I left Ireland in 2007 at the height of the economic boom there, the unemployment rate was under 5%1, house prices had gone through the ceiling and the head of state had suggested that anyone who thought there might be an end to the boom should go and kill themselves. I passed through Philly in March 2008 and the news from back home was not so good as the international banking collapse was having its impact. That June I moved back to Ireland, and from then on the economy went into free fall, pushed over the edge by property speculation, which had grown exponentially in the previous decade.
It has been revealed that the decade long resistance of the people of Erris to Shell’s experimental gas pipeline has now wiped out Shell’s projected profits from the project. Brian O’Cathain, the Managing Director of Enterprise Energy Ireland let the cat out of the bag at a debate at the IFI on the 4th December. Instead of the 650 million dollars the project was intended to cost, Shell & partners have now spent over 3 billion dollars.
November 24th the Irish government announced the details of the four year plan required as part of the ECB / IMF ‘bailout’ of the banks. There will be five billion worth of new taxes and 10 billion worth of cuts under this so called ‘National Recovery’ which in reality will take 10% out of GDP. As we show below almost all these costs are being dumped on workers, particularly low paid workers, the very sector that gained little or nothing during the boom years. the richest 1% are left with most of their legal tax dodges in particular the ability to avoid paying tax at all if they spend 6 months on holidays out of the country. [
Even the Irish Times has now editorialized against the IMF intervention but like most of the emerging mainstream concerns the Times is not concerned about the cuts in jobs, wages and welfare that the IMF will be used to impose. No their concern is for the loss of ‘sovereignty’ as IMF intervention results in a rise in populist cross class nationalism, a tide which ironically the ruling party, which is bringing in the IMF to make the cuts it would like to, will be best placed to ride.
It’s now official, the Irish state is in talks with the EU and the IMF about a so called ‘rescue plan’ to bail out the Irish capitalist class from the disaster created by the international crash of the capitalist economic system. A crisis that was magnified in Ireland by the corruption of local crony capitalism on the one hand and the dependency of the economy on ‘globalization’ on the other. Trapped between such a cast of crooks and idiots it is perhaps not surprising that many in Ireland hope things will be improved when the running of our lives will be handed over to those who many hope might have a clue. [
WSM reporters took part in the student march against Garda Brutality in Dublin called by Free Educations for Everyone and the Students in Solidarity networks. Over 600 people took part in the demonstration which marched from the Wolfe Tone statue to Pearse street police station.
Saturday 30th October saw the WSM take part in the latest 1% Network event, an after dark Halloween Treasure Hunt around Dublin’s exclusive Shewsbury and Ailesbury roads taking in the mansions of multi millionare bankers, developers and financers as well as the HQ of Allied Irish Bank and the 32 million in tax avoidance of the luxury Four Seasons hotel. The tour was led off by a vampire capitalist accompanied by a contingent of Zombie bankers and developers and ghost estates with the vampire showing how much wealth was present at each stop and explaining the contacts between the 1%, the media and the government that enabled them to make hundreds of millions during the tiger. The tour was accompanied by uniformed Gardai and a car of special branch political police. The 1% network is a coalition of socialist groups including the WSM, eirigi, ISN and Semora Spraoi formed to highlight the fact that the richest 1% own 34% of the wealth.