A budget of a thousand cuts is the latest austerity measure for the Irish

A young boy joined carers to protest last week’s budget cuts 
outside Leinster House in Dublin on Tuesday morning.

There were no big surprises in the budget in Ireland last week, the sixth so-called austerity budget in a row as the government battles to raise taxes and cut spending to match revenue. 

The reason was that all the bad news had been slowly leaked out over the previous few weeks to lessen the impact on the day.

So we knew all about property tax and increases in payroll "social" tax and cuts in child benefit payments and other adjustments like extra tax on alcohol, tobacco and cars.    

We didn't know about some of the "adjustments,” one of them being the cut in respite payments to carers, something that has proved to be so contentious that it could yet destabilize the government even though the overall amount involved is relatively small in terms of overall state spending. 

Carers are people who look after other people at home on a full-time basis -- like a parent looking after a severely handicapped child or someone looking after an elderly parent with Alzheimer's.

From the state's point of view, these people should be treated like heroes since they keep the loved ones they care for out of hospitals where long term care would cost a fortune.  The amount saved by the state as a result has been estimated at around €4 billion a year. 

Carers here get a basic payment of just over €200 a week from the state, and they also were getting an annual respite payment of €1675, to allow them have some "respite,” a short holiday or break from what is usually a demanding, year round 24/7 commitment. In this budget, that respite payment has been cut by €300. 

A meaner, nastier cut is hard to imagine.  This would be true even if most carers used the money for the respite break they were supposed to take. 

In fact, however, many of them were using the money not for a holiday but to tax or insure the car they need to take the person they care for out of the house occasionally, to medical appointments and so on.  Or they were using it to fill the heating oil tank for the winter, since many immobile people needing care also need higher home heating than healthy people.   

This is just one of numerous small cuts that were made in the budget in areas of state spending that affect the lives of the poorest or the most vulnerable in our society.  Extra payments for medicines for the poor is an example of another.  And there are many, many more.

But it's not just the poor and vulnerable who will have their lives made more vulnerable by this budget.  The lower to middle income families across the country are going to be hard hit as well.  These are the so-called coping class.

The trouble is since the boom and bust many of them are just not coping anymore.   And they now find that they are being squeezed even more.

Many of these would be people who bought properties over the past decade for which they paid boom time prices and which are now in negative equity.  They are struggling to pay their mortgages already and are now being hit with a new property tax.

They paid heavy stamp duty (like a sales tax) when they bought their homes.  It was six percent on an average house and nine percent on expensive properties.

During the boom it was quite normal to pay stamp duty of €20,000 to €50,000 when buying a property. People simply added it to the mortgage, borrowing enough to pay for both the house and the stamp duty.  And this is part of the reason so many people are now struggling to make their mortgage payments.

There was a wide expectation that when the new property tax was introduced in this budget, people who had paid heavy stamp duty in recent years would be allowed to offset that against their tax bill.   Instead they have to pay up the full amount of property tax like anyone else.

It's double taxation and it's clearly unfair.  But the government went ahead with this anyway.

Similarly, the government made no attempt to target child benefit cuts at people who don't really need the payments.  The payments are universal so all families get them, rich and poor. Taxing them would have taken about half of this money back from better-off families, while leaving payments to poor families intact. Instead of doing that, the government did an across the board cut which will hit every family in the country.

The property tax and child benefit cut will have most impact on ordinary middle income families here, with most of them down around €2,000 a year.  That may not sound a lot, but for families who are already living on the margins after a succession of austerity budgets it will make life even more miserable.

On top of the cuts, there are the extra charges and tax that people will have to pay.  The main one is the PRSI social tax (which is supposed to help pay the state's welfare bill) which is being hiked up.

Of course it's really an income tax since it is deducted directly from pay.  The effect will be to bring the marginal rate of tax on income for many ordinary people to well over 50 percent.

The problem for many families is that while they are being squeezed dry by the government, many of the "luxuries" that are in reality essentials for many of them are costing more and more.  The government is increasing annual tax on cars, for example, and petrol (gas) is going up as well. 

Some might say that a car is a luxury, but if you're stuck in a new housing estate miles away from work and schools and there is little or no public transport nearby, what do you do?

This felt like a budget of a thousand small cuts,  many of them hidden.  The cut to the carers respite payment, for example, hardly registered in the media on budget day but is now the hottest issue  facing the government. 

The reason all these small miseries were imposed by the government is that they began the task of making the €3.5 billion adjustment with the three biggest items in the budget off the table.  These were income tax rates, basic welfare rates and the Croke Park agreement on pay and pensions for state workers. 

Fine Gael and Labor made pre-election promises that income tax rates and basic welfare rates would not be touched, rash promises that have now come back to haunt them.

So there was no change in the basic income tax rates (although there was the hike in the PRSI "social" tax on incomes which has the same affect.)  And there were no changes in basic welfare payments like unemployment benefit and old age pensions (although the length of non-means tested jobless benefit was shortened and better off pensioners will now have to pay more of their own medical bills).

A much more imaginative approach to income tax and welfare and the link between the two could have been started in this budget and needs to be done soon if we are to incentivize business creators and workers to help us get out of the slump we are in.

The Irish welfare system pays people not to work and gives them many extra benefits for not having a job.  In Germany more than a decade ago the welfare system was changed so that welfare payments there pay jobless people to work in all kinds of activities like community service programs and so on.  You get very little for free unless you give back to society.

The Croke Park Agreement which guarantees pay levels and pensions in the public service (all state workers) was a major logjam in this budget.   In the big spending departments like health and education up to 80 percent of spending is on pay and pensions for staff, but because pay cuts are ruled out, making any meaningful cuts in their budgets involves hitting frontline services.

So, for example,  although school teacher's pay is not being cut, class sizes are going up (which affects students).

While student grants in universities are being delayed and student fees are going up, university teachers' pay (probably the highest in Europe) remains untouched.   

Then there is the scandal of the pensions for state workers which go on being paid at levels that are twice what many people who spent their working lives in the private sector paying into pension private schemes end up with.   And this is continuing while the state is desperately trying to save small amounts of money by cutting things like the carers respite payment.

This budget was not just unfair; it was incompetent and cowardly.  Instead of some blue sky thinking we got more of the same old ideas, a myriad of minor changes that eat away at the living standards of ordinary people.

And of course here was no mention in the budget of the elephant in the room, the huge burden of the banking debt repayments Irish taxpayers have been lumbered with and which are going to cost us billions in the years ahead, money the government might as well pour down the drain.   If the government had any backbone it would have told the European Central Bank by now that this party is
over.

It all makes a very bleak prospect for Christmas and the New Year.

Ordinary Irish suffer yet again as savage budget cuts will hit poorest

A Santa Claus protester held up a sign at a protest in Dublin last month.

This is budget week in Ireland but the bad news -- and it's going to be very bad news -- won't be revealed until Wednesday afternoon when the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan reads his Budget 2013 speech to the Dail (Parliament).  

So it will be after this column has gone to bed when the gory details of the Budget 2013 nightmare will emerge.  Of course we do know roughly what's going to happen, since we are no longer masters of our own economic sovereignty.  

That privilege belongs to the Troika (the EU, ECB and IMF) who lent us the bailout money to stay afloat three years ago and now lay down the law on our stony pathway back to fiscal balance and sustainability.

To meet the target for 2013 in the Troika's plan for Ireland, we have to reduce our budget deficit in the coming year by another €3.5 billion.  The government has said already that two thirds of this adjustment will be achieved by spending cuts, and one third by tax hikes.  That much is clear.

Also clear is that there will be a property tax, one of the things that the Troika is insisting on as a way of providing a steady revenue source for the state, like in the U.S. and most other countries in Europe.  

Part of the reason Ireland is in this mess is that property taxes here only applied when a property was sold, so when the market collapsed so did state revenue.    

Another change the Troika are keen to see is a targeting of welfare benefits so that only those in genuine need will get them; under our present system some welfare payments, like child benefit payments, are universal, going to all families regardless of income.

So we know the parameters of this budget. We even know some of the likely measures it will contain thanks to leaks to the media in the past few weeks as the coalition partners in the government, Fine Gael and Labor, have struggled to agree on what to do.  

As long as we follow the broad guidelines set down by the Troika and hit the target for next year's reduction in our budget deficit, the government is free to work out the small details of the spending cuts and tax hikes by itself.  

That's what the Troika says.  But, as always, the devil is in the detail.    

One reason this budget is so difficult is that over the last few years each annual budget has cut spending and found new ways of adding extra taxation.  There are no easy options left.

Some of the most obvious waste in spending has been stopped.  Hidden areas that could yield extra revenue have been exposed and taxed.   Most of the low hanging revenue fruit has already been picked as we tried to cut the deficit by a few billion over the past few years.  Now on top of that we have to find another €3.5 billion in cuts.  

Another reason getting the figures in this budget to add up is so difficult is because of the rash promises made in the election two years ago by Fine Gael and Labor. Fine Gael promised no income tax increases, while Labor pledged that core welfare benefits would not be cut.  Clearly, since we are now scraping the bottom of the barrel, something has to give on these promises.  

We have one of the most generous welfare systems in Europe, with benefits paid at very high levels.  Welfare for those out of work is more than one third higher than similar payments in Britain, for example. The basic state pension here is also much higher than in Britain and in most other European countries.  

Other state payments here -- like the aforementioned child benefits – and payments in many other smaller entitlement programs, are extraordinarily high in comparison with other countries.

An example would be statutory maternal leave from work, with an Irish mother entitled to 42 weeks leave from her job after having a baby, 26 weeks of which is paid for by the state at a rate of around €250 to €300 a week and may be topped up more by her employer.

The last time I looked there was no mandated maternity leave with pay in the U.S.  I'm not saying that is a good thing, but the contrast with Ireland is striking.

The bottom line here is that Ireland has become very much a welfare state on European lines in recent decades, and over the recent boom many of these entitlement programs and payments were inflated supposedly for social reasons but in reality to buy votes in elections.  

This has resulted in a situation in which some lower income families here find it as rewarding (and a lot easier) to live off the state than to hold down jobs.

By the time you add up the value of unemployment benefits, rent allowance, fuel allowance, other allowances, free family health care for those out of work and other payments, it is hard for employers to match the value in pay.  Plus staying home saves travels costs and other expenses.  

Saying this here is heresy, of course, because it challenges the orthodox perspective; one economist who was foolhardy enough to do so last year was bitterly criticized.

But the evidence is all around us and the effects on our society are clear.  

The trouble with entitlement programs paid at a high level is that they quickly become the norm for those who receive them. Cutting the level of payments leads to a ferocious backlash and accusations that the vulnerable are being targeted.

We have already seen this here in the “grey power” reaction when the government tried to take free health care away from better off pensioners who could afford to pay for their own medical needs.

Any objective assessment of Ireland's welfare system and other state programs which give people entitlements to services which some could pay for will show that they are very generous by the standards of other countries.

The simple truth is that the country cannot afford this anymore.  And we cannot go on borrowing to pay for it.  So reductions are inevitable.  

If the Labor Party insists that "core" welfare payments cannot be cut, then higher eligibility requirements to reduce the number getting payments will be needed.  

The other big item on the spending side of the budget equation is the pay of state workers here, which is protected under the Croke Park Agreement.   This agreement was supposed to deliver efficiencies that would allow the government to cut costs by reducing numbers while maintaining pay levels.  

It has not worked, no matter what the unions say.  Pay levels here for middle and senior workers on the state payroll (civil servants in government departments, doctors, nurses, teachers, police, and so on) all remain high by European standards and take no account of the state being bust.

It has now emerged, for example, that teachers here are entitled to an extra six weeks paid maternity leave on top of that outlined above, despite the fact that they already get long summer holidays when the schools are closed!    

On the revenue side of the budget equation, there is now widespread acceptance that we are at, or close to, the maximum level at which income tax can be applied here.  Our top rate is 41 percent, but there are two additional "social" taxes applied to income which bring it to well above 50 percent.  

The top rate kicks in at a relatively low level of income, equivalent to around $40,000 for a single person.  As a single person, anything you earn above that level, you lose about half of it in tax.  

As if that was not enough, all the other indirect taxes, like sales taxes, motor vehicle taxes, fuel tax, levies on pensions savings and insurance policy taxes -- there's a tax here on almost everything you do apart from breathing -- have all been ratcheted up over the past three years as the government tries to squeeze more and more revenue out of ordinary people.

And of course the property crash has left a lot of people in negative equity, struggling to pay high mortgages for houses that they cannot sell even if they want to.

What all of this means is that in this budget the government needs to show a new approach and some new thinking.   It's not enough to tinker with the present tax and spend structure anymore.  Radical reform and change is required, particularly on the spending side.

The Irish state -- government, civil service and all the rest of it -- is now much bigger than the country can sustain.  How many non-governmental organizations (quangos) with staff on the state payroll and with guaranteed state pensions can we afford?

There are hundreds of them and, despite promises, only a handful have been wound up. How many embassies do we need?  How big an army?  The population of Ireland is only half the size of London, yet we have to carry the expense of an entire country, one led by politicians with serious delusions of grandeur.
There is no sign of us tackling any of the sacred cows in Irish life.  An example would be the costs associated with the pretence that we are reviving the Irish language.

We go on paying teachers to spend hours every day teaching compulsory Irish in schools even though no European languages (or Chinese, or Russian) are taught in Irish junior schools and companies like Google have to import hundreds of workers here as a result to fill jobs in customer support services.

And we go on paying for not only a full Irish language news service but an Irish TV station, even though research shows that the audience is tiny.

I have nothing against Irish.  It is just one example of the many sacred cows in Irish life which cost a fortune and which we can no longer afford.  Long may Irish continue, but it has to stand on its own legs and so do all the other sacred cows we have here, instead of being supported by the taxpayer.

Any serious examination of Irish public life shows up wide areas of very expensive government activity which really have no place in a country that is broke.

Our Arts Council, for example, had a budget this year of over €60 million to promote the arts.  Close to €1 million was spent on a week of Wagner concerts in Dublin.  

Again, I'm all for the arts, but are the people who stand over this kind of thing living in the real world?

In an effort to save money, while continuing to pay obscene pensions to retired bankers and top civil servants, the government has cut the number of home help hours to families with disabled children, elderly people who need round the clock care and so on. In doing so they are undermining a program designed to keep such people out of hospital by helping families to look after them at home.

But then these vulnerable people -- and the family members who look after them -- are not among the sacred cows of Irish life. That's what is wrong with our attempts to reform our state finances.  

Mean, miserable cuts and extra taxes are loaded on to ordinary people here while the lofty pretensions of the Irish state carry on regardless.  To change this requires a fundamental shift in thinking at the top.  

Bold, radical moves to curtail state spending while protecting the vulnerable are possible.  But they would require the wholesale slaughter of sacred cows.  

That makes it very unlikely that we will see any real change in approach in this week's budget.  What we are likely to see is the status quo in Irish society -- and their pay, often state pay, and guaranteed pensions - being protected as much as possible.

Meanwhile, all the middle income people will be forced to pay even more to keep the circus on the road.  They will be forced to pay more even though research this year showed that, after paying all their essential bills, 1.8 million people here had only €100 a month left over for themselves.

The gigantic elephant in the room in this debate is, of course, the repayments the country is making on the banking debts that were "guaranteed" by the state, which means they were transferred to the taxpayer.   Just to deal with the two worst banks involved, Anglo and Irish Nationwide, is costing us over €50 billion.

The two had €31 billion in debts, mainly to foreign bondholders, and we borrowed the money to pay this back.  The bondholders have now all been paid back and we're scheduled to pay that borrowing back over 20 years or so, at around €3 billion a year (the interest bill is around €19billion).  

The last government was railroaded into this by the ECB, because they feared a collapse of any Irish banks would cause financial contagion across Europe.  There is no moral basis for it whatsoever.  The two banks are now closed.

The bondholders should have been burned. Instead this huge unsustainable debt was loaded on to Irish taxpayers.  

The other banks here, between them, have had another €30 billion pumped in so they could pay their debts, and again the Irish taxpayer ends up carrying the can.  

So all the pain that will be unleashed this week to narrow the budget deficit by €3.5 billion will be unnecessary suffering because we will be sending roughly the same amount out of the country in debt repayments.  And this is set to go on year after year, until 2030 and beyond.

Last week Greece was given another debt forgiveness package by the Troika. But this government has managed to get nothing for Ireland.  

So we go on paying.  Is it any wonder so many young people are leaving?

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. 

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.  

A lot more action needed by Fine Gael/Labour coalition to save Ireland from economic ruin

Eamon Gilmore and Enda Kenny (Eamonn Farrell / Photocall Ireland)

There was a huge sense of relief when the Fine Gael/Labor coalition took over the government here after the last election, nearly two years ago now.  

The last government had led us into an economic catastrophe, presiding over a bubble that saw our banks almost wiped out, our state finances bankrupted and our modern nation forced to accept a bailout from the IMF, like some banana republic.  

Ever since, our economy has been sliding into a steep decline, with unemployment now over 14 percent and mass emigration back again. 

So there was enormous relief that Fianna Fail was out.  After so many years in power it had become lazy, incompetent, compromised, and occasionally corrupt.

That sense of relief at the start of last year was mixed with seething anger at what Fianna Fail had done to the country.  Which explains why Fianna Fail was decimated in the election and the two main opposition parties, Fine Gael and Labor, got a massive majority to form a new government. 

Coupled with the anger and relief felt by the electorate, however, was one other very strong feeling, a sense of expectation.   There was a powerful expectation in the air that this time things would be different. 

Of course we understood that because of the economic mess we were in, it was not going to be easy.   We knew there would have to be huge cutbacks.  There was no other way.

But at least the pain would be more bearable because now decisions would be taken on a rational basis and the burden would be shared by all.  The government would be open and honest about the challenges we faced and would offer real leadership and take tough decisions. 

There would be no more golden circles who made loads of money and paid little or no tax.  The poisonous nexus between politics and business would be excised.  

There would be no more waste of public money on a massive scale, lining the pockets of those who were connected.  There would be no more parish pump politics where politicians looked after their own areas and ignored what was best for the country as a whole. 

That was the expectation.  It was to be a complete break with the past. 

We were to set out on a new path of integrity and honesty and, despite the enormous difficulties we faced, that would see us through to a renewed prosperity some time in the future.  

Ah yes, that was the hope and expectation.   Sadly, however, our hopes have been dashed. 

Over the past year and a half our expectations have been revealed as naivety.   The new administration is almost as bad as the last.     

With each day that passes we see more incompetence, more cowardice in the face of our problems, more failure to take hard decisions, more parish pump priming, more abuse of power for naked self interest.  

As my old French teacher used to say, Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

A wise old political observer I talked to last weekend asked, “Well, what did you expect?  They've been out of power for years. Enda's been waiting 30 years to be taoiseach (prime minister).  This is their chance to indulge themselves, to preen in front of the cameras, to enjoy the spoils.  Can you really blame them?”

Perhaps not, because Enda Kenny and his boys have been waiting such a long time.  But it's deeply disappointing.  

At least when Fianna Fail was splashing out, it looked like the country could afford it.  Now Fine Gael and Labor ministers are attempting to behave in the same way even though the country is broke. 

The hubris and downright stupidity were visible right from the start, with Kenny insisting that Ireland would never default on any of its debts and that even junior bond holders would be paid back.  

This laughable stance was taken by Kenny as though it was a heroic, principled position.  The truth, which became clear as time went on, was that we had been locked into a penal and inequitable debt repayment regime by the European Central Bank to protect German and French banks and bondholders. 

We should have rebelled. Instead Enda continued to honor the bailout program that had shifted the mountain of bank debt on to the backs of the ordinary Irish taxpayers.   

For the Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) Eamon Gilmore it was to be Labor's way, not Frankfurt's way.  That was his ringing election campaign call to arms. 

We were not going to accept the IMF-EU straightjacket.  We were going to renegotiate the bank debt and get a better bailout deal.

After the election he did a rapid about turn and continued the previous policy of accepting the bank debt mountain as a sovereign liability.  Even for a politician, it was a jaw-dropping reversal.  As a result it is now hard to take what Gilmore says on anything seriously.  

From what we now know, it seems clear that the infamous state guarantee for our banks given by Fianna Fail at the end of 2008 was done without fully appreciating the consequences.  The then Taoiseach Brian Cowen and the then Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan were completely out of their depth and working off inadequate information. 

They seemed to be unaware that there was a real and substantial risk that what they were doing -- turning bank debt into sovereign debt -- could bankrupt the state, which is exactly what happened subsequently. 

Ignorance is no defense. But at least we can say for the senior Fianna Fail people involved, they didn't know what they were doing.  They were engulfed by the crisis and panicked by the thought that the Irish banks might collapse. 

So they did what was necessary, as they saw it.  They also bought into the European Central Bank view that no lenders could be burned.  

And we set about paying back all the money our banks had borrowed from German and French banks, bondholders and other investors.   As bank losses multiplied to unimagined levels the money involved was huge.

Two years later, when the Irish state ran out of money and we were forced into the bailout,  Fianna Fail again accepted the EU diktat that writing down Irish debt and burning bondholders was out of the question because it might precipitate a crisis of confidence in banking across Europe.  

By then, of course, they had us over a barrel.  We either agreed to the terms or we were not getting the bailout money.

So we agreed and continued to pay back the mountain of bank debt as it fell due, even though we had now woken up to how unfair this was to the Irish taxpayer who had been left carrying the can. 

This was the background against which the Fine Gael and Labor government took power.  By then it was clear that Ireland had been given a very raw deal and that unless we could get it changed it was going to mean huge cutbacks in state spending here, coupled with higher taxes, for years to come. 

The attempts by the new government to get a new deal on the bailout have been pitiful.   Instead both Kenny and Gilmore have been strutting around at home, in Europe and elsewhere, making portentous speeches.  If dinner jackets and speeches could fix what is wrong, we'd be in great shape. 

An example of this disconnection was Gilmore addressing the UN last week on
Syria. 

Doesn't he know the extent of the financial crisis in Ireland? 

While he was in New York pontificating, one of his Labor junior ministers was resigning at home in a bitter row about health services and how spending was being handled.

The government's main policy is to continue the regime of severe cutbacks in state spending.  That is probably unavoidable, even if we did get a better deal on the bailout. 

But the question is HOW the cutbacks are made and how equally the burden is shared.  

So far the government's attempts to show courage and leadership have been pathetic.   Cuts are made in easy targets, usually affecting the mass of ordinary people who don't have lobby groups to protect them. There is a whole section of Irish society -- the upper tier of professionals, administrators, business heads, senior civil servants and so on, including politicians and their advisors -- which has been largely unaffected by the financial crisis here.  They are protected by their influence.  

There may have been some small adjustment in their pay or pensions, but proportionately the effect is negligible in comparison to the pain felt by ordinary people on welfare or lower wages.  

Fine Gael is presiding over this shameful situation because it does not have the courage to tackle the powerful vested interests.  And Labor is almost as bad. 

One of the big tests facing the new government was tackling the pay and pensions of the state sector workers. Even though the state is broke, reductions in pay and pensions for state workers have been very slight. 

The reason is that the state workforce is the last bastion of power for the unions here, who are a major influence on Labor Party policy.  Labor should have been able to do something about the enormous pay and pensions bill in the state sector but they have failed abysmally.  Instead they reduce services and introduce extra charges for ordinary people.

The non-performance so far of the government on the crisis facing us is producing a serious credibility gap for Kenny and his ministers. Kenny's forceful, defiantly positive sound bites are sounding increasingly empty. 

Action speaks louder than words.  And so far there has been no action worth talking about. 

Ireland is no country for young men or women anymore -- Sky high taxes, lower incomes means only bad news for the young

Karl Miller, Olwen Sheedy, Sam Hopkins and Sinead Donolon have all left,
thought about leaving or are leaving Ireland to find work.(Credit: CNN)

One of the worst aspects of the financial crisis in Ireland is the way it has impacted on young people disproportionately.

By young people, I mean not just those still in college, but those in their twenties and thirties, and even forties.

These include the young couples who bought houses at the top of the boom and are now struggling to pay their sky high mortgages as their income shrivels. When they bought their dream home their pay seemed to be increasing every year; now it's shrinking, all the bonuses and overtime payments have vanished and money is getting tighter all the time.

And of course they can't sell because they're deep in negative equity, with the house worth half what they paid for it, or even less. Then there are those couples in even deeper trouble, the houses in which one or even both partners have lost their job. A recent report predicted that by this time next year, around one-fifth of all mortgages in Ireland will either be restructured or in arrears.

It's not just mortgages that are causing problems either. As the government struggles to cut spending, a lot of free stuff now has to be paid for, in areas like health and education. Meanwhile, the cost of things that are essentials, like gas, electricity, oil, transport and even food have all increased. Petrol prices have increased sharply and for many families a car is an essential, not a luxury, with kids who have to be ferried to school and jobs to get to.

And the burden of taxes is getting heavier all the time. It's not just the income tax at 41 percent on anything over $40,000 a single person earns, but on top of that you pay four percent (and your employer pays 4.5 percent) in pay related social insurance (PRSI), and then there's the new universal social charge (USC) which is seven percent.

So including the employer's PRSI, the effective tax rate on anything a single person here earns over $40,000 is 56.5 percent, not the much quoted 41 percent.  For a married couple, the income at which the marginal rate kicks in is $49,800.

All told, the income tax burden here is already very heavy. And if you have to pay for child care -- unlike other EU countries it's not subsidized here -- it can be very difficult to make ends meet.

On top of all this, many younger people here have significant borrowings (when they bought their dream home they got the plasma screen and the designer kitchen and the nice car), and making those loan repayments is also getting harder.

In many cases, the extras are being sold off. Older people tend to have pre-boom savings and have already acquired and paid for the extras that make life comfortable.

The conjuring trick of taking "social" charges separately out of pay does not fool anyone here anymore -- it's time the government here started calling it all income tax, because that's what it is.

The irony is that many people don't make use of "social insurance" anyway. They don't want to endure long waiting lists in the public health system, and so they go private and pay for treatment.

A lot of them who lose their jobs emigrate so they don't take their welfare payments. And other things like "free" school education ends up costing money because sports and books and equipment all have to be funded by the young parents.

To say that money is tight for so many younger singles and couples here is an understatement.
A survey last April by the Irish League of Credit Unions showed that up to 47 percent of Irish adults have less than $130 to spend by the end of the month once all their essential bills are paid.

Most of them are younger people.Nearly two-thirds of those questioned said they have less to spend than they did last year.

The wave of unemployment here due to the financial crisis also affects younger people much more than the older generation (those in their forties and fifties and beyond).  This is not surprising, since the younger ones may be college leavers or young workers with limited experience, whereas the older ones will often be well established in jobs or professions.   The old rule of last in, first out, also seems to be in operation.

The result of this is that most of the 40,000 plus people now emigrating from here each year are younger people. And it's not just singles, but young couples often with young children as well.

So in all kinds of ways, younger people here are getting a raw deal despite the fact that the crisis was created by the older generation, not the younger generation. And they will go on paying for the mistakes that led to the financial collapse and the bailout for years to come.

Read more: 40,000 are leaving Ireland every year new figures show

It's obviously unfair, but nothing is being done about it (like, for example, a serious program of debt forgiveness to rescue those younger couples now drowning in mortgage debt and negative equity).

All of that is only half the story, however. Where this becomes really shameful is the way the older, established section of Irish society is doing everything it can to protect its privileged position at the expense of the younger generation, no matter the consequences.

A lot of lip service has been paid here to the necessity for burden sharing to get us through the crisis but when it gets down to it, it's I'm alright Jack, and you can look after yourself.

This is happening right across the economy here. In the private sector we have seen the arrival of so called "yellow pack" workers in many companies who get lower pay and poorer conditions and pension entitlements than existing workers doing the same jobs.  

School and college leavers are taken on for periods of "work experience" but never get paid.   There are the "internships" which are paid at low rates, and when it's time for the interns to get proper pay they are let go and a new lot of interns are brought in.

Add to that the growing tendency to offer short term contracts of a year or two rather than permanent jobs and it all adds up to exploitation.

A lot of this has happened while older workers in these companies have stood back and done nothing as long as their positions, pay, and pensions have been protected.   The same thing is happening to a far greater extent in the public service, where state workers and their unions have turned their backs on new entrants.

In this column recently we mentioned the case of teachers. Recent figures show that new school teachers here are now being paid $15,000 less than new teachers who started work in 2010 (starting salary of $36,000, down from $50,000).

They will be doing exactly the same work as their colleagues but will be paid far less. In fact they are getting less than the pensions being paid to older teachers who have retired in the past few years.  Even a teacher who retires at 60 instead of 65 gets more in pension than a new teacher now joining our school system gets in pay.  

Clearly this is deeply unfair. But it's not just in teaching that this kind of stuff is going on -- it's happening across the state workforce.

And to their shame, the unions in the state sector have been a key player in this rotten compromise. Younger entrants in all areas of state services are being given lower pay and poorer conditions in a trade off that allows the older workers (all unions members of long standing) to keep their privileged pay and pensions.

Pay and pensions in the state sector are protected under the Croke Park Agreement, the now infamous deal signed by the last government in 2010 and running up to 2014 under which the state sector unions guaranteed that there would be no strikes. Under the agreement there can be no pay cuts, other than the very limited reductions already agreed at that time by the unions.

But the crucial thing about the Croke Park Agreement is that it applied only to the state workforce at that time. It did not cover new entrants into the state services.

So in return for guarantees on their own pay and pensions, the existing state workforce abandoned the new generation of state workers who would be coming in. In effect this meant that the unions had abandoned the basic principle of equal pay for equal work.

The door had been opened to a two tier system, with those on the good deals that went with the boom hanging on to what they had at the expense of the newcomers.

The Labour Party – which is part of the coalition government -- has lost all credibility on the issue of reform in the state services.  The (Labour) Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin became a laughing stock here over the past week because of his failure to implement any reform that affects the existing workforce in the state services as opposed to the sacrificial lambs of the new entrants.

He promised major reform of the system of "allowances" given to state workers -- some deserved, most simply idiotic -- which gives them extra payments to hike up their incomes for doing extra chores (like filing, or using technology) that most people in the private sector would consider a normal part of the job.

These allowances are being scrapped for new entrants, but of the 1,100 allowances in the system which benefit the older generation of state workers, Howlin managed after his review to scrap just one.

Why did this happen? Because the unions, on behalf of the established state workforce, told him to back off.

What we have, we hold. And if the new entrants don't do as well, don't blame us, they said. We're not joining a race to the bottom.

So overall, the pain of cutting back in the Irish economy is falling mainly on younger workers and their families. It's true in the private sector and even more so in the state sector.

It's no country for young men, or young women either.