The Seanad is not a problem that merits any attention from the Irish government or voters

Gordon Wilson campaigned for peace after his
daughter was killed in an IRA bombing in 1987.
He was appointed to the Seanad by
Taoiseach Albert Reynolds in 1993.
{Photo: from the BBC}

Ireland has problems. The economy has a pulse, but not much more than that. Young people are streaming out of the country in search of jobs and opportunity. Tens of thousands of families all over the country are living in homes they can no longer afford, under pressure from our bankrupt banks.

Yes, Ireland has problems. However, one of those problems is not the upper chamber of the country's parliament. Yet the Irish government is holding a referendum next month and going all out to convince the public to vote to abolish the the Seanad (Senate).

Why? For the same reason governments do things everywhere: things are going wrong and they want to divert us by throwing smoke in our face. So we're being bombarded with daily government statements on how costly, elitist and ineffective the Seanad is. You'd swear it was the source of all that ails us.

The funny thing is they may be right that the Seanad is costly, elitist and ineffective, but it's far short of being a big issue. Already a member of the governing party has been forced to concede that the the cost-savings from eliminating the Seanad have been grossly overestimated. Even the government's faulty figure was hardly a significant sum. Now the savings are even punier.

But it's "elitist." I can't tell you how many times I have heard or read that word with regards to the Seanad. I don't think I've actually heard anyone explain what makes the Seanad elitist. The only thing that makes it elitist as far as I can determine is that six of the 60 Senators are elected only by graduates of Ireland's universities. Non-graduates have no vote.

I guess that's elitist and not all that fair to those who didn't have the opportunity to go to college. However, it doesn't seem anything like the injustice of forcing those who didn't have the chance or the wherewithal to go to college to subsidize the education of those who will someday be the elite."

The rest of the Senators are either selected by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) or appointed/drafted/whatever by the local county councils. I don't know anyone who thinks our County Councilors are "elite." The process of electing the members of the Seanad may be somewhat undemocratic, but "elitist" is a bit of a stretch.

The last charge, that the Seanad is ineffective, is indisputable. It is and it always has been. It was designed that way. The power is supposed to reside in the lower the chamber, the Dáil. It's hard to think of any real accomplishments of the Seanad, although by the same token when compared with its more powerful sister chamber it has done very little harm. Every so often someone is appointed as a Senator as a way of honoring their contribution to the nation, which may be the only mark in the Seanad's favor.

The truth is if the Seanad is abolished I won't really miss it. Occasionally a Senator makes a speech that entertainingly badly thought out, but for the most part nobody knows or cares when it meets.

If the people vote to abolish the Seanad I will not shed a tear. I'll be voting 'No' however because the arguments against the Seanad are fatuous: "elitist?" - change the voting process; expensive? - cut the wages and budget; ineffective? - give it teeth.

Seriously, the answers are so obvious, and all in the gift of the government, that it's obvious that the referendum to abolish the Seanad is a diversion. This is the government's way of saying, "Look at me and not that car wreck over there." Thanks, but I'd rather keep my eyes on the car wreck of Ireland's economy and I'd sure prefer if the government did the same.

Irish homeowners are not "revolting" - they're treating their incompetent government with contempt

Ireland's Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan,
who bungled the Household Charge.

It seems just about anywhere the new Irish household charge appears in the foreign press the words "boycott" or "revolt" are used to describe the fact that so many people did not pay the fee by Saturday night's deadline. Yesterday's New York Times quoted an Irish parliamentarian who refers to the "mass boycott." The Financial Times says the Irish government is facing a "revolt" over the new tax. {You might even see such words around here.}

Words like "boycott" and "revolt" suit those political campaigners who have been leading the charge calling on the people not to pay, but what's going on is nothing like a boycott or a revolt. It's more a case that hundreds of thousands of Irish people have weighed up the pluses and minuses of paying and come to the conclusion that not-paying is not such a bad idea. Why? Because the government blew this one in a big way. The charge was designed and implemented badly. Very badly. 100% ineptly.

The charge itself – €100 ($133) for the year payable by the owner of each house and apartment in the state – is more annoying than crushing. There was even an option to pay the tax on a quarterly installment basis.

Considering the hefty sums people pay in income tax and VAT (sales tax of 23%) €100 is no where near the most onerous levy Irish people pay. Heck it's even less than €160 ($213) annual license fee for having a television in the home, a fee that most Irish people pay without grumbling.

____________
Read More:

Half of Irish homeowners join boycott on $131 tax

Anti-household charge protest attracts 5,000 demonstrators in Dublin

Ireland's leader Enda Kenny pays no price for bad-mouthing the Irish people
_____________

Before this new charge was introduced for the 2012 tax year there was no tax on homeowners at all. {No property tax, although there is a fairly steep stamp duty payable on the purchase of a home.}

So it is a new tax, but did the Irish people really revolt against the government's austerity program when they decided not to pay this new tax? Is it really the case that after four years of accepting the punishing cut backs and tax hikes that this €100 charge was the straw that broke the camels' back? No. No, what really happened is that many Irish homeowners thought they might get away without paying this one.

From the start it was clear that government was flying by the seat of its pants on the household charge. They had no database of who owned what property. Sure they knew who lived where, but they didn't know who were the renters and who were the owners.

When this point was put to members of the government they went into full tyranny mode. The Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan oversaw the planning and implementation of the Household Charge and he, in particular, became the face of this hectoring, bullying government.

The government declared that they were going to get the information they needed by strong-arming the electricity and natural gas companies into revealing what they knew. The state-owned banks too would be forced to comply.

That tactic didn't work, but it was revealing: the government was going to struggle making people pay. The government's lack of information as to who owed and who didn't meant no bill or invoice could be sent to those who had to pay. The more this question was raised the more aggressive the government became. The public didn't so much fear as smell fear.

It wasn't just the lack of invoice, however. The tax came with a list of exemption criteria, but the criteria were unclear. If the vox pops on the radio are an indication many people who aren't exempt seemed to believe they are. It was all as clear as mud.

The government carried on brow-beating long past the point when it was obvious that it wasn't working. As the clock ticked down towards the March 31 deadline the government then took to threatening homeowners with cuts to local services. That too failed, possibly because it was too late, possibly because the waste in the mostly unaccountable local government spending is obvious to all or possibly because many people just didn't want to pay the €100.

The government made such a mess that 800,000* Irish homeowners thought they'd take their chances on the possible fine for late payment. This only served to highlight another serious design flaw in the Household Charge: the penalty for not paying on time is too small.

Those who fail to pay within the first 6 months will owe €116 ($154). The penalties rise a bit after that, but if you leave it for a year you owe only €142 ($189). A €42 ($55) penalty is just too small to cause anyone worry, especially if you believe that this government is incapable of figuring out who really owes and who doesn't. (Compare that penalty to the €60-90 that's owed by those who fail to put €2 into a parking meter.)

To me this is the essence of what's going on here – hundreds of thousands of people have treated the new Household Charge as not much more than a parking meter. They figure there's a good chance they'll get away without being caught and if they are caught the price they'll pay is too small to worry about.

This isn't so much a revolt against imposed austerity as a statement by the people on the capabilities of the government to actually enforce the law. For generations Irish people have skirted the law when the opportunity has arisen and this is more of the same. They've looked the government in the eye and said, "I'll pay - when you make me." It's up to the government to prove them wrong.

* Even the figure of 800,000 who didn't pay is open to question as the government doesn't really have an accurate figure for how many households there are in the country. Simply incredible.

** Just for the record: I paid. My wife says I'm too American.

{Photo thanks to Independent.ie.}

France and Germany now calling the shots in Ireland

The EU's power brokers
Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy

They started yesterday and they're still talking in Brussels. Well, 26 European Union leaders are still talking because Britain's David Cameron sort of excused himself early this morning when he basically said, "out, out, out" to everything that was being discussed.

Of course, among the 26, two are doing nearly all the talking and each of the others is nodding vacantly or looking into their coffee cup wondering why they didn't take that university job they could have had.

Sure some of the others are less unhappy than others, but they all know they're being told to take it or leave it. That's how the European Union works. Nobody officially says that, but there's a reason why Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy had their own pre-summit summit earlier this week. They were hammering out what is to be done and now they're telling everyone else.

The answer to Europe's troubles, according to current rumors, is what they're calling a "fiscal compact," which is basically centralized control over each state's budgetary process. In short-hand this means each EU state remains a free country ... so long as they do exactly as the Germans and French want.
____________
Read More:

Wall Street Journal speculates Ireland ready to print Irish punts

Ireland's sovereignty is probably gone for good

Photo highlights tensions on day Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish treaty
_____________

And what of Ireland? Well, to coin a phrase, we are between a rock, a hard place and the deep blue sea. All options look extremely unfavorable. Right now it looks like we'll swallow hard, look back longingly at all those nice sentiments and the long, historical struggle for independence and say good-bye to all that. Almost certainly Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny will come home from Brussles and try to put a brave face on what is a surrender, even if it's a surrender to reality in the eyes of many people.

The other options include turning away from the rest of the EU and asking if Britain will take us under its wing. This might be preferable to a Franco-German domination, but Irish people are not ready to accept that.

The last option is to - as much as possible - go it alone. "Ourselves alone" (Sinn Féin) again. This option will have a lot of appeal to the more hard core nationalists and could even carry the day if we get a vote on the new deal. It would mean severe financial hardship. Yet, Irish people are pretty stubborn when someone tries to tell them what to do and if we have a referendum any attempt by the Germans or French to bully us into a 'Yes' could well back-fire. We may well spurn the money if the mood is determined enough.

Oh, but that's the other rumor: we won't be getting a referendum on this new treaty to amend the rules of the European Union. We have had referendums for every EU Treaty until now, but this time, when the issue is fundamentally about Ireland remaining an independent state or becoming part of a United States of Europe we may not have a say. It's a rumor coming from Brussels.

There's a lot of gallows humor and jokes about German rule here at the moment. Irish people excel in laughing in the face of utter disaster, which is where we are now. I've indulged in it myself, calling the proposed new treaty the Anschluss Treaty.

However, a lot of the anger being directed at the Germans is not fair either. They're owed a lot of money and they want it back. They have a culture of saving and not borrowing and they're an old and aging population. They're fearful.

All of which is understandable, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily the right move for Ireland to be part of this new revised EU, this United States of Europe. In fact, with the United Kingdom outside our life inside the EU - the new tighter euro in particular - might easily leave us with the same boom/bust existence we've had since the euro was born.

Our peculiar place inside the euro, but trading mostly to non-euro countries leaves us exactly where we were before all these changes. As of now we still owe far more than we can pay back. I've seen nothing that says in exchange for agreeing to this new treaty that the EU powers will write off our over-sized debts. Without a big pay-off in terms of debt forgiveness it seems we may have opted for the worst least option available to us.

Ireland's 'bagel tax' is a vote of no confidence in the EU

Bagels - not bread in Ireland

Is a bagel bread? I say it is. The Oxford English Dictionary says it is ("a hard ring-shaped salty roll of bread"). From what I can tell Jewish people consider the bagel to be bread.

Truth is, I can't imagine anyone thinking the bagel is not bread yet, the Irish government does. As far as the government is concerned, bagels are not bread.

Last week the Irish Times revealed that Ireland's Revenue Commissioners (the Irish version of the IRS) are dusting off an old law as to what constitutes bread. Those products that don't meet the definition will now be subject to a 13.5% Value Added Tax (sales tax) rate. Bread incurs no VAT.

Lest you think this is an attack directed against Ireland's tiny Jewish community, it is not. Bagels were non-existent here until about a dozen years ago, but now they are widely produced by non-Jews all over Ireland. Besides, it isn't just bagels that the revenue officials are targeting. Croissants, garlic bread and other 'fancy breads' that became widely available here during the Celtic Tiger years are also in line for the extra tax treatment.

According to the Irish government, bagels and the rest are "not sufficiently bread-like to be exempt from VAT." The law defines bread pretty specifically based on ingredients and the cooking process. As far as the law is concerned bread is produced by "baking dough composed exclusively of a mixture of cereal flour" and any of the ingredients on their list.

Those ingredients include fruit and milk, but not eggs or garlic, which is why croissants and garlic bread do not fit the definition. Bagels are excluded because the dough is boiled before it's baked. Unless seeds can be included as "dried fruit" a lot of "fancy breads" topped by sesame or poppy seeds are also excluded from the legal definition of bread. Of course loads of bagels come with sesame seeds or poppy seeds or onion or garlic or cinnamon, which only further emphasizes how far from bread they really are in legal terms.
____________

Read More:

Frustration grows as severe Irish budget looms

Death of the Euro is inevitable in continuing European financial crisis

Brown bread as your mother made it
_____________

So what's going on here?

Well, ostensibly our broke government is simply looking for some extra dough. Enforcing a long-neglected law on bread is just one more way to raise revenue. However, I think there's a deeper philosophical underpinning at work here, one that runs counter to what I wrote last week.

By breathing new life into this moldy old law the government is telling the Irish people to stop eating that "foreign muck" and get back to eating "real bread." And by real bread they mean something your Irish granny used to make. Traditional Irish soda bread or brown bread is recommended, but good old-fashioned white bread, unsliced, is also fine.

This is the government's subtle way of telling us that all those foreign influences we've imported during the past 40 years of European Union membership are comming to an end. Maybe they think the EU is coming to an end or maybe just our involvement in it. Regardless, this is clear evidence that the government's love of the EU has grown a bit stale.

If they really believed in our long term future in the EU they'd realize that a narrow, Irish-only definition of bread would not survive a challenge brought to a European court. I mean, even Irish people seemed stunned to learn that bagels and croissants are not bread. Is a French or German or Polish official going to concede that bagels and croissants are not bread? Unlikely.

The government's 'let em eat brown bread' attitude ties in neatly with their constant cries of austerity. It also ties in well with the philosophy that drove Ireland's governments between 1922 and 1960, when people endured some significant financial hardship in order to build a new, independent Ireland. This is the first official hint that we are heading back in that direction. I'm curious to see what else they've got cooking.

{Picture from ChiagoBagel.com}