Drinking and the death of rural Ireland - the demise of pubs, the drink driving permit and isolation

Small rural pubs like this one in Templemore, 
Co. Tipperary are closing at a rapid pace

Don't you just love the way that story about Kerry County Councilor Danny Healy Rae's proposal on drink driving has gone global?

The bould Danny outraged all the politically correct nanny staters in Ireland last week by suggesting that customers in small rural pubs should be allowed to drive home slowly along quiet country roads after having a couple of pints.  

But it wasn't just the horror at what he was proposing that got to the PC brigade.   What made it even worse for the High and Mighty here was the international coverage the story got, since it fitted all the stereotypes about the Irish and booze, and it had the added bonus of an eccentric looking Kerryman at its center.

The sophisticates in Dublin were rigid with embarrassment.  Oh, the shame of it!  We were being made look like idiots -- sorry, that should be eejits -- before the entire world!

Papers, TV networks, the Huffington Post and other sites across the Europe, the U.S., Australia and further afield ran the story, with varying degrees of accuracy and extra chuckles added in.  

Most of them were in the Begorrah, Hic, Ye Won't Believe This! vein.  The headlines varied from the one on the U.S. Gawker site, "Lawmakers in Ireland to allow 'moderate' drunk-driving" (which is completely inaccurate) to the misleading one in the Toronto Star, "Irish county passes motion to let certain rural drivers drive while legally drunk" (they wouldn't be if the proposed legal change was made) to the follow-up one in Australia, "Irish county councilor insists drink-driving fight isn't over yet" (which managed to get the word fight in as well drink).  Seemingly the story even ran in China.  

"I know where I'm moving to," was a typical comment by readers on sites and blogs around the world.   For a day or two, the wilds of remote Kerry on the south west tip of Ireland seemed to be the center of the worldwide web.  

Here in Ireland, of course, we did not see the funny side.  We rarely do. We're remarkably thin-skinned when it comes to appreciating jokes, send-ups and humorous put-downs, especially if the words drink and Irish are mentioned in the same sentence.   

So the great and the good and the Holier Than Thou here all lined up to publicly ridicule and condemn Healy Rae for his "outrageous,” "irresponsible,"  "backward" suggestion.   The vitriol poured on him was quite extraordinary.

And no tactics -- including some papers getting comment from the mothers of youngsters who had been killed in road accidents -- were too cheap for the PC brigade to unload on him.

What none of them mentioned, however, was that he had a point. The pubs all over rural Ireland are dying.

The old men with the peaked caps who used to drive in a few miles from their farms out in the bogs for a pint or two in the evenings can't do it anymore because of our drink driving laws.  As a result many are suffering from isolation and depression.

The little country pubs are closing -- dozens of them every year -- and a way of life is being lost, a way of socializing which has been at the heart of rural Ireland for generations.

The effect of this has been devastating in the more remote and sparsely populated parts of rural Ireland.   Unable to go to the pub in the evenings, because they are afraid of being caught driving home again after a few drinks and losing their driving license as a result, they don't go out.

If you live a few miles from a village down a bog road, losing your license is not something you want to happen.   How can you get to the shops? To Mass? To the doctor? So rather than risk it, you stay at home.

Long before last week's controversy we were aware of the problems that this is causing, particularly for older people in rural areas.  The lack of social contact can lead to depression and worse.  So there's clearly a problem there.  

So far the PC brigade (mostly in Dublin) have said that the way to deal with this is taxi-sharing, local transport, pub owners bringing customers home in a minivan, etc.

This sounds sensible, but none of it works.  Public transport in rural areas is almost non-existent, and sharing taxis and minivans ignores the reality that people may want to go home at different times and that they may live many miles in opposite directions from the pub.

It's been tried and it rarely works on a sustainable basis.  Also many of the people we are talking about cannot afford to pay for taxis home.  They can just about afford the price of a couple of drinks.

The motion which Healy Rae introduced at the council and got passed on Monday of last week was actually a reasonable compromise.   It called for legislation to be introduced -- and it has to be national, not local legislation -- which would allow rural Gardai (police) to issue permits to allow rural dwellers to drive from their local pub "after having two or three drinks on little used roads driving on very low speeds."

Clearly when such legislation would be framed other qualifiers could be added in, like a high minimum age (over 40?), a clean driving record, a small engine car, a low maximum speed limit, a maximum distance from the driver's home and so on.

Healy Rae suggested the alcohol limit should be equivalent to two or three drinks (" a maximum of three.")   That could be kept at two, although clearly a lot depends on physical size and when the drinker last ate.  The present limit can equate to less than one pint for someone of average size who has eaten a small meal a couple of hours previously.

So Healy Rae's motion was not radical. It was a modest attempt to find a solution to a complex problem.   Or at least to start a discussion on how such a solution might be found.

The reality is that the kind of drinkers Healy Rae has in mind are not the problem.  The problem are the younger drivers who get out of their heads by downing a bottle of vodka and handful of pills and then get in their cars and go screaming down the road like a racing driver.  They're called boy racers, although a lot of them are in their twenties or thirties.

One of the mothers who was quoted in the media here this week condemning Healy Rae lost her son in a road accident and campaigns against drink driving.  But the young man who killed her son had consumed seven pints, six bottles of beer, five cans of beer, two vodkas, three shots and a line of cocaine before getting behind the wheel.

Of course everyone wants to keep someone like that off the road.   But there's a long way from that to the older, responsible, cautious driver carefully making his way slowly home after a couple of pints in his local pub.  

In case the Healy Rae line might gain some traction, all kinds of "experts" and politicians immediately flooded the media to put forward the conventional wisdom and insist there could be absolutely no change.  The idea was so stupid it wasn't worthy of intelligent discussion, they insisted.

A spokesman for Alcohol Action Ireland said that alcohol, even in small amounts, impairs driving ability.   Well, yes it does. But then so do lots of drugs we don't normally test for, like cocaine and marijuana, uppers and downers, ecstasy, and numerous prescription drugs like anti-depressants, blood thinners and so on.  Even normal cold and cough medicines can have an effect in high doses.

Then there are people with various medical conditions (diabetes, respiratory and heart problems and so on) whose driving can be affected either by their problems or by the drugs they have to take.   I know one elderly woman who has a bad case of "restless leg" and regularly kicks out to straighten her knee and relieve the tension when she is driving!  

The question is how much does alcohol in small amounts affect a person's ability to drive, and is it more than the effect of many other factors like the ones described above which are rarely considered.

I think we all know the answer to that one.

Small amounts of alcohol are no worse than small amounts of many other factors.  It's just that we have a thing about alcohol, to the point where it has become an obsession.

“Almost one in three crash deaths in Ireland is alcohol related. Even in small amounts, alcohol impairs driving ability - any amount of alcohol increases the risk of involvement in a fatal crash,” the Alcohol Action spokesman said.

Irrefutable evidence?  Hardly.  This is not evidence, it's propaganda.  

All the first sentence means is that in one-third of road deaths here, the driver(s) had some alcohol. We don't know how much.  It's possible that he or she had just one or two drinks.   Or maybe just one drink but also a handful of pills.   Or maybe they had a bottle or more of spirits and a load of other drinks as well.

We just don't know.   We don't know how much of a factor alcohol was in these deaths, although the implication being made is clear in the second sentence.  

The emotive line "any amount of alcohol increases the risk of involvement in a fatal crash" suggests that any drinking risks causing fatal car crashes and kills people.  Yes, a small amount does increase the risk but by how much?

More than lack of sleep and the risk of nodding off at the wheel?  More than getting hyped up by drinking too many cups of coffee or Red Bulls?  

This absolutist attitude to drink and driving ignores the truth staring us in the face.  What causes the death of people in most car crashes in Ireland (and probably everywhere else) is SPEED, not alcohol.

As Healy Rae says, if you have had a couple of pints and you drive slowly and carefully home along a quiet country road you know like the back of your hand, you are far less likely to kill someone than an alcohol free driver roaring down a main road at 90 miles an hour who may be on something.  

Healy Rae's motion, which calls for mature rural drivers to receive special permits that would allow very moderate drinking and driving, was passed by Kerry County Council by five votes to three.  Twelve councilors were absent from the chamber while another seven abstained from voting.  

Healy Rae, from a well known Kerry family of political mavericks, is himself a small bar owner in a rural area. There's no doubt he had one eye on his bar business and the other eye on increasing his vote when he put the motion to the council and got it through.  

There's also no doubt that many of those who were missing or abstained when the vote was taken did not want to be seen opposing the motion no matter what the big boys in Dublin think.  They know there's a lot of sympathy for this view at grassroots level.  Of course they also know that the chances of the national government agreeing to act on the Kerry Council motion and change the drink-drive law are nil.  

Country people know that an absolutist approach to social issues like this is unfair and disproportionate.  They know that the present regime is killing most of the small country pubs in Ireland -- hundreds have shut down in the last few years.  In the Healy Rae native village of Kilgarvan the village once had six pubs, now it has two.

The problem could be fixed, with a little common sense all round.  Unfortunately, given the power of the various PC groups in Ireland these days, it won't even be considered.

Meanwhile, the death of rural Ireland continues.

New Catholic Church leader in Ireland won’t change much - Eamon Martin’s take over from Sean Brady as Primate of Ireland

Monsignor Eamon Martin

Last week saw the beginning of the changing of the guard in the Irish Catholic Church.   Whether it will mean much of a change in attitude remains to be seen.

The jury will be out on this for a while, but the early signs are not good.

The new man at the top is to be Monsignor Eamon Martin, formerly of the Derry diocese, who was named last week as an assistant to the current head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady.

Brady had requested last year that someone be appointed "to help him with the workload."  The reality, however, was that Brady's position had become completely untenable following the revelations in a BBC TV program last year about his handling of the case of the notorious Father Brendan Smyth back in 1975.

Smyth perpetrated the most appalling child abuse north and south of the border and also in the U.S. when he was sent over there.  He was an obsessional, predatory abuser over four decades from the 1950s to the 1990s  as he was shifted around from parish to parish and even from country to country.

Dozens, possibly hundreds, of children were abused by him. Eventually, he was jailed in the north, and subsequently in the south. His case was so controversial that it led to the fall of the Fianna Fail-Labor government here in the 1990s over the attorney general's handling of Smyth's extradition.

Having brought down a taoiseach (prime minister) back then, it's not that surprising that Smyth, who died in prison here in 1997, is now responsible for bringing down a cardinal as well.

Brady has been clinging on since last year, but he had lost credibility and his position became hopeless. His problem was that he had been involved in the church investigation into Smyth in 1975 after accusations of abuse had surfaced.

This investigation was conducted by Brady and two other priests for the local bishop in the area where Smyth had been operating. Brady, a canon lawyer, has always insisted that his function was simply as a note taker. He passed his report on to the bishop for action and little or nothing was done.

What the BBC revealed last year was that during the investigation one boy had given Brady a list of names of children who were being abused. Brady did not inform their parents.

The program also revealed that the boy remembers that Brady played an active role in the investigation, interrogating the children who had made complaints.  This was confirmed by one of the other priests, who has since left the priesthood. So Brady was not just a note taker.

The questions that were asked during the investigation -- with Brady playing an active role -- were outrageous.  The boy, who Smyth had got to masturbate him during regular visits to his home, was asked if he liked doing this. He was also asked what happened to his body during the sessions and whether he would have done this with another boy or man.

This questioning was not only inappropriate but irrelevant. The boy was only 13 or 14 at the time and so was not old enough to consent.

Apart from his active role in the questioning and his failure to involve the police or to follow through on his report to the bishop, the most damning revelation was that Brady, although he had a list of names of children Smyth had abused, did not contact their parents to tell them. This was unforgivable in the eyes of parents who saw the program, and from that moment on Brady was a lame duck cardinal.

Last year he attempted to explain his actions -- or lack of actions -- by saying that he did everything that was expected of him as a priest back in the 1970s.  But that only made matters worse, and since then he has had zero credibility.

Mind you, all this has not stopped Brady trying to conduct business as usual, with the Catholic Church here a few weeks back condemning "the culture of death" that was being promoted in the developing debate about the introduction of very limited abortion in Ireland.

The church has been adopting its usual stance as the moral guide for the nation, urging legislators not to "exploit" the death of the Indian woman who died in a hospital in Galway last year from septicemia after being refused an abortion during a prolonged miscarriage.

But, of course, it is hard to occupy the high moral ground when your leader has no credibility.  So Brady, 73, has to go, and it is clear now that Rome wants him gone sooner rather than later.

Last week's appointment of  Martin as his "assistant" is supposed to carry Brady up to his planned retirement in 2015, but don't be surprised if he is gone in a few months.

So what of the new man?  Martin's new title is Coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh (Brady is Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland) and at 52 is a virtual teenager in church terms.

When he ascends to the top job he will be one of the youngest men ever to lead the Catholic Church in Ireland. In that sense he is being seen as a clean break with the previous, discredited generation.  He is also an engaging communicator with a relaxed style.

But behind the genial exterior there is a steely conservatism that was immediately on view when the announcement of his appointment was made last week after a Mass in Armagh.   Asked about the current abortion debate, he firmly responded that it was the church's duty to protect life from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

Flanked on one side by Brady and on the other by the Papal Nuncio, Martin's remarks made it very obvious that although the generations might be changing, there was no change in the message.

So don't expect any discussion of grey areas.   It will be absolutes as usual.   The church will lay down the law. The faithful (what's left of them) will follow.

Afterwards there was a more relaxed gathering in a hall in which the new man answered questions from the media, surrounded by admiring priests, nuns and some children.

There was one particularly revealing moment. In answer to some question, Martin said that he had grown up as one of 12 children in an ordinary family in Derry. There was a momentary pause and total silence.

Then Brady beamed an ecstatic smile and led the applause as all the clerics in the hall clapped and smiled happily. Twelve children!  Isn't that wonderful!

Well, no it's not. It's more than likely the result of the church's ban on contraception.

But then this has always been a very Irish attitude to sex and family size, one encouraged by the Catholic Church. Sex outside marriage is wrong. But once inside marriage, sex is acceptable, as long as it is natural and no contraception is used.

The "big families" that were so common in Ireland until recently were something to be celebrated, even if the family lived on a small farm producing barely enough income for a couple to survive on, or even if the parents lived in a small council house in a town or city and earned barely enough to feed and clothe themselves.   Parental responsibility did not come into it.

It was the state's duty to provide housing, schooling, health care, unemployment benefit if the parents were out of work, and so on.  So there was no reason to limit family size.   In fact the reverse was the case, because the more kids you had, the more benefits you got.

Martin smiled in a slightly embarrassed way as the applause rolled around him. Unspoken in the air hung the idea that the clerics were thinking.   Oh, these Catholic fathers!   They could be rogues! You couldn't be up to them!

This kind of traditional humor is built on attitudes that have bedeviled us here for generations and are still alive and well in the Catholic Church, particularly among traditional Catholics.

It's no accident that the chosen new leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland recently has taken a prominent role in asserting the church's pro-life message.   Last month Martin was at one of the pro-life vigils in Dublin, and in Derry he is coordinating a 40-day campaign of prayer and activism within his diocese to oppose abortion on either side of the border.  Under any circumstances.

Behind the almost casual style he presents, there is a formidable organizer at work. Martin has a reputation as a church administrator of great ability.   His nickname among clerics is “The Machine” because he works so hard and is so thorough about everything he does.

He is young, conservative and tough, even if it's hidden behind an informal, engaging personality.   It's church business as usual, then.

Abortion debate underway in Ireland - hard questions need to be asked and the country's Catholic history reviewed

A pro-life poster in Dublin to publicize a rally.

Here's a question for you on abortion -- imagine you have a pregnant daughter who has developed a medical condition which will mean that if she continues with the pregnancy and has the baby her health in the future may be damaged.   She may not die, but her long-term health may be compromised.

What do you do?  Do you encourage her to have an abortion, or do you advise her to take the chance and go ahead with the pregnancy for the sake of the fetus she is carrying?

There is no easy answer to a question like this.  Even if you believe in a woman's right to choose, is an abortion in such circumstances right if your daughter is half way through her pregnancy?  Or is the line of acceptability even later or much earlier in her pregnancy?

Let's take a different scenario, one in which no health issues are involved, the woman is healthy and the pregnancy is progressing normally.   In many western countries the right of a woman to choose whether to continue with a pregnancy is accepted up to the end of the first trimester, or 12 weeks. 

The rules vary -- in many countries a woman is expected to give physical or psychological reasons why she cannot continue -- but in practice the decision is hers. 

Beyond that time frame it becomes more difficult, with a wide variation in what is permissible. Between 12 and 20 weeks, abortions in some countries can be difficult to get, with more assessment and paper work required.  Late term abortions (at 20 weeks or later) are contentious even in liberal countries.    

Even countries which have had legislation and services in place for years still find abortion a difficult matter to deal with, the U.S. being an example.  In cases of incest or rape, or serious fetal abnormality, early abortions are accepted without question in many countries, although even these are opposed by many in the pro-life movement.  

So to repeat, there are no easy answers to questions about abortion. 

The debate in other countries has been going on for decades.  Here in Ireland -- Holy Catholic Ireland -- somehow we never got around to it. 

Instead we exported the problem and turned a blind eye as thousands of Irish women every year traveled to Britain for an abortion.  This allowed us to adopt a superior moral position and claim that there was no abortion in Ireland.  Talk about being holier than thou!

As societies in the west faced reality over the past 50 years or more and became more conscious of the rights of women, legislative changes happened elsewhere allowing abortion in defined circumstances. 

Aware that this was happening elsewhere, in Ireland around 30 years ago conservative Catholics got together and campaigned for a constitutional amendment which would prevent the introduction of abortion in Ireland.   They believed this would prevent a government sneaking abortion in by legislation. 

To introduce abortion, a government would have to have a referendum (a national vote) to remove the constitutional prohibition.

The Catholic fundamentalists put pressure on our politicians to introduce a constitutional amendment and our gutless politicians, afraid to refuse because it might give the impression that they were pro-abortion, went along with the idea.

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 fetal abnormality.  It also failed to define exactly what would happen if there were a conflict between the life of the fetus and a very sick mother.  

This might have been cleared up to some degree if legislation had followed, but none did.  There were many liberal voices in Ireland at the time -- this happened in the 1980s, not the 1950s -- who warned that this was a dangerous legal situation, leaving doctors and women vulnerable, and could result in deaths in Irish hospitals. 

The 1861 law we had inherited from the British meant that abortion was already illegal in all circumstances, and it could be argued that the amendment had modified the application of that.  But no one was sure and successive governments were too cowardly to legislate.     

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 on the right of women 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 remove the suicide grounds, 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 this may have been what killed Savita Halappanavar, the unfortunate Indian woman who died in a Galway hospital last year.  That caused uproar here, and rightly so. 

We are still awaiting the findings of the official investigation into what happened.  But there seems to be little doubt that some of the medical staff in the hospital felt that the Constitution prevented them from acting on the woman's requests for an immediate termination to end her prolonged miscarriage. 
She died from septicemia.

That appalling case put abortion back on the public agenda here.  But it was already on the government's agenda because the European Court of Human Rights a couple of years ago demanded action here on legislation after several women brought cases to Europe seeking clarity. 

The present government set up an expert group to report on possible abortion legislation and that took a year or more to produce its advice, giving several options. 

The one the government is going for -- the only one that makes any kind of sense -- will allow for abortion here under very restrictive conditions.   A request for an abortion may have to be approved by not one but two senior doctors, for example. 

Last week saw the debate on abortion opened out into the public arena when the outline for proposed legislation was the subject of three days of special hearings before the Oireachtas (Parliament) Joint Health Committee.

The committee was given the task of hearing testimony and preparing a report for the minister for health who will bring in the legislation for abortion in Ireland.

All the interest groups trooped in to have their say, the doctors, lawyers, constitutional experts, campaign organizations both pro-life and pro-choice,  religious groups and even the atheists.  (This was another tactic by the government to widen responsibility for whatever happens by consulting everyone, and they are playing it brilliantly.)

To everyone's surprise, the presentations and questions proceeded in a mature, civilized fashion, a welcome contrast with the hysteria that gripped the country in the 1980s.  Maybe we've grown up a bit since then. 

There was most concern at the hearings about the so-called suicide risk -- where a pregnant woman claims she must have an abortion because the pregnancy is making her suicidal.  Twenty years ago Catholic fundamentalists here tried to have the suicide option ruled out, but this was rejected by the people in two national votes.  Despite this, they are at it again.

The likely result is that a suicide risk as the grounds for an abortion will be very restricted, with possibly two senior doctors, one of them a psychiatrist, needing to give their approval.  There is also likely to be an appeal system when a woman is not happy with what the doctors decide and that could take a final decision even further away. 

Another idea is that the decision will involve doctors from more than one hospital.   It all sounds like a lengthy and difficult way of dealing with these situations.

One organization giving its views to the committee last week was the Catholic Church, with a bishop present to lay down the law.  And that's what he did. Some things never change. 

The arrogance from such a discredited organization is breathtaking.  One reader of the Irish Independent reacted by posing the question, “What do they want, more unwanted babies who will have to be adopted and taken into institutions where they will be fodder for abusing priests?”

That may be a bit extreme, but the reader had a point.

There will be more detailed coverage of the church's position here as the abortion debate develops in the weeks ahead. 

Ireland’s New Year’s resolution should be to pay no more bank debt, further crippling the Irish people

The downfall of Anglo Irish Bank, among other institutions, 
continues to devastate the Irish taxpayer.

At the start of what will be a critical year for Ireland, our politicians should be making lots of New Year resolutions on behalf of the country.   We could suggest dozens of resolutions for them on all sorts of policy issues.

But on the basis that the fewer you make, the more you are likely to keep, we will suggest just one resolution for 2013.  When it gets down to it, it's the only one that matters.

That resolution is as follows: In 2013 Ireland will tell Europe and the IMF that we are refusing to pay any more of the bank debt that is crippling the Irish economy and beggaring the Irish people.  

Rejecting the bank debt will not mean we are home free.  Far from it.

More than half of the huge national debt we have built up in recent years is due to the massive budget deficits we have been running, mainly since our economy went bust.  We should tell Europe and the IMF that we will be paying that back (minus the part that relates to bank debt). That is our responsibility and we are working on reducing our budget deficits.  

But what is not our responsibility is the tens of billions in bank debt (around €90 billion depending on how you count it) that has been and is being dumped on to the Irish taxpayer.   This year we should tell the IMF and Europe that our 2013 resolution is not to pay any more of it back.    

We will have our chance to begin this process pretty soon.  The next bit of the bank debt mountain we are supposed to be dealing with is a €3 billion promissory note payment that is due in March.

Depending on which minister you listen to, we either will refuse to make the payment or we are going to insist on a deal from Europe so that we won't have to make the payment.  These public rumblings by ministers are being made for Europe's benefit, but the reality is that we do not know if Europe is going to let us off the hook and we are rapidly running out of time.  

Read more: Signs of recovery boosted as Ireland beats EU/IMF deficit targets

There is a much bigger scenario at play here, relating to the overall bank debt mountain.  But before we deal with that let's look at the promissory note issue for a moment.

The game of chicken the government is playing on the promissory note payment due in March is missing the point.  That is just this year's payment on the total €31 billion promissory note debt which we are paying back at €3 billion a year over ten years.  

By coincidence, the amount saved on the deficit in December's budget was just over €3 billion and the fallout from that will be incredibly difficult here this year, involving all kinds of cutbacks, extra taxes, the new property tax and so on.  Yet we are supposed to be handing over this amount (€3 billion) in repayments every year for 10 years because of this promissory note.

Bear in mind that the €31 billion promissory note only deals with the debts of two of the smaller banks here, the now closed Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide rogue banks.  

The bigger scenario -- the one that is being forgotten in the argument about the promissory note -- is all the rest of the bank debt.   The promissory note is only one-third of the total bank debt mountain we were left, with and interest payments on that have to be included in our budget calculations every year.  

It's worth remembering how the promissory note -- basically an IOU given by the then Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan on behalf of the last government -- came into being in the first place.

In 2009 as the property crisis gathered pace, Lenihan shoved a few billion into the two rogue banks to stop them collapsing.  This was a consequence of the government undertaking given in September 2008 to guarantee the debts of all the Irish banks.  

By the end of 2009, the scale of the black hole in Anglo and Nationwide -- two of the most irresponsible players in the Irish property boom -- was becoming apparent.  They needed another €30 billion to be able to repay their lenders and bondholders.  

Lenihan was nervous about public reaction if he borrowed this amount upfront.  So instead he used promissory notes -- basically IOUs that promise the government will pay the money in the future -- which the two banks then used to raise cash to keep paying back their bondholders as bonds and loans from German and French banks matured.

So the taxpayer here was immediately on the hook for the huge debts of Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide.   But the bigger picture was much worse than that because the bank guarantee had also made the Irish taxpayer responsible for meeting the debts of the other banks as well, including the two biggest banks, Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks.  

All of this effectively made the Irish state bankrupt and forced us into the IMF-EU bailout program. A very large part of the money that we get under that program goes not to bridge the huge budget deficit that emerged after the crash, but to enable us to repay all the money the Irish banks borrowed during the boom to fund the property bubble.    

There are several points that need to be made in relation to this.  First off, when the Irish government ministers gave the state guarantee on all Irish bank debt on that infamous night back in September 2008, the banks either misled them about the depth of the black hole, or just did not know how deep it was themselves.

Which it was does not really mater.  The fact is that the government gave a guarantee based on either false information or seriously inaccurate predictions about the value of property portfolios.  

Read more: Four young Irish men cited on Forbes 30 under 30 list

For that reason alone, the validity of that guarantee is open to question.  It is also doubtful legally whether any government has the to right to issue a guarantee which can bankrupt the state, which is what happened in our case.

And for that reason alone, the blanket state guarantee given on Irish bank debt ought to be repudiated, as well as everything that flowed from it.  

What happened in 2010 was that the Irish government was pressurized by the European Central Bank (ECB) into continuing to pay off all the foreign investors who had put their money into Irish banks to get the higher returns that were on offer here during the boom.   So these investors, who essentially gambled and lost, got everything back.

The reason given was that a failure to pay these international investors -- mainly French and German banks and bondholders -- would have started a banking crisis across Europe.  Europe told Ireland that it had to keep on paying up as the bonds matured to avoid this.   To force us to comply, threats were made to cut off Ireland's funding from the EU.  

Eventually, the load of banking debt became too much, we went bankrupt and were forced into the EU/IMF bailout program.   By now most of the investors who put money into the Irish banks have been paid back, but the money to do so has effectively come from the bailout.   And that has to be paid back.

What was a banking debt problem has been transformed into a sovereign (or state) debt.   And the one left carrying the can for this is the ordinary Irish taxpayer.  

The amounts involved are far greater than a country the size of Ireland can manage.   The overall €90 billion bank debt mountain alone is too much, even without adding in all the rest of the debt due to overspending and budget deficits.

The outcry caused by shaving the deficit by €3.5 billion in December and the huge concern over the €3 billion promissory note payment on Anglo bank debt we are due to make in March shows the scale of the problem. Even if we wanted to, we cannot cope with our total debt, which is probably north of €200 billion.

So what do we do?  First off, we stop pretending that we are "on the road to recovery.”  The government is clutching at straws in the wind as it maintains its brainless positivity.

According to the latest figures, there has been a slight fall in the number out of work here (although it's still above 14.5 percent) and that has been seized on as "good news.”  But there has also been a fall in the number of those at work, which seems impossible if the number out of work is falling.

The contradiction is explained by mass emigration ... that's what our "good news" is based on.

Similarly, tax returns here rose slightly in the last set of figures, but that could go the other way in the next set of figures depending on global trade.  

These "signs of recovery" are uncertain.   The more important point is that they are largely irrelevant in comparison with the scale of our debt problem.  And even if we do achieve a fragile and very gradual recovery here over the next decade or two, the benefits from that will all be consumed by our debt problem.

Is that fair?   Obviously not.  Even if we could pay back our bank debt mountain, we should not do so because it is morally unjust and would condemn the Irish people to misery for decades to come.  

The ECB and the Eurocrats who blackmailed Ireland into repaying all the bondholders -- even including most of those who were unguaranteed -- now have to step up and shoulder responsibility for their actions. We don't know exactly what went on between the ECB and Ireland because the papers have not been released, but we have a pretty good idea.

Across Europe there is now a growing view that the ECB trick of forcing countries to turn bank debt into sovereign debt is not acceptable.   The new financial structure recently put in place in Europe -- the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) -- is partially an acceptance of that view.

Under the ESM, several things need to happen.  The €90 billion bank debt mountain that now overshadows Ireland has to be transferred to the ESM and the ECB.  In return the ESM and the ECB can take ownership of the Irish banks from the Irish state and can then use whatever profits the banks make to work down the debt over a very long time frame, 40 or 50 years.  

That would lift the bank debt burden off the Irish taxpayer, who had nothing to do with it in the first place. It would mean that we could concentrate on paying down the bill for our budget deficits which is a huge challenge in itself.  It would mean that at last there was some real hope for our future.  

So our New Year Resolution for 2013 must be that we will not pay back any more of the bank debt.

Happy New Year, Europe!

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?

We need abortion laws, now - Savita Halapanavar’s death force Irish people to make their voices heard

Another public protest in favor of abortion rights took place in
Dublin last Wednesday evening.

The Savita Halappanavar case has forced Irish people at last to face up to the reality of abortion. After years of dodging the issue, there is now no way of avoiding some kind of action here to clear up the uncertainty that surrounds abortion in Ireland.    

It's not just because of the tragic death of Savita.  In the background, the European Court of Human Rights is watching what is going on here. 

They have already warned Ireland (in the finding in the A, B and C case taken by three Irish women) that the absence of any legal framework which will tell a woman whether under Irish law she can have an abortion or not is a denial of her human rights and that action must be taken to correct this.  

The Irish government has to respond soon, and the Savita case has given added urgency to that reality.  

Of course, the truth is that Irish women do have abortions.  For years, while people here argued furiously at various times about the wording of constitutional provisions to protect both the unborn and the mother, the reality has been that abortion has been going on around us all the time. 

The current figure (based on U.K. data) is that 12 Irish women a day travel to the U.K. for an abortion, although the real figure is known to be higher since many of them conceal their origins when they arrive at the clinics in Britain.  If we did not have the U.K. next door to us, where abortion is available under fairly liberal guidelines, we would have had abortion in Ireland years ago.  

Read more Irish news stories here

Because we had the abortion escape route to Britain we could afford to be hypocritical and claim that Ireland has much higher protection for the unborn here, and as a result we do not have abortion at all. 

The truth is we did have abortion all the time. It's just that all the Irish abortions were done in Britain.  

This has been going on for decades.  As we pointed out here last week, it is national hypocrisy on a breathtaking scale.  It has been going on day after day, month after month, year after year. 

And you can be sure that it has been going on over the past two weeks as everyone here debated the tragedy of Savita, the young Indian woman who died in a Galway hospital from blood poisoning while going through a delayed miscarriage after being refused a termination.

She was refused for three days because a fetal heartbeat was still detectable and "because this is a Catholic country."  By the time the fetus had died and was removed, she had developed infection and septicemia killed her a couple of days later. 

As the debate here raged over the past two weeks, every single day, rain or shine, stormy or calm, at least a dozen Irish women were on a plane or a ferry making the lonely journey to Britain for an abortion they could not get at home.

The other way that abortion goes on here is by termination for medical reasons in hospitals in Ireland.  The numbers involved are much lower, of course, because in this modern age terminations of a pregnancy for medical reasons are relatively rare.  (They are particularly rare in Ireland, of course, because pregnant Irish women with serious illnesses like cancer go to the U.K. for a termination before starting treatment here, which allows the Irish pro-lifers to boast about how safe maternal services are in Ireland, even without abortion!)  

Read more Irish news stories here

But such terminations do happen in Ireland, despite our pretence that there is no abortion here.  We don't know the numbers involved because although the Irish health service collects all kinds of data, it does not collect information on how many pregnancies are terminated in Irish hospitals.   We don't want to know, you see, because such statistics might make us uncomfortable. 

It's easy to make us uncomfortable.  Even the word abortion is not something we like to hear, so when we talk about what happens occasionally in our hospitals to pregnant women who are seriously ill we use the word termination instead.

It is this second way that abortion happens (or does not happen) in Ireland that has been discussed so much since the tragic death of Savita.   And this kind of abortion involves just as much hypocrisy and double think on the subject as does our national amnesia about the abortion trail from here to the U.K.   

On abortion/termination, the guiding principle for doctors in Ireland is the key phrase in the ruling from our Supreme Court in 1992 in a case involving a teenager who was pregnant and suicidal (the X case).  This ruling stated that abortion here is legal under the 1983 amendment to our constitution when there is "a real and substantial risk to the life, as opposed to the health, of the mother."  The ruling also stated that the risk could be one of suicide. 

This was the general principle set out by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the constitution and its 1983 amendment.  But to give a detailed framework for the circumstances in which abortion is permissible here, legislation would be necessary.  The Supreme Court said as much.  

But our politicians, terrified of the pro-life lobby, did nothing, year after year and government after government.  Which is why there is no legal framework, however restricted it might be, for abortion here.  

The Irish Medical Council did issue guidelines for doctors which basically repeated the Supreme Court line about "a real and substantial risk to the life, as opposed to the health, of the mother."  But the question for pregnant women and their doctors remains, what does this mean exactly? 

At what point does ill health which may be caused by or complicated by a pregnancy become a substantial risk to the life of the mother?   With different conditions and diseases, this can vary greatly and also can be less or more difficult to pinpoint.  

So does one err on the side of caution?  And if so, how far on the side of caution?  And is it right to leave a decision like this entirely with a doctor or should the woman have a say -- perhaps the final say?

The entire spectrum from, at one end, a woman's right to choose, to, at the other end, an entirely medical/legal decision by other people with the woman having no say, covers a great deal of complicated ground.  

Read more Irish news stories here

Where you are on the spectrum can depend on where you are in Ireland. In one case in 2010 a woman with malignant melanoma was advised by her doctors to get a termination, but this was refused by Cork University Hospital because they decided her life was not at immediate risk.  They did this even though delay in treatment in such cases can be dangerous.

How advanced would the cancer have to be before they allowed an abortion?  In her case we do not know because she went to the U.K. for a termination and she died a year later.

There have been other cases where fetuses have had fatal abnormalities, meaning they could not be viable after birth, but the women involved were refused terminations because their lives were not at risk. 

And there are other cases (like the A, B and C cases) where family circumstances, heavy addictions or mental instability have meant that the women involved could not cope with their unplanned pregnancies and wanted to terminate them.  But no guidance or rules are available here.

Depending on who you talk to in the medical profession here, you can get widely varying accounts of what happens in Irish hospitals in circumstances in which pregnant women are seriously ill. 

The pro-life lobby says that because abortion is permitted if there is "a substantial risk to the life" of the mother, there is no reason for concern.  But try telling that to a doctor in a pressured situation or a pregnant woman who is afraid of what might happen if her condition suddenly worsens.


Read More: Abortion debate continues to rage in Ireland after Savita Halappanavar’s death


In a case like Savita's, for example, if there is some sign of infection during an extended miscarriage and there is a possibility, even a remote possibility, that this could develop into septicemia which might not be spotted in time to be controlled by antibiotics, does that count as a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother? 

In the absence of legislation that clearly sets out parameters for doctors to follow, the answer can depend on where you are and who your doctor is. 

Following the ruling by the European Court in 2010, the Irish government set up an expert group of doctors and lawyers to do a report on abortion legislation for Ireland.   That report is now with the government and is due to be published this week, although much of the content was leaked to the
media over the weekend.  

Instead of making a firm recommendation, the report gives the government a series of options, varying from doing very little, to making regulations to new legislation. 

The preferred option seems to be legislation to make restricted access to abortion legal in line with the Supreme Court wording, with additional regulations to define what that would mean in practice. 

So abortion would become legal in situations where the mother's life is in danger, and the regulations would spell out how to establish when this is the case.

Two medical specialists (not ordinary doctors) would have to sign off on a permission for a termination.  There would be a system for appeal to a wider group of specialists if the woman is unhappy with the decision.  What is proposed seems complex and could take considerable time, which may not be available in crisis situations. 

No mention is made about what to do when a woman is carrying an unviable fetus, or a fetus with gross abnormalities, and wants a termination.  There is no acceptance of the principle of a woman's right to choose, no matter how critical a situation she is facing.  

Consequently, ideas such as giving a woman an absolute right to choose in the very early stage of pregnancy and giving her the right to choose in consultation with a doctor at a slightly later stage (up to 10 or 12 weeks) and for specified reasons are completely absent from the report.

It is interesting that the thinking in the report, like the Supreme Court wording, is very close to the position of the Catholic Church, which accepts that a pregnancy may be terminated if it is an unavoidable consequence of an intervention necessary to save the life of a mother.

The key test from the Catholic Church point of view is that there is no direct intention to destroy the fetus, that the ending of the pregnancy is an unavoidable consequence of necessary medical action to protect the mother's life. 

In other words, the termination must be an unavoidable accident that happens during the medical intervention.   It's an accident that doctors know is going to happen, but it's still an accident.  

This is the kind of stuff that the intellectuals of the Catholic Church -- all celibate men of course -- spend years studying in theology classes in Rome and it gets incredibly complex and convoluted. 
Self-flagellation is nothing compared with the torture they go through delivering their lengthy pronouncements on the subject.  

Sadly, this report appears to be in the same category.  Based on the leaks we have seen, it does not seem to be much help. 

Now it's up to the government to decide what to do.  It's not just a question of meeting the demands of the European Court.  It's because we do not want to see another tragedy like Savita. 

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.