Report finds that Irish Dept. of finance has 'shockingly low' amount of economists

Here's one we could have foreseen.

The Wright Report into the shadowy underworld of the Irish Department of Finance, the government department responsible, among other achievements, for overseeing the financial implosion of the Irish economy and IMF bailout, has found that the Department continues to suffer from a 'shockingly low' level of expertise in the form of qualified economists working at the Department, while also shedding light on ousted leader Cowen's claims that he wasn't briefed on the imminent meltdown of the economy before it all went bust.

So what's more surprising, that politicians were lying or that a Department of Finance lacks qualified economists? Given the choice I'd probably vouch for the latter.

The Report itself was (almost) perfect, but spoiled, at least for some, by the fact that the (then) Minister for Finance himself, Brian Lenihan, actually sat on its committee for the duration of its deliberations, before being handed its final draft several months before it was made available to the punters on the street, conveniently after the general election had taken place.

What effect this had on perhaps diluting the strength of the report's findings we can only guess, but it would seem to cut entirely against the grain of an independent watchdog-style report to have the head of the group being investigating ranking among its committee members.

That be as it may, though, the Report still delivers some fascinating glimpses into the inner workings of the Department of Finance Upper Merrion Street, and the Report's head, Canadian Department of Finance secretary Rob Wright, makes some worthwhile recommendations. The only problem is that all this verbiage would have been helpful before the whole house came tumbling down (a popular Irish political forums website, politics.ie, categorizes it as the 'Wright Report at the Wrong Time').

Here's just some of what the Department was found to have done before the financial crash:

• The Department 'lacked coherence across its divisions' in its responses to various financial challenges.
• It didn't recognise the risk to the tax system posed by a very pro-tax policy which was being pursued for quite some time.
• All this, the Report says, could have been due to a shortage of qualified economists and financial market experts working at the Department during that time. Which is what's really worrying!

There are other conclusions but I think the main message was that the Department lacked the staff to fully realize how bad the policy it was pursuing was, and failed - in large part - to communicate the warnings to a government, who seem to have been slow to pay heed to their advice at the best of times.

Like most official Reports the full version doesn't make for riveting bedtime reading, but at least a Report was undertaken into what went wrong before the financial collapse. The only problem was that it was too little too late.

Legal dirty laundry - Ireland sued by the European Commission

Ireland is being sued.

It sounds strange doesn't it, unexpected? But not only is it happening at the moment, with the European Commission deciding to press further legal action against Ireland for continued non-compliance with an environmental directive so uninteresting that even the newspapers reporting the story didn't bother explain what it concerned, but it's costing Ireland a good deal of money in the process.

It's part of a long tradition, though.

I first learned of Ireland's somewhat renegade status within the so-called legal European order during a course on European Union law that I took at college last year. Ireland, being a member of the European Union, is expected to implement hundreds and thousands of directives and regulations, the collective output of European Union law, each and every year.

The only problem with this situation is that Ireland has the rather lovable and rebellious tendency of frequently not bothering to do so, or 'failing to transcribe Community legislation into domestic provisions' as the Eurocrats would probably be more likely to describe it. All this rebellion results in a long series of court-cases, fines, and condemnation from the European Union of which the farming directive case is but the latest.

It reminds me a bit of that classic scene in Team America  in which a puppeteer-ed Hans Blix is made tell a the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il that he will "be very angry" with him over his nuclear weapons program and then "write a letter telling you how angry we are" if he fails to change his tune.

The only difference with Ireland is that its paying a hefty price for those angry letters from Brussels.

The latest lawsuit which I'm referring to is the second time that Ireland's been taken to a European court for failing to implement a farming environmental directive, the precise contents of which is probably too boring to be explained, but whatever exactly it concerns, our persistence in not implementing it is going to land us a €3.2m bill in fines from the Union.

What I find extraordinary about this - besides the whole situation of Ireland being repeatedly sued, which I must admit I find somewhat delightfully roguish of us - is that fewer journalists have questioned how this situation can go unchallenged given Ireland's current economic crisis.

All Ireland generally has to do to "implement" or "transcribe" a European regulation or directive is to pass a Ministerial Order, amending Act, or make some other small changes necessary to bring its domestic law into accordance with the European framework. It tends to change from case to case but when all but the most serious changes are required (at which stage it can go to national referendum), the changes are generally simple and straightforward.

For that reason it would appear to be very hard to justify this current court case. Not only in light of the above, but also in light of the fact that this is in fact the second time that we're being sued for not implementing this directive. The first time it happened we said we'd changed our ways. Again, somewhat amusingly, we simply didn't.

Whatever about Ireland's apparently low respect for European/Community law, though, gifting the European Union millions in unnecessary fines is simply stupid and a massive waste of taxpayers money.

If only we could learn from our mistakes.