Sinn Fein's 10 point plan

PomBear

ilovesleep wrote: »

Jim236
I wouldnt listen to a thing david mcwilliams says.

I would, he has more economic experience than any of our prospective finance ministers and obviously anyone on boards.

Zubeneschamali

Papa Smut wrote: »

So would you like to back up your statement that the DOE has generic school designs in place?

DOE website is down, but the generic plans are linked from the page I linked to earlier, in the menu at the left. I'll look again tomorrow if the site is back up.

Sponge Bob

Papa Smut wrote: »

Ok, You may have missed my point, that page 128 is not there and I honestly didn't think to search for 435.

You missed mine, the €435m figure in point 6 was a spending heading for the 7 year National Development Plan 2007 - 2013 of which most was unsurprisingly spent during 2007-2010 inclusive.

While SF may witter about the number being in the NDP, and therefore not pulled straight out of their arses as a number, they have completely hidden what is already spent , around €200m+ of the €450m. This spend includes money diverted by Eamon Ryan from the pathetic c €50m-60m annual 'communications' budget to his wood pellet scams.

This already paltry budget was €53m in 2010 ( search for 53,512 in this large doc)

Pete_Cavan

Scofflaw wrote: »

However, they have already earmarked the NPRF to pay for the deficit. Since they're also talking about rolling back the cuts Fianna Fáil have made, and rejecting the IMF deal, there isn't anything left over even in year 1 for a 'stimulus package'. The expected annual state deficit is, or would be, larger than the whole of the NPRF, without the banks.

Yes Scofflaw, I read one point and was about to post the same until I read our post. I think it is worth mentioning again in case some people dont read the first page of the thread.

gandalf wrote: »

TBH the last thing we need are more Public Sector funded jobs. All I see here is spend spend spend. What is needed is the atmosphere for the SME sector to start to grow again, that is where we will get the real jobs growth and where we will see real inroads into the unemployment figures. To do that costs for business needs to fall, especially Government related costs and this plan does absolutely nothing to address that.

Another point I was going to make. Their job creation strategy seem to be build loads of schools, primary health centres and crèche. These are 100% state funded jobs and we cant keep building these for ever so it is only temporary employment. When the stimulus ends all these jobs are lost and we are back to square one. A real jobs strategy would be to spend our money on infrastructure that will allow jobs to be created by making it easier and cheaper to do business here.

Pal

1. A jobs stimulus. Sinn Féin is advocating the transfer of €7billion from the National Pension Reserve Fund.

Complete rubbish. Ask SF to please explain how the existing pension deficit will be funded before they take 7 yards out.

2. Growing the agri-food sector. Deploy funding of €500million

Where is this money coming from ?
You've just rifled the pension fund.


3. Health infrastructure at a cost of €500million.

Go on. tell me.

4. School buildings and refurbishment would cost €375million
See number 3

5. Crèches. Build 100 crèches at a cost of €200million,
Please stop

6. Improving communications infrastructure. Funding required = €435m.
FFS

7. Assistance for those starting a business. Funding required = €2 million.
happy days. realism.

8. Helping businesses to export.
Exports is about the only thing that doesn't need help right now

9.Rethink local authority and public sector
Now we're getting some clarity

10. Initiate a ‘Frontline Services Aides Scheme’
A what ?

Please forgive my cynicism SF, but no thanks.

RightHalfBack

Do the other parties have a clear list like this of what they will do? Thats a genuine question and not an attempt to knock anyone btw.

All we should need from Parties and candidities is a clear list of what they want to do and how they will do it. Then its very easy to decide who you agree with. I think Sinn Fein have done that better than anyone. All the spin and point scoring of each other is so sickening already..

Also a small bit offtopic but would anyone agree that Election posters\signs should be outlawed? They look awful, are blowing around the place hitting people and only mean candidates with more money are getting extra exposure. Was thinking of defacing a few for the craic

Jim236

Pal wrote: »

1. A jobs stimulus. Sinn Féin is advocating the transfer of €7billion from the National Pension Reserve Fund.

Complete rubbish. Ask SF to please explain how the existing pension deficit will be funded before they take 7 yards out.

2. Growing the agri-food sector. Deploy funding of €500million

Where is this money coming from ?
You've just rifled the pension fund.


3. Health infrastructure at a cost of €500million.

Go on. tell me.

4. School buildings and refurbishment would cost €375million
See number 3

5. Crèches. Build 100 crèches at a cost of €200million,
Please stop

6. Improving communications infrastructure. Funding required = €435m.
FFS

7. Assistance for those starting a business. Funding required = €2 million.
happy days. realism.

8. Helping businesses to export.
Exports is about the only thing that doesn't need help right now

9.Rethink local authority and public sector
Now we're getting some clarity

10. Initiate a ‘Frontline Services Aides Scheme’
A what ?

Please forgive my cynicism SF, but no thanks.

What a stupid post. The money is coming from the NPRF, and before going off on some tangent about Sinn Féin being economic illiterates, you should know that Fine Gael are proposing a similar stimulus using funding from the NPRF, while Fianna Fáil are proposing using the NPRF to recapitalise the banks.

Chucky the tree

Jim236 wrote: »

What a stupid post. The money is coming from the NPRF, and before going off on some tangent about Sinn Féin being economic illiterates, you should know that Fine Gael are proposing a similar stimulus using funding from the NPRF, while Fianna Fáil are proposing using the NPRF to recapitalise the banks.

The pension fund money is being used to pay our deficit by Sinn Fein.

Pal

Jim236 wrote: »

What a stupid post. .

Drive through. Your ignorance is ahead of you.

bonkey

Civility, folks. Its expected of you.

Pal

I apologise to Chucky.

back to topic.

10 point plan fiddling with the pension fund would be a disaster.
Ireland is very soon going to have considerable demographical problems.
SF need to go back to school on economics.
They may be smart people on spin and perhaps other things but clearly not on this topic.

the groutch

there is an element of the underpants gnomes at play here

Step 1: Empty National Pension Reserve Fund

Step 2: ?????????????

Step 3: Profit

but the principles are there, which if they got together with the right coalition partners could steer things in a much better direction than where FF were taking the country

CokaColumbo

I think this plan is typical of a political party which, along with most of the political establishment, thinks that government can effectively centrally plan an economy.

1) The idea that Sinn Fein is advertising the fact that they are using the pension fund to pay for things other than pensions is strange and demonstrates why any government should not be in charge of people's pension funds (it steals them). Aside from that, spending €7 billion on job creation? Are you kidding me? It is absolutely clear that governments are absolutely terrible at creating any sort of productive employment and end up wasting massive amounts of money in the process. This will definitely fail and as a result, there will be no more pension funds! The only way to create self-sustaining and productive employment is to reduce taxes and government interference in the economy. Every job created by government requires so much tax money that significantly more jobs will be sacrificed in the private sector as a result.

2) How about abolishing these state organisations and returning the taxes required to sustain them back, along with the €500 million, into the private sector so that productive and self-sustaining jobs will be demanded over time? You can be sure as hell that the state jobs created by these schemes sacrifice significantly more in the private sector.

You could go on and point to all of the real jobs which are being sacrificed by government "stimulus" and "job creation" but it would be too repetitive, suffice it to say that what this economy needs is less expenditure, not more; less taxes, not more.
If you were to follow Sinn Fein's path and impose significant tax increases whilst actually expanding the size of government, you will get a shrinking economy, lower tax revenue within a couple of years, and worsening unemployment levels. Governments cannot manage an economy without destroying prosperity and jobs in the private sector.

puffdragon

Has anyone considered the possibility that when we default on the IMF debt that we will be in a worse state than ever before and we could be sitting here in a two years time saying " burn the bondholders " but two years too late because the money will already been paid by the teachers and guards we seem to be oh so eager to tax beyond belief!!.
We have nothing to lose do we ? maybe a couple of years hard work for little money, but then what? we still havent paid the debt and still in hock to Europe , and this senario continues for the rest of your life and the life of your children.
A nation of poor guards and teachers for five years v your childrens future,hmm let me think now? .
This ten point plan may be woefully simplistic for some but then some of us (with the advantage of age and experience) have the wisdom to see a the truth!!

K-9

Well the argument would be, we are fecked to a certain extent anyway as regards the banks with a reported €275 Billions worth of debt:

Markets News Afternoon: Standard & Poor's says Irish domestic banks have debt of €275bn - - more than 170% of Ireland's GDP

What I'd wonder about the "letting them fail" approach is what happens deposits? Corporate deposits seem to have been fleeing the country in the last few months, but what about the ordinary depositor, Joe Soap with a few Grand in the Bank or the Granny with her life savings in Irish Nationwide or whoever it is?

Central Bank says deposits at Irish banks from non-financial companies plunged more than 16% in 2010; Non-Eurozone deposits tumbled 33%

Spudmonkey

Tbh, I could come up with a pretty good 10 point plan as well spending imaginary money. Everyone of their points (with the exception of two which don't give figures) involve spending money we don't have and make no effort to re-balance the books.

Scofflaw

the groutch wrote: »

there is an element of the underpants gnomes at play here

Step 1: Empty National Pension Reserve Fund

Step 2: ?????????????

Step 3: Profit

but the principles are there, which if they got together with the right coalition partners could steer things in a much better direction than where FF were taking the country

There's an element of damning Sinn Fein with faint praise there. Or possibly damning everyone else with even fainter praise.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

puffdragon

Permabear wrote,Exactly.

I wonder whether SF even formulates these plans with an economically literate audience in mind. They seem designed only to convince the gullible that SF has found a magical formula to save us all—when, in fact, they will only result in more pointless spending, more waste, more debt, and fewer productive jobs.




And your post only proves their point,( just because you say it dont mean its true) the fact is neither you nor I know how much money is available for us to spend, only when you get a look at the books can you start to formulate proper spending regimes.
It is just as reckless to tell Europe we can pay this massive debt off as it is to assume we would be all-right without it, the only difference is that your telling no lies , which is what FF FG and LB are doing, lying to themselves to us and to Europe, you and I will be standing here in one years time when the first payment is due on the massive loan and the penny finally drops that we cant afford even the interest payments saying, why didn't we go it alone like Iceland, proud people who brought their own economy around without the massive debt imposed by the IMF, #

Everyone keeps repeating the FF led gibberish "how will we pay the guards" well what sense does it make to give the IMF the same amount of money in interest payments every year that it would take to pay not only the guards, but also the teachers and nurses. talk about stupid, I do despair of my countrymen some times!!

And just caught someone on the radio talking about our corporate tax rate again, there's no disguising it anymore, we've sold out full stop!!

danbohan

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I wonder whether SF even formulates these plans with an economically literate audience in mind

bottom line none of the partys do , they are all lying because they know the majority wont see through it .

ogh and in a few weeks time enda and gilmore will apear outside the dept of finance looking like they had been told they had days to live to tell us , ''its much much worse than we thought and therfore .........................''

Scofflaw

puffdragon wrote: »

Permabear wrote,Exactly.

I wonder whether SF even formulates these plans with an economically literate audience in mind. They seem designed only to convince the gullible that SF has found a magical formula to save us all—when, in fact, they will only result in more pointless spending, more waste, more debt, and fewer productive jobs.




And your post only proves their point,( just because you say it dont mean its true) the fact is neither you nor I know how much money is available for us to spend, only when you get a look at the books can you start to formulate proper spending regimes.
It is just as reckless to tell Europe we can pay this massive debt off as it is to assume we would be all-right without it, the only difference is that your telling no lies , which is what FF FG and LB are doing, lying to themselves to us and to Europe, you and I will be standing here in one years time when the first payment is due on the massive loan and the penny finally drops that we cant afford even the interest payments saying, why didn't we go it alone like Iceland, proud people who brought their own economy around without the massive debt imposed by the IMF, #

Er, Iceland got an IMF loan. As a proportion of their GDP, their bailout was 38.7% - ours is 41.9%. Not much of a difference, and that assumes we use all of ours.

puffdragon wrote: »

Everyone keeps repeating the FF led gibberish "how will we pay the guards" well what sense does it make to give the IMF the same amount of money in interest payments every year that it would take to pay not only the guards, but also the teachers and nurses. talk about stupid, I do despair of my countrymen some times!!

So do I, but perhaps for different reasons.

We have made similar levels level of interest repayments before - in 1990 a bit over 20% of the tax take went on debt interest, which is where debt interest repayments are expected to rise to this time.

puffdragon wrote: »

And just caught someone on the radio talking about our corporate tax rate again, there's no disguising it anymore, we've sold out full stop!!

Not so much a case of 'sold out' as ruined ourselves and now have a very poor bargaining position.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zubeneschamali

Papa Smut wrote: »

So would you like to back up your statement that the DOE has generic school designs in place?

Here you are, more designs and standards than you could shake a stick at, all a click away from the page I googled up for you already:

http://www.education.ie/home/home.jsp?maincat=&pcategory=17216&ecategory=54380&sectionpage=12251&language=EN&link=link001&page=1&doc=50432

The oldest design (superseded) was published in 2004, so this is not news.

Rereading the 10 point plan, I don't think Sinn Féin are claiming that creating this generic design is part of their plan, they are just planning to spend €375 million rolling out 125 of the existing 16 classroom generic design.

Which wouldn't have been a bad idea 5 years ago.

Euroland

Jim236 wrote: »

Sorry to go slightly off-topic here but this suggestion that if you burn the bondholers and use on NPRF money instead, that you won't be able to borrow from the markets has consistently been thrown out there by both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil and its complete fiction.

The whole reason the markets were looking for such high interest rates was because of the banking debt, which was because of the guarantee. If you separate the banking debt from the sovereign debt then you don't have that instability thats worrying the markets.

Just take yesterday as an example when Standard & Poor downgraded Ireland's credit rating yet again, despite the fact we've been bailed out by the IMF and ECB. And the interest rate being sought by the markets is still above 9%. Why? Because the markets aren't thick and they know we can't pay the money back.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will have you believe that because we refuse to bailout the bondholders who took a risk by lending money to Irish banks and lost, that we wouldn't be able to seek money on the markets again. This is complete nonsense. Markets lend money solely on the ability to pay, and if we can show that we are tackling our sovereign debt and will be able to pay any borrowed money back, they won't care that we didn't bailout the bondholders in Germany, Britain and France. Going by that logic, the USA would have had the door shut in its face because they didn't bail out Lehman's Bros.

So anyone who thinks that accepting this bailout will lead to Ireland being able to borrow off the markets again is living in cuckooland. All it will mean is Ireland being saddled with €200 billion or so worth of debt that we can't pay back, and only delaying the inevitable which will be Ireland defaulting.

100%, I fully agree with you, refusing to bailout the bondholders is the only way forward. In many countries transfer of private debt to the state would constitute treason. We have to follow the Icelandic way (which is already pretty much OK by now) and also learn from the corporate default/restructuring experience. There is nothing wrong with refusing to save the private interests. We have to put our national interests first, ahead of the interests of the European private bondholders.

Pete_Cavan

Euroland wrote: »

100%, I fully agree with you, refusing to bailout the bondholders is the only way forward. In many countries transfer of private debt to the state would constitute treason. We have to follow the Icelandic way (which is already pretty much OK by now) and also learn from the corporate default/restructuring experience. There is nothing wrong with refusing to save the private interests. We have to put our national interests first, ahead of the interests of the European private bondholders.

Iceland TOOK the bailout, following the Icelandic way would be taking the bailout.

Euroland

ilovesleep wrote: »

By defaulting, would we not be telling the EU to fcuk off with their banks, then we'd be forced out of the euro and take on a new currency, which would be worthless. Could help with tourism and exports though. We'd be cheap again. But it will be awful for us because imports would be very expensive. By defaulting and taking on a new currency would we even have a deficit. A default and a new currency would probably mean working for a pound a day though.

Nonsense, backed by one of the strongest export sectors in the world, Ireland would be able to manage own currency reasonably well, particularly, if we off-load the bank debt.

Euroland

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Iceland TOOK the bailout, following the Icelandic way would be taking the bailout.

Iceland didn’t' take it. It refused to pay the bank debt, until deep restructuring was agreed (some still in process). We could do the same with haircuts of 90-95% (pay only 5-10 cents for every Euro of debt).

Chucky the tree

Euroland wrote: »

Iceland didn’t' take it. It refused to pay the bank debt, until deep restructuring was agreed (some still in process). We could do the same with haircuts of 90-95% (pay only 5-10 cents for every Euro of debt).

Yes they did.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a3Zf1f9IBUWg

Euroland

Chucky the tree wrote: »

Yes they did.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a3Zf1f9IBUWg

Apparently we misunderstood each other; I meant they didn’t bail out the banks.

Chucky the tree

So we should take the IMF money but not bail out the banks then? Sinn Fein have simply refused to take any baillout.

TunaSaladBB

Someone should really tell Sinn Fein that they of all "parties" shouldn't be reminding us of the 80s

http://electionleaflets.mygov.ie/leaflets/43/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter