How the Celtic Tiger was tamed

As Ireland heads to the polls, it expects not change but more of the same.

If all the talk of treason in Dublin were in earnest, there would be nooses dangling from the Georgian lamp posts around the Dail instead of general election posters. There are no lynch mobs along the banks of the Liffey and the worst financial crisis in southern Ireland since the founding of the Free State doesn’t seem to be bringing about the kind of large-scale realignment that the Irish left has been longing for.

Forget “Guns’n’Roses”, as a Sinn Fein-Labour coalition was nicknamed when a single rogue opinion poll suggested such a mould-breaking possibility. For all his gung-ho rhetoric about triumphing over the two big tribal parties, the Labour leader, Eamon Gilmore, now has a struggle on his hands to play any role in the next government. Instead of making history, the most he can hope for is to become a Hibernian version of the Liberal Democrat leader-turned-Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg – and he might be denied even that dubious achievement if a resurgent Fine Gael can muster a majority with the aid of independents.

Although Gilmore has accused the outgoing Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, of “economic treason”, the Labour leader is unlikely to pursue retribution if he becomes Tanaiste (deputy Taioseach). A politically connected golden circle of investors seems always to be protected, even in times of socio-economic carnage. Most people in Ireland can’t imagine this ever changing. Meanwhile, mass emigration is acting as a safety valve for social unrest. A new exodus from the country is one of the very few reasons that the number on the dole has yet to reach half a million.

Following the €85bn EU/IMF bailout, many have become exercised about the issue of economic sovereignty. The most that Fine Gael’s leader, Enda Kenny, promises is that, if he becomes Taoiseach on 25 February, he will try to negotiate a less onerous interest rate with the European Central Bank (ECB). But its president, Jean-Claude Trichet, has already publicly slapped him down for this. Alan Dukes, a former Fine Gael leader who is now chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, has added to Kenny’s woes by indicating that the country’s banking system will need a further €15bn on top of the €35bn already earmarked.

If the Irish Labour Party becomes the junior partner in a Fine Gael-led coalition that spends even more public money while implementing savage cuts in front-line services and social welfare payments at the behest of the ECB and the IMF, it will not be able to avoid becoming as loathed as Britain’s Lib Dems. And if they fall into the same trap, Dublin’s social democrats could end up following the Green Party, which fears electoral annihilation as punishment for propping up the outgoing Fianna Fail-led government. Even ardent ecologists find it hard to lament that prospect. Despite securing two of the ministerial portfolios that they most coveted – energy and environment – the Greens failed to tackle a national betrayal that straddles both these crucial spheres.

The great giveaway

The Corrib gas controversy concerns plans by Shell, Vermilion Energy and Statoil to exploit the hydrocarbon reserves off the Irish coast, whose total value is estimated by the government to be €420bn. It involves not just a rejection of local public safety concerns but also a sell-off of the nation’s natural resources.

When Eamon Ryan first entered the Dail, the charismatic young politician, once hailed as the great Green hope, campaigned for the Rossport Five, a determined group of local demonstrators who were prepared to go to prison to halt the construction of a gas pipeline through their village in County Mayo. When Ryan became Ireland’s energy minister, however, he seemed to forget this pledge of solidarity and failed to use his influence to prevent planning permission from being granted for an onshore, rather than offshore, refinery.

Furthermore, over the coming decades, as the Corrib gas starts to thunder through the pipe, the almost insolvent Irish state will not receive a single cent in royalties. And when the likes of Shell do eventually declare any profits, they will be taxed at just 25 per cent, compared to the international average of 68 per cent imposed by energy-producing countries.

In 1987, Ireland’s then minister for energy, Ray Burke, granted multinational corporations terms and conditions that few other countries would have stood for – including the abolition of royalties – purportedly to encourage gas exploration. Dick Spring, who was then Lab-our leader, is said to have denounced Burke’s deal as “an act of economic treason”. Burke was later jailed for offences relating to tax evasion. Little attempt has been made by any subsequent government to rescind his great gas and oil giveaway.

To cap it all, it emerged recently that a British undercover agent had been given free rein by the Irish police to infiltrate the Corrib protest groups. Mark Kennedy of the Metropolitan Police posed as an eco-warrior called Mark Stone while on the payroll of the UK National Public Order Intelligence Unit; he has claimed that he was commissioned in Dublin to do so. It seems that, when it comes to safeguarding the interests of international capital, Ireland’s national sovereignty can be breached not just by the IMF but also by the British police and equally unaccountable elements within the Irish state.

Rob Brown is senior lecturer in journalism at Independent College Dublin