The Debatable Land

Celtic Tiger De-clawed

Tough times on the Emerald Isle: Dell is closing it's largest non-US manufacturing plant. This is not good news.

Established in Ireland in 1990, Dell employed more than 4,500 staff in Ireland at its height and is the country’s biggest exporter and second largest company.

It accounts for approximately 5 per cent of Irish GDP and last year contributed €140m to the south western economy in wages alone.

Who's next?

UPDATE: Should have realised this myself, but as Tim Worstall says, these figures seem very fishy. Not the number of jobs, the other ones. 5% of GDP? Hmmm. Anyway, it still ain't good news and, given how much Ireland has relied upon American inward investment in IT and electronics, this seems likely to be a harbinger of further gloomy news ahead.

The Cruiser Goes Down

Conor Cruise O'Brien's death, at 91, comes as a jolt. By the end, the Cruiser was something of a reactionary (his hostility to nationalism had led him to embrace Bob Macartney's UK Unionist Party) but that shouldn't detract from his achievements as a historian (especially his books on Parnell and Burke), journalist and public intellectual.

Most of all, however, his death reminds one of how completely Ireland has changed in the past 20 years. The Cruiser's battles with Charlie Haughey (he was right about Haughey years before the full extent of the former Taoiseach's crookedness became widely apparent) and his fulminations on the national question have a certain antiquated feel now that the issue has, for the time being at least, been settled. Nonetheless, O'Brien played a leading role in dragging Irish opinion away from a cosy, soft-hearted, sentimental nationalism that tacitly endorsed the Republican movement's aims, if not necessarily its methods. In that sense, he did the Irish State great service.

In my time at TCD he still used to turn up, from time to time, to the College Historical Society but even then one had the sense that the Society's Patron (as he was) no longer quite understood how Ireland was changing. Prosperity was a tough surprise to handle and if O'Brien retained the ability to cut through some of the cant and humbug that accompanied this sudden, startling improvement in Hibernian fortune, he was, even then, a relic of earlier, grimmer times. Times when everything seemed likely to fall apart.

Even now, his war with Haughey's GUBU-era government (an acronymn coined by the Cruiser from the Taoiseach's description of how discovering a double-murderer hiding out in the Attorney-General's home was "Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented") is sparklingly good stuff. More than anyone else, O'Brien captured the extraordinary recklessness of the Haughey government, writing with savage wit, irony and anger.

Still, I guess that it's his work on Parnell and Burke that will last the longest. He was a very Irish intellectual: riddled by contradiction; often wilfully extreme (and inconsistent) in his views but, until his later years at least, always interesting and often surprising.

The best obituary I've seen is Brian Fallon's notice in the Guardian. Telegraph and Irish Times obits here and here.

UPDATE: Sean Coleman has a very good post on O'Brien over at Norm's place.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Jim for reminding me that O'Brien was also a Contributing Editor to the Atlantic. Here's one of his autobiographical essays, published by the magazine in 1994.

Attention Dublin Readers

Apart from a couple of pre-prepared items, there's not likely to be too much blogging in these parts for the next couple of days. The reason? I'm off to Trinity College, Dublin to speak at the College Historical Society's* US presidential debate on Wednesday. We shall be arguing the motion "This House Would Vote for Obama". They were having some trouble finding folk who would argue for McCain so I may be on the opposition side - in which case I shall make the case for Bob Barr, not McCain. Actually, whichever side of the motion I'm on, I shall be making a case against McCain. Just possibly against Obama too.

Anyway, Dublin-based readers are welcome to come along. At the very least we can sink a few at the Stags Head after the debate. It all kicks off at 7.30 in the GMB.

*A generous invitation since I am in fact an Honorary Member of The Other Society.

Ronnie Drew, RIP

The Foggy Dew should be busy tonight. Mind you, so should all the other pubs in Dublin. There'll be more cause than usual for singing now that one hears the sad news of Ronnie Drew's death. The Telegraph obituary puts the appeal of The Dubliners quite well:

The Dubliners achieved fame and notoriety as singers of street ballads and bawdy songs, and as players of fine instrumental traditional music. Their emergence coincided with the British folk revival of the early 1960s, and they were one of the first folk bands to break into the pop charts.

In Ireland their closest rivals were the Clancy Brothers. The American roots music magazine Dirty Linen described the difference between the two groups as follows: "Whereas the Clancys were well-scrubbed returned Yanks from rural Tipperary, decked out in matching white Arran sweaters, the Dubliners were hard-drinking backstreet Dublin scrappers with unkempt hair and bushy beards, whose gigs seemed to happen by accident between fist fights."

There was more to the Dubliners, however, than a colourful image. Reviewing their 1971 album Hometown in this newspaper, Maurice Rosenbaum wrote: "[They] have consistently held their position in the upper brackets of the folk league by virtue of their art, their skill and their folk integrity – in other words the kind of 'professionalism' that is superbly worthwhile."

Drew's distinctive voice has been compared to a rickety bass and a cement mixer. Influenced by Dominic Behan, he sang in an uncompromising Dublin accent, and this was central to the group's success in attracting a strong hometown following.

But, really, the man can sing for himself. And as he says, they really were some rare old times...

Taxing Questions

From the Adam Smith Institute:

Once again, Ireland seems to be the destination of choice for companies driven out of the UK by high taxes. Last week, reports Dominic White, WPP, Glaxo, International Power and AstraZeneca all hinted that they could follow Shire and United Business Media's plans to switch domicile to Ireland.

As the ASI point out, Ireland offers a corporation tax rate of 12.5%, compared to the UK's 30%. Attractive indeed. But what of Scotland you ask? Well, the SNP is a hybrid party as any analysis of its taxation policy reveals: Alex Salmond looks longingly to Ireland and dreams of a low tax Scotland that will be a business haven (as seems sensible, if only to offset some of the costs of being on the periphery). It's quite possible that an independent Scotland would favour a pro-corporation tax regime. If nothing else, it would be suicidal to implement policies that drove, say, the Royal Bank of Scotland out of Edinburgh.

How you square that with the SNP's milk and honey promises on public spending  is a different matter. At some point the money seems likely to run out, even if Salmond is a fan of the Laffer Curve. Hence, perhaps, the SNP's attitude to personal taxation:keep it high. I'm not sure why Salmond is never asked why he's in favour of lowering taxes on companies but not on individuals? One might think that the logic of tax competition might apply to individuals as well as corporations, after all...

UPDATE: A piquant issue given the rumour that Aberdeen Asset Management might leave Scotland for Ireland.

Major Carroll Advances

Heartening news from Ireland: when the government banned smoking in pubs in 2004, 27% of Irish folk smoked. Now 29% consume these little tubes of delight*. True, there's a long way to go yet but every journey begins with a single smoke...

*Dennis Potter's description, if memory serves.

[Hat-tip: Taking Liberties.]

Paddy Hillery RIP

Patrick Hillery, President of Ireland from 1976-1990, has died. From the Telegraph's obituary:

As president, Hillery's main achievement was the restoration of stability to the office; this he accomplished largely through invisibility and silence.

If only other Presidents - and especially ones with more power - could be persuaded to follow Paddy Hillery's excellent example...

Video of the Day

"It would give me the greatest of pleasure watching non-compliant tax-payers going to jail. That's the kind of person I am." Bertie Ahern, then Minister of Finance, 1993.

Storm in a Taoiseach...

We knew everything we needed to know about Bertie Ahern from the moment his mentor Charlie Haughey declared that of all the young thrusters in Fianna Fail, Ahern was "the most skillful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all". It's tempting to conclude that this endorsement provided sufficient grounds for barring Ahern from public office. Then again, the Irish electorate seems to prefer its leaders crooked.

There's a fine old story - only possibly apocryphal - in which a little old lady tells a journalist that no, she wouldn't dream of voting for Garret Fitzgerald: how can you trust a man who lives in the same small house he owned before he ever entered politics? If a party leader can't get rich himself how's he going to manage the country? Well, Bertie passed that test allright.

So Bertie is gone now, brought down, at last, by the consequences of living the Fianna Fail dream. The instant obituaries have, naturally enough, concentrated on his role in the Northern Irish peace process and suggested that this is what Ahern will be remembered for. I'm not so sure: it's more likely that he'll be remembered for presiding over perhaps the most extraordinary economic boom in recent european  - even world - history.

Which also means that Bertie is getting out at the right time. For more than a decade the Irish economy has grown at roughly 6% per annum. That sort of growth can't be sustained forever and sure enough the Celtic Tiger isn't quite as healthy as it was. House prices are falling, growth is slowing and some notable inward investors are either getting out completely or considering reductions in their Irish operations. Again, this is no surprise and no great tragedy either: it means Ireland has been a success and that it will have to work harder and perhaps look elsewhere to maintain its current or establish a fresh comparative advantage. Ireland is no longer an irrepressible youngster; it's joined the Grown-Ups club with all the problems that entails.

Still, the economic slow-down has consequences for politicians too. Haughey was done in by being seen to live large while asking tax-payers to tighten their belts in a time of austerity. The public was prepared to ignore Ahern's own corruption while the good times seemed likely to last forever, but changing economic circumstances change peoples' minds and my impression is that public tolerance was waning in regard to Bertie's inability to explain quite how he'd become so wealthy, why he'd failed to pay taxes on much of that wealth, why he'd misled parliament and the courts, to say nothing of his increasingly risible protestation that he knew nothing about how his political party had kindly given money to his then partner to buy property or, in fact, to explain much about anything at all...

As Fintan O'Toole says today:

We've had all of that over the last 18 months. Any one element of this scandal would have been enough to shame almost any office holder in the democratic world into resignation, but right up until yesterday morning, Bertie Ahern gave a master class in shamelessness.

And so now, just as it looked as though the truth was closing in, the old northside rogue has slipped quietly from the scene. The Drumcondra fox will have the last laugh after all.

Still: this sets a stiff challenger for the new leader of Fianna Fail, Brian Cowen: how does he match his predecessors, Haughey, Reynolds and Ahern? Tradition and custom demand that there be no break from the traditional Fianna Fail practices that make the Scottish Labour party seem a beacon of honesty and transparency.

Wherever the Green is Worn

The ten worst Irish accents in cinema history? Check 'em out here. Amazingly, Tom Cruise doesn't take the top spot...

So, yeah, Happy St Patrick's Day. Time then, to dust off this unnecessarily dyspeptic take from a few years ago:

When I was a student in Dublin we scoffed at the American celebration of St. Patrick, finding something preposterous in the green beer, the search for any connection, no matter how tenuous, to Ireland, the misty sentiment of it all that seemed so at odds with the Ireland we knew and actually lived in. Who were these people dressed as Leprechauns and why were they dressed that way?

This Hibernian Brigadoon was a sham, a mockery, a Shamrockery of real Ireland and a remarkable exhibition of plastic paddyness. But at least it was confined to the Irish abroad and those foreigners desperate to find some trace of green in their blood. It was, in the words of the great Myles na Gopaleen (a.k.a. Flann O'Brien) merely "the claptrap that has made fortunes for cute professional Irishmen in America."

These were the people that clung to a vision of Ireland, as he wrote in his wonderful satire, The Poor Mouth, as a place where a mother might take "a bucket full of muck, mud, and ashes and hens' droppings from the roadside and spread it around the hearth, gladly in front of me. When everything was arranged, I moved over near the fire and for five hours I became a child in the ashes — a raw youngster rising up according to the old Gaelic tradition."

A great deal has changed in Ireland, most of it for the better, since then. Sadly St. Patrick's Day is an exception to that general rule. Ireland's people have opportunities their parents and grandparents scarcely dared imagine; per capita income is now higher than in Britain and for the first time in centuries an Irishman need not emigrate to find success. When I first arrived in Dublin, in 1993, it was still the case that a visa to the United States was what every young Irish man and woman wanted. Now, Ireland itself is a magnet for immigrants from around the world and emigration from the Emerald Isle is a matter of choice, not necessity. The 1990s were years of dizzying, thrilling change; a moment in which a new Ireland appeared, casting off an old defensiveness in favor of a muscular confidence.

Yet something has been lost too. Prosperity comes at a price. Part of that has been the steady destruction of old Dublin. Oh, the grand Georgian buildings still stand, but whereas even 15 years ago you could still find more than just a trace of the Dublin J. P. Donleavy made famous in The Ginger Man today that Dublin has disappeared, replaced by yoga studios, juice bars, and the pressing fear that someone, somewhere, might secretly be doing better than you.

The cult of St. Patrick's Day exacerbated and reinforced this depressing process. The realization that, remarkably, the rest of the world wanted to purchase a bogus sense of Irishness demanded that the Irish sell it to them. Thus it is that Dublin these days has a St. Patrick's Day parade of its own, something it never felt the need for until recently. Tourists love it of course, and Dubliners have done their best to oblige them, providing, to quote na Gopaleen again, a "virulent eruption of paddyism."...

Too Late It Should Be, Too Late

I'm indebted to an old college buddy for alerting me to this description of David Irving's recent appearance on Irish TV's venerable The Late, Late Show. As the programme's website put it (emphasis added):

In 2006 David Irving was jailed for denying the holocaust ever happened. Despite being branded an anti-semitic, active holocaust denier in a court of law Irving continues to offer his own unique perspective on history, particularly the history of the Second World War.

Well, yes, particularly the Second World War indeed.

I can understand why undergraduate debating societies would - mistakenly in my view - chase public attention by inviting Irving to appear, but why should RTE?

Get a grip, Ron Burgundy

Will Ferrell: clown.

Top Hollywood star Will Ferrell last night appeared in University College Dublin to accept a prestigious award in front of 1,500 students.

The 40-year-old star of 'Anchorman' was dressed in the full Irish rugby kit as he accepted the James Joyce Award from the Literary and Historical Society for his outstanding contribution to comedic acting.

Ferrell had a packed O'Reilly Hall in stitches throughout his 40- minute speech where he joked: "As I look out at this crowd, I see the future of Ireland, the future of Europe. And let's face it, the future looks pretty bleak." [Editorial note: given the location, this was clearly a serious observation]...

...His speech also touched on what he believes are his similarities to James Joyce; Westlife and a dig at UCD's rival Trinity College Dublin.

Generating huge applause he said: "The truth of the matter is those guys are going to be working for you."

What piffle. Everyone knows that a proper Trinity man avoids working at all.

A Boy From the County Hell

Shane McGowan celebrates his 50th birthday today. Who would have thought it? Comfort and joy all round. This must rank as one of the most unlikely anniversaries imaginable. As the great man says himself:

"Smoking, drinking, partying - that's why I've stayed alive as long as I have."

That's the spirit lads. Give it a lash. Happy birthday Shane... And a merry Christmas to all of you out there, wherever you may be.

Clinton: My Wife's Part in Ulster's Downfall

Daniel Larison points out an extraordinary passage from Bill Clinton's appearance on The Charlie Rose Show on Friday. Bafflingly, Clinton seems to believe that the Northern Irish peace process qualifies his wife to be President:

Clinton:...The only way to overcome our differences is not basically to try to erase the past, it's to get used to working together. I mean it's kind of a metaphor for the Hillary argument. If you look at last Monday, the...

Charlie Rose: You are people are pushing me, so it's not my --

Bill Clinton: The new leaders of Northern Ireland came to Washington to see the president. They -- it represents a stunning change. I think everybody we met, right, stunning change in Northern Ireland.

Charlie Rose: It's unbelievable.

Bill Clinton: And they asked to see another person. They asked to see Hillary, because she played an independent role in their peace process when I was president, independent of me. Now who were these new leaders? Ian Paisley, who was a long time leader of their conservatives, and Martin McGuinness, who is one of the toughest guys in the Sinn Féin. They are the co-leaders of Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish didn't think that to turn the page, they had to throw out the people who had represented their respective points of view. They thought they were more likely to work together to effect positive change because of what they had done in the past....I like all these Democrats. I will support whoever gets nominated. I think we are fortunate in having people who want to turn the page and take a new direction. I think the relevant question from me is who would be the best president based on who has a proven record of making change in the lives of other people. Therefore, I think she would be the best president. But that is, to me, what it all comes down to. And if you think about the Northern Ireland deal, they didn't go out and find two guys that happened to be a Protestant, and happened to be a Catholic.

Well! Hillary certainly "played an independent role" in the Norther Irish "peace process" if by "independent role" you mean "position of no importance whatsoever". The idea that Hillary can claim any credit for whatever successes or progress there has been in Northern Ireland is preposterous. But only marginally more idiotic than the former President's apparent belief that he alone was responsible for the Good Friday Agreement. Since he's happy to exaggerate his useful, supplementary - but scarcely decisive - contribution presumably it is easy to similarly gild his wife's importance.

Secondly, Charlie Rose is right to say that what's happened in Northern Ireland is "unbelievable". It's just unbelievable in ways that I suspect neither Charlie Rose nor Bill Clinton will ever understand. It is indeed stunning that a DUP-Sinn Fein "partnership" at Stormont is hailed as a great achievement. To listen to Clinton's babble you would think that installing a government of bigots and terrorists is a good thing.

But of course it's actually evidence of the profound, dreadful failure of the peace process. Naturally, this means it must be called victory. Still, no matter what politicians in London, Dublin or Washington may say, installing Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness is a failure - a failure that may, perhaps, have been inevitable but that was, however unwittingly, aided and abetted by leaders in all three capitals.

Indeed, when the Downing Street Declaration or, years later, the Good Friday Agreement were signed, you had said that the result would be a Sinn-Fein & DUP administration in Belfast, everyone would, quite rightly have been horrified. Such an outcome would have been considered proof that the process had failed, not that it had succeeded.

Now, however, we are supposed to think differently and remember that we were wrong then and everything is fine and dandy now. After all, at every stage we'rereminded that an imperfect peace is better than a return to violence. Well, so it may be. But even if you accept that the Paisley-McGuinness alliance is preferable to some alternatives (a return to car bombs and snipers and all the rest of it) that doesn't mean it was preferable to all alternatives.

It didn't have to be this way. Now, of course, a settlement may have to involve talking with distasteful folk, including terrorists such as McGuinness (something more than Clinton's cheer "toughest guys in the Sinn Fein") and bigots such as Paisley (the "leader" of "their conservatives" [sic] largely because no-one thought it wise or sensible to support David Trimble and the OUP; preferring instead to assuage and sweet talk Sinn Fein at every step) but, as I say, this doesn't mean selling the store. Well before the end, however, the process had become more important than the result. In fact, the result didn't matter so long as the process itself continued.

The peace process was supposed to restore - or even, in some respects, create - Northern Irish civil society. Instead it ensured that it was, in the end, taken over by the very people that threatened or made impossible the idea of civil society itself. Truly, an unbelievable success.

Needless to say it would have been better had the Northern Irish people thrown out the buggers responsible for creating the chaos the peace process was supposed to end. Instead, for various reasons (not all of them unpredictable), the decent centre was weakened to pacify the indecent extremes.

So, anyway, Clinton's argument that his wife should be supported because she is the McGuinness/Paisley figure in this campaign is bizarre. Is she a terrorist or a bigot? Or both?  What does Bill know that we don't?

Rudy Giuliani, the Terrorists' Worst Enemy?

Well, not always. From the New York Times, September 29th 1994, less than a month after the declaration of a (temporary as it proved) IRA ceasefire:

Artfully casting off his old role as official outcast, Gerry Adams, the political spokesman for the Irish Republican Army, beamed from the steps of City Hall yesterday as New York politicians vied to be at his side and hail him as honored guest and newborn statesman...

...A relatively small lunch-hour crowd of a few hundred cheered him, but the domestic political value of Mr. Adams's official turnabout was demonstrated by the throng of local politicians who crowded about Mr. Adams. They pressed him to accept three different government proclamations, the Crystal Apple award extended by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to ranking foreign dignitaries, and a private New York Police Department boat tour of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

The tall, darkly bearded man from Belfast was officially hailed as an Irish leader to be reckoned with by Mayor Giuliani...

Mr. Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political arm, stepped forward happily beneath a City Hall welcoming banner as the Police Department's Emerald Society offered the bagpiped skirl of "Wrap the Green Flag Around Me, Boys."

Expressing "sad and glad appreciation," Mr. Adams thanked the city government for an "unwavering commitment" to economic-boycott pressures on Britain's Northern Irish Government in behalf of the Catholic minority. Then he addressed the British Prime Minister, John Major, as if his voice might carry out beyond the Brooklyn Bridge to London: "It is time, Mr. Major, to go -- to leave our country and to leave us in peace."

He received no shortage of sympathy from a phalanx of politicians led by City Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone, City Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi and Mayor Giuliani. The Irish group was particularly delighted to hear Mr. Giuliani talk of the North's suffering under an "outside occupation force" -- precisely the characterization resented by the North's Protestant loyalists, who worry that the British might eventually leave Northern Ireland.

Sure, there were domestic political considerations at stake and, yes, there was a - temporary - IRA ceasefire. But at the time Giuliani offered this lavish reception, the IRA had not renounced violence. On the contrary it reserved the right to return to the "armed struggle" any time they saw fit. This first ceasefire - however tough a sell it was to the Army Council - was a temporary measure, not a declaration that the war was over. And sure enough, within 18 months the bombs were going off again.

Plenty of other people were meting Adams then but there's a difference between meeting Adams knowing that realpolitk demands it and greeting him with this sort of enthusiasm - to say nothing of Giuliani's willingness to buy into the IRA's "framing" of the province's history.

Now I don't suggest that this is of enormous relevance to the current presidential campaign, nor that it should necessarily be held against Giuliani. After all, when it came to cosying up to terrorists Hizzoner is hardly the worst offender. But cosy he did and it might as well be remembered that he did so.