Pensions time bomb in Ireland - financial torture for the Irish people as worst budget to date arrives

Members of the Irish police force can retire in their fifties with a full state pension.

For the past two weeks, the papers here have been full of dire predictions about what's going to be in the budget in December.  

We know that a raft of tax hikes and state spending cuts are coming down the line because we have to get our deficit down by another three billion or so in 2013.  It's all part of the EU/IMF plan under which we got the bailout money and which requires us to balance the nation's books -- or at least get the deficit down to three percent -- by 2015. 

We will be looking at the financial torture that is on the way for us in detail in this column in the coming weeks.  But before we start talking about the budget it's worth taking time to focus on a real hot issue here which so far has stayed just below the radar.

I'm talking about the pensions time bomb that is ticking away in the background in Ireland.  (It's also relevant to the debate about Budget cuts and we will come back to that in a moment.)

The pensions time bomb is a huge issue for people in the private sector here -- in other words, people who work for private companies, not the state.   The fact is that the pension schemes in most companies here -- big and small -- are bankrupt.

Close to 80 percent of the Defined Benefit pension schemes in private companies here are in deep trouble, with huge black holes in their pension funds caused by the property and stock market collapses. 

Defined Benefit (DB) pension schemes are so called because the benefit the retiring person gets is defined in advance.  In most cases, someone who worked for a company for 40 years would get two thirds of their salary as an annual pension.  So if you were earning €60,000, your pension would be €40,000 a year. 

Because people move around, not many people would have 40 years service in one company.  In our example, if you had 20 years service, your pension from the company would be 20,000 a year.  (A full pension is 40 sixtieths of final salary, so if you have, say, 27 years service, you get 27 sixtieths of your salary.)

The most important thing is that the benefit is defined in advance when you join the pension scheme.
The DB schemes were financed usually by both the company and the employee who together would put in around 18 percent of the person's salary in monthly contributions into the fund (12 percent from the company and six percent from the person's salary). 

This money was put into the pension fund and then invested by the trustees into blue chip shares and bonds. The income generated paid the pensions as they arose. 

The system worked pretty well over the years, with the usual ups and downs of the markets averaging out over time. However, the recent global financial crash was more than the DB schemes could handle, with the value of their investments plunging and their income vanishing.  

Most DB schemes now have a black hole in the fund that was supposed to pay the pensions. The official statistics show that at least 80 percent of the DB pensions schemes in companies in Ireland are in trouble, unable to pay the retirees what they thought they would be getting.

Most of the big companies closed their DB schemes to new entrants over the past few years.  New employees instead were put into Defined Contribution schemes, in which what you contribute is set but what you get at the end depends completely on investment performance. 

A lot of companies have sharply reduced what their DB schemes will be paying out.  Some (like the prestigious Superquinn store group a week ago) also said they would not be paying pensions until later -- in their case until former employees are 68. 

A few companies -- and here I have to declare an interest because my employer (the Irish Independent group) is one of them -- have either shut down their DB schemes completely or are shaping up to do it.  Unable to meet their obligations, they are required to do so by law. 

In my own case, I will be okay for various reasons which I'm not going to go into here.  But for many people -- and we're talking tens of thousands of people here who have worked all their lives in private companies, in the real economy -- it's a heartbreaking situation. 

It's hard to get statistics on this, but many of them are going to end up with around half what they were expecting, and in the worst cases they will end up with nothing, or almost nothing.   And that after paying into their pension schemes all their working lives!  

There are tens of thousands of people here who paid into their pensions in the private sector for years -- people now in their late forties or fifties or even sixties and just a few years from retirement -- and the modestly comfortable retirement they were looking forward to has been snatched away from them.   Now their future is uncertain and bleak.  

Given what has happened in the Irish economy, in share values and property values, this could be seen as unfortunate but inevitable.  When the pension fund money is gone it's gone. 

The whole country has to deal with the new reality, you could say.  Everybody is feeling the pain. 

But that would not be true.  

Everyone is not sharing in the pensions pain here, which is where the ticking pensions time bomb comes in.  

Private sector pensions here have been destroyed. But state sector pensions -- the pensions of everyone who is on the state payroll here -- have been completely protected. 

So the politicians and all their advisors, the doctors, nurses, teachers, police, judges, soldiers, diplomats, civil servants, clerks and all the others who work in the administration jobs that keep the wheels of state turning, and all those in the numerous quangos who are counted as part of the state sector, they all will be getting their full pensions, worth up to two-thirds of their average salary.    

That's fantastic, you say, the state must have done a brilliant job investing their pensions funds to be able to pay all those big pensions. 

Well no, actually.  You see, there is NO pension fund invested to pay the pensions of state workers.  Instead, their pensions are paid out of current state revenue (which used to be taxes and is now mainly borrowing).

So we have the incredible situation where all these state workers will be getting their full and guaranteed pensions while at the same time tens of thousands of people in private companies have seen their pensions vanish.  

And it's even worse than that, because in some parts of the public service (the police, for example), people can retire in their fifties on a full state pension. 

The joke is that it is the taxes from the now pension-less private sector workers which paid for the state pensions up to now. 

State workers and their unions have tried to justify the situation by pointing out that they have been forced to pay more towards their pensions in the last few years, but it's still way behind the increased contributions in many private sector companies where the employees have now ended up with half or a quarter of their expected pensions. 

That's why I am calling this a ticking time bomb.  It's a deeply unfair, almost unbelievable situation. Civil wars have been started over less.

Pay and pensions in the state sector here amount to close to one-third of all annual state spending here.

And pensions are a big part of that. 

Which is where we bring the argument back to the big budget cuts we are facing in the upcoming budget in December. We need to save three billion? Here's how to save a billion or two without cutting services or hiking the tax load even higher: 

Take an average of the cuts in pension payments that are happening in the defined benefit schemes in the top 100 private sector companies here and apply that level of reduction to all pensions currently being paid to former state workers.

Not only would it solve most of our budget problem this year, it would be the fair thing to do. Everyone would be carrying the burden.  It just might prevent the ticking pensions time bomb going off.

Former billionaire Sean Quinn tells a story of two Ireland's

Sean Quinn outside the High Court in Dublin in June (Credit: Photocall Ireland)

The story of Sean Quinn, just four years ago Ireland's richest man and now bankrupt, is the story of two Irelands.

It's the story of the Ireland of the boom and the Ireland of the bust -- and how we got from one place to the other.

It's also the story of sophisticated urban Ireland and simple rural Ireland -- and of the great gulf that still divides the two.

You may already be familiar with the Quinn story.   But it's probably worth repeating the basic facts.
Quinn, now 64, came from very humble beginnings, a family farm of 20 acres or so in Co. Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, close to the border with Co. Cavan in the South.  It may have been a very small farm even by Irish standards, but it had a gravel pit.

As a young man Quinn borrowed enough to get machinery to extract and wash the gravel so that he could sell it to local builders.  He drove the truck himself.

He called his business Sean Quinn Quarries, which was probably overstating what he had, but the grand title showed his ambition.   He may have left school at 14 but he was a smart young man.

Delivering his gravel to builders, he noticed there seemed to be only one brand of cement around.   The cement market in Ireland was a virtual monopoly just waiting for someone to bust it open, and that is exactly what he did.

Quinn Cement became the model for his approach to business.  It was all about finding a sector of the economy that was a closed market divided up between a few players and busting it open with lower prices.

After cement he turned his attention to glass bottles with Quinn Glass, and then it was heating radiators and plastics and other businesses.

With his record of success and can-do attitude, the banks were happy to back from one venture to the next, even as the stakes became high.

By the time he got into the insurance business the Quinn Group was huge, employing over 5,000 people, many of them in his home territory straddling the border, an area that had been forgotten by the rest of Ireland north and south.

By 2008 he was Ireland's richest man, according to Forbes magazine, with personal wealth estimated at over €3 billion.  He remained a country man of simple tastes, enjoying sport (he had been captain of the Fermanagh Gaelic football team), a pint in his local bar and a weekly game of cards with old friends where the stakes were pennies.

In time he built a palatial home in the Cavan countryside, which as far as the Dublin sophisticates were concerned was evidence of how unsophisticated he was. You can take the man out of the bog but you can't take the bog out of the man, they said.

He seemed to have the golden touch in business.   He was a hero not only to the people in Cavan, Longford and Fermanagh, where his business empire was centered, but to ordinary people across Ireland, many of whom, for example, got car insurance from Quinn Direct at quotes other insurance companies could not match.

It was the same with health insurance. When one of the big two companies here, BUPA, was pulling out of the Irish market Quinn stepped in and took over the business, rescuing the worried customers and offering strong competition to the other big health insurer in the Irish market.

The insurance business grew rapidly and Quinn expanded into the U.K. market, again carving out business with lower quotes than the traditional providers were able to offer.

Behind the scenes, however, an even bigger play was going on.  With a huge personal fortune made from his businesses during the boom and a river of premium payments cash flowing into his insurance business, Quinn had a pile of money to make the biggest play of his life.

Using Contracts for Difference (a financial mechanism that enables people to gamble on shares), Quinn built up a 28 percent stake in Anglo Irish Bank.

Anglo, you will remember, was the small bank that was largely responsible for the crazy lending that fuelled the construction boom here and which eventually collapsed, bringing down the Irish economy and the other banks with it.

Quinn lost close to €3 billion on his Anglo gamble, wiping out his personal fortune and leaving him deeply in debt to Anglo (now the IBRC, the body trying to sort out the Anglo mess, which is pursuing him through the courts).

The construction collapse had crippled his cement business and the economic downturn also hit his other businesses hard.  Hopelessly in debt, he was declared bankrupt and lost control of everything in the Quinn Group.

But the biggest mess was Quinn Insurance.   The new Financial Regulator looked at the books and discovered that the reason it had been able to offer low premiums and make big profits was because of under-provisioning for future claims.  In layman's language, it was not putting enough aside to meet the claims that were bound to be made in the future.

The hole is now estimated to be somewhere around €1.8 billion.  To avoid a collapse that would have left people with Quinn insurance both in Ireland and the U.K. without cover, the government is now applying a levy on ALL insurance policies in Ireland.

In effect, everyone in Ireland with an insurance policy will be paying for the mess through a levy that will be applied for the next 20 years or so. So the next time I get my car or house or health insurance renewal bill it will have a lump added on to pay for the Quinn debacle (and it will be the same for everyone else here).

Meanwhile in recent weeks, attempts by the Quinn family to keep their foreign property assets out of the reach of the Irish banks they owe money to have ended up with one of Sean Quinn's sons being jailed.

Several hundred million euro worth of assets are at stake, mainly in eastern Europe.   They appear to be the last part of the Quinn family's wealth.

Despite all this, you may have seen that there was a mass rally in Cavan recently in support of the Quinn family.  Joining the march were prominent sports and business people from the Quinn heartland, as well as the high profile priest Father Brian D'Arcy.

The question asked at the rally was clear -- why are the Quinns being hounded by the Irish courts, when all the politicians, accountants and bankers who oversaw the economic collapse are still free (apart from one or two bankers who are facing court in the near future)?

Why are the courts ruining the Quinns when a lot of the people in power during the boom are now being allowed to retire on fat pensions and with big pay-offs?

It's possible to have some sympathy for this view.   There are a lot of professionals (lawyers, accountants, etc.) who now lecture or even sneer at the Quinns who were up to their necks in the boom charging huge fees.

And, unlike Quinn, who created up to 7,000 jobs in a depressed part of the country ignored by officialdom, these people have never created a single job anywhere.

As for the politicians and the courts, it's easy to be pure and sanctimonious when your big salary is coming from the state and you don't ever have to graft or get your hands dirty to earn a living.

Having said all that, it's hard for the average person here to have much sympathy for Sean Quinn.

We now know that the way the insurance company was being run was highly irresponsible, and we're all going to pay for that.  And the extent of the gamble he took on Anglo Irish shares showed little or no concern for the jeopardy he was placing his business empire, his employees and even his family in.  

The Quinn story is really the story in microcosm of what went wrong in Ireland.

Drive, ambition, unbounded self-belief, and a willingness to take huge risks are all admirable qualities.  But too much of this can be dangerous.

A country, like a man, has limits. Quinn forgot them.

But so did many other people here.

How Irish gun laws would have prevented the Aurora massacre

James Holmes pictured in court on Monday (Credit: RJ Sangosti-Pool/Getty Images)

One  aspect of American culture that is incomprehensible to people in Ireland (and probably the rest of the civilized world) is the attitude to guns and gun control.

We don't understand how such a simplistic insistence on "the right to bear arms" can prevail among so many people in America.   And we don't understand why, given the absence of any meaningful level of gun control, anyone over there should be surprised when yet another shooting outrage occurs.

Watching the TV news here in the aftermath of the horror at the Aurora movie theater, people here were deeply moved by the anguish of the families and friends of the victims.

But as well as feeling sympathy, the unspoken question in everyone's mind here was a simple one --how can anyone over there be surprised?

How can anyone in the U.S. think that such outrages will not happen every now and then when ordinary people can possess an arsenal like the one accumulated by James Holmes?

Listening to the commentary by leaders and experts on the American TV news -- which many Irish people now get as part of their normal TV package -- it was notable how the fundamental issue of gun control was dodged yet again.

The shooting rampage was discussed as a tragedy, as something impossible to understand, as something that could not have been predicted, as an outrage that could have happened anywhere, not just in the U.S.

No one was prepared to discuss the elephant in the room, the ease and speed with which Holmes was able to build up the arsenal for his killing spree.

When it was mentioned, it was stated without embarrassment that he had acquired the guns legally, even though they included semi-automatic weapons and thousands of rounds.

It was also emphasized that this was not the time for discussion about gun control, that any knee-jerk reaction in the wake of such a tragedy would be inappropriate.

Instead, the people of Aurora were urged to focus on rising above this awful atrocity by coming together to comfort and support each other and to begin the healing process.

Don't let the gunman win by going down to his level, they were told.

Don't let the gunman win by allowing his actions to degrade the community and its values.  Don't let the gunman win by allowing Aurora to be defined in the future by the terrible thing that happened there.

This was the message put forward by community, political and church leaders in the aftermath of the shooting and seen by us here on the extended American TV news coverage.

It was also the message from ordinary people in Aurora who, although devastated by what had happened, were restating their values, their belief in how precious life is and how they must stand together with pride as a good and caring community.

All of which is laudable, even noble, showing us the best side of American culture.  But the question is, is it enough?

Reporters and experts on American TV also spent time searching through Holmes's background, looking for an insight into the kind of young man he was and what stresses he was under, as though the answer to preventing a recurrence of what had happened could be found in that analysis.

But the answer won't be found there.   As a response, that is not enough either.  
So let's get down to the issue at the heart of all this -- gun control.

The fact is that there are young men under stress in Ireland and many other countries in Europe right now, but we do not see Auroras happening here.  

There are isolated, resentful young men here, just as there are in the U.S.  A proportion of them will become delusional and dangerous, just as happens in the U.S.

The difference is that here it is very difficult to get guns, and almost impossible to get automatic weapons and large amounts of ammunition.

If you have enough money and you're tough enough to deal with the criminal underworld, you can buy an old handgun or a sawn-off shotgun in Dublin -- but even that is extremely difficult.  A shy loner (like Holmes) would have no chance of getting a gun on the street here.

In the U.S., however, inadequates like him can do the paperwork and buy online or go into their local gun store and present an innocent face while they buy assault weapons more appropriate to a war zone.

The assertion on some American TV news shows that this kind of awful tragedy can happen anywhere and is not peculiar to America -- the Breivik case in Norway was cited several times -- is misguided.

There is a big difference in the frequency and character of these outrages in America.   Cases like Aurora are much more frequent in the U.S. and their character is very different.
Breivik is a neo-Nazi nut with an extreme political agenda.  Almost all the other cases in Europe also have political agendas.

The incidents in the U.S., apart from being much more frequent, are different because they are not usually politically motivated.   Typically they are the work of inadequate men, often young men, who are escaping their private failure and isolation through a fantasy payback on the society they imagine is oppressing them.

The most obvious way of stopping them is to make it much more difficult for them to get guns.   Yet that is something that America refuses to do.

Nor is it just shooting outrages like Aurora that is the problem in America today.   The level of gun killings across the U.S. is so high -- an average of 84 people are shot and die as a result every day, with many more injured -- that it shames a country which calls itself civilized.

That's seven Auroras every day. Yet America refuses to do the one thing that would make a real difference -- introduce strong gun control.

The reasons put forward seem infantile to us, as though America is still living in the days of the Wild West.

There might have been some justification for carrying a gun back then.   There is no justification for ordinary people having weapons in a modern society like the U.S. today.

The argument that the right to bear arms is a key part of the individual freedoms that make America the land of the free does not stand up to scrutiny. Yes it is a constitutional right, but that does not mean it must remain forever.

In a healthy democracy, a constitution is changed by referendum as a society develops.   What made sense in 1791 when the Second Amendment was adopted may not make any sense today.

And by the way, if you look at the wording of the Second Amendment it puts the right to bear arms in the context of having a militia ready to defend the state.  So back then it was not seen as a fundamental right for the individual.That came later, most recently in Supreme Court decisions in the last few years.

The idea that true freedom must allow good people to have almost unrestricted access to weapons so they can protect themselves against the bad guys is flawed.  It ignores the obvious fact that if there are very few guns around, very few bad guys will be able to get them.

What may be best for society may involve the curtailment of some individual freedoms.   It's already clear from the statistics that states in the U.S. where there are lower levels of gun ownership have lower homicide levels.

The frequently heard gun lobby argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" ignores this.   The fact is that the more guns there are around, the more people get killed with them.
The reason is simple -- killing someone with a gun is easy; killing someone with a knife, in contrast, is harder and also there are no automatic knives that enable you to kill a dozen people with a slight pressure of one finger.

There's no point in grieving for the Aurora dead if America does not do something about this because it's going to happen again.  America needs gun control.  That's the reality.
It's a reality that almost all other developed countries have accepted, even somewhere like Ireland, in spite of our much more recent fight for national freedom and our rebel image as the fighting Irish.   America could do worse than copy what we have done here.

Basically in Ireland, you can't have a gun unless you can convince your local Gardai (police) that you have a good reason for wanting one. That reason is usually that you are a farmer or you want to use the gun for hunting in the countryside -- well over 90% of guns held here are shotguns and sporting rifles used for hunting or controlling vermin.  These weapons are usually single shot and never automatic.

If your reason for wanting a gun is to do target shooting, you have to belong to a recognized gun club where very strict rules will apply.   Almost no handguns (pistols or revolvers) are allowed in private possession outside of gun clubs.

Anyone who wants a gun here has to get a firearm certificate from the Gardai, allowing them to have possession of a specified type of gun, as well as a relatively small quantity of appropriate ammunition.

The license or certificate has to be renewed every three years.  A separate certificate is required for each gun, and the Gardai are very slow to issue more than one to a person without good reason.

Handguns are severely restricted with very few in private possession, and those are limited to small caliber guns or air guns.

No one here seems to find any of this a problem.   I don't have the latest figures, but the number of guns per 100 population in Ireland is around five. It's an insult to the intelligence of the American people that nothing is done about gun control once and for all.

The state of play in Irish economy -- the IMF tells it like it is

People line up for unemployment benefits in Dublin last summer. 

As you probably know, last week Ireland passed its most recent review by the IMF-EU-ECB troika of officials -- they visit us every tree months to check the nation's finances.

It's the humiliating part of getting the bailout.  They have the right to come in, examine how we're doing and tell us off to smarten up if we're not sticking to the program.   Any back sliding and they could turn off  the money flow until we came to our senses.

So far that has not been necessary.  In fact we have been such good bailout recipients that we've passed every examination, and we're being held up to other EU countries in trouble as the model to emulate.
Once again we passed last week's quarterly exam -- the seventh since the November 2010 bailout -- with flying colors.  In fact we've been so good at meeting our targets and keeping the troika happy that it's almost boring.   Every three months they come in and tell us we're making great progress and to keep it up.

There is a down side to this, however, because it has generated a false sense of achievement and security among people here.  It's true that we have managed to keep more or less on track so far in the program, but the reality is that the toughest part of the process still lies ahead of us.  

The minor adjustments we have made so far have been mere trimming rather than cutting.   All the low hanging fruit in the garden of state spending has been picked.  In the future we are going to have to make cuts where it really hurts.

We're not near the end of our rebalancing of the nation's finances.  In fact we're not near even the halfway point.

The fact is that despite the cuts in some state spending and the modest increases in some taxes over the past three years, Ireland still has the highest budget deficit in the eurozone.  Not that you would think that listening to the government ministers complacently expressing "satisfaction" after getting the troika's approval again last week.

We may be hitting the targets in the bailout plan, but the fact is we're still broke.  And we still can't quite accept the idea.

We go on running a tax system that is porous with avoidance schemes, and we go on insisting on a level of state spending that is way beyond our means.  All suggestions of higher taxes and all attempts at making serious cuts in state spending are met with howls of anguish.  
The result is that progress in rebalancing our books -- getting rid of the yawning budget deficit -- has been painfully slow.

Under the bailout program we're supposed to have the gap down to a 3% deficit by 2015.  If we are to achieve that we need to stop the fiscal baby steps and take a few massive strides in cutting spending.

Even if we manage to get a deal on our bank debt from Europe which will lower the interest payments we have to make (due to reach around €10 billion a year within the next three years), we still have to rein in spending in line with our much reduced revenue.

Maintaining spending at near boom time levels even though tax revenue has collapsed is not a sustainable situation.  That's why the markets stopped lending to us and why we had to take the bailout.  
The fact is that if we are to regain our economic sovereignty the first thing we have to do is to start living within our means again.  

That means we will have to go through at least three more draconian budgets over the next three years, budgets in which we implement real hikes in tax and real cuts in spending.

It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be popular (just wait until they make major cuts in welfare benefits and replace the present token property charge with a real property tax that takes big money from anyone living in a half decent house.) But that's what's ahead of us from next year, and favorable reports from the troika won't make the medicine go down any easier. It's going to be a very rude awakening from our present national torpor.

Rather than scare people with the reality of what lies ahead, the government has been saying little and hoping for a miracle of some kind.

Over the past year they have been clinging to the hope that growth in the economy would start to lift tax revenues and lower the welfare burden as more people found jobs.  That would narrow the deficit gap and mean less cutting would be needed.  

But it ain't happening.  At over 14%, unemployment remains at a catastrophic level.  The latest figures from the state's Central Statistics Office, which also were published last week, show that the Irish economy contracted in the first quarter of this year.

So there is not going to be any easy growth-led solution for us in the immediate future, the kind of solution that would allow us to wriggle through this correction process without feeling any real pain.

So let's look at some of the things we have to do here. First on the revenue side, we have to move away from the present tax system which is riddled with reliefs that allow many high earners to avoid much of their tax (dodgy property investment  driven by tax reliefs was an example, contributing in a big way to the boom).
We need a simple, fair, progressive system with no get outs.  A bonus would be that the army of lawyers and accountants who now get rich by undermining the system would have to get a real job for a change.

We also need a similar approach to the forthcoming property tax next year -- no exceptions, everyone pays, thereby keeping the average as low as possible. Charges for many state services now provided free (water for example) will also have to be introduced, even in taboo areas like health and education.  The old adage that you never appreciate something you get for nothing has been proven by the rampant waste in the system at present.  

On the spending side, even bigger changes have to be made.   The two big untouchables, welfare and health, account for two thirds of all state spending, with the last one third going on everything else.
So to make any real progress in reducing the state spending we can't pay for, we have to start making cuts in these two areas.   There's simply no other way.

It's not just a matter of cutting welfare rates. It's also a matter of limiting who is eligible, thereby drastically reducing the numbers who are claiming.  

Our unemployment benefit, or jobseekers allowance as we call it these days, is one of the highest in Europe and has no limitation on how long someone can claim.  People learn to work the system and develop a powerful sense of entitlement.  Work, especially a regular job at or just above the minimum wage, becomes something to be avoided.

For those with children and who qualify for a range of free state services and payments, the cumulative benefits that come with being out of work are so high that it's hard for an employer to better them in pay.  

"It wouldn't be worth it for me to take a job," these people say.  "I'd lose my rent allowance and my fuel allowance and maybe my medical card.  I'd have to pay for transport to a job and I'd have to pay for childcare.

“It wouldn't be worth it.  I'd rather stay at home with the kids."

This situation is a real problem here now, although everyone tries to deny it.  One economist who used to work for the Economic and Social Research Institute, the main state-backed think tank here, recently let the cat out of the bag by writing a report detailing exactly what was going on.  The reaction here from the liberal consensus now running the country was to try to discredit him.

The other area that has to be tackled in a big way is the state sector.  There are too many people on the state payroll here (about one-fifth of the national workforce!), they're being paid too much, and when they retire they have guaranteed high pensions we can no longer afford to pay.  On top of that, efficiency in delivery of state services is poor.

Instead of instituting major cutbacks and reforms in the state sector, the government has continued with the Croke Park Agreement negotiated by the last government.  The state sector is the last bastion of union power in Ireland and the present government, like its predecessor, is terrified of stirring up trouble which could cause strikes and disruption of basic services.

The Croke Park deal, which guarantees no forced job losses and no pay cuts in return for increased flexibility and efficiency, is bogus.  It's largely controlled by the state workers themselves, and so change is resisted and takes forever.

Last week, for example, we had more statistics which showed that sick leave in the state sector is now twice as high as in private industry.  Why? Because they can get away with it.

And despite all the talk about keeping state pay under control, it turns out that pay among state workers is now higher than it was at the peak of the boom in 2008.   This is largely a result of the system of automatic annual increments in pay in the state sector, in contrast with the private sector where pay has been squeezed over the past few years as companies had to fight for survival.

All that has to change in the state sector, with management brought in from the private sector, performance related pay, cutbacks in pay and pensions to mirror what has happened in the private sector, and so on.
Instead, the state workers have been allowed to negotiate a reduction in their numbers, with people taking deals to get out on their golden pensions for life which are guaranteed at close to two thirds of salary.  

The immediate savings for the state are very small, although the government is insisting that long-term savings will be substantial, with smaller numbers.

The IMF has watched in mild horror as this has gone on.  They even suggested publicly that it might be better to reduce pay and pensions in the state sector rather than cut numbers so that the level of state services for the ordinary citizens could be protected.  

Obviously they are right.  But instead the state workers have been allowed to protect their pay, pensions and poor efficiency as the bogus Croke Park Agreement carries on and gets nowhere.  

The government claims savings are being made and reforms are underway.  But no one in the private sector believes them.

In the next budget in December -- assuming we don't need an emergency one before then -- the government has to find another €3.5 billion in savings and extra revenue to meet the bailout targets.

This time, even with a new property tax and other tax changes, major cuts in spending will be needed.  The untouchables of the state sector pay and pensions, welfare and health will have to be tackled.  There's nowhere else to go to get the budget deficit down by the amount required over the next year.

And if our government hasn't the bottle to do it, the troika will be stepping in to tell them to man up and get on with it.

It's sad but true that we are unlikely to get real reform here until it's shoved down our throats by the EU and the IMF.

Fifty Shades of Green - formerly reserved Catholic Ireland goes wild for 'mommy porn'

Ireland has taken to risky novels with great gusto Twitter's #IrishShadesofGrey proves

God be with the days when Ireland was famous for banning "dirty" books by writers like James Joyce, Edna O'Brien and John McGahern.  

These days Irish women readers can't get enough of Fifty Shades of Grey.  The three books in the so-called “mommy porn” trilogy have been sitting in the top three slots in the Irish bestseller charts for the past 12 weeks and counting. Fifty Shades of Grey is the fastest-selling paperback ever here. 

I'm not sure what that says about Irish women.   Either they're much more liberated, or they're no longer able to distinguish between good writing and stuff that is so bad it's laughable.  Or both. 

One thing that is clear, however, is that even if we've lost our Catholic standards, we haven't lost our sense of humor. 

Twitter and the Internet here have been buzzing over the past week with the Irish take on the bondage/S&M bestseller.  You could call it Fifty Shades of Green.  

On Twitter the hashtag #IrishShadesofGrey.   The following are some of the best, beginning with my favorite: 

 *”Give it to me, give it to me” he roared aggressively ... some days Mary hated working at Ulster Bank.

*Bríd's knees were sore and her throat was raw...this was the longest Novena she'd ever attended.

*Una gave it to him exactly as he demanded: bald, smooth and hot, melting inside ... nothing beats a boiled egg.

*"I want you to tie me down for 18 months and treat me like dirt," she said ....the man from Vodafone got the contract out.

*She opened her mouth and got ready to take it ...  then the priest pressed the Communion wafer on her tongue.

*Mary's mouth watered as his thrusts quickened.....but he still couldn't open the CapriSun with his straw.

*Creamy froth erupted over her face and hair ..  Mary hated it when she sneezed into her pint of Guinness.

*Seanie admired what he saw. Mary spread them like no one else could. He loved his Kerrygold on toast.

*She collapsed, exhausted, exhilarated, for the third time.  As he started again, Mary pleaded, “Not another Siege of Ennis."

*She could barely contain her excitement as she breathed in the heady scent of bacon and cabbage.

*"Take me, take me now!" demanded Derbhla, "or we'll miss 12 o'clock Mass."

*Beating away at it, she built up the rhythm. Mary got so excited about how her bodhran playing had improved.

*She wasn’t exactly beautiful -- but she had land with good road frontage.

*Brid cried out a little as she was stretched further than she thought possible. Why did the Irish Countrywomen's Association start Pilates classes?

*He took a breath. “Will ya come back to mine? Mammy’s gone to Lough Derg for the weekend and she left a pot of stew.”

*Teresa squeezed her fingers against it and took a sniff. Yes, this Brennans Bread was fresh.

*Fumbling in the dark his finger found the spot. By pressing softly, she roared into life. His first automatic lawn mower.

*On her knees and obedient once more, she suppressed a submissive thrill. He would never know how much she loved Mass.

*Slowly he ran his finger down the middle, parting the pink softness, feeling the moist sticky center. He loved a Mikado.

*Plug it in, he said. "I've never used one of these before," she replied. Excited, she nervously turned on the Soda Stream.

*It felt smooth, firm and long in her hands. “God,” said the camogie girl, “it's hard to bate a good hurley.”

*Spread 'em, he said gruffly. Margie looked dolefully at the bags of fertilizer destined for the back field.

*She gushed, taken aback by request. "Of course I’ll do a reading Father."

Demand in Ireland for Fifty Shades has been so high that some bookshops ran out last week.   The man who runs one of the biggest bookshops in the center of Dublin told me that when he got fresh supplies in last week he was selling them at the rate of 10 an hour.  He's now out of them again. 

Some news reports here last week pointed out that the real sales of Fifty Shades are far higher than the bestseller list indicates since it covers only the print edition.  The theory is that many women are downloading the book onto e-readers like the Kindle.  This allows them to read the book anywhere without  the tell tale cover betraying what they are engrossed in.

But the bookshop manager I spoke to strongly disagrees.  He says that although e-book sales of Fifty Shades may be high, all the women who are buying the print copies in his shop are very upfront about it and show no embarrassment whatsoever. 

Even without e-book sales being counted, sales volumes so far of Fifty Shades here now exceed those of any other adult title since records began.  The speed of sales is even faster than of The Da Vinci Code.  Only the Harry Potter books sold faster here, and they are in the children/young adult category. 

All of which is a complete mystery to yours truly.   Why so many Irish women -- and over 15 million in the U.S. -- should be reading this rubbish is beyond me.   There's a difference between writing that is merely explicit and writing that's erotic.

Dip into Fifty Shades anywhere (hey, it's my job, I'm a books editor) and you will find writing that is so poor it's a joke.  It's explicit but so clunky and cheesy that it's about as titillating as a wet Monday afternoon at Knock.

You probably know that the novel features the submissive-dominant relationship between young college grad Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, a rich media tycoon in his late 20s.

Abused as a child, he is obsessed with control.   She allows him to subjugate her, which includes her being blindfolded, spanked and whipped with a riding crop -- among other kinky routines. 

Some of the naughtiest stuff takes place in the "Red Room of Pain" in Grey's mansion. But it's hard to take seriously when Anastasia exclaims things like "Holy crap!" or "Holy s***!" or even "Holy Moses!" at the appropriate moments.

Some of the more laughable stuff cannot be quoted here but the following lines give some idea of the level: "Suddenly, he sits up and tugs my panties off and throws them on the floor. Pulling off his boxer briefs, his erection springs free. Holy Cow! . . . He kneels up and pulls a condom on to his considerable length. Oh no . . . Will it? How?"

It's so poor it's almost comic, before quickly becoming seriously boring. 

For something really erotic, you need a real writer, like Booker Prize winning author John Banville. 

Banville is not only Ireland's greatest living novelist, but one of the finest writers in the English language anywhere.   Yet despite his status his new novel, Ancient Light, which was published on this side of the Atlantic last week and will appear in the U.S. in October, has caused mild shock among some of his readers here. 

The reason is that the new novel centers on a taboo affair, a summer of love in a small town in 1950s Ireland between a 15-year-old boy and his best friend's mother, who is 35.   It's not Fifty Shades, of course, although the woman involved happens to be a Mrs. Gray. 

Fifty Shades is explicit but so badly written it's risible  rather than erotic.  Banville's novel is the reverse, and it's already being hailed by the critics as a masterpiece. 

The writing is as vivid, intense and literary as all his work.  It explores the relationship between the boy and the 35-year-old woman in beautiful prose in a non-judgmental way, highlighting the extraordinary intensity of how the boy feels.

It's occasionally explicit, from the grapplings between the pair in the back of her car to an oral sex scene in a river.  

In comparison, Fifty Shades is as erotic as the Bible.

Germans need to pay for much of Irish bailout after Euro crisis -- Finally, some hard facts hit home as reality dawns for Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

The agreement reached by European leaders in the small hours of last Friday morning can be seen in two ways from an Irish perspective.

The shift in European policy allowing the trillion euro European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to be used to directly recapitalize bust banks rather than routing it through the governments of the countries in question is something that Ireland has been seeking for the past year without success.

Now it's going to happen, which is great news for us.  From that perspective, it is a hugely significant development.

But there is another way of looking at it, which is rather humiliating.  The fact is we've been begging, cajoling and demanding the EU to give us something like this for a year, pointing out that the bailout deal that was imposed on us by the EU and the IMF was grossly unfair and was crippling our economy.

What was really killing us, we pointed out, was the massive cost of fixing our bad banks, which had been turned into sovereign debt in a way that was not only questionable but immoral. Something needed to be done to change that, or we would be stuck in a depression for decades.

But all our pleading got us nowhere.   No, no, we were told.  Or more precisely, nein, nein, since it is the Germans who hold the purse strings.

Of course they knew that turning our bank debt into sovereign debt made the Irish state liable and therefore put an enormous burden on the Irish taxpayer.

Of course they knew that making the Irish taxpayer pay back all the bad debts of the Irish banks was unjust because a lot of those billions were owed to German and French banks who had speculated on the Irish property bubble, lending recklessly to their Irish counterparts to get a slice of the action.  Now the EU was insisting that they be repaid in full.

Yes it was very tough, we were told.  But we could not be given a break because other countries in trouble would want the same, it would set a bad example, the euro might collapse, we created the mess and now we must pay the price while it is being cleaned up.  And so on.

Everyone was sympathetic, but sadly nothing could be done.

Except that now it is clear that something could have been done.

Our problem was not that we did not have a strong case.  Our problem was that we are too small.   So we could be ignored or bullied, like the Greeks.

The Italian and Spanish prime ministers at last Friday's critical EU summit were not going to put up with any of that.  With their bond yields climbing to unsustainable levels, Monti, the Italian leader, laid it on the line for Angela Merkel and the rest of them.  Either the EU did something, or the euro would soon be history.

Loading the cost of shoring up Spanish and Italian banks on to the sovereign debt of those countries would lock them out of the markets and the cost of rescuing them would take the euro down.  A different solution had to be found, Monti said.

Spain and Italy were too big to ignore.  They were certainly not going to be bullied.   So Merkel blinked and at around 3 a.m. that morning the deal was agreed.

Our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny called it a "seismic" shift.

Our Tanaiste (deputy leader) Eamon Gilmore said it was a "game changer."

They both implied that the deal was a confirmation that their policy of appeasement (or should that be abasement?) in relation to Europe had paid off.

Which of course is garbage.  We are riding on the coattails of Spain and Italy, in the hope that whatever they are given we will get as well.

Our policy seems to be to rely on the misfortunes of others, as we did last year when we got a reduction in our bailout interest rate only because a lower rate was being given to Greece.

But however we get it, the fact is that this new deal is likely to be the best thing to happen to us since the property collapse.

The last government's decision at the end of 2008 to give a blanket state guarantee to all the deposits and bonds and debts of the Irish banks was a national disaster.  As the hole in the banks got deeper over the following year, the cost escalated to unbelievable levels.

Eventually, combined with the collapse of tax revenue because the property boom had ended, it brought the country to its knees, begging bowl in hand.

Enter the EU/ECB/IMF troika to rescue us with a bailout that tied us into repaying all our bank debts in full, with the taxpayers carrying the can.

The austerity program started as we battled to get our budget deficits down and cut spending to match revenue.  A huge part of our spending, of course, is now our interest payments on the bailout deal, dead money that does nothing for our economy.

The cost of bailing out our banks is over €60 billion, and the repayments on that part of the bailout have wiped out the effect of the spending cuts and tax increases we have had to suffer for the past three years or more.

The painful corrections we have made in the recent hairshirt budgets have been offset by the huge cost of our bank debt.  We're running to stand still.

The situation is so grim that there has seemed to be little point in staying here since we are being bled dry to pay off the bailout, much of which has been used to pay off bank debt.

Now, however, there is hope.  Exactly how much hope we don't know yet because the detail of what was agreed by the EU leaders last Friday morning is far from clear.

But if the headline agreement is followed through and applied fairly, then the deal will allow us eventually to step off the fiscal treadmill we have been on.

Allowing the ESM to invest directly in failing banks in Spain will stop Spanish sovereign debt reaching unsustainable levels.  Similarly in Italy. Under EU rules, the same deal will have to be made available to any EU country which needs it.

And in Ireland's case equality of treatment, which is a basic EU principle, will mean the deal will have to be backdated to cover what happened in the Irish banks.  If that happens, the €60 billion plus in bank debt the Irish state and taxpayers are carrying will have to be taken up by the ESM.

That means that Irish government debt could be reduced by up to €64 billion, which would drastically reduce our Debt/GDP ratio, the key indicator watched by the international money markets.  That would enable us to get back into the markets sooner than expected, rather than taking the bailout cash.

In fact this Thursday Ireland will be auctioning three month Treasury bills, the first time we have gone to the markets since they refused to lend to us and we were forced into the bailout. It's not the same as selling a few billion of our longer term state bonds, but it's an important first step.

So are we off the hook?  Well, not really.

We still have to get our budget deficit down as fast as possible.

Since our revenues collapsed with the property bust, the gap between our spending and revenue has been huge.

Taking the bank debt interest payments out of the equation will help, but the annual deficit in our state finances is by far the biggest part of the problem.  So our austerity regime will have to continue until our finances are back in balance.

Before we put the champagne on ice we also need to see the detail of what was agreed by the EU leaders. That is still being worked out.

But it seems that if the ESM is going to take on our bank debt, that EU fund will replace the Irish taxpayer as owners of our banks until the debts are cleared some time far into the future.

The other factor is that the Germans will never allow the ESM to put money directly into ailing banks without the construction of a pan-European bank regulatory system.  That will mean that our banks will be monitored, not only by our own regulator or by the Irish Central Bank, but by a new EU bank regulator who will be the ultimate boss.

This is to prevent a repeat of the mad speculation the Irish banks got up to during the boom and given the abysmal performance of our own regulator at the time, it may not be a bad idea.

All we got from the EU leaders as dawn broke last Friday morning was a headline agreement of the principle involved.  The devil will be in the detail.  It is likely to be extremely complex and it will take months to work out.

One final point -- money does not vanish, it just gets shifted around.

 So where will the €60 billion plus of Irish bank bad debt end up?

The ESM fund is being accumulated by contributions from all the EU nations, but Germany will be by far the biggest donor.

What is happening is a sort of mutualization of the bank debt of bust countries like Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece.   That means the taxpayers of Europe will end up carrying the can, especially the taxpayers of Germany.

The German taxpayers are already critical of Merkel for the cost to them of propping up the euro, and this new deal will increase their anger. They want countries like Greece and Ireland to pay their own bills.

The financially responsible Germans have little sympathy for what they see as irresponsible spending in Ireland and massive failure to pay taxes in Greece.  But they need to look closer to home for the guilty party where Ireland is concerned.

The fact is that the German banks funded the boom in Ireland by lending to the Irish banks so that they could get a share of the much bigger returns that could be made here at the time. They poured money in here.

If we were irresponsible, so were they.  On that basis, it's only fair that the cost of sorting out the mess in the Irish banks should involve the German taxpayer as well as the Irish taxpayer.

Ireland financial system doesn’t know how to change

Members and supporters of Sinn Fein protest outside the Merrion Hotel in Dublin where representatives of the EU/ECB/IMF were staying in April.   

You might think that because our state finances are bust and we are being propped up by the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a complete overhaul of all state spending in Ireland would have been completed by now.

You might think that, given that we will soon be two years on the lifeline of the bailout.  But you would be wrong.  The Irish state is still spending around one-third more than it raises in tax.  

This is Ireland, folks. We don't like doing the math.  We talk a lot, but we're not so keen on follow-up action.
Despite all the moaning about the so-called austerity program here, the fact is that the adjustments we have made so far are minor. We've made only a tentative start on rebalancing our spending and revenue -- just enough to keep the EU/ECB/IMF troika placated -- but real progress is painfully slow.  

To be fair to the government, the problem has been made much more difficult because of the huge cost of the welfare bill caused by an unemployment rate that exceeds 14% -- we have 430,000 people out of work.

As well as that, there is the huge cost of the repayments we now have to make on our bailout money.  That is also counted as part of the state spending we are supposed to be getting down.  

So there is an excuse.  But at the same time as this is happening, we also have a state workforce that is among the highest paid in Europe.

When our top civil servants go to the Europe to plead for a better deal for us, their counterparts on the other side of the table, even the Germans, are on much lower salaries.  

And all our state workers have guaranteed life long pensions of at least half their salaries, something that has vanished in the private sector here and which the state cannot afford.

But the state continues to pay these pensions because it is afraid of what might happen if workers across the state services went on strike.

No one is against state workers getting pensions.  But the level has to match the private sector.

And the horrible fact is that in the private sector, 80% of pension schemes are bust.  Some will collapse altogether and be shut down, and many more will drastically cut the level of pensions they were supposed to pay out.

While this carnage is going on in the pension schemes of workers in the private sector, the state sector pension payments continue on at their generous levels as though nothing has changed, as though the Celtic

Tiger is still filling the coffers of the Revenue.  In fact all state pensions are paid for out of current revenue, which now means bailout money.  

The government should act to cut pensions to state workers by the same average margin that private sector pensions have fallen.  But it is doing nothing.

The same failure to act is evident in almost everything the state touches here, like in the fees it pays to consultants, lawyers and so on. Little has changed.

And the effect of that seeps across the private sector as well, keeping the cost of living high for people in the private sector (the real economy) who have seen their pay go down as well as their pensions evaporate.

The IMF has already told the government that state sector pay and professional fees are way too high here, even if we were not a busted flush.  In the context of a country on a bailout, they are simply ridiculous.

The IMF has also suggested that instead of reducing numbers of state workers to get down costs, we should cut pay instead and thereby protect levels of public service in hospitals, schools, local services and so on.
But the government seems incapable of real change.  They are paralyzed with fear of what might happen if they upset the unions.  

Instead they are sticking with the so-called Croke Park Agreement under which state workers agreed two years ago to a four year program which would make savings by increasing efficiency, thereby allowing some voluntary reductions in state staff numbers.  

The overall effect was supposed to sharply reduce the huge cost of pay and pensions in the state services, a shift which is essential to allow us to close our enormous budget deficit.  

In the last few weeks we have seen both government and unions slapping each other on the back about how they are "meeting all their targets under the Croke Park Agreement."  

If you look at the most recent figures, however, the reality is that the overall cost of the state payroll (including pensions) in the past year has gone down by 0.4%.

Yet at the same time over the past year or two so many workers in the private sector have accepted savage pay cuts and reduced pensions in desperate attempts to keep the companies they work for solvent.

The situation is ridiculous.  The government talks about reform, yet they don't want to upset the large section of the public (people on the state payroll and professionals of all kinds) which wants to keep things more or less as they are.  

As I said, we're great at talking, not so good at doing.  

There used to be huge resentment in the air here at the idea of the IMF and the EU experts coming in and telling us how to run things. Those days are gone.

These days you hear many people in the private sector expressing the hope that the IMF will lose patience with our dithering government and take over altogether.  Or at least that they will exert their bailout leverage and push through the changes that need to be made in the unbalanced, unfair and wasteful way state money here is being spent.

The sad thing about the government's failure to act is that this is the perfect time for them to have a go, to take a few bold steps towards reducing and rebalancing state spending.

They have a large majority in the Dail (Parliament).  They don't have to face a general election for another four years.  The longer they leave it, the more difficult taking action will become as another election begins to appear on the horizon.    

But don't hold your breath. It's a sad state of affairs when a mere 90 years after we got command of our own economy, we completely screwed it up.

We can moan all we like about the Brits and colonialism and 800 years of oppression, but we can hardly claim to have made a success of running things ourselves.  

In particular, we don't seem to be able to produce politicians who are capable of offering real leadership and taking tough decisions. The present government is turning out to be almost as bad as the last.

Where are the IMF heavies when you need them!  

At present the IMF experts come in for a few days once every three months to have a look at the books here and see if we are sticking to the headline figures in the bailout program.

They do have a small permanent presence in government departmental offices.   But it's a monitoring function and it's not enough.

Since we are failing to make the necessary changes ourselves, the IMF heavy gang need to be in here much more often telling Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny and his ministers exactly what to do and where to make the cuts.

They're not capable of doing it by themselves.  Sad, but true.