Ireland set to vote a grudging yes on Fiscal Treaty

Ireland is set to vote in no less than its ninth European referendum next week. As they have done in the previous eight, the major two parties are supporting the yes vote. But as in the past, this is no guarantee the ayes will have it. This is because like many of the previous ones the issue on the table is obscure and Austere Ireland has long since lost its romance with Europe. Those supporting the treaty have issued dire warnings of a “no” vote. 

The latest vote is on the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economicand Monetary Union more commonly known as the EU fiscal compact or EU fiscal treaty. The treaty tries to put in place a number of measures to get EU countries to balance their books and put an end to excessive borrowing.  Ireland is one of the worst offenders though is slowly on the mend. The Irish economy has stabilised after three years of contraction. The European Commission forecasts a GDP rise of 0.5% this year and all the quarterly fiscal targets under the bail-out program have been met.

Ireland needs a constitutional change to ratify the compact.  Article 29 of the 1937 Constitution deals with international relations.  Article 29.4 has been modified a number of times to signify the various EU treaties Ireland is a signatory to. If passed, the 10^th subsection of Article 29.4 of the Constitution will add a clause to the effect that: “The State may ratify the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union done at Brussels on the 2nd day of March 2012.”

Irish Broadcaster RTE has published a detailed breakdown of the 16 articles of the treaty and how they affect Ireland. The key article is Article 3 which sets out the requirements how to run balanced or surplus budgets and how it will be monitored and reinforced. The article defines an upper structural deficit of 0.5% of GDP where a structural deficit is defined as one where an economy is losing money despite operating at full potential.

Each country must meet a medium term objective which is a program of action to reduce their debt. The original Maastricht Treaty had a Stability and Growth Pact which had targets for public debt which had to be supported by annual programs. It had a 3% rule for budget deficits but it went out the window after both heavyweights Germany and France breached the upper limit in 2003-2004.

That caused a rule change in 2005 to make it more flexible. Many countries hid the true extent of their budget situation – none more so than Greece so that by the time the truth emerged the damage was done. In response, the EU introduced the Six Pack in 2011 of five regulations and one directive and the Fiscal Compact builds on this. The Six Pack has strict enforcement of debt limits with countries subject to monitoring and penalties for breeches. These penalties would kick in earlier before countries could no longer afford to pay them. It also clamps down on property bubbles and makes it easier for countries to vote for sanctions against those who break the rules.

The Six Pack had an upper structural deficit of 1.0% of GDP which the Treaty reduces by half. Those against it such as Sinn Fein have dubbed it the Austerity Treaty. Party president Gerry Adams said it surrendered “significant control of Irish fiscal and budgetary matters to unelected and unaccountable EU officials.”

Those in favour have issued the usual warnings to the consequences of a no vote. Sean O'Driscoll, chairman of the Glen Dimplex manufacturing group said failure to support the treaty would mean Ireland leaving the euro. “Ireland signed up to the currency in 1999 [and] that brought rules – rules which we broke by allowing our economy to become inflated,” he said. “We now need to stay within the system and we need to argue our case within the system.”

The Economist described the referendum as a battle between conflicting emotions among voters. “The fear of many that rejecting the treaty will mean no access to EU finance, potentially sending Ireland hurtling down the Greek path to ruin, against the anger of many about the hardship imposed by four years of austerity,” The Economist said. But in the knowledge that Ireland has grudgingly supported all the other recent Treaties, the Economist was prepared to grant a narrow victory to the “yes” vote. “At the moment it looks as if fear will trump anger,” they said.

David Bowie turns 65: A personal recollection

My first memory of David Bowie is when I was a young teenager at the house of my two older cousins. They influenced my early musical tastes which meant I had an early eclectic collection that featured Mike Oldfield, Steve Hillage, Rory Gallagher and Rush. Among their albums was a strange looking LP with an unforgettable cover photo. There was a man and a woman both shown naked from the chest upwards, the man with big bright red hair staring pensively straight into the camera, while the woman, her head resting gently on his shoulder, seemed almost forlorn. The album was called “Pinups” and the artist announced as just “Bowie”. I didn’t know whether “Bowie” was him or her or both of them but desperately wanted to know more. Her face was familiar but it was his voice that transfixed me from the first listen.

Later my cousin told me he was David Bowie and she was the model Twiggy, whom I remembered seeing on television. What was she doing on the cover, I asked. He didn’t know. It would be many years before I found out why though I figured Bowie must have had a thing for Twiggy when she got name checked (“Twig the Wonder Kid”) in Drive In Saturday on the album Aladdin Sane. That album and Pinups were released within six months of each other in 1973 when I was nine years old.

It was probably around late 1978 or so when my cousins first exposed me to his work and his astonishing different coloured eyes. The following year I got my first summer job porting cases around the Grand Hotel in Tramore for ten quid a week. I stayed at my auntie’s in Tramore and for the first time in my life I had discretionary spending money. All that summer I spent my wages on David Bowie’s back collection. There was Pinups, of course and Aladdin Sane. But there were lots more besides and I immediately loved them all.

Space Oddity (1969) featured the hit single of the same name. The tune was instantly familiar from radio but I never realised it was the same guy who shared a possibly naked album cover with Twiggy. There was The Man Who Sold the World (1971) full of raucous rocking anthems and the album that Roy Carr and Charles Murray later told me in their “Bowie: An Illustrated Record” (1981) was where the Bowie story really began. The cover art of Bowie in a dress was too much for 1970s Catholic Ireland (as it was for less conservative Britain) and we all had to make do with the “leg up” photo from the Ziggy era.

Hunky Dory (1971) quickly established itself as a personal favourite. While cycling in the countryside near Waterford I would sing loudly each song in the order they appeared on the album, much to the bemusement of the cows in the nearby fields who had to put up with my squealing out every previous moment of “Oh You Pretty Things". It was pure pop, Bowie style and I loved every minute of it. I'm not sure the cows shared my tastes.

Next up was Ziggy Stardust (1972). While this was the album – and the persona – that made Bowie a household name, it was never one I particularly loved. I thought the concept album idea was boring and none of the songs haunted their way into my conscience as did his other albums of the same era. I did like the instruction on the cover “To be played at maximum volume” but I never risked the wrath of mum and dad by actually complying.

As stated before the 1973 albums were my entry point to Bowie. Not until I read Carr & Murray, did I realise Pinups was full of 1960s covers and even recently when I heard Ray Davies blast out “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?” my first reaction was to think the Kinks did a great cover of Bowie’s record. Aladdin Sane, however, was pure Bowie and utterly haunting from the first listen. I was entranced by Bowie’s apocalyptic vision from the subtitle of the title song Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?) expecting World War III to break out any day. But it was Mike Garson’s piano in the final track Lady Grinning Soul that penetrated deepest with Bowie crooning “She will be your living end” grinning its way into my soul. It’s still my all time favourite Bowie song.

Then it was Diamond Dogs from 1974, another overrated album by my lights. I was never a huge fan of the singles Rebel, Rebel or Diamond Dogs though I loved the epic sweep of the Sweet Thing trilogy. Young Americans from 1975 was much more to my liking. Very different from anything Bowie did before, his “plastic soul” sounded anything but plastic and the influence of John Lennon still in his prime and Luther Vandross made this a very classy sounding album. Bowie’s voice seemed to adapt to any style.

Station to Station (1976) was another departure and another Bowie character the vampire-like Thin White Duke. Bowie was a heavy cocaine user during this period and it drives on the pulsating title track that opens the album. The opening minutes of that song are unforgettable as the train build up speed slowly with a droning guitar before the thin white Duke’s voice returns to bring this massive song home with an up tempo conclusion. Well, if it's not the side-effects of the cocaine, I'm thinking that it must be love.

It took me a while to love the two 1977 albums Low and Heroes. By then Bowie was in Berlin and under the influence of ambient musician Brian Eno. Low was well named, the pain of Bowie’s then splintered personal life brought out in songs like Breaking Glass and Always Crashing in the Same Car. The instrumental side 2 was difficult listening but ultimately rewarding. Heroes followed a similar trajectory with side one distilling in lyrics Bowie’s drug-crazed agonies while an instrumental side two seemed to explore the same concepts in music.

Lodger (1979) came out in the same year I was seriously getting into Bowie. It was a bit more upbeat than the previous two and was minus the instrumental frenzies but it was still a dark record. Boys Keep Swinging got Bowie back in the British charts but there was not much singles joy in this platter. The title Lodger hinted Bowie was not really at home in this music but his travels around world music did give him a better feel for dance music he would exploit successfully in the coming years.

That decade started with Scary Monsters and Super Creeps which was the first Bowie album I bought as soon as it came out. I was a bit disappointed. The album was a commercial successful and the singles Ashes to Ashes and Fashion put him at the top of the charts. Yet somehow I was expecting a bit more from Bowie. It was another change of musical philosophy for sure, but it just seemed to fall short. Maybe I was just being precious because everyone liked Bowie at the time. Listening again to It's No Game (Part 1) recently, it is a classic track with Michi Hirota singing the song in Japanese and Bowie spitting out the translation in English as if, as Carr & Murray said he was “tearing out his intestines”.

My love affair with Bowie ended in 1983 with Let’s Dance. Sooner or later Bowie would have to release a disco record and this was it, and a great success. But by 1983 I was a know-all 18 and starting to get into more obscure music, listening to Wire, the Virgin Prunes and the young Matt Johnson (later The The). I was unimpressed by Bowie’s clean dance sounds on this album. The title track was playing in every discotheque in the world that summer and I loathed it like I loathed Thriller which came out around the same time. This music was beneath me and I didn’t buy another Bowie record for 20 years.

Around 2005, there was a time when all his back collection of CDs was selling at $10 a pop in Brisbane record stores. In a fit of nostalgia I bought all those albums from 1970 to 1983. I fell in love with his early music again. Too much time had passed under the bridge for me to care about more recent Bowie offerings. I bought Heathen (2002) but because it had no 1970s or 1980s memories to weave on to, it never impinged on my conscience and I’ve hardly ever played it. But for those 13 years or so, Bowie’s voice, dexterity and mastery of various genres made him a musical genius of the highest order. Happy 65th birthday, David.

Charles Byrne's Body: A sorry science story

Back in the mid 18th century an oddity was born in Ireland who if he lived over 200 years later would have likely been one of Irish basketball’s best hopes. In a dwarfish country stunted by lack of access to nutritious foods, Charles Byrne stood out. He was believed by many to be over eight feet tall though skeletal evidence put him at 2.31m, which at seven foot seven was still head, shoulders and much of the upper torso over most of his contemporaries. Byrne did not have access to a better diet than others around him. It was a gene mutation caused by a pituitary tumour that caused the growth. He died in 1783 aged just 22 though it wasn’t the tumour that killed him.

Byrne lived 21 of those 22 years in Tyrone, born of unexceptional stock. The sly gossips said the reason for his height was his parents had a love affair on top of a huge haystack and this lofty situation somehow affected conception. No one said this to his face - if they could up into it. Although acknowledged as a freak of nature, Charles Byrne wasn’t generally treated as one. Australian historian Patrick O’Farrell said the Irish treated everyone on their merits. Writing about the Irish in Australia, O’Farrell noted that because they never tried to paternalise their relationship with Aborigines they never looked down on them as the WASPs did and instead treated them as equals. Byrne left Tyrone not ashamed of his freakdom but wanting to exploit it. His parents knew he could better capitalise on his status elsewhere.

His exceptional size had attracted a nearby carpetbagger named Joe Vance from Coagh. Vance wanted to astound Europe with Byrne. The pair arrived in London in 1782, and Byrne transfixed the capital as Vance’s creation “the Irish Giant”. He took a room next door to the fabled Cox’s Museum at Charing Cross. The choice was not accidental. James Cox was a jeweller and toy maker who exported luxury European items to the Far East. When China suddenly banned his goods, he turned his unsaleable cargo of exotic clocks, watches and earrings into a museum of “automata” which opened in 1772. This museum became known for its extravagant assemblage and quickly became “a seductive metaphor and a compelling stage for debating the troublesome issues of political and economic stability.”

While Cox had sold up by the time Byrne moved to London, his museum retained an aura that Vance knew he could capitalise on. Byrne entertained audiences next door for seven hours a day, six days a week. His gracious airs made him the talk of the town. Within a few weeks, Byrne was entertaining the Royal Family, members of the nobility and his baffling condition was examined by the Royal Society. When a fellow freak, Count Joseph Boruwlawski known as the “Polish Dwarf” met Byrne in London, their surprise was equal. As Boruwlawski remembered, Byrne was a moment speechless, “viewing me with looks of astonishment; then stooping very low to present me his hand, which easily have contained a dozen like mine, he made a very polite compliment. Had a painter been present, the contrast of our figures might have suggested to him the idea of an interesting picture; for having come very near him, the better to show the difference, it appeared that his knee was nearly upon level with the top of my head.”

Flushed with success, Byrne moved to Piccadilly where he continued to work six days a week (Sundays excepted). Admittance for ladies and gentlemen was 2s. 6d, children and “servants in livery” had to fork out a shilling. Vance and Byrne grew wealthy on the profits. By early 1783 the fickle public were tiring of the Irish Giant. News of his success drew other tall men to London including the Gigantic Twin Knipe brothers who were born only five miles away from Byrne in Tyrone. Another Irishman was advertised as a giant “upwards of Four Inches taller than the noted Burn”. Byrne’s problems were compounded by his love of gin and whiskey. He was frequently drunk on stage and cancelled many performances. Vance was forced to drop prices and soon everyone was paying the livery price of a shilling.

On 23 April 1783, Byrne went on a “lunar ramble” at the Black Horse public house. He fell asleep drunk and someone stole £700 from his pockets – his entire savings. Devastated, he redoubled his drinking and contracted tuberculosis. He deteriorated badly in May and died on 1 June 1783. In his final days his biggest fear was not death but the surgeons’ thirst for his body. His Irish Catholic upbringing gave him a horror of the coroner’s knife which he believed could deny his soul a place in heaven on Judgement Day.

One man had no time for Byrne’s scruples on the matter. His name was John Hunter, Surgeon Extraordinary to King George III. Hunter was a pivotal influence on modern surgery with his method and dissected thousands of cadavers he got from “resurrection men” – professional grave robbers. From the moment Hunter set eyes on Byrne he coveted his body for science. Byrne was aware of Hunter’s ambition and strove to thwart it in his dying days. His instructions were that his coffin should be guarded by Irish friends who would arrange to bury him at sea. Byrne scraped the last of his savings to the undertaker whom he entrusted to carry out the plan.

Hunter meanwhile was determined not to lose out. He employed a man named Howison to watch Byrne’s whereabouts at all times from a next door apartment. When Byrne died, a newspaper reported he wanted his bones “far out of the reach of the chirurgical fraternity”. The chirurgeons were in an arms race of demands for the body. One reportedly offered a ransom of 800 guineas to the undertakers. While the bidding went on, the promoters got one last meal ticket out of Byrne: they displayed his enormous coffin to the public for one shilling. Then on 6 June, the body was taken aboard a ship to Margate where it would be sunk in “20 fathoms of water” in the English Channel. At Margate another boat was chartered and the coffin was tipped into the sea.

But Byrne’s body was no longer in it. The Annual Register for 1873 said the sea burial report was “merely a tub thrown out to the whale.” While the whales had the tub, Hunter had the body. When Byrne died, Howison immediately told his paymaster. Hunter quickly bribed the undertaker for £500 who switched the body with paving stones while the oblivious funeral party was drunk. Hunter took the corpse back to his surgery but became terrified of the revenge of Byrne’s friends if they found out. There was no autopsy. Instead he He chopped up the body and boiled the pieces so only the bones were left. He then hid the huge skeleton for four years until Byrne’s name was forgotten. In his haste, it went brown.

Hunter displayed the Irish Giant in his anatomical collection and was later put it in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1909 American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing got permission to open Byrne’s skull and he diagnosed the pituitary tumour. Byrne’s discoloured skeleton remains today in the Hunterian where many visitors including the current monarch have been fascinated by his extraordinary size.

Hunter got his way but the fight continues today between his legacy and Byrne’s modern day family anxious to carry out his dying wish. One of those relatives, Brendan Holland said Byrne’s body has been on display for 200 years and it was time for him to receive a proper burial. "He was quite a celebrity and he made a lot of money out of exhibiting himself," Holland said. "It's the person within that's important. It's very unfortunate that he didn't live long enough to understand that." His enthusiasm for a sea burial is not shared by the Hunterian’s current director Sam Alberti. Alberti was reluctant to hand over his star attraction saying “researchers were excited about the potential for future research.”

But the British Medical Journal agrees with the family Byrne has done his time and should be buried at sea. Fellow Northern Irishman and researcher at the school of law at Queen’s University Belfast, Thomas Muinzer wrote in the Journal it was time to respect his memory and reputation. “What has been done cannot be undone but it can be morally rectified,” Muinzer wrote. Mr Muinzer added there was nothing of any more use that could be deduced scientifically from Byrne’s bones. “We have now a full record of Byrne’s DNA and we also have numerous examinations of the skeleton,” he wrote. “With burial law, when you or I stipulate burial wishes in life, we rely on those wishes to be respected. Those wishes don’t have legal force, they have moral force.”

Ireland's difficulty is Enda's opportunity

Incoming Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny might be forgiven a bit of hyperbole when he described the election result as a “democratic revolution”. It was nothing on the bloody scale of what has gone on in the Arab world. Yet Kenny wasn’t too far off the mark either. The scale of the weekend’s defeat of the ruling government is rare in western democracies and unheard of in Ireland where Fianna Fail has been a dominant national institution for 80 years. Everyone expected them to lose this election after the 10-year property bubble burst causing the collapse of Ireland’s banking system and national finances. But no one was game to predict how much the fury of the voters would turn defeat into annihilation. The word landslide barely does justice to what happened. (AP Photo of Enda Kenny by Peter Morrison)

In a time of major economic crisis in Ireland, incumbency stunk to high heaven. Thanks to cronyism and incompetence, Fianna Fail has dropped from 78 seats to a likely 21. Minor governing partners the Greens have been wiped off the map losing all six seats showing what happens when an environmental movement becomes just another political party. FF have plummeted from the biggest party in the land, to a precarious rural rump. They may not even be the official opposition, if the large batch of newly elected left-wing independents manage to cobble together some sort of coalition.

The disaster was most remarkable in Dublin where FF was almost completely wiped out. Outgoing Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan clung on to his seat but he was the only successful candidate as a dozen others fell. FG did well as expected but not as well as Labour and the independents; it was as the Irish Examiner said “a sharp turn to the left in the capital”.

My home town of Waterford was a microcosm of the sea change that infected Irish politics. Mostly working class Waterford would usually elect 2 FF, 1 FG and 1 Labour in a stable and predictable 4-seat constituency that covers the city and county. Seeing the way the wind was blowing, FF only put forward one candidate this time round, experienced TD Brendan Kenneally. Most people, myself included, expected Waterford to end up electing 2 FG, 1 FF and 1 Labour. But FF’s 2007 vote of 46.5 percent in 2007 collapsed to 13.9 percent in 2011. Left wing independent John Halligan (a popular former Mayor) polled 10.3 percent but overcame Kenneally on the 11th count with the help of preferences to join 2 FG and 1 Labour member. For the first time in the history of the party, FF does not have anyone in Dail Eireann from Waterford.

But if FF is receiving last rites, the result is not the death knell of Irish nationalist politics. Sinn Fein may win as many as 10 seats doubling their representation including the election of party leader Gerry Adams who topped the poll in Louth. Their successes were in the northern republican strongholds of Louth, Donegal and Cavan though they also advanced in working class areas of Dublin.

The new government is almost certainly going to be a coalition of Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael and Eamon Gilmore’s Labour Party. As J.G. Byrne put it on Twitter at the weekend, “saying bye-bye FF and hello FG bit like beating cancer only to be told you now have incurable syphilis”. Immense financial and economic issues await the incoming administration. The debt crisis is escalating out of control with the bailout of the Anglo Irish bank expected to cost €34 billion. The strings attached to the €84 billion IMF and EU bailout are severe with government spending to cut by a fifth by 2014 and taxes to rise substantially. FG and Labour have differing views how best this can be achieved though neither suggest defaulting on the debt.

Writer Ruth Dudley Edwards is pessimistic the new coalition will be much better at managing the budget than the regime it replaced. Fine Gael, she said, was no more ideological than Fianna Fail, and is similarly awash with teachers and lawyers with almost no experience of government. Labour, she said, was led and dominated by the trade unions resisting change or cuts in the bloated, secretive and inefficient public services. “It is doubtful if a look at the books will turn its leader into Nick Clegg,” she wrote for her British audience.

A likely trajectory of this government is four years of hardship, bending over to receive its punishment as bankers in Brussels and Frankfurt spank Ireland for its profligacy in the good years. Perhaps the change will act as a placebo and install a badly needed sense of confidence. If that doesn’t work, the electorate will turn on Fine Gael with the same savagery it meted out to Fianna Fail. If the nationalist or socialist parties (or perhaps a nationalist socialist party) ever get hold of the levers of power then there really will be a democratic revolution.

Soldiers without destiny: Fianna Fail set for Irish election massacre

Age old certainties in Irish politics are about to end on Friday week. Fianna Fail has been the dominant force and the largest party in Dáil Éireann at every general election since 1932. They have have ruled the country for all but 19 of the past 79 years. The party’s leaders and members have become wedded to power and have developed a born to rule mentality over the years. With the aid of coalitions, Fianna Fail has formed government for last 14 years. But all that is about to change on 25 February. Irish voters are angry and are about to deliver a shellacking to the soldiers of destiny. (photo by infomatique)

Junior coalition partners the Greens can also expect to be punished as incumbent parties take the blame for the fall of the Celtic Tiger economy over the last three years. The question is only whether the main opposition Fine Gael will win outright or more likely form a coalition with the Labour Party. The two parties joined together when the voters booted Fianna Fail out of office in 1973, 1981 and 1982. But in none of those elections was Fianna Fail hammered in a way expected on Friday week.

If the latest opinion polls are any guide, Fianna Fail with 17 percent of the vote could end up winning with as few as 25 seats in the 166 seat parliament (26 with the sitting ceann comhairle (speaker) Seamus Kirk who is automatically reelected). Fine Gael on the other hand with twice as much support are favoured to take around 71 seats but could win as many as 80 putting them within striking distance of an unprecedented outright victory.

More realistically they will rely on Eamon Gilmore’s Labour to form a new Government. Some polls have shown Labour as the most popular party and Gilmore’s own profile has occasionally made him the most popular politician in the country. It is almost impossible for them to shrug off their mantle as junior coalition partners and it is difficult to see them becoming the largest party. But they will break another record, as they take more seats than Fianna Fail for the first time since de Valera first took FF to the ballot box in the 1920s.

The parallels with the 1973 election are most stark. By that time Fianna Fail had been in power for 16 years. Under the leadership of economic guru Dr T.K. Whitaker, Ireland had risen out of post war penury during the sixties as standards of living and education rose. Innovative marketing launched the country as a world tourist destination and attractive taxation measures brought foreign capital to Irish shores. But with entry into the EEC, the collapse of the Bretton-Woods agreement and the looming oil crisis, old Irish certainties were changing. Despite (or perhaps because of) the IRA Arms Crisis, Fianna Fail actually increased their vote in that election but lost power 73 seats to 68. Four years of Coalition austerity packages later, the voters forgave Fianna Fail and they won a landslide victory in 1977.

Since Fianna Fail last regained power in 1997, they have also presided over many boom years, perhaps the best yet. Successive tribunals found large-scale corruption was endemic, but voters didn’t punish this behaviour because they were doing well. Personal wealth exploded over the life of the Celtic Tiger, at its peak five years before and after the millennium. But risk taking also increased exponentially. Debts rose to match growing exports. By July 2008, the Irish Independent calculated the average household was borrowing €158 for every €100 earned. In the good times, which were just ending as that article was written, that didn’t matter. Equity was rising rapidly to match the debt and bankers were happy to allow their clients cheap credit to gamble on what seemed like unloseable odds. The banks themselves were equally reckless so weren’t in a position to call the kettle black.

But when the 2007 credit crunch on subprime mortgages became the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, everything suddenly turned toxic. The lines of credit that had sustained a long building boom suddenly dried up. With creditors calling in loans, previous paper-wealth disappeared in a moment as property prices collapsed. Consumer confidence was shot to pieces and nobody was buying.

This was probably bad enough to cost any government its job, but the Irish Government compounded its mistakes with its handling of the financial crisis. Initially their promise to keep the financial institutions solvent was deemed a successful ploy to stop a run on the banks. But when the extent of the debt they had guaranteed for was revealed, it was obvious the Irish were in too deep. Rescue packages from the IMF and the European Central Bank came as they always do – with strings attached. Austerity was the order of the day, leaving average voters with a bad taste in their mouths. Why should they suffer for the excesses of the moneyed class?

It’s tempting to think that history will repeat itself in the way it did after 1973. The new FG/Labour government will be forced to continue austerity programs of the old government and will probably add a few of their own. The Minister for Finance will once again become the Minister for Hardship. But there are obvious differences from 1973 too. In 1973 FF were narrowly beaten, this time they will be smashed to pieces. This time too it may take longer for personal finances to recover to their 2000 highs, if ever.

Professor of Economics at University College Dublin Morgan Kelly predicts the crisis will mean the end of Fianna Fail / Fine Gael civil war politics and the rise of hard right parties looking for someone to blame. Sinn Fein may also provide an attractive nationalist alternative to voters that is not laden in xenophobia. No one knows what they really stand for beyond the Taiwanese impossibility of getting a 32-county republic. But Fianna Fail survived that handicap for 80 years so there is no reason that might not work for Sinn Fein too.

Billy Costine's Flight of a Magpie

I stumbled across this great story in the English Newcastle Chronicle this evening about a man from my home town of Waterford. His name is Billy Costine, he’s 58 years old and his autobiographical book called The Flight of a Magpie is about to be published in the next few months. The reference to Magpies is about Newcastle United Football Club, a side Costine has had a near-lifetime association with. (photo via Newcastle Chronicle of Billy Costine and Peter Beardsley)

Costine has been a Newcastle fan for 50 years. With little cultural affiliation between Waterford and Newcastle, the reason a boy in the south-east of Ireland becomes a fan of a club in the north-east of England takes a bit of explaining. In 1961 aged 8, Costine played the table top football game Subbuteo with his brothers. The game was created 16 years earlier, by British game designer and RAF veteran Peter Adolph who had an interest in both football and ornithology. Adolph wanted to call his creation “hobby” for the Eurasian hobby, a type of falcon. His request was turned down by patent officers because of the wider meaning of hobby so instead he called it by a part of the bird’s Latin name “falco subbuteo”.

The etymology would have been unknown to most boys of Costine's generation, but the game itself was legendary. It was a rite of passage for many boys growing up in Ireland and Britain - including myself about ten years later. Costine played endless games with his brothers until they tired of the standard red and blue colours of the two playing teams. “My brother David said we could send away for other teams,” Costine told the Newcastle Chronicle. “I looked at the small brochure, which featured all the teams in the first division, and saw this team with black-and-white stripes".
The Magpie, he said, was born there and then.

In 1961 it wasn’t easy for a boy in Waterford to become a Magpie. There was no Internet in those days and no access to English television. There were English newspapers available but they tended to concentrate on the big London, Manchester and Liverpool clubs. Instead, Costine became addicted listening to the BBC on short wave radio. Every Saturday afternoon, he would tune in to hear about the progress of Newcastle’s games and listen to the final results read out at 5pm. He became a passionate fan and soaked up every scrap of information he could find about his heroes.

It would take 15 years before he could see them in the flesh. The cost of a flight in those pre-Ryan Air days was prohibitive and getting there by train and ferry was an enormous and time-consuming undertaking. By 1976 however, Costine was making money. He was a glass cutter at Waterford Crystal during a time when the workers there were acquiring significant union muscle. In 1976 A friend from the factory pulled some strings to get tickets to a Liverpool-Newcastle clash at Anfield. Billy hoped to see his heroes get revenge for their cup final defeat to Liverpool two years earlier but he was to be disappointed. His first Newcastle match ended in a 2-0 loss to the Magpies.

Billy went home undeterred, delighted he had finally seen the team he loved and dreaming of when he could finally watch them at home in Newcastle. It would take another 11 years for this wish to become a reality. Costine finally got to see St James Park in 1987. The Newcastle manager at the time was another Irishman with a long and loyal association with the club. Iam “Willy” McFaul arrived as a player in 1966 from Northern Irish football and served as coach, assistant manager and then manager until he was sacked 22 years later. Costine arrived a year before McFaul was ousted and had laid the groundwork with a letter to the manager. McFaul arranged for Costine to meet the team.

As Costine he left the dressing room, Billy spotted his heroes – Joe Harvey and Jackie Milburn. Both men had played football for Newcastle in a golden era in the 1950s. This was before Costine’s time but it didn’t stop him from absorbing either the mythology or the moment. “I remember like it was only yesterday,” he said. “There I was, stood between two of the greatest names ever to play for the Magpies, while Willie McFaul took the most prized picture I own.”

Since then, Billy travelled to Newcastle for the last home game of every season. He has become a well-known figure around the ground and has forged friendships with several ex-players such as John Anderson and Bob Moncur. Over the years he met most of the Newcastle greats including Alan Shearer, Paul Gascoigne, Malcolm McDonald, Peter Beardsley, Kevin Keegan and Bobby Robson. His connections got him a job with the club as a talent scout with a brief to cover Ireland hunting for promising young players for the Newcastle United Academy. “To do a scouting job for the club I have supported since I was eight years old was a dream come true,” Billy said. “Most of the boys I helped send over on trial have been capped at schoolboy level and up for Ireland.”

Costine has turned his story into a book but it hasn’t been an easy path to publication. Costine was made redundant as the state of Waterford Crystal deteriorated and he got a job driving buses for Bus Eireann. In 2005 he was involved in an accident in Cork and accused of careless driving. Costine blamed the accident on the poor quality of the bus and he was vindicated after an inquiry found other drivers too had experienced power surges in Bus Eireann buses.

Then Costine got into a row with his former publisher Francis de Roelman, also of Waterford. Costine claimed he had given de Roelman €5,000 in a contract to publish the book and he provided the publisher with a manuscript as well as photos and memorabilia to illustrate the book. De Roelman said he had not been paid and kept the manuscript and memorabilia. The District Court awarded the case to Costine but de Roelman appealed to the Circuit Court. In February last year, Circuit Judge Olive Buttimer affirmed the decision to grant €5,000 and costs to Costine for breach of contract for failing to publish his life story. The Court also ordered de Roelman to return the manuscript and memorabilia. The Flight of a Magpie is now due out in May, fittingly at the end of the football season.

Ireland faces eviction

There is an image of Ireland doing the rounds which has gone viral. The image is in the format of a classified advertisement. The item for sale is Ireland itself offering “76,000 km2 of floor space” to the buyer. The “vendors” are prepared to sell for 900 billion Euros or roughly $1.23 trillion.

All joking aside, Ireland is no longer worth that kind of money. The pretend asking price is exactly ten times Ireland’s debt which currently stands at $123 billion and continues to grow. It is now equivalent to one third of Ireland’s GDP. With Ireland still seen as a risky proposition and the bucket of money fast running out, the situation is about to get a lot worse for the Irish taxpayers. They may have to bail out their banks to the tune of $95 billion and will pay the price through a series of austerity budgets and the return of emigration. The bad times are back with a vengeance.

Poverty has been the normal situation for Ireland for much of its existence. Founded out of the barrel of a gun in 1921, the Irish State was the desperately poor relation of northern Europe. Its protracted independence battle from Britain left it penniless, its war neutrality cost it a place in the Marshall Plan and the economic illiteracy and conservative social attitudes of Ireland’s towering statesman Eamon de Valera encouraged mediocrity. In an infamous St Patrick’s Day speech to the nation de Valera’s vision of Irish life was “the romping of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths and the laughter of comely maidens.”

But as the sturdy children, athletic youths and comely maidens grew into adulthood, they found an Ireland that had no place for them. Until the 1960s emigration was the only solution for most if they wanted a secure a financial future. Emigration was also an escape from a stultifying environment. An island off the coast of an island off the coast of Europe, Ireland was isolated culturally and financial from much of the European post-war boom in industry and ideas.

The Irish Catholic Church had enormous power and privilege in de Valera’s young state to the point where he allowed the archbishops to co-write the 1937 constitution. The Church’s conservative hierarchy held onto its power by ensuring new ideas were suppressed through censorship and criticism from the pulpit. Efforts to change the constitution in the 1980s mostly failed but the battles severely bruised the Church.

Europe would eventually come calling and change everything. Entry in the then-EEC in 1973 had a profound effect on Ireland coming as it did at the same time as the arrival of British satellite television across the country. Informed by overseas events and subsidised by European money the country rocked through waves of social revolution in the 1980s that bitterly divided populations. The constitutional referenda were mostly over sexual matters which had long been the preserve of the Catholic Church.

By the 1990s the Church's power was crumbling fast. Clerical scandals robbed them of their ability to preach down to the flock while the encroaching cultural influence of Britain and the US throughout the 1980s robbed them of respect in the young. Meanwhile an increasingly monied society was finding it no longer had the time nor need for spiritual aid.

The effect was revolutionary. A population of three million used to accepting power from the belt of a crosier suddenly found organised religion surplus to their requirements. As in many post-religious societies, mass materialism quickly rushed in to fill the void. Moral worth was now judged by the car people drove and the house they owned. Like the other PIIGS, all of whom emerged from strict Catholic or Orthodox societies, the Irish put their noses in the trough for 15 years of good times. As the economy improved through a series of one-off reforms, the nation went on a consumerist spending spree stimulating the economy even further. Long a net exporter of people, Ireland suddenly found itself an attractive destination for refugees desperate to get a job in this humming hive. The immigrants brought with them new ways and new ideas and further shook up a tightly homogenous society.

The original Irish boom was based on the take-off of low taxing hi-tech IT and pharmaceutical companies. But by 2000 those industries had plateaued. The boom was running on its own fuel. Construction became Ireland’s biggest industry. Ireland’s lax planning laws led to a building frenzy. The big profits available in property encouraged existing homeowners to gamble with their equity in what seemed like no-brainer easy money. The move to the euro made access easy to European markets. The Irish plunged into property in southern Europe and along with the equally cashed-up Russians and British became primary investors in places as diverse as Montenegro and the Canaries.

A few Cassandras such as Morgan Kelly (Professor of Economics at University College Dublin) predicted what would happen when the boom ended and the constructed house of cards collapsed. It wasn’t just private investors who were playing for high stakes. The Irish banks had made astronomical profits in the boom but got themselves in deep to foreign investors in the process. When the Global Financial Crisis hit, the cheap money those banks relied on dried up. With confidence killed at a stroke, businesses began to contract. The toxicity of many of the loans left the banks deep in debt with no new income to replenish them.

Desperate to avoid the loss of face of its major financial institutions going under, the Irish Government issued a bank guarantee as Governments did in US, Britain, and Australia. But unlike the other three English speaking counties, the Irish guarantee would lead to national insolvency. Three Irish banks (Anglo Irish, Allied Irish and Bank of Ireland) had hidden the extent of their bad debts from the Government at the time. Now the Government’s open-ended commitment to cover the bank losses far exceeds the fiscal capacity of the Irish State to pay.

The turning point in the crisis came in September when bank loans worth $75 billion due to the UK, German, and French banks matured. Despite being lied to by the banks, the Irish Government agreed to pay off the loans. It was accomplished with another loan, this time from the European Central Bank. Now Kelly is saying the next crisis will be mass home mortgage default. Like the “for sale ad”, Kelly goes for gallows humour. "After a sudden worsening in her condition, the Irish Patient has been moved into intensive care and put on artificial ventilation," he said. "While a hospital spokesman, Jean-Claude Trichet, tried to sound upbeat, there is no prospect that the Patient will recover."

The "hospital spokesman" Trichet is the French civil servant who currently heads up the ECB. The ease of access the euro provided was now the noose that threatened to leave the Irish economy to hang. Trichet would normally turn his Gallic nose up at the gauche goings-on of the Irish. But he has too has much to lose from the burgeoning debt situation. Ireland still owes a lot of money to French banks.

And like fellow terminally-ill patient Greece, the death of Ireland would put the health of the wider integrated European economy at risk if the crisis of confidence spread up the line to the larger economies. Ireland is relying on Trichet’s riches to pay for decades of crony capitalism. But the kindness of strangers will have a price. If mortgagees start to default on a widespread, Ireland could be ruled within five years by what Kelly calls “a hard right, anti-Europe, anti-Traveller party that will leave us nostalgic for the, usually, harmless buffoonery of Biffo, Inda, and their chums."

Robert Peel and the Irish Famine

In 1845 a devastating blight hit the Irish potato crop which was the sole diet of millions of Irish people. The blight wasn’t the first of its kind, but it was the worst. That is until the following year which was worse again. The effects of a third blight in four years in 1848 left Ireland reeling in a way it has never fully recovered from. Millions died, and millions more fled to Britain and North America. To this day, the island of Ireland’s population remains two million less than it was in 1845. There was well meaning sympathy next door in the then-wealthiest country on earth, but the problem got ignored whenever a solution inconveniently threatened to interfere with British financial interests.

The problem itself was slow to manifest itself at first. As digging of the potato crop progressed in the autumn of 1845, the news from Ireland grew steadily worse. By mid October, reports from the local constabulary were growing that showed crop failure all parts of the country. In Monaghan and elsewhere it was remarked “potatoes brought a few days ago, seemingly remarkably good, have rotted.”

It was this initial soundness that left everyone bewildered and then thrown into despair. What looked like a splendid crop rotted in front of farmers’ eyes. Wild theories were put forward as it why it was happening. Some blamed static electricity in the atmosphere generated by smoke from locomotives that had just come into use. Others pinned the culprit as 'mortiferous vapours' from ‘blind volcanos’ deep in the earth. One school of thought blamed another recent fashion: the collection of guano manure.

The esteemed British Prime Minister Robert Peel was being kept abreast of developments and asked his good friend and scientist Dr Lyon Playfair to investigate. Peel appointed Playfair head of a Scientific Commission to see what could be done to save the Irish potato. Playfair had studied under Justus von Liebig but was a better courtier than chemist. He asked the editor of the leading horticultural paper in Britain, Dr John Lindley to join him on his expedition.

In Ireland they were met by the eminent Irish Catholic scientist (a rarity for the time) Professor Robert Kane. Peel asked Kane to work with his Commission because he knew Kane was already investigating the problem and had written an important book about The Industrial Resources of Ireland. He would also provide the men with local knowledge and between them, Peel hoped, they would come up with a “dispassionate judgement” on the problem.

The Commission needed little deliberation. Members found evidence all too easily the problem was even worse than reported. They estimated half the crop was destroyed or about to be. Their mission became finding a method of preventing sound potatoes from rotting. But despite the involvement of Kane, fatal ignorance of Irish conditions proved the Commission’s undoing.

The traditional Irish method of storing potatoes was to keep them in a simple pit where the tubers could be partially protected from frost and rain. The Commissioners advised farmers to dry the potatoes in the sun and then put them in a trench covered in turf. There followed complicated instructions on sifting packing stuff using unslacked lime, burnt turf and dry sawdust. There was a laundry list of unobtainable tools required and opaque hints on how to make bread from the starchy material. 70,000 copies were printed of the instructions which suggested if the farmer did not understand them they should ask their landlord or clergyman to explain its meaning.

The Commission produced “four monster reports” to the Peel Government in three weeks. Hopes that the starchy material would provide sustenance were dashed as was the possibility of separating the good and bad bits of slightly blighted spuds. It didn’t matter what people did with them, the potatoes melted into a slimy decaying mess.

Senior landowners started warning Dublin Castle that the problem was getting out of hand. Lord Clare told the Irish Under-Secretary at the Castle he “would not answer for the consequences” if a famine occurred. With the year’s crop destroyed “how were they to survive to August 1846?” Clare asked. One person suggested the 12,000 police and army horse supply of corn be cut while the Duke of Norfolk said the Irish “should learn to consume curry powder” which he said had nourished India.

On 28 October 1845, the Dublin Corporation called for a committee to be set up to advise the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland Lord Heytesbury to adopt measures “to avoid calamity”. The committee led by Daniel O’Connell proposed corn exports be stopped and the ports thrown open for free import of food, rice and Indian corn. They also suggested food stores and public works for country areas. O’Connell suggested a tax on landlords to pay for all this.

Heytesbury was unimpressed by the proposal. He used the time-immemorial excuse of stonewalling politicians saying all the evidence was not yet in. “It was impossible to form an accurate opinion...until digging was complete,” he said. The plans needed to be “maturely weighed”. The Freeman’s Journal led with the condemnation of Heytesbury’s weasel words. They summarised his message as “let them starve”.

If Heytesbury was an archetypal colonial fool, Peel was not. He knew that the crop failure meant the Irish must be fed on grain, so his answer was to repeal the Corn Laws. He also knew this was political suicide. A previous supporter, the Duke of Buckingham had resigned from cabinet three years earlier rather than tolerate a slight modification to the laws. Now Peel was staring down a remedy that involved the abolition of duties on all “articles of subsistence.”

This was bad for Peel, but it would prove even worse for Ireland. In England, the vital oxygen of publicity for the fate of the Irish was deprived by the burning domestic issue of the laws. English farmers in particular stood to lose out if duties on imported grain were lifted. Worse still, opponents of abolition repeatedly denied there was any problem in Ireland at all and that change was unnecessary. The Tory Mayor of Liverpool refused to call a meeting for the relief of Irish distress while the blight was seen as “the invention of agitators”. To even express the opinion the blight existed, had the danger of setting the speaker out as a dangerous radical.

The abolition question produced a huge split in Peel’s own protectionist Conservative Party. There was an overwhelming majority in Cabinet against him. Despite being rolled on the issue, Peel refused to resign. Playfair produced his final report on 15 November. He said late rainy weather had made the problem even worse than before. But the Cabinet was unmoved. On 5 December Peel tendered his resignation to Queen Victoria. After “ten famous days” of feverish negotiations, opposition leader Lord John Russell told Victoria he too found it impossible to form a government.

The poisoned chalice was handed back to Peel who had to carry out Corn Law reform against his own party’s wishes. Ireland’s fate lay in his hands but they were tied behind his back. As 1845 passed into the deep winter of 1846, control of Ireland passed to Peel's increasingly powerful Treasury Assistant Charles Trevelyan. Trevelyan had little sympathy for the Irish whom he felt did not help themselves enough. He worked to undermine Peel’s relief plans of Indian corn. The Irish gave up hope on English assistance and prayed instead for survival to a good harvest in 1846. It was this second failure that did all the damage. The British had charity fatigue second time round and Trevelyan shut down the relief operation.

Peel, meanwhile got his Corn Law repeals through at fatal cost. On 26 June 1846 the Whigs and Protectionist Tories combined to bring him down. He was defeated by 73 votes and resigned three days later. As an observer said at the time, the vote “had as much to do with Ireland as Kamschatka". But with the laissez faire Lord John Russell in power supported by Trevelyan of similar mind, any hope Britain would intervene in the calamity that followed disappeared. Britain practised genocide by omission. In lieu of potatoes, the Russell Government planted the seeds that would lead to Ireland’s 20th century rebellions.

Dev: Eamon de Valera and Ireland in the 20th Century

Last week was the 35th anniversary of the death of the most prominent Irishman of the last one hundred years, Bono and James Joyce notwithstanding. His name was Eamon de Valera, the American born son of an Irish peasant woman and a Spanish artist. He is little remembered now and mostly reviled in the revisionism surrounding Michael Collins, yet de Valera’s story is nothing less than the story of Ireland for most of the 20th century. (pic of de Valera with Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies taken in London in 1941. Menzies Papers, MS4936. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.)

“Dev” dominated Irish politics for 60 years on both sides of the border, was a thorn in the British side for most of that time and also had a massive impact on American affairs over a crucial period between 1918 and 1945. Ireland was such a pain to successive White House administrations, the country was eventually punished for WW2 neutrality by being left out of the Marshall Plan that revitalised allies and enemies alike.

By the late 1950s de Valera’s economy naivete had landed the Irish economy in deep trouble. He was becoming an almost totally blind caricature of the remote and exotic president of the Irish Republic he helped create and then shape in his deeply religious image. Yet he used his aura to cling onto power until 1959 when aged 76 he was forcibly retired upstairs to “the Park”. There as a supposed ceremonial president, he continued wielding enormous influence for two terms and 14 years. He died in 1975 aged 92.

For one day short of 65 years he was married to Sinead de Valera who predeceased him by just three months. Sinead was a long-suffering wife who brought up a large family by herself but who yet held enormous power over her husband in their near-lifetime together. They met through their mutual love of the Irish language and Gaelic was mostly their lingua franca. But it is De Valera’s surviving letters in English to his wife from overseas we see a passion he kept mostly hidden in his public life.

Eamon de Valera’s owed his astonishing longevity of power to a combination of luck, charm and utter ruthlessness and bastardry Ireland has not seen before or since. He owed a large part of his fortune to his birthplace. His Brooklyn mother Cate Coll sent her boy home to her relatives in Ireland after his father the Spanish artist Vivion de Valero lived up to his lothario reputation and moved on. Cate's son grew up in Bruree, County Limerick steeped in west of Ireland culture fused with a British-style education. De Valera was Irish to his bootstraps and changed his birthname George to the Irish Eamon. Nevertheless he used his American birthplace to great effect on many occasions.

Naturally gifted in mathematics and strikingly tall he won a scholarship to one of Ireland’s premier schools, Blackrock College. His leadership qualities stood out and he was a natural captain of the prestigious rugby team. At Blackrock he also forged lifelong alliances with important Catholic prelates who would later rule the country with their croziers as he would with his political cunning.

An avid student of Machiavelli and a deeply Catholic man, he grappled with the rapidly changing political conditions in Ireland at the turn of the 19th century. Queen Victoria was dead and although the Irish still respected the monarchy there was a desire for change. As the Irish home rule movement grew in the south, a Loyalist force in the north grew in opposition. The Loyalists had the support of the top brass of the British Army and the Conservative Party and grew in belligerence and strength as the first decade of the 20th century ended. “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right,” was their battlecry.

Their cries reached fever-pitch after Westminster finally declared home rule for Ireland in 1912. With the north arming against this outcome with impunity, those wanting Home Rule in the South reacted in kind and set up their own militia groups to defend the likelihood of a Dublin Parliament. De Valera joined the newly constituted Irish Volunteers in 1913 as the Irish arguments threatened civil war in England with much talk of treason. The First World War broke out a year later temporarily putting all arguments on hold. Those on both sides of the Irish question signed up in large numbers to fight for the British Empire in the bloody fields of Flanders and Gallipoli.

Service was voluntary and many like de Valera could not bring themselves to put on a British Army uniform. With the Volunteers falling more and more under the influence of the Irish Republican Brotherhood secret society, a split began among those that stayed behind. De Valera joined the side that was pushing closer to aggression. He rose quickly through the ranks and though suspicious of the IRB was part of the leadership committee that approved the plans to stage an uprising in Easter 1916. De Valera was not one of the seven signatories to the Proclamation of Independence which stated “Ireland through us summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.” Yet he was one of the key military leaders and was one of the last to surrender a week later when the Easter Rising inevitably failed.

Because he was among the later captives he was held in a different jail to where the other rebel leaders were being summarily executed. By the time of his court martial, the revulsion at the 15 executions over 9 days had swung British public opinion against the execution policy. The William Martin Murphy Irish Independent newspaper was still baying for blood and De Valera was sure he was next. Murphy ensured socialist James Connolly would be the last to be shot while the humble “school-master” de Valera was shuffled off to jail first in Dublin and then four more in Britain. On arrival in Dartmoor he was greeted by other Irish as their leader, the “Chief” by virtue of being the most senior rebel to survive the death squad.

His one rival was Michael Collins who emerged as the new supremo of organisation determined not to repeat the open warfare tactics of 1916. De Valera struck for political status and within a year they were all realised. They went back to Ireland where they organised politically as “Sinn Fein” (Ourselves). With the war going badly and Britain considering conscription in Ireland, Sinn Fein quickly established itself and won most seats in Ireland in the 1918 election. De Valera was elected as the member for Clare.

The British became convinced they were in league with Germany and launched a swoop against of Irish leaders in May 1918. Collins used his spy network to get advance warning but most of the other leaders including De Valera ignored his advice and were arrested. De Valera was sent to Lincoln Prison while Collins began his asymmetric war against Britain striking deadly blows against their vast network of informers which bedevilled Ireland for hundreds of years.

Collins biggest coup was getting de Valera sprung from Lincoln Prison. De Valera was spirited back to Ireland where the pair rowed about tactics. De Valera realised his primary value was as a propaganda weapon and he was smuggled away to the US as the “First Minister” would he would spend 18 months on an awareness and fundraising campaign.

De Valera was treated as a hero by Irish Americans and somewhere along the line his title was inflated to "President of Ireland". But he blundered with his own entry into US politics. He supported the isolationists against President Wilson because he (Wilson) would not recognise Ireland as a participant in the Versailles Peace Conference. He split the Irish-American organisation failing to realise his allies were Americans first and then Irish a long way behind in second. Yet he raised large amounts of money and lots of equally valuable publicity as the war of attrition raged back in Ireland.

Collins was directing that war for the Irish Republican Army against British power with no holds barred on either side. By the time de Valera got back to Ireland both sides were wearying of the bloody stalemate with the Black and Tans offering a particularly savage form of reprisal attacks the Nazis would copy 20 years later. The Protestants in the north used the chaos of the south to form their own administration. Partition of Ireland was first mooted in 1912 Liberal Unionist T.G.R. Agar-Robartes but was rejected at the time but it never went away. The new parliament in Belfast was given the blessing of George V in 1921.

In his speech the King appealed for “forbearance and conciliation” in the South. De Valera was invited to London where he met the Prime Minister Lloyd George. They discussed a possible peace treaty which was only possible because de Valera gave defacto approval of partition. But de Valera knew his countrymen would have difficulty accepting this position. So he cleverly stayed at home for the actual treaty discussions which Collins led with full plenipotentiary powers.

Collins knew just as well as de Valera what was the best compromise he could get. Sure enough in December 1921 he signed a Treaty with Lloyd George that confirmed the existence of Northern Ireland and a new parliament in Dublin with wide powers but one which would have to take an oath of allegiance to the crown. Collins called it the “freedom to achieve freedom”. But he also knew the price he would have to pay. At the signing ceremony senior British Minister Lord Birkenhead told Collins he (Birkenhead) may have signed his political death warrant. “I may have signed my actual one,” Collins replied prophetically.

With Collins and his network exposed, any return to war against Britain would have been doomed to failure. Yet De Valera pretended to be livid with Collins for signing the Treaty to create the Irish Free State. Arguments raged hot over the Oath while the more substantive matter of partition was ignored. The IRA favoured rejection of the treaty while the Church, the newspapers and most of the population wanted peace. De Valera refused to see it as a stepping stone and lent his considerable weight to those against it.

When the Treaty was narrowly carried in the Dail, de Valera held in his hands the fate of Ireland. He resigned as President and offered himself as the leader of the “true Republic”. Hardliners took their cue from “the Chief” and within months Dublin was ablaze again this time in civil war. The war was a hopeless mismatch with Republican idealists no match for British artillery in the hands of Collins’ new army. Collins himself was assassinated in County Cork by a sniper’s bullet while De Valera hid near by.

De Valera never admitted he was wrong but when he indicated that the struggle was unwinnable it quickly ended. He was imprisoned a third time, this time by the Irish. Another year in jail made him realise he could not win by the revolutionary path. He renounced the IRA and Sinn Fein and set up Fianna Fail “the soldiers of destiny”.

After six years of fighting the Oath, he took it himself in 1927 and entered parliament with his new party. The De Valera name had mystique and it did not take long for Fianna Fail to establish as a force. Never forgetting the lesson of the Irish Independent working against him, de Valera went to the States again on another large fundraising mission. On his return he created a new newspaper empire: the Irish Press.

With the power of his name and his new propaganda machine, he was able to form government in 1932. His bitter enemies from the civil war handed over power though rising fascist movements like the Blue Shirts were less accommodating. De Valera ruthlessly dealt with them and later destroyed the IRA when it too looked like causing him problems. He used Collins' stepping stone approach he hated so much in 1921 to gradually remove the Crown from Southern Irish affairs.

Now at the peak of his powers De Valera was Prime Minister (Taoiseach) and Foreign Minister, ably representing the “Irish Free State” at League of Nation conferences. De Valera used the constitutional crisis in England over the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 to give Ireland a new constitution of his own a year later. It deeply stamped Ireland as a Catholic nation and formally claimed the North as part of Ireland. But like China and Taiwan, this was a fight Dev never wanted to win, he just wanted to keep it going.

In the 1930s he also declared an Economic War with Britain refusing to pay land annuities due to buy out absentee landlords. It lasted six years crippling the Irish economy but caused discomfort in London too. In 1938 he agreed with Chamberlain (whom he greatly admired for his compromise approach) to end the war and resume payments. In return Ireland got back three ports (Cobh and Castletownbere in Cork and Lough Swilly in Donegal) it had given the British Navy in the Treaty. The far-sighted and conservative Churchill (who sparred with Collins in 1921) condemned the deal as he knew the consequences to the defence of the realm in the coming war. It meant De Valera could more easily keep Ireland out of the war that was brewing with Nazi Germany.

When war did arrive, it wasn’t just the British that were exasperated, Roosevelt was equally unhappy. He sent Eleanor Roosevelt’s uncle David Gray as the American Minister in Ireland for the duration of the war. Gray made no bones about openly supporting Britain with the full support of FDR. De Valera hated Gray as an "insult to Ireland" and wanted him replaced. Roosevelt would have none of it.

Particularly in the early days of the war, the lack of availability of the Western Approaches was a bad blow to the British Navy. With the Germans controlling waters in France and Norway, British naval convoys were forced to take a narrow and dangerous channel north of Ireland. Throughout it all de Valera never called it a war. It was an “Emergency” and his young state was on life support. He knew Ireland would have no chance against Nazi bombardment and watched as Belfast across the border suffered some of the worst of the Blitz. De Valera sent the Dublin fire brigade to help put out the fires but never complained to Germany about them bombing "Irish soil".

Despite the efforts of Churchill and the meddling Gray, de Valera refused to bend and as the war progressed, Ireland became less strategically important. Roosevelt's successors did not forget Ireland’s lack of friendship and left the country to muddle economically through the post-war years. De Valera was an economic illiterate and utterly unmaterialistic to the point he promoted hardship as necessary to wellbeing.

By the 1960s he was yesterday’s man despite his enormous status. Managerial types like Sean Lemass and T.K. Whitaker would take Ireland in a new direction that would eventually take fruit in the rise of the Celtic Tiger in 1990s. It was the success of the south that eventually steered the north in the path of peace. Today conditions in the Republic of Ireland are not too dissimilar to what de Valera faced as Taoiseach, rising unemployment, a stagnant economy and mass immigration. But expectations have changed drastically.

The Civil War generation are now long dead. The Irish Press is gone and the Catholic Constitution is almost completely discredited. Even Fianna Fail are in decline though they remain in power 85 years after Dev founded them. Partition of Ireland is entrenched with no prospect of change.

Despite being littered with pettiness, failure and missed opportunities, Eamon de Valera's legacy is immense. Almost single-handedly he developed a positive sense of being Irish to the world that millions both in Ireland and in the diaspora now take for granted. For that and his sheer longevity in power he must still be considered an unrivalled giant of Irish politics.

Urbi et Orbi: Pope on the ropes

As the Easter Sunday Catholic faithful wait outside St Peter’s for Benedict XVI to deliver his tenth papal address, the Church itself has come under unprecedented attack and criticism. Numerous controversies have emerged about the protection of child-molesting priest in many countries including Germany, the US and Ireland with the Pope implicated in many of the scandals.

Although the Church has addressed some of the concerns, its preference is to adopt a siege mentality as the charges multiply. The Pope downplayed the charges as “petty gossip” while the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, has accused the media of a "clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators".

One of the Pope’s apologists, Vatican priest Raniero Cantalamessa noted Easter and Passover fell during the same week this year and said this led him to think of comparisons with the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence, and also because of this they are quick to recognise the recurring symptoms,” Cantalamessa said. “The use of stereotypes [and] the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” However a US advocate for sexual abuse victims said the comparison was “breathtakingly callous and misguided.” David Clohessy said “men who deliberately and consistently hide child sex crime are in no way victims and to conflate public scrutiny with horrific violence is about as wrong as wrong can be.”

The public scrutiny into child sex crimes is becoming deeply uncomfortable for the Church and indeed for Benedict himself. In Germany, Father Peter Hullermann has become the focus of an expanding sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled the Pope. Hullermann was a priest in northern Germany with an addiction to sexual abuse of children. He was transferred to Munich for therapy where Pope Paul VI had appointed Joseph Ratzinger as Archbishop in 1977. Ratzinger was copied in on a 1980 memo which said Hullermann would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. A German court eventually convicted Hullermann of further child abuse in 1986 but the church still took no action to stop him from working with children. The Archdiocese has acknowledged that “bad mistakes” were made with Hullermann, but said it was the fault of people reporting to Ratzinger rather than to the cardinal himself.

In the US, the news is no better for the Pope. As the then leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981-2005), he was also implicated in the scandal of the St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Lawrence C. Murphy worked at the school from 1950 to 1974 initially as chaplain and later as director. Murphy admitted he sexually abused deaf boys for 22 years. Victims tried for more than three decades to bring him to justice, but recent documents show Ratzinger’s office neither defrocked him nor referred him for prosecution but instead encouraged “pastoral action” to resolve the problem. In the end Murphy solved the problem for the Vatican by conveniently dying before the trial could proceed.

In Ireland too, sex scandals have left the reputation of the Church in tatters (though it hasn’t stopped them from trying to enforce Good Friday alcohol bans). There have been three official Irish state-sanctioned investigations into the Church’s abuse of children. The most recent and most comprehensive, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse released its damning report last year which found widespread physical and emotional abuse were a feature of outdated Catholic-run institutions and sex abuse was endemic, particularly at boy’s institutions and known to Church authorities.

Sexual offenders were usually transferred elsewhere where they were free to continue abusing other children. The Church relied on a culture of secrecy, a compliant Education department and a fear of retribution to keep matters quiet. While the Pope has recently blasted the Irish bishops for “grave errors of judgement”, his apology did not address the Vatican's own role nor did it endorse the report finding that the church leadership was to blame for the scale and longevity of abuse heaped on Irish children throughout the 20th century.

That would have been a step too far for the Vatican as it would mean having to confront its own rulebook. The Catholic Church’s unnatural insistence on celibacy for its priests has contributed greatly to the problems in the US, Germany, Ireland and elsewhere. It is hardly surprising that men without sexual access to women looked for gratification elsewhere, particularly among young and vulnerable people without the access or knowledge about how to complain about their treatment. And while the Church professes to be pro-life, care for its flock seems to stop at birth. The Church continues to see sexual offence as a risk only in terms of the potential for scandal and bad publicity. The danger to children has never been taken into account. This obsessive, cynical and secretive accretion of power at all costs is now coming back to bite the Church badly.

Guinness at 250

Guinness celebrated its 250th anniversary with a party in four countries on the weekend. Festivities were at their peak in the beer’s spiritual home Dublin on Thursday, but the anniversary was also celebrated with concerts in Lagos, Kuala Lumpur, and New York. On 24 September 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease on the St James's Gate brewery in Dublin and began a beer brand that is the best known in the world. The anniversary party kicked off at 5.59 pm (17:59) in Dublin with a toast to Arthur Guinness, before carrying on long into the night in the other cities (photo of McDaids of Dublin by Derek Barry).

One of the reasons for Guinness’s worldwide success is the quality and quantity of its advertising. Britain’s World War One government can take some of the credit. It passed legislation to reduce the alcoholic strength of beers to promote the war effort. Guinness was hurt more than most by this as it needed the strength to preserve the quality of its extra stout. Guinness consumption decreased so badly by the mid 1920s, the company hired SH Benson advertising agency to turn it around. Benson toured Dublin pubs where most people said they drank it because “Guinness is Good for You”. They also asked thousands of British doctors who confirmed that the beer was a panacea for any ailment under the sun.

While the success of the subsequent campaign was legendary, Guinness’s health claims continued to be argued throughout the years. The company is now careful to make any medical claims for its drinks. It has not been able to use the “Guinness is Good for You” slogan since the 1960s and it has not appeared on a poster since 1937. However 2003 research from the University of Wisconsin found that a pint of Guinness at mealtimes is good for the heart, unlike a pint of lager. It found that Guinness was full of flavonoids (also found in dark fruits and berries as well as red wine and chocolate) which reduce damage to the lining of arteries.

But Guinness is more than about health. In 2004, a British survey named the Guinness can widget as the greatest technological invention of the last 40 years. It was invented in the 1980s by a Guinness brewer named Peter Hildebrand who created a jet of foam instead of a jet of air inside a can. The plastic molded device that sits on the top of each can with a small amount of beer and nitrogen, trapped in the widget. When the can is opened, the nitrogen is forced out through the beer, which creates the creamy head. The resulting Draught Guinness in Cans saw the brand take off again in Britain and had the side effect of increasing pub sales too.

Guinness is now brewed in almost 50 countries, with ten million glasses drunk around the world every day. It is made from four natural ingredients: barley, water, hops and yeast. Its dark colour and distinctive taste come from the roast barley. The Guinness family have not been directly involved in the management of the company since 1992 although they retain a financial interest in the business. In 1998 Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan to form Diageo, now the largest drinks company in the world. Among the brands owned by Diageo are Smirnoff, Baileys, Johnny Walker, J&B, Gordon’s, Captain Morgan, Bushmills and Bundaberg Rum.

The background of Arthur Guinness is shrouded in mystery. Although a Protestant, he appropriated the coat of arms from an aristocratic Catholic family named Magennis. Through this sleight of hand, it allowed his family to inherit the title of Earl of Iveagh which gave later family members great prestige. Guinness began in 1759 by brewing several beers and ales at St James Gate in Dublin. On a visit to London he saw porters enjoying a new drink which was a mixture of beer and ale and named after their occupation. When porter was introduced to Ireland, Guinness decided to beat the British at their own game and brewed his own version. It took decades to establish but he eventually abandoned all his other products to concentrate on the porter he named after himself.

He exported the first shipment of Guinness to England as early as 1769 but the stout did not travel well. By the 1830s British factories had taken over the bottling and distribution and helped turn it into an international brand. By the 1890s, Guinness began to get serious with its brand and insisted all its products had uniform labelling and trademarks. By then, the Guinness brewery in Dublin was the largest in the world, and the company, Arthur Guinness and Sons was floated on the London Stock Exchange. But it wasn’t until 1950 that Guinness gained control of its global export business. They had immediate results and increased sales of its export product from 35,000 barrels to 300,000 barrels in ten years.

The name Guinness remains indelibly linked to Ireland in general, and Dublin in particular (rebel city Cork prefers Murphy’s stout or Beamish). When renowned writer and frequent Guinness drinker Brendan Behan was asked “hasn’t Guinness been good to the people of Dublin?” he supposedly replied “haven’t the people of Dublin been good to Guinness.”

But Behan left unanswered the question whether Guinness taste better in Dublin than anywhere else. This writer is one of the many who think it does (for what its worth, my favourite Guinness pub is Mulligans of Poolbeg Street). But as Mark Griffiths writes in “Guinness is Guinness”, I and countless others are probably wrong. He quotes Guinness Ireland Brand Controller Mark Ody who says it is a myth, up to a point. “A pint in Dublin might not be a week old [whereas] in England it can be two months in the chain,” he said. “It’s pure myth and speculation – but fresh is fresh is fresh”. No matter, wherever you are having a Guinness this weekend, enjoy. Here’s to the next 250 years. Sláinte go léir.

Hopes rise for Irish and Ugandan aid workers kidnapped in Darfur

A kidnapped Irish aid worker spoke to her family for the first time in two months raising hopes of her release in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region. 32-year-old Sharon Commins was one of two employees of Irish aid agency Goal who was kidnapped on 3 July when six armed men stormed their building in the North Darfur town of Kutum. The attackers grabbed Commins and 42-year-old Ugandan co-worker Hilda Kawuki. Commins spoke to her mother in Dublin yesterday though the family have asked that the details of the conversation remain private (Photo of Sharon Commins by Goal / Press Association).

The concession from the kidnappers came after Irish Foreign Minister, Micheál Martin made a two day visit to the Sudanese capital Khartoum last weekend. Sudanese authorities say they know who the kidnappers are and are negotiating with tribal elders. The kidnappers want two million dollars in ransom, however Khartoum is refusing to pay a ransom for fear it will result in further kidnappings. Sudanese minister for humanitarian affairs Abdul Bagi al-Jailani has been trying to negotiate the release of the two aid workers and he said he is heartened by the phone call. He believes the women will be freed around 19 September to mark the end of Ramadan, a month of worship and forgiveness.

Last month, North Darfur state humanitarian affairs minister Abdel Baqi Al-Gilani said the kidnappers are members of a nomadic tribe in north Darfur. He said Sudan would forgive them if they gave up the woman and would also provide legal immunity. He also dismissed a report published by the Khartoum based Al Ray Al-Aam which claimed Commins had married one of her kidnappers.

Meanwhile a spokesman for a rebel movement in the Kutum area said their group was not involved in the kidnapping. Ibrahim al-Hillu from the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction blamed Arab tribal gunmen “supported by the government”. And al-Hillu may have some justification for his accusation. In March the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur which triggered a downturn in Sudan's relations with foreign relief organisations. SLA’s leader Abdel Wahid al-Nur says Khartoum’s greatest international misinformation success is that the Darfuri conflict is the notion that it is the result of ethnic or economic rivalries that are too complex and too entrenched to solve.

Irish authorities are becoming aware of the complexities of the region but remain confident of getting a positive outcome. Commins was an experienced campaigner with four years experience with Goal and 18 months in Darfur. Ireland sent two teams to Sudan ahead of Foreign Minister Martin’s visit; one to Khartoum and the other to the Darfuri capital El Fasher. The teams were charged with reporting to Martin on a daily basis, while other staff kept close contact with the Commins family. According to the Irish Times, the women were in good health and have spoken to Sudanese Government officials several times since they were captured.

GOAL director John O'Shea also says his organisation are “working around the clock” to ensure the women’s release. In a press statement on the Goal website last week O’Shea said he was pleased that Ireland had acceded to their request that a senior minister become involved and said the best chance of success lay with “the Irish Government impressing upon their Sudanese counterparts the absolute seriousness of this situation”. He also pleaded with the kidnappers. “Hilda and Sharon have given much to alleviate the suffering of the Sudanese people,” he said. “They want only to be allowed continue their lifesaving work”.