FG vs Labour if this is Right vs Left Fianna Fail must be the Centre

CDfm

OK - I have a confession to make.

I do not enderstand the labels left and right as being applied in Irish Politics at the moment.

How can a political party like Fianna Fail who stuck to the Social Partnership thru thick and thin be considered right wing.

The money came in from the property bubble,income tax,prsi, VAT, stamp duty and got paid out again. Lots of it on public service wages.

The property bubble burst but we are still commited to all this spending.

Gilmore warns against majority FG government

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said his party in government would place an emphasis on jobs and fairness. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons/The Irish Times




EOIN BURKE-KENNEDY

I wish there was a go-compare.com on political policies and ideologies.


Refreshingly, I heard Eamonn Blaney - Independent (New Vision) Dublin North East on Newstalk during the week telling the leader of a union that the unions did not represent the unemployed.

A majority Fine Gael government would impose further cuts in child benefit and a range of other “hidden” taxes, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore claimed today.
As the election campaign entered its final week, there appeared to be no let-up in the row between the prospective government parties.
Mr Gilmore said voters faced two choices next Friday; either to elect a single-party Fine Gael government which would impose a raft of cutbacks or to elect a government that included Labour which would place an emphasis on jobs and fairness.
His warning against single-party government echoed the famous stance taken by former Progressive Democrat leader Michael McDowell in the 2002 election.

Child benefit is sometimes called "milk money" or less charitably " mickey money" and is a benefit paid out without regards to means.

This is hardly a fair benefit.

So what voters is this aimed at.

However, Fine Gael’s education spokesman Fergus O’Dowd hit back at Mr Gilmore’s claims, saying Labour's attacks on his party “smacked of panic and desperation”.
“Today, the Labour Party was supposed to launch its youth manifesto. Instead, it decided to highlight and attack Fine Gael’s own plans on third level education,” he said.
"Voters are entitled to know why Labour still refuses to promote its own failed policies. Clearly, Labour’s policies do not stand up to scrutiny. Too many of their proposals are uncosted and backed-up with vague evidence."

What he is saying is you cannot assume jobs will follow and if you need to raise taxes to fund your policies - you may screw up what is left of the economy.

Mr Gilmore was speaking in Dún Laoghaire where he launched the party's new poster campaign criticising Fine Gael's proposals for funding third level education.
The campaign claims Fine Gael is planning to impose a “graduate tax” on students to fund one-third of the cost of a college course. Labour says this would saddle young people with debt and act as a disincentive to staying in Ireland.

Now this one is one I have thought about before.

Students come largely from educated middle classes.

The unfair bit is that the unskilled workers etc who pay their tax ,prsi & usc actually are subsidising middle class education.

The next thing of course is that 25% of the population leave school functionally illiterate.

So really, where is the social justice there.

Separately today, Fine Gael unveiled plans to introduce a new social welfare payment system to target fraud which the party claimed would save €1 billion over its first three years in government.
As part of its plan to create a smaller, more efficient public sector, Fine Gael wants to establish a payments and entitlements service (PES) to process citizen entitlements by merging the existing 20 Government bodies which process welfare payments.
“In the same way that Fine Gael has declared ‘all-out’ war on white collar crime and rogue bankers, we will target welfare fraud and secure savings of €1 billion by year three of a new government,” the party’s enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton said.

I laughed at this - will the HSE Union slush fund get investigated.


http://www.herald.ie/national-news/new-hse-scandal-as-flaws-found-in-forums-spending-2457272.html

He said the party could double the outgoing Government’s existing target for fraud of €500 million by introducing a range of targeted new policies, including powers to reduce or remove benefits to those caught defrauding the system.
The party also wants to pilot a control system which stores a photograph of the owner of each PPS number on a secure central database accessible by social welfare staff.

So control benefit fraud is a target -when you can't control public service departments.

Is there benefit fraud and what are the figures.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0219/breaking11.html .

Now here is an IBEC promo on what we do well job wise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6iBKc0O0E

Low taxes have been a huge incentive in creating that.

chief of public service pay body says staff cuts to save €200m




MARTIN WALL, Industry Correspondent
STAFFING REDUCTIONS across the public services since the ratification of the Croke Park agreement last June will generate payroll savings of €200 million, the chairman of the group set up to oversee its implementation has said.
PJ Fitzpatrick said there were about 4,000 fewer staff in the public service at the end of last December than there had been six months earlier. This includes the 2,000 health service personnel who left the Health Service Executive under the recent voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes.
The Government has said savings generated under the deal should be calculated from the time it was ratified by unions last June.
However, some of the Government’s figures for staff reductions in the public service date back to the introduction of the moratorium on recruitment in March 2009, a year before the Croke Park deal was agreed and 15 months before it was ratified.


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0204/1224288988024.html

Hardly savage cuts by Fianna Fail.

I mean, our public service pay is far above the EU average and this from a country on the verge of bankrupsy. We are the I in PIGS, the acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain as the economic basket case countries.

Now, like it or not, that is fairly "left wing." Is it equitable and fair ?

Hardly, because the economic conditions that paid for the increasesare gone. This is what the Labour Party and the Unions want to protect.

So yes I am very confused over who is left , right, centre and socialist.

oppenheimer1

FG - Right
Lab - Left (ish)
FF - populist (traditionally)

CDfm

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

FF - populist (traditionally)

I have a difficult time reconcilling this with the form of government by concensus via the mechanism of the Social Partnership.

Read this .

http://sociology.nuim.ie/documents/hardiman.pdf

A reason for looking at this is that many of the same policies are espoused by all the parties.

Lacking are plans for economic growth.

CDfm

It's war as FG faces wrath of the unions






By Conor Feehan

Saturday February 19 2011

Now union leaders are warning of the "dangers" of voting for Fine Gael, and handing powerful support to Labour.
The move comes after Fine Gael declared on its website and in election leaflets that it would take on "vested interests" such as bankers, developers and unions which, it said, had contributed to the current economic crisis.

Teachers

UNITE and the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) have sent urgent messages to members not to vote Fine Gael.

Public Sector 70,000 Private 130,000

The largest union, SIPTU, which has more than 200,000 members, has declared itself in favour of Labour and parties that "support principles of social solidarity"

.


Bar & Retail Workers

Mandate, the union for 45,000 bar and retail workers, is not a Labour Party affiliate but has encouraged members to vote for parties and independent candidates "of the left".

And the leader of the trade union movement, David Begg, has also threatened to "advise" the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' 600,000 members of the Fine Gael position and demanded the election material be withdrawn.

600,000 ICTU assocites told not to vote FG

But Mr Kenny has refused to back down on his claims that the unions represented a vested interest group.

jimmycrackcorm

I've been amazed at the reaction to some of the public sector workers I know who have said that they won't follow the unions voting direction nor vote for labour; because they recognize so many incidences in their workplaces where inefficiencies and people are protected by the unions.

Union members are intelligent enough to understand that the real risk to their jobs comes with not making the painful but correct political decisions. Thats why the unions are not able to get 600,000 ICTU members out on the streets...

Ray Burkes Pension

The reality is there are 4 centrist parties in Irish politics.
Fianna Fail, Fine Gael are Centre Right
Labour - Centre Left
Green - Centre

There's nothing really between their ideologies, the just have differing level of competencies.

Sinn Fein and ULA are your more traditional left wing Parties.

CDfm

High wages and uncompetiveness have been a feature in the PIGS economies and Ireland is one

this is an interesting slideshow

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ZRy6n0lXoZUJ:www.nuigalway.ie/management/staff/morgan/documents/trade_unions_employers_associations.ppt+trade+unions+employers+associations+power+point&hl=en&gl=ie&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShw82pKju-nUFeG_JfOF_HC975v4F8DlVl6IkXCCNsk1NGScp1kQL-MqhwLzlkxUfOtZp27Q8lwXFoGFdAlAu8sFgTt2pK08Gv5siPC3ednG859Ucr52hW6fv-aLP1S9V9mak8z&sig=AHIEtbSjb6X_ZsLd7Pstfn_Os9jX1gey0Q

high wages and and inefficiencies in the public sector actually fuelled the boom

when you look at the collective bargaining positions with unions they can be very uncomprimising.

@ray burkes pension you will have to convince me FF are centre right. The ideologies on benefit payments and the social partnership model make it not so.

Centre Left & Christian Socialist maybe.

The Economist has run Irish stories

http://www.economist.com/node/17854975

The trick for the politicians is to try to make Ireland a competitive.


revovery for the economy is not slow

it is more beneficial to cut civil service salaryrather than dole as the unemployed spend everything