Tuesday's news Ireland Blog by Donie

Ireland’s Fiscal treaty referendum to be held on Thursday the 31 May

The Tánaiste has announced that the referendum on the fiscal treaty will take place on Thursday 31 May.

       

Eamon Gilmore made the announcement this afternoon

A Referendum Commission is likely to be established to oversee the public information campaign in the run-up to the vote.

Eamon Gilmore announced the date in the Dáil this afternoon, after the Cabinet approved the timing of the vote.

Arriving at Government Buildings this morning, Mr Gilmore said the referendum campaign will about the stability for the euro and the Government will make that case to the people.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the announcement brought clarity to the issue and he said his party would be supporting a Yes vote.

Mr Martin said that given the short timeframe it was important that a good information campaign be launched. He asked the Government to bring out a White Paper.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said the Government had tried to avoid a referendum and he said Sinn Féin believed it to be a bad treaty.

Mr Adams said the treaty would cost the country an extra €6bn in cuts and it will give too much power to unelected administrators in Brussels.

He said his party would be campaigning vigorously against it.
Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins said the treaty would mean permanent austerity.

Mr Higgins asked the Government to explain why a clause was inserted in February blocking access to EU funds in the event of a No vote, the so-called Blackmail clause.

Elsewhere, the Taoiseach has said that he is quite sure that the people will vote positively in the referendum.

Speaking in China, Enda Kenny said ratifying the treaty was a matter of good housekeeping, as no one would ever want to see a situation again where a Government could run riot with the people’s money and the people’s future.

Mr Kenny said that a Yes vote would be a statement of confidence about the future of Ireland.

The latest indication of public opinion came in a Red C poll at the weekend in the Sunday Business Post, which showed a reduction in the number of undecided voters to 18%.

After they were excluded, the Yes side was ahead of the No side by 60% to 40%.

Dear Phil, if you want the household tax paid ‘just ask the people nicely’ 

'like asking for a vote'

Writes Fergus Finlay

   

Dear Phil I was going to write about the Mahon Tribunal this week, but your need is more urgent  (I know you’ve never asked for my advice, but you’re going to get it anyway — mainly because I agree with what you’re trying to do).

The Mahon Tribunal, in my humble opinion, changes the Irish political landscape for ever, and in the most profound ways. That will become more and more clear as time goes by, and no doubt the like of me will be writing lots and lots about it.

But Phil, you have a deadline to make this week. As things look right now, you’re not going to make it. And as a result, you and the Government are going to look more than a bit damaged.

The deadline I’m talking about, of course, is the March 31 deadline for payment of the household charge. The main reason you’re not going to meet the deadline is because you made a bags of it. It’s one of those classic political no-wins. If you don’t get the tax in, your reputation for competence is damaged. If you back down on it, your credibility is seriously undermined. So is the credibility of the whole government. And so, most seriously of all, is the case of a more permanent system of property tax.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think if I had your job, I would have made all the same assumptions as you did. I remember when it was announced around budget time, the talk from everyone in Government was “sure, it’s only €2 a week”. That’s certainly what I thought. So I’m not going to do a “holier than thou” piece about what you should have done, because it’s only obvious with the benefit of hindsight.

There were three things that were immediately clear though about the announced household charge. (a) It’s regressive. (b) It’s small. (c) It’s temporary. It’s regressive because it takes no account of ability to pay, but the other two factors make up for that. And it is certainly a step in the right direction — towards a tax system that it better balanced and fairer in the overall sense.

On the basis of those three characteristics, I certainly would not have predicted last December that you’d be in the mess you’re in today. And I wouldn’t have advised you to go about the collection differently. In fact, I like the idea that you can log onto a website and discharge your responsibility in a relatively painless way. I’d have liked it even more if you’d sent me a receipt, but still, it was a smooth and easy operation.

And I certainly would never have advised you to back down in the face of the political opposition that gathered around the household charge. Socialists and social democrats all over the world have long accepted that people who own property should make a contribution to the common good based on that property. Our so-called socialists prefer cheap populism, however, and they certainly don’t deserve to be pandered to.

But it’s a mess, and there’s no getting away from it. By the time you read this, maybe half a million households will have paid up. And by the way, half a million saying OK to the charge, compared with the 3,000 who turned up to a protest meeting on Saturday last, is not too bad. But it’s not nearly enough. You’ll be doing very well to arrive at a point by the weekend where half the eligible population has paid up on time. It will be damn close to a miracle if you reach the figure of a million households by midnight next Saturday.

I’m absolutely convinced, though, that it would be a mistake to assume that the reason people didn’t pay was ideological, philosophical, or political. It was cultural.

You’ve fought a lot of elections, Phil, on your own behalf and on behalf of others. You know as well as I do that the Irish people won’t vote for anyone who doesn’t ask them for their vote. And I’m afraid it’s the same with bills. We don’t pay them if we don’t get them.

Maybe you keep a careful note of when your TV licence is about to expire, Phil, so you’ll never be caught without a licence. If you do (which, I’m sorry to say, I doubt), you’re in a minority of one. The rest of us wait for the renewal. I think if the truth were told, most of us, even though we recognise the importance of the TV licence, wait for several renewals.

And if that’s the case about something that we’re used to, it’s much more likely, when you think about it, that there would be a similar cultural resistance to a new tax — especially a new property tax. Unlike other countries, we don’t do self-assessment in Ireland. If we’re in the PAYE sector, we’re used to seeing it deducted from our wages. Otherwise, we wait for the letter from the taxman.

In short, I don’t think it’s possible to collect tax on the cheap. You have to ask for it, properly, with a letter in the post. If you’d realised that from the beginning (and let me re-emphasise I didn’t either), you’d have spent the first three months of the year getting your ducks in a row. Establishing the names and addresses, distributing the information, and then sending out the bill. And you’d now be waiting for the money to roll in the second three months of the year.

YES, it would have cost a bit, and that would have reduced the yield this year. But it’s really the principle you’re trying to establish, isn’t it? As helpful as the yield from €100 per household would be, the real breakthrough is changing the culture around the principle of a fair property tax.

So here’s my advice, Phil. First, when it’s clear that the arrangements put in place in the first quarter of the year didn’t deliver the goods, don’t blame the people. Take responsibility for any faults or mistakes in the arrangements yourself.

“Don’t blame the people” means that whatever you do, don’t start insisting that everyone who hasn’t paid now has to be hit with penalties and surcharges. It’s too soon for that. Take a step back. Let everyone know that you’re going to spend the next three months making sure that everyone gets a proper invoice (and a receipt if they have already paid).

Sure, there’ll be some short-term embarrassment. But the only way to get everyone signed up is to be reasonable, and to recognise that we have a right to be asked properly. By the end of the year, if you do it right, this present fiasco will be remembered as teething troubles. Of course, if you don’t get it right now, knowing what we know, the phrase “nail in the coffin” comes to mind. And if being reasonable doesn’t work, you could always tell everyone that Bertie Ahern and Pee Flynn are refusing to pay the household charge, and that they’re joining the campaign against it. That ought to persuade everyone else to pay up pronto.

Chinese interest in Ireland is a sign of things to come

      

Some weeks after event, I am still being asked by Chinese journalists and civilians alike: “Why did Xi Jinping go to Ireland?” The answer seems to be a combination of things, ranging from our position in the euro zone to our impending presidency of the EU from next January and, possibly, the fact that Shannon’s free-trade zones provided a model for China’s own version.

But the questioning is becoming more acute in the past few days as the Taoiseach and other senior ministers are in China.

“China is becoming more important and it’s just astonishing the sheer pace of growth,” said Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton, who was visiting Hong Kong and Shenzhen before linking up with the Taoiseach in Shanghai and Beijing.

“Our goal is to introduce Irish companies to the opportunity here. And the Xi Jinping visit was a huge opportunity for Ireland. This is a question of building a relationship.”

China has made numerous vocal pledges to help Ireland and the euro zone in its hour of need, and they have been welcomed by the Government. But now people are wondering if China is maybe heading for a difficult situation itself.

What version of China is Enda Kenny (pictured right with Luo Linquan, the Chinese ambassador to Ireland, in Shanghai last

week), experiencing on his maiden voyage to the world’s fastest-growing major economy? A China facing the prospect of a hard landing or one headed for a soft landing?

It’s a more complicated question than it sounds because many analysts are not too sure about the direction for China right now.

The Shanghai Composite stock index fell more than 1 per cent last week, and the Hang Seng index fell by a similar amount.

There are definitely more bears around than there were before, especially since premier Wen Jiabao said growth would slow to 7.5 per cent this year. Eight per cent is the growth figure usually given as the level below which job creation becomes difficult to guarantee.

Most analysts expect the final out-turn to be higher, possibly by around 8.5 per cent this year. That’s still a marked fall from 9.2 per cent last year. Hard to believe it’s only five years ago that Chinese GDP was expanding at a rate of 14 per cent.

The Chinese manufacturing index, compiled by HSBC, fell to 48.1 in March from 49.6 in February. Figures below 50 indicate that manufacturing is contracting. This came after soft Chinese housing data and a warning from Australian mining, oil and gas company BHP Billiton, which together have stoked concerns about China’s economic outlook in China – which itself has helped cushion the global economy over the past few years.

“The latest People’s Bank of China quarterly survey show that business confidence is improving, household expectations of inflation and future income are stable, and bankers have seen monetary policy being eased. Information in the survey is consistent with our view that economic activity is weak now, but should rebound in the coming months, partly because the government has already eased policy to support growth. We expect new bank lending to return to ‘normal’ in March and Q2, and see limited impact on China from higher oil prices,” said UBS China analyst Wang Tao.

One of the reasons, perhaps, why China is so interested in Ireland is because our situation provides a useful reading on the overall health of the euro zone.

While China will get a lift this year from the recovery in the United States, Europe’s woes are set to be on China’s agenda for some time yet.

35% of babies born today may live to be a 100, but age will bring its own problems

  

More than a third of the babies born in Britain this year could receive a 100th birthday message from whoever happens to be on the throne in the second decade of the 22nd century, according to figures published yesterday by the Office for National Statistics. The office forecasts that 35 per cent of the 826,000 people born in 2012 will live to become centenarians.

In its latest report, entitled What are the Chances of Surviving to Age 100?, the office examines the births of 423,000 boys and 403,000 girls this year. It estimates that 135,000 of the boys and 156,000 of the girls could still be alive in 2112.

A long life is not unalloyed good news. David Sinclair, head of policy and research at the International Longevity Centre UK, warned that for many the future might mean social isolation as they outlive friends and family, physical isolation as they are trapped in unsuitable housing, and poor health.

“It is of course good news that so many more people are living longer,” he said, “but there is a big but. In many ways, today’s centenarians are unrepresentative. They are people who have escaped cancer, heart attack and stroke and so they are actually healthier than many people younger than them. Now that we are getting so much better at keeping people alive, that will no longer be the case. We will be older, but in worse health, and at high risk of living alone in unsuitable accommodation.

“The other problem is that we are very poor at forward planning. We deal with the problems that are under our noses . . . When you’re talking about forecasts for a time half a century away and more, I see no evidence that we are putting in place the measures.”

The news for those turning 65 this year hoping to make it to the same milestone is less heartening: only 10 per cent of men and 14 per cent of women born in 1947 will make it to 100. Women have higher life expectancies at every age; the estimated number of female centenarians has risen from 500 in 1961 to more than 10,000 in 2010.– (Guardian service)