We send 3.6bn per year (and growing) to the EU...

Kermit.de.frog

This year, but for corporation tax, Ireland has an 8.5bn deficit in the finances.

Meanwhile...

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/0929/1408128-ireland-eu-budget-cag/

Oh and they are going to take our cash cow too. Make no mistake who the real losers are in this transaction.

https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2023/0915/1405522-eu-budget/

It will go on folks and the usual suspects will be along like lightning to tell us we should be on our knees to the EU. At this rate all we have gotten will be far surpassed within a few years. When the next crisis comes they will not win the argument.

bucketybuck

Didn't we see this on the side of a Tory bus once?

Peregrinus

Seriously, you need to have it explained to you?

Kermit.de.frog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121195972#Comment_121195972

Yes I do. Explain it please. Start with our homeless and immigration crisis.

The EU has suddenly decided we must take more - and pay more to them.

Please explain to the Irish people why continued membership is in their interest. We all know it isn't.

Peregrinus

Ok, for the slow learners.

The first error: The report to which Kermit links say that, in the year in question Ireland paid €3.6 bn and received €2.5 bn, making a net contribution of €1.1 bn. Not €3.6 billion.

This is, of course, the error that was famously perpetrated on the side of the Brexit Bus, that has been widely pointed out in the years since, and that even prominent Brexiters have since conceded was indefensible. And it's not a point that Kermit cannot grasp; in the same post he refers to our budget deficit of €8.5 bn, so the concept of an excess of expenditure over receipts is not beyond him.

So I'm going to say that this cannot be explained as an error that Kermit made through stupidity. This is dishonest.

The second error: Kermit fails to ask himself what Ireland gets in return for its €1.1 bn net contribution. What he's doing here is the equivalent of pointing out how much money you can save by not buying groceries any more, while ignoring the downside of not having any food.

What we get, of course, is participation in the EU, which is enormously valuable.

Let's look at our hapless friends in the UK again. In the referendum year of 2016 (but you could pick any year; the outcome would be similar) the UK's net contribution to the EU was £9.4 bn. In return, they got to participate in the EU, which was enormously valuable. But how valuable? Was it worth more or less than £9.4 bn?

Much more, is the answer. We know that UK GDP in 2016 was £2,111 billion. We also know that the adverse impact on UK GDP of leaving the EU on the terms of the WA is calculated, by different economists using different methods, at between 2% and 5.5%. Even if we take the most conservative of these estimates, that means EU membership was worth £42 billion to the UK in 2016 — between four and five times more than the cost of the net budget contribution.

Nobody has modelled the cost for Ireland of leaving the EU, but literally nobody thinks that EU membership is less valuable to Ireland than it was to the UK. On the contrary, it's widely perceived as having been especially valuable to Ireland. It follows that exiting would be correspondingly harmful.

In the year 2022, when our net contribution to the EU was €1.1 bn, Ireland's GNI* was €273 bn. In other words, our net budget contribution was 0.4% of GNI*. It's absurd, simply absurd, to suggest that leaving the EU would cost us less than 0.4% of GNI*. Kermit is not stupid enough to believe that it would, and I doubt that he is dishonest enough to pretend to believe that it would.

Conclusion: What Kermit is saying here is nonsense. And Kermit knows it's nonsense.

maninasia

THIS IS UP there with the dumbest posts I've read on this site.

The Department of Finance forecasts 2023 corporate tax take of €24.3 billion .

Guess why most of those companies channel their tax thru Ireland and employs 100,000 of people?

Hint - It's not the weather.

Padre_Pio

It's worth noting that tax take in Ireland has increased something like 50% in the last 10 years, far surpassing what Ireland contributes to the EU.

So Kermit's "Ireland would be better if we didn't pay this money" argument is rubbish, since Ireland has gotten far more money than predicted in tax and still hasn't solved housing or health.

Another example of blaming the big bad EU when the issue is our own politicians.

Murph85

A billion euro , the HSE alone would deem that budget over rrun spare change FFG would find down the back of the couch...

ancapailldorcha

More of the OP's disinformation, link dumps and Irexiter nonsense. Pass.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121195975#Comment_121195975

We don't need to explain it to you. You need to explain why we should only honour our commitments when our economy was on the floor and we desperately need investment to allow us to develop into the modern economy we have today. The majority of the Irish people fully understand their membership of the EU and it is on you to factually prove any of this nonsense before you are to be taken seriously.

Mr. CooL ICE

At this point, I'm convinced Kermit has some weird kink going where he gets off on repeatedly being wrong

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121195982#Comment_121195982

...

ancapailldorcha

Always gets me how so-called Nationalists unceasingly advocate for the worst for their country.

InAtFullBack

Ah, the beloved EU. It took a long time for the left to fall in love with it. I guess the appeal of the EU is how it is merely a stepping stone to increased globalisation as the EU becomes increasingly federalist and continues its gradual erosion of national sovereignty.

Along will come some EU die hard to point out that Ireland has done well from 'the EU' and we wouldn't have 'da mohorways' connecting Dublin to Cork etc... they fail to point out that there are two tolls on the 'da mohorway' and there are thousands of BMWs, Mercs, Audis, etc... whizzing up and down them.

Oh, and that would have happened under the EC. There was no need for the EU.

Wanderer78

deficits are not a bad thing, as its just government created money, as opposed to bank created credit, credit is currently primarily being used to inflate the price of assets such as property. an element of our current deficit was taken on during covid, this money went straight into the economy, benefitting the households it was given to, and then of course the businesses that received this money as those households spent it....i.e. everyone won!

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121196207#Comment_121196207

I love how right-wingers like to construct imaginary bogus arguments designed to be easily knocked down so that they can enter a discussion to refute things that nobody in the discussion has said.

You only have to look at the progress of the Brexit process itself to see how EU membership has magnified Ireland's sovereignty, while Brexit has diminished the UK's. But that's a reality-based argument, so right-wingers don't feel any need to engage with it or learn anything from it.

peter kern

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121196153#Comment_121196153

more like somebody that wants ireland to be part of the uk ... as this would be the only bad alternative to the eu.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121195982#Comment_121195982

You're making the classic mistake of evaluating the EU through purely a financial lens.

In the UK, it was a matter of parliamentary sovereignty, democracy, and border controls - not whether GDP rose by 2%. That's what polls consistently showed. In other words, some things can't be measured through dry assessments of finance and GDP figures. Now you could argue that the UK has failed to live up to this ambition, and I would agree with that, but that's a question of the failure of successive UK governments rather than a failure of the concept itself. There are many ways to skin a cat, as the saying goes, and the UK has done a second-rate job to date.

I think Kermit is right to some degree, in that Ireland's relationship with Europe is not exactly ideal. I find it somewhat amusing that those strongly in favour of Ireland remaining in the EU are unable or unwilling to even acknowledge the smallest criticism of the relationship between the two; almost hinting at the idea that it's uncritically perfect, no edits or improvements needed.

That said, there is no political appetite for Irexit in this country. Sinn Fein wore those clothes for some time, then realised it wasn't getting them anywhere. Even Marine Le Pen has lost her Frexit tongue.

So the debate is somewhat academic, as the chances of Ireland leaving the EU are about as likely as Ireland winning the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

rob316

Lets leave the EU sure, its not like we got anything from it and the UK is doing swimmingly well after leaving!

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121196446#Comment_121196446

The argument in the OP is purely a financial one. the correct response is purely a financial one and shows the OP to be talking their usual nonsense

djan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121195982#Comment_121195982

Excellent post. While Brexit was also led by other factors such as autonomy even with the UK's ability to self fund it has faltered. Ireland's well being as a nation is pretty much solely reliant on FDI and international trade. I'd even argue that without EU membership/funding it would be at developmental levels below eastern Europe as at least there was some infrastructural, domestic production and services being developed under communist rule while IE was really struggling.

€1.1bn is a tiny price to pay for membership in an admittedly not perfect but very sought after club that brings in multiples of its cost in financial and social value.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121196446#Comment_121196446

I'm not evaluating the EU through a purely financial lens; I'm responding to (and rebutting) the purely financial arguments made by kermit in the first post.

I think it's rewriting history to say that "in the UK, it was a matter of parliamentary sovereignty, democracy, and border controls", given that economic arguments and claims featured largely in the Brexit campaign. There was the Brexit bus, famously, but also the claims about the trade deals the UK would make, the claims about the UK profiting by reorienting it economic relationships from stagnant Europe to rapidly growing China, the whole Singapore-on-Thames nonsense, etc, etc.

I accept, of course, that different Brexit supporters had different motivations. Not all were motivated by economic considerations, but many were, and the Brexit movement clearly expected and encouraged this, which is why they put such emphasis on the supposed economic advantages of Brexit in their campaigning. For obvious reasons, Brexiters now like to deny that such things were ever mentioned, but you shouldn't fall for that kind of gaslighting. The economic arguments for Brexit remain important if only because, if they hadn't been advanced in the campaign, it's unlikely that Brexit would have got over the line — with different people being motivated by different considerations, all the available arguments had to be pressed to maximise support and scrape over the line with 52%.

To the extent that Brexit was a matter of "parliamentary sovereignty, democracy, and border controls", I don't think you can say that the failure to realise the promises made is the result "successive UK governments rather than a failure of the concept itself." I've already pointed out the vivid illustration of how Ireland's sovereignty is maximised by EU membership, while the UK's is constrained by Brexit, and I think that does simply emerge from the nature of Brexit itself. Similarly the UK's issue with border controls is related to the fact that, with Brexit, they have fallen out of multilateral arrangements for managing these issues, and are reduced to alternating between begging and hectoring the French to solve their problem for them. And these examples could be multiplied.

I accept, of course, that Brexit was implemented astonishingly badly when, at least in principle, it didn't have to be. But even if it had been implemented less badly, I don't see how it could have delivered on the promises - economic and otherwise - that were made for it. I think the concept is fundamentally flawed.

You say that you "think Kermit is right to some degree, in that Ireland's relationship with Europe is not exactly ideal." I'm not sure that Kermit would accept that as a fair summary of his position; I think his views are rather more negative than that. But leave that aside. No-one is going to disagree with you that "Ireland's relationship with Europe is not exactly ideal"; all real-world relationships are less than ideal. And I honestly don't see anything to support your perception that advocates of EU membership "are unable or unwilling to even acknowledge the smallest criticism of the relationship between the two", not least because the discourse is rarely between those who think the relationship is fine as it is and those who think that it could be improved, but almost entirely between those who think the relationship should be one of membership and those who think there should be no relationship at all. The question of whether and how the terms of membership could be improved is rarely discussed, so nobody gets to deny that any improvement is possible.

SteM

In the UK, it was a matter of parliamentary sovereignty, democracy, and border controls - not whether GDP rose by 2%. That's what polls consistently showed. In other words, some things can't be measured through dry assessments of finance and GDP figures.

Vote Leave to put

"We send the EU £350 million a week – let's fund our NHS instead".

on the side of a bus. They seemed to think that dry assessment of finance was a pretty big issue, one their pals in some papers pushed as fact whether it was true or not.

ohnonotgmail

It would be interesting to calculate our net contribution to the EU since we joined. I wonder when that turns positive.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121196570#Comment_121196570

2013

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121196650#Comment_121196650

I think you misunderstood my question. 2013 is when we started making a net contribution on an annual basis. I was asking when our total contributions since we joined exceeded the benefits received. I suspect we have not reached that point yet

Geuze

Between 1973-2014 Ireland received EUR 72.5 billion in grants

We paid in EUR 30 billion in contributions

For every €1 paid we got nearly €2.50 back.

But since 2013 we are net contributors.

djan

Added to that would be measuring the added value over time of the EU funded infrastructure development throughout the past decades. It will be a long time until the break even point.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121196671#Comment_121196671

this is what i am getting at. People are complaining that we are net contributors now but we are only in a position to be a net contributor because of all the investment we received from the EU in the past.

Geuze

In return for the net contribution, we receive the huge benefit of access to the Single European Market (SEM).

Seve OB

The point Kermit makes

This year, but for corporation tax, Ireland has an 8.5bn deficit in the finances.

well this is like a company saying, if we didn’t have any sales, we would be making losses

🤦‍♂️