Electricity Price Hike

Energy Regulator to discuss electricity price hike and disconnection of customers with Committee on Economic Regulatory Affairs




August 31 2010



Energy regulator Michael Tutty will appear before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Economic Regulatory Affairs tomorrow, Wednesday 1 September to discuss concerns over a planned increase in electricity prices and the record numbers of electricity and gas customers being disconnected due to their inability to pay their bills.



Michael Moynihan, TD, Chair of the Committee on Economic and Regulatory Affairs said: “The planned 5 per cent increase in electricity prices the Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy from next October will hit many households and families very hard and at a time when many are already struggling with other utility bills, price increases, falling incomes and unemployment.



It also comes at a time when reports show that the ESB are already cutting off power to 900 houses a month – or 30 households a day – because people cannot afford to pay their bills. In the past three months, Bord Gais has disconnected an average of 230 people a month.



The Committee’s emergency meeting will provide committee members with an opportunity to question the energy regulator on the proposed increases in electricity supply charges which it has authorised for hundreds of thousands of domestic customers from next October through the PSO.



Concerns about the impact of the price rise on households, the record numbers of electricity and gas customers being disconnected due to inability to pay, the disconnection and reconnection fees being levied on these customers and the protocols in place to protect vulnerable people in dealing with the energy suppliers will also be raised with the regulator.”



This meeting will take place in Committee Room 1, Leinster House at 12.30pm tomorrow, Wednesday, 1 September.

Remember Katy French

Michaela Davis

The funeral of Michaela Davis, who was killed in Dublin at the weekend, is to take place on Thursday.




The 12-year-old's body was found on a bank of the Royal Canal on Saturday afternoon. She had been strangled.



Yesterday, 18-year-old Jonathan Byrne of 24, Lohunda Downs, Clonsilla, appeared in court charged with the schoolgirl's murder.



He was remanded in custody to appear in court again on Friday.

Cooking

Today I have cooked Irish Lamb Casserole. Now this is a very simple meal. I hope it passes as a Hub as I simply want to share the recipe.

Firstly, I bought some lamb giggot chops, very tasty and not too expensive. I fried the chops with some onions until they became golden brown.



I then chopped some carrots and parsnips. You can add what ever veg you like. I also chopped some potatoes in half.



Having cooked the chops and onions, I added all the ingredients to the casserole dish.



I then made some stock, simply bisto granules mixed with pint of water.



I then added some seasoning, black pepper, salt, parsley and a little pinch of mint.



I then covered the dish with tin foil. Oven set at 180* (fan) , for 1 hour and 30 minutes.



Absolutely beautiful meal for two, just finished it.

Take Care of Your Pets

Maddie Mc Cann Fraud

A private detective whose firm was paid up to £500,000 from publicly donated funds to find Madeleine McCann is to get tens of thousands of pounds in legal aid to fight extradition to the US for fraud charges.


Kevin Halligen, 50, told Kate and Gerry McCann he could find their daughter but allegedly spent the cash on a lifestyle of first-class flights, chauffeured cars, nightclubs and luxury hotels and goods.

In a separate alleged scam he was arrested last November at the £700-a-night Old Bank Hotel in Oxford.

US authorities issued an extradition warrant accusing Halligen of defrauding a law firm of £1.3 million by ­claiming he could help free two men jailed in war-torn Africa. It is claimed he instead spent the money on a mansion.

Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission

Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission: http://northernirelandhumanrightscommision.blogspot.com/

Wanted Sex Offender Could Be In Ireland

A sex offender from Scotland who broke his bail conditions could be in Ireland, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre has said.




Fraser Benjamin McLaughlin was last seen on a ferry on route here three months ago.



The 57-year old from Hamilton in Scotland has strong links to Northern Ireland.



He has broken Sexual Offenders Register conditions and failed to answer bail over charges linked to child abuse images.

FBI

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending August 27, 2010




Los Angeles: Forty-One Members and Associates of Pueblo Bishops Charged in Federal Racketeering Indictment



More than 1,000 FBI agents and LAPD officers executed arrest warrants and search warrants Wednesday after a two-year investigation into the Pueblo Bishops Bloods, a street gang that controls the Pueblo del Rio housing project in South Los Angeles. Authorities arrested 19 defendants who are named in a sweeping racketeering indictment that was returned last week by a federal grand jury. Additionally, 10 people were taken into custody on various state offenses. Several defendants named in the indictment were already in custody on unrelated charges. The investigation into the Pueblo Bishops was called Operation “Family Ties” because many of the targets, in addition to residing at Pueblo del Rio, are united by family ties. Full Story

Phoenix: Canadian Man Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for Selling Counterfeit Cancer Drugs Using the Internet



Canadian Hazim Gaber was sentenced Wednesday in Phoenix to 33 months in prison for selling counterfeit cancer drugs using the Internet. Gaber was indicted by a federal grand jury in Phoenix on June 30, 2009, on five counts of wire fraud for selling counterfeit cancer drugs through the website DCAdvice.com. Gaber was arrested on July 25, 2009, in Frankfurt, Germany, and was extradited to the United States on Dec. 18, 2009. At his plea hearing in May 2010, Gaber admitted selling what he falsely claimed was the experimental cancer drug sodium dichloroacetate, also known as DCA, to at least 65 victims in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Netherlands between October and November 2007. Full Story

Philadelphia: Former Camden Police Sergeant Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Deprive Others of Civil Rights



Dan E. Morris, a former Camden, New Jersey police sergeant, pled guilty Thursday to conspiring with other Camden police officers to deprive others of their civil rights, United States Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced. Morris admitted that he engaged in a conspiracy with at least four other Camden police officers to deprive individuals of their due process rights while on duty as a uniformed police officer with the Camden Police Department. Morris admitted that between May 2007 and September 2008, he conducted illegal searches without a search warrant or consent; obtained coerced consents to search residences based on threats and undue pressure; stole money during illegal searches and arrests; and allowed officers he supervised to include facts in police reports that were false. Full Story

New York: Twelve Members of the Bloods Street Gang Indicted on Racketeering, Murder, Drug Distribution and Firearms Charges



An indictment was unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn Wednesday charging members of the “Nine-Trey Gangsters,” also known as the “Bugout Boyz,” a set of the Bloods street gang, with racketeering, murder, drug distribution, and firearms offenses. Two defendants, including Laron Spicer, were charged with the July 18, 2008, murder of a drug rival; eight defendants were charged with racketeering; nine defendants were charged with illegally possessing guns in connection with drug trafficking; three defendants were charged with armed robbery; and all defendants were charged with conspiring to distribute heroin and cocaine. Full Story

Washington Field: Former Airline Executives Indicted in Conspiracy to Fix Fares on Flights Between the United States and the Republic of Korea



A Brooklyn, New York grand jury returned an indictment Thursday against two former executives of Asiana Airlines Inc., for participating in a conspiracy to fix economy class airfares paid by passengers for travel from the United States to the Republic of Korea, the Department of Justice announced. The one-count indictment charges Joo Ahn Kang and Chung Sik Kwak, each a former vice president of the Americas of Asiana, with conspiring with others to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing passenger fares for passenger transportation services from certain airports in the United States to Korea from in or about and between January 2000 and February 2006. Kang served as President of Asiana from December 2005 to November 2008. Full Story

Cincinnati: Fairfield Man Sentenced to Prison for Role in $9 Million Investment Scam



Kevin Miller was sentenced Thursday to 15 months’ imprisonment for his role in a real estate investment fraud scheme between 2005 and 2008 that defrauded more than 90 victims out of more than $9 million. In addition to the prison time, Miller’s sentence includes two years of supervised release and an order to pay restitution of $184,354 to the three victims directly affected by his actions. Miller is also prohibited from engaging in any further investment solicitation activity. Full Story

Anchorage: Alaska Man Sentenced to Eight Years in Prison for Making False Statements in Domestic Terrorism Investigation



Paul Gene Rockwood Jr. was sentenced to eight years in prison for making false statements to the FBI in a domestic terrorism investigation. Rockwood’s spouse, Nadia Piroska Maria Rockwood, was also sentenced for making false statements to the FBI in connection with the investigation of her husband. Chief United States District Court Judge Ralph R. Beistline imposed the eight-year sentence, pursuant to a plea agreement, entered into by the parties on July 21, 2010. Nadia Piroska Maria Rockwood was sentenced for her felony conviction for willfully making false statements to the FBI. She agreed to a sentence of five years of probation which was imposed by the court at sentencing. Full Story

Charlotte: Former Chief Accounting Officer for Beazer Homes USA, Inc. Indicted on 11 Criminal Counts



Michael T. Rand, the former chief accounting officer for Beazer Homes USA, Inc. was charged in an 11-count federal bill of indictment with conspiracy, securities fraud, obstruction, witness tampering, false statements to a financial institution, misleading conduct and destruction of records. Rand appeared before a U.S. Magistrate Judge in U.S. District Court in Asheville Tuesday and was ordered detained pending a detention hearing. The charges arise from an ongoing government investigation involving Beazer and its employees. In July 2009, a federal bill of information was filed in U.S. District Court charging Beazer with, among other things, participation in the conspiracy and securities fraud with Rand. Beazer accepted responsibility for those charges and, in a deferred prosecution agreement, agreed to pay restitution over time up to $50 million. Full Story

Miami: Roberto Settineri Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering Charge



Roberto Settineri pled guilty Wednesday to a one-count superseding information charging him with conspiracy to commit money laundering. According to the information and statements made during the plea hearing, Settineri admitted to conspiring with others to launder $10 million in funds and concealing assets represented to be the proceeds of a large scale fraudulent scheme. The initial investigation was part of a joint U.S. and Italian law enforcement action. Full Story

Pittsburgh: Three Pennsylvania Men Indicted for Cross Burning



Michael Bealonis and Kenneth Stiffey, Jr., of Robinson, Pennsylvania, and Michael Bracken, of Bolivar, Pennsylvania, were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges stemming from a cross burning in the yard of an African-American juvenile in November 2009. In the three-count indictment, Bealonis, Stiffey, and Bracken were charged with one count of conspiracy to interfere with the housing rights of another, one count of interfering with the housing rights of another, and one count of using fire in the commission of a felony. If convicted, Bealonis, Stiffey and Bracken face a maximum punishment of 30 years in prison and a $750,000 fine. Full Story

The Resignation of Monica Mc Williams

The resignation of Monica Mc Williams as Chief Human Rights Commissioner in Northern Ireland, is no loss to those of us who value the rights of all people. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission is funded and directed by the British State, it has no value in the real fight for Human Rights in Northern Ireland.




The majority of the Human Rights industry in the north has become the anti-thesis of the Human Rights genre. People in the pay of the British State can never represent the demand for Human Rights by those who are marginalised in society. Those on inflated salaries and expense accounts can never represent the victims of Human Rights violations. Children are being denied basic care due to cut backs in our education and health care system while these middle-class, non-elected and non-representitive quangos drain our much needed revenue.



Its time that we called a stop to this 'Human Rights' gravy train and put our hard earned money into education and health care. The silence of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in relation to the rape and mutilation of children at the hands of Sinn Fein/IRA criminals shows clearly that it has been unable to treat all Human Rights violations with equal contempt.



The Human Rights of the Irish and British peoples in Northern Ireland would be better represented by those people who work on a voluntary basis and are not in the pay of the British State.

Better Value - Kennedy Road - Navan

Sinn Fein the Road to No Where

Sinn Fein (political party in Ireland) begins to fall apart as it tries to reach middle class votes. theirishobserver.blogspot.com




Yet another high profile member of Sinn Fein in Dublin has resigned from the party. Killian Forde said that he was leaving Sinn Fein because it was "Staid and unresponsive" which is an interesting description of Sinn Fein by someone who is joining Labour. So Killian suggests that Sinn Fein is "sedate, serious and rather dull" that must mean that Labour is "alive, happy go lucky and rather bright", while I am no fan of Sinn Fein surely such fanciful descriptions by an auld comrade in arms is window dressing for what appears to be a career move. Killian Forde joins three other high profile members of Sinn Fein who have left the party over the past year including Sinn Fein's bed rock in Dublin, Christy Burke. Chirsty Burke, Louise Minihan, John Dwyer and now Killian Forde have all decided to leave Sinn Fein at a time when the party should be enjoying the fruits of its role in the peace process. Why then have the RA supporters club become the "RA -Ts" abandoning a sinking ship.



It is not enough for Sinn Fein to issue mealy mouthed statements attacking each individual on a personal level every time one of them jumps ship. The Green Book tactic of "the best form of defence is attack" holds little water in a modern day democracy, Sinn Fein simply show themselves to be even more isolationist and insular when they attack individuals who feel the party has lost its way. Sinn Fein to survive in a modern day democracy must ask serious questions of themselves, why are so many dedicated activists jumping ship when they should be riding high on the wave of all that has been achived in the north. What is it that has left a once vibrant and vocal opposition party in such a shambles. In my day as a Sinn Fein activist I worked long and hard for many election campaigns, I never once took as much as one cent for my many years of committed work for Sinn Fein. When I needed lads to put up posters for Sinn Fein I could call upon an army of volunteers, when I needed lads to go round the pubs on a Saturday night to sell An Phoblacht I could pick and choose who I wanted, today however Sinn Fein is a party of paid activists and semi-professional spin doctors.



People like Christy have been side stepped so that educated woolly jumpers like Mary Who can woe the middle class vote, this is where Sinn Fein went wrong. Outsiders may say but surely other leading members of Sinn Fein are woolly jumpers who were parachuted into position, surely the Sinn Fein leader in the Dail is a woolly jumper, well actually no, the difference between COC and Mary Who is that COC earned his stripes, he left his job in the bank in 1980 and became a full time Sinn Fein activist, he lived on little or no income for many years, he walked and talked the length and breadth of Ireland in order to organise Sinn Fein, from one day to the next he did not know if he would have petrol for his car. Eventually he was elected to Monaghan County Council and from there worked himself into the ground until eventually being elected to the Dail. However, from my own observations I see few in the ranks of Sinn Fein now prepared to make that committment and effort, the hard working activist has been set aside. Now in Sinn Fein the activist expects to get paid, they want to know whats in it for them, of course there will always be the fools that do it all for the 'cause' but they are getting fewer by the day.



Sinn Fein if it is to survive and I doubt that it will, particularly in the south, needs to get back to basics, it needs to ask why are the men who were once so ready and willing to volunteer their services no longer doing so, why are people like Christy walking away ashamed of what Sinn Fein has become. Its not enough that Sinn Fein know they will get votes in the north because there is no credible alternative in communities long since forgotten by the State and its cheer leaders, its not enough to pay spin doctors to present a virtual reality when their own supporters are living in the real world.



Sinn Fein must decide if they can offer a Real Alternative (RA) and opposition or is the Sinn Fein ship to be allowed to sink with its members being left with no alternative than to Run And Translate (RAT).

Keeping the traditions alive

PIRA, Dissidents and Drug Dealers

Dissidents, Provisional IRA and Drug Dealers team up to profit from criminality.




Read the full history of militant republicanism: irishrepublicanarmy-ira.blogspot.com









During the embryonic years of the ‘peace-process’ when Provisional IRA murders and other criminality were viewed as ‘internal-housekeeping’ by the British and Irish Governments entrepreneurial terrorists made fortunes. While the terrorists continue to make vast sums of money from open criminality, the Gardai can now pursue that criminality in a way that they could not as the Government tried and succeeded in corralling Sinn Fein into the democratic process. However, people who would continue to be viewed as PIRA members are continuing to make vast sums of money from criminality. These PIRA members who have not joined any ‘dissident’ group have now teamed up with ‘dissidents’ and other criminal gangs to maximize their profits. Dublin’s north inner city is now home to an alliance of some of Ireland’s most seasoned and ruthless terrorists and drug dealing criminals. On an almost daily basis these terrorists distribute drugs, illegal cigarettes, fuel, counterfeit CDs/DVDs while at the same time planning and carrying out armed robberies where and when possible.







While the Celtic Tiger roared around the country in October 2006 few even blinked at what was a significant Garda raid in the leafy suburb of Rathfarnham in Dublin. The Gardai raided a very fine house that was nestled among the manicured lawns and polished BMWs of the up market Rathfarnham suburb. The house with a market value of at least two million Euro at that time was not the home of a property speculator or banking executive, but was one of the many properties owned by the Officer Commanding the Provisional IRA in Dublin. The OC of the PIRA in Dublin was a close working associate of one of Dublin’s most notorious or now infamous criminals, Christy Griffin. In 2006 a feud had broken out in the north inner city of Dublin, after it emerged that Christy Griffin had been accused of raping his girlfriend’s daughter since she was a toddler.







When the Gardai searched this fine house they were looking for a stash of hand grenades that had been sent from the PIRA in Belfast to a PIRA member in Dublin who was heavily involved in the bloody feud surrounding Griffin. There had been two hand grenade attacks before the Gardai raid on the house, the grenades were traced back to similar devices that had been used in Belfast. During this period and for many years before, the IRA’s commanding officer in Dublin had been involved in large scale high-jackings from the lucrative Dublin Port. The PIRA leader had inside men at Dublin Port and these men would identify large shipments of high value goods that would be easy to dispose of on the black market; cigarettes were a particular favorite as they could be sold in the markets and pubs around Dublin. The IRA Commander and his drug dealing associates were making lots of money, and as early as 2001 the IRA Commander who had no visible means of income bought the house in Rathfarnham for 900,000 Euro. The IRA Commander also bought himself a holiday home in Wexford and this house was close to another house that had just been bought by his sister-in-law. His sister-in-law was living in Wexford with a former PIRA prisoner, all of the members of this closely net group where heavily involved with Sinn Fein.







While this criminal empire headed up by the PIRA Commander in Dublin and the Christy Griffin gang were allowed to operate without constraint as the peace process was finding its feet, their multi-million Euro robberies were starting to cause problems for both the Sinn Fein leadership and the Fianna Fail Government who had lead them into democratic politics. The Gallahers cigarette company had informed the Irish Government that it could no longer transport its cigarettes through south Armagh or Dublin Port due to the high number of PIRA high-jackings. The security services on both sides of the border felt that their hands were tied as any significant move against the IRA could not go ahead without political sanction. However, Michael Mc Dowell who was then Minister for Justice began to make public pronouncements that warned the Sinn Fein leadership that the honey-moon period was over and the State was going to take direct action against PIRA criminality. The Sinn Fein/IRA leadership was forced to close down its Dublin operation, the Provisional IRA Commander continued to maintain his business links with the drug dealers, but he was told that his association with the IRA would be denied if he ever appeared before a court for his criminal activity.







The Dublin PIRA was now able to get even more involved in the drugs trade as they had been disowned by the Sinn Fein/IRA leadership. By now Christy Griffin was charged, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape of his girlfriend’s daughter. Christy had always been someone the PIRA could deny and deny they did, but for those of us who know the truth Christy Griffin was one of the PIRA’s best earners in Dublin. Christy Griffin had been paid hundreds of thousands of Euro by the PIRA in Dublin for his good works on their behalf. The PIRA Commanding officer in Dublin continued and continues to pay money into the Professional IRA/Sinn Fein organization, this money is laundered through a myriad of front businesses. As long as the PIRA in Dublin, along the border and in the north did not stretch their criminal activity to ‘political terrorism’ they could be certain that they could get away with murder and there would be no political sanction against Sinn Fein. The recent murder of 22 year old Paul Quinn in County Monaghan by members of the PIRA shows that their assessment is correct. By association people like drug dealer Christy Griffin enjoyed the fact that the Government were turning a blind eye to organized crime that was associated with the PIRA. Griffin and the IRA Commander in Dublin were career criminals, both had graduated from youthful theft to violent crime, they both enjoyed the terrorizing of innocent people or anyone who got in their way.







Christy Griffin involved many members of his extended family in his crimes. His nephew Colm Griffin was a member of his gang. Colm was an ad hoc intelligence officer who would be supplied with the details of Lorries carrying valuable goods and their movements, he would also received information on banks and post offices that could be easily robbed and the PIRA would supply him with the guns to carry out those robberies. However, in May 2005 Colm Griffin and his associate Eric Hopkins were shot dead as they carried out an armed robbery of a post office in Lusk in north Dublin.







As the feud surrounding Christy Griffin intensified several people were murdered. Thomas ‘tomo’ Byrne was well known within the north inner city, a female relative had been assaulted by the PIRA Commanding Officer, Byrne retaliated by beating the PIRA Commanding Officer and was later shot dead for his act of defiance. The PIRA Commander believed that he had a license to murder and mutilate at will.







This feud had all started with the decision of a then 19 year old women to go to the Gardai and tell them that she had been raped by Christy Griffin from she was eight years old. This decision caused a split in the PIRA that had up until this point protected Christy Griffin and his associates. Those who supported Christy Griffin were simply trying to protect their sourse of income; those who opposed Christy Griffin were simply embarrassed because of their close association with Sinn Fein. The IRA Commander continues to enjoy the life of a wealthy businessman and uses legitimate businesses to launder money for his former PIRA comrades who continue to engage in full-time/front-line criminality including drug dealing. The PIRA Commander has been forced to pay The Criminal Assets Bureau 500,000 Euro but it has made little impact on his criminal earnings, some of which still makes its way to Sinn Fein.







At its height the Christy Griffin feud claimed several lives including Stephen Ledden who was an innocent by-stander in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Gardai have managed to maintain a presence in the hot spots that have been central to the Griffin feud and this has reduced the feud to a smoldering cheek by jowl fist fight. The north inner city remains a dangerous place, yet it also remains a place where a great deal of money can still be made from drug dealing, cigarette smuggling and so forth. Now in 2010 the entrepreneurs among the criminal gangs including the PIRA, dissidents and the traditional drug dealers have joined forces to maximize profits. The PIRA members still manage to siphon off some money to Sinn Fein but keep the bulk for their own luxury; the dissidents are pure criminals who can satisfy their leadership by occasionally getting access to semi-automatic weapons that come in with drug shipments. The drug dealers continue to enjoy licensed protection from the various terrorist groupings. This pattern is being repeated in Limerick, Cork and many other urban centers around the country, however, Dublin remains the real money maker for all concerned.

Mountjoy

Mountjoy




Six weeks ago Ned Whelan took over the toughest job in the Irish Prison system, that job is Governor of Mountjoy which houses 700 inmates. Ned Whelan is not new to the prison system but has a proven track record in dealing firmly but fairly with those in his care.



Ned Whelan while Governor of Wheatfield Prison introduced a pragmatic regime in relation to drug use and abuse. As Governor Whelan reduced the supply of drugs to prisoners in Wheatfield he also turned 10% of the prisons accommodation into drug free areas. These two landings provided for both drug users and non-drug users to live in an area that did not have the daily routine of drug abuse every time they stepped out of their cell. These prisoners were not treated with kid gloves, nor did they live in luxury, they were simply able to stay drug free by being in a drug free environment in which they could have daily access to Prison Officers and other professionals who wanted to develop the drug free environment.



Many prisoners who would normally have returned to drug use and abuse, robbery, burglaries, violence and so forth walked away from Wheatfield as new men and entered employment, training and education. Governor Whelan could simply have punched in his time in Wheatfield and not bothered himself about Community Safety, however, Governor Whelan is a man of vision and he has now taken that vision to Mountjoy.



Yesterday 24th of August 2010 prison staff in Mountjoy reacted badly to the transfer of a violent prisoner to Mountjoy, that prisoner having previously led a riot in Mountjoy and been involved in a serious assault on a prison officer. While the actions of prison staff is understood, it is important that prison staff are not allowed to dictate who is and who is not housed in our prisons. Those of us who know the prison system know that there are good officers and there are bad officers. Some officers have turned a blind eye when certain prisoners were assaulted, some prison officers have supplied confidential information to the tabloids about certain high profile prisoners, and some prison officers have been charged and convicted of supplying drugs, mobile phones and so forth to certain prisoners.



Ned Whelan needs the full support of our politicians and the community in order that he can continue to do his job to the high standards for which he is known. It is important that the POA is not allowed to dictate prison policy, if that were allowed to happen our system would go into free fall. When the Court makes an Order, Ned Whelan must abide by that Order, Ned Whelan will use his experience and judgement to determine what is in the best interest of his staff and those in his care. Political knee jerk reaction must not be part of prisons policy and one hopes that Dermot Ahern continues to work in a progressive and professional manner with professionals like Ned Whelan, who from my experience puts the safety of his staff first and foremost, the protection and safety of those in his care and Community safety run parallel with his firm yet fair implementation of policy and procedure.



By theirishobserver.blogspot.com

Take Care of Your Pets

SIPTU

Sinn Fein/IRA by Guest writer theirishobserver.blogspot.com

As a former member of Sinn Fein/IRA (the republican movement) for twelve years, I am often asked for my insight into how the republican movement works and where the republican movement is going. So with these constant requests in mind I have decided to write what may turn out to be a book on the republican movement. These writings will first appear exclusively on Hubpages.com as it is Hubpages.com who has provided the opportunity and forum for the writings of non-mainstream writers. I will complement my own knowledge and experience by drawing on the writings of some of Ireland’s foremost experts on Irish Republicanism.










What might have been is an abstraction,



Remaining a perpetual possibility,



Only in a world of speculation









T.S. Elliot









This book will unravel the tapestry of 20th/21st Century Irish Republicanism that has been held together by such mythological threads as socialist republicanism and Irish national liberation. It will uncover the true identity of Irish Republicanism as embodied in Sinn Fein/IRA as a sectarian movement whose objective was and remains to coerce the Protestant people of Northern Ireland into a United Ireland, through a campaign of physical and psychological brutality. This book will further show that whatever the republican movement was intended to be in its embryonic stages, it emerged as a sectarian/criminal empire. This book will give a brief history of Irish Republicanism from 1916 to 1960, including the IRA’s close relationship with the Nazis. It will look at the establishment of the Irish Free State and how many tens of thousands of Protestants were driven from that State by way of murder, intimidation and discrimination at the hands of militant republicans. It will then cover events that led in the late 1960s to a Civil Rights campaign, launched by the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland (the north) against what were seen as institutional sectarian discriminations imposed on the Catholic community by the Unionist (Protestant) dominated Stormont Government in Northern Ireland.









This book will then look at the re-emergence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the late 1960s and the ideological conflicts that eventually lead to the split within the IRA in 1970, from that split emerged the Provisional IRA. The role played by the democratically elected Irish Government in Dublin at this time will be analysed. It will be shown that as early as 1970 the republican leadership realised that the real obstacle to their desired United Ireland was the Protestant people of Northern Ireland. However, it will be shown that a specific strategy for directly and intentionally targeting Protestants was not adopted by Sinn Fein/IRA until the mid 1980s.









This book will then examine the development of the Provisional IRA and its Political wing Sinn Fein. I will analysis the roles played by republican prisoners and the hunger strikes in which ten young Irish men lost their lives. I will then look at the political status and political momentum that these hunger strikes generated for the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein.









I will look at key sign posts that lead to another split in the IRA in 1986 from which was established Republican Sinn Fein/Continuity IRA. The Provisional Sinn Fein/IRA strategy of that of the Ballot box in one hand the Armalite in the other will be examined as will the Anglo-Irish-Agreement signed by British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and Irish Prime Minister, Garret Fitzgerald.









The split that occurred in Sinn Fein/IRA in 1986 will be explored in detail, emphasising the importance of such a split for the future direction of the republican movement. It will be shown that the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein leadership believed that a twin track approach of political and physical coercion could be used against the Protestant people of Northern Ireland to physically and psychologically force them into a united Ireland. The same twin track approach would be used to both economically and psychologically force the British Government and public to become persuaders of the Protestant people of the benefits of a United Ireland.









I will show how the IRA’s numbers were reduced as The Northern Command of the Republican Movement under the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin Mc Guinness took control of both Sinn Fein and the IRA by placing loyal followers into key positions. I will evaluate Sinn Fein’s electoral performance and investigate why the republican movement became involved in secret talks with the British Government, The Irish Government and the SDLP (Catholic/Nationalist Party in the north). These secret talks would eventually bring about the Hume/Adams initiative. I will examine the influence of the American administration on what had become known as the peace process. And why the President of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams had bought into the idea of political coercion to further the aims of the republican movement.









This book will critically examine the road on which the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein has continued to travel after 1986. This examination will include: the 1992 Sinn Fein policy document ‘Towards a lasting Peace in Ireland’, the secret talks between British Government intermediaries and the leadership of Sinn Fein/IRA, the Peace Process which produced the 1993 ‘Downing Street Declaration’, the 1995 ‘Framework Document’ and culminated in the 1998 ‘Good Friday Agreement’ all of which lead to Devolution and the power sharing Executive at Stormont Buildings in Belfast, the all important but less than perfect Republican and Loyalist cease-fires.



This book will take us up to 2010, a time in which the peace process has produced a power sharing executive at Stormont including the devolution of Policing and Justice from Westminster. The present threat from 'dissident' republicans will be examined and following the collapse of Unionism in the 2010 Westminster Elections I will ask what can the future hold for Northern Ireland and is a United Ireland any closer today than it was before thousands of people were slaughtered in it's name.















Chapter 1









Historical Regression









Irish Republicanism has, in every epoch of its existence, sustained life and meted out death through a combination of romanticised martyrdom and an out right hatred of the great British oppressor. Both can be seen here in a letter from one of the republican hero’s of the 1916-1923 Irish revolution against British rule, Terence Mac Swiney, writing from Brixton Jail in 1920:









Oh my God, I offer my pain for Ireland. She is on the rack…I offer my sufferings here for our martyred people beseeching Thee, O my God, to grant them the nerve and strength and grace to withstand the present terror in Ireland…that by Thy all powerful aid the persecution may end in our time and Ireland arise at last triumphant.[1]









Contemporary militant republicanism is embodied in Sinn Fein/IRA, Sinn Fein/IRA has at all stages failed to be a homogeneous ideological unit because of the diversity of its personnel. Countess Markievicz wrote in one of her prison letters (17 August 1919):









Sinn Fein is not a solid, cast iron thing like English parties. It is just a jumble of people of all classes, creeds, and opinions, who are all ready to suffer and die for Ireland. [2]









From the very out set of the creation of the new liberated territory known then as the Irish Free State (Irish Republic/Eire), Irish republicanism was in confusion. Britain had withdrawn from twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties leaving behind a divided republican movement. Those who had supported and signed the treaty with Britain were prepared to kill their former IRA colleagues to advance their vision for Ireland. Those who opposed the treaty with the British were willing to defend to the death the Irish people’s rightful claim to national self determination over the entire national territory of Ireland. Some militant republicans continued to murder, intimidate and discriminate against those Protestants who wished to continue to live in the Irish Free State where they had lived for generations. Tens of thousands of Protestants were forced from their homes and went either to the newly created Northern Ireland or England for their own safety. In conflicts all over the world it is the case that extremists who have tasted the power of dictating life and death over fellow citizens, do not wish to let go of that power.





In the aftermath of the Irish Civil War (pro and anti Treaty republicans fought each other) Irish republicanism was a fragmented ideology that had beaten itself into constitutional politics. As republicans began to regroup there were obvious ideological differences. Those who had signed up to a 26 county constitutional frame work free from British interference were content to allow the six northern counties of Tyrone, Armagh, Antrim, Down, Derry and Fermanagh to be a Protestant State remaining under British rule. Others continued to pursue a united Ireland through constitutional politics. Others remained within the ranks of militant republicanism and they would not accept that the Free State was anything more than a neo-colonial British state.









Simply put, those supporting the Treaty and accepting the Free State would become known as Fine Gael (political party), those who wished to pursue the ideal of a united Ireland through constitutional politics would after the 1926 extraordinary Sinn Fein Ard Fheis [3] be known as Fianna Fail. Those who would continue to support the IRA Army Council would be a combination of socialist O’Donnellites and others of a purely militaristic mind set who had supported the IRA’s break with Sinn Fein and second Dail in 1925 to pursue a policy of social agitation.[4]



It must be mentioned here that in 1922, when the opponents of the Treaty left the Dail and precipitated the Civil War, the Labour Party provided the first opposition, and consitutional politics was born in Ireland. While this book is focused on militant republicanism, it must be noted that the Labour Party would be the only true voice of the oppressed working class in the newly liberated territory and it continues in that role in the 21st Century. In a poll published in the Irish Times 12th June 2010, the Labour Party was found to be the largest party in the Irish Republic. This is the first time in its history that the Labour Party appears to have made Irish politics a three party contest and it is certain that Labour will be a major player in the Government of Ireland following the 2012 General election.



In the 1920s central Government in Dublin introduced the Local Appointments Commission and the Civil Servants Commission in order to stop corruption and nepitism at local Government level. However, dicrimination and jobbery were rife in local councils, this discrimination against Protestants in particular was highlighted by the appointment of a Trinity Graduate and Protestant to the position of County Librarian in County Mayo in 1930. Mrs Natasha Dunbarr-Harrison was appointed by the Local Appointments Commission on the basis of merit, however, Mrs Dunbarr-Harrison's appointment was not endorsed by the Library Committee of Mayo County Council. The committee initially suggested that Mrs Dunbarr-Harrision had not got a good enough grasp of the Irish Language, however, the real reason for her rejection was reflected in the comments of a Fianna Fail member of Mayo County Council as reported in the Connaght Telegraph on the 29th of December 1930:



I am opposed to the appointment of a product of Trinity which is not the culture of the Gael but poison gas to the history of the Celtic people......bigoted anti-Irish out-post of England in Ireland....that feeds like a parisite on the flesh and blood of our kindly Celtic people...we must check the progress of the pest if we are to preserve Celtic Culture.









These were the words of a constitutional 'republican' and while Mayo County Council were sacked for refusing to endorse the appointment of Mrs Dunbarr-Harrisson, Protestants would continue to be dicriminated against in every walk of life in the new Free State. When Sinn Fein or what remained of Sinn Fein, came out of the debris of the 1920s it was a party in total confusion. British withdrawal, yes, but was Sinn Fein purely a nationalist party or had it the socialist blood of James Connolly in its veins, bold uncompromising socialism appeared absent. Richard English, Professor of Politics at QueensUniversity, Belfast suggests that socialist republicans sustained their project through self deluding myths:









James Connolly’s socialist republican theory was their intellectual point of reference, but they failed to see that even Connolly’s own career demonstrated the inadequacy of his central thesis. Inter war socialist republicanism offered incoherent readings of the 1916-1923 revolutionary period; on the basis of these misconstructions they maintained the fiction that republicanism, properly understood, had class conflict at its root.[5]









Peadar O’ Donnell, one of Connolly’s most ardent followers in the subsequent generation acknowledged that it had been possible for Connolly’s socialism to be drowned in nationalist tears. Writing in 1933, O’ Donnell claimed that Connolly was not presented as having seen,









That the final battle ground for Irish Freedom must be the revolutionary struggle of the Irish workers against Irish capitalism.[6]









If Connolly’s socialism is ever mentioned, it is to admit a fault which the manner of his death redeemed. In the 1940s and 1950s the IRA Army Council continued to pursue a purely militaristic campaign. That said, the IRA’s military capacity even at its height was nothing more than a blot on the landscape as the Second World War raged, however, there were some exceptions:









At 2.30pm on the 25th of August, 1939, Broadgate in the centre of Coventry was crowded with shoppers and people returning to their places of work. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and the weather forecast for the weekend promised two days of sunshine. What the people did not expect was for an IRA bomb to rip through the crowed streets. When the smoke cleared, fifty-two, men, women and children lay dead, dying or injured.[7]









What was even more alarming and in stark contrast to their rhetoric of Freedom was the IRA’s links to Hitler and Nazi Germany. One might suppose that the IRA viewed the enemy of their enemy as a friend. In February 1939 a German Intelligence agent Oskar Pfaus using the alias, Eoin Duffy, arrived in Dublin to make contact with the IRA. Pfaus meet with the IRA staff at General Headquarters, including some of the most senior republicans at that time, Sean Russell and Seamus O’Donovan. The Nazis wanted the IRA to work as a fifth column inside Britain and the IRA was happy to do business with them. O’Donovan travelled to Germany on many occasions in order to secure guns and explosives. On the 23rd of August, nine days before the Germans invaded Poland; O Donovan was on his third trip to Nazi Germany, which surely proved that there was nothing progressive about contemporary militant Republicanism.









The IRA’s pursuance of a purely militaristic agenda failed to draw any real attention except from the legislators in The Irish Republic and the Protestant dominated Stormont Government of Northern Ireland, both of whom introduced the usual measures to control militant republicanism, namely, internment, interrogation, raids, shootings and censorship.









Since the foundation of the Irish Free State/Republic there has always been a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the minority Catholic community that was abandoned to the dictate of the Unionist dominated Stormont Government. However, sympathy for the Catholics in the north among the masses in the south is sympathy for an oppressed minority; such sympathy cannot be taken to imply support for a united Ireland. In the north, the predominant concern of the Catholic community has been for an end of the Unionist regime at Stormont and its oppressive anti-Catholic policies. Compared with the question of reunification is of little more than sentimental significance.[8]









Following the creation of the Irish Free State the IRA had few friends; former allies had given their allegiance to de Valera and his new Government in Dail Eireann (Irish Parliament). American sympathisers with Irish republicanism consoled themselves in the Irish Constitution of 1937 (Bunreacht Na hEireann), a constitution that was drawn up by de Valera and the Catholic Church, in Articles 2 and 3 of the original constitution it laid claim to the whole Island of Ireland. This claim would be watered down in a constitutional referendum in order to facilitate the fledgling peace process in the late 1990s.









The initial claim to the whole Island of Ireland by de Valera in the original constitution was enough to convince Irish Americans to give their hard earned dollars to the new constitutional politics of de Valera and Fianna Fail rather than the militant politics of Sinn Fein/IRA. The American input even up to the modern day is a key component of Irish politics. The American input takes on many forms and they will be discussed throughout this book.









End Chapter 1: Click the link to take you directly to Chapter 2.



http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Fairly-Secret-Army-Chapter-2-Civil-Rights-and-the-role-of-the-IRA















[1] Page 46 English, 1994



[2] Page 29 English 1994



[3] Page 36 Patterson, 1989



[4] Page 44 Patterson, 1989









[5] Page 270 English, 1994



[6] Page 28 English, 1994



[7] Page 32 Dillon, 1994



[8] Page 160 Morgan, 1980

Sinn Fein/IRA

As a former member of Sinn Fein/IRA (the republican movement) for twelve years, I am often asked for my insight into how the republican movement works and where the republican movement is going. So with these constant requests in mind I have decided to write what may turn out to be a book on the republican movement. These writings will first appear exclusively on Hubpages.com as it is Hubpages.com who has provided the opportunity and forum for the writings of non-mainstream writers. I will complement my own knowledge and experience by drawing on the writings of some of Ireland’s foremost experts on Irish Republicanism.










What might have been is an abstraction,



Remaining a perpetual possibility,



Only in a world of speculation









T.S. Elliot









This book will unravel the tapestry of 20th/21st Century Irish Republicanism that has been held together by such mythological threads as socialist republicanism and Irish national liberation. It will uncover the true identity of Irish Republicanism as embodied in Sinn Fein/IRA as a sectarian movement whose objective was and remains to coerce the Protestant people of Northern Ireland into a United Ireland, through a campaign of physical and psychological brutality. This book will further show that whatever the republican movement was intended to be in its embryonic stages, it emerged as a sectarian/criminal empire. This book will give a brief history of Irish Republicanism from 1916 to 1960, including the IRA’s close relationship with the Nazis. It will look at the establishment of the Irish Free State and how many tens of thousands of Protestants were driven from that State by way of murder, intimidation and discrimination at the hands of militant republicans. It will then cover events that led in the late 1960s to a Civil Rights campaign, launched by the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland (the north) against what were seen as institutional sectarian discriminations imposed on the Catholic community by the Unionist (Protestant) dominated Stormont Government in Northern Ireland.









This book will then look at the re-emergence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the late 1960s and the ideological conflicts that eventually lead to the split within the IRA in 1970, from that split emerged the Provisional IRA. The role played by the democratically elected Irish Government in Dublin at this time will be analysed. It will be shown that as early as 1970 the republican leadership realised that the real obstacle to their desired United Ireland was the Protestant people of Northern Ireland. However, it will be shown that a specific strategy for directly and intentionally targeting Protestants was not adopted by Sinn Fein/IRA until the mid 1980s.









This book will then examine the development of the Provisional IRA and its Political wing Sinn Fein. I will analysis the roles played by republican prisoners and the hunger strikes in which ten young Irish men lost their lives. I will then look at the political status and political momentum that these hunger strikes generated for the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein.









I will look at key sign posts that lead to another split in the IRA in 1986 from which was established Republican Sinn Fein/Continuity IRA. The Provisional Sinn Fein/IRA strategy of that of the Ballot box in one hand the Armalite in the other will be examined as will the Anglo-Irish-Agreement signed by British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and Irish Prime Minister, Garret Fitzgerald.









The split that occurred in Sinn Fein/IRA in 1986 will be explored in detail, emphasising the importance of such a split for the future direction of the republican movement. It will be shown that the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein leadership believed that a twin track approach of political and physical coercion could be used against the Protestant people of Northern Ireland to physically and psychologically force them into a united Ireland. The same twin track approach would be used to both economically and psychologically force the British Government and public to become persuaders of the Protestant people of the benefits of a United Ireland.









I will show how the IRA’s numbers were reduced as The Northern Command of the Republican Movement under the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin Mc Guinness took control of both Sinn Fein and the IRA by placing loyal followers into key positions. I will evaluate Sinn Fein’s electoral performance and investigate why the republican movement became involved in secret talks with the British Government, The Irish Government and the SDLP (Catholic/Nationalist Party in the north). These secret talks would eventually bring about the Hume/Adams initiative. I will examine the influence of the American administration on what had become known as the peace process. And why the President of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams had bought into the idea of political coercion to further the aims of the republican movement.









This book will critically examine the road on which the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein has continued to travel after 1986. This examination will include: the 1992 Sinn Fein policy document ‘Towards a lasting Peace in Ireland’, the secret talks between British Government intermediaries and the leadership of Sinn Fein/IRA, the Peace Process which produced the 1993 ‘Downing Street Declaration’, the 1995 ‘Framework Document’ and culminated in the 1998 ‘Good Friday Agreement’ all of which lead to Devolution and the power sharing Executive at Stormont Buildings in Belfast, the all important but less than perfect Republican and Loyalist cease-fires.



This book will take us up to 2010, a time in which the peace process has produced a power sharing executive at Stormont including the devolution of Policing and Justice from Westminster. The present threat from 'dissident' republicans will be examined and following the collapse of Unionism in the 2010 Westminster Elections I will ask what can the future hold for Northern Ireland and is a United Ireland any closer today than it was before thousands of people were slaughtered in it's name.















Chapter 1









Historical Regression









Irish Republicanism has, in every epoch of its existence, sustained life and meted out death through a combination of romanticised martyrdom and an out right hatred of the great British oppressor. Both can be seen here in a letter from one of the republican hero’s of the 1916-1923 Irish revolution against British rule, Terence Mac Swiney, writing from Brixton Jail in 1920:









Oh my God, I offer my pain for Ireland. She is on the rack…I offer my sufferings here for our martyred people beseeching Thee, O my God, to grant them the nerve and strength and grace to withstand the present terror in Ireland…that by Thy all powerful aid the persecution may end in our time and Ireland arise at last triumphant.[1]









Contemporary militant republicanism is embodied in Sinn Fein/IRA, Sinn Fein/IRA has at all stages failed to be a homogeneous ideological unit because of the diversity of its personnel. Countess Markievicz wrote in one of her prison letters (17 August 1919):









Sinn Fein is not a solid, cast iron thing like English parties. It is just a jumble of people of all classes, creeds, and opinions, who are all ready to suffer and die for Ireland. [2]









From the very out set of the creation of the new liberated territory known then as the Irish Free State (Irish Republic/Eire), Irish republicanism was in confusion. Britain had withdrawn from twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties leaving behind a divided republican movement. Those who had supported and signed the treaty with Britain were prepared to kill their former IRA colleagues to advance their vision for Ireland. Those who opposed the treaty with the British were willing to defend to the death the Irish people’s rightful claim to national self determination over the entire national territory of Ireland. Some militant republicans continued to murder, intimidate and discriminate against those Protestants who wished to continue to live in the Irish Free State where they had lived for generations. Tens of thousands of Protestants were forced from their homes and went either to the newly created Northern Ireland or England for their own safety. In conflicts all over the world it is the case that extremists who have tasted the power of dictating life and death over fellow citizens, do not wish to let go of that power.





In the aftermath of the Irish Civil War (pro and anti Treaty republicans fought each other) Irish republicanism was a fragmented ideology that had beaten itself into constitutional politics. As republicans began to regroup there were obvious ideological differences. Those who had signed up to a 26 county constitutional frame work free from British interference were content to allow the six northern counties of Tyrone, Armagh, Antrim, Down, Derry and Fermanagh to be a Protestant State remaining under British rule. Others continued to pursue a united Ireland through constitutional politics. Others remained within the ranks of militant republicanism and they would not accept that the Free State was anything more than a neo-colonial British state.









Simply put, those supporting the Treaty and accepting the Free State would become known as Fine Gael (political party), those who wished to pursue the ideal of a united Ireland through constitutional politics would after the 1926 extraordinary Sinn Fein Ard Fheis [3] be known as Fianna Fail. Those who would continue to support the IRA Army Council would be a combination of socialist O’Donnellites and others of a purely militaristic mind set who had supported the IRA’s break with Sinn Fein and second Dail in 1925 to pursue a policy of social agitation.[4]



It must be mentioned here that in 1922, when the opponents of the Treaty left the Dail and precipitated the Civil War, the Labour Party provided the first opposition, and consitutional politics was born in Ireland. While this book is focused on militant republicanism, it must be noted that the Labour Party would be the only true voice of the oppressed working class in the newly liberated territory and it continues in that role in the 21st Century. In a poll published in the Irish Times 12th June 2010, the Labour Party was found to be the largest party in the Irish Republic. This is the first time in its history that the Labour Party appears to have made Irish politics a three party contest and it is certain that Labour will be a major player in the Government of Ireland following the 2012 General election.



In the 1920s central Government in Dublin introduced the Local Appointments Commission and the Civil Servants Commission in order to stop corruption and nepitism at local Government level. However, dicrimination and jobbery were rife in local councils, this discrimination against Protestants in particular was highlighted by the appointment of a Trinity Graduate and Protestant to the position of County Librarian in County Mayo in 1930. Mrs Natasha Dunbarr-Harrison was appointed by the Local Appointments Commission on the basis of merit, however, Mrs Dunbarr-Harrison's appointment was not endorsed by the Library Committee of Mayo County Council. The committee initially suggested that Mrs Dunbarr-Harrision had not got a good enough grasp of the Irish Language, however, the real reason for her rejection was reflected in the comments of a Fianna Fail member of Mayo County Council as reported in the Connaght Telegraph on the 29th of December 1930:



I am opposed to the appointment of a product of Trinity which is not the culture of the Gael but poison gas to the history of the Celtic people......bigoted anti-Irish out-post of England in Ireland....that feeds like a parisite on the flesh and blood of our kindly Celtic people...we must check the progress of the pest if we are to preserve Celtic Culture.









These were the words of a constitutional 'republican' and while Mayo County Council were sacked for refusing to endorse the appointment of Mrs Dunbarr-Harrisson, Protestants would continue to be dicriminated against in every walk of life in the new Free State. When Sinn Fein or what remained of Sinn Fein, came out of the debris of the 1920s it was a party in total confusion. British withdrawal, yes, but was Sinn Fein purely a nationalist party or had it the socialist blood of James Connolly in its veins, bold uncompromising socialism appeared absent. Richard English, Professor of Politics at QueensUniversity, Belfast suggests that socialist republicans sustained their project through self deluding myths:









James Connolly’s socialist republican theory was their intellectual point of reference, but they failed to see that even Connolly’s own career demonstrated the inadequacy of his central thesis. Inter war socialist republicanism offered incoherent readings of the 1916-1923 revolutionary period; on the basis of these misconstructions they maintained the fiction that republicanism, properly understood, had class conflict at its root.[5]









Peadar O’ Donnell, one of Connolly’s most ardent followers in the subsequent generation acknowledged that it had been possible for Connolly’s socialism to be drowned in nationalist tears. Writing in 1933, O’ Donnell claimed that Connolly was not presented as having seen,









That the final battle ground for Irish Freedom must be the revolutionary struggle of the Irish workers against Irish capitalism.[6]









If Connolly’s socialism is ever mentioned, it is to admit a fault which the manner of his death redeemed. In the 1940s and 1950s the IRA Army Council continued to pursue a purely militaristic campaign. That said, the IRA’s military capacity even at its height was nothing more than a blot on the landscape as the Second World War raged, however, there were some exceptions:









At 2.30pm on the 25th of August, 1939, Broadgate in the centre of Coventry was crowded with shoppers and people returning to their places of work. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and the weather forecast for the weekend promised two days of sunshine. What the people did not expect was for an IRA bomb to rip through the crowed streets. When the smoke cleared, fifty-two, men, women and children lay dead, dying or injured.[7]









What was even more alarming and in stark contrast to their rhetoric of Freedom was the IRA’s links to Hitler and Nazi Germany. One might suppose that the IRA viewed the enemy of their enemy as a friend. In February 1939 a German Intelligence agent Oskar Pfaus using the alias, Eoin Duffy, arrived in Dublin to make contact with the IRA. Pfaus meet with the IRA staff at General Headquarters, including some of the most senior republicans at that time, Sean Russell and Seamus O’Donovan. The Nazis wanted the IRA to work as a fifth column inside Britain and the IRA was happy to do business with them. O’Donovan travelled to Germany on many occasions in order to secure guns and explosives. On the 23rd of August, nine days before the Germans invaded Poland; O Donovan was on his third trip to Nazi Germany, which surely proved that there was nothing progressive about contemporary militant Republicanism.









The IRA’s pursuance of a purely militaristic agenda failed to draw any real attention except from the legislators in The Irish Republic and the Protestant dominated Stormont Government of Northern Ireland, both of whom introduced the usual measures to control militant republicanism, namely, internment, interrogation, raids, shootings and censorship.









Since the foundation of the Irish Free State/Republic there has always been a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the minority Catholic community that was abandoned to the dictate of the Unionist dominated Stormont Government. However, sympathy for the Catholics in the north among the masses in the south is sympathy for an oppressed minority; such sympathy cannot be taken to imply support for a united Ireland. In the north, the predominant concern of the Catholic community has been for an end of the Unionist regime at Stormont and its oppressive anti-Catholic policies. Compared with the question of reunification is of little more than sentimental significance.[8]









Following the creation of the Irish Free State the IRA had few friends; former allies had given their allegiance to de Valera and his new Government in Dail Eireann (Irish Parliament). American sympathisers with Irish republicanism consoled themselves in the Irish Constitution of 1937 (Bunreacht Na hEireann), a constitution that was drawn up by de Valera and the Catholic Church, in Articles 2 and 3 of the original constitution it laid claim to the whole Island of Ireland. This claim would be watered down in a constitutional referendum in order to facilitate the fledgling peace process in the late 1990s.









The initial claim to the whole Island of Ireland by de Valera in the original constitution was enough to convince Irish Americans to give their hard earned dollars to the new constitutional politics of de Valera and Fianna Fail rather than the militant politics of Sinn Fein/IRA. The American input even up to the modern day is a key component of Irish politics. The American input takes on many forms and they will be discussed throughout this book.









End Chapter 1: Click the link to take you directly to Chapter 2.



http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Fairly-Secret-Army-Chapter-2-Civil-Rights-and-the-role-of-the-IRA















[1] Page 46 English, 1994



[2] Page 29 English 1994



[3] Page 36 Patterson, 1989



[4] Page 44 Patterson, 1989









[5] Page 270 English, 1994



[6] Page 28 English, 1994



[7] Page 32 Dillon, 1994



[8] Page 160 Morgan, 1980

Priest Accused of Child Rape

A Catholic priest has been charged with twice raping a 14-year-old girl in Germany 20 years ago. A Catholic priest has been charged with twice raping a 14-year-old girl in Germany 20 years ago.



Prosecutors in Osnabrueck said the 50-year old man, then a chaplain, used force to make the girl have sex with him and also threatened her with a punishment by God.



The priest, who has been relieved of his duties by the church, has admitted sexual contacts with the girl.



The woman says she has had a sexual relationship, marked by violence, with the chaplain over three years.



The woman contacted the diocese of Osnabrueck earlier this year amid a widening abuse scandal in Germany.

If you have any concerns about crime please contact the Gardai

Terrorist Threat

Forty years ago—on August 24, 1970—Burt and three other young men protesting the Vietnam War carried out a pre-dawn bomb attack at the University of Wisconsin in Madison that would stand as the largest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history until the Oklahoma City bombing 25 years later.




The three accomplices were eventually arrested and served time in prison for the bombing of Sterling Hall, which caused significant damage and the death of a physics researcher. But Burt—22 at the time and an aspiring journalist—has been on the run ever since.



Retired Special Agent Kent Miller, one of several agents to lead the hunt for Burt over the years, said the Bureau has run down hundreds of tips around the world—everything from Burt reportedly being homeless in Denver to working at a Costa Rican resort. But the fugitive has somehow managed to elude capture, leading some to believe he is dead.


Miller, who spent 36 years in the Bureau and is currently a deputy coroner in Madison, thinks Burt may still be alive. “If so, I don’t think he’s living in the United States. And if he is alive,” Miller added, “he’s got to be worried every day that he’s going to slip up and get caught. That’s no way to live.”


Special Agent Kevin Cassidy has been in charge of the investigation for the past three years. “Even after four decades,” he said, “we cover every credible lead that comes in.” Despite the passage of time, agents in the field are happy to help. “If we ever catch him,” Cassidy said, “it will be due to the hundreds of agents who have been so diligent in their efforts.”



Cassidy prefers not to speculate about Burt being alive or dead. “Until I know for sure,” he said, “we will pursue him. This was the largest truck bombing in the country’s history at the time, it did millions of dollars worth of damage, and Burt killed someone. He needs to be held responsible for that.”





Leo Burt's wanted poster, including images of what he might look like today. A reward of $150,000 is being offered for information that leads to his arrest.





Burt was part of a radical anti-war group known as the New Year’s Gang. They were targeting the Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall to protest the Vietnam War and the university’s involvement with the military. The explosion—heard some 30 miles away—caused extensive damage to the building and to 26 others, and resulted in the death of Robert Fassnacht, a 33-year-old father of three who was working late on campus to finish a research project.



Even though Burt is the only bomber to thus far avoid prison—the other three served relatively brief sentences—retired Agent Miller thinks he may have suffered the most.



“He had a fairly close family,” Miller said. “But because he was on the run, he had to sever ties with his brother and other family members. He missed both his parents’ funerals. When he became a fugitive,” Miller added, “he basically gave up his life.”



We need your help to locate Leo Burt. If you have any information, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $150,000 for information leading to Burt’s arrest.

Nelson Mandela

For those of us who campaigned over the years for the release of Nelson Mandela, he will always be held in our hearts as one of the great inspirations in the 20th Century. His inspiration was as a man who had endured so much pain and suffering. The ANC well thats a whole different matter.




Mandela what ever his politics, is a man viewed by many as agreat champion of the dispossessed. Since his release from prison he has done much to bring healing to his country. While many of us viewed the 1995 Rugby World Cup as simply another outing for well paid footballers and their wives, for Mandela the 1995 Rugby World Cup was yet another opportunity for blackman and white to sit beside each other and cheer for a common cause.



Mandela said, "Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people, in a way that little else does". Mandela viewed the 1995 World Cup as another opportunity to move South Africa forward from its former darkness. Mandela wanted to heal and be healed by the wave of change in South Africa. We know that there is much work to be done, we know that much poverty and discrimination exists, but Mandela has a dream that we can all aspire to.



Yet Mandela was not alone in his dream, indeed, it would be impossible for one man to do what had to be done. Mandela the President of South Africa would team up with the Captain of South Africa's Rugby team (the Sprinboks) to bring unity and healing to their nation.



Francois Pienaar was a willing partner in this venture to bring hope and salvation to a new South Africa. Now this sensational story of hope and healing is brought to us in Invictus.



Invictus: Is inspiring, action packed and full of inspiration for anyone who has blood running thorugh their veins. The legendary Morgan Freeman plays the part of Mandela in Invictus. Morgan is convincing and magnificant in his portrayal of a modern day hero. Matt Damon plays Rugby Captain, Francois Pienaar.



The ending of apartheid did not bring about an end to the misery and suffering of many millions of blacks in South Africa. Mandela has a dream of an Africa where his people are at one with each other, a rainbow nation. Mandela wants to unite his people with one voice through their love of their countries sporting heros. Mandela knows that his nations rugby team are the under dogs of the 1995 Rugby World Cup yet he rallies the people to get behind their team.



The Springboks Green and Gold colours are to shine brightly in Mandela's vision of a rainbow South African nation. Even some of Mandela's most trusted followers and advisors ask him if he should be focusing on such an insignificant matter as sport when his country was in social and economic melt down. But Mandela the man persisted.







A New Dawn.



A New Dawn. Mandela

Most black south Africans had viewed the Green and Gold of the south African rugby team as a symbol of all that was bad about apartheid. They remembered how their country was represented by whitemen when they the blacks had been the natural majority in their own country. Yet Mandela knew that the Rugby team was a symbol of pride and purpose to the white minority. Mandela needed his people to unite, with him, in telling the white minority that they had a central place in black south Africa.



Invictus is of course inspired by the book, "Playing the Enemy" by John Carlin. Carlin could see that Mandela wanted to turn a symbol of hate (Springboks) for black south Africans, into a symbol of hope and inspiration for all. While this film is explosive with its combination of Damon and Freeman, their wonder is only fully fulfilled by the role of the man who once played Dirty Harry. Clint Eastwood is clearly written all over this magnificant movie.



This is a box office hit for me. This portrayal by Freeman is illuminating. The Mandela smile breaks through on Freeman's face as natural as the man himself. On one or two occassions I would say the south African accent plays tricks with Freeman, but this is small change when his overall portryal is considered.



Invictus is of course a poem by William Ernest Henley, a poem that Mandela says brought him great strength while he was in prison. Translated Invictus means 'unconquered'. Mandela quotes this poem as he calls upon Pienaar to lead the south African team to greatness. Mandela has forgiven those who hurt him so badly. He does not want revenge, he wants his people in unity, not in dispute.



Mandela knows that the white population follow their rugby team with great heart. He knows that if he can seek unity of black and white through sport his country can move forward. Mandela cries out for unity and hope. Almost in desperation Mandela says, "This country is hungry for greatness".



Damon plays an honest and recognisable role as Pienaar. Damon shows how this 1995 World Cup could be much more than a game of macho rugby. Clint Eastwood is all over this movie, his Directorship is captivating. Scenes that only Eastwood could contrive make this movie magical. The scene where two white police officers are listening to the game while a black lad lurks about their car, could have been taken from any one of Eastwood's earlier movies in the glory days of Dirty Harry.



Eventually the white police officers and the black lad would celebrate together as south Africa marched forward both on the football field and the road to political unity. Invictus is a movie of magnitudal proportions. This movie reaches deep into the soul and drags out any life that it finds. This movie is a must for any one with any sense of history. Leave your prejudice at the door and simply sit back an enjoy this masterpiece.

Economy

Fast-Growth Economies:


Sustainable and Unsustainable Examples from Europe and Asia



Address by Governor Patrick Honohan

to Ireland Japan Chamber of Commerce, Tokyo



Traveling to East Asia from Ireland, as I have been doing off and on for almost a quarter of a century, has always been accompanied by an air of expectation: What will be the most evident new examples of how fast the Asian economies been evolving? It is no different today. As usual this is the fastest-growing regional economy on earth. And I am coming to you today from what is temporarily a country buffeted by a contractionary shock. Europe as a whole has suffered badly from the global recession, and the Irish economy has been one of the worst hit – reflecting the fact that we had allowed the economy to overheat rather badly.



But it is important to emphasise that Europe too has had its fast-growth regions and countries also in the recent past and will continue to have them in the future. After all, fast growth is not regionally biased, but can occur in at least three distinct ways, which I can call the convergent, the unsustainable and the agglomerative.



· Fast growth of the convergent type is available only to countries which have fallen behind what is often termed the global productivity frontier and are catching up with the rest.



· Unsustainable surges of fast growth are generally driven (or at least supported) by bank credit or public borrowing: this is the boom and bust type.



· The third form is more intriguing, and is observed in some small countries or sub-national regions that secure some special advantage involving economies of agglomeration.



All three forms of fast growth are exemplified both in recent East Asian history, and they are also exemplified in Europe. Not only that, but each type plays its part of the story of Ireland’s rapid growth over the past twenty years before the recent set-backs.



Convergent growth



When it comes to the greatest success stories of recent fast-growth economies, of course there is no denying the primacy of the Asian miracle. After all, most of the East Asian economy as a whole is in a phase of convergence, and its great cities benefit from being the entrepots and the intellectual, entrepreneurial, and administrative centres of the vast expansion in economic activity that is associated with this convergence of living standards for some 2 billion people to what economists have long called the production frontier.



This term production frontier, I guess, was partly inspired by American economists mesmerized by the expansion of European colonization into the ever retreating Western US frontier of the mid-19th Century. Exploiting the agricultural and mineral potential of that continent offered, for a while, unlimited opportunities for growth and underpinned the can-do attitude to prosperity which has survived in that part of the world right to the present day, even though production possibilities are nowadays limited more by access to human and technological capital.





Convergent growth in Ireland



For over three decades after Ireland became independent almost a century ago, policy debate seems to have been largely free of any form of such “frontier” thinking. Rather than converging, Ireland had been exporting what was seen as its surplus population to fuel growth in the New World as well as in the UK and elsewhere. The pattern had long been established of emigration by those who sought a wider horizon and better opportunities than seemed available at home. Economic policy was geared towards a defensive and inward-looking maintenance of the status quo. As late as the 1950s, getting a good price in the British market for our beef and dairy products seemed the height of national ambition.



Then, belatedly, and as a response to the deepening malaise of economic stagnation in the middle of the last century, a new and energetic internationalist mindset suddenly began to take hold in Ireland:



Why could Ireland not become a producer of a wider range of the goods and services in demand worldwide? If it was education that was lacking, that would be provided for all from the public purse; if it was enterprise and market know-how, this too could be sourced, in the first instance by encouraging the entry of foreign multinationals with grants, a low tax rate and above all a welcoming attitude.



That Ireland is now the most globalised economy on earth – OK, maybe Singapore and Hong Kong run us close – is directly attributable to that policy shift of over a half-century ago, a shift which set us on an export-driven course of openness considered conventional today but which was relatively pioneering at the time.



The formula was a successful one, albeit one that was derailed by policy errors in the 1970s from which the 1980s recovery was at first a slow one. Gradually the exodus from traditional labour-intensive agriculture and other low-productivity sectors was absorbed not by emigration but at home in activities – often computer-mediated – that increasingly matched global productivity standards. Better-educated young women and men took their chances in an increasingly flexible labour market.



New business-like working methods and a respect for the discipline of the market percolated through the economy from the wave of US and other multinational companies who found Ireland a profitable productive base.



Equally important, enthusiastic engagement with cooperative policy development of the European Union helped to leaven traditional approaches to public administration.



Positioned in the geography of ideas mid-way between Boston and Berlin, the Irish economy, as it leapt forward in the 1990s, seemed to benefit from the best of both of these worlds. The momentum built and by the 1990s was spectacular, with rapid employment growth stimulating a reversal of the traditional pattern of migration.



By the late 1990s – the performance of the Irish economy was being talked about in the same awed terms as that of East Asia.



From 1988 to 2007 real GDP expanded by 6 per cent per annum on average (reaching double digits on average during 1995-2000). Even more astonishing, the unemployment rate shrank from 16 per cent (on the ILO basis) in 1994 to 4 per cent in 2000 – essentially full employment for the first time in modern Irish history. Non-agricultural employment jumped from 33 per cent of the population in 1993 to 41 per cent in 2000 and 46 per cent by 2007. With Ireland at the frontier of economic prosperity, surely this was an economic miracle to be studied and replicated.



The Celtic Tiger, it seemed, could grow as quickly as its Asian cousins and for a sustained period. Growth miracles could happen and were happening in Europe also!



Unsustainable growth in Ireland



If we fast forward to the present, the talk is all about the setbacks that have occurred to the Irish economy. It is natural for observers to ask: was it all a chimera: a bubble masquerading as a tiger?



It is important to avoid this interpretative trap. In fact, the rapid and sustained growth of Irish output and employment in the 1990s was – as I have indicated – based on a belated export-led convergence to Western European productivity and living standards as an increasingly well-educated labour force, priced itself competitively and adapted flexibly to the evolving global economy. The role of foreign-based multinational corporations in mediating between Ireland and the rest of the world was already a long-established feature reflecting in particular the favourable tax regime: over half of manufacturing employment was already in foreign-owned firms by the 1980s.



The speed of the convergence in then 1990s reflected how far the economy had been held back by policy errors of the 1970s and 80s—errors which had pushed unemployment close to 20 per cent and had discouraged many women especially from entering the labour force. To be sure, conventional data somewhat flattered the real situation to the extent that some of the output growth reflected profits due to the multinational firms. But the new levels of employment and income reached by the turn of the millennium were real and sustainable. Had Ireland stopped to take stock and consolidate at that point, we would be in a better position now than we are.



But the growth had been so heady, with success seeming to build on success, that stopping to take stock was not on many agendas.



The elusive goal of agglomerative growth in Ireland



Indeed, given the growing rate of net immigration, it was not easy to see what the natural limit on the size of the Irish economy might be. After all, look at Hong Kong and Singapore: with a higher population on a much smaller land platform and living standards as high as Europe. Sure enough, the world production frontier would define an outer limit to productivity, and as such to per capita income, but the relatively low physical density of population suggested to many that Ireland’s population could continue to grow, exploiting economies of agglomeration, if competitiveness were maintained and investment in infrastructure not neglected.



But it was not to be. As the millennium passed, some of the preconditions for sustained expansion began to erode: real wages started to move out of line with international comparators and well ahead of historic competitiveness norms. The export boom slowed. Nevertheless, employment and output aggregates continued to impress, albeit now increasingly heavily reliant on the construction sector, as demand both from final purchasers with good jobs and speculators hoping for continued national prosperity made residential sales easy. The government’s budget became increasingly reliant on the property market and vulnerable to any interruption in what was rapidly a world-beating property bubble.



The arrival of the euro – offering an attractive stable monetary platform for continued expansion – may have played a role also in fuelling the construction boom. Nominal and real interest rates dropped sharply as euro membership approached, increasing the affordability of large mortgages and thus seeming to rationalise a higher capital value for property. After a brief pause in 2002-3, the construction and property price boom resumed with heightened vigour. Banks, including foreign-owned banks, began to source more and more of their loanable funds in the global financial market—with no exchange risk, given the borrowing was in euros. By 2006, net foreign borrowing of Irish mortgage lenders exceeded 60 per cent of GDP and Irish banks were even financing the purchase of a growing share of prime property in the UK, US, China and elsewhere by a handful of over-enthusiastic speculative developers.



The Irish banking and property lending debacle had a few things in common with that of the US; but in large part it was a home-grown affair, driven by an over-optimistic misinterpretation of the nature of the Celtic Tiger and the basis of the earlier success. Egregious lending abuses were not prominent features and there was essentially no use of complex mortgage-backed securities.



Only the timing of its denouement really coincided with the global financial crisis. The revulsion and suspicion of financial market lenders after the collapse of Lehman Brothers rationally focused on those banks that had taken the most extreme bets, and in such an environment, the Irish property merry-go-round was doomed.



The same occurred with other – even more damaging – contemporary financial crises in Latvia and Iceland: neither country was directly influenced by euro membership, but still both of them were able to draw on the elastic availability of international banking funds, and both arranged their financial markets in such a way that borrowers were faced with low nominal interest rates.



Contrary, then, to the image of Europe as inevitably slow-growing, peddled by some observers, Ireland is not unique among European countries in exhibiting exaggeratedly rapid growth. Dynamism is present; it simply needs to be harnessed. Policy complacency is what has been the Achilles heel of these rapidly growing economies: they did and do have the potential for relatively rapid growth, but at a lower rate than was observed, and with the need to guard against the emergence of unbridgeable imbalances.



Put that way, we see the relevance also to Greece, though in the case of Greece, the origin of the problem was not in banking, but in fiscal and wage rate aspects—and it may well be that part of the complacency there too was associated with an exaggerated understanding of what the secure platform of the euro can deliver and what it cannot.



Although there are important differences, I would like to emphasise the parallels between what Ireland has experienced and the famous East Asia crisis of 1997-98. In both cases a strong underlying convergence in living standards had been under-way for some years. In both cases the countries had made themselves vulnerable by relying heavily on short-term foreign borrowing through the banking system, and had allowed a property price and construction boom to get out of hand. In this interpretation, a viable convergent process spun out of control into unsustainable territory. And, encouragingly for us today, recovery from the collapse was – in varying degrees – speedy and comprehensive.



Sources of fast and stately growth



This discussion helps us recognize both of the potential sustainable sources of rapid national economic growth – the convergent and the agglomerative – and the unsustainable type. All three types are also evident in the East Asian experience also.



First then, is convergence to the production frontier. This is exemplified by the early true Celtic Tiger period in Ireland in the 1990s as employment rates in the modern sector of the economy grew. It is also reflected in the rapid growth rates of China, Malaysia and other emerging economies as they have successfully adopted efficient and highly productive technologies throughout more and more of their economies. The transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have shown that this phenomenon is also very much realisable in that part of the world also. And the fact that Greece lies well inside the production frontier is a consideration which allows some headway for part of their debt management problem to be resolved in time through convergence of productive efficiency.



The second sustainable rapid growth mechanism, agglomeration, is exemplified by what has been achieved by Singapore and Hong Kong even since they reached the production frontier. I include under this loose heading any form of sustainable national or urban growth through the application of both more labour and more capital: because of the efficiencies offered by agglomeration, and also exploiting particular advantages of their locations, these cities have managed to become more highly productive than one might expect from mere replication. But sustainable fast agglomerative growth it is not always attainable even by a small country or region, especially if cost competitiveness is not maintained. There may also be inherent limitations to such growth, as congestion costs increase. As we have seen, the hope that Ireland could become super-productive in this way proved illusory.



The third, and unsustainable, growth path is the property boom financed by credit and driven more by hope than any real underlying demand. The sums borrowed and the resources applied – often from abroad, but sometimes financed by domestic savings – prove to have been wasted. In Ireland, Iceland and Latvia as in parts of East Asia in 1997-98, such bubbles collapsed.



When economies reach the production frontier, as have Japan and Germany, to take the largest examples of both regions, then growth will inevitably be at a more stately rate. Stagnation is not entailed, though there can be a danger of an economy getting passed if complacency seeps in.



Learning from historic errors



Thus, taking both regions together, we find examples of all types of growth path. We can learn from each others’ experience – and some of us in Europe should have learnt better from the East Asia crisis.



Fast growth clearly carries the risk of macroeconomic errors as an unsustainable output, property price or wage boom – whether driven by reckless private credit expansion or fiscal deficits – in a potentially fast growing economy (of either of the two sustainable types I have mentioned) can be masquerading as something sustainable.



To an extent, the wider crisis of financial innovation with its epicenter in the US and which spilled over into the UK and into major banks in other mature countries too before triggering the sharp global recession of 2008-9 (itself strongly influenced by the widespread but thankfully contained loss of confidence in financial intermediation generally) was also a misunderstanding of real and unsustainable progress. But such occurrences, which can happen in mature economies – an earlier one was the dot.com and tech bubble of the late 1990s – tend to be smaller in amplitude. The greater risks are in potentially fast-growing economies.



Two policy problems arise: how to prevent such policy errors, and how to recover from an error. The first is more challenging conceptually, the latter more challenging politically.



In the euro area, we could do more to exploit a mechanism not available in Asia, which I believe potentially assists in both of these dimensions. The tight cooperation which exists between euro area countries, both at the level of macroeconomic policy coordination and in the stable anchor of a widely used common currency helps to provide both a discipline and a mechanism for peer review that can be very beneficial to avoiding complacency and other sources of policy error. Exploiting this potential could all work better, though and the EU is working on institutional innovation to help deliver this.



Indeed, it may well be that complacency about the automatic effectiveness of these stabilisers lulled policymakers both in some of the Euro area countries – most conspicuously Greece, but also in others including Ireland, into a sense of false security – in Greece with regard to fiscal policy; in Ireland with regard to banking policy, to speak only of these two.



For it seems the market too had become complacent. Lax policy was not punished by the discipline of the market until it was too late, and until wage rates had gotten out of line and the fiscal vulnerabilities worsened. Admittedly this was much more pronounced in Greece than in others such as Ireland, and the needed adjustment may be more wrenching there. But a lesson has been learnt by all.



Led by Ireland, all of the euro area countries that have come under pressure have begun to take vigorous corrective action on wages and on fiscal deficits generally. Adjustment is a task which will not be accomplished overnight, indeed, when the exceptional financial support needed from government to fill the hole created by the accumulated banking losses in Ireland is added to the fiscal deficit on regular operations, the headline figure for the Irish government deficit in 2010 will experience a remarkable one-off spike in the statistics. That jump is, though, a sign of the thoroughgoing and transparent clean-up that is in progress on the banking side, and of the measured but tough spending and tax adjustment that is in progress in the rest of the government accounts.



These countries are adjusting, and they know they are supported by the huge backstop financial commitments of EU partner countries announced in May of this year, and by the monetary stability ensured by ECB policy. They also know that they cannot again allow public spending, credit and wages to get out of line, because of the painful adjustments that this implies. Already, national spending is, more or less, back in line with national production in Ireland: by next year there will no longer be a current account deficit in the balance of international payments. When the budgetary adjustment is accomplished, a chastened polity will help ensure stability-oriented policies that will be key to a renewed engagement in the global economy: especially, but not only, for countries such as Ireland which are among the most globalised on earth. The customers for our exports: increasingly Asia for sure. The investors: likely also to be shifting more in the direction of Asia from which investment in Ireland’s traditionally highly profitable MNC sector is, to date, still underweight.



Many opportunities then, for what I am confident will be a more stable future.