Back at work this week after a holiday down in Galicia in Spain. It's a magical slightly Celtic part of the world, prone to rain and wind, and everywhere we went there seemed to be wind turbines on the hilltops. We took the slow travel option of a ferry from Portsmouth in England across the Bay of Biscay to Santander, and the journey there was half the fun.Meanwhile here the NAMA debate has intensified, and it's straight back into the discussion as to what is the best option for Irish tax-payers and the Irish people. As the IMF stated:
"The success of NAMA will depend on a number of very complex decisions that will need to be taken in designing it during the course of the coming months and then in its implementation."
I waded my way through the Heads of the Bill with James Nix and Gary Fitzgerald the other day. We discussed the valuation issues at length, as this is crucial. Writing down the loans to a realistic level from the stratospheric level that they reached at the height of the boom must be at the heart of the legislation.
I was interested in Fintan O'Toole's piece in the Irish Times the other day about NAMA versus the Kenny Report. I sat on the All Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution as it considered property rights, and the Green Party's submission endorsed the views of Justice Kenny's report from 1973 which recommended that Local Authorities should be able to buy land in specific areas for the existing use value plus 25%. I don't believe that both proposals are mutually exclusive, as I'd imagine that the bulk of development lands have already undergone a massive write-down that brings their value a lot closer to agricultural use. In essence the green field lands will only constitute a small share of the value of the loans that the State may acquire. I'd imagine the real value will lie in assets located in cities such as Dublin, London, and in the United States. Perhaps this is related to the on-going High Court discussions relating to Liam Carroll's Zoe group. I'm hopeful that some of the work that is underway on the Planning Bill will address some of the issues raised by Justice Kenny one third of a century ago.
The challenge for those who reject NAMA is to propose a viable alternative that could cost Ireland less in the long run. The recent contributions by Brian Lucey, Alan Ahearne and other economists to the debate are hugely useful. I'm heartened that Alan Ahearne seemed to call the bubble for what it was earlier than others. One of my concerns about full nationalisation is that it has the potential to raise the interest rate at which Ireland borrows money abroad.
NAMA is only one of the challenges that lies ahead over the next three or four months. We also have the McCarthy Report, the Commission on Taxation, the Programme for Government Review, and Lisbon Two. Each issue in itself will generate heat, and hopefully light inside and outside the Green Party. As Eamon Ryan said the other day, there's a fascinating 100 days of politics ahead. NESC suggested back in March that we need an integrated approach to Ireland's Five-Part Crisis in banking, public finance, Ireland's reputation, and in the economic and social field. I tend to agree.
Meanwhile in Dún Laoghaire the long term weather forecast (as I write) is looking good (if a bit showery) for the Festival of World Cultures this weekend. Trevor is coming out to talk about food at Cool Earth in the County Hall on Saturday at 2.30 pm, and on Sunday, there's a first in the line-up - the Climate Change comedians at 3.45pm!
Looking at the line-up I'd say Dub Colossus at 6.30pm Saturday on the Main Stage at Newtownsmith (between the East Pier and Sandycove) should be amazing, and the following day Oumou Sangare from Mali in the same slot is bound to impress. Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council is the main backer of the Festival which has gone from strength to strength in recent years. They're also organising the Mountains to the Sea book festival from 10th to 13th September.
Between culture and politics there'll be more than enough festivals and fireworks to keep us busy, and entertained over the months ahead.
2 comments:
Nice to see the picture of Blackrock Baths, and the usual guff about protecting citizens from the latest strike by Capitalists. But if you took a walk around your constituency, and the spot where that picture was taken, you would find that while our council makes spectacularly ugly plans for the seafront at Sandycove, they can't even maintain our already existing half dozen benches at Idrone Terrace.
Maybe the NIMBYS got tired and afraid of the youths who drink there. Or maybe there isn't enough parking spaces in that end of town. Who knows? But the council decided to rip them up. 6 scars are left on the ground. Big plans sit in the planning office, sure to be ignored. Unfunded. By local or big business. The S2S dream less likely to be realised than the local neoliberal dream of selling off the baths for once and for all once the price fixing developers get back to gambling.
Like the wider state, the council continues to whack us common people and our commons. It makes big promises, and accumulates small cuts. One here, one there. Green Transport initiatives that become Dublin Bus Cuts. Anti war principles that become full unquestioning support of imperialism in Shannon. Hideous watercolors of knock off new urbanism that becomes a ripped up bench here, a deteoriating bath house there.
Bullshit is so much more potent when it's organic.
Hello Ciaran,
Well, I have to say I told you so! In our "meeting" in the Stag's Head before you decided to "sup with the devil", I insisted that the property pyramid was about to come crashing down, and that the Greens would be used by FF as someone to blame.
Now a couple of years on, on NAMA, have you the bottle to insist on some principles?
- Not to overpay for these debts, if we have to take some of them on. Even the ECB warns we shouldn't overpay. "Long-term economic value" is a meaningless concept, unless you somehow believe that the NAMA evaluators are better business brains than anyone else out there. See Sean Barrett's good piece in the Irish times on this: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0902/1224253663079.html?via=mr
- To drop Anglo... They nationalized the wrong banks. All guarantees should be recinded given the hidden activity this "bank bolted on to a casino" was engaged in, not known at the time of the nationalization. Now they're promising to bailout our friends Zoe Developments (with whose money), they who have done so much harm to the fabric of Dublin since our days in "Students Against the Destruction of Dublin". Enough is enough, surely? Rather nationalize less dodgy outfits, such as AIB & BoI, and let the shareholders & bondholders of Anglo get a lesson in risk, rather than in moral hazard.
Above all, remember that you're still supporting the fox that's running the henhouse...
Good Luck,
Michael
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