Broken Dreams

A Mother stands alone in tears
Looking down the winding road
Seeing a car in the distance
Talking away a precious load
Two children from the cradle raised
They were her hopes and dreams
But in search of a life of gain
They must leave this isle of Green

The house behind her is now empty
It was once a bustling home
The door was always on the latch
It was the Family Throne
Seeing our Nation sold out for profit
By those in power who abused control
Condemning Irelands finest Children
To seek life’s fulfilment far from home

P.J. Brennan

I will be voting NO and I do not believe these polls.

Do these poems have any actual relevance to the contents of the treaty? Or are we supposed to hark back to the ‘good ole days’ when we were poor, miserable and abused by priests?

Good stuff PJ.
While this may be a foreign experience to some in our country, there are tens of thousands of families will know, unfortunately, exactly what you’re writing about.
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-15/irish-emigration-climbs-to-highest-since-nineteenth-century.html

You would have thought FFail asking for a yes vote would have been a clear sign to go the other way!

It must be the Shinnerbots on BreakingNews.ie! Vote No… delete cookie… Vote No… delete cookie

The general election polls suggested Sinn Fein should be running the country now. All online polls are very easily abused for a start, and are not a proper sample to be considered official.

This isn’t won yet, for either side but the atmosphere is more Yes as it stands.

I was in Alberta, Canada recently where the premier of the province campaign was winding down. The polls indicated a very strong win for a new political party, yet on the night of the elections, the results saw the exact opposite, with another party winning by a HUGE margin! I’m going to pray that the same thing happens here. I’m crossing my fingers that sense prevails in Ireland and we get a strong NO.

Shayno ZO. You’re correct that having Fianna Fail support a Yes is not necessarily helpful but on the flip side of that I’m going to quote Michael O’Leary…
“When you look at the array of idiots and lunatics on the No side, really I wouldn’t want to be in any club which would have that lot as a member…

The sensible majority and the rest of Ireland will vote Yes…There is no argument for voting no.”

Sean, I am also thinking about when Europe picks up and they raise interest rates to suit Franco/German needs, this will make out mortgages completely unsustainable leading to mass default and repos..
We need ti be able to set interest rates as it contributed to this mess…

Excellent point Sean.

The government told us that they were complying with the terms of the bailout agreement. Ireland would be back raising funds in the markets by 2013. They lied.
The government told us don’t worry as long as Ireland meets the terms of the bailout the EFSF will continue to provide funding until Ireland returns to the Market. They lied.
This week Lucinda Creighton told the truth. Ireland will not be able to raise funds on the markets.
A nation with sovereign debt exceeding 120% of GDP(approaching 150% when the Nama fallacy unwinds) and total debt approaching 500% of GDP was never going to be able to raise funds on the markets.
If Ireland got a write down on it’s bank debts, it would bring sovereign borrowings below GDP and back to a level where fiscal measures would allow us to tackle out debt and realistically return to the bond Market.
This treaty presents a historic crossroads to Irelands. Do we want to abandon our sovereignty and become a protectorate of Brussels. Or will we kick back and say no.
This is the only opportunity offered to Ireland’s voters to get themselves out from under the yolk of bank debt. If we endorse this treaty we will not get another opportunity and will only have ourselves to blame.
Despite all the bull and bluster Europe cannot allow a member state to walk away. To do so would have incalculable costs to core European nations. All it takes from Irish voters is a small bit of courage. A fraction of the courage shown by Irelands patriots. Who initially bought our sovereignty with their own blood.
Don’t sell it cheaply.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/creighton-strong-possibility-that-ireland-will-not-return-to-markets-next-year-552449.html

Hey Sean. Check your calendar. Its not 2013 yet. Oh and the EFSF is continuing to fund us. The rest, is not relevant to the treaty or is simple pie in the sky economics.

Good point Shayno.

Thanks for your considered and insightful comments Kevin.

Excerpt from Irish Times 17/05/12 :

“THE EUROPEAN Central Bank said it would temporarily stop lending to some Greek banks to limit its risk as president Mario Draghi signalled the ECB would not compromise on key principles to keep Greece in the euro area.

The ECB said yesterday that it would push the responsibility for lending to some Greek financial institutions on to the Greek central bank until they have sufficiently boosted their capital.

The move comes after Mr Draghi acknowledged for the first time that Greece could leave the monetary union.

While the bank’s strong preference” is that Greece stays in the 17-nation euro area, the ECB would continue to preserve “the integrity of our balance sheet”, he said in a speech in Frankfurt yesterday.

“I think the ECB is playing hardball,” said Mark McCormick, currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York.

“I doubt they want to get too involved in EU politics, but I think they’re trying to show Greek policy-makers what their banking sector would look like without support from the ECB.”

The move comes as the man who represented private creditors in negotiations leading to the Greek debt restructuring earlier this year said a Greek exit from the euro posed “more ominous potential” to the global economy than the collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers more than three years ago.

The effect of Greece leaving the single currency would be “somewhere between catastrophic and Armageddon”, the managing director of the Institute of International Finance Charles Dallara said.”

Believe it baby!

I agree but what we have here is sadly a case of ff/fg voters doing what’s asked with no research of their own on the most important referendum to date. Hopefully The No side celebs like Eddie hobbs and David Mc Williams come out more publicly.. As they say it’s economic suicide.

Financial suicide you say…

Not so say Ireland’s leading economists.

http://www.businesspost.ie/#!story/Home/Politics/90%25+of+Irish+economists+’back+a+Yes+vote’/id/19410615-5218-4fbf-93e6-390982093312

The No side wanted a referendum and got it, claiming that it would be undemocratic and unconstitutional not to have one. Now when it looks like a majority will vote Yes, you are suddenly putting it down to people not doing their research. Well guess what, ye have had months to influence them.

David, the articles title is a bit misleading.

What it should say is- ’90% of Irish economists, whose inflated salaries, benefits and pensions may be put at risk if Ireland does not ratify the fiscal union treaty, back a yes vote in the referendum’.

“The survey included comments from professors of economics and full time economics lectures in economic departments of Irish universities but did not include economists “working in the media or in banks or other financial institutions”. The survey also did not include economists “working in government departments or agencies or in employer or trade union organisations”.

I would tend to cautiously agree with you there sean. I am not for a second questioning anyone’s integrity or opinion but I did find it odd that most publicly employed economists were the ones leading the yes vote whilst those not relying on the public purse are actually urging no? Just seems strange?

Would you like them to do the poll again- ask them the same question until you get the right answer that you prefer? Oh the irony!

I’m not an economist but I can read. I know from my reading, for example, that *all* the fiscal limits in this treaty already exist in previous agreements with Europe, some from twenty years ago. So I cannot understand how anyone can call it financial suicide, it just makes no sense whatsoever. If these limits are financial suicide now they were also financial suicide years ago too, and I don’t remember a peep about them before.
Also it creates an independent Irish authority to oversee our budgets, created in Irish law. This alone makes me want to vote Yes as any government will find it much harder to ever make a mess again. It makes everyone stick to the same general rules but leaves them the freedom to work out how they individually do it.

@ Gary. Circa 1998, Prof. Anthony Coughlan’s (TCD) prophetic warning regarding the hazards presented by the ill-designed monetary union and associated one-size-fits-all monetary policy. He is now issuing similar warnings with respect to the proposed one-size-fits-all fiscal agenda.
There were voices issuing warnings. Unfortunately, as with the property crash, they fell on deaf ears.

“The five years since our 1993 currency devaluation have been the only period in the history of the Irish State in which it has followed an independent exchange rate policy, permitting the punt to float rather than tying it to sterling or the Deutsche Mark. The resultant highly competitive exchange rate is the most important single reason for the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom, which coincides exactly with that period. Yet having proved how successful can be an independent currency and exchange rate, our leaders are now abandoning control of them to others, in principle for all future time.

The manifest unsuitability of a one-interest-rate-fits-all economic policy inside the eurozone is shown by our recent interest rate reductions to get in line for EMU. These further boost soaring house and asset prices here. They are precisely the opposite of what the Irish public welfare needs, although low interest rates suit recession-locked Germany and France. Yet in two or three years time inside the eurozone, unlike now, the Irish economy may really need the stimulus of lower interest rates, just at the time when the European Central Bank decides that higher interest rates are needed to cap a German-French economic revival. And that could happen just when the euro gives us an uncompetitive exchange rate vis-a-vis the bulk of our trading partners outside the eurozone. What happens to the Celtic Tiger then?”

Sean I think there’s little doubt that some of the possible downsides were not explored fully when creating the Euro. We didn’t have enough Europe-wide fiscal controls in place that’s for sure, thankfully the treaty addressees some of that. However that doesn’t mean it was a bad idea, I hate to think what would have happened if we’d gone into this crisis with the Punt, we’d be crucified.

And just as a side note about what Anthony Coughlan didn’t like or agree with…
“He has been described as a eurosceptic and he opposed EU enlargement and EU treaties such as the Single European Act, Maastricht Treaty, Amsterdam Treaty, Nice Treaty, Nice Treaty re-run and the Lisbon Treaty.”
If someone starts with a position of disagreeing and then works back to find the reasons why I think we have to take what they say with a very large pinch of salt. And obviously the fact his default position is to object to all these arrangements with Europe means it won’t be a surprise when we find he disagreed with the Euro as well. This is exactly what Sinn Fein does when they have opposed every single agreement we’ve ever made with Europe.

Gary, the hazards presented by the poorly designed currency union were forewarned. Claiming they weren’t is a bit like Bertie Aherne’s lament that no one warned him of the danger of a property crash.
The same people who forewarned the bubble-generating effects of currency union are now warning of the damage one-size-fits-all fiscal union will have. Do we need to be back here in 10 years claiming we weren’t warned.
It is not correct to say that Prof. Coughlan started from a position and worked back, when he forewarned the property crash in 1998. Attacking his motives for predicting Ireland’s collapse nearly ten years later does not stand up or address the substance of his criticism.

So your plenty informed then?

Is it not possible to be proud of the Irish with no desire for a nationalist individual politic? We are giving up sovereignty, something that in an ideal world we really shouldnt have,in my head.

Yes, rather than ceding my financial responsibility to the heartless Europeans, who will take my money and will joyfully suspend me in a perpetual state of poverty and hopelessness, I will instead cede my financial responsibility to a political party who have no experience in national financial management and who want to see the capitalists hounded out and hanged and who, by their incompetence, will suspend me in a perpetual state of poverty and hopelessness.

this is not an ideal world, if it was we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

Yes: 49& (-4)
No: 35% (+4)
Don’t Know: 16% (no change)
So not quite what you claimed at all.
http://www.businesspost.ie/#!story/Home/News/Red+C+poll%3A+Yes+vote+slips/id/86451974-84fc-0fcf-e925-7b562013351

Interestingly on the same page there is a link for this article…
“90% of Irish economists ‘back a Yes vote’

15:57, 25 May 2012 by Post Reporter

Survey claims nine out of ten economists back Yes vote

Nine out of ten of “Ireland’s leading economists” say a yes vote in the Fiscal Treaty is in Ireland’s best interest, according to a new survey,

The Indecon International Economic Consultants survey of the views of 44 economists in Ireland also claims that one of the most significant impacts of the Treaty vote arises from the inability to access EMS Funds if Ireland voted ‘No’.”
http://www.businesspost.ie/#!story/Home/Politics/90%25+of+Irish+economists+%27back+a+Yes+vote%27/id/19410615-5218-4fbf-93e6-390982093312

Everyone knows that this is where the no voters hang out. The yes voters are out in the sunshine getting on with their lives.

James has it right. Journal.ie’s comments section is filled with people who have both time & inclination to fill that time with comments. People who feel (rightly or wrongly) they’re not being listened to are far more likely to wade in than content people.

I gotta say, there were a lot less opinion pieces in comments sections when J.ie first came out, then the political cause activists got wind of the place and here they are, making the conversation oh *so* much clearer, informed, civilised, and pleasant with their *wonderful* wisdom & insight.

James Id say you should head in from the sun for a while. It seems to have affected you! Shinnerbots, what a stupid and immature thing to call a different political persuasion.

Annette Carroll. You’re asking the Journal to run a unscientific poll to prove that the scientifically run polls are wrong. (The Journal guys will happily confirm to you that online polls are not scientific).

Indeed they are not.

Yes, the phrase “wilfully self-deluding and crypto-fascist” seems more accurate than “shinnerbot”. Roll up, Roll up, to buy a ticket for the new republic. Tickets are reasonably priced. Please suspend your disbelief at the door.

Hitler? Are you for real? Anyone who invokes Hitler to forward their argument looses all credit. Call it the Hitler cop out. Means you are unable to win an argument with facts so resort to disgusting racial slurs.