Five things Ireland could learn from America

Firstly, please excuse my usual pessimism, but as I’m sure a lot of my fellow passengers on tomorrow’s flight from Kennedy to Shannon must be thinking: do we really have to come home?

Just in case I did have fond thoughts of returning back to the old sod after two weeks of lounging in Florida, though, Google News convinced me otherwise. The State of the Nation is a typically mismanaged one and could easily be mistaken for a third world country in the midst of a drastic humanitarian crisis: “A round up of water supply conditions nationwide” leads the Irish Times; ‘Burst Pipes Brings New Year Misery For Thousands’ intones no more cheerily the Galway Advertiser.

Seeing as America doesn't take kindly to extended Irish imports and I have a degree to finish that's not one of the options, so instead I said I'd divulge to Irish Central my yearly list of ideas that Ireland could borrow (or steal) from America, before it slips out of my head and into the recesses of distant holiday memories.

ONE: Preservatives.

I know they’re bad for your health, and I suspect that that evil draconian bureaucracy machine the EU has something to do with Irish bakers’ aversion to them, but seriously, toast in America keeps for so much longer it’s ridiculous. I’m sure a lot of fellow lazy Irishmen will sympathize with me on this one. Toast back home is so fickle. It’s fresh and crispy one day then before you know it it’s sporting green mold spores the colours of Patrick's Day. The American solution seems to be to lace the bread with preservatives or some other magic ingredient that preserves it to the age of Methuselah. It may not be doing your insides any favours, but it says you running down to the local Centra (rough 7-11 equivalent) every second day.

TWO: Good English muffins.

I suspect the reason for this one has something to do with our sensitive colonial past, but again, seriously, there’s a time to move on, and importing or baking decent English muffins is one such way. English muffins are a way of life for Americans. Go to Publix and there’s about twenty varieties; go to Dunnes Stores and you’d be lucky to find one, and at that it's usually a horrible imitation of what you find over here. Plantations may leave lingering sentiments but let’s not let it carry over into the breakfast muffins business...

THREE: Portion sizes

I know America has an obesity problem and all that, but a bit of extra chips (sorry, fries) couldn’t hurt. It’s time for Ireland to move beyond kiddie size portions and start feedings its men and women with proper food. It might cheer us up a bit too.

FOUR: Happiness

Before I go overboard on this one, let me just say that Irish people are perfectly happy. I think I’ve narrowed the problem down to the media which is almost without exception relentlessly negative.

If it comes to passing a law (like they did in Romania) to stop journalists whingeing on about how bad things are, how many young people are emigrating, and how the recession is so terrible, then so be it.

I, of course, am as guilty as anyone in this regard, in fact more so, for an inordinate amount of blogspace I've written on Irish Central has been given over to said misery-laden lamentations. So moving forward with an American spirit to a more positive year and less political moaning and groaning. One more point, though. Not only does the content need to be happier, but Irish newscasters (particularly Dobbo) also need to make an effort to smile a bit more and stop speaking in a monotone. The news is painful enough in itself but why does it have to be delivered painfully as well?

FIVE: Decent beer and happy hours.

I know this is a massive paradox, but for some reason despite our reputation as the world’s greatest drinkers we seem a bit lacking on the beer front. We have beer of course, but besides several specialist outlets (and there’s only one such place in Cork), there’s a real lack of variety on the high street. Why, I ask and beg, can’t we buy Blue Moon in Ireland? Will nobody import it? Give me an import licence a millions dollars and I'll do it..and what about a pitcher of Yuengling? Surely it’s better than Dutch Gold and Bavaria. Happy hours must also take place on a greater scale, preferably in each pub in the each county and on a daily if not hourly basis. And finally: whoever managed to sneak the Intoxicating Liquor Act through the Dáil in ten short days, which mandates Irish liquor stores to close by 10pm, should be sacked.

SIX: Better cream cheese. Why does Philadelphia loose half its quality and smoothness on the way across the Atlantic? Nobody knows..

EDITED BONUS: a proper weather management system!

Seriously. A bit of rain, a bit of snow, and the entire country grinds to a standstill. They run out of salt one year, say it won't happen again, then run out the very next year. To the Government: wake up, smell the coffee, and realize that global warming - which also seems to entail a lot of global 'cooling- is not just hypothesis but reality. Irish people have a hard enough time with the unemployment and emigration without having the entire country break down when a bit of snow and rain rolls in...


Now to round things off, a few things we can export the Yanks in return.

5 things America could learn from Ireland.

ONE: Proper toilet cubicles.

I hope I’m not the only person who’s noticed that American toilets are somewhat see-through. While Irish (and European) toilets are hermetically sealed, American toilets, almost ubiquitously, have little slits running down each side from which one can observe and be observed. Not that people are generally doing much worthy of observation while in toilet cubicles, but that doesn't give toilet cubicle architects carte blanche to just let us go on show in them either. I know for a fact that this problem (regrettably) extends even in Irish Central’s venerable office space in midtown Manhattan. Perhaps Niall & co. can take a lead on this and show New York City that Irish-Americans do not and will not stand for visible toilet cubicles.

Because this point is us of such pressing national importance, it was necessary for me to don by Photoshop goggles and display the problem in image format to illustrate my point with clarity...

Left: American cubicle with slits. Right: Irish toilet, hermetically sealed.

TWO: Pints.

Why do American bars serve glasses of beer and not pints? Some sell pints but not nearly enough. This has to be addressed and implemented on a national scale. American bartenders also have to stop staring in astonishment when your order your third or fourth drink.

THREE: Cynicism.

“Have a great day!” (said at 2am), “have a wonderful afternoon”. Such expressions need to be replaced with the more honest (and Irish) “how’s it going”, which can be replied with “not too bad” (emphasizing, of course, a degree of badness rather than one of positivity). America needs to come down to our level of realism and stop being so damn cheery all the time.

FOUR: Rugby.

No matter how much I watch American football, the constant interruptions still annoy me. And what kind of sport breaks for an advertising break? A sport where commercialism rather than athleticism and competition is the driving factors needs to take a reality check. Americans need to rid themselves of their padding, cheerleaders (well maybe not them) and Pepsi adverts and watch a decent eighty minutes of competitive sport without being interrupted by ads for the local Hyundai dealership..

FIVE: Lethargy.

Sometimes Americans’ amazing ability to get things done fast is great, other times I’m sure it can be annoying. Four o’clock could mean twenty past four without anyone being overly discommoded. A ten minutes break for Barry’s Tea (which by the way should be imported on the same scale as Guinness and Kerry Gold) will ease frayed, stressed-out, over-worked nerves, and make things that much slower. America needs to take this on board, without going too far. A recent drainage repairs scheme in my estate took six months rather than six weeks. That was a little too relaxed even for my liking.

SIX: Unpunctual buses (for amusement).

Where’s the fun in the bus arriving on time every time, to the minute? Same goes for the train and Subway system. An Irish bus, in contrast, is a real gamble. I spent many years riding local commuters buses before I bought a car. Sometimes they wouldn’t show; other times two (or even three) would arrive simultaneously; other times they’d arrive half an hour late, sometimes ten minutes early. It kept you on your toes and kept that infamous bus-stop ennui at a very distant bay. American buses should do likewise. This slavish punctuality is entertaining nobody.

Bailey extradition trial a serious affront to Ireland's legal sovereignty.

Whatever decision High Court Justice Michael Peart comes to in a few weeks’ time, the Ian Bailey extradition trial will be a landmark moment in Irish and European legal history.

Ian Bailey, a former journalist with several British publications, is on trial before the High Court in Dublin on foot of a European Arrest Warrant seeking his extradition to France, where Judge Patrick Gachon, a well-connected magistrate, has endorsed a warrant seeking his extradition and trial in France to face trial for the alleged murder of a French film-maker, Sophie Toscan du Plantier, in a rural Irish summer village over 14 years ago.

The case presents many complex legal problems, but the largest by far is that Ireland’s own public prosecutor, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), decided in its investigations after the crime that Bailey wasn’t worth prosecuting through the Irish courts, and following three arrests and interrogation by Irish police, Bailey was released on each occasion without charge.

Complex legal issues of double jeopardy and European-wide law dominate much of the legal discourse on the case, but a letter from the DPP to the High Court stating that after an exhaustive review of the evidence nothing new has been found, has led many to question just what exactly the French are hoping to achieve by dragging Bailey into the High Court over a decade after the crime was allegedly committed.

Even among those still convinced of Bailey’s guilt, a quiet feeling exists that the man is entitled to get on with his life after being more or less acquitted by the DPP in the wake of the crime all those years ago; the timing of the trial, just weeks after Bailey received his Law degree from University College Cork, also seems rather vindictive.

I personally don’t have an opinion to offer on Bailey’s guilt or innocence in the case (and who without knowing the facts could?) but I do feel that the extradition attempt threatens to make a complete mockery of Ireland’s legal sovereignty if it succeeds.

Our economic sovereignty was recently surrendered in large (if not complete) part to our new puppet-masters at the IMF and the EU; now our legal sovereignty threatens to go down a similarly disastrous route.

That take on the case might be overly-simplistic, but my gut feeling, rather than legal understanding comes to the fore: the alleged crime took place on Irish soil, and if the Irish police and prosecutor have decided not to prosecute Bailey for the offence, then neither Judge Patrick Gachon nor his European counterparts have any right whatsoever to try force Bailey’s extradition through the Ireland's sovereign and independent courts.

If the French really have new evidence that can link Bailey to the crime, then the correct step should be for them to forward that evidence onto the Gardaí (Irish police), who can then make a renewed assessment of Bailey's guilt or innocence. Even then, and without that French extradition attempt, the double jeopardy principle would be a very hard one to overcome.

Trying to bulldoze a European Arrest Warrant through the Irish Courts, though, against the express will of the State’s own prosecutor, threatens to stifle the Irish State’s natural legal right to pursue its own criminal investigations, and to have the outcome of said investigations respected by all -- irrespective of the nationality of one of those parties, or whatever evidence comes to light years after the crime has been done and dusted.

If Justice Peart capitulates to the French and European extradtion demands, then he risks kow-towing to the new European politico-economic order which fasts threatens to eclipse all facets of our sovereignty, legal now included.

If Pearse and company hadn’t turned in their graves when the IMF marched into Dublin, then I think they most certainly would then.

Wikileaks cable highlights Irish third level's dicey future.

Former Ambassador James C. Kenny is a clever man indeed.

The former Kenny Management Services President and US Ambassador to Ireland was also a man who seems to have had a clearer idea of where Ireland was headed than the Government did itself.

In a series of insightful documents released by now infamous whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, Kenny is seen counselling a doleful Irish government on the quandary facing the country in just a few short years from when the documents were dated (2004): a shortfalll of smart economy ready graduates from the nation’s universities, and a resulting exodus of foreign direct investment (FDI) from the now not so shimmery ‘Emerald’ Isle.

That things have played themselves out almost exactly as Kenny predicted makes him a rather impressive economic forecaster, if not a genius.

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise, though.

This was the Government that did, after all, shipwreck Ireland into a situation in which it was forced to beg the EU and IMF for help, so whatever economic know-how Ambassador Kenny and his aides at the US Embassy had, it certainly could well have been more prescient than the ponderings going on over at the Irish Government.

The Wikileaks cable, dating from 2004, reads like a script for what was then to be Ireland's future.

“The Ambassador related concerns expressed by U.S. firms and Irish universities that the quality and number of third-level graduates....increasingly appeared insufficient to meet the needs of Ireland’s hi-tech economic sectors,” the cable says in the staid language of leaked diplomatic missives, before recounting how the US Ambassador predicted several other mounting economic house-wrecks before our own puppet-masters in Leinster House did.

The words ring true today just as they did then. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, the future of our smart economy is in a fairly large spot of bother, and to compound this not exactly insignificant problem, our educational standards also seem to be on the slide.

The recently released OECD rankings tables have added a sleuth of further problems to our ailing third level education system.

The world recognized tables find that our literacy and educational levels are sliding fast, and have justifiably set alarm bells ringing back home, as what we thought was our one major consolation - that despite all that's happened our educational system was still world-class - has now turned out to be a mere fallacy.

Years of rumours that the State exams have been getting easier would now also seem to have been true, as our students struggle to achieve the levels of education envisioned by former Ambassador Kenny and his advisors in 2004; if it was true back then, it's even truer now.

Reading levels have dropped from 5th to 17th in the OECD table, while maths competence levels have plummeted from 16th to 26th in the same decade-long, intervening period.

The problem facing Ireland's smart economy now looks worse than ever, and although it’s hardly the cheeriest prognosis to make, it increasingly seems like an unfortunately realistic one.

Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Education and Skill Mary Coughlan's first concrete reaction to the OECD news was the announcement of what's effectively a petty building and infrastructure fund for Irish third level institutions; a moderate contribution towards taking care of sundry building and maintenance expenses at the nation's seven universities.

The newly announced fund shows just how off-target the government's approach to tackling the problem continues to be: a fundamental overhaul of the Irish secondary school system, will based in disconcertingly large proportions on 19th-century style rote learning, is what's needed to tackle the pressing issue.

In post-Bailout Ireland where the country is literally gasping for hope amidst a seemingly endless tide of despair, these latest findings weren't exactly the good news story that we were hoping for, but they came nonetheless.

Amidst the controlled panic at the findings, some calls have been made to curtail Irish language teaching hours in order to free up class time for instruction in the more basic skills we seem to be so lacking in, but sacrificing our culture and heritage would be an even more tragic loss to Irish society than our rapidly devolving literacy and mathematics standards.

There are few easy answers to the mess, but sadly it's people like the former US Ambassador who can probably proffer better answers than our own crop of politicians can; and that, truth be told, is a fairly sad state of affairs to find ourselves in.

Ireland's smart economy will be scuppered by fees and grants cuts

The future of Ireland's smart-economy is looking decidedly bleak after the beleaguered Irish Government confirmed earlier this week that it intends raising the college registration fee to €2,000 ($2,664) and adding grant cuts to the list of austerity measures facing the Irish third level sector in the new year.

The news makes grim reading for Irish student unions who have been lobbying fervently over the past few months against Government plans to raise tuition fees, but who are refusing to call outright defeat on the matter, with the holding of a major student march on Cork next week perceived as a last ditch attempt to show the Government that opposition to the planned move still runs at fever-pitch.

The unfortunate reality, is that the student marches and lobbying are beginning to seem like a waste of time and effort - if commendable ones - as the Government sends out clear signals that only the size of the fee increase is up for discussion.

The problem with the planned cuts, which the Union of Students of Ireland (USI) has been highlighting ad nauseam, is that cutting third level grants and increasing registration fees could together spell the end for the smart economy dream.

Ireland is almost unmatched in modern economic history for the speed of its advancement from a traditional agrarian economy to a modern services-based one, but the continuation of that current economy - and the prosperity which it had engendered - may not prove sustainable once low-income students start dropping out of college like flies.

Ireland's new financial task-masters, the EU and the IMF, have made clear that our current corporation tax-rate of just 12.5% is economically untenable, so major US and international corporations will have not just one but two reasons to forsake Ireland in favour of foreign shores: less smart, highly qualified graduates - in fact less graduates, period - and a less incentivizing tax regime.

There is, of course, a government perspective in all this. Cuts have to be made, money has to be saved, and the IMF have to be answered to, but this looks like the most ominous of solutions to the problem.

Time and time again the government's decision making has been called into question. It should be again.

Austerity measures and bleakness will be necessary no matter what way the government tries to increase the bottom line, but the opportunity cost of these measures may outweigh the benefits.

The third level cuts aren't just bad news for college-goers and their parents and sponsors, but for Ireland as a whole.

Irish government on the rocks after losing support of the nation

The Fianna Fáil party seems well and truly to have had its day with the Irish public.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen's televised address to the nation this evening, in which he finally capitulated to demands for a general election, will dispel any hopes party loyalists may still be clinging to that the Republican Party is anything but a sinking ship.

The announcement that a general election will be held early next year comes as little surprise though. It's hard to conceive of a social group or voting bloc that the incumbent government hasn't managed to anger or alienate over the last number of months, as everybody and anybody seems to be angry about the party's leadership/perceived ruination of the country; the party's popularity has unsurprisingly ebbed to an all time low.

Students are up in arms over the likelihood of increased tuition fees, workers are aghast at the prospect of the minimum wage coming down, and the rest of the country is horrified by the thought of Ireland having to cede control over its fiscal and economic policy to the IMF, with the 'Republic of IMF' fast emerging as a favourite moniker to call the new State by.

Among today's plentiful political drama, the first signs of major discord within the Fianna Fail party itself signalled that something major was on the cards.

The effective defecting of bankbenchers Sean Power, Noel O'Flynn and Chris Andrews, who early in the day called on Cowen to resign, signalled that the government was the first warning that the government was on the verge of a long overdue collapse.

When their coalition partners the Green Party then announcement that they'd leave government in January, alongside nationwide protest at the IMF bailout, the strain was simply too much for the embattled Government to bear, and amidst emergency meetings, last ditch conference calls, and national bailouts, the the castle finally collapsed.

The problem is that now that Fianna Fail seems set for an obliteration at next January's election, excitement about the alternatives could hardly be less palpable.

The Green Party seem to have gained nothing from their decision to effectively pull the plug on their coalition with Fianna Fail, while the collective offerings of Fine Gael, Labour and the other major parties seem to do little to excite an Irish electorate worn-out from years of lack of progress, broken promises, and economic stupor.

If one thing seems certain in all this, it's that Fianna Fáil will finally pay the price for Ireland's economic undoing at the polls next January, and not remain in power for a day longer than that.

FF has completely lost its mandate to govern -- at least from Ireland's youth

This afternoon's official announcement from the Irish Government that it will indeed be applying for an IMF/EU emergency rescue funding package should well and truly be the final nail in the coffin of a government which has long lost the mandate of its people to remain in power.

Without wanting to over-dramatize, there's also a real fear that the constant economic and political volatility will actually push Ireland into a state of civil unrest.

An Irish trade-unionist recently said that the upcoming Budget's expected cutbacks would be too much for the people to bear, adding that his Union, the TEEU, would consider launching a campaign of 'civil disobedience' if cuts were as bad as expected.

Meanwhile Irish students' recent march on Dublin turned violent, with allegations of police brutality now coming to the surface, although a similar gathering in Galway passed off peacefully.

Whoever you are though - student angry at the registration fee, out-of-work parent, or civil servant clinging to a job - the announcement that Ireland has applied for the Bailout funding really makes a difference.

Besides the palpable signs on Irish streets that the country is indeed in economic turmoil, such as businesses closing, the ubiquitous for-sale signs, etc , we Irish can now say that we live in a country which is literally having to be rescued by the international monetary system in much the same way as that other recessionary casualty Greece was.

A recent interview on popular daytime chat show Liveline turned inevitably to the banking crisis, and the government's almost comical denial that a bailout would be likely.

An impassioned caller said that the country's fore-bearers would literally be turning in their graves at the thought of the Republic of Ireland having to cede some of its sovereignty just to stay fiscally afloat.

The thought of Dev, the signatories of the Proclamation, and others who fought for the emergence of an Irish Free State turning in their graves is indeed a dramatic one, but it's unfortunately also increasing true. Given Ireland's colonial past, its long and bitter struggle for independence, the loss of even a fraction of that freedom should be cause for great disappointment and sadness, and any government responsible for causing that loss should be overthrown without delay.

I don't know how exactly you go about organizing a coup d'état in a Western democracy in the current day and age, but I know that unless some major political upheaval takes place soon, the Irish electorate simply won't wait until 2012 for a change of government.

As Pat Rabbitte rather pointedly told Minister Pat Carey during an incredibly heated Prime Time exchange: "you'd [the Government] want to be ashamed to show your face". I think that summarizes best how Irish people view their government now.

David Norris recording his own eulogy to be played at funeral

Here's a really weird story from Ireland to end the weekend with.

Senator David Norris, one of Ireland's most outspoken gay-rights activists, has said that not only has he planned out his own funeral, he's also started recording his own eulogy, to be played as his coffin is buried into the ground.

The eccentric Senator is mustering support through a vigorous PR and Facebook campaign to become Ireland's first openly gay President.

How this fits into that overall campaign is anyone's guess; it could just be a publicity stunt designed to attract the media's attention to his campaign for President, or else he could just genuinely be thinking morbidly ahead to his funeral arrangements at this stage in his life.

Like many Irish, I've got very mixed feelings about the Senator's campaign for President, after this episode even more so.

He, perhaps with some exaggerating from the media, is basing his campaign quite largely on the fact that he's openly gay, and the fact that if elected he would become Ireland's first openly gay President.

Make what you want of that - and most people will undoubtedly support that in much the same way as they supported Obama becoming America's first black President - but how much does, or should, a President's sexual persuasion have to do with his or her fitness for office? How central a role does it deserve in their manifesto?

The main question to be asked of David Norris,including by the media, is is he capable of being Ireland's main figurehead, of representing Ireland well abroad, and of conveying a generally positive image of the country, which is effectively what the role of President involves in Ireland.

I think that a man who's not only - by his own admission - 'meticulously' prepared his funeral, but is also in the process of recording his own funeral eulogy, isn't the sort of person you'd want instated as President of Antartica, never mind Ireland.

If Norris were elected President, though, his quirkiness, for want of a better word, would make him a fairly dramatic change from the previous two Presidents we've had.

Both current incumbent Mary McAleese and her predecessor Mary Robinson were from fairly conventional legal backgrounds and seem to have done a reasonably good job at representing Ireland as a country.

They did so in a quiet and conventional fashion, and no doubt do not have a pre-recorded mp3 of their own funeral eulogies hidden somewhere on their iPods (if Presidents have such things).

For that reason alone I'd be happier to see McAleese re-elected than Norris get the job, although given a provision in the Irish Constitution this is not in practice possible.

Norris would certainly be an 'interesting' choice of President, and I'm sure many would feel that he'd be a very good one, but the plain old vanilla Robinson/McAleese sounds better to me than having a guy who's planning his own funeral arrangements before he's even retired!

Re-introduction of university fees in Ireland seems imminent

In a series of frantic developments over the past couple of days, it now seems that Ireland is on the verge of re-introducing fees at third level institutions, including the country’s seven universities.

The move was precipitated by an interview which appeared last night on This Week in Politics during which the Irish Minister for Defence, Minister Killkeen, gave a very unconvincing answer to when pressed on whether or not the State was planning to reintroduce paid tuition in the upcoming Budget.

The Minister told the weekly politics program that: ‘We have a very difficult challenge [in balancing the Budget]; no areas is exempt from consideration, the challenges are very very difficult.’

The Minister’s comments have meanwhile been interpreted in the media as a sort of sign that the fees will indeed be introduced this December, and the timing of the comments, just three days before a major student march on Dublin, seem far from coincidental.

No sooner had headlines turned to talk of the impending registration fee, than the Presidents of two Cork third-levels, Dr Michael Murphy of University College Cork (UCC), and Brendan Murphy of Cork Institute of Technology CIT), issued a joint statement stating that they were in favor of the fee.

This announcement from the two Presidents couldn’t really have come at a worse time, at least not so far as the colleges’ PR is concerned, and it’s fairly amazing to think that these two men thought that two days before a massive anti-fee student march, and a few hours after that interview, was a good time to announce to the world their advocacy for introduced tuition fees.

It’s fairly frustrating that there are seemingly going to be college fees re-introduced in the upcoming budget, but I share the opinion of several other writers for my website, CorkStudentNews.com, that the Government has to raise money from somewhere, and to expect it to provide Irish students with free education forever borders on the delusional.

What I do find really annoying is that if the Government does indeed introduce the fees - as we’ve every reason to expect they will - then they’ll immediately be breaking a promise they made just a few short months ago, and if even your Government can break promises, what sort of justice is there in general in a country?

Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Education Mary Coughlan issued a statement just this August promising that there would be no third levels fees introduced during the lifetime of the incumbent Fianna Fáil led coalition Government.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Minister’s words turned out not to be worth the paper they were written on.

Irish denied social welfare because of red-tape bureaucracy

Over 3,000 returning Irish emigrants are being refused social welfare payments (known as 'the dole' in Ireland) because of erratically enforced 'habitual residency' requirements stipulating that you have to be resident in the Republic for two years before you can make a claim for payments.

According to media reports, this is causing great hardship.

Joe O'Brien, the policy officer with Crosscare, an Irish NGO working with Irish migrants, says that the welfare officers themselves often apply the laws incorrectly, and may be causing even more hardship than is necessary.

The habitual residency requirement was necessitated by Ireland's membership of the European Union (EU), and it's believed that the requirement is in place to deter foreign workers from claiming Irish government handouts without having any intention of being a long term resident in the country.

This is yet another example of Ireland's membership of the European Union causing complications domestically.

The Irish Government is between a rock and a hard place on this issue.

It can't really create an exemption from the residency requirement to Irish citizens, as this would probably be viewed as discriminatory under the European Union law which Ireland has incorporated into its Statute Book, yet the current situation is unnecessarily harsh on returning Irish emigrants who now find that despite being in need of government payouts to survive, they no longer qualify.

There are no easy solutions to this problem, but it's one which must be fixed. If not we risk compounding the Irish emigration problem with a reduced immigration one, worsening an already out-of-control net migration figure.

At a time when Ireland is undergoing a massive emigration problem it's now being faced with another problem: the returning of previous Wild Geese is now losing its luster somewhat because of these controversial welfare requirements which disincentive the Irish to return home. Not that all Irish emigrants need social welfare, of course, but it's a safety net that should be there for all citizens of a country, and in the current economic volatility, there's not much sense of assurance in knowing that if you come home you won't qualify if times get tough.

This requirement also fits uneasily with the hotly debated Certificates of Irish Heritage which the government hopes to hand out to reach out to emigrants who've left Ireland. If it's truly interested in reaching out to these people and luring them back home, then it should ensure that they have as easy a time as possible in qualifying for social welfare benefits once they get back home.

The requirement is also extremely harsh on Irish citizens who were forced out of lack of economic opportunity to emigrate from Ireland, and now find that because they had to do so, they can't even 'draw the dole' back home.

The Irish Government need to think up a solution to this problem fast, before more Irish emigrees decide to postpone their decision to return back to the old soil because they either current need, or may need soon, to rely on State welfare payments to get by.

Has exporting employment been Ireland’s downfall?

It's hard or impossible to make the following point without sounding like a xenophobe, angry young man, or just a plain ol' racist, but Irish companies' off-shoring of jobs to countries with cheaper wage bases like India was and isn't good for the country's economic future.

I've been thinking about this point over the last few days as I've been speaking to various Irish cellphone providers for support switching networks, and most of the voices speaking back to me have been calling from places like Pakistan and India.

I'm all for integration, multi-culturalism and a mixed multitude of people in Ireland, and these things can only be for the good of the country, but I think we have to ask ourselves the question whether it was necessary or good to move as many jobs overseas as we eventually did?

For companies, the dilemma is a pressing one. The combined effects of the Celtic Tiger and robust minimum wage legislation together led to what many Irish companies and overseas firms would see as unsustainably and unrealistically high wage levels, which in turn would hamper the bottom line. As a result, the companies moved their jobs to places like India where they could hire workers for less.

We have the Cork Jazz Festival going on in Cork at the moment, and it's wonderful to see the city awash with the sounds and sights of foreign accents. Less transiently, you'd be hard-pressed to argue that the influx of foreigners to Ireland has been without its benefits, and easier-pressed to say that it's been for the benefit of a country. Yet multi-culturalism shouldn't mean an abandonment of patriotism and I think we should do our best, particularly during the current recession, to hire our own workers if that's at all possible.

Allied Irish Banks, although hardly the Irish taxpayer's best friend at the moment, at least has its call centre based somewhere in Ireland. Yet try dialing up a hotline for support when your Blackberry, mobile internet, or something else technical has gone bust, and you'll have your call routed to somewhere in India.

Irish students turn to prostitution to pay for class

Even in recession-worn Ireland with its booming dog-washing courses and rampant unemployment I never thought I'd read that students were turning to prostitution.

Yet according to an article in the Irish Independent, CorkStudentNews.com and the Union of Students in Ireland, Irish students are turning to escorting and sugar babying to help pay their way through college and ultimately life.

"We've been hearing more and more about students having to go to these lengths [prostituting] to pay for their education and I think it's a shocking indictment of the state of the country," the Union of Students in Ireland's President, Gary Redmond, told the newspaper, confirming rumours that this was starting to be a problem in Dublin.

This isn't actually new, though. I was surprised to dig up an article in the Irish Independent written in 2007 which was about more or less the same thing.

"Escort agencies are encouraging students to take up work as prostitutes," the daily newspaper found.

"The Irish Independent has learned that many students are turning to prostitution to fund increasingly costly college lifestyles, in some cases estimated at more than €7,000 a year." If this was starting to be a problem in 2007, I guess it's only logical that it's rearing its head again when times really have gone bust.

This latest phenomenon is pretty grim reading for a student-body already suffering from seeming uncontrollable student emigration and a mounting fees crisis.

It's an unfortunate thing to happen, but when people are desperate for money, they'll do anything.

What the articles really highlight, though, is the urgency of the problem facing Irish students today.

When you hear of Irish students launching a 'policy document', such as the one the USi has tabled to fight student unemployment, you tend to think of of unemployment and emigration as a long term thing, but for many students, graduating Irish universities and colleges in 2010 or 2011, the problem is right around the corner.

Hopefully those forced to leave Ireland will at least be able to do so without having had to prostitute themselves to pay for the flights.

When you have to say that sentence, it's a fairly bad state of affairs indeed.

Students hope to stop emigration with 'internships', but enterprise and jobs are what's needed.

The Union of Students in Ireland's daring bid to stop Irish student emigration by creating internships doesn't seem to be making much headway.

The glossy new policy document launched this September to help halt student emigration through a €52m internship creation programme seems to have vanished off the news pages,.

Perhaps the answer is because it will probably do little to solve or help the emigration problem.

The USI- the representative body of most Irish third level college students - does more 'slamming','hitting out' and marching than most other Irish trade unions combined, though seems unable to come up with meaningful solutions to assist the thousands of Irish students caught in this predicament of emigration or unemployment.

The idea behind this 'programme' they're offering is to offer employers fixed term PRSI rebates in exchange for keeping graduates on in full time employment after an initial internship period; the Union claims that this policy, to be implemented across both the public and private sectors, will take 20,000 off the Live Register (Ireland's unemployment register).

The problem, though, is that internships - usually either unpaid or poorly remunerated - are far down the priority list of most Irish students faced with the dilemma of leaving their home and family out of a want of other opportunities, and even if some of them are paid, students can't rely on an employers' tax rebate as an incentive for hirers to keep them on in the long run.

Parents struggling to make ends meet won't be too keen either on finding out that their children are on internships with only a possibility of getting a real job after all their effort getting Masters degrees in college.

I think a better idea would be a framework for bettering student enterprise, and making it easier for graduates to either join existing businesses, or even start their own ones. This way students could look forward to making their own opportunities, and maybe even giving jobs to other ones in the process.

Sold job prospects and not nebulous 'public sector internships' are what will make students think twice before hopping on to an Aer Lingus flight for JFK, and encourage them to stay in Ireland.

Yet it's probably too late for that now, as over 100,000 young Wild Geese have already left.

Sandwiches and potted plants: what the Irish are paying tax for.

A great story from Sunday's Irish newspapers which managed to marry politics with a completely unintentional and typically Irish brand of humour was a story by Nick Webb and Roisin Burke of the Independent on Sunday.

The two journalists managed, through a Freedom of Information request, to find out the 2009-2010 spend figures from the Department of Communications Energy and Natural Resources. The results were almost as comical as they were shocking.

Potted plants, life coaching, and landscaping services were just some of the uses which the bureaucrats had seen fit to dispose of taxpayers' dollars on, and in fairly hefty proportions.

Prominent among the article's findings, was that The Department had managed to spend an impressive €67,000 ($93,190) on potted plants and landscaping services alone, which if intended to lift moods at their Dublin headquarters must have been a total flop, as a further €600 ($834) was dished out to the Irish Lifecoach Institute for 'life coaching' services.

When the Department wasn't busy billing us for manicuring its hedges and planting fuchsias, though, it took the somewhat more conventional 'let's blow the budget' route of billing us for wining-and-dining interested clients.

In Ireland, apparently, the phenomenon of trying to allure clients with food and wine isn't limited to corporations and banks; seemingly even the government gets involved in the racquet given a nice budget! One conference at the swanky Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin cost the Department-cum-taxpayer a tidy €1,793 ($2,493), while other 'send-offs' of dubious legitimacy ensured that nobody was left without a smile on their face after the meal, especially not after the €50,000 ($69,545) had been doled out on the 'catering' expenses.

The whole thing would be just midly surprising if it didn't follow so closely so on the heels of a few classic expenses scandals. Seeing as it does, though, perhaps 'unbelievable' would be a shade closer to the truth.

Most recently and prominently among the many expense scandals, we had the recent Ivor Callely expenses story, when an Irish Senator intentionally misstated his place of residence in order to reap a windfall from travelling expenses.

Shortly before during the summer, Minister Noel Dempsey saw fit to blow €13,000 on taking the government jet from Dublin to attend a 'summer school' in County Donegal. It was 'the most viable option' available, defended the government in response.

It's great and we should be happy that Ireland has investigative journalists of the calibre who wrote this story, and a Freedom of Information regime and freedom of the press that provides the framework for such journalists to operate in. But it's a real pity that the people who are the target of such articles don't lend their ear to their criticism.

The Irish Government is currently faced with the rather 'taxing' dilemma of finding a way to clear its almost €20bn budget deficit, created largely through banking and fiduciary mismanagement. It's main solutions will inevitably involve hitting the weakest elements of Irish society the hardest.

Before it tightens the noose further on the taxpayer, perhaps it might seize on the opportunity to look at its own spending, and consider whether the life coaching or gardening really got the Government anywhere in the first place.

Patience running thin for Church in Ireland

The writing is well and truly on the wall that the female ordination issue will be a major bone of contention between the Church and its faithful in Ireland, and opposition to the stalemate now seems to be springing from within the ranks of the Church and the faithful itself.

The Irish Examiner reports yesterday that a campaigning nun from Fermoy (Co.Cork) is challenging the Church's no-go stance on ordaining female priests.

"People are looking for change now," wrote Sr Louvenagh Heffernan in the Cork-based daily, "and that means the priesthood has to change."

But Sister Heffernan is just the latest figure within 'the fold' to criticize the way the modern Roman Catholic Church is run, and to take issue with the notion that the issue of female ordination isn't up for discussion.

Jennifer Sleeman, from Clonakilty, also in County Cork, has attracted international media coverage by leading a boycott of Sunday Mass in protest at the same issue.

What's surprising, though, is that besides strong layperson support for the boycott, which took place last Sunday, the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) insisted that the boycott had been well supported, which sounds like a statement of implicit support for the move.

But if the Priests' Association came out with that statement, the Bishops had something very different to say.

A spokesperson for the bishops' 'hierarchy' told RTÉ news that the boycott had been a flop, and that attendances were actually better than usual last Sunday, when the boycott went ahead.

Such a division between priests and bishops shows that the issue could be divisive even within the the hierarchies of the Catholic Church itself.

Whether or not attendances dropped at churches around the country last Sunday, though, isn't the main point.

What matters - at least to those lobbying for greater female representation at Mass - is that Sleeman and co have made a point, that the Church seems to have noticed, if not listened, and that this could well prove to be the beginnings of a Church-led policy of dialogue with - rather than monoloogue to - its faithful.

And if the Church hasn't noticed the growing sense of alienation felt by both the secularists as well as the weekly mass-goers, then it should start reading the newspapers (and internet blogs!) a bit more.

Sleeman told the media that the boycott gave rise to an 'upswelling of women who want to be equal in the church.'

If that is indeed the case, the Vatican-led policy of no dialogue on this issue seems only increasingly doomed to failure.

'Ireland RIP' image marks a new lowpoint for the Irish gutter-press

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. They may have a point.

Even for the most seasoned of tabloid readers, there's an element of shock to today's Irish Daily Star leading with the headline 'Ireland RIP: our future killed by wanker bankers and stupid politicians'.

How low does a tabloid have to stoop to sell copies that it will splash 'wanker bankers' over its front page and superimpose such an inscription onto a sepulchral image of a gravestone? The answer is very.

Although I've probably not mentioned this on IrishCentral before, I run a small student news website in Cork (CorkStudentNews.com), and for that reason crossed paths with this very tabloid's editor, Ger Colleran, just two days ago.

He was speaking at the university's Law Society and I attended to cover the debate for the website.

He seemed a very intelligent man, an articulate and clearly well-read debator, and, you'd assume also a capable editor, yet obviously shock tactics rank higher in his priorities than conveying meaningful and well-written news to the general public.

Perhaps its not surprising, though.

Recalling his speech at the Law Society a few days ago there was a fanatical dislike of 'power' and 'the judiciary' throughout, an archanist's jaundiced eye of 'the powers' that be.

Arguing in favour of mandatory sentencing in the criminal justice system, he railed against the judiciary's attire, their gowns, even their accents, points, which in retrospect, were moot, to borrow the legal term.

Perhaps that same mistrust of the 'powers that be' was what led him to consider 'wanker bankers' a byeline fit for publication in his tabloid.

I've made the point several times before on this blog that Ireland needs to think well to get well.

The point is obviously not my own, borders on the cliche, and has been made far more eloquently than I've ever put it, yet stories like these remind us that unfettered negativism is still a real threat to the Irish public.

Yet news, I realize is not created in a vacuum.

The 'shock value', level of 'scandal' and, of course, entertainment element of any given story are factors which all weigh heavily on a journalist or editor before he or she decides to publish a particular piece.

Good news - they say - doesn't sell many papers, yet there's a certain limit called common decency which should not be crossed.

For the better or worse the media has the power and capability to control the thoughts and feelings of a huge section of society.

And with great power should come great responsibility.

People editing tabloids shouldn't be held exempt from their basic journalistic responsibilities simply by virtue of the trashy nature of their 'newspaper', tabloid, broadsheet, or otherwise.

The morbid image of a tombstone emblazoned with Ireland RIP and bearing the inscription 'wanker bankers' is an image not fit for publication in even the lowliest of rags, which in truth is what the Daily Star is, and does nothing to help a country that's struggling with a daily onslaught of pessimism and bad news headlines.

And it comes at one of the most delicate and fragile moments in the history of the Republic, with the simmering Anglo fiasco and the plummeting AIB shares sending the country into a renewed wave of chaos and volatility.

At such a time the last thing we need to hear or see is that Ireland is dead and buried.

Fine Gael makes promises on Irish emigration disaster

Union of Students protest lack of employment and mass emigration

Yesterday’s news that Fine Gael will make tackling the emigration crisis a cornerstone of their policy if elected is encouraging news for both myself and other Irish students long fed up with the incumbent government’s policy of laissez-faire on this issue.

Two things stand in the way of Mr Bruton’s statement, though: the fact that politicans have a habit of breaking their promises, and the fact that they’re not yet in power. Otherwise there’s hope on the horizon.

Student bodies have had their plaints fall on deaf government ears for far too long, and perhaps a change of leadership can lead to a change of policy.

Students unions from the umbrella-style USI (Union of Students in Ireland), to the lower-level individual institutions, have collectively been unable to get the government to ‘wise up’ on the issue of student emigration and unemployment despite a huge press and social media campaign.

So Fine Gael Enterprise and Job’s spokesperson Richard Bruton’s acknowledgement that “over 80% of the jobs lost have hit those under the age of 30” shows an awareness that was acutely lacking in Irish political circles about the students’ current crisis.

As satire of Brian Cowen nudges into the US media the feeling builds in Ireland that the government has had its day, and is running on borrowed time.

And although I think the radio interview issue was blown out of all reasonable proportion, I couldn’t deny that it’s caused Fianna Fail a continuing and protracted political fall-out.

“It is clear that the Government is unravelling,” said the same party’s environmental spokesperson on the same day.

If it does so unravel, let’s hope they take care of the students before they’ve all left.

Could Ireland legalize medical marijuana?

Despite the story having been pushed out of the Irish media limelight by the Brian Cowen 'Gargle-gate' fiasco, there have been several very important movements in the Irish medical cannabis question over the past few weeks, which have led many to believe that Ireland could be set to legalize medical cannabis within a couple of years.

The first significant development took place on the 10th of September, just over 10 days ago, when Ireland's Minister for Health, Mary Harney, said that she would be 'open' to the question of medical marijuana and would solicit expert opinion on the matter with a view to making a decision on the issue by the end of the year. This was in itself a huge jump from days previous, when the Tanaiste had explicitly told the Oireachtas that she would not consider the idea of legalizing cannabis in any form.

This was followed, shortly afterwards, by a meeting between Gordon McArdle,perhaps the country's most outspoken cannabis proponent, and Minister Pat Carey, the man with overall responsibility for Ireland's drugs policy. By the end of their sit-down, McArdle said that he was pleased by how 'open' the Minister was to the idea of introducing medical cannabis to treat a number of health problems, which furthered the notion that there had been a government-wide softening on the traditionally frigid medical marijuana stance.

The biggest move of all though, is the drafting and submission of the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act 2010, drafted by McArdle himself, which has been submitted and received by the government, and has attracted considerable media attention in itself, both on Irish television and radio. Although the exact provisions of the Act may not yet be workable, they're based loosely on a similar law in the United States, and it's believed that - if passed - the new Act would pave the way for the treatment with cannabis of various forms of cancer, MS, etc, but most importantly allow for the first time ever cannabis to be used for medical interventions in an Irish setting.

And although deadlines don't seem to have been set yet, the fact that the necessary legislation is already in draft, while at the same time the government solicits opinions from experts in the field, together point to a shorter rather than longer timeline for all this to work out.

So will Ireland legalize cannabis? Who knows, but check back before 2012!

Irish knowledge economy doomed as education fails its youth

News that an Irish engineering representative body is offering high school students free after-school tuition (grinds), for free, shows just how bad Irish math has gotten.

It’s one of Ireland’s lesser-known problems, but looks set to become one of the main impediments to growth in Ireland’s upcoming economic recovery unless educators find a way of teaching the subject which yields better results.

This latest announcement is just the latest in a long series of calls from Irish educational, political and scientific bodies to improve the teaching of math in Ireland’s high-schools in order to produce the sort of math-literate and proficient graduates that companies crucial to Ireland’s future are looking for, but are not finding enough of.

Just yesterday a Fine Gael TD called the teaching of Irish math at second level ‘just not good enough’, terminology which has already been iterated several times this year alone.

The latest solution tabled to help resolve the problem of Ireland’s math shortage is bonus points for students taking Higher Level in Ireland’s national second-level finishing exam, the Leaving Certificate. The move has been agreed upon by a number of Irish universities.

Yet amidst all the praise for the raise in bonus points - from a number of universities and most recently UCD - there’s been an equally growing concern over a rising failure rate in Ireland’s slightly more junior second level examination, the Junior Certificate.

7.4 percent of students failed the exam at the Ordinary level, a figure which was well in excess over the other two compulsory subjects in the exam, English and Irish.

Prominent amongst the Irish economic and scientific community lobbying for an improvement in the math standards is IBEC, an employer’s union, whose spokesperson Tony O’Donohue said that: "The current over-crowded, rigid and subject-based curriculum dominates secondary school organization and teaching practice’.

The math illiteracy issue extends far beyond just school-level age, though, a recent study of the adult Irish population found that 40% of those surveyed had difficulty with very simple mathematical calculations

The recent news about Irish math illiteracy, between school age and after, shows that the problem will have to be tackled head-on, before another generation of school leavers leaves school with only basic or rudimentary mathematical skills.

If Ireland is going to make scientific and high-tech advancement one of the hallmarks of its planned economic recovery, then it’s going to have to sort out its math teaching!

Cowen drinking episode is much a-do about nothing.

Much noise has been made in the Irish press over the past couple of days about Brian Cowen and the allegedly drunken interview which he gave yesterday morning after what must have been a fantastic night out at the Fianna Fail conference in Galway.

There are already many versions of what happened, that night, and the back and forth between Fianna Fail and the Opposition parties would put a game of tennis at Wimbledon to shame, but I think that without doubt too much is being made out of it.

For me, it's clear as daylight that Cowen was a little tipsy when he took the mic on that morning. We've all had a few too many at least once in our lies, and that morning after slur is something we're probably all too familiar with. It's not to be confused with 'exhaustion' which at least in my mind doesn't cause the sort of drawl with which Cowen addressed the nation, though his followers are trying to make out as such.

That aside, though, is it really such a big deal if Cowen did have a few units of drink left to metabolize in his system when he took air? Politics and drinking are close and kindred friends, and can we not forgive a man once in his life for making such a slight misdemeanour. As our publisher Niall O'Dowd wrote in another blog post for this site - though not in these exact words - there was an element of McCarthyism about the way in which the media and the Opposition pounced on this interview to insinuate that Cowen had a drinking problem.

Whatever about the stupidity of getting on national radio in an either exhausted or drunken state, though, surely an even bigger farce is the Justice Minister threatening to bring a defamation suit on the back of a Twitter message from Simon Coveney that 'Biffo' was somewhere between 'hungover and drunk'.

Then again though, do bear in mind that this is the same genius who concocted the plan to deter kidnappings by increasing bank fees, so perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised.

Despite my law education having extended no further than two undergraduate years at UCC, I'm aware that opinion is a defence to defamation, and let's be honest, Coveney had quite some basis for Tweeting what he did. It's therefore a bit of a joke that Ahern should be riling for a defamation suit, and a bit too reminiscent of a time when you couldn't even criticize the government to begin with.

Breifne O'Brien: the Irish Bernie Madoff

If you haven't heard of the name Breifne O'Brien before, I wouldn't blame you.

He's a man who's elaborate pyramid scheme has earned him notoriety in Ireland, made him a poster-boy for the post Celtic Tiger era, yet who, unlike his approximate American counterpart, Bernie Madoff, is neither serving time behind bars or showing much in the way of repentance for his extraordinary financial misdeeds.

O'Brien and estranged wife Fiona Nagel were one of the Celtic Tiger's love couples. An investment adviser and a PR magnate respectively, they became known nationally for their lavish dos and lifestyle which often included government Ministers and entertainment tycoons on the guest list. Yet their extraordinary largesse was all coming from one not so legitimate source: O'Brien was running a pyramid scheme.

If, like me, you're not too au-fait with what one of these 'pyramid schemes' are, besides knowing that they're bad news, let me fill you in via Wikipedia.

According to the encyclopaedia website, they are - euphemistically - a 'non sustaining business model' which involves the con-man, in this case O'Brien, heaping promise a-top promise, and occasionally keeping baying investors at bay by taking others' money. Ultimate, like a deck of cards, the whole thing comes tumbling down, yet unlike in America, there seems to be little consequence when that happens.

Compare and contrast the experiences of O'Brien and that of former American stockbroker and current jailmate Bernie Madoff.

Madoff was sent to prison for 150 years for his role in mounting a massive Ponzi scheme which ultimately amounted to approximately $65 billion in losses to his defrauded victims. And although O'Brien's ill-got gains were nothing as staggering, his impunity certainly is.

In conservative Ireland, where defamation laws are still considerably tighter than those in the US, a recent article by the Irish Independent begins by calling O'Brien an 'alleged' society fraudster, but then goes on to recount how he has admitted to calling his victims 'suckers' as he lured them in to his elaborate scheme.

Which then beggars the question: is he an 'alleged' society fraudster, or just a plain old gangster?

The extraordinary thing at the bottom of the whole O'Brien saga is that media coverage in Ireland is dedicated to discussions of how O'Brien's bust taxi business' liquidation won't be enough to pay off his creditors, or how his estranged and now broke wife had been forced at one stage to raise money from her mother as her life collapsed around her.

Yet for those who have been defrauded by O'Brien, and who have faced the fresh disappointment of learning that the taxi company won't earn them a cent, there is the seemingly unanswerable question of why criminal investigations haven't been strongly pushed for, which is ultimately why the newspapers remain forced to tack on an almost farcical 'alleged' to an offence which by his own admission O'Brien is guilty of.

Minister for Justice suggests ATM charge to deter kidnappings.

It's a story that could have come straight from the back page of the Irish Examiner, the space on one of Ireland's broadsheets reserved for ridiculous stories such as 'man escapes from prison through toilet', yet the story involves an Irish Cabinet Minister and a very real suggestion to deter kidnappings by increasing ATM charges.

If you're scratching your head at how on Earth this proposal was supposed to work, I think everybody but Dermot Ahern, Ireland's Minister for Justice and Law Reform, is wondering precisely that.

The context is that Ireland has suffered a spate of so-called 'tiger kidnappings' in recent years. Incidents in which a bank official's spouse or partner is held up until the bank official hands over a substantial sum of cash to the kidnappers.

Such incidents have increased dramatically in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, and are now a staple of broadsheet crime and court reporting.

The immediate impetus for the Minister's unexpected suggestion was a tiger kidnapping which saw a Dublin robber making away with €300,000 in cash after terrorizing a bank official and his unfortunate wife.

While the tiger kidnapping could unfortunately have been expected, I very much doubt that anybody was expecting to hear the Justice Minister's colorful suggestion: to increase charges at ATM machines.

The logic - according to the pundits - was this: greater ATM charges deter people from withdrawing money from ATMs; in turn, people use 'plastic money' such as bank cards mor often; in turn there is less cash in circulation; and finally, there's less cash about the place for robbers to try rob, so tiger kidnappings are reduced or entirely obliterated.

This might be the sort of earnest suggestion to a problem that you'd expect from a grade-schooler, yet it's somewhat worrying that it comes from Ireland's Justice Minister - and was discussed, if the headlines are to believed, with various high-ranking bank officials. The Minister's afterword that Ireland was lagging behind the rest of Europe in becoming a cashless society is very true, but not in the way Ahern intended.

Perhaps a better suggestion on the part of the Minister might have been to ensure that local police forces have more than batons to combat the increasing numbers of armed and dangerous robbers plying their trade by the doors of the country's banks.

Above all the Minister's suggestion is telling of an Irish government who's idea of solving problems involves heaping on more tax and making the majority of the population pay for the misbehaviour of a minority.

The Criminal Justice Psychoactive Substances Bill was cut from the same cloth. Make all psychoactive plants illegal because a few people take mind-altering drugs was the logic; unfortunately it became law.

The Minister's ATM proposal throws an already wounded and limping government even further into ridicule and disarray.

Let's hope that the Irish people can elect a Justice Minister who can come up with a better idea for stopping tiger kidnappings than increasing ATM fees in the next general election.

Student Unions ratch up pressure on "half baked" Minister

The students are revolting again.

And while that may not be news to anyone, their latest spate of irateness may.

An unusually strongly-worded press release from the University College Cork (UCC) Student Union called Ireland's Minister for Trade, Employment and - ironically - Innovation "half baked" and "lackluster" in his approach to stemming the rising tide of graduate unemployment.

Daithi Linnane, the Union's Deputy President, repeated a call first made by the national equivalent of the UCCSU to "get real" on the issue.

The press releases capture acurately a building frustration among Ireland's youth at the fact that despite holding enviable academic qualifications like Masters and PhDs they're unable to hold down or even get a job position - even at the local grocery store. Openings at petrols stations are regularly inundated with hundreds of resumes - that's how bad it's gotten.

A recent protest in Dublin was directed against the exact same phenomenon. Students chose to protest outside the famine ship memorial, the message being that the Airbus 330 has replaced the old bows and oars of the infamous famine ships which were the visible symbols of the last wave of forced emigration; the e-ticket and Shannon Airport being the iconic images of this one.

As a student this latest news-piece has a more visceral effect than most.

Unlike, say, a piece about the American recession, which I may read with distant and detached empathy, there's something very personal about the graduate unemployment dilema.

The reason, of course, is that in a little under a year I'll be one of those graduates. Holding a BCL law degree from UCC I too may be joining the ranks of the SU and discommoded students protesting against a bleak future - and heading into an unknown one.

No easy answers for government on third level fees issue.

The Irish government looks bereft of easy answers to the increasingly complex third level fees issue.

With Ireland just beginning to peek its head out of a recession of staggering depth and proportions, the Government has some hard choices to make if it’s going to abide by its promise to not bring in third level fees, as Minister for Education Mary Coughlan made last week.

Ireland’s avowed economic mission for the twenty-first century is to become a so-called 'smart-economy', one based on its citizens' educational skills and abilities. This mission, though, hinges largely on its ability to produce a large crop of graduates with advanced degrees every year, and for this third level funding is requried.

Such graduates, however, require extensive training, and this, of course, is provided in the nation’s universities, which run – as do all institutions – at a cost.

But therein lies the problem.

Ireland is in the anomalous situation of being one of the few countries in the world which doesn’t charge tuition fees for a university education, a concept which must seem absurd to Americans' used to forking out or borrowing six digit sums to keep their children, or themselves, in 'school', as Americans call it.

And while that’s good news for Irish students, for the Irish government it translates into something of a headache, or more recently perhaps, into a massive migraine.

On the same day that the Minister for Education swore her promise to not introduce tuition fees during that government's "lifespan" in power, she told the Irish nation that economist Dr Colin Hunt, the man heading the Government-appointed commission to look into the fees funding issue, is leaning increasingly in favour of concluding that third level fees are both inevitable and drastically necessary.

This looks likely to pit Ireland's leadership against expert opinion on the matter, something makes the economic viability of the decision look even more improbable.

To make a bad situation worse, though, 77,123 students applied through Ireland's admissions system, the CAO (rough equivalent of the Common Application) to enter third level education in 2010-2011.

Although this figure may seem small by American standards, it's the largest ever recorded in Ireland, and seems likely to make an already difficult financial situation impossible.

The figure is the by-product of a trend in Irish society to continue in third level education rather than enter the desolate workforce, where jobs are as scare as water in an African desert, though doesn't look likely to abate in future years as the recession hangover draws on.

Newsweek magazine recently named Ireland's Prime Minister Brian Cowen as one of the ten top leaders in the world. If Cowen and his cabinet can find a way to grant entry to this year's massive application-load without compromising on the no-fees promise he will well and truly have earned that accolade.

Larry Murphy release shows Irish justice system up for the joke that it is.

Although it's hard to draw many positives from the release after a mere decade in jail of a sexual offender whose attack was so astoundingly violent that even the police service seem to remain in palpable fear, perhaps the one good thing to come out of it is that the world is now talking about - and laughing at - the decrepit state of the Irish justice system.

As one commenter did well to note on this website: "you double park you get a day in court , you kill someone you get a pat on the back." Of course that's a bit exaggerated, but there's more than a kernel of truth there.

The Irish justice system was built on the solid backbone of our own ancient Brehon law, and more recently from the English Common Law. Yet from these solid foundations, something began to crumble.

Among the many problems facing the Irish justice system as it stands today is that unlike Ronseal - the trust gardening paint of that famous commercial - it doesn't do what it says on the tin.

A 'life sentence', according to the latest figures, now works out at a little over 17 years, which is just one year shorter than the average lifespan of a black forest bear, but certainly comes nowhere close to matching the natural lifespan of a flesh and blood mortal.

But the real problem - besides these farcical 'life sentences' - is the ubiquity of the 'suspended sentence', whereby the 'prisoner' avoids prison by abiding by certain conditions, most of which are usually met.

Unlike in America, where suspended sentences are generally reserved only for first time offenders, the suspended sentence is a staple at almost all levels of the Irish criminal justice system. In 2008 a sister convicted of the manslaughter of her brother got such a deal from the Central Criminal Court. Calling this a shambles wouldn't go far enough.

One of the 'courts' section articles which abides in my memory was an absolute gem of a story which the trusty Irish Independent picked up on last September.

The article stated that one in seven prisoners had to be released from Irish prisons because of of overcrowding.

This meant that up to 600 inmates at a time were walking free on temporary release simply because there wasn't enough room for them in the nation's prisons. There could be one outside my window.

There are times, many time, when the famously laid-back Irish approach to life provides great humour.

When you come back home from somewhere as high stress and hard working as America to road work crews packing up for the day at 4:00pm there's a bit of a laugh and a charm there.

But having arguably the most inefficient and hopelessly lenient criminal justice system in the world - as demonstrated by the Larry Murphy release - is cause for only shame. Yet who's counting on change?

Flood report a step forward

News of the Oireachtas Environment Committee taking a shot at the government over its response to two natural disasters is a healthy sign of a well functioning democracy in Ireland.

Ireland really wasn’t riding its luck last winter. In November a massive “one in eight-hundred years” flood devastated the country, and shorty afterwards, in January, the country was literally frozen still by a protracted cold snap.

Despite the monumentally bad luck the government faced in having to cope with not one but two natural disasters in a winter, though, it didn’t exactly shine forth in brilliance with its response.

Being in Ireland both during the floods and the cold snap I saw first hand just how poorly the “authorities” dealt with both situations.

Salt ran out; rivers were flooded; people were airlifted; it was a mess.

Perhaps the most blackly comical moment of the whole episode came in Cork, when the ESB (Ireland’s national electricity company) made a bad situation worse by opening a dam floodgate which led to even more flooding in an already swamped city. Talk about planning!

That was funny in a 'only in Ireland' sort of way, unless, of course, you were one of the people being rafted down the quays by the fire service or found your car afloat the next day. Then, of course, the humour was well and truly lost on you.

And rightfully so, that blunder will be the subject of an “independent investigation” at some indefinite point in time, but then again the initial one into the whole fiasco ordered by the Minister for the Environment hasn’t been completed yet, as the thick of another winter looms just a few months away.

The ‘big freeze’, just over a month later, was another fantastic spectacle of governmental incompetence.

Returning home from America from a short stay, I found a country in devastation. Supplies of road gritting salt were almost completely depleted and the government was busy fussing over how to get some more salt and from whom, while some of the country's most important thoroughfares remained impassable.

It was hard to believe that lots of the roads around Cork simply weren’t being gritted because there wasn’t enough to go around. Yes of course, they "hadn't anticipated" this level of ice, global warming only made the world hotter.

The sight to top it all off, though, came after the ice had thawed, when I saw a massive truckload of gritting salt making its way hopelessly and uselessy to Tivoli Docks, presumably for storage for next winter. The much anticipated salt, apparently, had arrived too late.

Anyone Irish or foreign in the country, or perhaps reading about it for the first time now, would realize that something was seriously amiss here.

Yet how much have things changed?

Here’s an interesting experiment. Open up another tab, go to Google, and type in ‘Ireland emergency’, see what comes up, open another tab, then type in ‘NYC emergency’.

At least from what I have here in New York, the first result in the Ireland search is a Wikipedia entry about The Emergency in Ireland (WWII), followed by some newspaper articles, followed by a satirical comedy team.

The first result in the US search brings up the NYC Office of Emergency Management.

What does that tell you about Ireland's emergency planning?

Fortunately all hope isn’t lost. The very fact that the Oireachtas Environment Committee published a report is to be welcomed. So is the forthcoming one urged to be published by this November. The Minister for the Environment's response that the government did everything in its powers is merely to be expected.

It takes a man to admit his own faults, and it’s good to see that Ireland’s political class finally seems to have acknowledged - at least in some circles - that the management of the disaster was almost as big a catastrophe as the floods and ice themselves.

Perhaps we can hope for a more successful winter this time round; though I'm hanging on to any spare salt just in case!

Nude Bike Race a Great Idea

The county that’s promising to bring Ireland its first ever installation of the wacky Paddy Games brought together 56 daring cyclists to pedal naked around the streets of Cork in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Co.Cork, proudly and aptly known as The Rebel County, hosted the event to roughly coincide with the Cork Cycling Arts Festival. It got underway at 5:45am, and despite the typically dismal weather conditions and half-frozen participants it was a roaring success by all accounts.

The recurring theme from the news reports, which are already in, was the encouraging reception the motley troupe of naked riders got from the general public, which was described as constantly positive and involved much hooting and cheering.

This is good, but it’s more than their nudity that the Irish public was cheering on; it was their positivity and bravado.

As the Irish Time’s Shane Hegarty remarks in this excellent column, the very concept of mass nudity marks a step forward in Irish society. Whereas just a few short years ago mass displays of public nudity were viewed with a jaundice eye, they’re now more widespread than ever before.

From University College Cork’s nude campus quad run during RAG week, to famous naturalist photographer Spencer Tunick’s nude photoshoots in Blarney and Dublin and of course nude bike trecks, it seems like everyone - or at least a lot of people - are getting naked and having a good time!

What it all points to is a welcome liberalization of a once somewhat repressed society; a subtle but perceptible shift in the public’s perception of nudity, and the welcome revelation that having a laugh is sometimes more important than following boring social norms. Best of all it’s a great and creative thing to do during a recession. Although you’d be hard-pressed to argue that it has a positive economic effect on the country, (nude cycling tourism, perhaps?) it certainly seems to have put a lot of smiles on faces, which certainly helps immensely.

Just yesterday Moody’s credit rating agency gave its weighty seal of disapproval to the flailing Irish economy, downgrading the whole country’s credit rating to a sub-optimal AA2 standard. That’s the kind of negativity Ireland is dealing with on a daily basis and perhaps this is one of the small ways which with it combats it. And if so, what harm?

If only the government were half as entertaining and good at creating diversions as the folks organizing this fine idea perhaps Moody’s dismal credit downgrade wouldn’t even make the national news, and people would have a lot more reasons to smile! Let’s hope that day arrives.