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.