. Having won election to the Dáil in 1981, he rose quickly in Garret FitzGerald’s Fine Gael to become Government Chief Whip and Minister for Sport in 1982, and held the job through the fractious lifetime of the Fine Gael-Labour Government. When Fine Gael returned to power again in 1994, he returned to the job for five months, before becoming Minister for Defence and the Marine. A sudden retirement in 2002 came as a surprise – so too did his successful return in 2007. Still, he remained a significant player behind the scenes during ‘retirement’, as a party trustee involved in fine Gael’s finances and in selecting candidates. Few politicians have held such influence on a party for so long while flying firmly below the radar of most political writers. Even in Gemma Hussey’s diaries, a soap-opera account of FitzGerald’s troubled 1982-7 coalition, Barrett is on the fringes of drama, a figure offering solace and emotional support to Fine Gael ministers who, like Hussey, wanted to do “the right thing.” (Most readers would take this to mean imposing harsher spending cuts than that Government actually did – Barrett, who says he hasn’t read the diaries, agrees with this interpretation). By his own account, that Government went through “traumatic experiences”, facing a controversial referendum on abortion and an economic picture that was almost as grim as is today. “It was a very, very tricky period. And an awful lot of good things were done. More probably could have been done in terms of bringing about the correction in the economy earlier”, he says. “Dick Spring had just taken over as leader of the Labour party… He couldn’t carry the sort of things that should have been done in the first year or two, that’s the reality of it. And in 1982, instead of making the savings early in the first two budgets by reducing expenditure and becoming more efficient, we shied away. We increased taxes, and it took much longer to recover as a result”. The Government from 1994 to 1997, by contrast, “was a bit of a cakewalk. The people who were in from 1994 to 1997 were mostly guys who’d been with us in 1982 to 1987. We all said ‘we’re not making the same mistakes this time as we made the last time’”. If this year’s general election throws up the Government that most people expect – a coalition of Fine Gael and Labour– there’ll be considerably fewer Government veterans around, particularly on the Fine Gael benches. Aside from Finance Spokesman Michael Noonan, Barrett has more ministerial experience than any other sitting TD, making it surprising that he only returned to the front bench (as Foreign Affairs spokesman) in the wake of Richard Bruton’s failed leadership challenge last year. Barrett, a personal friend of Enda Kenny, was one of the few Dublin TDs to support him. “I was in favour of the leader, yeah. It’s a very serious thing to change a leader, and we’ve had a bad experience of doing that as a party,” he says today. “People misunderstand, in my opinion, what a leader should be, or what a leader should be doing. A leader is more than a high-profile individual who gives the impression that they’re in charge of every department. When it comes to the actual day when you’re appointing a cabinet, what you need is a team of fifteen people, sixteen with a chief whip. The Taoiseach is not going to be running over to my department, or your department or everybody else’s department. No, he’s saying ‘I’m expecting you to do the job’. And then, when it comes to a cabinet, you need solidarity – you need to be able to bind people together to get decisions and to keep a good atmosphere, especially where there’s a coalition. And, you know, there are different types of people for those particular jobs. Enda Kenny, whether the people know it or understand it, has been very successful at running a team approach to things”. @font-face { font-family: “Calibri”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Locally at least, Barrett has some experience of teams breaking down. In 2007, clashes between Fine Gael candidates in Dun Laoghaire were happily relayed by the local press, and sometimes got national coverage.

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    Abolish the €100m State funding for private schools. By Mark Lonergan (current edn, Village)

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    Jerusalem in South County Dublin “the’best’ schools in the country are off limits to the children of  immigrants, members of the Travelling community or those with special needs” By Mark Lonergan The growing fiscal crisis demands cuts in State expenditure. One cut would actually enhance the common good. What better place to start than the present state subvention for private schools? The economic meltdown will  devastate average household budgets but leave intact the unassailable bastions that are our nation’s elite private schools which, according to figures released recently, still  managed to enrol over 26,000 pupils this year despite charging fees in the region of €6,000 a year for day students and up to €20,000 for boarders. These schools share certain characteristics that make them anathema to those who believe that equality ought to be the foundation of our education system. The  admissions policies of these schools are blatantly discriminatory as they give preference to the children of former students, siblings of current students, attendees of their fee-paying junior schools and relatives of their teaching staff. Even more intimidating for those outside the existing educational elite is the fact that many of these schools insist on interviewing both the applicant child and their parents as part of their admissions process. The result of all of this is that some of the’best’ schools in the country are off limits to the children of  immigrants, members of the Travelling community or those with special needs who would benefit most from having access to them and leads to a total lack of any meaningful diversity in the student body. Our private schools are facilitating educational Apardheid. In a democracy many would say that parents have every right to send their children to a far-from-free school. Harder to understand is the lavish State largesse that these fee-paying schools continue to receive – over €100 million a year, the bulk of which goes toward teachers’ salaries. The most up-to-date Department of Education figures show the 51 fee-paying schools received this support for teacher salaries in 2008/09 with an additional €2.1 million for capital or building works in 17 fee-paying schools last year. For example, St Andrew’s in Booterstown, Dublin  received over €5 million in State supports, including over €4.5 million for teacher salaries and €460,000 for building works; Blackrock College  received over €4.2 million from the State for teacher salaries and an additional €114,000 for building works. In an age when parents feel obliged to collect  vouchers for essential educational  equipment for schools, it is impossible to understand why the ordinary decent taxpayer should be forced to watch taxes being used to fund schools that have a deliberate policy of discriminating against their own offspring. Private schools  may spend excess funds on floodlights for the hockey pitches while poorer schools are  denied special-needs funding or conduct classes from damp prefabs. With teacher salaries paid by the State, many fee-paying schools enjoy much better facilities than their counterparts in the free second-level sector. Language Labs are the norm in South County Dublin, whereas the State school in North Tipperary has to make do with an antiquated tape recorder. Furthermore, the private secondary school model is predominantly a Dublin phenomenon: 37 of the fee-paying schools are in Dublin with  over 70% in its South County. Why is taxpayer’s money being diverted to the richest area of Ireland? At a very minimum fee-paying schools should be forced to choose between adopting an open and transparent admissions process or face the removal of all State funding. These schools will survive as they have access to money from both donations and fees – and from both alumni and parents. Sean Dunne famously gifted €1m to Clongowes Wood for an all- weather Rugby pitch. It is hard not to conclude that the decision of the rainbow coalition to abolish third level fees in 1996 represented a lazy apology for a decision. A quick jaunt around any Dublin university would have shown the main beneficiaries of free fees are not children from the poorest families but middle-class families who, relieved of the future burden of third-level fees, responded to  this windfall by reallocating their resources towards their kids’ secondary education.  And that this led to an unprecedented demand for fee-paying secondary schools with the consequence that some excellent State schools, such as Greendale in North Dublin, found they could not fill places and were forced to close. Having enjoyed such benefits at second-level it is hardly surprising that the majority of the alumni of these feeder schools motor on to third level.  They usually fill nine of the top 10 places in the broadsheet staple lists of feeder schools to   leading universities. In the face of such base unfairness surely  fiscal Armaggedon  compels an end to State subsidies for  private schools and the diversion of the €100 million savings to schools that are simply more deserving? Perhaps the reason this is never discussed is that our political and media masters have vested interests in upholding this scandalously counter-egalitarian educational tradition.

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    Doomed Nuclear ‘Renaissance’

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    Tony Lowes blogs on the ‘nuclear renaissance’ now underway around the world with nations and power companies, often global consortiums, scrambling to build more and more nuclear power stations – including the 113 reactors planned along the Asian Rim earthquake fault that just shifted and the 104 reactors built on fault lines in the USA. As George Mombiot writes that ‘As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology’, Lowes points out that the limited amount of uranium left means that in 60 years that too will run out – leaving us to count the cost in money and human health caused by not switching now to renewable energy.

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    Ireland’s rural pub trade is collapsing (March ’11 edn)

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    By Éibhir Mulqueen The village of Annascaul on the road to Dingle in Co Kerry is notable for two distinctive pubs: one, The South Pole Inn, was owned by the famous Antarctic explorer Tom Crean; the other, Dan Foley’s, was run by a retired magician. The pub’s garish pink, blue and red façade is famous for its picture of a gas cylinder and the words “it’s an illusion”, painted on as a magician’s hologram, was a staple of the Real Ireland Design postcard series. Both venues have entertained locals and visitors over the years. But the famous epigram now hints at a deeper, more profound meaning: Foley’s has been on the books of a Tralee auctioneers for the past four years, its colours are fading and the “Guinness is good for you” enamel sign is rusting. You can still purchase the original postcard on eBay but the more recent pictures available online of a slowly decaying premises with a ‘for sale’ sign now reflect a more up-to-date real Ireland. Closure has been the fate of 1,300 pubs throughout Ireland over the past five years or at the rate of nearly one per day, as the Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI), representing 4,500 rural publicans, points out, while the return of mass emigration in rural areas means the outlook is bleak. In the past three years alone, Co Cork has lost 90 pubs, double the number of the counties with the next greatest losses, Kerry and Galway, which each lost 46. Mayo, Limerick, Donegal and Clare have also have seen high closure numbers. In contrast, Meath and Kildare have increased their pub numbers, if only by a small number as they benefit from the numbers living on the commuter belt. Along with local shops and post offices – around 600 sub post offices have closed in the past ten years – pubs have been an essential part of village life, a meeting point for friends and a place that have delighted foreign tourists, where they felt less of a walking commodity and more of a visitor having a genuine experience. Eileen Percival, a native of Annascaul who returned from England twelve years ago to lease the South Pole, tells a familiar tale of struggle, changed drinking habits and people less willing to pay for meals. She was employing seven staff up to three years ago during the summer. “Any staff that go I am not replacing them. I am just doing it myself because I cannot afford to. Times are really tough.” The effect is not just on the hundreds of family-run businesses that kept small numbers employed over generations. Apart from reducing Ireland’s appeal to visitors, pub closures amount to a loss of a social forum, most keenly felt by single, elderly men. President McAleese has highlighted how rural isolation is now a major social problem for older men in particular. “Yeats once said that this ‘is no country for old men’. I want to be sure he was wrong”, she said at a forum on the issue four years ago while pointing out that older men are now the second most at risk suicide group after young males. In some areas this has been reversed. South Kerry coroner Terence Casey pointed out recently that in his region most suicides since 2005 were among older age groups. “We have had a lot of discussions about this at our regional meetings. What has been identified is a male group typically aged between 50 and 80,” says Ted Tierney, deputy chief executive of Mental Health Ireland. “The disappearance of the rural pub and the drink driving laws is impacting on them. “With the closure of these pubs, their only social outlet in some cases is gone.” His organisation promotes a befriending project but he also underlines the need for a rural transport scheme to run between 9pm and midnight. “If you could walk to your pub and that closes, the next one could be four or six miles away,” he says. Meanwhile, the GAA Social Initiative began as a result of the President’s talk and is a reach-out project aiming to have every GAA club participating in social activities, often in a local pub if there is no clubhouse. Seán Kilbride, project manager for the initiative, has 90 clubs involved so far and hopes to have 150 by the year’s end that involve elderly men and, ultimately, all sections of the community in GAA social activities. “We do not want to be too formulaic. We would be a reminder to clubs that this should be a natural part of their philosophy”, he says. The VFI has campaigned for dedicated smoking rooms, reduced bureaucracy and lower rates to help pub owners, while pointing out that drinking at home often creates more problems than drinking in a pub. It wants a ban on supermarkets selling below-cost alcohol, an issue also taken up by grocery group RGDATA which refers to Tesco “selling beer cheaper than water”. The pub is as much an institution in Britain and there the trend is similar. One in ten pubs has closed in the past six years and closures are still running at 39 a week, according to the British Beer & Pub Association, which is also calling for government policies to support a sector promoting community life. Elsewhere too there are similar developments due to crackdowns on drink driving and teen drinking as well as smoking bans. In France food rather than alcohol has traditionally been at the centre of French community life and there family-run restaurants and bistros, along with café and bars have fallen by the wayside, as smokers are nudged outside and the ‘le fast food’ culture takes hold. In 1960 there were 200,000 cafés but that number was down to 38,600 by 2009, according to the National Federation of Cafes, Brasseries and Discotheques. Common factors in all countries are changing habits, urbanisation, the selling power of corporations and strictly-enforced drinking laws which have turned

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    Irish media failing over Corrib (2010)

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    By Miriam Cotton In April 2006, life-long native of Erris, Co Mayo, Willie Corduff was honoured to go to California to accept the coveted Goldman Environmental Prize – awarded to him for his efforts to protect his community from environmental and other threats it faces from the proposed Shell/ Statoil/ Marathon Consortium’s Corrib Gas project. The Goldman is awarded annually to just six people from around the world. Here was a big story: a source of national pride, with international significance and full of human and social interest. Yet there was only a relatively low-key murmur about it in the Irish national media. Three years later almost to the day Corduff allegedly found himself attacked and viciously beaten by a number of men in balaclavas. By the early hours of April 23rd, 2009, Corduff had spent much of the previous day trying to prevent the erection with dubious permission of fencing for a Shell compound above Glengad Beach in Broadhaven Bay, by sitting under a Shell works truck and so rendering it inoperative. The sandy beach cliff at Glengad is home to a much-loved population of sand martins but it is also the proposed landfall site for the 92km, globally unprecedented, pipeline of highly volatile raw gas – from seven well heads out in the Corrib field. Having hit the landfall at Glengad, Shell say the pressure will, if the project goes ahead, be reduced from the extremely high 345-bar pressure to 144-bar via a ‘reduction valve’ and then travel a further 9 kilometers inland, criss-crossing the exquisitely beautiful Broadhaven Bay, to a proposed refinery at Ballinaboy. Following the alleged assault on Corduff, again, the national media have been strangely reticent in key respects. Most reports, at first, relied on Garda statements which focused on a separate allegation that earlier the same night ‘an armed gang’ had frightened off two Shell security men and taken down the fencing – ‘with paramilitary precision’– but omitting mention of any attack on Corduff or of the beating sustained by his brother-in-law, Pete Lavelle, who says he had tried to help Corduff when he was attacked. As other accounts of the incident began to surface from alternative sources, further Garda statements mentioned that an ambulance had been called for Corduff to take him to Mayo General Hospital because he had been ‘feeling unwell’. An RTE report on the 23rd April is typical. Brian Dobson in Dublin and Teresa Mannion in Mayo emphasised at every turn the removal of the fencing while noticeably understating what Corduff believes was a serious attempt on his life. His wife, Mary Corduff, has expressed her dismay at how her interview with Mannion was presented – most of her testimony edited out and chopped to imply that her husband had been happily sitting under the truck until, as then qualified by Dobson, he was ‘led by gardai’ to an ambulance. According to Corduff, unable to stand or walk, he was carried by paramedics on a stretcher. Corduff says of his attackers ‘they knelt on the side of my head and neck and on the side of my chest, my airways were constricted and I couldn’t breathe. One of them jumped repeatedly on the inside of one leg. Eventually, my tongue fell out of my mouth and when they saw that, they stopped. I think they thought I was gone.’ Corduff says he heard one of them say “ ‘Stop now lads, he’s nearly finished’. I could see two gardai mingling with the people who attacked me who were still wearing the balaclavas but none were arrested.’” For the first five or six years of the ten-year-old dispute in north-west Mayo the media reaction was mainly one of indifference. That all changed when, in 2005, four farmers and a retired school principal – ‘The Rossport Five’ – including Willie Corduff, were jailed for refusing to comply with an injunction by Shell requiring them to allow access to their land for works on the project. The story was iconic: five Davids were taking on three colossal Goliaths on points of safety, environmental, social and national economic principle. Support for the men poured in from all over the country. After toughing out the negative media onslaught for 94 days, Shell, the majority shareholder in the project, was effectively forced to concede the public relations disaster their injunction had generated – though a face-saving explanation was found for lifting it – a course of action they had been adamant they could not and would not take. Shell is to go on trial in the US on the 26th of May for its activities in the Niger Delta where Ken Saro Wiwa, was hanged with eight other men by the Nigerian government following his determined opposition to Shell activities there. In his book about Corrib “The Price of our Souls: Gas, Shell and Ireland”, Michael McCaughan, who often writes for the Irish Times, though not about Rossport, quotes the observations of Kevin O’ Hara, the founder of the Centre for Social and Corporate Responsibility in Port Harcourt, Nigeria about what he saw in Mayo: “I pulled up in my car and people jumped out at me and were taking photographs of me and my car and my number plate…I realized, oh boy, here we go again, Shell in Ireland…I was very saddened to see all of the same mistakes, a repeat of what I saw in Nigeria and it was happening in County Mayo, Ireland”. Was there a planned, behind–the-scenes campaign to smear the reputation of the community in response to the popularity of The Rossport Five? In October 2006, almost exactly a year after their release, a large force of gardai was sent to Ballinaboy where they began to physically engage with local people participating in the ongoing, non violent direct action to prevent the construction of an onshore gas refinery. A baton charge ensued and many people were injured. Since then, the victims have, in the media narrative, become the aggressors. Community

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    Phil Hogan interviewed (2009)

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    Interview: Phil Hogan wants to be Minister for the Environment but has a cautious agenda   Fine Gael’s environment spokesperson would leave well enough alone at local authority level   Tony Lowes Phil Hogan entered politics as a Kilkenny County Councillor on the death of his father,  when he was 22 years old, rising to be Chairman of the Council and a member of the South Eastern Health Board. After unsuccessfully standing in the 1987 general election, he was appointed to the Seanad from the Industrial and Commercial Panel. He was returned to the Dáil from the Carlow/Kilkenny constituency in 1989, holding a number of front-bench positions, including that of Minister of State at the Department of Finance with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works, a position he resigned after leaking details of the budget to journalists. He has been Chairman of the Fine Gael Party, was ruthlessly supportive of Enda Kenny in resisting Richard Bruton’s Summer 2010 coup and is currently Director of Elections and frontbench spokesman on the Environment. His website claims: ‘Hogan needs no slogan’.  Tony Lowes interviewed Hogan, a genial giant of a man, the day after the elections were called in the atrium of the new extension to Leinster House, a modern and airy glass and chrome building, underground. Tony Lowes: If you hadn’t gone into politics what do you think you would have done? Phil Hogan:  I had a small business in the earlier part of my life in insurance and auctioneering so I probably would have done that… Tony Lowes: And gone bust with everyone else? Phil Hogan:  Probably, but sure I might as well have gone down in style with the remnants of the Celtic Tiger Tony Lowes: Are you happy now? Phil Hogan:  Ah, this is an exciting time. Tony Lowes: And you have every confidence in your leader. Phil Hogan:  I have every confidence in my leader. He’s a very honest person and there is no doubt that he is interested in the people of the country rather than any vested interest. Tony Lowes: And of all the portfolios which one would you like to hold? Phil Hogan:  I’d like to be Minister for Environment, Heritage, and Local Government to deal with the reform of local and national politics that’s so essential for the country to get Ireland working again – and now I’ve worked-in the Fine Gael  slogan for the election! Tony Lowes: The climate change Bill is a big one for environmentalists. Is this a priority for you – or is it toxified now? Phil Hogan:  No – Fine Gael included it in its manifesto – we’re committed to a Climate Change Bill based on the all-party Bill from the Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security  at the earliest possible opportunity. We believe that the climate change targets that have been set out with our partners in Europe are appropriate and we shouldn’t be putting ourselves in the position by which we’re going to cap the opportunities for food production where we have a distinctive competitive advantage. Tony Lowes: What do you think of the IFA’s response to the climate change bill? Phil Hogan:  I can understand the IFA’s response because the targets that were being presented and the assumptions which were being made were too vague. Certainly we have to take at face value what Teagasc – an independent part of the Government apparatus –  are saying to us:  it goes far beyond the competitors – far beyond our needs. We’re not going to step out into an uncompetitive environment. Tony Lowes: Is John Gormley’s emphasis on the regional and national imperatives for  local authority Development Plans something you would support? Phil Hogan:  Totally opposed to [a policy of]  all decision-making in the Custom’s House which is what the new Planning and Development Bill does. We have enough centralised control of the Department of the Environment in the past. It would worry me if the wrong Minister of the Environment was in office with huge powers that could influence the outcome of individual planning applications. We’ve had enough corruption in the planning system. With the centralised powers the Minister has given the Department of the Environment he can do anything he wishes in relation to planning. But I don’t believe that’s healthy for democracy and I don’t believe it’s healthy from a planning point of view. Tony Lowes: Do you support the investigations that Mr Gormley [recently-resigned Green Minister for the Environment] set up for certain Councils  including Dublin City – and Carlow. Phil Hogan:  Spuriously mostly. Tony Lowes: If you became Minister would you allow this process to go forward? Phil Hogan:  Absolutely – I think it’s very important that we have confidence in the system of public administration at official level and political level – we learned enough in the Mahon Tribunal to know that this is important – but we’re not going to get into the political business of trying to find scapegoats for political purposes which is what ex-Minister Gormley is intending to do. I’m aware of issues that have come before Carlow County Council but on the material that has come out of the investigations to date I don’t see anything. Tony Lowes: Do you support the proposals for a  new mayor for the whole of Dublin? Phil Hogan:  We’re for that – but not until we have proper devolution from the central to the local. We would look at the existing structures in Dublin. There is no way we would agree to putting in a Dublin mayor and a Regional Authority on top of the four existing local authorities. Tony Lowes: Would you fund this through a property tax and water charges? Phil Hogan:  Well in the EU/IMF deal there is going to be a property tax – that’s going to come into effect on January 1 2012 – so that’s a resource that’s available to Local Government. We also have been in favour of water

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    David McWilliams and the vindication of his impure capitalism (interview 2010).

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    By Miriam Cotton. “I’m not a pure capitalist”. “if Brian Lenihan lets the guarantee lapse after two years, which it is legally supposed to, then it has worked completely” I recently spoke to David McWilliams in his Volvo Estate in a church car-park in Dalkey.  In case that seems intriguing, the purpose of our meeting was to conduct an interview – on recording equipment that does not cope with background noise in public spaces like the coffee-shop we had just left.  McWilliams has a strong personal presence and is possibly one of the most cheerful people you are likely to meet.  He is greeted warmly in his locality where most people appear to know him.  During the last year alone, he has travelled the world on a punishing schedule while making the documentary ‘Addicted to Money’, chaired a series of the comedy show ‘The Panel’, finished writing his book ‘Follow the Money’ and organised the controversial Global Irish Economic Forum at Farmleigh – among many other things. MC: I want to ask your opinion about the economic crisis and Irish media coverage of it.   Morgan Kelly has referred to what he called ‘group-think’ by which he means how during the bubble there wasn’t much criticism of what was going on.  In the aftermath, we now have the ‘there-is-no-alternative’ to NAMA version of group-think . Who or what makes you angry about the way the media is behaving both during the boom and afterwards? DMcW:  I think it’s quite obvious what I thought during the Celtic Tiger because I was almost completely on my own in saying this is a huge bubble.  I’ve always thought that.  I was vilified – well maybe not vilified – but slagged off. Ireland is constantly terrorised by conventional wisdom and anybody who breaks with it can expect to go through a three-phase process: the first phase is ridicule; the second is violent opposition and the third phase is the universal truth phase when everyone says “sure we all knew it was a bubble at the time”.  And that’s what happened to me.  It’s no big deal. In Ireland we feel we need permission to ask the obvious.  It doesn’t really make me angry – but it makes me sad. MC:  With regard to the 2008 bank guarantee, people have accused you of inconsistency since at first you appeared to claim that the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, was acting on your advice but subsequently distanced yourself from the guarantee.  Did you change your mind? DMcW:  Well, first of all, I don’t think changing your mind is the end of the world.  The bank guarantee that I discussed with Brian Lenihan involved a guarantee that would be rescinded after two years specifically.  In a way it was a bluff, not a policy.   Once this guarantee started to be regarded as a blanket underpinning for all sorts of loans – then it changed materially from what I was discussing with the Minister for Finance.  The first thing is, if Brian Lenihan lets the guarantee lapse after two years, which it is legally supposed to, then it has worked completely.  Then we’re back to square one whereby we are in a position where we can simply get the creditors into the room and say “listen lads, we’ve no money”.  The whole idea was supposed to stop a run on the banks.  It’s like being a fireman in a forest fire where you have to ask yourself whether you stop it or let it blaze on. And the second thing is the guarantee has given two years to figure out how bad things are at the banks – and it’s not just Anglo; it’s across the board.  Once you’ve figured it out, you simply withdraw the credit and say to creditors “sorry guys you simply backed the wrong horse and let’s do a deal”.  And that’s capitalism.  But what’s happened in the last while is that it’s being said that what is good for the banks is automatically good for us. MC: But didn’t you depart from your capitalist principles by recommending a guarantee in the first place? DMcW : I’m not a pure capitalist.  I think that what you’ve got to do if you believe you can stop something traumatic from happening is do it.  I don’t believe in this Austrian School idea which says that all recessions are the seeds of the next recovery – or that humans are infinitely able to react to unemployment.  They’re not.  My father was laid off many years ago and I know exactly what it’s all about.  Humans are not machines.  One of the reasons a run on the bank is disastrous is that the big guys get out first.  The little guys are shafted.  So there is nothing inconsistent in what I’ve been saying. MC:  What is the distinction between Lenihan’s version of the guarantee and your own? DMcW:  I  hadn’t expected that the guarantee would extend to sub-prime debt.  If we let the guarantee lapse this coming September as it is supposed to, it will have achieved its aims.  It will not have been a flawless policy but the best we could have done in the circumstances. MC:  The least worst thing? DMcW: I don’t want to be wise after the event.  I was very vocal both privately and publicly in saying we had to do something quite radical and different – something that takes the markets by surprise.  Having worked in the markets I know what they are like.  In many ways this is just a bluffing mechanism.  You’ve got to hit them where it hurts – do something that is so outlandish that they back off – show them you are in control. MC: It surprised more than just the markets, though. DMcW: But what was the alternative?  To let the banks go bust? What the Europeans have just done with Greece and the Euro crisis is exactly the same thing – it’s effectively a blanket

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