The ESRI says that the Central Bank's mortgage lending rules should be modified to ensure more housing is built. As it happens, they should be modified (but not just yet). The recently retired Governor of the Central Bank probably knew that they would be so possibly opted to make them stiffer than they should be. Changing the rules won't increase supply (certainly not in the short term) but will increase demand. It makes more sense to keep supply and demand as close to equal as possible pending the election of a new government that can get to grips with the housing mess. The current rules are dampening demand at a time when supply is inadequate. That makes sense. (Hopefully, the new Government will opt not to use good land for housing but to go for greater population density, the development of brown sights, etc.)
The debate about mortgage rules should not just be a technical one. Indeed, the technical debate should follow a wider cultural debate about the role of property in society. The technical details are important but the real problem is cultural: how to wean people off thinking about property as a money-making machine. The property industry obviously should be profitable but it is neither necessary nor appropriate for the majority of the population to be players in the industry. Buying a house is the most important asset most people buy but most people buy a house to live in, raise their families in and leave to their descendants. They don't get into the property market for business reasons, except that during the Celtic Tiger many did. The results were predictable.
It is much harder to change cultural practices than laws. Irish society seems to believe that property is a ticket to easy riches. Riches aren't picked up easily anywhere by anyone (other than lottery winners although we should always remember that the famous French PM, Tiger Clemenceau, described lotteries as a tax on idiots). Irish society discovered in 2008 that the property market can be as difficult to negotiate as any other market. I get the impression, however, that the lessons of 2008 are being forgotten and that the love affair with property is on again.
Attempts by the Minister for Finance to put pressure on the Central Bank about mortgage lending rules before the general election were typical of how populist political parties behave. They love to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds, talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time and generally behave like yahoos. That is what has to change. The President (as someone who can talk about cultural issues) and, more pointedly, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and all other Ministers should address the cultural problem. They need to start the process of weaning this society off the notion that the property market is a mechanism for easy riches. It took perhaps a generation to get (most) people to understand that drinking and driving wasn't on. We still have problems with drinking and driving but far less than we once had. So, we can expect it to take at least a generation to educate people into treating the purchase of property in the right way, to tackle the problem of greed that is at the heart of the love affair with property and to leave the money-making aspect of the industry to the professionals.
1916 is all about 2016
The 1916 carry-on is all about 2016 really. It is an attempt to disguise
things like partition, the refusal to back the Provisional IRA in the North after 1969
(they were exactly the same type of people as Pearse and co) and the surrender of
sovereignty to the EU. As the PSNI begins a murder investigation into the death of a prison officer, it is just as well that the Irish State choose to pretend there was a difference between 1916 and 1969 (despite doing a great deal to light the fuse there with the 50th anniversary celebrations in 1966). The continued threat from dissident Republicans reflects the fact that not everyone in the North is prepared to pretend that 1916 and 1969 were different. Most people in the Republic don't realize (not least because the Republic is almost as as partitionist as Northern Ireland) that for Northern Nationalists the Treaty of 1921 meant nothing. Their situation didn't improve. Indeed, it worsened for another fifty years although the creation of the British welfare state after WW2 gave Nationalists some breaks that some took and that enabled a new generation of Nationalist leaders to emerge in the 1960s.
The 1916 Rising provided a leadership cadre that
prevented conscription being extended to Ireland in 1918,
kept the Irish State out of World War 2 and prevented conscription being extended to the
North during WW2. The 1916 Rising, therefore, prevented far greater bloodshed in WW1 and the possible destruction of Irish society, North and South, in WW2. Eamon De Valera objected to conscription being extended to the North. Churchill’s generals told Churchill to let it go as they were satisfied they would get
more volunteers from the 32 counties than conscripted soldiers
from the North only. Dev would have sought to prevent people from here joining the British forces had
conscription being extended to the North and he would probably have broadly
succeeded. Those are considerable achievements that Home Rule and John Redmond would never have achieved.
The 1916 Rising, though necessary, was violent and bloody (as all wars are) and should not be celebrated
like a carnival. Commemorated, yes, jumped on by bandwagoning politicians trying to disguise their many failures and betrayals, no. The contrast between the celebrations (they will now look - what they are - uncouth after the murder of the Northern prison officer), on the one hand, and the condition of this state, on the other, is embarrassing. Much of the torrent of print and broadcast media output about 1916 is irrelevant and clearly related to the agendas of today. About those, perhaps the less said the better.
Politics as a business
Power (to the extent that Irish Governments still have any) is collapsing.
Most TDs don’t want it. They all want office (which includes being a TD/Senator
and doesn’t have to involve being a Minister). Being a successful politician
today is not about changing things, delivering a new vision or anything of that kind. Eamon de Valera had the best part of a century to deliver the vision he
had for Ireland – an extraordinary privilege. A pity Michael Collins didn’t get the same
time.
Today’s politicians are entrepreneurs. Politics is a business like any
other. It has its risks and its rewards. The rewards are not the salary and
pension of a TD or senator (though they are not to be sneezed at) but the doors
that are opened to celebrity status, board membership, EU perks, joining the
rest of the elite who are richer than politicians, etc., etc. That has been the
pattern in Britain since, probably, the late 19th century. Before that, most
politicians were grandees or gentry of one kind or another. Since, give, or
take, the early 20th century a great many people who went into politics in
Britain as commoners ended up with peerages. They wanted to join the upper
class. Today, politics globally is a vehicle for the same kind of advancement,
and for little else. [Reading The Maiskey Diaries bears this out. At least 50% of the footnotes refer to
British politicians, who, the footnotes state, ended up getting peerages as in
“Joe Smth MP, the first Baron this”, or “Undersecretary Jones, the first
Viscount that”.]
Many of the smaller parties and independents in the 32nd Dail haven’t the slightest interest in
behaving responsibly, which involves taking power and wielding it with
discipline, which, in turn, involves a whip system for certain measures that must go through
the Dail. It also involves compromises, including moral compromises. The
principal planks in a government’s programme, if endorsed by its parliamentary
party(ies), should be delivered in a disciplined manner. However, Government
programmes should be short. They should be of the order of
“we will do the best we can” rather than sixty pages of promises that are then
delivered in a box ticking operation without regard to whether they should be
delivered or not. Matters of conscience and strictly parliamentary business
should of course not be whipped.
It is possible that we are inching towards a greater understanding of the
need to separate the rights of TDs as members of parliament from their
obligation to support a government programme to which they are committed (Kenny
might have lost fewer TDs if he had given his party a free vote on the suicide
abortion Bill). So, one step forward. However, it is very much a case of two
back as it is obvious that other than FF and FG no one wants to be in government.
That might sound contradictory but if you think about it, it isn’t. Many of the smaller parties and independents would have zero
credibility if they supported a government or, God forbid, joined one. They are
so extreme (in the sense of not being willing to recognize the harsh realities
of life) that any derogation from the absolute positions they adopt (100%
increase in government spending and the abolition of all taxes except for taxes on the
“wealthy” – who dey Gay?) would cause them to lose their seats and be
replaced by other headbangers. Their business model is built on adopting
positions from which there can be no retreat and no compromise. They created
that business model (or rather than fact that the Dail has 100 TDs too many
created it) and they know they will live or die by it.
So, we are left with FF and FG to form a government. They clearly can’t,
not this side of a May election but possibly after a May election, particularly
as FF will win more seats than FG and will claim the Taoiseach’s office. It is
critical, therefore, for FF that they are not blamed for causing a May election.
All of their jockeying for position is aimed at not being blamed for the next
election. I don’t know if FG has realized that.
An interesting final point: what happens to the Senate election if the Dail is
dissolved before the new Senate election is completed? No one seems to
know.
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