Positives about the Irish economy ?

PatsytheNazi

Now this isn't a wind up or a " let's put the green shirt on " as Lenihan in true FF style tried to BS his way out. But watching Today Tonight on Monday, John Bruton ( normally a person I wouldn't have much time for) acknowledeged the bank and state debt etc but also said that with exports in pharmaceuticals, agriculture etc that the country was actually doing better than others in the EU - if we didn't have the bank gambling debts around our necks :mad: This was something David McWilliams also picked up on and threw out some stats comparing Ireland's industrial out put with other such as Belgium etc and appearently like Bruton, he pointed to much of the same.

Now I know some will accuse me of ignoring the elephant in the room etc, but for those of you who know your stuff - What positives has Ireland got at the moment ?

ferike1

A highly mobile and educated workforce that is able to emigrate to the UK, Austrailia and Canada.

We also have the largest group of saps in the world that are willing to take any BS the higher ups throw at us smiliing. Our taxpayers are very compliant to the needs of the economy.

ei.sdraob

bright-side: Sarcozy will bomb us if we dont increase corpo tax :P

sandin

There are 600,000 mortagages in the country. The other 1.1m have no mortgage.

Of the 600,000 mortagages, about 250,000 are over 50% paid off and were purchased pre-boom.

85% of adults are working.

The fact that a home as worth €750,000 and you had a mortgage of €200,000 meant you "felt" rich. Now that house is worth €400,000 and the homeowner does not feel as rich as he/she did and so is more careful about spending.

Once house prices move up again, even slightly, confidence will return somewhat, not just to the housing market, but to the consumer market in general. This will lead to increased spending, which will lead to increased employment.

We're nearly at this stage, a lot of people have a fair whack of savings and they'll start spending as soon as they know things are on the up again. This will very quickly help the jobs situation which gets another group of people spending and so on.

As for emigration - it one of the biggest mis-reported things about. In the height of the boom, 30,000 people moved away from Irealnd. (circa 24,000 irish, 6000 non Irish). Currently 60,000 will leave this year, but the breakdown is estimated to be about 35,000 Irish & 25,000 non Irish.

In America, if you lived in Boston and a better job came up in San Francisco, you'd probably start the following week and think nothing of moving 3000 miles, but here, the begrudgery types see it as a major negative skipping a couple of hundred miles over the water to take a job.

It happened in the eighties and thousands came back once things got better, and they came back with skills and experience that they would never have got here. The same will happen and todays emigrees will return and create more employment, create more exports and lead the country back to growth.

jakdelad

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Now this isn't a wind up or a " let's put the green shirt on " as Lenihan in true FF style tried to BS his way out. But watching Today Tonight on Monday, John Bruton ( normally a person I wouldn't have much time for) acknowledeged the bank and state debt etc but also said that with exports in pharmaceuticals, agriculture etc that the country was actually doing better than others in the EU - if we didn't have the bank gambling debts around our necks :mad: This was something David McWilliams also picked up on and threw out some stats comparing Ireland's industrial out put with other such as Belgium etc and appearently like Bruton, he pointed to much of the same.

Now I know some will accuse me of ignoring the elephant in the room etc, but for those of you who know your stuff - What positives has Ireland got at the moment ?

RYANAIR ,, we can all get off this rock fairly cheaply

is the free cheese still going???

FILLING IN THE CENSUS FORM ,knowing that such useful information
such as what religion i am or how many children born alive is so important
to our govt getting us back on track

THE PLOUGHING MATCH, when you are being screwed for a sandwich and a cup of tea, you can sleep sound knowing the farmers will still get their huge cap cheque on time from brussells

TOLL BRIDGE
knowing the toll company will spend millions updating their technology
to hunt down the nissan micra that somehow slipped through without paying,and that we all pay for that usefull service

TV LICENSE INSPECTORS
these elite unit are comparable to the waffen SS no housing estate will be left,untill every single ,unemployed,single mother,
disabled, etc vill pay to the full cent for that beautifull RTE

ALL ABOVE ARE NATIONAL TREASURES

gigino

For young people who can get a job - we have a great green little country, without extremes of weather. New 2-bedroom apartments are advertised from a major auctioneering group now on daft.ie from only 40,000.

We have plenty to eat.

Einhard

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Now this isn't a wind up or a " let's put the green shirt on " as Lenihan in true FF style tried to BS his way out. But watching Today Tonight on Monday, John Bruton ( normally a person I wouldn't have much time for) acknowledeged the bank and state debt etc but also said that with exports in pharmaceuticals, agriculture etc that the country was actually doing better than others in the EU...

Well, I think Garrett Fitzgerald should take a harder stance with the Labour ministers, and that Alan Dukes needs to take tough decisions as finance minister. Might be a good idea to organise one specific body to attract foreign direct investment, and even reduce corporation tax to, I dunno, 12% as an incentive. As an aside, he might only be a novice TD, but I tip that Enda Kenny fella for great things.

PS: Does anyone really rate Pat Kenny over Brian Farrell?!!

Sleepy

Most of the millionaires espousing "staying positive" and deriding the "negativity" of the great unwashed are in their 60's and, as such, aren't long for this world.

I'm sick to the back teeth of people who made fortunes from being in the right place at the right time, having the right daddy or knowing the right FF politician telling us our problem is that we're not positive enough. Positive thinking won't feed and clothe my kids.

[/RANT]

Genuinely positive things: our private sector is performing adequately. Were a sane person given free reign to take a chainsaw to PS spending and Welfare we could be out of this mess inside a decade.

PatsytheNazi

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Now this isn't a wind up or a " let's put the green shirt on " as Lenihan in true FF style tried to BS his way out. But watching Today Tonight on Monday, John Bruton ( normally a person I wouldn't have much time for) acknowledeged the bank and state debt etc but also said that with exports in pharmaceuticals, agriculture etc that the country was actually doing better than others in the EU - if we didn't have the bank gambling debts around our necks :mad: This was something David McWilliams also picked up on and threw out some stats comparing Ireland's industrial out put with other such as Belgium etc and appearently like Bruton, he pointed to much of the same.

Now I know some will accuse me of ignoring the elephant in the room etc, but for those of you who know your stuff - What positives has Ireland got at the moment ?

This thread was started with a genuine question. Could all the wannabe funny guys bring their stupid comments off to the AH forum.

sarumite

Positives: The Private sector (excluding banks) is fundamentally competitive.

Sleepy

It's part of the Irish psyche PatsytheNazi, when things are this bad, we laugh because if we didn't we'd never stop crying.

BTW: Interesting choice of username for someone trying to play the "high-minded, above the AH comments" card...

Eliot Rosewater

Yes folks, this isn't After Hours, it's a serious-ish forum, so please keep that in mind.

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

This thread was started with a genuine question. Could all the wannabe funny guys bring their stupid comments off to the AH forum.

Don't backseat mod like that PatsytheNazi: wait until the mods respond.

/mod.

PatsytheNazi

Sleepy wrote: »

Most of the millionaires espousing "staying positive" and deriding the "negativity" of the great unwashed are in their 60's and, as such, aren't long for this world.

I'm sick to the back teeth of people who made fortunes from being in the right place at the right time, having the right daddy or knowing the right FF politician telling us our problem is that we're not positive enough. Positive thinking won't feed and clothe my kids.

[/RANT]

Genuinely positive things: our private sector is performing adequately. Were a sane person given free reign to take a chainsaw to PS spending and Welfare we could be out of this mess inside a decade.

So basically our best hope is -
A) Through exports we can go along way to bringing the country back

Rein in the public sector ( which is on the way anyway )

Surely renegotiating the bailout for the Gambling debts of Irish and foreign bankers and seperating it from the soverign debt should also should be done and would go a long way to restoring the economy ?

And what about the property asssets in London, New York etc held by NAMA. When they are eventually sold off surely that will make a huge impact on our foreign loans ?

Sleepy

I'd agree: exports are our only means of generating real wealth. Anything and everything we can do to support them should be considered and implemented where viable.

Unfortunately, many of the best things we can do to support our export industry will be extremely politically unpopular: Statutory Redundancies and further pay cuts in the PS, Cuts to/ abolishment of Minimum Wage, Severe cuts to Welfare, Consolidation of the Local Authorities (including further redundancies) to facilitate lower rates etc. I believe many within Fine Gael can see this, however I can't see the populist elements of the party supporting them nor can I see Labour going along with the blatantly obvious strategies as they'd be committing political suicide.

ei.sdraob

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

So basically our best hope is -
A) Through exports we can go along way to bringing the country back

Rein in the public sector ( which is on the way anyway )

Surely renegotiating the bailout for the Gambling debts of Irish and foreign bankers and seperating it from the soverign debt should also should be done and would go a long way to restoring the economy ?

And what about the property asssets in London, New York etc held by NAMA. When they are eventually sold off surely that will make a huge impact on our foreign loans ?

Yes separating the debts and making it clear that they are separate should be top priority. Taking on the banking debt was like a heroin addict injecting himself with HIV infected needle, one can be weaned of heroin with work but the disease you contract will push him over the edge.

But as I mentioned in other thread the EU are wasting time with corporation tax which would directly impact on A) which you identified

as for with Labour in government i dont know how much "reining in" there will be

CDfm

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

So basically our best hope is -
A) Through exports we can go along way to bringing the country back

Rein in the public sector ( which is on the way anyway )

Surely renegotiating the bailout for the Gambling debts of Irish and foreign bankers and seperating it from the soverign debt should also should be done and would go a long way to restoring the economy ?

+1 simplicity

one of the problems with the CelticTiger based on property was that it is not a "traded good" for export purposes.

And what about the property asssets in London, New York etc held by NAMA. When they are eventually sold off surely that will make a huge impact on our foreign loans ?

I found myself agreeing with John Bruton too since January and would never had much time for him.

Enda did mention getting to the bottom of the financial transactions that caused the bubble and the sources of the foreign money.

I would love to know the answer.

martinn123

Some very good points raised in these posts, but what can we do as individuals, to get the economy moving again.

Individually we cannot influence the export market, and '' the elephant in the room'' will be sorted eventually, may take a long time.

So as individuals.....well not everyone is out of work, and we have accumulated an enormous amount of savings.

For those of us in business and hanging on by our fingernails we need those who have cash to start spending.

I need one good order per month to pay my overheads, so far nothing for Feb/Mar, all I need is one customer to make a purchase decision.

Then if I can get two orders my overheads are paid, and I have a surplus.

My overheads are the usual, rent, light, heat, car expenses etc, so in paying my overheads I am spreading the cash around to assist other business's.

I will let the BIG questions be answered by those who know more about economics than me, but my appeal to everyone who can, to get off the fence and start spending again, and to those who can't, hang on, when the tide rises, help is on the way.

PatsytheNazi

sandin wrote: »

There are 600,000 mortagages in the country. The other 1.1m have no mortgage.

Of the 600,000 mortagages, about 250,000 are over 50% paid off and were purchased pre-boom.

85% of adults are working.

We're nearly at this stage, a lot of people have a fair whack of savings and they'll start spending as soon as they know things are on the up again. This will very quickly help the jobs situation which gets another group of people spending and so on.

martinn123 wrote: »

So as individuals.....well not everyone is out of work, and we have accumulated an enormous amount of savings.

Is it possible to guage how much money their could be in savings which could be spent back into the economy?

As for emigration - it one of the biggest mis-reported things about. In the height of the boom, 30,000 people moved away from Irealnd. (circa 24,000 irish, 6000 non Irish). Currently 60,000 will leave this year, but the breakdown is estimated to be about 35,000 Irish & 25,000 non Irish.

In America, if you lived in Boston and a better job came up in San Francisco, you'd probably start the following week and think nothing of moving 3000 miles, but here, the begrudgery types see it as a major negative skipping a couple of hundred miles over the water to take a job.

It happened in the eighties and thousands came back once things got better, and they came back with skills and experience that they would never have got here. The same will happen and todays emigrees will return and create more employment, create more exports and lead the country back to growth.

Yes I believe that about emigration, there was a link on boards about it. But we are not the only ones to experieince this, the UK is also experiencing this.

Emigration soars as Britons desert the UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1569400/Emigration-soars-as-Britons-desert-the-UK.html

jakdelad

CDfm wrote: »

+1 simplicity

one of the problems with the CelticTiger based on property was that it is not a "traded good" for export purposes.



I found myself agreeing with John Bruton too since January and would never had much time for him.

Enda did mention getting to the bottom of the financial transactions that caused the bubble and the sources of the foreign money.

I would love to know the answer.

so you found yourself agreeing with john bruton
a man who has
a TDS pension
a ministers pension
a toaiseachs pension
a an ambassadors pension
a state car n driver for life
a farm as big as carlow
no wonder the millionaires want us all to be optimistic...
when will we as a nation stop listening to people who after all these years
are still in the bubble and not in the real world
like the lady said to myhole martin could you live on 200 euro a week????
lets take council from real people not these lumpheads whos fathers before them also lived in the comfy dail money bubble

hmmm

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Is it possible to guage how much money their could be in savings which could be spent back into the economy?

Our savings rate is currently about 12%. Pre the recession it was more like 4%. There is an enormous amount of potential spending there which may be unlocked when people feel more confident about the economy and their jobs etc.

PatsytheNazi

David McWilliams spoke of this one night on the V Brown show - if as he stressed, it is developed properly ( probably had FF cronyism in mind ).

Ok I know it would take a lot of money, but in the long term does it have real potential ?

K-9

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

David McWilliams spoke of this one night on the V Brown show - if as he stressed, it is developed properly ( probably had FF cronyism in mind ).

Ok I know it would take a lot of money, but in the long term does it have real potential ?

Cumbersome Planning issues seems to be the big stumbling block there.

Vizzy

K-9 wrote: »

Cumbersome Planning issues seems to be the big stumbling block there.

and the fact that the ESB seem to be putting up major resistance to connecting to the grid.
I think ( and i'm open to correction) that if you started the process today you wouldn't be getting paid for your electricity for about 5 years( and that assumes that there is not too much objection from the "bobblehat brigade"

Euroland

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Now this isn't a wind up or a " let's put the green shirt on " as Lenihan in true FF style tried to BS his way out. But watching Today Tonight on Monday, John Bruton ( normally a person I wouldn't have much time for) acknowledeged the bank and state debt etc but also said that with exports in pharmaceuticals, agriculture etc that the country was actually doing better than others in the EU - if we didn't have the bank gambling debts around our necks :mad: This was something David McWilliams also picked up on and threw out some stats comparing Ireland's industrial out put with other such as Belgium etc and appearently like Bruton, he pointed to much of the same.

Now I know some will accuse me of ignoring the elephant in the room etc, but for those of you who know your stuff - What positives has Ireland got at the moment ?

Yes, now we have enormous trade surplus and positive current account balance. GDP grew up by 0.5% in Q3 2010. Residential property market again looks were attractive (relatively to other countries, based on average residential property price to average gross household income ratio).
However, the main 2 problems outstanding now are the enormous private bank debt and relatively high unemployment. Budget deficit can be easily reduced, but needs political decision to reduce public sector salaries and significantly cut social welfare, limiting it only to 3 years in a row.

ei.sdraob

Vizzy wrote: »

and the fact that the ESB seem to be putting up major resistance to connecting to the grid.
I think ( and i'm open to correction) that if you started the process today you wouldn't be getting paid for your electricity for about 5 years( and that assumes that there is not too much objection from the "bobblehat brigade"

ESB dont run the Grid

dynamick

11 reasons to be cheerful about the Irish Economy by Ronan Lyons
http://www.ronanlyons.com/2011/01/11/eleven-reasons-to-be-cheerful/

ei.sdraob

dynamick wrote: »

11 reasons to be cheerful about the Irish Economy by Ronan Lyons
http://www.ronanlyons.com/2011/01/11/eleven-reasons-to-be-cheerful/

Ah now Ronan, articles like this where much more fun


apparently his employer has told him to change his tune and start talking up the market

Vizzy

ei.sdraob wrote: »

ESB dont run the Grid

Who does ? Government?

Am I right about the difficulty in getting connected ?

jakdelad

One day a man comes to a village and tells everyone that he'll buy monkeys for $10. Since monkeys are plentiful and easily caught, the villagers catch many monkeys and make lots of money. As the villagers catch more monkeys the number of monkeys declines, they become harder to find and the villagers have more money now so many stop catching monkeys.

The man then claims that he'll buy monkeys for $25 and a new monkey catcher arrives from the city selling traps. Since the monkey catcher is making lots of money with his new traps the villagers want those traps but they can't afford them. They borrow money to buy the traps, catch more monkeys and soon they're making more money than they were before.

One day the man tells the villagers that he has to go to the city but when he returns he'll start buying monkeys for $50. The man's assistant goes to the villagers and tells them that he's unhappy with the man and that the he'll sell the monkeys for $35 and when the man comes back he'll buy those same monkeys for $50 so they can make a profit. All they have to do is borrow some money from the bank to buy the monkeys and some monkey cages from the monkey catcher.

The villagers buy all the monkeys, buy all the traps and never see the man, the assistant or the monkey catcher ever again.
Now you know how it all works

ei.sdraob

Vizzy wrote: »

Who does ? Government?

Eirgrid do, who are state owned

Vizzy wrote: »

Am I right about the difficulty in getting connected ?

Its complicated.

Connecting wind-farms means building power lines, often to the back arse of nowhere, at great expense (to the taxpayer of course),
2.1 billion is needed in next few years alone by Eirgrid mostly to connect wind generators (here is an idea why dont they pay for it),
thats before you get to planning, everyone wants electricity and think wind is cool until they find out pylons will go thru' their area and no one likes those...
also for every MW of wind you need a backup of gas since its so bloody unreliable, that aint free either.

David McWilliams always likes to point out hidden costs, tho not in this case for some reason...

K-9

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Eirgrid do, who are state owned



Its complicated.

Connecting wind-farms means building power lines, often to the back arse of nowhere, at great expense (to the taxpayer of course),
2.1 billion is needed in next few years alone by Eirgrid mostly to connect wind generators (here is an idea why dont they pay for it),
thats before you get to planning, everyone wants electricity and think wind is cool until they find out pylons will go thru' their area and no one likes those...
also for every MW of wind you need a backup of gas since its so bloody unreliable, that aint free either.

David McWilliams always likes to point out hidden costs, tho not in this case for some reason...

Yep but nobody wants a nuclear power station, an incinerator or massive pylons in their backyard either!

View

K-9 wrote: »

Yep but nobody wants a nuclear power station, an incinerator or massive pylons in their backyard either!

Nobody?

I was sooooo long forward to applying for planning permission for the proposed Toshiba Micro-Nuclear reactor. See here.

K-9

View wrote: »

Nobody?

I was sooooo long forward to applying for planning permission for the proposed Toshiba Micro-Nuclear reactor. See here.

Well if Toshiba say it's true..........................................