Is there a future for Fianna Fail?


FF had DIRECT controls of the planning process via Dept Environment and via the political appointees to An Bord Pleanala. Don't try to rewrite history now.

FF bankrupted the country when they signed the unlimited bank guarantee on 28th September 2008. If they hadn't signed the guarantee, we wouldn't be in the hands of the international money lenders now.

That's their legacy.
 
Complainer said:
FF bankrupted the country when they signed the unlimited bank guarantee on 28th September 2008. If they hadn't signed the guarantee, we wouldn't be in the hands of the international money lenders now.
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eh, yes we would.
Why do you think they gave the guarantee in the first place?
I agree that it was a stupid socilaist thing to do but it was wasn't done in a vacuum.
 

True, but would the IMF have come in to bail us out and who would be paying the public sector wage bill right now if they hadn't?
 
Mpsox said:
True, but would the IMF have come in to bail us out and who would be paying the public sector wage bill right now if they hadn't?
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The bank guarantee pushed us over the edge into the abyss. There was certainly a major issue with cost of providing public services, and the dependance on property taxes to support this. This could have been addressed through normal borrowing over time. It was our exposure to the bank debt that pushed our bond yields to unsustainable levels.

Thanks Brian and Brian.
 

Actually it wasn't. Bond yields didn't fall off the cliff until the middle of 2010 which was nearly two years after the Guarantee. The state of the public finances (huge deficit) and the general European debt crisis was the reason. The broad nature of the Bond Guarantee scheme was a mistake but nothing would have been different without it. No senior bondholder would have been allowed to lose money anyway. FG and Labour despite all their noise from the opposition benches are still unable to impose losses on Anglo and Nationwide bondholders never mind the main banks.

In the meantime, we would still have had a day to day deficit of approx €20 billion and to think that we would have been able to fund through normal borrowings in the current environment is wishful thinking.

FF made a lot of mistakes but they go far beyond the bond guarantee scheme and there are plenty of other people around that can share in the blame. Whatever you might think about Brian Lenihan, there has been no change in Government Policy with regards to the budget. It's easy for them to say they don't have a choice because of the IMF/EU/ECB but they knew that when they were mouthing off from the opposition benches and promising the moon and the stars.
 
Only got around to watching part 3 of the FF show on TV3 last night.

They really don't get it, do they? John O'Donoghue was victimhood personified, had done nothing wrong in his own eyes. Bertie felt that the Galway Tent hadn't affected how people thought of FF, because it had been cancelled and they still did badly in the General Election, that's the sophisticated level of thinking in our former Taoiseach!

The main thing for me was that none of them seemed to know what FF stood for, they were only now going to think about that. Why were they in a party that they didn't know what it stood for?
 

Think that pretty much sums them up. O'Donoghue should be held up as an example of someone that should never ever be elected.
 
What's that famous saying, people get the politicans they deserve

You can say JOD shouldn't be elected but he was what the people wanted
And there are plenty who see their politican as the man/women they send "up to Dublin" to bring home the bacon
Martin Cullen was the "Minister for the South East". Incompetent at everything but he was the most senior politician for the area

Them fancy Dubs have their Luas, Dart, IFSC and government jobs, what can we get

And JOD was better then most
Here is his website with his achievements
[broken link removed]

Doesn't list anything like I negoitated in Northern Ireland or I worked on legislation or represented Ireland at the UN.
Every achievement there is money and resources he pulled for his area

For example the first line under Health isn't about being a cabinet minister with some great achievment like insurance reform or money for research, no no no,
More than €79 million has been provided in capital funding for school building and modernisation projects in Kerry since 2002.
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It's what did Kerry get


This is what people wanted and this is what they got.
Tipp does the same with Lowry, Dublin had Tony Gregory who leveraged his vote to extract millions for his area.

FF without power have little to offer, they'll be back but there is nothing outstanding or unique about them to attract people
 

Are you saying that we just keep borrowing 18-20bn a year indefinately? This IMO would be akin to the Ostrich burying its head in the sand..
 
Complainer said:
Where did I say anything remotely near that?
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Perhaps I have mis-unstood the piece I highlighted in bold, but to me it reads that ""There was certainly a major issue with cost of providing public services" (actually there IS as opposed to was).

"and the dependance on property taxes to support this." Agreed. Transactional property taxes should never have been used to fund annual payments

"This could have been addressed through normal borrowing over time". This is the main bit I am referring to. With the income from property taxes effectively gone you are suggesting that we borrow to meet our budget deficit - this has been between 18-20bn a year for the past 3 years with little sign of decreasing. So we just keep borrowing for this? If I have mis-understood then please clarify.
 
Where you misunderstand is where you say 'keep borrowing'. I never said 'keep borrowing'. I said that we wouldn't be in the arms of the IMF if it wasn't for the banking debt. We would have been able to borrow through normal processes while we worked out how to address the gap between income and expenditure.
 
That's simply not true.
 
Complainer said:
We would have been able to borrow through normal processes while we worked out how to address the gap between income and expenditure.
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I doubt that the political will, to face up to the deficit, would have been forthcoming in the absence of the bailout.
 

The whole mess is interlinked. Without the building boom in the first place the public sector unions would not have demanded pay increases to keep their members pay inline with private sector workers (to be able to afford houses among other things which were rising in price - and you can't blame them). Likewise the resources would not have been there which allowed politicians hire so many additional staff in their departments or create so many quangos.

The fact is that Fianna Fail were in charge for all of this period. Ultimately the financial regulator and the governor of the Central Bank reported to the Minister of Finance and he to Bertie. Bertie was ultimately in charge. However, we the people voted him in and we all benefited to some extent during the good times. It was a lot easier for Bertie to ignore any warnings he might have received...sure weren't we all doing well...did he really want to be the one who shouted stop and bring the whole thing down? All said and done, FF are the largest culprit IMO. Just because we voted them in doesn't make us reponsible for all of their actions (a lot of which are only coming out now anyway). They allowed this whole mess to foster and brought in budget after budget to fuel the fire.

Perhaps if the banks were regulated by a body totally independant of government influence they could restrict lending in the first place. This could be great in theory but on a small island I doubt if it would ever work as intended.

We are left with two large issues. The banking capitalisation and the budget deficit. The requirement for the former will at some stage level-off. The latter is being addressed at the moment by cutting services (garda stations and A&E untis closing) more than pay (even though pay has been cut somewhat), so we the public are the ones losing out. IMO, it is really only a matter of time before the IMF focus their energy on public sector numbers and pay...unless of course our economy improves.

So, in summary I think your point about the bank debt being resposible for our woes is only part of the story...we are borrowing as much to meet our budget deficit.
 
Getting back to the original question - Is there a future for Fianna Fáil?

I heard the Fianna Fáil people being interviewed on Morning Ireland as they were leaving the Think Tank in Tallaght. They came up with the same boring rubbish I would expect from a gaggle of nitwits at the same event. They are not learning and still talking down to us. The Fianna Fáil support hasn't bottomed out yet, they have still more distance to fall.
 


They say opposition parties don't win elections, Governments lose them.
Its hard to see the current FG-L government situation ending any time soon.

FG-L are bound to follow the path set for them by the last government and the IMF.
They have a built-in "get out of jail" card - if anything goes wrong their choices were very limited.

I think it will take an exceptional leader to reinvent Fianna Fáil, but the scapegoating of the most popular party for three terms is hard to credit.
Without doubt, they represented the worst of the Celtic Tiger - the ignorance and arrogance of those new come to money, vinegar aspiring to wine.

I think the current low poll result is partly a reaction to their behaviour towards the presidential election, and not allowing their members a free vote.
Mícheál Martin has shown himself to be dismissive of the wishes of his party and of certain back-benchers, which is not good sign in a leader of Fianna Fáil.

Bertie Ahern's recent comments about the Grass Roots seem to be a cynical attempt to further undermine a leader and a party for which he has no further use.
This kind of back-stabbing from a former leader of Fianna Fáil would be calculated to further alienate the same grass roots and prevent any rejuvenation under Martin.

Will Fianna Fáil renew itself? Not under Mícheál Martin, by the looks of things.
Will it ever recover? Not with a vain and embittered ex Taoiseach lurking in the wings, smarting from having missed his shot at The Park.
Remove these two impediments and install an energetic, visionary leader focused on the economy and the Party might have a fighting chance.

But does Sean Gallagher want the job?


ONQ.
 
I seriously doubt whether FF will get back up to it's 2007 level of support any time soon. Between now and the next election I wouldn't be surprised to see the formation of another party. The appetitie is there from the voters to try something new.
I also think the steady rise of SF will eat into a lot of the tradtional working class FF support, leaving the field very crowded.

FF could end up going into a FG led government in 5 or 10 years time.
 
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