Wednesday 19 June 2013
THE Lough Erne Declaration – signed by G8 leaders in Fermanagh yesterday – will pose challenges to Ireland maintaining lucrative inward investment. The leaders' declaration on taxation and increased transparency says tax authorities across the world should automatically share information to fight tax evasion.
THE killings in Killorglin have been formally declared by gardai as a double-murder investigation. This is a deeply distressing incident which has blighted the community in one of the country's most scenic and tranquil areas in the Laune river valley.
THE US First Lady, Michelle Obama, is for many Irish people the real star of this welcome return visit to Ireland by President Obama and his family. Mrs Obama's trademark warmth, friendliness, and glamour are a winning combination while she also impresses with her down-to-earth attitudes and the obvious bond with her two children, Malia and Sasha.
OFTEN it takes a stranger to come among us and help us see the wood from the trees. So it was with US President Barack Obama's address to students in Belfast yesterday, as he delivered a clinical but forward-looking assessment of the North's still fragile peace.
THE eyes of the world will focus on the enchantingly beautiful lands around Lough Erne resort today as the leaders of the world's most powerful nations gather there for a summit of the G8. This first gathering on the island of Ireland by the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, USA, Japan and Russia brings many positive features to all of the Irish people.
THE cost of car insurance has for decades been the scourge of the average motorist. But in recent years a modicum of fairness has crept into the equation as reforms, which included the introduction of the Personal Injuries Board, these days called the Injuries Board, helped bring premiums down.
GOVERNMENT should always be cautious in approaching polls that send mixed messages. The ongoing capacity of abortion to divide not only Ireland, but all Western democracies, is evidenced by the extraordinary menace that has accompanied this administration's conservative response to the X case. However, those who would threaten to cut the throats of democratic politicians should recall we had 30 years of a far more vicious attack on democratic procedures in this State and it was the extremists who were brought to their knees.
ONE of the critical factors in the collapse of the Celtic Tiger was the politicisation, beginning with Mr Haughey, of the Civil Service, where a culture of independent thought was replaced by a self-interested servility that reached its apotheosis in the politics of social partnership.
WE need transparency in our planning system, especially given the mess we're in. It was poor planning that left us with hundreds of ghost estates, and bad decisions helped kill off town centres in favour of out-of-town development.
Junior doctors are the journeymen and women of the Irish health service and without them hospitals would grind to a halt. There are currently around 4,910 employed in our hospitals and the gruelling working hours that many face have long been documented.
IT HAS been a very tough eight months since the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar at Galway University Hospital. The tragic loss to her husband Praveen, and the rest of her relatives, was compounded by the struggle to establish how and why she died.
THE very stones on the Waterford shoreline cry out in grief for the loss of the three Bolger brothers to the sea. The tragic loss of the three popular family men from Passage East adds to the litany of tragic loss of life from fishing boat tragedies all around the coast in recent years. The fates have once more reserved some of their cruellest twists for the treacherous waters off our beautiful south coast.
There are thousands of words spoken in the Dail every day and most of them go unnoticed. But it is safe to say that historians of church-State relations will be checking the transcripts of what happened yesterday for years to come.
PRESSURE mounted last night for Public Accounts Committee chairman John McGuinness to resign. As the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, delivered scathing remarks about Mr McGuinness's comments and conduct, the focus moved to Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, who continued to defend his party colleague.
YOU should treat your emails much the same way you would a traditional postcard. You can expect these so-called 'private messages' to be read by others you never dreamt would see them. Those are the inevitable conclusions to be drawn from reports carried in this newspaper today.
MANY of us have had to learn a lot more about money management over the last five years as we have literally had to do more with a lot less. But today our consumer correspondent brings the staggering news that some grocery prices have increased by almost one sixth during the past year. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) tells us that the current rate of inflation is just one half of one per cent.
OVER two months the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, John McGuinness, has brushed aside the extraordinary €250,000 cost of refurbishing his office when he was the Junior Trade Minister.
The attempt by this Government to abolish the Seanad is an act of constitutional vandalism, led by a Taoiseach whose ego – if his own party colleagues are to be believed – is getting as big as Galway Bay. Mirth may be the natural response to Mr Kenny's willingness, when it comes to the issue of bicameralism, to lock intellectual horns with the founding fathers of the American republic. However, we should recognise this is just the latest act in a far broader pattern because the desire to stifle dissent, whether in the apparently unquenchable desire of the Taoiseach to quash the Seanad or Mr Shatter's advocacy of a privacy bill, has become the political signature tune of this administration. The most appalling feature of this attempt by a Coalition with the largest majority in the history of the State to abolish the sole institution that can hold it in check is the insidious offer that this will be accompanied by the sort of Dail reform that is in the Taoiseach's gift without the benefit of a referendum. This implied bargain of Seanad abolition or no Dail reforms is nothing more than the politics of the passive-aggressive bully.
WHILE many parts of the property market remain mired in recession, there is little doubt that parts of Dublin are witnessing rising prices once again. While a jump in prices is undoubtedly pleasant for those wanting to sell houses in the capital's leafy suburbs, it is not necessarily a cause for celebration. High property prices come with high social costs and society needs to be wary of simply repeating the mistakes of the last boom once again.
PROFESSIONAL footballers often get a bad press, especially when compared to their amateur counterparts in the GAA. We are forever hearing negative stories about the off-duty antics of Premiership players; about how they are overpaid and how they under-achieve.
Greeks reacted with a mix of vindication and outrage yesterday after the International Monetary Fund's admission that it erred in its handling of the country's bailout. Here in Ireland, we could be forgiven for feeling much the same but with rather less justification.
ONE of the things that Ireland can be justifiably proud of is its literary tradition. James Joyce and Samuel Beckett re-wrote the rules in the 20th Century, and Shaw, Wilde, O'Casey and Yeats are all towering names in the world of letters.
SO now we definitively know voters will be asked if they want to abolish the Seanad, at a date yet to be specified, but very probably in late September. Unveiling the referendum proposal yesterday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the Seanad abolition and accompanying Dail reforms would lead to a more efficient political system. Mr Kenny said Ireland had too many politicians for its size and there was now no need for a second chamber like the Seanad.
THE Government is entitled to a fair wind for its proposals to invest €150m in road maintenance, schools and insulating 25,000 local authority homes. Announcing the plan yesterday, Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin openly acknowledged that the proposals were, relatively speaking, small enough. But he insisted that they represent a change in policy.
ALMOST 117,000 students are starting the Leaving Certificate and Junior Certificate exams today, carrying the best wishes of the nation with them. The state exams are an important milestone in the lives of all candidates, most of them teenagers, but also mature students who took the wise step to return to education and give themselves a second chance.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has the Seanad in his target sights at the moment – and will soon be giving voters the chance to pull the trigger. A key step will be taken today when the Cabinet approves the bill to hold a referendum on abolishing the Seanad.
AFTER several millennia on this island we can safely say we, the Irish, often fail to use alcohol wisely. Periodically, we hear calls for action by the authorities to save us from ourselves and our inability to handle the demon drink. Classically, these calls are countered by the drinks lobby who argue that we must consider the economics of the issue writ large.
IT WAS a super holiday weekend for very many people across the country. It was dry, fine and sunny in most places with only the odd shower. So many people availed of the opportunity to get about and attend the plethora of sports and social gatherings.
OUR lawmakers are not over-burdened by the attendance demanded at Leinster House and they are well paid for their trouble. So it is disappointing to see that some of our TDs have a poor enough attendance record. It is true that some of those cited in a report in today's newspaper have explained about medical issues which, quite acceptably, account for the days lost.
WITH all due apologies to the late, great Winston Churchill, as we contemplate the record of the Irish banks over the past five years, we must conclude that: never was so much given by so many to so few and with such an abysmal response. Alright, it is naive to expect gratitude from banks to the long-suffering taxpayers who continue to shoulder the burdens created by past bankers' greed and stupidity. Granted, we have long ago had to accept that the banks are central to our economic functioning and had to be bailed out.
The clearest finding from today's Sunday Independent Millward Brown poll is that Ireland's political system is sleepwalking into a crisis of legitimacy. This troubling development goes far beyond the levels of party political support, for not one of the Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Fein party leaders has satisfied even a quarter of the electorate, while the most popular leader, Fianna Fail's Micheal Martin, has a dismal satisfaction rating of 29 per cent. And the graph of public support for all four is falling. Chillingly, less than 20 per cent of voters are satisfied with the way the Government is running the country and it is doubtful the public is any more content with the way the Opposition is opposing how the country is being run.
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