The young leave as new residents arrive, Ireland needs immigration reform too

Immigrations becoming naturalized citizens in Dublin during a ceremony in May.

The debate that's going on right now in the U.S. over comprehensive immigration reform is of some interest to us here, not just because it would help many of the Irish who are illegally there. 

It's also interesting because of the recognition it gives that greater control of immigration is necessary even in a "melting pot" country as large as the U.S.

If a vast country like the U.S. recognizes the need for greater immigration control, then a tiny country like Ireland, which on a proportional basis has had a far higher immigration rate over the past decade than the U.S., should at least be considering its policies.   

The issues involved and the context obviously are different in the U.S.  But immigration is a growing issue in Ireland, and there is widespread  dissatisfaction among people here with the way it is has been handled over the last 10 years. 

Last month, for example, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), the leading research organization in Ireland, produced a report that showed that when our banks and our economy took a nose dive in recent years attitudes here became much harder on immigration.  

Well, hello? We hardly needed a roomful of academics and statisticians to tell us that. 

But even so, since the ESRI is the leading think tank in the country with the brightest brains working there and it's supported by the state, its reports deserve careful attention.

Its reports are not the kind of anecdotal stuff you read in newspapers. They are based on extensive fact finding, polling and analysis.     

The new report revealed that the number of people here who are opposed to immigration from other European countries (which would be mainly Eastern European countries like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and so on) has risen from four percent in 2002 to 15 percent in 2010.  

There may also a slight racial factor in our changing attitudes because when people were asked about immigrants with non-European ethnic backgrounds (Africans, Asians etc.) the number opposing such immigration went up from five percent in 2002 to 20 percent in 2010.    

There are a few points to note about this.  First, people being surveyed on this topic frequently moderate their views because they don't want to appear racist. 

Second, the figures are out of date and, given the trend, the number opposing immigration is likely to be considerably higher now.

Third, a national figure like this is an average that dilutes the number of those opposing immigration in the areas where the concentration of immigrants is highest.  

So it's pretty safe to assume that the ESRI figure is an understatement of the current position nationally, and probably a gross understatement of the number that oppose immigration in an area like north county Dublin where so many immigrants live.    

It's not surprising that the change in attitude mirrors the collapse in the economy here and the climb in unemployment.  That indicates that at heart we are not a racist nation, but we do believe in putting our own people first.  

The immigration aspect of the ESRI report got wide coverage in the Irish papers a few weeks ago. But most of the papers missed something. 

The report was about integration instead of immigration and, in fact, is an annual report done by the ESRI for the Integration Center here (another state sponsored body).  

And when you read the report itself you find that the poll on attitudes to immigration was actually part of the European Social Survey, a bi-annual survey carried out by researchers for the EU.  

The ESRI team took that poll data and analyzed it for a chapter on immigration in their report.  We're so politically correct and paranoid on subjects like race and immigration that we did not even do our own research (in case we get an embarrassing answer).  So for this study the ESRI relied on stuff from Europe that is more than two years old.  

What we do know from our own census data is that the number of non-Irish living here is now well over half a million (a huge change in a very short time in a total population now at 4.7 million.) 

We also know that since the recession began the total number of immigrants here has not declined and, in fact, immigrants are continuing to come here, although in lower numbers.  

The reason for this is straightforward.  Welfare rates in Ireland are much higher than those in Eastern European countries, so even those who are out of work are better off here.  Why go home to Eastern Europe where welfare is a pittance and quickly runs out? 

For non-Europeans, mainly "asylum seekers," the application process and the subsequent appeals process, supported by free legal aid, can be stretched out over years.  Which makes it attractive to stay because the longer you are here the greater the chance of getting rights here.  

What all this means is that Ireland now has a large number of immigrants (about 17 percent of the population) and they appear to be here to stay. 

Most of them are here by right since they are EU citizens -- the enlargement of the EU in 2004 brought in the former communist states in Eastern Europe.   

At that time, Ireland became one of only three EU countries to allow people from these new EU member countries an automatic right of entry to live and work. 

When fears were raised here about this at the time they were brushed off, and we were told that maybe 8,000 to 10,000 Eastern Europeans would come here and that we needed more workers to feed our growing economy.  We were also told that they would be very likely to go home again if they were out of work.  

This turned out to be a farcically inaccurate estimate of the numbers involved and how long they would stay, as we now know.  

As immigration soared during the boom, the politically correct among us then shifted the argument to one about the positive aspects of a "multicultural society," and we were encouraged to embrace "the new Ireland."   Anyone failing to do so or raising doubts was ridiculed as a quasi-racist or some kind of retard. 

A whole industry grew up around making immigration work (support groups, lawyers, extra language teachers in schools etc., all funded by the taxpayer).  

The only problem was that no one had asked the Irish people whether they wanted this high-speed immigration and multicultural society in the first place. 

Now at least five years into the crash, the chickens are coming home to roost.   

There's no money to pay for any of it.  The extra language support teachers have gone, leaving junior school teachers in some areas facing large classes where many of the kids can't speak English. 

The multicultural "new Ireland" turns out to be the same as the old Ireland, but with the addition of particular areas where there are high concentrations of immigrants and where different national groups band together.  

There is huge pressure on the health service and other state services due to the increased numbers.  And as unemployment has climbed among the new arrivals, the welfare bill has gone through the roof. (Unemployment among immigrants is 18.5 percent, among locals it is 14.7 percent.) 

And all of this is now paid for by borrowing.  We don't actually know what the total bill resulting from our high immigration is because official Ireland does not compile such figures because it might be racist and would definitely be unsupportive of the new multicultural Ireland and therefore unacceptable.  

One unofficial estimate I have seen puts the direct costs (welfare, housing, etc.) at close to €200 million a year now and up to €300 million or more if you add in all the extra costs to the state in medical, educational, legal and other services. 

As I said, all of this has to be borrowed right now and will eventually have to be paid back by the taxpayer here.   

Meanwhile, of course, emigration of the young Irish out of Ireland has soared as jobs have dried up. The stresses that this situation is causing are now starting to emerge more frequently, and they are not all that different from what we have seen over the years in British cities with large immigrant communities which are still not integrated after decades.  

In the small towns in north county Dublin where so many immigrants ended up, fights between locals and immigrants are common outside the pubs after closing time.  And the current heatwave here is not helping, with a battle on one of the beaches recently between "locals" and immigrants. 

Some of the heavy East European and African immigrants, reflecting where they have come from, are on the fringes of crime here and are not interested in working.  But the courts find it very hard to remove them.  

Like north county Dublin, the sprawling suburb of Tallaght on the west side of Dublin (a place as big as Limerick), now has streets where African or Arab or Romanian families form their own communities.  In Tallaght as a whole, around 12 percent of the population is immigrant.   

And it's not just in greater Dublin.  Some of the big provincial towns around the country are also experiencing the problem. 

One newspaper here recently highlighted the situation in the town of Monaghan, where 30 percent of the people are immigrant.  Some other big towns in the midlands have numbers that are almost as high.    

All of this is breeding deep resentment among many Irish people who are conscious as the economic downturn has continued that many immigrants are getting welfare and state housing while their own sons and daughters are emigrating to the U.S. and elsewhere to find work.  

Of course official Ireland and those who are fortunate enough to have jobs and live in "nice" areas with expensive housing and good schools, still support the idea of a multicultural Ireland.  

Which is fine for them since their daily lives are unaffected by the stresses of high immigration in other areas.  (And being able to hire a Polish plumber in the black economy is always handy.)

But even among these more liberal people there is a very slight, but detectable, shift in attitude lately, with more questioning of overall policy as their tax burden grows to close the budget deficit.  

Even many of the very idealistic (students and so on) now admit that the situation is not sustainable.   Others would put it more strongly and say that unless we wake up fast we're going to have a major problem here without the resources to tackle it in the future. 

The irony is that it is a self-made problem, one that we created over the past 20 years without really thinking about it.  Mind you, we got more than a little help from the dreamers in the European Union.   

Immigration reform is not just needed in the U.S.

Abortion debate was a sham, nothing has changed for Irish women

Anti-abortion protesters pictured outside Leinster House last Thursday evening.

Last week was abortion week in Ireland.  A shameful 30 years after the X-Case (involving a pregnant and suicidal 14-year-old rape victim who the Irish state attempted to stop having an abortion in the U.K.), the Dail (Irish Parliament) passed the first law ever to allow abortion in Ireland, albeit within extremely restrictive limitations.

In practical terms, there will be no change for Irish women.  The thousands of Irish women who go to the U.K. for abortions every year will continue to do so since abortion here will only be available in extreme medical cases in which the life of the mother is at substantial risk.  

The circumstances under which such abortions will be carried out have already been laid out in detail in this column and elsewhere in recent months.  They are so restrictive that some medical experts have predicted that only a handful of abortions will take place here every year.

This is more or less the situation at present in Irish hospitals when abortions or "early deliveries" sometimes happen during the treatment of a mother whose life is in danger.

Abortion in cases of rape, including child rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormality (where the fetus is so compromised that it will be unable to live outside the womb) and in some other extreme circumstances, will not be allowed under the new legislation. 

All this legislation does is put into law the situation decided years ago by national referendums and a Supreme Court decision giving the mother and the fetus an equal right to life. 

Not that you would think that from the week of high drama we have been through here. It was a week of marches, protests, all night vigils outside the Dail, extended TV coverage that went on around the clock as the Dail sat through the night to 5 a.m., politicians (including a junior minister) being expelled from their party for refusing to vote in favor of the bill. 

In the end the bill went through, taking up more hours on live TV and acres of space in newspapers, with lengthy interviews with troubled members of the Dail wrestling with their consciences and words like historic and ground-breaking being thrown around.  

The bill was nothing of the sort. It was pathetic and cowardly, failing in any meaningful way to face up to the fact that Irish women, like women everywhere, have abortions. 

The only difference is they don't have them here. They have them in the U.K.

The situation here is crying out for a more sympathetic abortion regime, in particular to deal with rape, incest and the other difficult cases mentioned above.

The new legislation should have been concerned with that and with the detailed regulation of a slightly wider abortion regime that would have given more weight to a woman who stated that she was suicidal because of the pregnancy.   In cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormality that would not have been too much to expect from a government with any courage, particularly since recent national opinion polls have shown majority support for such changes. 

But it was not to be.  Instead, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny and his government played safe, ducked the issues and introduced a new law that is so minimalist it is almost meaningless. It will certainly mean nothing to thousands of women here who have abortions in the U.K. every year.  

The level of debate in the Dail, particularly during the all night sitting, was very poor, with members making repetitive and sometimes contradictory speeches, some of which were barely coherent, even infantile.  

Maybe it was the heatwave here, or maybe it was something to do with the Member's Bar in the Dail staying open all night, but the debate was ridiculous at times and the Dail chamber was a sorry sight. 

The worst moment came when one male member grabbed a passing female member and pulled her onto his lap for a few seconds, an incident that was captured by the Dail cameras and has now gone viral.  It was a very stupid thing to do, not least because of the subject being debated.  

Another member was so addled by what was going on that he voted the wrong way "by accident." The night was almost comical, except that it was so tiresome -- and so tragic since it affects the lives of thousands of Irish women.  

The most contentious point in the bill for the troubled members of the house was, of course, the proposal to allow a suicide threat as grounds for an abortion.  But as we pointed out here already, this is circumscribed by an extremely tight framework. 

There will be no question of a woman simply declaring that she is feeling suicidal and then being allowed an abortion.  Her declaration will be tested in interviews by a panel of two psychiatrists and one obstetrician in a process that will be very demanding for her.

The assessment may continue for hours or even days.  If the panel decision is not unanimous she will not be allowed an abortion.  

In no circumstances is the law that passed in the Dail last week supportive of a woman's right to choose. 

In all cases, whether it is a woman who is seriously suicidal or a woman facing difficult cancer treatment, the decision on whether an abortion is permissible under this law will be taken by the medical professionals.  They will listen to the woman.   But they will decide. 

Savita Halappanavar, the young woman who died of septic shock last October in Galway after being refused an abortion, was mentioned several times during the debate.  It was claimed by those opposing the bill that if this law had been in place it would not have made any difference to her.  

Those supporting the bill said repeatedly that the new legislation would bring "clarity" for medical practitioners and this might have saved her because it might have given her doctors the confidence to act earlier.

But despite all of the guff about "clarity," the fact is that the situation for women in Irish hospitals who face such difficult medical situations is still as clear as muddy water.  As in the Savita case, knowing when the risk to a mother's life becomes substantial enough to allow an abortion is far from easy.

Some doctors may tolerate a higher level of risk than others.  Even though it is the woman's body and the woman's life, the decision will remain out of her hands.

And unless the situation is an extreme and immediate life-threatening crisis for the woman the decision will be taken by two senior doctors, not one.

In the case of a woman who is suicidal, again there is no right for the woman to be in on decision. She will put her case and be assessed. 

But the doctors (three of them) will decide.  If they say no she can appeal to another panel of three doctors which is likely to take days.

This very restrictive regime does not sit well with the decision taken years ago by the Irish people in a referendum to uphold a woman's right to travel.  This decision was taken by the Irish people so that women could continue to travel to the U.K. and elsewhere to procure abortions.  

In many such cases abortion is allowed on the basis of a possible suicide risk declared by the woman.   When the Irish people passed the referendum in question they were well aware of this. 

It seems clear that the Irish people then were saying that a woman who says she is suicidal has the right not only to travel but also has the right to be at least a major part of a decision to allow her to have an abortion because of the suicide risk.  Yet the legislation fails completely to recognize that.

It is yet another Irish solution to an Irish problem, that problem being our inability to deal with reality, the reality that thousands of Irish women have abortions every year.     

Ireland’s anger over Anglo tapes shifts in the right direction to Irish government’s Department of Finance and Central Bank

The Anglo Irish Bank office sign being taken down from its main Stephen’s Green location in Dublin in 2011.

Public anger here at the Anglo Irish Bank tapes revelations is beginning to shift in the right direction at last.

As we hear more and more of the leaked tapes, it's becoming more and more obvious that the main villains of the banking collapse which led to the bankrupting of the country are not the frazzled, foul-mouthed executives at the top of Anglo Irish Bank.     

As we pointed out here last week, the Anglo Irish boss David Drumm and his top two executives who feature on the tapes were simply trying to save their imploding bank.  They were so desperate they were bending the rules and misleading the financial authorities -- and discussing it all in frat boy language that showed their contempt for the politicians, the civil servants, the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator who were all completely out of their depth.

The new tapes published last weekend showed just how clueless these public servants were, particularly in the Department of Finance and the Central Bank.

The Anglo boys were able to wrap them around their fingers, to the point where the authorities who should have been looking out for the country's interests were commiserating with the bankers about how awful the situation was, and how much pressure they were all under.  

There was an air of "we're all in this together."  Instead of probing and threatening, the public servants were pleading and cajoling.  None of them appeared to understand the scale and speed of the crisis that was engulfing Ireland or what to do about it.

The whole posture of the authorities was polite to the point of subservience to the bankers, even as the country headed towards the cliff.

So yes, the attitude, the behavior, and of course the language of the Anglo executives was appalling.  But the incompetence of those they were dealing with was far worse.  It was that failure at official level that eventually brought the country to its knees. 

At least the Anglo boys knew what was happening, and that is clear from the tapes.  In fact you could argue that if Anglo CEO David Drumm and his top execs had been running the Central Bank they would have tackled the crisis much more effectively. 

Even more shocking than the language of the Anglo boys and their cavalier talk of forcing billions out of the Central Bank which they would never be able to pay back, was the  "muddle through" attitude of the authorities. 

The people at the top who were supposed to be looking out for us taxpayers were either asleep at the wheel or overwhelmed by a situation they were not qualified to handle or not smart enough to understand.   

So public anger here which so far has been directed at the Anglo boys and their cowboy banking culture is now shifting as the wider picture of what was happening at the time starts to emerge. 

The realization that the Anglo boys were not the main villains is starting to dawn on people.  And those in the firing line are the top public servants who were supposed to be dealing with the situation at the time.

We already know that the Financial Regulator at the time, Patrick Neary, now in retirement on a huge pension, was a joke who was still telling the government and the Irish people that the Irish banks were robustly capitalized even when we were already up to our necks in the crisis.   

Just as bad were the people at the top of the Central Bank who the Anglo boys refer to as "clowns" on the latest tapes published last weekend in the Sunday Independent.

In particular, the performance of the former governor of the Central Bank, John Hurley, also now in retirement on a huge pension, was hopeless (he and Neary both "retired" in 2009, a few months after the state had to give the blanket guarantee to the banks).

Probably worst of all, however, were the top civil servants in the Department of Finance, the people who were advising the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen and his Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan on what to do. 

The chief clown among those was the then secretary general at the Department of Finance (the boss of the department), David Doyle, now also safely in retirement on a fat pension, who was in charge for most of the boom. 

His right hand man was a guy called Kevin Cardiff, then assistant secretary and head of the Financial Services division in the Department.  He went on to take over as secretary in 2010.    

You may remember that Cardiff was the guy who was in charge when there was a €3.6 billion error in the figures computed for the Irish national debt a couple of years ago, an achievement that gained him considerable notoriety.  

Despite this, the present government shifted him into a cozy job in Europe as Ireland's representative on the European Court of Auditors, the body that checks up on EU spending!  This happened at the start of last year and came with a salary of €276,000 which of course will be in addition to his big Irish civil service pension. 

So Cardiff is now out of the spotlight even though he was a key player in the financial catastrophe in Ireland.  He was there at the marathon meeting in Government Buildings on the night of September 28, 2008 when Cowen and Lenihan took the decision to give the banks the blanket guarantee that eventually bankrupted the country. 

And he was there two years later when the decision was taken to take the bailout from the IMF.   But he's not on the tapes (so far anyway), and he's singing dumb on what went on at the time. 

Someone who is on the tapes which were published last weekend is Ann Nolan, who was Cardiff's right hand woman as second secretary in the department and ran the Financial Services division responsible for the banks. 

On the tapes she can be heard laughing and commiserating with the Anglo executive John Bowe about the dire situation facing Anglo at the end of 2008.  The clear implication is that she was out of her depth and being played along by Anglo.  Yet she is now said to be the favorite to take over as the new Financial Regulator in Ireland! 

Another person to emerge on the tapes published last weekend was Con Horan, who was the point man in supervising Anglo for the Financial Regulator at the time.   What is most revealing about what he says on the tape is the tone, rather than the content. 

His questioning of Anglo executive Bowe about the way Anglo was overusing the blanket guarantee to get funds in the markets was almost apologetic.   Horan, by the way, is now on secondment from the Central Bank and is working at the European Banking Authority.  

So these three civil servants, all of who were up to their necks in the banking collapse and failed to perform adequately, are all still active in senior financial supervisory roles.

Nolan went on to play a lead role in the bailout and looks after the National Asset Management Agency (the bad bank for property) for the department.  

You couldn't make this stuff up.  Don't laugh, it's the Irish way of doing things!

Of course, as Drumm has said, we also need to hear the tapes from the other banks, and we now know that these tapes exist.  

The two main banks here, AIlied Irish and Bank of Ireland, were major players in the property lending madness, and both had to be rescued by the Irish taxpayer.  Their role in the catastrophe was at least as big as that of Anglo, yet their top executives at the time are not being held up to public ridicule like Drumm.  It's not surprising that he feels he is being turned into the fall guy. 

But it's hard to have any sympathy for him when you hear the bravado and bull that he talks on the tapes ("Another day, another billion!") as his bank played fast and loose with the rules and risked not just its own future, but that of the Irish economy and the country. 

Those billions he so casually joked about are part of the reason now why Irish people are emigrating, losing their jobs, being squeezed by taxes, waiting for months for hospital treatment and so on. 

Yes, the Anglo boys (and the other Irish bankers) have a lot to feel guilty about.  But much more guilty are the clowns (to use Drumm's description) who were in charge here at the time, particularly in the Central Bank and the Department of Finance. 

The Anglo tapes - Irish need to hear similar conversations from AIB and Bank of Ireland too

Angry protesters gather at Anglo Buildings in Galway (Photo: Galway Indo)

The Anglo Irish tapes has been the biggest story here for ages, an Irish Independent exclusive that has enraged the country and led to calls for a public inquiry and prosecutions.

But when you strip away the bad language and the macho talk, what the tapes reveal was not really that surprising. 

Anglo was going down the plughole at the time in 2008, with a billion euro a day being withdrawn from the bank by big depositors and institutions that were nervous about the bank's exposure to the Irish property market which was then in the early stage of its steep decline.

Anglo had about a week or two left before it would be completely bust.  So naturally "the lads" at the top were desperately trying to save themselves and the bank.    

The macho language and posturing was bravado covering rising panic as they realized the situation was slipping away from them unless they could get emergency funding in fast from the Irish or European Central Bank, or somewhere else.

For example, they knew the €7 billion they were asking the Irish authorities for -- a figure one of them says on the tape he pulled out of his arse -- was unlikely to be enough.  But it's also clear that none of them really knew how big the hole in the bank was going to get.   

The truth is that at the time no one did, because everything depended on how far the Irish property market was going to fall.  It was a moving train, and getting a fix on it was not easy.

Property prices in 2008 up to September that year (when the tapes were made) fell by around eight percent; the market had peaked and turned the previous year, 2007.   

Clearly international investors believed Irish property was seriously over-valued and were pulling their money out of Irish banks, but how far would prices fall?  Was it possible to know then that the whole thing was a bubble and that by 2012 property prices would have fallen by well over 50 percent?   

Anglo Irish was exposed on a massive scale to the property market.  But in 2008 it was still possible to claim that the problem it and the bigger Irish banks were facing was temporary liquidity rather than solvency.  We're all geniuses in hindsight, but that needs to be remembered.

What really enraged the Irish public last week was the revelation on the tapes that the Anglo lads had apparently tried to con the Irish authorities.  They asked for €7 billion, knowing it was not going to be enough, so that the Irish Central Bank would have "skin in the game."

In other words, when the lads would come back looking for more the Irish authorities would feel they had to keep giving.  Which is exactly what happened.        
  
That and the cavalier attitude, the macho language and the contempt for the Irish authorities, is easy to characterize as outrageous or criminal.

But a lot of it is merely the Irish version of the way the banking Masters of the Universe talk to each other.  And as far as the language is concerned, if the private phone conversations between other senior bankers -- or politicians or editors -- were recorded at times of high stress they might not be very different in tone. 

Of course that did not stop many politicians and newspaper columnists here getting all sanctimonious last week, trying to outdo each other in outrage. 

Forget about the language and the macho banter about billions.  What is involved here is much bigger than the phone chatter between the senior Anglo executives as the pressure mounted.

The bigger picture which still remains hidden is not what was going on in Anglo, it was what was happening in the Big Two Irish banks and at official level at that time. 

It wasn't just Anglo that bankrupted the Irish state (although it played a major part). The property gambling of the other Irish banks was also to blame, as well as the vast overspending by the Irish state (all based on property taxes) during the boom.   

The main reason Ireland went down was the insistence by the European Central Bank, heavily influenced by the Germans, that the cost of the banking catastrophe here had to be borne entirely by the Irish taxpayer.

The overriding concern of the ECB, the Germans, even Timothy Geithner in the U.S., was that no investors or bondholders were to be burned, because this might start a run on banks in other weak European countries.    

Even though these bondholders and investors had essentially gambled by putting their money in here during the boom, they were not to be touched.  Every last cent of the cost of saving the Irish banks and repaying all the foreign banks and bondholders was to be carried by the Irish taxpayer.  And that is exactly what has happened. 

Last week Irish politicians from the taoiseach (prime minister) on down were declaring themselves to be shocked and disgusted by what was on the Anglo tapes.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had nothing but "contempt" for the Anglo bankers.   

But what was done to ordinary Irish taxpayers -- and is still being done -- is what is really shocking, disgusting and contemptible, and much of that is down to German policy.  So we can consider Merkel's outrage with that in mind. 

That's the real scandal. Not what a few Anglo execs were saying to each other when the testosterone and adrenaline were flowing and they were almost hysterical about the failure of the Irish authorities to act fast enough to save them.     

It's a fair bet that the same thing was going on in the two big players in Irish banking, Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks, as their cash situations also started to crumble.  We have been told that the recording of phone conversations in Anglo was normal and that the same may well be true of the Big Two banks.

Are there tapes there as well?  If so, we need to hear them. 

We have been told repeatedly that no records exist of the conversations that took place on the night of the infamous blanket guarantee given to the Irish banks by the last government at the end of September 2008, the decision that ended up bankrupting the country.  We have even been told that no notes were taken.

This is both outrageous and incredible.  If no notes were taken by the senior civil servants, the senior politicians and the bank bosses who were at that all night meeting, that is disgraceful.  (And by the way, the Anglo Irish executives were not at that critical meeting.)   

We are told also that there are no tapes of what happened that fateful night in Government Buildings.   But even if there are no tapes of what AIB and Bank of Ireland bosses were saying that night, it may not matter because in the days and hours before that critical meeting you can be certain that their most senior executives were discussing what was evolving.   

And even more important, you can be sure that in the hours and days after that fateful night when the blanket bank guarantee decision had been taken, the senior bank executives would have been discussing what had happened that night, who had said what, and so on.   

So phone recordings or written records from the Big Two banks for those crucial days before and after the night of the bank guarantee are gold dust.  They would show exactly what the former Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan were told by the bank bosses.  They would also reveal what the top civil servants from the Department of Finance who were in the room were saying. 

All of this is vital in assessing the basis on which the blanket guarantee was issued.  That guarantee bankrupted Ireland and forced us into an IMF/EU bailout a couple of years later. 

And we were given the bailout money on condition that the Irish state -- in other words the ordinary Irish taxpayer -- pays it all back. 

Which is how the cost of the bank collapse here was transferred from investors and bondholders to the Irish taxpayer, and why we are now in a killer austerity regime of higher taxes and lower spending that has suffocated our economy and caused mass emigration. 

That's the real scandal.  Not just what a few Anglo execs said to each other when the testosterone and adrenaline were flowing.

Sasha and Malia bored in Ireland and Clare Daly’s rant about Obama “war criminal”

Sasha, Michelle and Malia Obama in Glendalough, Co. Wicklow last week. (EPA)

What did the Obama girls do to deserve such torture during their 24-hour visit to Dublin last week?

Bored stiff by some ancient book in Trinity College, forced to listen to ancient diddle-aye music at the now ancient show Riverdance, eaten alive by midges while looking at an ancient rock in Glendalough and, worst of all, having a pub lunch with some ancient, nauseating rock star called Bono.

Is it any wonder they were looking sulky and pulling cross-eyed faces?  At least they weren't on their phones all day like Irish teenagers.

After getting over the shock of how unimpressed the Obama girls seemed to be, and how their visit here with their mom was being reported back in the U.S., the Irish media decided to be sympathetic and agree.  

The Book of Kells and the old ledgers showing the family births and deaths of their Irish ancestors, the Kearneys, which the girls were shown in Trinity, was hardly interesting stuff for teenagers.  Riverdance is a show for middle-aged people.   Being bitten by midges is horrible and scary, especially if you're not used to it.

And who -- adult or teenager -- would want to be subjected to Bono and his ego when they're trying to eat their lunch?

The negative coverage was a bit of a laugh, we decided.  And it wasn't all boring, despite what the pictures seemed to show.  

They're barely teenagers, for God's sake.  Give them a break.

It's not so long since some of my gang were teenagers, and I know all about this.  You and I might think there are accepted standards of behavior in such situations even for teenagers (like when they're visiting relatives or attending school events), behavior involving politeness, showing an interest, making an effort to engage, smiling now and then.

It's not a big deal.  I'm just saying that when my teenagers behaved that way back in the day I was not happy with them.  I'm just saying, that's all.

Hundreds of Irish kids go on school trips to see the book of the Books of Kells here every year and find it amazing.  The history of your own family should be fascinating to anyone.

Glendalough is so spectacular (even when there are a few midges around) it could be a location for Game of Thrones.  What's not to like?   Even Riverdance is impressive, despite being a bit of a cliché these days.  

And as for His Bononess ... well, okay, there I give up.  He's enough to make anyone go cross-eyed.

As various people here said afterwards, it should have been lunch with Niall from One Direction.   That surely would have put a smile or two on those sad, disconnected Obama faces.

But it wasn't all Yawnsville, even for teenagers, although I do have some sympathy for the Obama girls. (At least they weren't on their phones, like the texter Enda Kenny when he was meeting the last Pope.)

The person from Official Ireland who put the program together clearly was trying to show off things that would look good on TV in the U.S. and attract lots of American tourists rather than genuinely entertain a couple of young teenagers.  

Was that the right thing to do?  Probably not ... but it's too late now.

The visit also raised some other questions, not just here but in the U.S.  How much had it cost? And was it worth it?

The answer is a definite yes, for one reason that got little attention.  While First Lady Michelle Obama and the two girls were here the meeting of the G8 leaders was taking place in Fermanagh, bringing the most powerful people in the world (Obama, Putin and the others) to Northern Ireland.  

Beautiful Lough Erne and Co. Fermanagh, once a very troubled place where sectarian murder was common, looked wonderful, bathed in sunshine.  It looked as beautiful and peaceful a place as you could imagine. 

And it also looked British.

The Union Jacks fluttering in the gentle breeze made it very clear to the global audience watching TV news that although the pictures were coming from Ireland, this was happening in a part of the United Kingdom.  David Cameron, the British prime minister, was on hand to welcome the world leaders.    

It was a reminder to the global audience -- and to us in the south of Ireland --- that part of the island of Ireland is still very much part of Britain.

Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny, partly because Ireland currently holds the EU presidency and partly because he's the next door neighbor, was allowed to stroll around for a few minutes with President Obama and the global leaders.  But as one of the papers here put it, he had to hop in his car and come back down here for his dinner when the real round table dinner for the world leaders was going on up there.  

That is the political reality and we all know that.   Ireland is a minnow in the global pond of big fish.

And Northern Ireland just happened to be the part of the U.K. where the G8 meeting was being held. It was an inspired choice by Cameron, showing the world how peaceful the North is these days and at the same time remote Fermanagh being difficult for all those G8 protestors to get at.

No one here resented the choice.  Everyone here knows the reality.

Yet it's hard not to feel just a hint of humiliation when all these world leaders are congregated just a hundred miles up the road from Dublin and it's really got nothing to do with us.

Which is why the visit by Michelle Obama and her daughters here was a good idea.  It made us a part of the Obamas-in-Ireland story.  In fact there are many people here who would say that we got the better part of the deal.

But back to Bono, the man with delusions that he is some kind of world leader himself.  It was hard to miss the irony in Tax Dodger Bono hosting the lunch for Mrs. Obama and the girls while up the road one of the main items on the agenda for the world leaders was tax dodging by global corporations.

Funniest moment of the visit, however, was not provided by Bono, but by an independent socialist member of the Dail (Irish Parliament) called Clare Daly, who was so incensed that she went completely over the top.  She accused the Irish government of “prostituting” Ireland to the U.S., and accused the Irish media of  "slobbering" over the first lady and the two girls during their brief stay in Ireland.

She told the Dail she was surprised that Kenny had not dressed his ministers in leprechaun hats decorated with stars and stripes flags.  She said that the Irish government was "the lapdog of U.S. imperialism," that Obama was the "hypocrite of the century" for preaching peace to Northern Irish teenagers even though he had doubled U.S. drone attacks.

And there was more of this stuff in Daly's diatribe in the Dail.  Kenny told her she was a "disgrace" -- and he was right.        

Nobody likes the drones because of the possibility of collateral damage, including the unintentional
killing of civilians.  But most of us are grown up enough to understand that the deliberate or careless killing of civilians is not what the U.S. does, unlike the terrorists who deliberately target civilians.

We also realize that the drone program has been highly successful in reducing the terrorist threat by removing much of the leadership.

Daly should have a better understanding of military matters like this since her dad was a colonel in the Irish Army.  Like most of our socialists, she has a nice, comfortable middle class background behind her.

She got into left wing student politics when she was in college 20 years ago, and basically she never grew up. She's still spouting the same infantile lefty nonsense we all did in university before we learned what the real world was like.

So if any of you over there were alarmed at or even offended by the things she said, you need not be.

We don't take her seriously.  Just like Bono.      

Is Ireland trying to shake off the shackles of the Catholic Church?

Taoiseach Enda Kenny

Is Ireland still a Catholic country?  

It's an interesting and timely question, given the watershed speech in the Dail (Parliament) last week by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny and the much-quoted reference he made to not being a Catholic taoiseach.  

The reference came during a debate on the government's proposed abortion legislation.  The quote got so much coverage -- some of it inaccurate -- it's worth repeating exactly what he said:

"I am proud to stand here as a public representative, as a taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but not as a Catholic taoiseach."   

To an outsider, it might seem like a statement of the obvious.  We are, after all, a republic.  We are governed by the people, not by any church.  A person's religion, even if that person is the taoiseach, should be separate from their politics.  

But we have always been a peculiar kind of Republic.  Our Constitution, introduced by de Valera in 1937, specifically gave the Catholic Church a special and influential place in the formation of Irish laws and Irish society.  And although that special position has now been withdrawn, the resonance here of what used to be called Rome Rule lives on. 

So when Kenny states the obvious, as he did last week, it still feels like some kind of breakthrough.  And it is still welcome for that very reason.

But the fact that it is still characterized in the Irish media as a courageous stance is probably more revealing of us than we realize.  You would not hear Hollande saying something like that in France, for example, even though it's still a substantially Catholic country (note the recent huge opposition to gay marriage there, for example). 

But to be fair to Kenny, he is marking out a line in the sand that none of his predecessors was prepared to lay down.  It's a long way from the crawling behavior of the early generation of our leaders like de Valera, who were always sinking to their knees to kiss the rings of the bishops.  

De Valera referred most of his legislative proposals to the church, usually the malign figure of Archbishop McQuaid, then head of the Catholic Church in Ireland.  

To be fair to de Valera, he was no different than all the politicians of his generation, most of whom would not dream of ignoring the "advice" of the church on proposed legislation and how to run the country.  

This fear of the church bedeviled our politics until very recently.   When the “rebel” Charlie Haughey finally introduced contraception, it was only available to married couples on prescription! 

Even the liberalizing Fine Gael Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald caved in to the bishops and held the pro-life referendum which gave constitutional equality to the life of a mother and that of a fetus, and which got us into the mess on abortion that we are still trying to disentangle.     

The influence and power of the church pervaded all levels of Irish society for decades, in fact for nearly all of the life of the state since its formation in the 1920s.  You don't have to be as old as me to remember what it felt like. 

In rural Ireland where I grew up nothing -- and I mean nothing -- was done without the tacit approval of the local priest.  Holding a dance or running a club or doing virtually anything that brought people, especially young people, together required the imprimatur in advance. 

The image of the local priest out at night with his flashlight and blackthorn stick patrolling the laneways after dances in search of canoodling couples may now be seen as a joke, but it was all too real in the Ireland of the fifties and sixties and even the seventies. 

In retrospect, it seems odd that so few people ever stood up to this intimidation.   But then how could they, when there was no leadership from the top. 

Kenny's line in the sand statement about not being a Catholic taoiseach should be contrasted with what another Fine Gael taoiseach, John A. Costello, told the Dail back in the 1950s:  "I am an Irishman second, I am a Catholic first, and I accept without qualification the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong." 

So yes, we were a Catholic country, ruled as much by Rome as by our parliament in Dublin.  The question is, are we still one?  

The answer probably is no, but it is a very qualified no in spite of Kenny's statement.  People are now more determined to make up their own minds on issues, rather than be told how to think by the church.  

The recent Irish Times poll showing huge approval for the government's proposals on abortion demonstrates that, despite fierce opposition by the church leaders and the usual hysteria from “pro-life” extremists.

But before we start clapping ourselves on the back, the minimalist extent of the proposed changes on abortion shows just how slowly things are changing here.    

The new legislation will offer very little increased protection for women in crisis situations, and the complexity of the regime will mean that the vast majority of Irish women who want abortions will continue to go to the U.K. to get them. 

One of the interesting things to emerge from the details of the proposed legislation which emerged last week is that medical institutions, unlike the individuals who work in them, will not have the right to opt out of abortion provision on conscience grounds.  

In Ireland, the running of many of our biggest hospitals -- like nearly all of our schools -- is heavily influenced by the church.  In the old days this was total control, but these days it operates through wider boards of management. 

But the element of control and "setting the ethos" is still there, even though the state pays nearly all of the costs of running both hospitals and schools. 

This ludicrous situation evolved because over the years it was the church which raised the funds to set up schools and many hospitals.  The result was that the church gained and held on to control (the patron would be the local priest or bishop) even though the money had actually come from the people.  It will be interesting to see whether the church will attempt to limit the operation of the abortion regime through its influence in the hospitals. 

Overall, the Catholic Church here appears to be fighting a losing battle.   With its credibility totally undermined by the child abuse scandals and a catastrophic fall in weekly church attendance, the battle to keep Ireland as a Catholic country is being lost. 

But the last people to realize this seems to be the Catholic bishops themselves who are still behaving and issuing diktats as though nothing has changed.  

And the extremist Catholic campaigners in the “pro-life” lobby are making things worse for them by alienating the vast majority of people, including people who regard themselves as Catholic, by heckling the Taoiseach and sending bloody plastic fetuses to other politicians, and even issuing death threats.     

The irony of all this is that Kenny is a practicing Catholic and a man who takes his religion very seriously.  Yet he is the one who has been brave enough to make an explicit statement in the Dail making clear the final disconnection of church and state in Ireland. 

It's about time for us.

Young Irish high on drugs and booze and vandalism are a disgrace

The cheapness of alcohol in Ireland has become a huge problem

Looking out my study window right now on Tuesday morning I see things are back to normal.  It's raining!

But for the past week and right through the weekend things have been far from normal.   Not a drop of rain. Hot unbroken sunshine from clear skies all day long.   It was like the Mediterranean.  

We needed it badly because here in Ireland we have come through the coldest, wettest spring for decades. So when the sun finally appeared a week ago and then turned into a six-day heat wave we basked in it.

They can warn all they like about the dangers of skin cancer and the need to slap on the factor 30, but when Irish people get the chance to escape the drizzle and soak up the rays, they just go for it.  They can't resist.  So there are painfully pink bodies everywhere today.   

For most people here a few days of hot weather means stripping off outside work or college during lunch break, trying to get home early and praying that it will last to the weekend. 

Unbelievably, this time it did, right across the country. It was glorious. 

But once again it revealed a far from glorious side to Irish society -- the ongoing problem we have here with drink.

For the Irish, particularly Irish teens and young adults, sun and booze seem to go together.  It's not just a few beers with a barbecue. It's a compulsion to get completely out of it.

This leads to tragic outcomes like drownings (there were a few here over the past week) as drunk teenagers decide to go swimming.  It also leads to fights and even riots as the alcohol kicks in and tempers flare up in the rising temperatures. 

The Internet hums with messages about raves and beach parties.   Nothing wrong with that, except that the results are often out of control drunken mobs throwing bottles, doing drugs and having running battles.   

There were two of these not far from where I live on the north side of Dublin, one when the good weather kicked off and the other during this weekend.

The first was a running battle on the popular family beach in Portmarnock, with vicious fighting and bottles being thrown, terrifying children who were in the vicinity. 

Anecdotal evidence indicated that it started as a battle between two mobs, one immigrant and the other local (north Co. Dublin has a high concentration of immigrant families who came here during the boom, mainly from Eastern Europe).

With hundreds involved, the few Gardai (police) who arrived at the scene could only stand and watch and video what was happening.  (You can see this yourself on YouTube if you search for Portmarnock beach riot).  The video is filmed from a safe distance and gives little idea of how terrifying the event was, particularly for families who were caught on the beach when the trouble broke out. 

One tactic that the drunk and drugged up teens are using now to defy the police is to congregate in such large numbers that it's impossible to control them (at least for an unarmed police force). 

At the weekend, organized on the Internet, they descended on Howth, the fishing and sailing village at the end of the Dart electric train line on the north side of Dublin, which is in all the guide books and is visited by hundreds of tourists to the city every weekend in the summer.

The tourists come to stroll down the piers, admire the fish in the fish shops or lunch in the restaurants around the harbor.  There are big sailing yachts to see and boat trips out to the famous Ireland's Eye, the small island just offshore.  There are beaches for a swim, cliff walks, golf courses and the ancient Howth Castle to explore.  

Howth is a spectacularly beautiful place (one reason why I live there), and it's a perfect break for tourists in Dublin who want to get out of the city for a while.  It's less than half an hour away from the city center by Dart.  So, as I said, it's hugely popular with tourists.  

But what greeted the tourists who came out to Howth last weekend to stroll down the pier must have been left them reeling in shock, particularly if they were trapped at the far end of the pier when the rave started. 

Again, you can see it on YouTube if you search for Irish Teens Start Rave in Howth.   The teens have taken over the pier, and two police patrol cars who arrived can do nothing about it. 

The short video does not communicate how threatening it was later on, and it's hard to see the bottles and the drugs. But people who passed the pier at the time say that a large number of teens were completely out of their skulls.  There were fights breaking out and there were reported stabbings. 

The common link in these two incidents -- and in others like them around the country over the past week -- is the amount of booze involved (these youngsters can down a bottle of spirits no problem) and the way this behavior always emerges whenever we get a few days of good weather.  It's like mass teen hysteria brought on by the sun. 

The next day, of course, a massive clean-up is needed.  Because the Irish kids are not just drunks, they are drunken pigs who leave litter, bottles and all kinds of crap all over the place.  They treat wherever they are like it was a garbage dump.  

No one seems to know what to do about the booze problem here, which is getting worse, not better, particularly among the young Irish.  If anyone foreign (like the Brits or the Yanks) calls us drunks we go crazy and say it's racial stereotyping and we demand apologies. 

Well, that doesn't apply to me because I'm Irish and I can tell the truth as I see it.   And what I saw over the weekend makes it clear to me that we Irish have a serious drink problem. 

The present government has been trying to do something, but knowing exactly what to do is far from easy.  Minimum pricing?  Age limits?  Health warnings?  Education campaigns? 

Finding a solution that will be effective but still allow responsible people to drink in moderation seems almost impossible. 

The last junior minister for health here (before she fell out with the minister) was Labor politician Roisin Shortall, who took a strong line and bluntly said that as a nation "we need to reduce the amount of alcohol that we drink.”

The cheap and easy availability of alcohol happened in recent years and is a big factor, she said, referring to the way Irish supermarkets sell booze at rock bottom prices to get customers into stores. Some kinds of booze (beer, cider) are now often cheaper than bottled water. 

But her efforts to do something were stymied by the powerful alcohol lobby which so far has managed to stop efforts to introduce a minimum price for alcohol.

She said that alcohol puts huge pressure on the health system and costs us nearly €4 billion a year in hospital costs, alcohol-related crime, missed days at work, inefficiency and so on. 

Then there are all the things that are impossible to cost, like the damage done to the kids of alcohol addicted parents who are too out of it to look after them. 

Official figures released by Shortall last year showed that per head of population we’re drinking almost 12 liters of alcohol a year, equivalent to a bottle of spirits a week per person over 15.  (In comparison, the figure for the U.S. is about 8 liters per head.) 

Shortall's role is now being handled by someone else, but we still have to see real action.  It's not going to be easy because of the power of the alcohol lobby and how ingrained alcohol is in Irish society. 

In particular youth drinking is a huge problem, with the young Irish having one of the highest levels of drunkenness in Europe.  One theory on how to tackle this involves limiting alcohol advertising and visibility.

Shortall had proposed that all drinks sponsorship of sports events should be phased out over the next 10 years.  But this will leave a huge funding gap in sports budgets and no one knows how to fill it.

Meanwhile, the alcohol industry is campaigning against such a restriction. 

It's all about getting the young Irish to buy into responsible drinking instead of feeling that the only point in drinking is getting out of your head as fast as possible.  Maybe then they will stop disgracing us as a nation, not only at home but in places where the young Irish have emigrated to like the U.K., the U.S. and Australia.