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Cóir Date: 15.03.2010 Last Saturday, Iceland held its first-ever referendum. To say it was a landslide is an understatement, as a whopping 94% of voters cast a ‘No’ vote against what many felt was an unfair agreement between their Government and those of Britain and The Netherlands. The agreement focused on the issue of the repayment of loans owed to the British and Dutch Governments by Icelandic bank, Landsbanki, in the wake of the collapse of its off-shore unit, Icesave, in 2008.
The referendum was triggered because the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to sign the accord into law, even though the Icelandic Government had already agreed in principle to repay the loans and even though the Althingi (Iceland’s Parliament) had already debated the issue for more than eight months.
When Icesave collapsed in 2008, Iceland’s Investor Guarantee Fund was too small to cover the account-holders’ deposits. And since many of the account-holders were British and Dutch, their respective Governments stepped-in to rescue their savings. This situation left the Icelandic Government, then, responsible for the debt, which amounted to 3.9 billion Euro, roughly half of Iceland’s GDP. And, of course, there was the interest to be added on top of that figure – reported to be 5.5%, over fifteen years.
However, many ordinary Icelanders, including the President, felt, and still feel, that they were being punished for the mistakes made by bankers and politicians. And although the Icelandic Government are saying that the result of the referendum does not mean that Iceland is going to renege on its obligations, and although better conditions for Iceland are now being renegotiated by the three Governments, a recent poll shows that about 50% of Icelanders want a referendum on any Icesave agreement – and many might vote ‘No’ again.
On hearing of the massive rejection by the Icelanders, Richard Greene of Cóir said: “There are many parallels between the economic sagas of Iceland and Ireland, though, at least in this instance, the Icelandic people were given a chance to vote on their version of NAMA. They were given a chance to vote on their versions of the speculator-developer and the non-regulated bankers, and the people of Iceland said, ‘This is not our fault, so if we are going to pay back a debt that we did not ourselves incur – and saddle many future generations with this debt – we want a significantly better deal!’ And it appears that democracy is working in this case, and that they are, indeed, going to get a better deal.”
Mr Greene went on to say: “The way that the EU was seen to be using the IMF as their repo-men has also gone down very badly in Iceland. Actually, their Foreign Minister even said that the EU were ‘abusing the IMF to hand-collect debt’. Unfortunately, the EU does not deal in niceties when it comes to small states. However, as a member of the European Economic Area, Iceland still has access to the internal market of the EU, without having yet given up their sovereignty and their main source of income – their fisheries.”
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Cóir Date: 15.03.2010 A new, investigative report by Fishsubsidy.org has shown that the EU has subsidized fishing firms, convicted of breaking the EU’s own regulations, to the tune of 14 million Euro.
The report only looked at the incidence of law-breaking and subsequent EU subsidy for France and Spain, so it is thought that the figure could grow, as more member states are investigated.
But, speaking on behalf of the Irish Fishermen’s Organisation, Caitlin Ni Aodha told the Cóir office: “It is obvious from this news, that what we’re talking about generally applies to big fishing firms, companies and corporations, like they have in Spain. These companies are able to absorb fines, in the order of 35,000 Euro, as part of their business operations, unlike the smaller, individual fishermen, like we have here in Ireland, for whom such fines generally mean bankruptcy.”
“In other words,” she continued, “big Spanish fishing corporations can afford to break the law – and subsequently get subsidized – whereas the little guy, whose family has been fishing for generations, can be fined off the seas for one small infraction. It is no secret that EU Commission law favours the fishing corporations over individual fishermen.”
In response to the damning report, the EU Commission blamed the member states, saying that they, not it, were responsible for awarding subsidies. But, under EU directives, criminal action is not an excluding factor when a vessel applies for EU subsidy.
“The Common Fisheries Policy is fundamentally flawed,” said Ni Aodha, continuing: “What we want to see is the return of control of their own fisheries to the member states themselves. Quotas set by Brussels and preference given to the most egregious offenders with the least coastline, like Spain, points to the fact that the EU would like to consolidate all vessels into an ‘all-EU fleet’. What they are allowing now – and subsidizing with our taxes – is the beginnings of what they are grasping for in the future. Ireland have given enough...have had our fishing stock decimated by EU bureaucrats who no more care about the seas than they care about the small fishing communities being hurt by their regulations – and now they want it all. We say enough is enough; it’s time to renegotiate a better deal for Ireland.”
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Cóir Date: 15.03.2010 Three months on and the reality of the Lisbon Treaty – even for its ardent supporters! – is now beginning to come home to roost.
The Financial Times Deutschland is not known for too much criticism where the EU project is concerned, but now that the Eurozone is going through its first bad patch, the editors may be having a re-think about ever-closer union. Being German, they probably realise that they are about to foot the bill for a number of member states who need financial bail-out, and they don’t like it.
But, though that may be the genesis of this unusual outburst, this headline article actually deals with the fact that, post-Lisbon, the EU is up to its old trick of ‘bait-and-switch’. The article argues that, “Governments have for a long time fought for it [referring to the ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty over the last 6 years]. However, three months after coming into force, there is disillusionment. For many Governments, the outcome has bitter consequences: the power in Brussels is being distributed in a new way”.
The article continues: “Between Barroso [Commission Pres.] and Van Rompuy [nominal EU Council Pres.], between Commission and Council, the real power struggle is being conducted...Van Rompuy builds his influence steadily. He has created a culture shock in the Council Building as, ‘instructions are now coming from above’”. And the article does not leave Barroso off the hook, adding that the Commission President has, “suddenly discovered his heart for the European Parliament”, to the disadvantage of member state governments.
Cóir spokesman, Manus MacMeanmain said: “You’ll forgive me for sounding like a broken record where the Lisbon Treaty is concerned, but this is no surprise. Cóir were saying all along that people had to be wary of the powerful institutions of the EU, as they rarely live up to their word. Now, even the Europhilic advocates of Brussels bureaucracy are getting stung. What can we say in this case, except, “Schadenfreude ist die beste Freude”.
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Cóir Date: 25.02.2010 Parents for Children (PFC) have warned that the proposals brought forward to amend Article 42 of the Constitution could transfer power from parents to the State to the detriment of children. Writing in a letter to the Irish Times, PFC spokeswoman Maria Mhic Meanmain said:
Madam,
I am glad to see that The Irish Times has called for a debate on the proposed referendum on children, given that the committee proposing these changes ignored the views of parents when bringing forward this proposal.
There are several important sections of this proposal that require debate; where parents need to take centre stage. These include the questions: 1. Why has the term “exceptional cases” been removed, if not to make it easier for the State to seize children? 2. Why does the State want this expanded power considering the dreadful record it has in caring for children taken from families, as we’ve seen from the Ryan report and elsewhere? 3. Why are married parents being demonised? 4. Is our marital commitment to be seen as suspicious and dangerous?
This State has fought parents who tried to get their autistic children appropriate education, closed down children’s wards in our hospitals, removed special-needs assistants from classrooms, reduced child benefit and scrapped the early childhood supplement. Clearly child welfare is far from the top of the Government’s agenda. Parents cannot trust this State to vindicate the rights of our children.
It was reported in this paper recently that there has been an increase in the number of children taken into care because families are struggling to deal with the recession. Is being poor now an offence? Will this new proposal see us return to the practices of the 1950s, where children were taken from families only because those families were poor and then placed in institutions where they were abused?
Why is this being portrayed as a virtuous shifting of balance between the rights of the family and the rights of the child, when it is in fact a shifting of the balance between the rights of the family and the power of the State? There are times when children need protection. Let us not confuse that with endangering even more of our children who are loved and cared for by their parents.
Writing on the same subject in The Irish Times journalist John Waters said that the only “equality” created by the proposal would be, “the equal right of all parents to have their children snatched by the State”, adding that: “Irish children need to be protected, but history tells us that mainly they need to be protected from the State”.
Read more at: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0219/1224264799796.html
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Cóir Date: 25.02.2010 After Fine Gael's dirty laundry was aired in public with the departure of George Lee, the public has finally started to learn what Mr Lee had actually said in the Dáil and elsewhere. As though kept secret by the media and the party, in case the public should discover that not all politicians march in lock-step, what has come to the fore regarding George Lee's economic view are two issues: one, his regard for the family; and, two, his realisation that the EU's rules about government deficit might well stymie Ireland's economic recovery.
As regards the family, Lee not only opposed tax individualisation and cuts in welfare, but also supported the universal child benefit. Commenting on Mr Lee's stances, Cóir spokesman, Richard Greene, said: “It's a pity that more politicians don't speak up like this. The family is the most important unit in society and if it breaks down, the economy is surely going to be negatively impacted. So apart from the social and moral aspects of protecting the family as the centre of Irish society, such action also has huge economic ramifications as well – and George Lee obviously recognised that fact.”
Mr Lee also criticised the heavy-handed approach taken by the EU regarding its demand that Irish government reduce its deficit to 3% of GDP by 2013 and 2014, from where we are today, at around 12%. He contended that, instead of cutting back on spending, the Government must continue to spend to invest in and create job, because, as he said: “You will not recover banking until you get jobs. You will not get anyone buying houses until you get jobs.”
Instead, however, as we are all so painfully aware, the Government cut E4 billion Euro from the budget for this year, and, because of the EU's rules on deficit spending, faces the same type of cuts for the next three or more years. On the issue of EU regulation in this case, Mr Lee told the Dáil in November (Since then the situation has changed slightly with the emergence of Greece's debt problems, though the essence of what he said still remains true): “What Europe is asking us to do has never been asked of any other economy...Jobs should be at the centre of our economic adjustment so that we can have employment, not the long-term consequences of following a blind mantra on cutting everything because someone else says so.”
Cóir spokesman, Richard Greene, had this to say: “Given Mr Lee's prominent status as a celebrity politician, it is peculiar how his Dáil speeches on these matters never made front-page headlines. Perhaps, he had strayed too far off the reservation, and, even though well-liked among his former peers, the media were never going to make it known that the EU were actually behind the terrible cuts being imposed on the Irish people. How could they, when they had been the most vociferous proponents of giving the EU even more power with Lisbon. What has been made quite clear from our current economic woes is that the EU is primarily of, by and for the Big States of Europe.”
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