Fianna Fail won't tolerate satire, except when its agin the other shower. When they returned to power in '77 they axed "Hall's Pictorial Weekly" by the admittedly ingenious ruse of appointing the nation's chief satirist, Frank Hall, to the post of Chief Censor. Only in Ireland.
        - Declan McCormack, "The Sunday Independent"

A war of words broke out last night between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael over the Irish language — conducted entirely in English... "I would claim there's more of us conversant in Irish than Fianna Fail. This is utter nonsense" said FG's one fluent Irish-speaking MEP, Jim Higgins.
        - Conor Sweeney, "The Irish Independent"

For decades after independence it was a foolish person who had anything good to say about Britain. Britain was the cause of all our problems and no good idea could ever come from that quarter. Even when an idea was manifestly sound — the benefits of an open economy, for a start — it would be dismissed because of its associations with the ancestral foe. Our attitude to 'Old Ireland' is now much the same as our — now thankfully fading — attitude towards Britain. If the past is indeed another country, then nothing good ever came from there. We're well rid of the old ways and anything that even remotely smacks of them is to be instantly and aggressively rejected. Politicians, who once were anxious to display their fierce independence from Britain, are now anxious to show their fierce independence from the past.
        - David Quinn, "The Irish Independent"

"As Irish people our relationships with the United States and the European Union are complex. Geographically we are closer to Berlin than Boston. Spiritually we are probably a lot closer to Boston than Berlin."
        - Mary Harney, speaking in 2000 as Minister for Enterprise

We hear more than enough about those who died and indeed killed for Ireland, but precious little about the greater number who took the far more heroic option of simply trying to live in the place.
        - Liam Fay, TV Review, "The Sunday Times"

Current Affairs - The State - Economics - Politics - Northern Ireland - Society

>> Quotes on EU Treaties, Neutrality & Immigration moved to New page

# CURRENT AFFAIRS

Emotional terrorism.
        - Ian O'Doherty, on the Afghan hunger strikers in St. Patrick's Cathedral, "Irish Independent"

"We would ask for it to be left there as a lesson of what Irish neutrality (in the Second World War) was all about."
        - Shivon Samuels, on the decapitated statue of Sean Russell, IRA leader and Nazi collaborator

"The tribunal was put in place to investigate urgent business of public interest. Clearly it's failed — it's been 10 years in existence."
        - Ulick McEvaddy, on the failure and mission creep of the tribunals

Ministers are looking forward to an extra-merry Christmas following their brave decision to award themselves that infamous pay hike. In other words, for reasons best known to themselves, this Government seems to be doing its best to confirm every cynical belief that the public holds about politicians. They're only in it for themselves, they make promises they know they can't keep and all the time...
        - Andrew Lynch, as Brian Cowen promises a tough 2007 budget, "Evening Herald"

It is vitally important to be offended every now and then — at the very least it makes you confront
your most deeply held beliefs and hold them up to scrutiny. But the PC brigade have no interest in
confronting and challenging one's feelings, preferring instead to introduce censorship by stealth and
cowardice. Let's put it this way - would you rather live in a society where the likes of Jimmy Carr and
Tommy Tiernan are free to offend whomever they choose, or one run by the likes of Michael D Higgins,
where anyone with the temerity to voice an unpopular opinion runs the risk of being prosecuted?
        - Ian O'Doherty, "The Irish Independent"

Limerick’s first citizen is unhappy with an internet “sniper” game that allows players to shoot stickmen targets on the city’s streets. “This game does not portray a true picture of the town,” says mayor Joe Leddin. Limerick’s leaders should stop worrying about how their bailiwick looks in novels, movies, plays or computer graphics. The real problem is how it looks on the news.
        - Liam Fay, "The Sunday Times"

Recent revenue figures revealed that 28 resident Irish artists who earned between half a million and €10m in 2001 claimed immunity from tax under the artists’ exemption scheme. The majority of these are multi-millionaire pop stars, many of whom sport what they advertise as "social consciences" — which means they hold passionate views about how government should spend the tax paid by others. As well as the world’s most socially parasitical entertainers, Ireland has the privilege of being home to the world’s most blatant hypocrites. It will be fascinating to watch as these enemies of injustice endeavour to protect their right to live in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed at the expense of the public purse.
        - Liam Fay, "Hear the cant of our loaded freeloaders", "The Times"

For a man who won popular support when he castigated the Irish government for its failure to spend our tax in the way that he saw fit, Bono now finds himself standing in a lonely place. Last week the rock-star-turned-campaigner was exposed for taking part in a decision that will deliberately reduce the amount of tax that he and his business partners in U2 will contribute from next year onwards. Since June, the band and its manager have engaged in what is known as ‘tax avoidance’, moving U2’s publishing empire to the Netherlands where it can avail of a near zero rate of tax on royalties. It is absolutely legal, but it still jars. How can the music industry’s preacher-in-chief hope to retain his credibility when next he delivers a sermon to governments on how they should spend their taxpayers’ money?
        - Matt Cooper, "The Sunday Times"

Take Bono, who is worth scores of millions of pounds, and is irrepressibly free with his words about what the governments of the world should do for developing countries. Yet in all the fawning, saliva-rich interviews to which he is treated, no one ever asks him how much money he gives either in tax to the Irish government or in donations to the poor of the world. Though, like the rest of U2, he enjoys the artists' tax-exemption in Ireland, the inherent contradiction between what he practises and what he preaches is apparently taboo. For one of the defining features of the cult of the famous is an allergy to hard questions.
        - Kevin Myers, in Britain's "Sunday Telegraph"

The fact is that the expert advisers who are trying to make Chernobyl safe are from Sellafield; that to
compare the two is like using the Tay Bridge disaster as evidence that one shouldn't build railway lines
over rivers, or the Titanic as proof of the folly of going to the sea in ships.
        - Kevin Myers, "The Irish Times"

Be afraid, be very afraid. Dick Roche says Ireland will "vigorously oppose" British government plans for a network of nuclear power plants. The environment minister is about to redouble his efforts, and that usually means things are about to get twice as bad. Ireland will import electricity from Britain, he said, but we will have no truck with electricity generated by nuclear sources. Unfortunately for Bray’s answer to Braveheart, this was palpable nonsense. Padraig McManus, the ESB chief executive, pointed out that it would be impossible to determine how the energy we import had been produced.
        - Liam Fay, "The Sunday Times"

All this week the Shannon airport row has rumbled on, in varying degress of indignation and misinformation. The most pitiable participants have been the politicians, especially those of the Fianna Fail variety, exposed to the cameras in all their ignorance, powerlessness and bewilderment. You could almost feel sorry for them. But not for very long... If this is how they handle little local difficulties, I cringe to think what might happen in a crisis.
        - James Downey, "The Irish Independent" (Aug'07)

# THE STATE AND YOU AND ME

"The State is you and me and the man around the corner."
        - Kevin O'Higgins, Minister in first Free State government

"Can a country which cannot organise signposts expect to run a first-class health service?"
        - Brendan Keenan, "The Irish Independent"

A hospital is unable to decide how many electricians it takes to change a light bulb. Cork University College Hospital is entering talks with workers to determine who should carry out the menial task, and when. Some light was thrown on the issue yesterday when the Labour Court recommended that the hospital's electricians should accept that non-electricians could also carry out the job. In its recommendation, it found that it was "not unreasonable to expect electricians to co-operate" with a new bulb changing regime. A row over the bulbs was sparked when the hospital authorities recently allowed non-electricians to carry out the task.
        - from "The Irish Independent" (Mar'07)

To pillory the government for not providing an extra €12m, or even €35m to save an essential service is a bit of a nonsense when the overall budget is €14bn... What is the "right" amount for a society to spend on health care is one of those unanswerable questions -- depending partly on the make-up of the population, on the economy, and the political will to give healthcare priority over other pressing needs. To compare Ireland with Germany, without taking into account the higher proportion of elderly people (who make much higher demands on health services) in Germany, is not particularly illuminating... There used to be a rule of thumb in the NHS that for every £3 of extra money put in you would be lucky to get even £1 improvement by way of service. The other £2 was eaten up by the system, either by demands for more pay, improved conditions, or better staffing-ratios -- much of which was justified, but not all. In the jargon of the trade it was called the internalisation of welfare -- the benefits of increased expenditure being enjoyed more by the providers of the service than by those it was intended to serve. So we have probably the best paid doctors in Europe (even before the bonus of private practice), and interminable protectionist negotiations on contract which prevent the development of a consultant-delivered service, and nurses who demand at the same time a 10pc rise in salary and a 10pc drop in hours... The HSE does need to smarten up its management. It may need, as Gerry Robinson has said, someone with experience of managing change in a large, complex organisation. But Professor Drumm has the vision. He knows where he wants to get to, and he should be helped to get there.
        - Maurice Hayes, on how criticism of the HSE misses the mark, "The Irish Independent"

Politicians should concentrate on running the country, not our lives. Our politicians can't build a tunnel on budget or buy computer systems that work, yet we want to let them have something to do with the lives of our children? I am fed up with us having laws that no one enforces.
        - John Masterson, on laws on smacking and child car seats, "The Sunday Independent"

I am increasingly mystified as to what the civil service does because it seems no minister can do anything without assembling a bunch of outside experts to give advice.
        - John Masterston, "The Sunday Independent"

Irish politicians respond to a foreseeable — and foreseen — crisis looking for newer and stronger laws to deal with the problem. And like most people, I scratch my head and think that as far as I knew, the laws were already there. They just aren't enforced. We got rid of plastic bags, but the country is littered with plastic bottles and packaging. I know of only one person who has ever been fined for littering. This law-abiding citizen was waiting for a bus and cleared out her handbag into the little bin. Part of what she discarded was an envelope with her name and address on it. This woman would not litter to save her life, but it was against the law for her to dispose of personal litter in this way and she ended up paying for her 'sins'. The country is awash with litter and they look at litter in a bin to enforce the law. Now to the roads - those pieces of tarmac between the litter. Last year, I got no penalty points. The previous year I got four, all obtained by going a little over the limit on roads you could land a plane on. Yet I am often overtaken where there is an unbroken white line, generally by idiots without seat belts. Just once, I would like to hear 'Nee naw' from an unmarked car when I am being overtaken dangerously.
        - John Masterson, on what he doesn't like about Ireland

The sheer number of people still being caught drunk in control of cars shows that, even if it is netting many more offenders, the deterrent effectiveness of random breath testing is questionable. More insidious by far is the widespread cynical circumvention of the law by companies which "nominate" non-national employees, or employees from Northern Ireland, after an offence has been committed by an Irish driving licence-holder employee. One in four driving offences are never pursued because the driver has a licence issued by another country. Many of these cases, it seems, are a product of conspiracy. The Automobile Association believes that many individuals and companies are routinely utilising this legal loophole. This is cynical exploitation of a wider problem which is, literally, a matter of life or death. Although foreign nationals make up just ten per cent of the workforce, it has been estimated that they account for about one in four of deaths on Irish roads. There is evidence that large numbers of non-national drivers are taking to the roads uninsured, untaxed and unlicenced.
        - Editorial in The Irish Independent (Aug'07)

A total of 1,700 crashes on our roads last year involved cars registered in Poland and Lithuania. The growing number of collisions involving foreign cars on our roads yesterday prompted Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny to demand foreign-nationals living here obey Irish standards. Twenty people were also killed last year -- and 2,000 injured -- by uninsured drivers, many of them foreign-nationals. Uninsured driving is now running at three times the rate of most EU countries. The penalty points scandal continues with one in four penalty points going to non-Irish registered motorists, so dangerous drivers effectively can't be penalised and eventually put off the roads.
        - from "The Irish Independent"

As it stands, foreign nationals using our roads enjoy all the rights of Irish nationals, but escape many of the responsibilities. So we end up blaming them for chaos on the roads, but the government sits on its hands and does nothing to level the playing field. There is anecdotal evidence that many eastern Europeans are driving without tax or insurance and generally behaving recklessly. Why? Because they have little fear of effective punishment if caught by the gardai. The problem here is that foreign drivers do not pick up penalty points for offences committed in the republic. Fines and disqualification can be applied, depending on the circumstances, but the potential accumulation of points is supposed to be the deterrent to bad driving. It’s a two-tier system that works against the Irish driver and is patently unfair.
        - Matt Cooper, "The Sunday Times"

Throughout the country, on secondary roads, there are people driving like maniacs without a Garda in sight — fact — facilitated by generous speed limits you would have to see to believe, provided by engineers in the local councils. Take a drive to the west of Ireland and see for yourself how absurd the laws and enforcement procedures are when it comes to speeding on the small roads where the majority of the annual kill takes place.
        - Dermot Crowe, "The Sunday Independent"

More than 40% of accidents occur on the country’s main, national roads. Despite significant investment in motorways, there are still a lot of single-lane carriageways, many of which include dangerous right-turns. The National Roads Authority (NRA) has identified 430 accident blackspots on main routes, but says it will take two years to deal with them. Although the NRA accepts that roads can be made safer, Ireland has been slow to use engineering solutions. A recent report from the European Road Assessment Programme found that sections of road with higher than average collision rates are distributed throughout Ireland. It found 465 km of medium- to high-risk road and 96 km of high-risk. In Sweden, they’ve been engineering for years to take account of driver error and the concept of blackspots is almost unheard of. Drive elsewhere on the Continent and you will find road networks dotted with slip roads and underpasses, the like of which simply do not exist in Ireland.
        - Richard Oakley, "The Sunday Times"

In the UK, police recently stopped 6,000 cars in a single day as part of an exercise and found 30% were being driven illegally — due to an unroadworthy vehicle or drivers bring unregistered or uninsured. That exercise probably made a greater contribution to road safety than 100 speed cameras, but they won't do it on a regular basis because it would take a lot more money than the British government is willing to spend... people who have driven for decades without causing an accident are made to feel like criminals for edging over the speed limit occasionally, all so that the authorities can pretend to be taking tough action whilst privately rubbing their hands at the extra cash rolling into the State's bank account as a result.
        - Eilis O'Hanlon, "The Sunday Independent"

Bertie Ahern may be earning more than George Bush and Gordon Brown but it's clear he and his Ministers do not operate to the same performance standards. Earning more and held accountable less, can anyone imagine a British Transport Secretary surviving Noel Dempsey's latest bungling? The truth is had a British Minister made an ass of not just himself and his government, but of the very law of the land itself, then he would have offered his resignation or been fired within the day.
        - Senan Molony, on the Learner driver debacle, "The Irish Ind." (Oct'07)

Minister Dempsey admitted last Monday that he could not yet introduce "congestion charges" for those driving in Dublin city centre. Such tolls exist in other European capitals. But our public transport system is simply not good enough to offer a viable alternative to motorists... Dempsey's 22020 Vision" document has no hard proposals, just too many desperate questions. It is a plea to the public to help solve a problem that he and his colleagues were paid to solve but did not... Provided with privileged parking facilities at Leinster House, our TDs have little feel for the daily realities facing many commuters. And the Dail begins conveniently late. How many TDs are out on the approach roads to Cork, Galway or Dublin every morning between 6.30 and 9.30? Have they any idea of what it is like? Ministers get garda chauffeurs to cushion their existence. There are no penalty points for using mobiles, no parking fines for them. Fantasy solutions about children walking to school or people cycling to work are laced with a sort of privileged sadism. They show scant appreciation of the actual needs of people who are trying to balance complex lifestyles in an urban landscape shaped by the kind of political decisions now being investigated at Dubln Castle. There are few if any proper park-and-ride facilities. Timetables are elastic, with transport companies using remarkable modes of measurement. An already slow commuter train may be 10 minutes late but still deemed "on time". There are punitive tolls imposed on people who use roads only because they must do so to get to work...
Minister Dempsey recently told drivers that they may have to get used to suffering massive traffic jams. A truck had crashed on the M50, causing great inconvenience and discomfort when it blocked that main artery for hours. Yet, in contrast, just weeks earlier, I was brought to a standstill by an accident across three fast-moving lanes of traffic on a motorway outside Birmingham, England. Moments later, a fleet of police and service vehicles were roaring down the hard shoulder. They had the road open again after about 20 minutes. "Sure, what can you do?" is not the only option, minister.
        - Colum Kenny, on the lack of transport policy, "Sunday Ind." (Mar'08)

Oddly enough, the decision by Brian Lenihan, of the humble €250,000 a year salary, plus expenses, plus free car, plus a huge pension fund, to tell the whinging punters of Ireland to get on their bikes and adjust their expectations towards a more modest standard of living, did not go down well.
        - John Drennan, "Sunday Ind." (Jun'08)

Members of the public pay their taxes in the expectation that they can depend on a dependable, efficient public transport system. The relief of congestion in our cities, reduction of road deaths, distribution of goods, every new plan for development of infrastructure -- all of these depend upon a reliable public transport system. It is fundamental to the very quality of life. Only those who are prepared to serve the public should be allowed the privileges which come with employment in the public service.
        - Irish Independent editorial, after a wildcat train strike (May'08)

It was in 1979 that the then Transport minister, Sylvester Barrett, announced that learner drivers who had twice failed their test would henceforth be allowed to drive unaccompanied. Once again, an Irish solution to an Irish problem, a noxious four-part brew compounded in equal measures of humbug, sanctimony, hysteria and, of course, ruthless sectional self-interest... silently watched by the grey spectres of the hundreds of people killed on Irish roads by unqualified drivers over the past 28 years.
        - Kevin Myers, "The Irish Independent"

Is E-voting an improvement? Yes, the current method takes too long and is innaccurate. Mistakes are
endemic, every re-count produces a different result. Results depend on which bundles are used for
transfers, which means it's as fair as tossing a coin. The current electoral system produces far too many
parochial clowns, cute-hoor vote-harvesting machines who are wonderful at stroking votes but know
nothing and care nothing about anyone else. If it gets them a vote it's good and they'll back it. If it
doesn't, they'll oppose it. Social welfare, public housing and grant systems are used ruthlessly by these
people to stroke votes.
        - Gene Kerrigan, "The Sunday Independent"

I sometimes feel that the criminal law in Ireland can be like a game of football with very peculiar rules. The prosecution can score as many goals as they like but the game goes on. As soon as the defence score a goal the game is over and the defence are declared the winner.
        - James Hamilton, Director of Public Prosecutions (2006)

We have a legal system that is more concerned with the nit-picking of technicalities than with the delivery of justice, and which prides itself on a legal purity that is as self-delusional as it is flawed. Justice Hardiman's decision to dump the law on statutory rape was based on an interpretation of the law that is purist. He and his fellow judges believe that 'strict liability' - meaning that proof that an offence occurred is all that is required to secure a conviction, and that no defence applies - can only be used for minor regulatory crimes that attract small penalties (like traffic offences), not for serious crime that attracts harsh penalties and social stigma. Strict liability ensures that someone who has sex with a child cannot claim a defence: it presumes that there is so much risk attaching to the act, and such harsh penalty for being caught, that the accused must have been reckless to proceed. The effect is that no children can be cross-examined about how they looked, or what they said, or what they did: proof that sex took place is proof enough to convict. It is harsh, but it is also the only just way of dealing with this crime when it is committed against the very young.
In the United States, where there is a tradition of liberty and constitutional rights, they have no difficulty applying strict liability. Many states make a clear age distinction: under the age of 14, strict liability applies: from 15 to 17, the mistake of age defence can apply. It is common sense, affords protection, sends a clear message to the predator and is the model we should copy. Following Hardiman's judgment, McDowell's route should have been clear: instead of introducing legislation that is against his better judgement, instead of forcing children to be, in his own words, "rigorously tested by skilled lawyers", he should have proposed a referendum that would reaffirm our right to use strict liability for statutory rape of children under 14.
        - Alan Ruddock, on the statutory rape controversy, "Sunday Ind."

All through the enormous and constantly accelerating changes that have occurred in Irish society over the last three or four decades, our governments and legislators have done as little as possible, as late as possible. Now they are paying the price — or rather, we are all paying the price.
        - Editorial in "The Irish Indpendent" in wake of statutory rape debacle

I am very sceptical about this Children's Rights amendment proposed for early 2007. We should always be wary of anything that promises rights without corresponding responsibilities. Rights without responsibilities generally means a lot more litigation all round, and a bonanza for lawyers.
        - Mary Kenny, "Irish Ind."

It's about time our Government started taking seriously the need for fertility legislation, an area that's currently as well governed as Dodge City before Wyatt Earp pinned on his badge. It's shameful we still don't regulate our assisted reproduction industry... we continue to be left in limbo, with nobody - neither couples embarking on treatment nor medical professionals - knowing exactly where they stand.
        - Martina Devlin, "Irish Ind."

Happy slapping is an obnoxious and worrying new social trend, but the kind of scum who engage in it are the kind who engage in random, casual violence anyway. People who call for tighter regulation of the internet are merely showcasing their own ignorance. After all, how can you regulate something which in essence doesn't exist? But while it's easy to blame YouTube - this follows on from equally spurious panics about chat rooms and paedophiles - people are missing the real issue, namely the violent underclass which exists in this country - and which seems to be getting bigger.
        - Ian O'Doherty, "The Irish Independent"

We're not in the middle of a crimewave. Most of us live free of fear in our homes. We have problems of drunken hooliganism in our streets, but they are social in origin, not criminal. Arming gardai will not change that (though a more liberal use of truncheons might help). Innocent people are generally not being murdered, and the current gang warfare is being conducted according to the quite principled west Dublin interpretation of the Geneva Convention. Most importantly of all, such wars will always occur, so long as we continue to pursue an unenforceable prohibition on drugs. Not a junkie or a dealer? Then relax.
        - Kevin Myers, "The Irish Ind."

The US State Department has issued an unprecedented alert to American tourists coming to Ireland, warning of rising levels of serious crime here, including an increase in murder and burglary, as well as a shortage of gardai. In its official briefing to prospective American tourists, the department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council (Osac) report for 2008 expresses concern that overall levels of crime in Ireland have risen significantly, with a 20 per cent rise in homicides. The council’s report, released last week, also said that a substantial rise in organised crime in Ireland had resulted in fatalities among innocent bystanders. The body warned American tourists about ‘‘the misconception that there is little crime in Ireland’’... The report describes the gardai as ‘‘well-trained’’ and ‘‘professional’’, but said the force suffered from a shortage of manpower.
        - Seen in the Sunday Business Post

Is anyone remotely surprised that Garda representatives have voted in favour of non-cooperation with the planned Garda Reserve? It seems to me that for a long time now many on the force have been operating a policy of non-cooperation with the public they're supposed to protect and serve.
        - from "The Irish Independent"

It suggests a mindset that views police officers as a law onto themselves rather than upholders of the laws of the state.
        - editorial in "The Sunday Times" on militant opposition to the Garda Reserve

Even if the gardai had done all of the things recommended by the Barr report, it still wouldn't have altered the fundamental facts of the situation: that here was a man with a history of psychiatric illness, who had been hospitalised no fewer than 5 times, armed with a shotgun, who fired at least 30 shots at gardai and who when he emerged from the house with a loaded shotgun, refused repeated requests to surrender his weapon. Even if the 'sterile area' had stretched for a mile or more, sooner or later the ERU would have had to take the decision to open fire... in August 1998 the gardai confiscated John Carthy's legally held shotgun following complaints from a neighbour. However, following a letter from psychiatrist David Shanley, which stated that "on my opinion (Carthy) is fit to use a firearm", the gun was returned in November 1998. Shanley didn't send a copy of this letter to Carthy's GP Dr. Patrick Cullen, who had reservations about returning the gun. Despite this, Barr ruled Shanley's conduct was "appropriate".
        - Dan White, "Where Barr Got It Wrong", "Evening Herald"

A massive search of the maximum security prison at Portlaoise has uncovered a substantial quantity of smuggled mobile phones, drugs, needles - and even a budgie. Officers seized at least eight smuggled mobile phones, three SIM cards, around 150 tablets, including ecstasy, a significant quantity of powdered drugs, a large amount of homemade alcohol, known as hooch, and 30 syringes. The haul also included a live budgie, which officers believe had been smuggled into the jail by a female visitor who concealed the bird internally in her body.
        - seen in "The Irish Independent"

The most risible truth about our jails was buried in one story: "It is now a specific offence to smuggle drugs into a prison." Ha ha ha. But it's been a specific offence to have drugs anywhere for decades, which didn't stop our prison system, containing the most-supervised prison population in all of Europe, from becoming Ireland's drugs capital.
        - Kevin Myers, "The Irish Independent"

It was the summer when the public concluded that laws were being used by the State as devices to raise revenue. Bulletins about the whereabouts of clampers and Garda speed traps were broadcast on the radio. The perception that laws are being used by the State merely to garner cash is always disastrous - for the State and the law, no matter how desirable or necessary the particular laws may be... a Government responsible for that kind of thing is in deep trouble.
        - Anthony Cronin, "The Summer of 2004", "The Sunday Independent"

"Have you ever tried to get to Liffeyvalley by bus? I recommend it as an experiment. It's an adventure."
        - James Wickham, on Dublin's transport 'network', "RTE Primetime"

People cannot switch to a public transport system which is not there. There is no point in waving a big stick at motorists. They are not sitting in their cars for pleasure. They are the symptom, not the problem.
        - Conor Faughnan of the AA after Dublin's "No Car Day" leads to worse traffic

"They could follow it up with a busless day or a truckless day. The Trade Unions regularly give us train-free days and bus-free days."
        - Sean Barrett, economist, dismissing car-free days as gimmicks, "The Irish Independent"

There is a glaring inconsistency between aggressive car parking regulations in the suburbs and the desire to foster the use of public transport. Have you noticed the gradual spread of double yellow lines in suburbia? The only reason that there are double yellow lines in places like Dalkey and metered parking is to raise cash for the council. So here we have an example where one state agency — the corporation — is actively undermining the attractiveness of another, Irish Rail. In an effort to raise finances for itself, the corporation, is actively undermining the finances of Irish Rail, without providing a transport alternative... In rural Ireland, the car is a gelling agent for the community. It brings people together and yet its use for local business is being attacked by officious main-street tax collectors.
        - David McWilliams, "The Irish Independent"

The train approaching will be carrying all winter viruses such as heavy colds, flu and bronchitis and stopping at all stations to your office.
        - The Metro, with a suggested public health warning

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but she is rarely a lone parent. In this country, guilt and shame also get things done. Often, great tragedies must occur before the authorities are spurred into action to effect long-overdue changes.
        - Liam Fay, after a school bus tragedy, "The Sunday Times"

Q: For what respective in the Irish Republic will you be fined (a) €5,000 and (b) €2,000?
A: You will be fined €5,000 for smoking illegally in Ireland. You will be fined €2,000 if you get very drunk, drive your car and kill two people. This has happened.
        - Mary Kenny, "The Irish Independent"

Health, you cry: smokers are clogging up the hospitals. Rubbish. Smokers subsidise the rest of us
through their taxes and considerately kill themselves before they clog up the old people's homes.
In the 1960s I couldn't wait to get out of Ireland, for I felt stifled by its authoritarianism. Nothing
has changed, it seems to me, except that those bossing everyone around now are the forces of political
correctness rather than religion. The US in the 1920s the stupidity of Prohibition. Most of the world
these days is demonstrating the futility of trying to ban drugs.
        - Ruth Dudley Edwards, on the proposed smoking ban, "The Sunday Independent"

"We would not allow food to be produced in the kind of hygiene environment in which patients are
treated, and that is not acceptable."
        - Mary Harney, current Minister for Health, former Minister for Enterprise

Health, rather like the Law Library, has acquired the worst features of private sector greed, and a level of inefficiency which was associated with our old unaccountable state-sector monopolies. The great irony of the PPARS debacle is that the solution was consumed by a system which was in such a state of chaos that it infected the cure.
        - John Drennan, on the Health Service's IT woes, "Sunday Independent"

The bid to reverse the X-case was undone in large part by an inability on the part of some pro-lifers to
tell the difference between a political compromise and a moral compromise... On March 7, the day of
the count, the enemies of the culture of life cheered their victory as the final result came in. They knew
that the defeat of the government proposal had brought much closer the day when abortions would take
place in Ireland. What a pity those pro-lifers who opposed the amendment couldn't see that also.
Instead they played right into the hands of their enemies. A disaster.
Without wishing to be melodramatic, in terms of the "culture wars," Ireland enjoys (if that is the word)
a position somewhat analogous to that of West Berlin during the Cold War. What I mean by this is that
Ireland is one of the last outposts in the world holding out against legalised abortion, and if it falls it
will have a galvanising effect on pro-abortion forces worldwide, and a demoralising effect on pro-life
forces.
        - David Quinn, commenting on the 2002 abortion referendum in "Human Life Review"

We have a two-tier economy: a thriving private sector that creates wealth and jobs, and a lumbering public sector that soaks up cash, spends it inefficiently and increases the costs of doing business.
        - Alan Ruddock, "The Sunday Independent"

What's going on isn't a recycling campaign. It's something that looks like a recycling campaign. And that's what our politicians specialise in - spending money on things that look like they might be what they're supposed to be... One firm got €3.4m over two years to tell us about the 'Race Against Waste'. A fortune was spent on a frightening TV advert, showing our children threatened by a tsunami of waste. There's no shortage of money for consultants and advertising agencies, and more consultants, and websites, and more consultants and advisors. What there doesn't seem to be is enough money for the collection of recycled waste - or the provision of proper centres, properly staffed, efficiently emptied when full, and open all hours. Are we supposed to drive around looking for a recycling centre that's open, with space left in its skips? They emptied the green bin on 16 December. The next pick-up is 20 January. Thirty-five days. Do the rubbish people really think it takes 35 days, over Christmas, to fill a green wheelie bin?
        - Gene Kerrigan, "It's Not Easy to be a Good Rubbish Citizen", "Sunday Independent"

Although we have grown accustomed to hyped-up launches of Government policies, strategies and even "policy strategies", the weary Irish public must view the publication of the Green Paper on Energy as a new record in vacuous waffle.
        - Editorial in "The Irish Independent" (2006)

A successful and coherent energy policy here would enrage almost everyone.
        - Brendan Keenan, "The Sunday Independent"

"As I understand it, the law as currently applies places an obligation on a person whose home is being robbed that they must in the first instance retreat or find a method of retreating. If retreat is not possible, the homeowner is legally required only to use such force as they believe necessary. In other words, if a burglar has a baseball bat and a homeowner takes out a shotgun they're expected to leave aside the shotgun and get a baseball bat and have equal contest at 4am in the morning. It's not very feasible to do something like that."
        - Enda Kenny, leader of Fine Gael, favouring a law change on burglaries

Would it be too much to put out on APB when rapists are let out? Oh, sorry. I forgot about their human rights. Well, what about the next woman victim? Has she no rights?
        - John Masterson, "When Is It 'Safe' to Let a Rapist Out?", "Sunday Ind."

"Not only am I against capital punishment, but I would gladly hang anyone who was for it."
        - Hugh Leonard, "The Irish Independent"

I somehow doubt that Michael McDowell visits South Armagh very often... but if he did, he would notice three feet across the Border, the first fireworks warehouse. Next door is another one, and next, yet another. This is the Tijuana Effect: the accumulation of outlets supplying goods and services banned in a neighbouring jurisdiction. In Tijuana, the commodity is sex, and the outlet is whorehouses. In Nevada it is gambling. In Donegal on Sundays (in the days when pubs were closed in Northern Ireland) it used to be booze. Still is, between dry and wet counties in the US. The Tijuana Effect means that we cannot successfully ban fireworks.
        - Kevin Myers, "The Irish Independent"

In other times and tribes, teenagers would be sent out to face wild animals with a handful of weapons
and the challenge to survive days in desperate conditions with only themselves to rely on. Instead, this
time and tribe sets them up educational trials. For tigers at the mouth, read pass level Irish. For
scorpions, read English comprehension, history replaces story-telling rituals.
        - Medb Ruane, as the Leaving Cert looms, "The Evening Herald"

Inevitably the question will be asked: is there not a better way of making these decisions about college entry? Nobody really likes the points system, and everybody is aware of its disadvantages, but it continues because it is objective and incorruptible. If we were to adopt a more flexible and subjective system, education institutions would be besieged by telephone calls and representations seeking to influence the selection process. This is a pressure we are glad to be without.
        - Philip Nolan, Deputy UCD President, writing in "The Irish Independent"

The numbers taking maths and science for the Leaving Cert are falling. This is no surprise. The kids are not stupid. They know that getting points is the name of the game. Subjects which are perceived as difficult to acquire good points in will not be chosen. That is very sensible from the pupils' point of view, but potentially very bad from the country's point of view... As you might expect the Government is concerned. This Government does concern very well. And worry. And alarm. And investigation. It is action that is beyond it.
        - Brendan Keenan, "The Sunday Independent" (Aug'06)

Education Minister Mary Hanafin needs to put her cards firmly on the table and declare whether she thinks the main purpose of schools is to promote equality or educate children. This week she gave every indication that she believes their main purpose is the promotion of equality. If she thinks otherwise, then she needs to say so... A two-tier system is the direct result of the choices people make and of the fact that some parents are willing to spend their money, sometimes at considerable sacrifice, on obtaining for their children the best education available... Ironically it will retard rather than advance the goal of equality in that the benefits of a private education will continue to be restricted to a very few, that is, to only 28,000 pupils out of 850,000.
        - The Irish Independent, after the government refuses to support new private schools (Oct'07)

Ill-health is to modern, secular societies what sin was to older, religious ones. Whereas the Catholic church used to warn against the wages of sin, the state warns against the wages of smoking, unprotected sex and excessive drinking. The church said sin was bad for you. The state says unhealthy habits are bad for you. The switch from the old obsession with sin to the new obsession with health turns ministers such as Martin and Michael Woods, the education minister, into our bishops. The odd thing is that it is often the people most in favour of such campaigns who happily kicked over the old moral restraints which made kids wait until they were older before becoming sexually active, drinking or smoking. I mean those on the left — it was the left which led the rebellion against the old moral restraints, and the left which is now in favour of the nanny state.
        - David Quinn, "The Sunday Times"

Ireland needs a new social revolution. We need to rebalance the scales and return childhood and adolescence roughly to where they were in the 1970s. The beauty of that Ireland (leaving aside the awful economy) is that it was nicely poised between the old authoritarianism and the frequently wild permissiveness we've got today. In the 1970s, we still lived more or less inside the well-ordered moral framework of Old Ireland, but that framework no longer resembled the walls of a prison. We should thank liberals for challenging the old authoritarianism, but having done that, they didn't know when to stop. The result is an Ireland where drug abuse is becoming as common as alcohol abuse, cinema ads warn young people about dangers that once hardly existed and parents have barely a clue what to do about it.
        - David Quinn, "The Irish Independent"

What the Equality Authority seem to seek is social control over all citizens. Mr Niall Crowley of the Authority is the true heir of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, the Dublin primate who virtually controlled civil society in Ireland over the span of his reign, from 1940 to 1975. As it happens, he too was extremely concerned with justice, the marginalised and victims, and he believed his ministrations were helping hard cases. They often were, too. But at the cost of social control of the majority.
        - Mary Kenny, "The Irish Independent"

The influence of the men of 1916 on today's democratic Ireland is minimal. All the things the inheritors of 1916 believed in — economic nationalism, protectionism, isolationism — made the country into an economic basket case and eventually had to be scrapped. Even if you're not a great fan of the country as it presently is, you have to acknowledge that there's been something of an economic miracle. But the ideological godparents of the Celtic Tiger, the Progressive Democrats and Charlie McCreevy, are nobody's ideas of oul' stock republicans.
        - Eamonn Sweeney, dimissing links between 1916 and the Celtic Tiger, "The Sunday Independent"

As a historical event of undoubted significance the 1916 Rising should be marked, but Bertie Ahern has gone much further. He wants it to become the defining annual event for this country and chooses it over, say, the day the Irish Free State came into being or the day Ireland became a republic.  Is that what we really want to celebrate as the font of our national identity? Why should Easter 1916 become our independence day?
        - Alan Ruddock, "It Didn't Have To Be Like This", "The Sunday Times"

In Ireland we barely notice when a Supreme Court candidate is appointed and rarely, if ever, discuss trhe relative merits of the potential candidates... but the relevance of the Supreme Court to our democracy has become ever more apparent in recent years. Whether kicking out our laws on statutory rape, or interpreting constitutional amendments in such a way as to contradict what was intended by people, or determining when legal protection can be afforded to human life, the courts are playing a role that is more properly the remit of the Dail. Political cowardice has played a large part in bringing us to this place — politicians run in fear of moral and social decisions — and that cowardice has placed the courts, not the legislature, at the centre of our lives. This is not their role. Judges cannot be expected to replace the will of the people, and must not be expected to fill the voids left by politicians who are too timid to legislate.
        - Alan Ruddock, "Our lives in their hands and we don't know their names, "Sunday Indep."

# MEDIA

Why does the state make it a criminal offence for citizens not to pay RTE to broadcast 'The Late Late
Show Twink Special'? If it's necessary for the state to own a TV station then why isn't it necessary for it to own a newspaper?
        - Open Republic Policy Watch, on the delights of the TV licence fee

"There seems to be an assumption that any right thinking reporter (in Ireland) must be anti-Israeli,
pro-Palestinian and anti-capitalist, must believe that there is always somebody to blame and that Sinn
Fein should be treated like any other party."
        - Eoghan Harris

"If I told you that Ned Kelly died because a platform gave way beneath him, it would be factually true, but you would wrongly conclude that it was an accident. If I added that he had a rope around his neck at the time, you would correctly conclude that he had been hanged. CP Scott of 'The Guardian' said facts were sacred and comment was free. The reverse is true. Facts can be fitted to almost any agenda. For anything near the truth we not only need all the facts, but we need the facts fitted into their proper place. And that means a narrator without an agenda. No such neutered political animal exists."
       - Eoghan Harris

"Prejudice comes long before it is time to balance anything. It comes from choice of subject and angle of attack, and deficiencies cannot bre remedied by a belated numerical balancing... The bias is built in long before the camera rolls. Like a second skin a liberal view is the norm and is only noted when absent. These shared liberal assumptions are not likely to be challenged by anybody who works for the BBC or RTE."
        - Eoghan Harris, in "The Sunday Indo"

"The camera cannot lie. But it can be an accessory to untruth."
        - Harold Evans

"People always believe they have to deliver secret documents to journalists in carparks."
        - Sam Smyth, "The Irish Independent"

"I don’t mind being the token right-wing madman at The Irish Times."
       - Mark Steyn

"'Prime Time' interviewers appear to have learned their interviewing techniques from the Soviet Union
school of political interrogation. Without bullwhips and electric shocks however, this approach rarely
leads to significant revelations... but that is the 'Prime Time' style."
        - Peter Howick, after Carol Coleman hectors her way through an interview with George Bush

Once upon a time, RTE set up a television channel called RTE2, which seemed like a logical name for a second channel. Then, in an effort to give it a different, supposedly younger, kind of identity, they rechristended it Network 2, and no one understood either the name change or its purpose. Now, a couple of decades and much expensive soul-searching later, it's been rebranded as RTE2 once more and your guess is as good as min eas to what that's all about.
        - John Boland, "TV Review" in "The Irish Independent"

# ECONOMICS

The truth is that no sane traveller is prepared to pay over the odds for a single air ticket to save Aer Lingus. The truth is also that hardly a single Irish citizen is ready to sink his hard earned savings to buy shares in the airline. Patriotism starts in our hearts and ends in our pockets.
        - Senator Shane Ross, "The Irish Independent"

Irish prices are about 10% higher than the average for the richer euro members. Prices in Ireland could be significantly lower only if a significant section of the population had missed out on the income growth enjoyed by the rest. I suspect that higher prices are an inevitable adjustment to the peculiar nature of the economy and the peculiar trade-weighted value of the euro for Ireland, which trades heavily in sterling and dollars.
        - Brendan Keenan, writing in the "Sunday Independent"

The power of low interest rates can be almost incredible, especially in an economy with competitive and deregulated financial markets. For example, the reduction in real long-term interest rates from about 6 per cent in 1992 to 1 per cent today can be shown to be arithmetically sufficient to account for essentially all of the increase in house prices in the past decade, even without considering the gains in personal incomes and the improvements in economic growth during this period. While it may seem odd that people’s prosperity should depend more on the assets they own than on the work they do, this has been true of almost all societies throughout 5,000 years of recorded history, whereas the system we live in is a 200-year-old aberration.
        - Anatole Kaletsky, "The Times"

When the decision was taken back in 1999 to hand control of interest rates to the mandarins in the European Central Bank, Ireland surrendered the most potent weapon with which to control credit growth, house price inflation and general inflation in the economy. Effectively, prayer became the key policy instrument of the Irish Central Bank. The prayers have clearly been ignored to date. The only thing the Central Bank can now do is try to scare people into becoming more cautious in their house-buying behaviour.
        - Jim Power, "Prayer is the Best Housing Policy We've Got", "Sunday Independent"

There was very little sign of a free market in the development of Dublin's sprawl. Instead, there was the usual petty political (and probably financial) corruption, as the key resource of zoned land was handed out by politicians to where it would generate most profit for the well-connected. It is intriguing to think how a real market might work. Instead of councillors deciding which land should be re-zoned, on the basis of goodness knows what, zonings would be sold to the highest bidder. The Government would collect the revenues on behalf of the public, and builders and developers would pay on the basis of what they thought they could sell. One suspects there would be a good deal less sprawl and a lot more high-density dwellings in urban centres if the market worked more like that. It would evoke cries of horror from the proponents of planning, Danish or otherwise. But since we have now gone 40 years without any real planning, it might be better than what we actually have.
        - Brendan Keenan, "The Sunday Independent"

The government has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the booming property market, with almost half the cost of new homes going on taxes. New figures show the taxman takes 45% of the purchase price of an average new home in Dublin by imposing nine different levies on builders and buyers. The extent to which property is taxed means that the government has benefited enormously from runaway house prices even as ministers have agonised over first-time buyers being priced out of the market
       - Siobhan Maguire, "The Sunday Times"

"It is not a tax on ownership, wealth or income and, at 9pc, has closed down the secondary housing market."
        - UCD Economist Colm McCarthy, urging the abolish of the 'daft' stamp duty

There is a credit crunch. On one side, the banks, who caused this mess with tehir sub-prime packages, sold to each other to targets could be reached and bonuses received, are now squeezing us, the b******s. On the other, the Government is crucifying us: the level of stamp duty remains a huge inhibitor to economic activity. The European Central Bank — a faceless bureaucracy, like most power bases in Europe — is, meanwhile, relentlessly hiking up interest rates. The ECB is refusing to cut interest rates because, it says, it wants to control inflation. But inflation is sky-rocketing anyway. Go figure... When we complain about inflation, the new Minister for Finance, in a breath-taking display of arrogance, tells is not to 'whinge'; such arrogance is reminiscent of his immediate predecessor, new Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who stubbornly refused to properly reform stamp duty when he should have, because he knew best. Meanwhile, my sole asset is losing me €30,000 a month.
        - Jody Corcoran, "Sunday Ind." (Jun'08)

There are calls for enshrining housing rights in the Constitution. Give me a break. Anything that is too expensive we can just enshrine ownership or use in the constitution and all will be well. But thing don't work like that. The last time this was tried was the Societ Union and look what happened there.
        - James Young, "The Irish Independent"

"Nobody in Ireland will be happy until everybody is better off than everybody else."
        - John B. Keane

Lofty principles are alright when you are young and have no possessions. Then you get a house and a car and a family and a mortgage and you find that your money is going to pay for a lot of things for other people, while you struggle by, from month to month... but the poverty industry is never grateful. Because I earn more than some people, because I get up on a Monday morning, despite the hangover, and make sure the kids go to school, the poverty industry regards me as colluding in 'social exclusion'. The poverty industry, including St Vincent de Paul, want to conspire with the Government to take money that's not needed, from people who have better things to do with it.
        - Liam Collins, "Sunday Ind."

Charity does not begin at home. It begins where it is needed most, where real poverty exists and this is not in Ireland today.
        - John O'Keefe, "Sunday Ind."

The country, we keep hearing, is awash with money. Every two-bit commentator and poverty advocate is saying, unchallenged, that the country is awash with cash. We should wave a wand, they say, and solve every social ill. People are even thinking that we should be able to solve social ills that every society throughout the course of history has failed to remedy... everything is vital and everything is justifiable on the grounds that it will cost less than the money wasted on e-voting machines or whatever. It doesn't matter how much a lobby group demands so long as they can show that somebody in government once wasted a bigger sum... And, of course, we're taking on more and more civil servants. The State will expand to fill whatever resources are available to them. Let's hope it stays fine for us. If the Government has so much money that it has to think up ways of spending it, then how come we don't? I'm not awash with cash. Are you? I don't have enourmous budget supluses every year. Do you?
        - Brendaon O'Connor, "Sunday Ind.", writing after Budget'06

"70 years of dingbat economics dressed up as sovereignty."
        - David McWilliams, on post-independence Ireland

No one has a monopoly on compassion and social conscience. Those of us who have driven Ireland's success — from within or without the political system — have accomplished more in terms of real, tangible social justice than all the high-minded incompetence of the 1973-87 period. There is absolutely no political morality in well-intentioned failure.
        - Michael McDowell

In a sign of how many on the left have recognized the power of free enterprise, SIPTU has threatened a strike at supermarket and wholesale giant, BWG, to demand not higher wages or better working conditions, but to acquire shares in the company... To date, Union leaders have not commented on their retreat from a long-held ideological position that condemned "exploitative" capitalist enterprises while advocating widespread nationalisation of private industry.
        - The Open Republic, "Unions demand to become Capitalists"

Once upon a time, there was an IDA-backed Dutch shipyard called Verolme in Cork, which essentially depended on state subsidies and state orders to survive. Workers to the shipyard used to travel by train from Cork. But there were never enough seats on the train for all the workers to sit down. So not merely did the Verolme workers go on strike in their state-subsidised shipyard because their state-subsidised railway service didn't provide enough state-subsidised seats in their state-subsidised carriages, but the unions also picketed the home of the state-subsidised head of the railway. Where is Verolme now? Finished. This is state employment, by state rules, in which state services are run for the benefit of their employees... Consequence. It all comes down to consequence in life, in all we do and all we don't do. If we believe that there are not consequences for irresponsible acts, that's what we'll do -- perform irresponsible acts, not least because the human spirit is full of the instinct for complaint; and if we know that we shan't be expected to pay the price, then chaos occurs.
        - Kevin Myers, "The Irish Independent"

Socialism was always a crappy philosophy based on the stupid idea that we couldn't allow anybody to succeed in life becacause if would make the rest of us feel like failures. Good riddance to that.
        - Marc Coleman, urging a new approach for the left in "The Sunday Indo"

The left must ditch its attachment to the trade union movement... sking hard-working working class families to pay exorbitant taxes to fund a pampered and unreformed public sector is no longer acceptable... Benchmarking pay awards are taking money from those on lower incomes and giving it to those on higher incomes. Where it should be condemning them, the left's links with the trade union movement force it to praise them.
        - Marc Colemen, "The Sunday Indo"

There are many worse things in the world than buying and selling for a profit. As Ruairi Quinn rightly reminded us on Prime Time, there are many good sides to globalisation, which, of course, is only another name for the capitalism which feeds us, clothes us and sends our children to school.
        - Eoghan Harris

"Cutting taxes is always magic to stimulate an economy. The latest example is very clear - Ireland was known as a dead country. It was a saying, at least 10 years ago, that everybody in Ireland that had get up and go had already got up and left. That was fairly true. Then the government came in and cut taxes, cut them down to about half. Now Ireland is flooded with Europeans, people want to move there, people want citizenship there."
        - Sir John Templeton

"Chief in opposing deregulation is the state sector, whose unions affect concern for the less well off. But our state sector and its trades unions have never had an informed concern about poverty and unemployment. During the 1980s, these groups caused, and then presided over, levels of unemployment and poverty that dwarfed anything seen in Thatcher’s Britain. At that time the Irish governing elite grown corrupt behind a highly regulated economy seized every opportunity to lecture our dwindling young population about the ‘extremism’ of the Thatcher and Reagan reforms. The irony that they did this, whilst waving good bye even to their own children emigrating to work in Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s America, still remains entirely lost on them.
We had a blood transfusion service that killed quite a few people. Because senior public sector officials are unaccountable no one was prosecuted or punished. Extreme or what? Imagine the outcry and consequences if the BTSB had been a private, profit-making organisation."
     - Paul MacDonnell, "Open Republic Institute of Ireland"

"With the Independent Radio and Television Commission's recent crazy decision to liberalise radio ownership still further, along lines that even Milton Friedman might find a little too untrammelled, there would be no shortage of station owners keen to add 2FM or Lyric to their portfolios."
        - Michael Ross, Radio Review, "The Sunday Times"

"The Minister is asking industry to accept for no good reason he has given and against the wishes of industry, the possibility that fines, originally of £100,000 but now proposed to be reduced to £50,000, can be imposed for the crime of charging too little, not too much, for air freight. It was intended that two years in jail would also be imposed but in a ministerial amendment it is intended to drop that. Therefore nobody will get two years in jail for charging too much for air freight, but a person can be fined £50,000."
        - Desmond O'Malley TD, leading revolt against Air Transport Bill in the Dail (1984)

"Twenty-one years ago, on June 27, 1984, a rare event took place in Dail Eireann. A deputy speaking from the heart and with great sincerity secured the support of the House to stop the Air Transport Bill passing all stages in two days. The purpose of the Bill was to imprison, fine and deprive of their travel agent's licence persons selling air tickets for less than the Minister for Transport wished. The deputy who made the speech was Des O'Malley then an independent. His passion on the day persuaded both the Fine Gael/Labour government of the day and many speakers on the Fianna Fail opposition benches not to allow the Bill to pass. Less than 2 years later on May 23, 1986 the policies advocated so eloquently on that day by Des O'Malley bore fruit when Ryanair opened its Dublin-London service. Fares fell by 54% on the first day of deregulation, from the old £208 fare to £94.99. Today's value of the prederegulation air fare is €500 and the average fare charged today is €30 oneway plus charges. Airline deregulation made every business in Ireland, an outer offshore island, more competitive. Tourism, stuck at 2m visitors since the 1960s, grew faster than any other tourist sector in the OECD to over 7m visitors. New hotels sprung up, over 50 in Dublin alone. Tourism today employs more people than in either Irish or foreign owned manufacturing. In my opinion it is no exaggeration to say that the Celtic Tiger economy we now know was born on that day in Leinster House."
        - Dr. Sean Barrett, speech to Progressive Democrats conference about airline regulation

# POLITICS

If I saw Mr Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads, with a stake driven through his heart — politically speaking — I should continue to wear a clove of garlic around my neck, just in case.
        - Conor Cruise O'Brien, writing in "The Observer" in October 1982

"Grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented."
        - Charles Haughey, then Taoiseach, describing the MacArthur murder case (1982)

"People can now produce evidence to justify their cynicism and their low opinion of politicians."
        - George Colley, FF TD, on the actions of the 1982 Haughey-led FF government

The things that happen to people are like the people they happen to.
        - Editorial in "The Irish Times" (1982)

"An Irish solution to an Irish problem."
        - Charles Haughey, introducing family planning bill to quasi-legalise contraception

"While he was telling us to tighten our belts he was loosening his."
        - Mick Rafferty, on Haughey's "living beyond our means" era

A Patriot for Me.
        - Headline of Sunday Independent leader following Haughey's death

Where Mr Haughey did stand head and shoulders above his contemporaries was in his corrosive influence on the body politic. He didn’t invent political corruption but he institutionalised it in this country. His dependence on wealthy benefactors, his embezzlement, his offshore accounts, his tax evasion and his perjury did immediate and long-term damage to politics. Mr Haughey was convicted of no crime and, on occasion, did the state some service. He was, therefore, entitled to a state funeral. However, he is not entitled to have the truth about his misdeeds expunged from the record.
        - Editorial from The Sunday Times

"An increasing individualisation of society, with its accompanying erosion of a sense of community and commonality, weakens the capacity (and desire) for effective protest".
        - One political analyst's view of voter 'apathy'

Alan Dukes: Not the kind of man to pet baby seals.
        - John Drennan, "The Irish Independent"

"Cunning is almost a core value of Fianna Fail."
        - Peter Howick, "The Evening Herald"

"In normal life, you get gifts from friends and loans from strangers. Yet Mr Ahern got loans from his friends and gifts from strangers."
        - Pat Rabbitte on 'Bertiegate' in the Dail

"He is the evil of two lessers."
        - Michael McDowell describes Gay Mitchell in comparison to his brother Jim

"He called me Ceaucescu but I didn't jump up looking for an apology."
       - Bertie Ahern, commenting after McDowell compares Richard Bruton with Dr Goebbels

"Michael! You've been invoking 20th century despots again, haven't you?"
        - Tom Halliday in the Independent imagines Mary Harney's reaction to the 'Goebbels' quote

"The direction of his life has been established since conception, and before that. It is the path of the
'noblesse oblige', where a man actually takes a substansial cut in wages, in order to run the country on
behalf of those who are incapable or undesirable."
        - Declan Lynch, with a wry look at Michael McDowell, "The Irish Independent"

Aggressive Democrats.
        - Headline after rumours of PD leadership contest

"You are paid to emote, I am paid to think."
    - Moore McDowell, economist, to Joe Duffy, radio broadcaster

What most people believe can't be the basis for law, or we'd have the awful prospect of being ruled by Liveline listeners.
        - Eilis O'Hanlon, "The Sunday Independent"

Her preference for "Boston" over "Berlin", the American model over the European, has often been mocked. But those who derided it have not met the challenge to set against her argument a counter-argument at a similar intellectual level.
        - The Irish Independent, following Mary Harney's resignation as PD leader

Whatever his portfolio, Charlie McCreevy will perform outstandingly. The EU will be a better place as
a result. The same cannot be said for the country he is leaving to the tender mercies of his party
colleagues.
        - Moore McDowell, "The Irish Independent"

The Labour party has never forgiven Charlie McCreevy for halving the capital gains tax rate from 40% to 20%. The fact that this reduction in the rate trebled the yield only compounded the offence in Labour's eyes. How dare the Minister for Finance demonstrate the phoney nature of Labour's envy-driven ideology?
        - Dan White, "The Evening Herald"

"You are better than no one, but no one is better than you."
        - Charlie McCreevy's motto

Micheal Martin's greatest achievement in Health is to have Charlie McCreevy blamed for its failures.
        - Sam Smyth, "The Irish Independent"

"Subsidising problems rather than solving them."
        - Enda Kenny, on the government's handling of the public sector (Dec'06)

"He who wields the knife never wears the crown." Let us hope the old adage applies to the ambitions of John Deasy and Damien English... Naturally there is nothing wrong with young men being ambitious — provided they have what it takes to be leader. And these two do not.
        - Eoghan Harris, on attempts to unsettle FG leader Enda Kenny, "Sunday Independent"

Willie Is Gonna Get Ya!
        - Slogan on t-shirts with photo of Defence Minister Willie O'Dea pointing gun at photographer

As the rest of the Cabinet jets off to the four corners of the globe, the country is effectively now being run by our indefatigable Minister for Defence, Willie O'Dea. Anyone planning a military coup this weekend should be warned that they'll first have to get past a small man with a Limerick accent and some rather striking facial hair. In such an image-conscious age, it takes a brave man to sport an upper lip that's practically begging for snide remarks about Groucho Marx.
        - Andrew Lynch, writing on St Patrick's Day 2006, "Evening Herald"

With the state of the Oireachtas, no sane person with any vision or national ambition would want to be a TD, spending their time alternately stabbing backs and kissing backsides in a perpetual struggle to hold onto the seat.
        - Gene Kerrigan, "The Sunday Independent"

"You promise you will spend a pound; then, you tell them you are spending it; finally, you tell them you did spend it. That way, you get to spend every pound three times."
        - Donogh O'Malley, former Fianna Fail Cabinet Minister.

"Being at a public poll is like being at your own post-mortem without the anaesthetic."
        - Ruairi Quinn, on the stress of election counts

Q: How many cabinet ministers does it take to launch a Metro?
A: Five, but only when there's an election in the offing...
        - From "The Irish Independent"

Charlie McCreevy once famously said he knew about 25pc of what Bertie Ahern was about and added that that was about 24pc more than anybody else.
        - seen in "The Irish Independent"

We've had one Taoiseach, Charlie Haughey, who couldn't tell the truth, one, Garret Fitzgerald, who couldn't tell a lie, and now Bertie Ahern, who can't tell the difference.

# GENERAL ELECTION (2007)

The terrifying thought is of Fianna Fail always being in government... Dealmaking is what the party does best, especially with other people's money.
        - Kevin Myers, "The Irish Independent"

Fianna Fail got 78 seats. You know how many they got in 1981? 77. In 1989? 77. In 1997. 77. This time they got, in other words, more or less what they've always got. Plus one... Economic conditions and social change haven't changed a thing.
        - Eamonn Sweeney, "The Sunday Independent"

The portents for the next administration are not good. The voters have delivered a decisive rejection of both left and right, and have rewarded blandness and consensus over reform. Inept ministers have — as always — been rewarded with poll-topping performances. Only Michael McDowell has suffered the indignity of losing his seat while serving as a frontline minister... Let the horse-trading begin, and let the economy beware.
        - Alan Ruddock, "Sunday Ind."

An internal Fianna Fail document suggests that because of the blanket coverage of the payments to Bertie Ahern for nearly three weeks at the beginning of the campaign, the oppsition couldn't get their message across. And that, ironically, helped FF in the final days before polling... The document concludes with the belief that FF would win "because Bertie destroyed Enda Kenny's 'contract' (in the debate) and the press coverage at the front end of the campaign sucked all the oxygen out of the room."
        - Sam Smyth, on how the tribunal leaks hurt FG more than FF, "Irish Ind."

Fianna Fail is effectively 'outsourcing' government departments to the Greens and PDs under a rigidly enforced programme for government. This distances Fianna Fail from unpopular or controversial policies and decisions, such as hospital co-location or hard environmental or energy choices.
        - Sam Smyth, "Irish Ind."

The Green Party in government may be good for the country, but paradoxically, could be a disaster for the party itself. Fianna Fail is the praying mantis of Irish politics you see... Expect Fianna Fail to turn a new shade of green as the colour drains from its junior partner.
        - Matt Cooper, "The Sunday Times"

"If we were to be part of a new government, it would be a new government in the sense that it would be perceived to be different and doing different things."
        - Dan Boyle, after the Green party's about turn on Fianna Fail

"I love my country and am ambitious for it."
        - Michael McDowell, bowing out after losing his seat

Michael McDowell was determined to defend the integrity of the State and the rule of law from terrorist subversion. That job is done. The threat is largely over. He can return to the peace and balm of the private life... It might well be that the historic duty of the PDs is similarly over. For the past two decades, they have provided Ireland with some of its finest and bravest servants. More to the point, they have broken the sterile adversarial mould of Irish political life, and challenged some of it central pieties. Imagine what this country would have been like without Des O'Malley, Mary Harney and Michael policing Fianna Fail, and driving forward the economic policies of that PD-manque, Charlie McCreevy. Over time, the benign virus of PDism has infected every major party.
        - Kevin Myers, "The Irish Independent"

"When history is written it will be shown how strong he was in protecting the institutions of the state and ensuring that the settlement of difficulties in Northern Ireland would not, in any way, compromise what we had built up in the Republic of Ireland."
        - Brian Lenihan, paying tribute to his predecessor Michael McDowell

The good news from last week's election in the Irish Republic is that Sinn Féin, the party of terrorism, bank robbery, and cop-killing, garnished with half-baked sub-Marxist economic theories, achieved only a 0.4 percent increase in its first-preference votes, and actually lost one of its seats in the Irish parliament.
        - John Derbyshire, in America's "National Review"

The partners offering themselves as an alternative government have a different view of their members' relationship with the Irish people. As Conor Cruise O'Brien has often said, Fianna Fail think they are the State. One could go on to say of the other parties that Fine Gael wants to serve the State but do it better; Labour wants to convert the State to greater equality; the Greens want to clean up its water, its air and its patterns of behaviour; the Progressive Democrats have forgotten what they used to want; and Sinn Fein want to undermine the State and replace it with an all-Ireland 32-county republic. There is a dividing line here for those who want to find it, and it has voters surprisingly evenly split.
        - Bruce Arnold, "The Irish Independent"

By and large, Ireland resembles a rugby ball stood on end, with the upper class and unemployed class at either end, and the dominant middle class like a large band around the middle of the ball. As always, the poor are with us, but in absolute terms they are now a minority class. Given that any able-bodied man or woman can find work if they wish to work, Irish politics provides more fertile soil for welfarism than for socialism. Accordingly, an Irish general election is not an ideological choice between left and right, but between two groups of social democrats, each of which promises to manage the economy better than its rivals. By default, a General Election is less about how we feel about our parties, than how we feel about ourselves — we choose the party which most closely matches our perceptions of ourselves at that time.
        - Eoghan Harris, "Sunday Indo"

FG, the main opposition party, is further to the right than FF. Its only possible partners are to FF’s left.
        - Simon McGarr, on FG's pre-election strategic problem, "Tuppenceworth.ie"

"We're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't."
        - Pat Rabbite, on pre-election opposition pacts

"A place like Swords has grown to the size of Waterford City with one dilapidated Garda station, one library, no third-level college, no hospital."
        - Trevor Sargent, Green Party TD, on lack of proper planning

"Let's call a spade a spade: Labour are openly hostile to the private sector in health... but patients don't care who provides the service so long as quality standards are maintained."
        - Mary Harney, as Minister for Health

"I'm surronded by the Left, the Hard Left and the Leftovers."
        - Michael McDowell, during his debate against Labour, Sinn Fein and Greens

"A national state of emergency... or a third world war."
        - Liz McManus, Labour Deputy Leader on the grounds for a coalition with FF (Jan'07)

The ruthless and relentless opposition of Fianna Fail and the PDs when the most recent FG-Labour coalition was in office still evokes bitter memories in those who served in it. FG and Labour ministers faced a daily blitzkrieg in the Dail from 1994-97. A robust opposition is as important to the proper working of our democracy as an effective and accountable opposition, so there is clearly a powerful argument to ask FF and the PDs to return to the opposing benches in the Dail... A malfunctioning opposition reinforces the current coalition's unspoken re-election slogan: "If you think we're bad, look what's coming behind us."
        - Sam Smyth, "Elect a Better Opposition", "The Irish Independent" (Jan'07)

When Fianna Fail first entered coalition government in 1989, it was hailed as a huge step forward by all who claim to love and cherish democracy. Gone were the days when Fianna Fail could enter single-party government. Gone were the days of its pre-eminence. It was a sign of this once mighty party's perhaps terminal decline... In fact, the day Fianna Fail, led by Charles Haughey, entered coalition government was not good for democracy, as some believed — it was very bad because it was now obscenely difficult to remove Fianna Fail from power. Since the first Fianna Fail coalition government, Fine Gael hasn't been on the winning side in a single election.
        - David Quinn, "The Irish Independent" (Jan'07)

# GENERAL ELECTION (2002)

"In the battle between Establishment and anti-Establishment, there was simply no room for the return of an old Establishment. If you were prepared to accept things as they are, the logic was to vote for Fianna Fáil. If you felt angry and excluded, the return of familiar 50-something figures from the past was merely irrelevant."
        - Fintan O'Toole analyses the 2002 Election result, "The Irish Times"

"This is the first time that the opposition has been voted out of office."
        - Charlie McCreevy describes Fine Gael's disastrous performance

"According to the cliche, oppositions do not win elections: governments lose them. True, but not the whole truth. Oppositions can win elections... for the incumbent government."
        - Moore McDowell, "The Irish Independent"

"Fine Gael promised that the next time it was in government it would do all the stuff it has never done when it was in government."
        - John Drennan, "The Sunday Independent"

The most original and the most concrete vision of the future since John Lennon's 'Imagine'.
       - Brendan O'Connor sums up Labour's '6 Pledges', "The Irish Independent"

# NORTHERN IRELAND & SINN FEIN\IRA

"Ireland's hour has copme. It came not as victory or defeat but as a shared future for all."
        - Bertie Ahern, speech on peace in Northern Ireland to British parliament

"We should not and must not forget our history. But as we gather on this famous battlefield, it is not history that concerns us now. It is the future. In the future, let us respect each other and our different identities."
        - Last speech by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern at the Boyne battle site with First Minister Paisley

The conflict in Ireland has little or nothing to do with religion, other than being a handy way of identifying which tribe you belong to. Catholics, and indeed Protestants, are not attacked because of their religion, but because they belong to the enemy tribe. The conflict is over territory. We nationalists see the unionists as usurpers of our ancient tribal territory. Unionist violence against nationalists is motivated, not by religious bigotry, but by an instinctive primeval fear of being subsumed.
        - from a letter to the Sunday Times

Hardly any NI Protestants favour Irish unity but most (72%) said they would accept it if a majority of people in Northern Ireland voted to end partition. However, a substantial proportion — one in four — said they would find a united Ireland “almost impossible to accept” even if people voted for it. Just more than half of northern Catholics (60%) think of themselves as Irish and a still smaller proportion, 52%, said they were nationalist. Yet just 38% favour Irish unity over a range of other options. Nearly as many Catholics (32%) wanted to remain in the UK while 13% would prefer an independent Ulster. Only 3% said they would find it “almost impossible to accept” if Irish unity never happened.
        - Liam Clarke, commenting on a recent NI poll, "The Sunday Times"

Sinn Fein supporters are more prejudiced against gays and immigrants than other voters, a new study says. Gerry Adams' party is not right-wing but has similarities with far right parties, like the British BNP and Jean Marie Le Pen's French National Front, the research by a political expert says. The beliefs of the party are not all shared by its supporters, Dr Eoin O'Malley concludes. Sinn Fein has a radical left-wing social agenda but its supporters tend to be more conservative. It is a radical nationalist and populist party but is "at odds with its supporters except on the national question", the lecturer from the School of Law and Government at DCU says. "The more likely you are to vote for Sinn Fein, the more intolerant you are," he said.
        - Fionnan Sheahan, "The Irish Independent"

"So do you actually do the killing yourself or do you just do the PR for it?"
        - Pj O'Rourke, on Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams.

"Sinn Fein warns that enforcement of the law could jeopardise the peace process."
        - EvilGerald.Com takes a typically irreverent look at the peace process

Sinn Féin welcomed comments by PSNI acknowledging problems with use of plastic bullets... suggests real bullets more effective.
        - An "Online.ie" headline suggests an obvious response

"British Army bomb disposal squads who attempt to defuse car bombs early and before areas are properly evacuated will be responsible for endangering civilian lives."
        - IRA statement (1988)

"The failure by Gerry Adams to mention his IRA service in his memoirs is equivalent to a biography of Field Marshall Montgomery that leaves out the British Army."
        - Roy Foster, "The Irish Story"

There's a lesson there in the reformability of terrorists. The IRA's first instinct is to kill. If you complain about the killing, they offer to kill the killers. If you complain about the manner of the killing, they offer to kill more tastefully - "compassionate terrorism", as it were.
Because they no longer have to engage in the costly and time-consuming business of waging war against the British Army, they've been free to convert themselves into the emerald isle's answer to the Russian Mafia. They recently pulled off the biggest bank heist in British history - snaffling just shy of 50 million bucks from the vaults of Ulster's Northern Bank. What do they need that money for? Well, it helps them fund their real objective: the takeover of southern Ireland.
So this March 17 the president is merely following the logic of his own post-9/11 analysis. St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland. The least Bush can do is chase them out of the White House
        - Mark Steyn, "The Irish Front", "Chicago Sun Times"

Why, when Martin McGuinness was interviewed on radio yesterday, could he not bring himself to say that the Northern Bank robbery was a crime, but that instead it represented "criminality"? That law is for the rest of us. Sinn Fein and their supporters rightly demand justice for themselves, for Pat Finucane and for those killed on Bloody Sunday, but offer no justice whatsoever to their victims. You can whistle for your inquiry into the murder of so-called "informants". There seems to be no end to republican self-pity. It's in the bloody name, after all - "Ourselves Alone". If only they were.
There isn't another mainstream party whose leaders make speeches flanked by members of their own private armies; there isn't another mainstream party whose activists carry out punishment beatings; there isn't another mainstream party whose overt political organisation is covertly interlinked with that of a secret paramilitary organisation. In a normal democracy you can expect just a little criticism for these practices. If you want to be treated like everyone else then you have to start behaving like everyone else.
        - David Aaronovitch, "The Guardian"

"Was he told by phone, or by fax, or by text message, or was he perhaps just talking to himself?"
        - Jeremy Paxman, interviewing Martin McGuiness on how the IRA contacts Gerry Adams

"Do you think the people of the North are entitled to know if a man standing for elected office is in fact on the organising body of an organisation committed to gansterism and bank robbery?"
        - Jeremy Paxman, to Martin McGuinness, "BBC Newsnight"

"Gerry Adams threw in a sneering comment to the effect that the banks were robbing us... this is a party whose approach to the practical economics of funding itself has included the use of robbery, violence, extortion, smuggling, money-laundering and the control of drug-dealing."
        - Bruce Arnold, on Sinn Fein 'economics', "The Irish Independent"

Suppose that the people of Northern Ireland had been told, 35 years ago, that the result of hundreds of murders and a subsequent peace process would be that the province would be controlled by a combination of Sinn Fein/IRA and the Revd Ian Paisley. Would they have marched towards that future with their heads held high? And would any of the British politicians who committed themselves to resolving the conflict have considered this the result for which they were struggling? The people who have been destroyed in this process are the moderates, on both sides.
        - Charles Moore, "The Spectator"

Tony Blair is generally considered to have done the right thing in Northern Ireland, but the lesson that Ulster sends out to the world is that moderate politics does not work, and terrorism does — so long as the terrorist is wily enough to know when to cash in his chips.
        - Charles Moore, "A Truce is not Peace", "The Spectator"

Terrorism can be defeated. The modern IRA was animated by two goals: (1) the absorption of Northern Ireland into an all-Ireland republic; and (2) the overthrow of the southern Irish government and its replacement by an ultra-nationalist revolutionary regime. Neither of course has happened. The IRA lost. Of course, that’s not quite the end of the story. The IRA lost because it lost its constituency. The IRA drew support from three groups: angry Catholics in the north of Ireland; militant nationalists in the south; and nostalgic donors in the United States. The donors aren’t donating any more: New anti-terror laws threaten them with severe consequences. Southern nationalists are no longer so militant. A tidal wave of wealth has inundated southern Ireland, submerging a lot of ancient quarrels. Per-capita GDP in Eire has overtaken Britain’s — and far exceeds that of the north. The southern Irish see what it cost West Germany to absorb the East, and a great many of them are content to let the British underwrite the rustbelt North. As for northern Catholics,they seem no less angry — but they are a lot better politically represented. And if it isn’t too fanciful, I wonder if post-9/11 and the London subway bombings, they don’t prefer to put maximum distance between their cause and the new terrorism of the Islamic extremists.
        - David Frum, "National Review"

The two curses of recent Irish history have been poverty and violence, with poverty most acute in the South, violence in the North. It is a great relief, and a cause for rejoicing, to anyone who loves Ireland, that these two demons are no longer walking about in the land. Have they been decisively vanquished, though? Or only imprisoned, like genies in fairy-tale lamps? We must hope for the best, but perhaps Ireland is the last place one should go looking for the End of History.
        - John Derbyshire, in America's "National Review"

"Stealing from banks and slaying men on the streets are not the acts of freedom fighters, they are the work of a small minority trying to hold back the forces of history and democracy and they hurt the very people for whom they claim to fight. Nobody can honestly claim today that the IRA are any better than an organised crime syndicate that steals and murders for its own members' personal interestss. There is nothing republican about the Irish Republican Army."
        - John McCain, US Republican Senator, St Patrick's Day 2005

The final argument advanced against decommissioning is that it is unrealistic to expect an undefeated army to give up its weapons in a public way. It is said to smack of humiliating surrender.  One only has to think of international arms reductions pacts to see that this is rubbish. When, at the end of the cold war, the USA and the Soviet Union reciprocally reduced armaments, the process was closely monitore