Irish national debt in the 1980s – the figures and the facts

// November 30th, 2006 // 5 Comments » // Fianna Fail, irish economy, irish national debt

I keep having to do this so much on various sites that I’ve decided to have it on my blog to make it easier for me to find and reference. The figures I’ve used below come from the NationalTreasuryManagementAgency and the Irish government’s own sites.

These are the figures in euros for Ireland’s national debt

At the end of 1977 -National debt was €5,370
At the end of 1981 – National debt was €12,945 that is more than 240% of the 1977 figure.

That would be while we were governed by the oh-so fiscally responsible folk in FF we’re governed by right now.

And in all honesty the beginning of year 1983 was the first one that the FG/Lab coalition had actual power and a chance to decide what to do. From June 1981 to Feb 1982 they had barely time to look at the books (and had to introduce a supplementary budget because of how reckless Haughey had been.). And the figures have to be viewed in comparison to the rate of inflation which in turn affected the interest rates

1982 – 14,816 which is a 14.45% increase on previous year

1983 – 18,274 which is a 23.33% increase on previous year

1984 – 21,358 which is a 16.87% increase on previous year

1985 – 23,492 which is a 9.99% increase on previous year

1986 – 27,440 which is a 16.8% increase on previous year

1987 – 30,085 which is a 9.63% increase on previous year

So, that is just over a 100% rise in 5 years. The numbers come from the government’s budget figures used in 2002.

So when some people love to harp on about how the national debt doubled from 1983 to 1987 they are ignoring the fact that the FG/Lab government started off with an inherited deficit, in a sense taking over a control of an accelerating debt level. The deficit (or overspend) was of the order of nearly 10% from FF going from one year to another which they had to reduce. So the level of national debt would have risen by 70/80% even with no further borrowing had taken place simply due to the very high interest rates at the time, and that the debt meant recession and a lack of investment and further jobs losses which in turn meant fewer people in employment to pay taxes and more people out of work and drawing benefit so spending was going up.

It is also a factor that from 87 to 91 emigration from Ireland peaked which reduced the current expenditure demand on the FF government in terms of social welfare. Anyone remember Brian Lenihan telling us “after all, we can’t all live on a small island‘ in an interview to Newsweek in October 1987? Of course not.

And lastly, people defending FF and attacking FG for what happened in the 1980s economically choose to forget that the spending Haughey committed the state to involved repeating current expenditure like hiring civil servants just to get the dole queues down. The incoming government simply wasn’t in a position politically to sack them.

Water shortage in the northside area

// November 30th, 2006 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Water Tankers will be at St’Brigid’s church, Howth rd and behind UCI Coolock.

You can request water delivery at 2224220 or 6796186

More here -> water shortage

BA cross

// November 24th, 2006 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

BA have got themselves into some trouble last week over preventing a member of staff from wearing a cross to work, or did they? Is perhaps the truth that it is the media falling over themselves to be even handed that have instead dug a hole, got someone to kneel down behind the company and pushed BA into it.

Fact is, as the BA reps have pointed out repeatedly, they have a uniform policy against the wearing of any jewelry at work, and a necklace with a cross on it is when all is said and done jus that – jewelry. Wearing a cross is not a core aspect of being a Christian or a Catholic for that matter.

I wonder sometimes if there aren’t people who go looking for things to be offended about.

Update – BA have decided to ‘review’ their uniform policy. I think for commerical reasons they had to do this but the media have created a dangerous precedent here. As noted on HIGNFY, someone could ask to wear a dead goat around their neck and as it is part of their personal interpretation of their faith, in this case Satanism.

Let’s give it back

// November 24th, 2006 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I’m struck at budget time with how proud the minister appears to be that he took in more money than intended as if he has somehow created more money (which as minister he can do but that fuels inflation), when it fact he has simply taken more of the public’s money out of circulation than he had actually intended.

I can’t help but feel that there is something wrong about the smugness involved in all this. Given that much of the increase this year is as a result of house prices running ahead of where they were expected to, it seems doubly cruel.

My suggestion would be why don’t we do what the US federal government does and issue rebates or one off increases in tax credits when this happens? That way we would all share in the wealth that results from our economic activity.

Boot camps and bright coloured hoodies

// November 21st, 2006 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Odd that all this bruhaha has blown up on monday about ‘boot camps‘ as I was asking mates of mine over the weekend how come no one had come up with a ‘make the little feckers break some rocks’ type hard time proposal. Of course, as someone pointed out the last thing you want to do is take a nasty piece of work and make them a more physically fit, nasty piece of work.

Now, I’m pretty sure that I’m not being bugged by Billy Timmins, but it was somewhat coincidental. There again, if I was being bugged they might have stayed around as the idea we came up with was making those guilty of anti-social but non-violent offenses clean chewing gum off the pavement of our city streets in bright pink overalls on weekends using plastic utensils. And then take pictures and display them in public places. (OK, the pink overalls is my late addition to the idea)

Basically, make them feel bad, embarrass them, make fools of them. Anything, but make them feel like big lads because they got nicked.

L’etat c’est everyone else

// November 19th, 2006 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I’ve a personal view that when someone says ‘the state’ should do or pay for something that it is useful to substitute the words ‘everyone else’ for ‘the state’ and see if the idea still makes since. Try it at home, it’s free and makes some things that are on initial viewing quite complicated seem a lot more straightforward.

Another year older, another budget

// November 17th, 2006 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

We’re getting plenty of never mind the quality feel the width from the government about the estimates. I’m put in mind of a builder telling someone that they still haven’t finished building their extension but bragging about how much more they have spent than they had previous intended to.

I was wonder how the issue will percolate down to the local authority leve. It would seem on initial reports about the place that the local authority grant has not risen to match inflation not to mind the commitments made as part of benchmarking. It would seem in part that the government is aiming to force the local councils to increase charges and as such create resentment against the opposition parties that are now in control of most councils around the country.

Of course, all this robbing Peter to pay Paul sleight of hand is going to have an immediate direct impact on local authorities most directly in the form of waste charges as budgets for the coming year. The government negotiated with the unions a few years back and agreed a partnership deal with increased pay for local authority employees. Then they did the dirty on the local authorities by not increase the contribution from the central fund to cover this increase.

I believe that paying directly for something such as the bin collection service places the issue in sharp focus for most people. to hear some talk about it you’d swear it was tiny minority of households that produced all of our waste and in fact we were all producing too much. I got myself into some hot water a few years back when I queried the comments from a public rep who appeared to be opposing the change in the Dublin City charges system from one that charged everyone the same amount to one that charged based on how often you put your bin out. In fact what annoyed me most was that while I had pointed out the problems with the intial plan the same person had publicly supported that previous reform package which was even less responsive to the amount that people put out and as such would have rewarded recycling efforts much less than the system introduced. Well, sure, you makes your choices and let the voters decide, and we live and learn.

Of course, any charge system should have a consistent national waiver system to address the issue of affordablity that affects those on fixed incomes and treats everyone fairly. That does not mean that someone getting the service for nothing would be able to dispose of all the waste you would like for nothing. There are issues to be addressed particular to different groups such as the issue that many older people have with disposing of pants for incontinence, there again I’m not sure that should be going into the regular wheelies bins as it is. I would think that there should really be a separate free collection for people in such situations.

On a minor political issue, I wonder where will Cllr Cosgrave place her vote when it comes to the budget for Dublin City Council? It would be nice but naive I suppose to think she might pay a visit and consult her constituents and those who voted for her as to what she should do.

Fixing the electoral register.

// November 13th, 2006 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

See here is the thing, if you filled in the form and gave it to the collector, and it got lost in the system, what is there to stop it getting lost again if you fill it out now and have it returned by nov 25th?

And being a complete ninny but why do we not have a rolling register? Instead we have a deadline of Nov 25th and the register next comes out on Feb 15th of the following year. That is nearly 3 months to update and print something?

Surely, at this point the orginal register from which the printed version is made is electronic, probably a greate big excel file and that can be accessed via the web as we can see from checktheregister.ie so why can’t they update the changes as they are going along? Each Monday morning the latest version replaces the version that was previously being accessed and then we can see well before Feb 15th and the final version being printed if we’re on the damn thing.

Christ you would really wonder some times if the lads in the Dept of the Environment even know what century it is.

I will correct myself on one thing, the register comes out on Feb 1st and comes into effect on Feb 15th.

See it takes 2 whole weeks to distribute them. Odd that a publishing company and on-line sales sites can get you a copy of the new Harry Potter into hundreds of thousands of homes in the space of 2/3 days, we take 2 weeks to distribute the register to around a thousand locations.

But there is no IT job involved, the work of making the register available has been finally done and all this is copying a new version of the files up the same location once a week.

A rolling register would spread the cost and make it cheaper rather than having this false peak and who knows perhaps associated overtime.

Can anyone seriously think of a valid reason why we do this whole once a year deadline thing?

The most recent illustration of the farce our electorate register arethe revelations last week that a number of TDs have been struck offthe register despite personally preparing and handing in their forms.If they are being targeted for elimination then what hope for therest of us?

As many people are now aware the Dept of the Environment has at longlast started to embrace the modern age and you can check if you areon the register online using www.checktheregister.ie . Those who donot have access to the net can continue to check at their local Gardastation or Post Office. If you are not on the current draft registerthen you must fill in the form and get it into the council byNovember 25th.

What is not understandable is why we do not having a rollingregister? By means all print and provide a paper copy once as year aswe already do, but we should spread the work of updating the registerthroughout the year. All alterations to the register should require awritten note to be attached to the electronic master record. Ifsomeone is removed the note should explain why that was done, just aswe have to provide a written form to be added. It would be veryinteresting to hear why these Labour TDs were targeted for removal.

And finally, we should automatically add people to the register whenthey are issued with a PPS number.  Of course, only with the votingrights appropriate to their status in the Irish electorate system.The means to fix the register are so straightforward one would haveto wonder why it hasn’t been done already? E-voting has shown wecan’t trust the government to count the votes and now it seems wecan’t trust them to let us vote.