Ireland is shamed before the world - Thousands of Irish march for Savita Halappanavar and abortion law reform

Thousands of people marched in Dublin’s city center on Saturday calling for legislation
on abortion, following the death of Savita Halappanavar.

The feeling is a mixture of shame, disgust, humiliation and rage.  Over the past week it has been felt by most people across the country here, following the death of the young Indian woman, Savita Halappanavar, who was allowed to die in Galway University Hospital last month not just by the inaction of staff there, but by the hypocritical attitude of Ireland to abortion.  

As you will undoubtedly know, there has been an outpouring of disgust and anger here over what happened to Savita.  And there has been international condemnation as well.

There were protests and vigils not just in Dublin and in towns around Ireland, but in India, the U.K., the U.S. and other countries as well.  In India, the government called in the Irish ambassador for an explanation.

We have been shamed and humiliated before the civilized world.  Savita's story has been carried in newspapers and on TV around the globe.  These stories reported what happened, based largely on what Savita's husband has said ... and there is no reason to doubt his account.

Thirty one year-old Savita, who was 17 weeks pregnant with her first baby, developed pain at home in Galway and showed signs of starting a possible miscarriage.  Her husband rushed her to hospital where a doctor told them that her cervix was fully dilated, that amniotic fluid was leaking, that the fetus would not survive and that it would be over in a few hours.  She was admitted into the hospital. 

But it did not end in a few hours, and by the following day Savita was in "agony" and distressed. Because of the pain and because she accepted that the fetus was non-viable, she requested a termination that day and on the following two days in the hospital.  

Her requests were made each morning when the hospital consultant doctor was doing the rounds and at other times. Yet despite her pain and her weakening condition, the request was refused each time; the reason given was that although the fetus was non-viable, a fetal heartbeat was still detectable.  

According to Savita's husband, they were told both by the doctor and other staff that a termination was not possible in these circumstances.  The consultant doctor said it was not possible because "it is against the law" and  "because this is a Catholic country." 

This position was maintained by the medical staff even though there was an acceptance that the fetus would not survive anyway.  

Checks were done each day by medical staff on the fetal heartbeat.  The delay continued for another two and a half days, as Savita's condition worsened and despite her pleas for a termination.  

According to her husband, Savita had told the hospital consultant on the first morning that she was a Hindu and for that reason, Catholic-based rules should not apply to her and she should be allowed a termination.   But she was told that it's a Catholic country and abortion is not allowed while the fetus is alive.

It took two and a half days for the fetal heartbeat to stop, during which time she became sicker and weaker.  On the evening of her second full day in hospital Savita began to shake and shiver, classic signs of septicemia (blood poisoning). 

She collapsed in the bathroom, was returned to bed and given antibiotics.  The next morning, now much weaker, she again pleaded for a termination and was again refused.    

Later that day, the fetal heartbeat stopped and she was taken to the operating theater for an evacuation (emptying of the womb).   But by then it was too late to save her. 

The septicemia may have been developing for two days (starting from her open cervix where infection can be a danger) and seems to have pervaded her system.  By then, even though she had been moved into the intensive care unit in the hospital, some of her organs were closing down, her heart rate was low and she was critical.  Hours later she died.

The medieval barbarity of the situation was what struck most of the international media which carried the story.  As an educated young woman with some medical knowledge (she was a dentist), Savita was probably aware of the possible dangers of her situation and the possible consequences.  

One can imagine her growing fear, despair and disorientation.  Yet she and her husband were  powerless because of the religious-inspired framework which was dictating how she would be treated.    

Comparisons were made in the international media between Ireland and countries with fundamentalist regimes, even with the Taliban.  In Ireland a woman had been allowed to die because of the influence of religious beliefs on the health service. 

In other countries women have been stoned to death by fundamentalists because of religious beliefs about "crimes" like adultery.   Was there really much difference? 

Much of the international coverage raised the question of how something so barbaric could have been allowed to happen in a western nation which presents itself to the rest of the world as a modern liberal country.  The same question was being asked by the thousands of Irish people who marched and held vigils outside the Dail (Parliament) in Dublin and in other Irish cities as well. 

Is this really the kind of country we live in?  Is this really what we are?

If this had happened to an Irish woman there would have been an outcry here, but perhaps the story would not have attracted so much attention around the world.  

Because Savita was a middle class Indian woman (she lived in Galway with her husband who is an engineer in the local Boston Scientific plant) the story quickly went global.  

There was an angry and horrified fascination with the plight of this unfortunate woman, trapped in an almost medieval situation in Ireland (in the middle of a high tech hospital).   A situation which had allowed her to die.    

But whatever about international reaction, anger in Ireland over what happened is far greater, and in addition to that there is guilt.   There is a feeling here that Ireland let Savita down, that Ireland imposed its hypocritical beliefs on her, that she died as a result and that we are all culpable.  

There is absolute outrage here as people struggle with the image of Savita repeatedly pleading for a termination and being repeatedly refused. There is horror as people think about the confusion and terror that must have engulfed her as she began to realize that she was dealing with a system with undefined, opaque rules that could have deadly consequences.   

In the wake of this appalling case, there is now some hope that at last something may be done to end the present legal vacuum on abortion in Ireland, making it clear in future in what circumstances a termination will be permissible here.  

But already there are worrying signs.  Both the hospital and the Health Service Executive (HSE), the national health authority, are setting up investigations.  The HSE investigation is likely to take months, we are told.

It's the usual stuff -- set up an inquiry and allow it to sit for months while the heat of the situation evaporates.   Meanwhile, our gutless politicians can continue to play safe.  Even the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny was at it a few days ago. 

As though the public outrage and demand for immediate action was somehow suspect, Kenny said he "will not be rushed."  The abortion issue has been left on the shelf here by politicians for over 20 years and Kenny does not want to be rushed?

It's the same with the Expert Group report on possible abortion legislation which has been in preparation for the government for the past year. The Expert Group, mainly doctors and lawyers, was set up over a year ago following a call from the European Court of Human Rights for action here after several women brought cases to Europe. Coincidentally, this report was delivered to the government last week.  In the wake of Savita's death, there were calls for its immediate publication.  

Now we are told it has to go to the Cabinet first and that it may be next year before there are government proposals for legislation on the issue.   

It's always been like this, of course, because our politicians have always been terrified of the pro-life lobby here.  As a once strongly Catholic country, we had great difficulty coming to terms with "evils" like contraception and divorce.  

Abortion, however, has always been a much more difficult issue, as our attempts to deal with it have shown. 

The only law which is in place actually dates back to British times, to 1861, and is an absolute prohibition on abortion.   In 1922 the new Irish state adopted this law (and many others) and it is still in force today.

In the meantime, particularly in the last 40 years, Irish society has been changing.  Similar laws in other countries were modified to take account of changing attitudes and circumstances in which people might feel abortion was acceptable.  But here nothing changed. 

It was easy for Irish politicians to do nothing, of course, because we simply exported the problem to Britain where abortion was available.   And that's what we have been doing over the years, in a breathtaking display of national hypocrisy. 

We could pretend that "Catholic" Ireland did not accept abortion.  But the reality was that an estimated 7,000 Irish women every year made the lonely and expensive journey to clinics in the U.K. to have their abortions there.  And that miserable trail is still going on. 

In the 1980s, worried by the changing attitudes here, Catholic fundamentalists in Ireland were concerned that at some point the Dail might change the 1861 law to allow abortion here in some circumstances.  To stop this happening they decided to get a prohibition on abortion written into our Constitution.

They put pressure on the politicians to hold a referendum.  And our gutless politicians, afraid to refuse because it might give the impression that they were pro-abortion, went along with it. 

The 1983 referendum was passed after a bitter debate. It inserted wording into the Constitution which acknowledged the right to life of the unborn and the equal right to life of the mother. 

This lacked definition, although it seemed to mean that any abortion from the moment of conception was unacceptable, even in cases of rape or incest or severe fetal abnormality.  It also failed to define what would happen if there was a conflict between the life of the fetus and of the mother.  

This might have been cleared up to some degree if legislation had followed, but none did. 

Nine years later, in 1992, we had the X case.  X was a 14 year old girl who became pregnant after statutory rape and was suicidal.  Her parents made preparations to take her to Britain for an abortion, which she wanted, but the attorney general in Ireland got an injunction in the High Court to stop her traveling.   The case caused uproar, and Ireland was compared to a police state like East Germany.  

After an appeal, the Supreme Court decided that the girl could travel because evidence showed her to be suicidal and therefore she had a right to an abortion under the 1983 referendum wording which guaranteed "the equal right to life of the mother."  In its decision, the Supreme Court said that the girl could have an abortion because there was a real and substantial risk to her life, instead of just to her health.

In fact the girl had a miscarriage shortly after the Supreme Court judgment.  But the phrase "a real and substantial risk to the life of a woman, as opposed to her health" became the test by which medical staff would work to from then on.  

But again, there was no legislation to give clarity to what the Supreme Court finding would mean in medical situations. 

Another referendum was quickly held and passed. It gave women the right to travel and to information about abortion.  A third part of that referendum to remove possible suicide as grounds for an abortion was rejected by the people.  A further attempt 10 years later, in 2002, to do that also failed. 

Over all this time -- it's now 20 years since the X case -- there has been no legislation to bring clarity to the grounds for abortion in Ireland.   Twenty years ago the Supreme Court produced a broad principle based on the Constitution, but we need detailed legislation to make clear what medical staff are allowed to do in our hospitals.

The failure to do so was what killed Savita.  We must await the outcome of the investigation to learn exactly what happened.   But there seems to be no doubt that some of the medical staff in the hospital felt that the existing guidelines prevented them from acting.  

Savita's case is a perfect example of the grey area our cowardly failure to legislate has produced.  At what point in Savita's situation did her condition change from being a threat to her health to a threat to her life, which would have allowed the evacuation of her womb even though there was still a heartbeat of the non-viable fetus? 

Was it the point when she collapsed on the bathroom floor, shaking and shivering?   Was it the third morning when her husband believed she was seriously ill and she again pleaded for a termination? 

Or was it on the first morning when she asked for a termination because the fetus was non-viable and she was in pain and distress?  

How much risk must there be? Even if in most delayed miscarriages the risk of septicemia never develops into a life threatening situation, what is a reasonable amount of risk to allow before a decision on intervention is taken? 

And who gives anyone the right to take that decision away from a woman?  In a situation like that, how can a woman's right to choose be wrong? 

Of course Holy Catholic Ireland is a long way from accepting the general principle of a woman's right to choose.  But even without going that far, any sensible, humane health system would have helped Savita instead of taking a risk, however small that risk was perceived to be, with her life. 

Unemployment, emigration and Ireland’s economy - more pressing issues than children’s rights

President Michael D. Higgins and wife Sabina cast their referendum votes

Why should we vote, my kids asked me as we trooped down to the polling station on Saturday evening.

The referendum is going to be passed anyway, they said in long suffering voices, conscious of the TV show they were missing. 

Apart from a few mad, far right Christians, everyone is in favor of children's rights, so everyone is going to vote yes, they said.  So we're wasting our time. 

I argued back about people in some places in America lining up for hours to vote for President Obama, about how precious democracy is, about how it's always important to have your say.   Inside, however, I was silently agreeing with them.

The referendum last Saturday on putting basic rights for children, separate from the rights of families, into our Constitution was sure to be passed by a massive majority. 

Our Constitution has always been weighted towards family rights because of our Catholic heritage.  And as our society has changed this has caused problems because children had few rights as individuals. 

It was more difficult than it should be for the state to intervene in highly dysfunctional families where children were at serious risk.  One practical problem was how difficult it was for long term foster parents to adopt children who needed a second chance -- and there were dozens of such cases on the books. 

So change was needed and almost everyone agreed with that, including all the political parties and all the media.  The only ones who disagreed were the fundamentalists who saw this as another attack on Catholic families.  They are the same lunatic fringe who opposed contraception and divorce, and there are only a few of them around these days.

So yes, as we walked in to vote on Saturday night it seemed certain that the referendum on children's rights would be passed by an overwhelming yes vote.  How wrong can you be?   

The referendum was passed all right, but by 58 percent to 42 percent, a much smaller margin than was predicted.

Even worse, only one in three of those eligible to vote in the country turned out, making it one of the lowest referendum votes we have ever had.   As the figures came in on Sunday afternoon, we were suddenly glad of our decision to head out to vote the night before, when it would have been far easier to stay at home and watch The X Factor.

So what happened?  Have we turned back into fundamentalist Holy Catholic Ireland where priests rule? Not really.  But something almost as disturbing is going on.

One of the reasons people didn't bother, apart from the general view that the yes side was going to win easily, was because they felt it didn't matter that much in practical terms. 

Yes, putting children's rights into the Constitution is a good idea.  But far more important is having the funds for enough social workers to tackle the real problems that many kids face when their parents are drugged, drunk and generally incapable of looking after them.  And that's before we even mention other aspects of what goes on, like violence and sexual abuse. 

Life can be very raw and rough in the deprived suburbs around our cities, just as it can be in similar areas in New York or LA or any other big city.  Having protection for kids written into the Constitution is great, but it's no use if there's no money to back up the social services that are needed for intervention in crisis situations. 

That was one factor.  Another was the feeling that, important though children's rights are, there are much more immediate issues to be dealt with by this government at the moment.

Issues like unemployment, emigration and the economic mess we have to deal with.  People are so worried and beaten down by these issues that at the moment they really can't cope with other things, like Constitutional reforms, no matter how worthy they are.

And that is linked to what I believe was the major reason that so many people here didn't bother to vote.  The government has lost its moral authority and many people have lost respect for and trust in what it says. 

In addition to that many people, including many who voted this government into power nearly two years ago, are now extremely angry with the way things have turned out.  In particular they are furious about the way the government has failed to moderate the pay and pensions of the upper layer of our society while everyone else is struggling to pay the bills and survive. 

This referendum gave this huge swell of angry people a chance to register some kind of protest.  They were never going to vote no.  But given their disgust with the government they just could not bring themselves to go out and vote yes, because that was what the government was asking them to do. 

A high yes vote would have been seized on as a kind of positive approval rating by the government, and that's the last thing many voters here want to give them right now. 

In the past two weeks, more and more revelations have come out about the high pay and high guaranteed pensions for life that so many people here have in politics, the banks, the judiciary, the civil service and many other areas in the state sector, where middle and senior staff have deals that the rest of us can only dream about.   

Some of the stuff that is now being revealed is so outrageous that it's almost past belief.  The details of the astronomical pay and pensions in the banks in particular is making people's blood boil, not least because our banks are now effectively owned by the state. 

Last week details of pay and pensions in Anglo, the renegade bank that was the main driver of our economic collapse, were published, with everyone on huge boom time salaries. 

At the same time that the government is cutting home help hours (the minimal service provided for disabled people in their homes) they are telling people that they can do nothing about the huge pay and pension deals that the top bank executives are on.

The pensions debate, in particular, has fuelled an outpouring of anger.  We have all these pillars of Irish society (like Mary Robinson, or the current President Michael D. Higgins) who are all on, or soon to be on, not just one pension but two or three.   The same applies to the politicians who got us into this financial mess. 

The senior civil servants and regulators who were supposed to stop it happening are all on huge guaranteed pensions as well.  And it carries on down the chain across the state sector, with everyone in line for a nice pension.  

Unlike private sector pensions, all these state pensions are funded out of current revenue (or state borrowing).  There is no pension fund to go bust, as has happened to 80 percent of private pensions here.  The state just keeps on borrowing and paying.

This guaranteed pension regime for everyone on the state payroll also apples to most people in the hundreds of government sponsored organizations (a/k/a the quangos) we have and in the semi-state sector, which is why there is an Aer Lingus strike on the way.  Their pension fund is completely bust, but they want the state to bail them out (and you can be sure higher fares and airport charges will be used to make the rest of us pay for that.)

In the real world, when a pension fund goes bust most private companies can't afford to rescue it.  Many companies have gone bust and brought their pension funds down with them. 

One Waterford Glass worker was on radio this week explaining that after his long years of hard work there he was supposed to get a pension of €600 a week.   He is now getting €15 a week. 

Meanwhile, all the state workers are retiring on roughly half their final salary and it's guaranteed for life.  Why should they be different?  The government's answer to this is an uncomfortable silence. 

These pay and pension issues are the real and immediate concerns of people here now, not children's rights.  That's why the vote was so low.   

That and the perception that this government has completely lost the plot.  They came into power promising to force a major deal out of Europe on our banking debt, which should never have been loaded on to the Irish taxpayer in the way that it was.  They have failed to deliver on that. 

Instead, they have kept to the EU/IMF bailout program by cutting spending and raising taxes for ordinary people, while letting the upper tier of the state sector here off the hook. 

There is no equity in what they are doing.  Yet they seem to be blissfully unaware of this and of the sinking regard that people here have for them. 

Why else would Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny think that it was OK to leave the sinking ship behind and head off to Berlin (where else!) a week ago to collect his European of the Year award?  He accepted it on behalf of the Irish people, of course. 

Thanks for nothing, Enda.  

Irish people at the tipping point - anger and cynicism among Irish over austerity cuts and economy is palpable

Ireland's Minister for Finance Michael Noonan

For Ireland -- or any democratic country -- to function, the vast majority of people have to support the state by paying their taxes, obeying the law and generally being compliant citizens. 

No one likes paying tax, and no one will agree with all the laws or all the policies of the government in power at any particular time.  But in normal times enough of us do, and the rest of us accept the will of the majority, and from that the moral authority of the state.

There's an element of consent involved which is the bedrock on which all democracies are founded.
Politicians and state authorities undermine that consent at their peril.  If people feel cheated by the state they start to withdraw their consent to be governed.  They become resentful and distrustful of the state. 

They feel alienated from the state authorities and power structures.  They no longer feel a compulsion to pay their taxes and obey the laws.  They feel the state no longer deserves their loyalty and support.      

It is at that stage that angry street protests break out and become violent, democracy begins to flounder and a country starts to become ungovernable, with a huge number of its citizens appearing to reject the policies of the state.  We have already seen this happening to some extent in Greece and starting to happen in one or two other places in Europe. 

These are not normal times in Ireland.  We are now in danger of seeing the same thing happening here.  The Irish people are at a tipping point, and the future could go either way.

Read more new on Ireland's economy here

The level of anger at and cynicism about what is happening in the Irish economy and Irish society is now palpable here.  This boiled over last weekend when there were further revelations about the pensions of bank chiefs and retired politicians, many of whom played a part in the collapse of our economy. 

This is an issue we have been exploring in this column for weeks now, including last week on Irish Central when we looked at the huge pensions given to the two men who headed up the two biggest banks in Ireland during the property bubble.

It was the reckless lending by the banks that was the main driver of the boom and bust here, with the catastrophic consequences that followed including the loss of our economic sovereignty.  But instead of being penalized or even prosecuted for their failures, the guys at the top of the banks have been handsomely rewarded. 

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan attempted to deflect questions last weekend about the outrageous pensions given to the power elite in the banks, in politics and in state regulatory bodies, the people who went asleep on their watch and got us into this crisis.  In a feeble response, Noonan told reporters that he was not "legally empowered" to do anything about the pensions given to the bank chiefs because they were subject to legal contract. 

This response, which topped the TV news on Sunday night, was greeted with the derision it deserved by ordinary people in the private sector around the country who have seen their own pensions collapse in the past few years.

As we reported here recently, around 80 percent of defined benefit pension schemes (the kind that guarantee you at least half your final pay when you retire after 40 years service) in private companies here are bust.

But that did not stop the government last year adding to the problem by imposing a 0.6 percent levy (or half a billion euro a year nationally) on private pension funds, whether they were company schemes or individual pension plans.  And the levy (a nice word for tax) is set to continue for another three years at least.  

The government's excuse was that it needed the money for "job creation" schemes.   We have seen no jobs as a result.  What we have seen are company pension plans collapsing and the employees being left with little or no pensions.

So although Noonan does not feel "legally empowered" to retrospectively stop the huge pensions the failed bankers got, he does feel "legally empowered" to retrospectively raid the pension funds saved up with great difficulty by ordinary people in the private sector over their working lives.

It gets even better.  It also emerged last weekend that the state's biggest bank, AIB, used some of the bailout money it got to fund its former chief executive's annual pension of over €520,000.  And who will end up paying back the bailout money?  The ordinary taxpayer of course.

The situation with the half million euro a year pensions for life given to the top bankers is, of course, only a small part of the overall problem that is tipping the Irish people into revolt.  The same situation reaches right across the state power structure here, including senior politicians and civil servants and top executives of all kinds in state and semi-state companies and organizations. 

They are all guaranteed pensions of anywhere from €80,000 to €180,000 a year for life when they retire.  Typically a pension on this scale would cost an individual in the private sector who has to buy an annuity several million euro.  At a time when most people in the private sector have seen their pensions vanish, the injustice of this is sickening. 

As we said here before, we are now seeing the emergence of two Irelands, the haves in the state sector and the have-nots in the private sector.  The disparity is particularly evident when you look at all those people on the state payroll who are middle management rank or above and who are over 50.  They are the ones with the high salaries and the huge guaranteed pensions, at the expense not only of the private sector workers but of the lower paid state  sector workers.

Why should this power elite want to reform the system, since it would mean reducing their own Rolls Royce pensions down the line?  So they all play the game and talk the talk (about sharing the burden and turning the corner and positioning for recovery and so on) but they won't change the system.

The single most striking characteristic of the way the present and the last governments have attempted to work their way through the bailout program and towards balancing our annual budgets has been the success of the power elite across Irish society in avoiding most of the pain.

They have managed to insulate themselves from most of the adjustments, making only token changes  to their lifestyles.  The group includes all the senior ranks in the state services and in their trade unions, as well as a lot of professionals in the private sector.

Typically, these people are in the over-50 age group, with their houses paid for, so they also have no negative equity or mortgage problems. 

The other side of this is the tens of thousands of young couples here who are not only struggling with pay cuts and job losses, with higher taxes and cuts in state services, with repayments on boom time mortgages on houses that are now deep in negative equity and higher prices for essentials like petrol and electricity.  All these people, the great middle section of Irish society, are being crucified by the cuts being imposed by the government.   And they are getting no help from the government, least of all in getting the banks to carry their share of the burden.

 Read more new on Ireland's economy here

One revelation here last week underlined this. The current head of one of the banks that gave its retiring boss a half million pension a few years back was before a Dail (Parliament) committee last week, and one of the questions he was asked was how many mortgages had been written off by the bank since it had been bailed out by the state. 

This bank got around €5 billion in bailout money, a chunk of which was supposed to be used for debt forgiveness for customers who had taken out mortgages during the boom and now were deep in negative equity and unable to make repayments because of pay cuts or job loss. 

How many mortgages like that have you written off? the bank boss was asked.  None, was the answer.
The banks are holding on to all the bailout money and the government seems powerless to do anything about it.  

The only one of the elite to pay the price for failure here is Sean Quinn, once Ireland's richest man, who began a nine-week jail term last week for contempt of court.   Mind you, he was always a bit country and rough around the edges to be an accepted part of the sophisticated elite here, which may explain why he has ended up where he is. 

The short jail sentence arises from Quinn's alleged attempts to hide his remaining foreign property assets from the authorities.  He owes a couple of billion to the former Anglo Irish Bank, now being wound up, which has left the Irish taxpayer with all its debts, so any money Quinn has left should be going to lessen that burden.

But Quinn's enormous bet on Anglo shares was not something he did all by himself.  Others were either involved or knew, including bankers, financial advisers and possibly the financial regulator. 

Yet he's the only one who has ended up in the slammer.  There's something not quite right about this, as Quinn's many supporters in the border counties he comes from keep saying.  

But there is not much sympathy for him across the rest of the country.  He made such a mess of his insurance business that anyone with motor or home insurance here (which is most people) will be paying a levy on their annual policies to make up for his losses for a decade to come. 

Again, note that instead of using bailout money to sort out the financial mess of the Quinn collapse, it is the ordinary people who are being hit with a new extra tax to pay for it. 

We are now just a few weeks away from the budget here, which has to reduce our budget deficit by €3.5 billion euro over the coming year.  This is a huge test for the government.

Will it at last tackle the state sector pay and pensions imbalance to help pay for this?  Will it tell German Chancellor Angela Merkel that we want our money back, the tens of billions we were forced by the ECB to repay to unguaranteed German and French bankers and bondholders who gambled on our property boom and lost?

Or will the government continue the policy of changing nothing and loading all the pain on to the majority of ordinary Irish people who have no way of escape? 

We will know next month, and there are no prizes for getting the right answer.

The tipping point will come either then, or early next year when we have to make another €3 billion payment on bank debt back to Europe. 

Irish Golden Circle still shining despite massive recession -- Still running the show despite bankrupting the country

Brian Goggin, formerly of the Bank of Ireland

They were called the golden circle, the people in the inside loop who made lots of money during the boom years here.

I'm not just talking about the property speculators and developers playing with their borrowed billions who were in an inner platinum circle all of their own.  The golden circle was far wider than that.

It included bankers, lawyers, accountants, financial advisers, brokers, management consultants, IT experts, the top layer of professionals of all kinds -- and it also included the senior levels in the civil service and state agencies, the guys and gals who actually run the country for the politicians.

So having comprehensively screwed up the country and plunged us into a financial catastrophe so bad that we had to be rescued by the IMF and the EU, all these guys and gals are now out of a job, right?

Not at all.  This is Ireland, after all.  The unbelievable, extraordinary truth is that almost all these experts and advisers have held on to their top jobs and are still doing very well, thank you very much.

While the ordinary folk here struggle in the darkness of lay-offs, welfare cutbacks and tax hikes, the sun is still shining brightly on our golden circle.

Of course there has been some token changes.  At the very top of the Department of Finance, the Central Bank, the Financial Regulator's office and, of course the banks, a few people were shifted.  A couple went to cozy positions in Europe with big salaries attached, and the others were put out to grass with pension pots worth millions and huge golden handshakes so they can continue to enjoy the privileged lifestyles they expect.

Only a very small number of people were moved from the leadership roles they had.  In fact you could count on two hands the number of top dogs who were moved.

The majority of the top layer of people, who all played a part directly or indirectly in destroying our economy, are still there.  The senior civil servants,  the financial experts, the consultants, the lawyers, the accountants and auditors are all there and still being paid boom time salaries and fees.    

The game has changed, of course.  Instead of advising the government and businesses on the boom, they are now advising them on the bust.

The bankers and accountants and auditors and consultants who failed to see the developing bubble are now the ones making fortunes dealing with all the businesses that are going bust.  Dozens of them have even been hired to play key roles in NAMA, the national bad bank where all the toxic property loans have been dumped.

So the very people who made the mess are now the ones making a very lucrative living out of trying to sort it out.   Two or three of the biggest legal firms and  accountancy firms here which were up to their necks in the boom are now "advising" on the bust.

This is enough to give you indigestion.  But what is really sickening is that the members of this very large golden circle are still charging eye-watering fees for their services.

We're talking hundreds of euros an hour here.  And

they are getting away with this even though the country is broke -- and it's broke thanks to their incompetence.

It starts right at the top, of course, with our politicians, who are paid far more than their European counterparts.  We all know the taoiseach (our prime minister) earns more than the U.S. President.  But he also is paid more than the British prime minister and more than the heads of most European countries, which may be a less dramatic comparison but is more relevant.

The same applies to the civil servants who head up government departments here, and to many other areas of Irish government and professional life.  Consultant doctors and top lawyers in Ireland earn far more than their counterparts in Europe.

Further down the ladder, senior teachers here earn at least 20 percent more than teachers in Britain, for example.  And it goes on and on, increasingly dividing Irish society into those who are comfortable and those who are struggling to make ends meet.

The common factor among those who are doing okay -- in case you haven't spotted it already -- is that they all work for the state or for semi-state organizations (except for the bank bosses, although you could say they also work for the state since the state now owns the banks).

This influences fees that are charged by others who provide professional services to the state (like lawyers and accountants) and so they keep their fees and charges high.  Why should they bring them down when they see all the others in the golden circle hanging on to their high pay and status?

What all this means is that we are developing two Irelands.  There are those who are paid by the state, directly or indirectly, and who see no reason to moderate their pay or pensions as long as the state can borrow enough to keep going; since it's all paid for by borrowing, there's no real limit.

Then there is everyone in the private sector, where pay and pensions depend directly on the ability of a company to make a profit and stay in business --and for more and more of them, the cost of keeping a job or continuing to get a pension means taking huge cuts in what they are getting.

The pension divide between the two Irelands is even more nauseating than the pay situation.  Let's start with two of the most infuriating examples from the top of the golden circle.

You may remember the name Brian Goggin, the boss of Bank of Ireland during the boom.  You also may remember the name Eugene Sheehy, who was the boss of AIB during the boom and property bubble, which of course only happened because the two banks (the biggest in Ireland) made it possible through reckless lending.

Sheehy has a bit of extra notoriety because he was one of the senior bankers who had the late night meeting with the taoiseach and the minister for finance in September 2008 and pleaded for help to help them get through their "temporary liquidity problem."

The result was the government guaranteed all bank debt, a decision that has bankrupted the country because the real level of the bank debts was many times greater than Sheehy and his buddies revealed to the government that night.

The banks did not just have a liquidity problem. They were insolvent.  They were completely bust,  owing tens of billions of euro with not a hope of ever being able to pay it back.

So Goggin and Sheehy were major players in destroying the Irish economy and losing us our economic sovereignty.  Not only that, but we taxpayers have had to meet the cost of pouring billions into AIB and Bank of Ireland to keep them open.

Did the two boyos go to jail?  Or even have to do some community service to atone for what they had done?  Not at all.  This is Ireland, after all.

They were both moved, given early retirement.  And this is the best bit.  Goggin is on a pension of €650,000 a year for the rest of his life. Sheehy's pension is €450,000 a year for life.

Both are still relatively young.  Sheehy has gone

back to college.   Goggin is back at work, playing a leading role in a multi-billion U.S. investment group that is targeting distressed property loans in Ireland and buying baskets of insurance policies from finance institutions here that are under pressure.

These are extreme examples of the way golden circle members here get looked after.  But the same stuff goes on all the way down the state food chain, with state employees getting very generous guaranteed pensions for life, typically between half and two thirds their final salary.

And it's all funded by state borrowing, so there is no limit on what it costs.  Contrast this with the private sector, where almost 80 percent of company pension funds are bust, thanks to the financial collapse.

Let's take an example to illustrate what's going on.   The pension fund in Independent Newspapers, the biggest newspaper group in Ireland where this writer has worked, now has a black hole in it of some €160 million and is probably going to be closed down, leaving a lot of people with little or nothing.

Meanwhile out at Dublin Airport, the umbrella pension fund that looks after staff in Aer Lingus, the DAA company that runs Irish airports and a linked aircraft maintenance company, has a black hole in it of €750 million.  Because Aer Lingus and the DAA are semi-state companies, the unions are trying to force the government to pump money into this pension fund so staff can get their full pensions.

And you are all going to know about this very soon because the unions are threatening a wave of strikes in the run up to Christmas that could disrupt trans-Atlantic flights.  

The fact that the pension fund is bust -- there's no way back from a €750 million deficit -- and the state is bust, makes no impression on these semi-state workers.  As far as they are concerned the state must borrow to back fill their pension fund. It's that simple.

In the real world of the private sector, such nonsense is not an option for workers because their companies cannot borrow like this and could go under if they tried.  Independent Newspapers is already struggling for survival, quite apart from its pensions problem.

It's a two Ireland scenario.  Unfortunately the politicians and the civil servants who run the country are all part of the Ireland that is okay.

They talk a lot, but there is no action to reduce the problem for the private sector workers who are part of the other Ireland.  Instead we get lectures from union leaders about avoiding a race to the bottom in wages and pensions.

Like I said, the golden circle is still shining, but the glow is making the rest of us feel like throwing up.

Let’s get a European divorce -- Angela Merkel drops a bomb on Enda Kenny over Ireland’s debt deals

Enda Kenny meets with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite 
and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels last week.

This past week has been a humiliating one for Ireland, thanks to the rebuff given to Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny. 

After months of attempts to ingratiate himself with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a manner that most people here regard as demeaning, including lots of kissy kissy stuff on red carpets, Kenny was brought back down to earth with a bang last Friday. 

Merkel dropped him like an unwanted boyfriend.  She didn't even bother to let him down gently. There would be no retrospective deal on banking debts, she said in an interview after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.

She was answering complicated questions about the Spanish economy at the time, but the implied message for Ireland was clear. The deal we have been pushing so desperately for on our "legacy" bank debt is a pipe dream.  We can forget it.

Merkel's comments caused consternation in Dublin and the phone lines to Germany were busy over the weekend, as officials pleaded for a more nuanced statement from her that would not leave Kenny looking like a lovesick fool.   And eventually after a 30 minute phone conversation between Kenny and Merkel, an agreed statement by both was issued which referred to Ireland as a "special case." 
It was the kind of support that could mean anything.   The truth is that she had let the cat out of the bag.  

For the past year and a half -- in fact since the day it came into office -- this government's main priority has been to get a better deal on the enormous banking debt that is suffocating the country.  
Kenny and his Minister for Finance Michael Noonan have been engaged in a charm offensive, sweet talking the other nations in Europe, particularly the Germans and the French, to convince them that Ireland deserves some kind of bank debt relief.   

We have toed the austerity line.  We have done everything Europe and the troika have asked of us.  We have been held up as the bailout poster boys of Europe, the proof that an economy can be fixed if cutbacks are implemented and a program is followed.      

We are not there yet, of course.  But we are heading in the right direction.

We have been able to show the rest of Europe that we are slowly getting our spending under control and our economy back on track again.  We have been able to show that we are tackling our budget deficits and that we will be able to deal with the sovereign debt that those deficits have built up, difficult though that will be.  

But we have also told Europe repeatedly that our mountain of banking debt is just too big for us to carry.  Repayments on a debt that size would condemn us to recession and poverty for decades and are doomed to failure anyway because it would be impossible to extract that much money every year from the Irish economy without provoking a nationwide revolt.   

We have tried to argue our case both by appealing to Europe's sense of fairness and their sense of logic and also by ingratiating ourselves with the big powers in Europe. 

To say Kenny has been on a charm offensive is an understatement. He has been glad-handing and air kissing Merkel and the others as if his life depended on it. 

Our objective is to get the rest of Europe to agree that sovereign debt and banking debt must be separated.   If that is done and our banking debt becomes Europe's problem, where it rightly belongs, we have some hope of recovery.  If that doesn't happen we are doomed. 

At the end of June, as impatience grew here over the situation, a summit of European leaders seemed to offer us hope.  As the summit finished Kenny joyfully told us that what had been agreed amounted to a commitment to separate bank debt and to get Europe to carry the cost of refinancing banks.   It would take time to work out the details, we were told, but the principle had been established. 

Soon, however,  it became clear that Kenny was overselling what had been agreed.  The very next day, in fact, the German finance minister said that he believed that the cost of bank recapitalization should remain with the sovereign. Last month he was joined by the Dutch and Finnish ministers for finance, and all three said that there could be no retrospective deal on banking debt. 

To that can now be added Merkel's blunt statement last Friday along the same lines. "There will not be any retroactive direct recapitalization," she said.

Her attempt after the weekend to soften the blow was hardly convincing.  The agreed statement said that the Eurogroup would "examine the situation of the Irish financial sector with a view to further improving the sustainability of the well performing adjustment program."  It also said that "[we] recognize in this context, that Ireland is a special case, and that the Eurogroup will take that into account."

You don't have to be a diplomat to see that this reassurance could be interpreted in various ways.  It's very far from a clear statement that Ireland's sovereign and banking debt will be separated and that the ESM (the new rescue fund) will buy into the bank debt which our government now holds.

This is an absolutely make or break point for Ireland.  The last Irish government, bullied by Europe, pumped €64 billion into the Irish banks to enable them to repay their debts without going bust.     

As I pointed out in a recent column here, this means that almost all the money we’ve got from the bailout so far has not gone to keep our schools and hospitals running. Instead it has been used to allow our banks to repay their bondholders, in Germany and other countries. 

These bondholders loaned money to the Irish banks so they could get a share of the higher returns that were on offer here during the boom.  It was a gamble ... and they lost. 

But instead of being allowed to burn the bondholders, the Irish government was forced by the European Central Bank to pay all of them back in full, including junior and unguaranteed bondholders.  Either that or we were not getting the bailout. 

The mountain of banking debt was turned into sovereign debt owed by the Irish people.  In return we got to own the banks, but the cost was the gigantic €64 billion euro bank debt we are now carrying. 

The bondholders -- all of them --  should have been forced to take a hit, but this was ruled out by the ECB because they feared it would undermine confidence in European banks with consequences that would be disastrous for the EU. 

So the ordinary Irish taxpayer became the sucker in the game of protecting the European banking system, facing decades of high taxes and low state spending so the country can pay off the bank bondholders. 

Complex though it is, most people here now understand that this is unfair.  What should have happened is that all the bondholders should have been forced to share in the pain, and unguaranteed bondholders should have been burned. 

Anglo Irish and at least one other rogue bank should have been allowed to collapse altogether, with nobody except small depositors getting their money back.   (Anglo alone is responsible for half of the bank debt we owe.)   

The ECB, instead of forcing us to turn the bank debt into sovereign debt, should have been facing up to its own responsibility for what happened during the boom here.   The ECB is supposed to regulate banking across Europe, but it allowed the Irish banks to run wild during the boom and the European banks to fund the madness.  That failure must carry consequences. 

When you add to that the fact that €100 billion of Greek debt was subsequently written down and bondholders were burned, and also that other European countries which have since got into trouble like Italy, Portugal and particularly Spain are all being treated differently than Ireland was, it becomes clear why people here are so angry. The automatic loading of banking debt on to sovereign debt in the case of Spain, for example, is not being tolerated by that country.   

So far Merkel, the ECB and the financial hardliners in Europe are taking the view that in the case of Ireland, what was done is done and there's no going back.  The way we were forced to "socialize" our banking debt mountain may make us "unique" and a "special case," but there is no explicit undertaking yet by Merkel and the others to reverse the situation. 

A partial fix has been hinted at, but even that is uncertain.   Talk is cheap and that's all we've got so far. 

The bottom line on all this is that the €64 billion in bank debt we are being forced to carry (and a lot of the bondholders have already been paid in full) is money that should never have been paid back at all.   It certainly should not have been loaded on to ordinary Irish taxpayers.

The ECB failed to regulate, the bondholders took a gamble in the Irish market, the ordinary Irish taxpayers had little or nothing to do with what happened.   They should never have been forced to take responsibility for the debts of Irish banks and for the €64 billion that has been and is being paid back to bondholders. 

If the ECB wanted to give the billions back to international investors who had lost it in Irish banks that are now effectively bust then they should be doing it with their own money or money from the financial rescue funds in Europe.  If the aim was to prevent contagion of the European banking system, that's OK but it's the business of the ECB, not the Irish taxpayer. 

The bottom line is we never owed this money and we need it back.  Instead of air kissing Merkel, Kenny should be threatening her with an Irish divorce from Europe.

Emigration the only way out for young Irish in Ireland -- No future, no jobs, no hope if they stay behind

Children taking part in a Sinn Fein organized demonstration 
against emigration in Dublin earlier this year.

Behind the very occasional good news story about new jobs the economic situation here remains absolutely dire.  Not that you would think that watching the way Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny and his ministers turn up at every new job announcement to bask in the glory and suggest that we're emerging from the gloom.

There have been a couple of examples of this in the past two weeks, with the Kerry Group announcing 900 jobs at a new food product research facility to be built in Co. Kildare and the Paddy Power bookmaking business announcing 600 new jobs in their Dublin HQ in online gambling and the supporting technology and marketing.

Both of these are impressive developments in home grown businesses that are doing well, and of course new jobs are not only welcome but desperately needed.   But the way we are all supposed to accept news like this as the dawn of a bright new day and the way the Kenny and his ministers seize on these announcements and milk them to the last drop is worrying for several reasons. 

Firstly these are mainly high end jobs, some of which will require high skill sets and language abilities that will not be that easy to find among Irish school and college graduates.  As in similar job announcements recently, some of these jobs will go to foreign applicants who will come in here to fill the vacancies.   We will come back to this later. 

But the main issue in this week's talking points memo, as Bill O'Reilly would say, is that such announcements give a misleading view on the jobs situation here right now, because that remains extremely bleak. 

The fact is that Ireland is hemorrhaging people now, particularly young people, because they can't get jobs at home. 

The headlines and the statistics are soul destroying, and no doubt you will have seen some of them. 
Most of the figures come from information gleaned in the census last year, which led to the memorable headline that emigration was worse now than at any time since the famine. 

Another emotive headline said that one person was leaving every five minutes.  This was built on figures that showed that 87,100 people a year were emigrating – a daily average of 238, or one person every 303 seconds, which is just over five minutes. 

That was the situation over a year ago, and what level emigration is at now is anyone's guess, although no expert thinks it is coming down. 

Adding information from airline figures, from unemployment figures and other official statistics to the base of the census data allows the experts to estimate the current level of emigration.  But it's not an exact science, partly because there is no real effort to gather enough information.  Official Ireland does not really want to know.  

Read more on Irish immigration here.

The overall point is that we are losing a significant slice of the present generation of young people.  And many of them will never come back on a permanent basis. 

The return of emigration here on a scale that is now higher than in the eighties or in the fifties or probably any time since the famine has, of course, caused a great deal of discussion and comment here. 

But a lot of this is superficial. An in-depth analysis of emigration to identify its root causes would involve many sacred cows in Ireland, and official Ireland is not prepared to go there. 

Of course we know the immediate reason why so many people are leaving right now -- they can't find jobs at home.  The emigration figures are higher than ever before because our population is higher than at any time since the famine, and the economic  crisis we are going through now is deeper than any this century. 

Most of that is of our own making, but our situation is made even worse by the worldwide financial crisis and slowdown.    

That much is clear.  It's stating the obvious.

But what is not clear is why Ireland is so vulnerable and so prone to emigration.  Mass emigration is not unique to us, but we are probably the country in the world best known for it. 

There are historic reasons, of course.  We have a history of emigration that goes back to the famine and because we speak English, the U.K., the U.S., Canada and Australia are easy destinations for our escape.  
There are social reasons as well.  For decades, up to relatively recently, our Catholic belief in the evils of birth control meant that large families were common.

Families with eight or 10 children growing up on modest farms in areas with no industrial development were seen as something to be celebrated, even though the inevitable result was going to be emigration.

That has now changed drastically, with the high number of single parent or one child families bringing down the average number of children per family in Ireland to less than two.

But there are still large families, and the emigration option is deeply ingrained in us at this stage.  

Another critical factor is the failure of our culture and particularly our school system to develop a sense of entrepreneurship.   The idea of starting your own business is not a dream many young Irish have, at least not until they go abroad.  Too often here the aim is to get into one of the professions or the civil service.  

Our school system is still a largely classical education, with rote learning to pass exams and a failure to teach children to think for themselves and to develop initiative.  In spite of recent efforts to get kids to do more math and science, Shakespeare and Irish still take up large chunks of school days. 

Very few schools have computer rooms, and computer skills and programming/information technology is still not a Leaving Cert (high school) subject.   

On top of this we have very poor language skills by European standards.  It's not unusual for a Dutch or French or German teenager to speak English and another foreign language as well as their own.  They study English and often another foreign language, starting in primary (junior) school. 

Here we don't study a "continental" language until secondary (high) school because Irish, the dead language to which we continue to pay lip service, is a compulsory part of every school day and eats up the time for language.

One consequence of this is that many call center and technical support center jobs here (like some of the new Paddy Power jobs mentioned above) end up being filled by immigrants from other parts of Europe. 
During times of strong economic growth these factors tend to masked by the number of jobs in construction and services.  But these weaknesses -- particularly the failure to develop an enterprise culture here and the failure to radically change our education system -- mean that in normal times emigration remains a constant factor in Irish life.  

Another factor that masks our failure is the success of foreign direct investment (FDI) here, the multinational companies (many American) who open plants here to supply product or services to Europe or the wider world. 

The fact that we are English speaking and that we have a young workforce that used to be cheap (and is now becoming cheap again) helps us to maintain this, although the truth is that it is mainly tax driven.  The trouble with FDI is that it is moveable, and we have seen the consequences of that in the past decade as we were undercut by well educated, young workforces in other countries and plants migrated from here.  

The bottom line is that our efforts to create and maintain enough jobs here for our population has never equaled the performance of, say, the Scandinavian countries.  Our society remains locked in attitudes and beliefs that prevent us from developing the way we need to and from tailoring our population level and our education in a way that will allow us to take control of our national destiny rather than forever being forced to accept the humiliation of forced emigration. 

Voluntary emigration will always be an option for our adventurous young people, and so it should be.  But forced emigration of people who do not want to leave is a scandal and a failure. 

The ridiculous amount of immigration to Ireland that happened during the boom -- the census last year showed that we now have half a million non-Irish people living here -- is another facet of our failure to plan and organize our society in a sustainable, sensible manner.   Around half of the emigration figures produced by the census last year related to some of these people going home again, mainly east Europeans. 

But many now regard Ireland as their permanent home, partly due to our higher standard of living, education, housing, health care, welfare and so on.  

Faced with an economy now in crisis and the necessity to make huge cutbacks in state spending, the wisdom of allowing such large scale immigration now seems doubtful, if it ever made sense. 

But what to do about the situation in this era of political correctness where everyone is expected to look on multi-culturalism as a blessing remains to be seen.

The immediate problem is, of course, our flat-lining economy, with little sign that our unemployment level (almost twice the level in the U.S.!) is going to come down anytime soon.  

Even the IMF last week was wondering aloud whether the austerity program here was depressing economic activity so much that jobs would not emerge and that the cure might be worse than the disease.  Thanks, guys.  We could have told you that. 

The answer, as if you didn't know, is to split our banking and our sovereign debt, get the ECB to take a hit on our bank debt and give us a chance. 

Beyond the present crisis we are in -- and it is difficult at the moment to look that far ahead -- we need to grow up as a country and start taking responsibility for ourselves, for how big our families are and for how we are going to provide enough jobs for our population, whatever sustainable level that is.

Only then might forced emigration be consigned to where it belongs -- the history books.  

The Time of Enda Kenny’s life - Superman act does hide the fact that Ireland’s a long way from a “comeback”

Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the cover of Time Magazine

It was hard to know whether to laugh or cry here last week when we saw Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny adorning the cover of Time magazine, doing his steely-eyed pose into the camera.  “The Celtic Comeback,” the cover headline said. 

You will not have seen it on the newsstands over there since it was the cover of the European edition only.  Be thankful for small mercies. 

And spare a thought for Time readers all over Europe who were confronted with the disturbing sight of Enda doing his Superman act. I'm prepared to bet that most of them hadn't a clue who was he was, which must have been a bit perplexing since Time covers personalities who are usually familiar faces. 

Even so, people across Europe must have been intrigued by this strange man's power stare. This is what Enda does, of course. He may not use as much make-up as Bertie Ahern did, but he's just as concerned about image.  

A bit like George W. Bush, he talks in short sentences and simple language and he's slightly aggressive in his delivery, using a lot of hand chops for emphasis.  Under that improbably blond head of hair, he's very stern (to show he's serious), but with the occasional twinkle in the eye (to show he's human).   And he is relentlessly positive.  

Ireland will never default on its debts, Ireland will do whatever is necessary to get back on track, he repeats.  Lately he's started saying that Ireland is turning the corner.

He says these things with so much conviction he's probably starting to believe them himself.   The trouble is very few people here go along with him. 

They have seen through the empty positivity because they live in the real world, not in Kenny’s parallel universe. 

But whoever wrote the “The Celtic Comeback” headline appears to have bought Kenny’s line.  To be fair to the European editor of Time, Catherine Mayer, who wrote the cover story, her account was a lot more nuanced and qualified that the headline suggests.   (Even though Enda did not make the cover in the U.S., Mayer's story was carried inside the US edition so you can read it yourself).

So as someone who wrote front page headlines for newspapers for years, let me offer an alternative.   A more accurate headline would have been “The Celtic Con Job.” 

Because that is what we are faced with here, a financial con job that has been imposed on Ireland by Europe at enormous cost to the ordinary citizens here.

It's called a bailout, but in reality it's a way of paying back all the (mainly foreign) bondholders who gambled on the Irish property boom and making the Irish taxpayer pick up the tab. 

And who is the chief enforcer of this con job on Ireland?  It's the Comeback Kid himself, Enda Kenny.  

The Time magazine article does quote Kenny saying that he wants a better deal from  Europe on our debt.  We may get one eventually. 

But in the meantime he continues to work this deeply unfair bailout agreement which is depressing the Irish economy, causing record emigration and making life tough for ordinary people here.   

The heroic image of Enda on the cover of Time and the headline suggests that we are on the road to recovery and that the Irish economic crisis will be over before too long.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The truth is that we are not even halfway through this crisis and it's a toss up which way it goes from here.  

Yes, it is true that because of the perception that we are coping with austerity, the yield on  Irish bonds has come down and we may be able to get back into the money markets at some point.  But the scale of the debt problem facing us is so great that we don't have a hope of keeping up with repayments.  And where will our bond yields go then?  

Read more news on Irish politics and government here.

There are two elements to the problem we face. The first is the €68 billion EU/IMF bailout we got, which is a millstone around the neck of the country.  

As you know, the Irish state guaranteed all Irish bank debt when the crisis erupted at the end of 2008, and so far the amount of money the Irish government has pumped into the banks to make good on this promise is around €64 billion.  

So almost all of the money we got under the bailout has been used to enable the Irish banks to pay off their bondholders. These bondholders took a risk lending money to the Irish banks because they wanted a slice of the high returns that were available during the boom here. 

They took a chance and it did not pay off. But even so, they are getting all their money back.

The joke is that many of the original bondholders sold on at prices discounted up to 50 percent, so the new holders of the bonds are doubling their money when the bonds mature and the Irish banks pay up the face value in full. 

So in effect what has happened is that the bailout money was given to the Irish government, who gave it to the Irish banks, who gave it to the bondholders.

At the end of this merry-go-round, the Irish taxpayer/state owes €68 billion in bailout repayments to the EU/IMF.

And these repayments are now part of the annual budget here, eating up a huge chunk of our tax revenues and making it much harder to balance the budget, even with big cuts in state spending. 

The Irish taxpayer is being forced to pay the gambling debts in Ireland of the international money markets.

Kenny was not taoiseach when the disastrous state guarantee was given to our banks or when the bailout was imposed on us after the state went bust as a consequence.  But instead of refusing to be part of this unjust system, he has gone along with it since he came into power.   

It is unjust because the bondholders, including senior bondholders, should have been forced to take a hit.  This was ruled out at the time by Europe because they feared it would seriously undermine confidence in European banks.  

So the EU turned a European banking problem into a gigantic problem for the ordinary Irish taxpayer who had nothing to do with the boom here.   It's an impossible burden for Ireland to carry. 

Even hiking taxes sky high and cutting state spending to the bone is not going to be nearly enough to allow us to pay back all we "owe."  The figures don't add up.  We either get a large amount of debt forgiveness (and it's not really our debt anyway) or Ireland will collapse again.  

So to suggest that we are now experiencing The Celtic Comeback is ridiculous. 

The humiliating part of all this is that our plea to have our banking debt separated from our sovereign debt and to have Europe deal with our banking debt, was turned down flat.  It was impossible, we were told. 

Yet now that a major country like Spain is asking for the same thing, it is suddenly possible after all.   We are now being told by Europe that the new arrangements don't apply to our "legacy" problem.  But that is so ridiculous it is unlikely to be sustained. 

What is clear is that, despite the impression given by the Time cover, Ireland is not showing the rest of Europe how to stage a comeback.  Instead we are trailing on Spanish coattails.

Apart from bank debt, the other part of our problem is the massive budget deficit that we now have following the collapse of tax revenue when the boom became a bust.   The Irish state is spending far more than we can afford.  

Instead of implementing a bold adjustment plan, Kenny has been fiddling while Dublin burns, afraid to take on the vested interests and the unions. 

He has failed to cut waste out of the system, to cut the pay and pensions of state workers in line with what has happened in the private sector, to reduce the hugely expensive government and NGO morass that eats up state revenue.  Most of the cutbacks so far have been aimed at the poor and powerless because they can't fight back. 

Despite the image of the strongman on the Time cover, Kenny's performance has been extremely weak.   The magazine piece includes a few quotes from Mario Rosenstock, a brilliant satirist and mimic who makes his living sending-up our top politicians. 

He got it exactly right when he told Time that Enda was a bit like Chauncey Gardiner, the Peter Sellers character in the movie Being There.  The movie is about a simple gardener in Washington who is mistaken for a great seer and whose simple pronouncements on the seasons and growing plants are interpreted by the president as allegorical insights into the state of the economy.  

With his Chauncey-like observations, Enda appears to have beguiled a lot of people outside Ireland that all will be well in the Irish garden.  But the reality is very different. The truth is we're a long way from any kind of Celtic Comeback.