Dublin Opinion

Recently I mentioned that a certain weekend had provided a number of shocks: in the Rugby, with Labour tax cut pledge, and with the nomination of this modest site for the Irish Blog Awards. There was also one other shock which I mentioned obliquely without explaining what it was.

I can now reveal for the curious and those still reading that I was talking about the stroke suffered by my Father-in-Law. He’s fine now. A 100% recovery – in fact he says that apart from the odd word finding difficulty and problems constructing sentences when it happened he never felt sick and is getting tired of everyone asking him how he’s feeling. He’s intolerant that way; doesn’t like people fussing.

We met up with him last Sunday after he had been discharged and as if to illustrate how his mind is as sharp as ever we had a wide ranging conversation on all sorts of topics. I’m not sure how it started but he began going through all the lecturers and professors who taught him in UCD, which was then located in Earlsfort Terrace and is now the National Concert Hall. From there he started listing those now well known Irish public figures who were in college with him at the time.

And then he told me this story about Michael McDowell, Taniste, Minister for Justice and current leader of the Progressive Democrats.

On the first floor of Earlsfort Terrace there were a number of oak lined common rooms (my own memory is too weak to remember the name of the room mentioned and d’internet is not being helpful). My father-in-law was in one for an L&H debate and the room was pretty full as the gathered students waited for the debate to begin. Behind them they heard hob-nailed boots pounding on the wooden floor and the back door of the room opened. Then they saw that the pounding was coming from a young man in an army uniform who came up to the podium to address the room.

The young man was Michael McDowell.

‘For anyone interested in joining the Pearse Regiment‘ said the young McDowell referring to a UCD branch of the FCA, ‘can you please come to room…’ which is as far as he got before being drowned out by sounds of “Sieg Heil!”.

Exasperated at this he then shouted out ‘you lot are only interested in women!’ As most of the students in the room where male, they gave a mighty cheer.

Once things settle down, however, he said that anyone interested in joining the FCA can have a look at an exhibition of the FCA’s armoury in another designated part of the college. My Father-in-Law and few of his friends were curious enough to go along.

And what did the FCA armoury consist of?

Two old rifles and rusting pistol.

My Father-in-law didn’t join up.

It turns out that there are plenty of tales of McDowell’s UCD student days and his regular sporting of his FCA uniform at college events.

According to a Sunday Business Post profile of the recently appointed Minister for Justice in 2002 the stories of his attending the L and H debate in uniform are legendary:

“A time-honoured UCD story has him addressing the L and H debating society in his FCA uniform. This was around the time when student radicals such as Ruairi Quinn and Kevin Myers were occupying buildings and indulging in other such subversive activity, and shortly before another contemporary — Gerry Stembridge — chaired an L and H meeting wearing a motorcycle helmet and eating a bag of chips. The attraction to military attire seems to have been a strong one for him at the time; senior counsel Kevin Feeney once told a Gonzaga past versus present debate that the “first time I ever saw a Doc Marten was when Michael McDowell stood on my face.””

Well, this is the first time I’d heard it (although when I told the story to a colleague this week he told me that Frank McDonald, the Environment correspondent of the Irish Times and co-attendee of UCD at the time, is also fond of telling the story).

But in the light of McDowell’s inaugural address as party leader at the Progressive Democrats convention last Sunday I find several things to compare between the position taken in that speech and the idea of McDowell encouraging students to join an irrelevant and outmoded pathetically small reserve army force which, when it came to the crunch had no resource with which to act.

Please bear with me and, in order to see this you may need to adjust your satirical goggles to the right setting.

Firstly, the most significant announcement that McDowell made is that if elected as part of Fianna Fail/PD coalition that it will lower both the standard and upper rate of tax by 2% by 2012. It will also reform of the stamp duty system to benefit first time buyers (and resellers) and increase the old age pension.

These are significant promises. Much comment has been made of the fact that the PDs, traditionally seen as the Tax Cutting party, were upstaged by Labour when Pat Rabbitte made the surprise announcement of promising to reduce the standard rate of tax to 18%.

Michael Taft of the Notes from the Front points out the potential pitfalls of that announcement.

“The rising costs of Labour’s tax cut proposals will be, over five years, approximately €6.1 billion (each year the cost will increase – by 9% on the basis of the last five years – since there will be rising incomes and more people entering the tax band). That, right away, gobbles up a majority of the ‘extra €11 billion’ [The figure the Department of Finance predicts tax revenue will grow to over the next three years]. But that’s the situation on current trends.”

Michael’s post and comments provide a very good discussion on Labour’s surprise policy.

But the PD suggested cuts are even more expensive and depend even more on current trends.

As Marc Coleman pointed out in the Irish Times yesterday (subs required), the PDs presume that the nominal growth rate (the value of goods and services produced by the economy) will grow by 8%. This is still in line with ESRI predictions.

But the PDs also presume that tax revenues will grow by 10%. Now I’m not an economist, so I’m relying entirely on Coleman for the next point, something that Michael Taft may take issue with, but Coleman argues that up to now:

“revenue growth has been broadly in line with economic growth. Only in the property boom years since 2003 has it substantially exceeded it. Without this boom revenue growth would have fallen short of economic growth. In some years - 2001 and 2002 - it has been significantly lower.”

Michael McDowell said that the tax cuts were fully costed, but clearly their calculations are based on what it is that is currently keeping our tiger economy going, the behemoth of construction. Considering that the Irish Property market is considerably over valued and, while not likely to crash overnight will, as with all bubbles, suffer a significant slump, it seems wreckless to put the economy in harms way by relying on it so completely.

With the latest MRBI/Irish Times poll predicting a 1% percent share of the vote the PDs on their own are as significant a force as an FCA regiment, and with this tax proposal they have the equivalent of old moded rusty rifles in their stockade.

I don’t have the time now to go into the other strand of their election campaign, the broken down revolver of their environmental policy. I’ll leave that up to Alex Klemm at the excellent Progressive Gardener. In fact, I do declare that everyone should read his blog.