Dublin Opinion

Poor Garret Fitzgerald, that once great statesman, Taoiseach of our nation, party leader, economist, thinker – all sorts. Look at him now, reduced to writing a column in Saturday’s Irish Times, which no one reads. He’s just a little mouse, squeaking out his wisdom which all too often is drowned out by the lion’s roar of ignorance.

I remember listening to the radio in the aftermath of the last election when RTE followed its excitable election coverage with the reflective wisdom of various party leaders and experts. Or, rather than ‘experts’ I should say ‘expert’. Actually, to be completely accurate I should say Noel Whelen, who seemed to be on TV and radio permanently during the election. On this occasion though Pat Rabbitte was offering his usual excuses and Garret was there to take him to task. This time it was about the fact that throughout the whole election the Labour party never challenged Fianna Fail on the economy.

Ya-har! I thought to myself, pirate-like, for I’ve a tendency to imitate a pirate when I hear things on the radio with which I agree. I did this because we mentioned this very blinkeredness on behalf of Labour many times on Dublin Opinion prior to the election.

Rabbitte tried, rather weakly, to counter Garret’s point with a ‘oh, I think you’ll find we did…’ But Garret, to his credit, was having none of it. Nonsense, he said there was a perfect opportunity to highlight the inherent weakness of the Irish economy at the moment and you did nothing. And then, with a sort of exasperation, said: “Well if people would only read my Irish Times column….”

Shiver my timbres, says I, he’s a former leader of Fine Gael. I’m sure he’s still a member and gathers together with other leading Fine Gaelers from time to time. I know he doesn’t attend front bench meetings and as he’s enjoying semi-retirement had nothing to do with the planning of Fine Gael’s election strategy, but still, you might think that he could have had a word in Enda’s ear about the lack of analysis about the inherent weaknesses of the Government’s economic strategy, just on the off chance that Enda only ever reads the Mayo news.

Once again, however, he’s describing himself as the lonely voice of reason, crying out against the white noise of what passes for economic commentary in our broadsheet press. What is different on this occasion is that he mentions the short comings of the Irish Times, something I’ve noticed he’s tried to avoid in the past.

His point, ultimately though, is a very important one. Its about the injecting of additional €2.2 billion into the economy in the form of certain tax reductions in the pre-election 2006 budget, thereby reducing the amount of surplus, which comes in handy when the global economy does a bit of a tumble or when our little housing bubble begins to deflate.

Now that both of these are happening at the moment it may mean that we have to borrow more, and Garrett suggests that this might be a bit tight, as at the end of the year we expect to borrow up to 1.5%, while the cap on borrowing for euro zone states is 3%.

At this point though moves on to the media’s role in all this, and he calls himself a one percenter:

“When I wrote in this column about the budget of December 2006, I remarked that only 1 per cent of the space devoted to that budget by those who chose to comment on it in the following day’s Irish Times addressed its likely impact on the economy in 2007.

This 1 per cent consisted of two very brief reports on comments made by the ESRI and Ibec. No less than 99 per cent of the space was devoted to reactions to marginal changes in taxation or spending.”

Not only that, but there is also a battalion of journalists who are only too willing to offer the Government some ideas about what to do next…

“One of these bright ideas as to how the economy might be stimulated was that the Government should abolish stamp duties on housing and commercial property - which account for two-thirds of the €3 billion receipts expected from stamp duties this year. To that €2 billion tax cut this journalist also proposed a halving of VAT on an unspecified number of goods and services, and as well as a reduction in the top rate of income tax. He also publicised a proposal by a private economist that the lower rate of tax be cut by 1 per cent - at the cost of a further €500-550 million.

In addition, we were to increase spending on the capital programme and persuade the European Central Bank, for Ireland’s sake, to reduce interest rates. Another journalist in the same paper also called on Brian Cowen “to make noise” on this interest rate issue - whatever good such noise might do us!

A third journalist in that same paper offered to “help out . . . well-paid-officials” by outlining to them “what they need to be doing”. They were “to cut taxes” because “the total abolition of stamp duty was always a moral imperative . . . So is cutting the top and bottom rates of income taxation!” Moreover, “the Government needs to bring the rate of VAT down from 21 to 15 per cent”. Cost not mentioned, of course, but I estimate that, on its own, this last proposal would reduce tax revenue by a further €3 billion.”

I don’t know who these journalists are, exactly, but I have my suspicions. Certainly if one reads the Sunday Independent you are sure to find several talking about the need to stamp duty every week; ditto in the Sunday Tribune which is effectively from the same stable. As we have said before, this nonsense percolates through the Irish Times as well.

It seems fair to say that 99 percent of economic commentary in our press follows a particularly cheap n’ tacky Bray Amusements line in neo-liberalism. It doesn’t matter if the figures don’t add up, just keep up the hectoring line of ‘cut tax – reduce the size of government – offer incentives to the rich’ and all will be well.
And the thing is it works.

It sets agendas, it persuades governments and it stymies serious debate to the point that political party leaders who should have the courage to attack a government on the obvious weakness of its economic policy, don’t.

Instead they say vague things like “But are you happy?”

And someone who should have a commanding voice within that debate is reduced to squeaking like a mouse.