…And another minimum 18 Billion next year is going to the banks and bondholders next year too!

Enda and company are blowing smoke up … This deal is already agreed enda is playing politics. When the deal is eventually announced we will all shout ” and what a good boy was he”

Eaten bread is soon forgotten, eh Angela?
Ireland’s been stitched up like a kipper.

Because if the bigger economys fail. Who do we sell are goods too?

Iceland is 15 times smaller than Ireland and they’re not in the Eurozone.

Apples and Oranges to compare the two.

we can folow the icelandic route and pull out of the Euro burn the bondholders and jail the bankers

As Mark said, Germany’s reaching the point, or has already reached, the point of being over-extended. If Greece and Ireland default, this could collapse Germany and, if Germany collapses, we all go under. It’s not about following orders or being a lapdog, it’s about not burning the house down because we’re given a crappy room. I’m not saying do nothing, but defaulting will hurt us more than it would help us.

Gary

I don’t see why everybody is continually insisting that the Bondholders are German and French when Irish Pension Funds were massively invested in the Banks. My own Pension bought Bonds from AIB on three occasions after the Bailout . That makes me a Bondholder and burning them would not just be a blind kick at an assumed enemy.
The anti German rhetoric on this site is appalling and you can be certain that they know about it and ask more penetrating questions about the Irish on a regular basis. I belong to a business network based in Mannheim and all of my contacts ask why they should give us more money since we regard them as Nazis. To modern Germans that is the most unacceptable insult and slur.

Do you ever ask your German contacts if they thinks it’s fair we are paying losses their banks accrued through reckless gambling here Paddy?
Do you ever ask them how they felt being called the sick man of Europe not so long ago and the rest of us bent over backwards to facilitate them?
While your at it ask them if they fully appreciate the turmoil created here as a result of these debts and if they wouldn’t mind would they agree to take theirs back.

@paddy I agree that the anti German attitude it wrong and I understand how they would be offended and question why should they be asked to help….but similarly the reality is that the euro “bailout” was in fact a way to put major debts onto the shoulders of the Irish people , and a very large amount of the credit was actually German and French financed credit , so your friends in Germany need it explained why people in Ireland are so annoyed , because as things stand we are signed up to pay these unsustainable debts for a generation.The euro currency project was built with poor architecture , driven by Germany and France in particular , yet to expect a small country like to to to able to pay that level of deb of debt to fix the crisis is just unsustainable.We don’t all think they are nazi , but we need to do a better job getting them to understand exactly what it is we have been asked to do….all in the name of preventing contagion and damaging German and French banks. The so called ” bailout” is nothing more than a further loan to repay money back that is already lost…with interest…it is not as portrayed us begging for the Germans to give us their hard earned cash…..it’s a loan and its unsustainable.

God forbid we would upset German (or any EU) sensibilities! Like you Paddy I’m glad they came along and gave us someone to tug our forelocks to now that the British and the Church are not so dominant in our lives.
Bailing out the corrupt EU financial system seems a small price to pay to feel so wanted.

“I’m glad they came along and gave us someone to tug our forelocks to now that the British and the Church are not so dominant in our lives.”

Did you not go to them? No one made Ireland take the Euro.

True, no one made Ireland take the Euro. Don’t recall the bit about us taking on the debts of private Euro banks though.

There is this thing in a country called a cost of living, if the private sector started reducing prices perhaps then that would be justified. It’s cheaper to live, eat and sleep in Germany, plus we are not asking them to pay our public sector – we are asking them to remove a debt we never incurred! With bull talk like yours you play right into their hands! What we pay anyone is irrelevant, the debt IS NOT OURS!

I agree Diarmaid but saying that I think limiting public sector salary to twice the national average wage would be a good thing to introduce.

Help us?
Well for a start it was Frau Merkel who contributed greatly to Ireland being froze out of the markets with her very public comments suggesting we couldn’t afford to pay debt as a result our ill conceived bank bailout which lead us to full capitulation to the IMF/EU/ECB and all to prevent contagion and protect German tax payers from carrying the losses of their own banks.
We’re not looking for help, we’re looking for fairness and an acknowledgement that the debt burdened upon us is unsustainable and we shouldn’t have being forced to adopt them.

we have already been told NO why would anyone think any different..its not father Ted and Mrs.Doyle saying gowan gowan gowan and eventually give in

@Paul Absolutely 100% agree with that.

That’s too generalised. Cost of grocers, electronics goods are cheaper; services like insurance and pension plans are more expensive. Taxes are higher. Landlines are cheaper, mobile phones and mobile network charges are higher. Rent in Germany is lpwer, but not by much as rents are spiralling upwards. Wages are lower. The average employed German worker is not significantly better off than the average employed Irish worker.

Merkel doesn’t have to bail out banks because we, and the other PIIGS are stopping the contagion by doing the job for her. German banks have huge exposure to investments in these countries. If we were to let the banks go to the wall, then German banks would collapse too and they’d be in need of a bailout. So it is her problem and we deserve some recognition that we’re in the front-line blocking this contagion from spreading to Germany. We’re doing them a service and the Germans and the other “safe” countries should recognise this.

A deal?
No, not with our weak leaders.

Throw in Cavan as well…

Sounds about right; although I could imagine a case where the AIB/BOI repayments could be held back and used as funds to get the banks lending to SMEs and mortgage applicants to promote growth.

There could be something in that alright.. At the moment we are the poster boys for the bailout programme and if we go to the wall or need another bail out then they can’t point to us and say “look, Ireland did it so you should too” to Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Still, I voted “Don’t know” because there’s just as much reason to think that whatever deal they give us will be literally just enough to keep us afloat and no more, maybe not even that, it might just be spreading the payments out over a longer period and prolonging the misery.. We shall just have to wait and see.

It wont be until Merkel is re-elected (?) which is October 2013, that we will we get any debt written off.She is playing the “we will make the paddies pay” card so the German public feel they are not letting another Greece off the hook! We will pay back around another €15-20 billion in the meantime before we get any deal.Kenny will get a paltry deal around early 2014 and will have 2 years to make some progress, which he will milk to his political gain in the 2016 general elections.Meanwhile, the Irish man and woman will have a succession of ludicrous budgets taxing the sh*t out of us and further ruining our services while the elitists(political/banking classes) remain comfortable..all in all..we lose and they win!In 2020, we will be out of recession in the EU but we will own nothing in our own state (oil/gas/forests/water etc), we will be paying private companies huge profits for everything from water to healthcare to education (in some cases we already are!)!This “downturn” was well organised by the largest banks and their political puppets,and this is becoming ever more evident… daily.

You know what the Germans, Dutch and Finns say: “oh… Should the rest of us pay more tax to give them a handout then?”
They use your own logic, so why you of all people expect a handout is beyond me!

Exactly.
It’s a case of seeing how long this particular can will survive being kicked up the road or remain whole for the FG/Lab spin machine.

Damocles,
Agree with that. The question is what will we be asked to give up to get it?

“why you of all people expect a handout”

I don’t expect a handout. I expect that European politicians will offer some sort of sop that looks like it has substance and will appease some but will turn out longer term to be utterly worthless.

“The question is what will we be asked to give up to get it?”

Ireland can’t get something for nothing. However, if what I suspect is right, Ireland will get nothing for something.

Correct. I think we’ve been here before. Several times. Vote yes for jobs anyone?

@Mark, how about we stop giving them hand outs as a start, and take if from there.

What makes the whole “it’s not our debt” pretty much useless as a negotiating chip is that the average German, Finn or Netherlander will say that’s not their debt either, and the’d be just as correct as the Irish. Talking about the banking debt in terms of nationality is a non-starter, but we had a government who framed it in those terms by agreeing to nationalise it. Why should taxpayers from other nationalities on their shoulders? That’s no better over all, it’s helping the Irish by screwing another nationality…

@Paul: we don;t pay Merkel handouts, we pay bondholders. We borrow Merkel’s borrowed money to do this.
65% procent of this country agreed on doing so, but somehow people still expect a deal.
I just think sheep don’t get deals, they get slaughtered.

Back up a wee bit there Mark, when did 65% of people vote to pay these debts?
When was this held, did you vote yes?

Perhaps you already forgotten/blocked out the referendum earlier this year?
If there was ever a point to stop this government blindly following the previous one, that was it.
But people voted and now will have to live with the consequences.

Very true Nikolas, and Mark. I’m just extremely frustrated at the whole thing. I don’t expect any reasonable deal to to come from this at all. It seems there’s no such thing as a bad investment for big business any more. They’ll just bleed each economy dry in turn.

Take a look at this rare species:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP9ZdeXRNYg

@Dermot, I think Mark is referring to the recent referendum on the ESM.

oops, beat me to it Mark, forgot to submit my reply after I wrote it. :-D

Ahh ok, the ESM treaty…..yeah the people who promoted that and dressed it up as something which would alleviate our burden should beginwalking the country knocking at every door and apologise for being such s***heads.

Dermot

Germans were never reckless gamblers as you put it. They lent overnight monies to Irish Banks regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland and assumed they were dealing with people of integrity and honour as would be the case in Austria or France or Holland etc.
What they didn’t know is that Fianna Fail ignored the regulation of Banking and Sean Fitz crept on to the scene and AIB with BofI felt they had to compete.
You see there were people like that arch hypocrite Shane Ross at the time telling us all to pile into Anglo and he even demanded that Fitzpatrick be appointed Head of the Central Bank!
In all those circumstances how could the Germans or anybody else know they were dealing with incompetents or rogues.
Our Banks under the control of our Central Bank and monies lent to Irish people and somehow we want to say its Germany’s fault and problem!
I think we need to grow up.

I find your anti-Irish rhetoric offensive.
Your assertion is that we were somehow conniving, sly and lacking integrity, we conspired to lure foreign banks to invest here knowing they would fail but we’d scam some money of them before the fall but we were found out and now we must pay the piper, them poor Germans eh?
You constantly play down the fact that German banks….(along with many more nations)……invested here and the consequence for us – the Irish – is that once that investment turned sour we are obliged to carry the losses.
Frau Merkel understood, it’s why she interfered in our sovereignty making public her doubts about our financial responsibilities, she knew that unless we undertook a bank bailout her country would be forced to cover the losses on their own banks, we’re paying for our banks and our politicians stupidity, it’s high time they done the same.

Dermot – you yourself have been pushing the “Dishonest and conniving Irish government” line for a while now. The Germans are no angels, and neither are we. It’s never so simple as to be reduced to “Two legs bad, four legs good” Personally. I think applying nationality as distinguishing the perpetrators from the victims is probably the most unhelpful and damaging mistake made over the last four years.

Actually Merkel needs an Irish success story to help her win the elections next year. It justifies her austerity stance. Spain on the other hand are unlikely to get any deal beforehand.

If they’re only in it for the money then it’d be best to stay until the end of the Dáil term and then collect their pensions.

And Merkel isn’t up for election for another year. A deal is due before the end of this year.

Pensions for Ministers after 2 years,two years are up in Feb 2013.A Merkal up for election in 2013.

Buy beans!!!!

One way ticket to Barter Town with Tina and Mel

Ah well sure there it is….we can all go home now… Gabriel knows it all…. I keep feeling that people on here and SF in particular dont want a success story with regard to the debt…They want the Irish people suffer even more…prehaps the belief is that it will fuel some sort of revolution….

Mad as hell like everybody else but to believe we will get €billions in a thank you from Germany or anywhere else is not going to happen. It’s not like those with the cash view us as worthy of a dig out, on the contrary they see us as sheep who reward ourselves handsomely from the public purse. We are seen as leeches with an insatiable appetite for other people’s money. We need to wake up, we are saddled with it and now we pay the price for not managing our affairs.

I think we’ll get a deal after other more important countries get one then FG/Lab can spin the spin that they’re absolute beasts in negotiating with our…. lol – EU partners.

It’s a fair comment but Sinn Fein have not shown any thing new, they should make it clear what would they do, until now they have being playing the position of a very week opposition Party, what is there agenda, at moment all people see is opportunistic politics with no ground and no real backbone….

And just who would you offer as strong opposition Ciaran?
Please don’t say FF as they’re utterly clueless and it’s quite surreal for them to be offering solutions to a problem of their making.

You can want all you like. I want a sports car and a prettier girlfriend. Wanting on it’s own never made anything happen except disappointment.

Paddy a question how many names do you use?Must be hard trying to keep up with the writing style of each,your begining to slip.Anyway your point would have more weight if you dropped the insults and personnel attacks.Further up you said you were part of a business group.I don’t believe you because your interpersonnel skills are appalling.

Paddy,
Reich is a German controlled area. It is not a reference to what Hitler did that was a horrid crime and cannot be defended.
The EU at present seems to be controlled by Germany. This can be seen in the handling of the economic crisis to date. Nothing gets done unless it benefits Germany.
Germany are threatening to call of EU budget rescission unless the UK get in line.
Germany wants to set up a Currency Commissioner with the power to veto National Budgets unless they meet standards.
You say I am clueless and should refrain from commenting, attacking the person rather than my point of view. Can you answer my points?

“In this game good finishes last and get screwed royally along the way.”

Not entirely unexpected.

Work hard, pay your mortgage and stay out of arrears and your reward is to continue to work hard, pay your mortgage and stay out of arrears, while dwelling in the joy of negative equity, whereas if you do get into arrears a load of help appears … free legal advice, write downs, and so on.

So with Ireland, the country works, pulls its socks up and starts to grow so no help needed. Greece on the other hand …

Of course that’s a very loose and generalised analogy.

Stop being an arse with your 4th Reich babble. It’s not a replacement for an actual argument.

The argument is at present the EU is Germany’s way or well Germany’s way. They are trying to bully the UK now.
Also you calling me an arse is no argument either, so my argument still stands, also when you attack the person and not their argument, right or wrong as it may be, you open yourself up for attack but I am above that. If you want a debate, fine, but stick to the issues not personal attacks.

But I’m not presenting an argument, I’m trolling. I’ll happily call anyone an arse, irrespective of politics, nationality, colour, sex or creed, but I’d never call a person a Nazi arse. I’m an equal-opportunity troll, not a xenophobic and sloppily-labelling one. We differ there.

I did not call anyone a Nazi. Reich has to do with a Greater Germany. It must be remembered there were two Reich periods before Hitler’s maddness and like I have already said his actions and the actions of his followers can not in any way be defended. They were physical crimes against a few races but they represent an evil towards all nations and all peoples.
Troll if you must but troll against bad arguments not against people.

what would you do Eric? Usual j.ie stuff…complain and yet sit on fence…. I am certain that Mr Kenny and Mr Noonan do want a reduction in debt!!! Why would they not?? But maybe they should walk in and put a gun to Merkals head!!!!

but the question is what kind of deal and at what cost and how long will this take, Kenny and co dont have the ability or the stomache let alone the balls to do this

How about this,the banks should have been forced to realise the losses first,then recapitalise where apprioate.

BTW you asked before who made A Merkel leader of Europe.She answered your question last Friday,she did and no one is calling her up on it including Enda.

Gagsy, the main consensus whether people agree or not is that this debt is not solely ours, we shouldered it to protect the euro, the euro project and the entire stability of European banking.
Any deal should conclude with the admission of this fact, an apology and reparations for the damage done to date.

Gagsy, I think the strength of feeling from the saner elements is that loans to privately owned banking bodies should not be conflated with loans to sovereign bodies. Which is fine as far as it goes. Unfortunately here the state owns these same banking bodies, so this raises the question of whether that portion of the loan should remain “sovereigntised”. If the state owns much of the bank does it own the debt?

Have only one bank. Let the others go. Like it or not we have a small population and we should let them go to the wall.
Then try the mangers, regulators and political elite for neglect, fraud and over charging people to fund their golden payment and pension pots.

@Damocles – A state-owned bank is not necessarily a state-guaranteed bank so there is no legal obligation by virtue of state ownership to make good defaulted liabilities of these banks unless it has otherwise explicitly committed to do so.
That these banks continue to pay their liabilities is a necessity of staying in existence – ie when people complain about the disgrace of paying bond holders the alternative is for banks to go into liquidation. I believe that is a simple reality.

So the continuing support given at least to the pillar banks is an imperfect solution which sticks in the craw given that without state support the banks would collapse and the bond holders would have justifiably absorbed much of the losses. But, to use the awful cliche that ‘we are where we are’ the debate should move to how this burden of maintaining the banks is shared. And my main point here is that it is not reasonable to expect that this is fully the cost of Germany and Europe.

@Norman – what do you mean realise the losses first? At any point in time a bank can only estimate the extent of their likely credit losses.

Sweden done it worked for them.But our clever TDs voted for the worst possible course of action.The banks should have been allowed to suffer their losses then recapitalise as necessary.

Fair enough, Gagsy, state owned is not state guaranteed as you suggest, although there is a state guarantee, should that be abandoned? I don’t know. I do know that any organisation that fail to pay its debts that it has agreed to pay finds borrowing money later tricky.

Many people point to Sweden but overlook the relative size of the problem and the fact that many of the Swedish solutions haven’t been done in Europe and won’t and that Sweden didn’t look for outside money in any way close to the degree that Europe has.

Merkel is leader if Europe by default, as no-one else took the reins or challenged her when she did so. By that logic, she deserves less blame for holding an unfairly powerful position than all the other EU leaders.

@ Dermot, no I would not say FF, the political field is empty of talent and honour… It’s like trying to find a ballerina in a ploughing contest ……..

It’s called reality! Lot of people living it day to day

It’s called reality! Lot of people living it day to day

Everybody says if SF get in power it will be terrible but i say give them a chance to prove themselves they cant be any worse than FF/FG/LAB

IF you want someone to negotiate what is wrong with sending over Sinn Fein who have a track record.The myth is that Sinn Fein will be a disaster ..why.. because someone somewhere high up who’s an expert on these things said so the same gang that ran this country into the ground or gave totally false information time and time again to trap the people of Ireland .Are we still to believe these incompetent fools.The troika comes here on business stoneyfaced hard ball negotiators what do we send up against them Time Magazine model and the likes.If you were the troika and Sinn fein delegates came into the room to negotiate you would think these people are here to defend their country and we wont push them out the door with nothing .They would get more in one meeting than FG/L would sitting on their hand would in a whole term.Merkel Von Rompuy hav Kenny down a lapdog tat wont change so we sit around waiting for mercy rather than elect a party that will fight for us remember while Kenny Martin all the screamers in the Dail where sitting back while the Celtic Tiger was roaring Adams and Sinn Fein were negotiating with Blair Paisley Trimble for equality and a fairer society but we wont listen to SinnFein because were so sophisticated have a look the country its in ruins and a lot more to come so how sophisticated are we really . Listen to people who will fight for you in Europe or just get robbed out of existence. I have no debt but i want to stay i care about what happens to everyone single person in this country we are not divided we just think we are we have to stick together.

@ Well said. Screaming “it’s not fair!” Is pointless, as what’s fair is in the eye of the beholder. The banking debt Ireland took on was a result of a toxic game of pass the parcel, But more importantly, the crisis should be compared to a hospital’s emergency department, not as Solomon’s Court.

Someone sits in an emergency room for six hours with a broken arm. Suddenly, another person is brought in with a spear through their head. This new patient will be treated immediately, the person with the broken arm must wait longer. Is that fair? Not to the man with the broken arm, but it is fair when you consider that there’s little risk that the broken arm will kill him, he’s in a stable condition. The person with the higher risk of death is more unstable, so he takes priority. It also is irrelevant that the man with the broken arm is law-abiding, while the man with the spear though his head is a petty criminal. Is that fair.

It is not fair that Ireland is carrying so much debt, but how is it fairer that a different nation’s taxpayers should take over that debt, or that debt should be reduced, leaving less funds available for countries less stable than Ireland. Ireland is no longer a priority not because we were “good”, but because we are relatively stable, far more stable than other nations. We’re the guy with the problem arm. We’re no longer high risk, and we will be passed over for debt relief as long as Greece and Spain remain unstable.

I agree with some of what you say,but your last paragraph i’m afraid your way.You see us all as a collective.Do you think your local TD is suffering the same way as your elderly neighbour whom had their home help cut.As for respect for Enda, why does Angela pull the carpet out from under him.Lets not even dicuss him having his hair ruffled.

no i

sorry I fat fingered the above comment. but no, I don’t think that politicians are suffering as much as the elderly, but I don’t believe that is solely due to Enda and his government. politicians are paid a lot more than the elderly, so when

I’m having a houler today! no I don’t think that politicians are suffering as much as the elderly, but that is because when cuts are applied to both of their respective salaries, those with more money cope better. But I don’t believe that we should remove the meritocracy in our culture, as some of the ‘tax the millionaires’ do. I don’t claim to have the answers for how to achieve financial targets while preserving a standard of living, but I don’t get paid for that, nor do I have to receive criticism from a vast majority of the population such as politicians do.

Stewart i’m sorry you’ve rubbished your own claim “we are a collective”.A collective assumes all members are equal and work for the good of the collective as a whole.This is one discription that definitely does not apply to Irish society.

I haven’t rubbished any argument. by collective, I mean we as a society must work towards making and sustaining a minimum standard of living. Yes this is under threat in Ireland as there are too many people living in poverty, but a least some of this was caused by international and rogue national factors. I believe that Enda and his government are trying (not totally succeeding) to fix this, and reinstill our sense of a collective. We appear to be just getting over the initial shock, now we must look after everyone in society, and that won’t be solved by cutting politicians wages, nor will it be solved just by keeping a local hospital open, its much bigger than that. we are a collective. We work together for the betterment of everyone, not bring everyone down to the lowest common wage.

LOL

Its not going unnoticed because we are the laughing stock of Europe and as for their efforts at home they are disgracefully attacking the most vunerable in society as per usual and continually placing people on or below the poverty line but fair play to them according to you ..SHAMEFULL BEHAVIOUR

No-one’s laughing. Long faces all around.