I don’t think yer agreeing with f. fail, there Matthew… thats why O’Cuiv resigned. FF will want to send the message to Germany and co that they will be good dogs, in case Merkel decided on a general election here

Nail on the head there Conor!

No matter what you’d like to believe Conor, the problem was, and still is, a banking problem – not a political one.

Read my comment Seb; I never for a second denied that the banking sector wasn’t at fault either. It was nonetheless the responsibility of our Central Bank and policy makers to ensure that the banking system was properly regulated – self-regulation doesn’t work! And yes, part of the reason why our public finances are in the state they are in, is because the revenue that was coming in during the boom years wasn’t sustainable. Revenues from the likes of stamp duty flooded in because of the over-heated property market thus allowing Fianna Fáil to fool themselves and the electorate into believing that we could continue to increase public spending by double-digit percentages every year. However, as soon as recession hit, a €20 billion gap per year emerged as those temporary revenues dwindled to nothing.

We didn’t run large deficits during the boom. In 2006 we ran a significant surplus. That’s a verifiable fact. This treaty wouldn’t stop a repeat of what happened in 2007.

Nobody is saying that we didn’t run surpluses during the boom. However, O Cuív is once again denying that the previous three governments, all Fianna Fáíl led engaged in reckless, pro-cyclical budgetary policy that partially has us in the mess that we are in now.

Did you ever hear the parable about the two men who built themselves houses. One built his with deep foundations on solid ground, the other built one with no foundations on sand. as soon as the storms came, the second house collapsed. Thanks to Fianna Fáil, Ireland is that second house.

Yes, actually, our budget deficits were one of the lowest in the world during the boom. Unfortunately, that changed and FF are to blame for failing to regulate and keep a hold on things, but as regards the budget deficit, it was practically non existant

Seb – How can you say that the problem was not a political one. In a ten year period Fianna Fail doubled public spending on the back of a weak and unsustainable tax base. This is a fact.

Conor is 100% correct in all of his statements here. It’s amazing the number of people who are still in denial by the damage caused by Fianna Fail.

Sorry to be pedantic, but what EoC said was technically correct, we didn’t run a budget deficit during the boom years. He never claimed it was sustainable…

Bit much alright, Kerry but typical of civil war politics. Let them play their games. We’re just going to vote NO! ;)

I just saw this on the news and it just goes
to show how deep rooted the civil war politics go.
pure nonsense if you ask me .
Yes I will be voting NO.

Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya……….

Like either of these muppets had balls to begin with, a pair of political eunuchs .

i think from my reading of the article is that he doesn’t oppose it going to a referendum…. i don’t think that means he agrees with the treaty though? am i wrong in thinking that?

As far as I know, we are not in China. Whereas, Ireland/Irish? Any resemblance?

For your reasoning, go to England

That’s right Frank2521 – let’s stop the funding of Irish. It really is a luxury we can’t afford. Let’s also, while we’re at it, stop funding for the arts – another luxury we can’t afford. Let’s close down the National Museum of Ireland – another luxury we can’t afford. Let’s close down RTÉ and TG4 – more luxuries we don’t need. Let’s close down the Road Safety Authority – another luxury we can’t afford. Let’s stop providing funds to the Irish Olympic Council. Let’s stop funding the GAA, the FAI and the IRFU. Let’s stop the funding of St. Patrick’s Day festivities. Actually, while we’re at it, why don’t we just stop funding everything, and instead, simply take all of our tax intake and plough it into our debt. We’ll be debt free soon enough, but we’ll all be a miserable shower of b*st*rds when it’s over. Cop on!

Dead right Frank! Brian, why should people’s taxes be used for these things? If you want them, you pay for them. Simples.

I do want them Eric, and I am paying for them – through my taxes. I don’t want to pay off other people’s stupid gambling addictions – yet through my taxes I’m also paying for them. Or am I right in thinking that you view taxes as something that should be paid for by everyone to satisfy your own personal wishes and to hell with everyone else’s? I mean, where do you draw the line. Do you stop funding special needs assistants? I mean I don’t need or want them personally, so why should that funding come out of my taxes – why don’t the parents pay for it entirely themselves? I don’t need or want public transport in Dublin, so why should that funding come out of my taxes – why can’t Dubliners pay for it themselves? I’m finished with my education and I don’t have children – so why should my hard-earned money be used to pay for the education of other people’s children.

Frank. We may as well come out with our hands up if we give up on our language. Will you change the bloody record. You’re turning into an awful
Moan.

Reada: Irish is a useless language spoken by about 80,000 people outside of education and even they speak English anyway. I don’t even know if you’re a man or a woman. The majority of Irish wouldn’t know either based on your first name. We spend a billion euros a year teaching Irish. A billion euro is useful money to be had during a fiscal crisis. I always believed that Ian Paisley was just as Irish as Peig Sayers. If it wasn’t for physical force Republicanism we would have a politically united Ireland today. Instead we have a divided Ireland between the Irish and “The Brit Traitors” today, thanks to the post 1916 Sinn Fein movement. Returning to the Irish language, it’s time to give up the ghost. And why do we have bilingual signs?! Everyone can understand the English version anyway. It’s time to revisit the land of logic.

Paul. You’re working hard on me, granted, but you still haven’t convinced me to turn Ireland into mini-China. Give up now please. You never will. :)

I was reading up on your hero, Patrick Pearse. Here’s what he had to write in 1913: “Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing’. And in 1915 he said this: “the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed by the red wine of the battlefield”. Well, I suppose Patrick Pearse didn’t do human rights violations. He didn’t have slitty eyes after all.

@ Paul – are you really so naive as to think that if the teaching of Irish stopped that that €1 billion would suddenly become available to the state? The answer, sadly, is no. The teachers currently employed to teach Irish would simply have to be redeployed elsewhere. The €1 billion would simply be paid to them to teach other subjects in other schools. Considering approximately 250,000 people are either directly or indirectly employed as a result of the state’s policy on Irish, and considering it would cost €2.5 billion per year (minimum, but probably much closer to €5 billion due to lost revenues and other ancillary benefits) to pay these people dole payments as a result of your fine logic on the state’s treatment of Irish, even your economic argument falls flat on its face. Your policy regarding Irish actually has a name – it’s called “linguacide” – the forced extermination of a language by insulting it, insulting those who speak it (including their names), denying access to services in that language (and despite popular belief Paul, there are still monolingual Irish speakers alive in Ireland today), and forcing its speakers to speak a different language.

Paul. I’m assuming that comment was addressed to me. You’d be more likely to have seen hero in the same sentence as Connolly or Hume, while I am willing to acknowledge that Pearse was worthy of the same distinction.

Last thing, your argument at the bottom of this thread is pathetic.

Brian: I wasn’t insulting Reada’s name at all. I was merely pointing out that I didn’t know whether Reada was a man or a woman on the basis of his/her name and that I think the majority of Irish people similarly would have no idea based on his/her Irish name alone.

Reada: I wouldn’t consider Patrick Pearse or James Connolly in the same league as John Hume. Patrick Pearse was a physical force Republican. James Connolly was a tool of the physical force Republicans of the IRB. John Hume, by contrast, was a peace-maker throughout his political career. James Connolly and Patrick Pearse ended theirs by embracing violence as a means to resolve political disputes and they both rejected the idea of pursuing dialogue to resolve conflict. John Hume rejected violent means totally, recognizing, like Daniel O’Connell did, that violence only begets more violence and that it only makes a bad situation worse.