Michael D poised for victory in long presidential race for The Aras

Michael D Higgins

As I write this on Friday lunchtime, Irish time, it is looking likely that Michael D Higgins will be the ninth President of Ireland.

Although official counts will not be announced for a few hours yet, early tallies are suggesting Michael D surging ahead, with erstwhile poll favorite Sean Gallagher in a distant second and Martin McGuinness in third. According to a Red C telephone poll carried out on behalf of RTÉ, the last week of the campaign has been the difference between a two horse race and a near assured victory for Higgins, with over half of the 28% of people who switched their vote in the last few days drifting away from Gallagher. 

Given the scope and function of the Presidency, such campaigns always seem unusually hard-hitting and dramatic. In 1990 there was Brian Lenihan’s “mature recollection” and Pee Flynn’s outrageous comments about Mary Robinson’s new found interest in her family. In 1997 there was Adi Roche and allegations of bullying, and Mary McAleese being a tribal time bonb. And this year, perhaps because of the volume of candidates, the mud flew higher and faster. There was Norris and his letters, Davis and her state boards, Higgins and his age, McGuinness and his IRA past, Mitchell and his general disagreeability, Dana and her family feud, and the fact her husband and brother drove on a puncture.

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And then there was Sean Gallagher. As with Lenihan, it wasn’t so much the charges that were thrown at him so much as the way he reacted that precipitated a turn away in support. His responses to McGuinness’ accusations on The Frontline, accusations about Fianna Fail and fundraising he really should have prepared for, were all over the place. In the ensuing melee, he gifted phrases like “no recollection”, “envelope” and “bagman for Fianna Fáil”. His reaction to Frontline audience questioner Glenna Lynch, the objectivity of whom he tried to question, was disastrous. 

But at the end of the day, Gallagher’s connections to Fianna Fáil, or the apparently “money resting in my account” state of his finances, weren’t in and of themselves reasons to vote against him. The fact he was a stunningly uninspiring candidate who, to quote the template for Presidents everywhere, Jed Bartlet, “made being unengaged into a Zen-like thing” should have been enough. And yet, it took a coven full of Galway Races Tent incantations to finally put people off him. 

The Presidency isn’t the only vote going down today of course, with a by-election and two referenda also being counted. While Labour look good in Dublin West, the referenda are likely to go 1-1, with the Judges Pay referendum passing and the Oireachtas Inquiry referendum getting defeated quite decisively. In other words, today has been a complete cataclysm for Fine Gael. Failing to get a second TD in Dublin West is one thing, but failing to pass a key piece of legislative reform is a big dent for them. And Gay Mitchell potentially finishing this election on single figures is wading in to condiments poured on cuts territory.

There’s many hours to go before we know for sure and certain what’s going on, but at this stage there can be little doubt that Michael D Higgins is set to take up residence in Aras An Uachtarain. There’s less doubt still that he’ll do a terrific job when that declaration is made official.

Ireland's unemployment crisis - job bridge scheme and the future

Dole queue in north Dublin

Ireland’s recent chastened economic woe has not only hit pockets and confidence, but also language and action. More and more, people aren’t so much “working” as “keeping busy.”

In my parents’ time, there were certain jobs available to people (the civil service, the bank, the farm, teaching or nursing) and most of them were long-term, secure and pensionable. The world we live and attempt to work in is now unrecognizable.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not yearning for the fadó fadó days of narrow vocationalism by any stretch. It’s a marvelous thing to have not only a greater choice of jobs but better knowledge transfer and employment mobility, but as is often the case with Ireland we have oscillated from one extreme to the other with no concern for balance.

Currently, we have all the insecurity and uncertainty of mobile employment without the range or variety of jobs to make it work. Therefore, we have a host of young people struggling to find any job in any market, not least the one for which they’re qualified, and often multi-qualified.

With so much demand and so little supply, hiring practices have taken on a moral dimension. More and more young people trying to advance their careers are having to do more for less. With employers holding the cards and graduates desperate for experience, remuneration often amounts to “a lovely time and a good reference.”

The lines between serving your time and being outright exploited are being horribly blurred.

Instead of the pillars of employment of old we now have Job Bridge, a catastrophic attempt at a work scheme that has rightly drawn snorts of derision for being laden with jobs either too ridiculous (waitressing and cleaning) or too advanced in their requirements (a whole host of the media ones) to warrant a (much too long) nine month stretch of an “internship” for the princely price of the dole and a little bonus sprinkled on top. It’s not how they do things in Holland.

While I was in Brussels at the EU Open Days event, I attended a seminar that showcased the Dutch policy for tackling youth unemployment. Some of the proposals were a bit out there, and it’s far from a perfect system either, but on the whole their approach was multi-faceted, well coordinated and well targeted.

Amazingly, it’s illegal to leave Dutch school at 18 without a qualification of some kind, and people younger than 27 have to comply by the rather rigorous rules or they don’t receive dole at all. The flipside is there is a large structure in place to avoid that happening. The job fair circuit is an industry all of itself, along with a multitude of other initiatives such as work coaches, youth covenants and subsidies and premiums for business owners who co-operate actively in the process, as well as a robust internship and training sector. As a result, their unemployment rate among young people is half that in the BMW region (borders, midlands, west) of Ireland. The Dutch themselves sum up their plan thusly: partnership, personnel, political prudence and pressure. The Irish plan brings to mind another word that stars with “P”.

While in Brussels I also talked to Connie Hanniffy, a county councilor from Offaly and senior member of the Irish delegation on the Committee of the Regions, being appointed to the continental committee by three different leaders of Fine Gael and with a particular interest in enterprise, business and employment. She claimed that we not only have to concentrate on more funding for skills and jobs, but we have to concentrate attention on who gets that funding.

“We’re missing the very people we need to get at” claimed Hanniffy. “We need to be getting to people with traditions of unemployment in their family and their community and provide schemes for those that haven’t had the direction. We need to engage with many people on a partnership basis.”

She also pointed to the role EU funding can have in job creation and re-skilling, pointing to the globalisation fund for erstwhile construction workers and funding for people wishing to start up their own business and mentoring. “You can’t subsidise your way into business but a structure is needed for business to survive. They may have good ideas but they may need help getting access to markets. Businesses need to interlink and find new ways of doing things.”

On the more general question of the job market and the sort of jobs people do and the way they do them, Hanniffy pointed to the fantastic example she saw in Berlin, where more and more jobs were coming from the burgeoning creative sector. She also saw an important role for educational facilities. “It’s up to colleges and universities not to try and pack courses, to provide balance and offer different boxes. I think this is what has been wrong in the past”.

Of all the things Ireland is currently short on, talent is not one of them. And any future prosperity the country has will be determined by how serious government, business and all other interested stakeholders take the job of building a structure where that talent is valued and put to best use.

The EU and Ireland - the importance of being close to Boston and Brussels

During the tremulous time following the 1992 general election, the embattled Taoiseach Albert Reynolds was handed a lifeline. With his grasp on power hanging in the balance, Reynolds went to an EU summit in Edinburgh at the end of that year and secured £8billion in European structural funds. Even his most optimistic supporters were expecting something closer to six. Emboldened, Reynolds told his press secretary, “Now watch me put a government together”.

That money was not only was an instrumental element in keeping Reynolds in power, it also became a vital element of policy. In the years since 1992, all manner of capital projects have the EU’s starry prints all over it. From the Luas and the M50 to research facilities and local enterprise boards, and whether it’s widely known or accepted or not, the EU’s structural funds helped build an entire national infrastructure.

Small wonder then that the EU’s Open Days event, run by the Directorate General for Regional Policy, is such a big draw. It’s the single biggest event the EU hosts every year, with thousands of interested parties coming from every townland in Europe. This year, I was one of them. 

A couple of things struck me from the start. First, structural funds may not be the silver bullet they once were, both because of relative year-on-year improvements and the banking cataclysm, but they’re still vital as a means of realising key investments. The second thing I found striking was how clear the focus was on what those key investments would be: emerging business and research. It may have been roads in the past, but from here on in, it’s SME and R&D.

There were other talking points and debates that ran through the week. “Macroeconomic conditionality” became the unlikely catchphrase of the whole event, with a strenuous debate revolving round whether sanctioning regions or countries that don’t use their funds properly would disproportionately affect the poorest countries who needed the money most. Then there was the issue of credit. For once in a European context, we weren’t referring to the debt kind.

Often, money distributed to the respective government departments of Europe is appropriated as such. Since any structural fund money has to be matched by national governments, the European influence can often be underplayed or lost altogether. In a time when passive Euroscepticism is becoming more and more fashionable, the way the EU asserts itself in this regard is becoming more and more important. 

Plenary sessions and debates aside there were also a host of seminars where people could showcase the ways they used their funding. One particularly interesting session involved Holland and its approach to tackling youth unemployment, the scope of which puts our own much-maligned Job Bridge to shame.

Over the next weeks I’ll be considering the finer points of some of the issues brought up in Brussels, and with the announcement in the last week of The Gathering in 2013, it’s important to balance the relationship with our friends within and without Europe. Being close to Boston doesn’t mean we have to ignore Berlin.

Debating with the stars - candidates for president put to the test

Irish presidential candidates

We’re up to our eyes in Presidential al debates at the minute. First Sean O’Rourke took the magnificent seven into RTE’s far-from spacious radio studios for a ferocious grilling, followed by Ryan Tubridy’s parboil on the Late Late. But on Tuesday night, TV3’s Vincent Browne lobbed them all in a microwave and set it to high for 90 minutes. 

Vincent Browne’s interviewing style can easily be summed up in one phrase – “Why aren’t you crying yet?” – and therefore the debate, while compelling TV, generated more heat than light as it highlighted Vincent’s ability to be a relentless badass above pretty much everything else. 

So in view of the showmanship that has become a prerequisite of the campaign, and given the fact Dancing With The Stars is concurrently cutting a swathe/rug Stateside at the minute, I figured the only way to assess the Presidential candidates was Len Goodman-stylee:

Martin McGuinness

Vincent’s interrogation style was water off this duck’s back and he came across very composed, as Gay Mitchell’s insistence on throwing epithets at him just gave him a chance to look more Presidential. 

Vincent pulling out a range of books alleging he was in the IRA was a sensational stunt, but the thud of a library on his desk drowned out some pretty ground-breaking things said by McGuinness, including referencing the Somme and Ulster Solemn League and Covenant in relation to centenary commemoration. His insistence on telling us he only wants to be paid in tea and biscuits is getting a bit repetitive, but his steady performance combined with the hysterical bleating his candidacy is causing is making him a contender. Score: 8/10

Mary Davis

Even with the strutting in neon suits on her posters, there’s something oddly staid about Davis. Her attempts at positioning herself as Mary III aren’t working, and it’s hard to even recall any great zinger she came out with during the night beyond the usual gubbins about her board appointments. This was borne out on the TV3 website, the viewers of which deemed her to have placed joint dead last. On the face of it, someone with her experience and background should be a much more appealing candidate, but something is missing. Rating: 5/10

Michael D Higgins

Ireland’s own wizard poet took an economical approach to speaking during the debate, backing away from the contentious scraps and speaking in measured, statesmanlike tones. He probably demonstrated that he gets the role best of all the candidates, quoting articles of the constitution left, right and centre. The only one sticky issue was when Vincent attacked his role in government being at variance with being an independent thinker, particularly in relation to the tax amnesty of ’93. Michael D responded with rare straightforward honesty: he wasn’t proud of it but used the money to buy Collins Barracks military museum. Score: 9/10

Dana

Disaster. No matter what the topic, she brought it back to her central point: that the President is the only person that can stop the EU from plying the constitution with sweeties and bundling it into a van. More suited to running for Mayor of Wasilla than President of Ireland. Score: 1/10

Sean Gallagher

The country version of 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy has gone up in a lot of people’s estimation since the campaign, even coming second in a recent poll. He did however get a hammering about his Fianna Fáil past. He talked with clarity and confidence, but I can’t really remember what he was saying while being clear and confident. Score: 6/10

Gay Mitchell 

Somebody needs to have a word. There may be a parallel dimension in which Gay Mitchell constantly going after Martin McGuinness is working, but it’s not this one. He spoke well at points but ultimately comes off too tetchy and obsessed to make any real impression. Call off your goons, Gay! Score: 5/10

David Norris

His penchant for pressing the big red button strikes again. Most commentators compared his inability to answer the legal questions surrounding his letters to Israel to Brian Lenihan’s “mature Recollection” meltdown on the RTE news 21 years ago. The sad part is that when he spoke well he was excellent, on mental health issues and his fight to get homosexuality decriminalised for instance, but his cumulative performance did him no favours. Score: 6/10

What’s the point of a United Ireland? - Martin McGuinness' presidential campaign raises questions

Martin McGuinness

Last week’s column on Martin McGuinness has, to say the least, prompted a great deal of debate. While a lot of it was regarding the rights or wrongs of the circumstances of McGuinness and by extension Republicanism in general, some involved the nature and rationale of the conflict itself. But really, what possible reason could there be for a united Ireland?

There are certainly no logical reasons for such a move. In a lot of cases, it seems to me, the desire to unite Ireland comes from a deep-seated case of geographical obsessive compulsion: Ireland is an island, that stands alone on the north Atlantic, and having another country administering a small part of it is just plain messy. The anti-partition school of thought in favor of a United Ireland is related to this, in as much as they claim every political problem from social inequality to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa could be solved by scrubbing the border.

And then there’s the good old irredentists, the ones who maintain the Brits are occupying the six counties and that Ireland is for the Irish, whatever the hell that means. None of these have any real life application. I’ve lived on the border basically all my life and I don’t understand the fervency towards what is and has always been an infeasible pipe-dream.
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The reality is that green post boxes in Strabane will not make Strabane any happier or more prosperous a place to live in. It will not make the villages between Strabane and Derry that paint their curbs red, white and blue and brandish union flags and ensigns any more favorable to Ireland, or any less attached to Britain. It will not change the fact that whatever the nationality of the people who live in those villages, they can probably trace their family roots as far back on this island as anyone.

Besides, a lot of Donegal Catholics have Scottish planter lineage too who converted at some point along the way. They’re hardly more Irish because of that. Britain handing over the deeds to Northern Ireland would not have any positive transformative effect. Combining our forces will not create a land of milk and honey.

As the recent Life and Times survey bears out (see link above), this isn’t a niche opinion. Most people in Ireland, northern Catholics or otherwise, are much more concerned about tackling social and economic matters than eternally gazing through a national prism. Besides, Ireland has always been much more complex and interwoven than the irredentists like to imagine.

Taking Donegal as an example, we have much more tangible connection with Glasgow than we do with Cork, lovely a place as it is. It’s much easier and quicker to get to Glasgow from Letterkenny than it is to Cork too. People where I’m from who live in the Republic often do a lot of their shopping, socializing and even working across the border, the presence of which forms no impediment to traveling or interacting. In Padraig Pearse’s proclamation nearly one hundred years ago, he talked about freedom and liberty, about equal rights and opportunity, about pursuing happiness and prosperity.

As our access to the world and its different cultures becomes greater and greater, so long as we fight for those principles does it really matter what flags are flying overhead?