Brian Cowen's legacy of failure as Taoiseach

[uibhfaillian]

I know this is a GAA site, but was wondering what other Offaly fellas think about Brian Cowen's term as Taoiseach. To me no matter what you think of his politics, as an Offalyman he has been a huge disappointment. He took over from the spiv Ahern and appeared to say to himself "well now I've arrived, I don't have to do anything anymore, this is as good as it gets". At a time when the country was facing economic turmoil, Cowen was actually in a position to implement sweeping changes in Irish politics, because in a sense he may as well have been hung for a sheep as a lamb. Cowen however remained conservative at a time when radical changes were required, sat on his hands and carried on like before as if nothing was happening. He didn't even change the cabinet a year ago when he had the chance. He didn't seem to realise that if he put his own fellas into ministerial jobs they'd be beholding to him and would support him when he needed them- so much for his reputation of being politically astute. The very fact that he left Mary Harney, in particular - who wasn't even affiliated to a party anymore - in situe was an early indicator that Cowen was going to do feck all about anything.

FFers of all standings are now turning on him and trying to make Cowen out to be the fall guy in order to save their skins. Hopefully the people throughout the country will see through this and hammer all these FF cowards in the GE and put FF out of business for once and for all paving the way to a proper political set up with Fine Gael and Labour fighting it out to lead Irish governments. I stress though I don't feel sorry for Cowen, it was his own fault that he sat on his arse and did feck all. I'd like to hear what Offaly fellas think about the whole debacle. Has Cowen been instrumental in inadvertently doing the country a favour by helping to put FF out of business ?

[Bord na Mona man]

There is an irony in what Cowen has done in the last few days. A huge flaw of his was to generally appear more pre-occupied with the well-being of the Fianna Fail party than that of the nation. His actions in the last few days have further ensured an election wipe out for Fianna Fail.

Cowen will be the political fall guy for the economic meltdown. Just like Seanie Fitzpatrick will be the single embodiment of all bad banking practices in the country. Cowen's lack of political cute hoordom and cunning have added to this.

The seeds of the economic meltdown were sown from about maybe about 2001 onwards with populist, inflationary and unsustainable spending increases. Cowen should take his portion of the blame for his policies as Minister for Finance. Along with several others. Most of these others are getting off the hook easily.

On a personal level I'd feel sorry for him as he is decent and down to earth.
Had he been a corrupt, two-faced, narcissist like some of his colleagues and predecessors, he'd have ensured a much greater legacy for himself.

[uibhfaillian]

There is an irony in what Cowen has done in the last few days. A huge flaw of his was to generally appear more pre-occupied with the well-being of the Fianna Fail party than that of the nation. His actions in the last few days have further ensured an election wipe out for Fianna Fail.

Cowen will be the political fall guy for the economic meltdown. Just like Seanie Fitzpatrick will be the single embodiment of all bad banking practices in the country. Cowen's lack of political cute hoordom and cunning have added to this.

The seeds of the economic meltdown were sown from about maybe about 2001 onwards with populist, inflationary and unsustainable spending increases. Cowen should take his portion of the blame for his policies as Minister for Finance. Along with several others. Most of these others are getting off the hook easily.

On a personal level I'd feel sorry for him as he is decent and down to earth.
Had he been a corrupt, two-faced, narcissist like some of his colleagues and predecessors, he'd have ensured a much greater legacy for himself.

I'd agree with you that he wasn't personally corrupt in any way, and I met him myself and found him personable and down to earth as you say. I think he's been let down by his colleagues in FF who are now trying to scapegoat him to save themselves, but most of all I think he let himself down and didn't seem to ever get to grips with the job of Taoiseach. At times he appeared to be a man of talent and mettle and events conspired against him somewhat. However he had lots of experience in the Dail and should have known what he was in for in relation to betrayal within FF ranks. Why he didn't surround himself, with people he should have promoted into ministerial positions a year or more ago at least is difficult to comprehend. Especially seeing as we were lead to believe by the media that he was an astute political operator.

[Lone Shark]

Brian Cowen is/was the clasic FF politician in that he knew how to play the game - he climbed the ladder, managing to appear competent all the way, despite the fact that if you asked me to name a long standing achievement of his, I don't think I could name one. Of course if you count looking after his constituency to be an achievement then he was definitely a heavyweight politician, but the idea of Taoiseach is to look after the country, just as ministers are supposed to look after their portfolio. This whole concept is alien to FF who think that their sole job is to guarantee re-election.

I don't doubt that Brian is a personable man and he does come across as an honest guy (though I'm not sure how the recent accusation of picking up the phone and calling Michael Somers asking him to use our money to shore up Anglo's accounts fits in with that) but in Ireland we've a tendency to forgive politicians a multitude of sins on that basis.

If I had a family member going in for surgery and the surgeon made a complete mess of it, I don't think I'd be inclined to say it was all okay because he managed to conjure up a sincere and well meant apology, I'd expect competence. I certainly wouldn't be happy is part of the reason for the failure was because his main motivation was to use a specific brand of medical supplies so as to "bail them out".

Brian may well be a sound guy, but he, like most of this FF generation, was utterly, utterly incompetent at the business of administration and economic governance and we now must all pay the price. I don't think his legacy will be one of malevolence, the same way Ahern will, but it will still be remembered as a black, black period in Irish history where our political system and our citizens were sacrificed at the altar of FF's ongoing lust for power, which Cowen continues to propagate.

[The Magpie]

Finding it hard to hide your contempt LS

utterly, utterly

black, black

And must you always sit on the fence?

[Lone Shark]

Finding it hard to hide your contempt LS

I'll confess that I wasn't trying too hard....

[Bord na Mona man]

I think Olivia O'Leary hit the nail on the head on Friday night when she said that Cowen's lifetime ambition was to lead Fianna Fail, not necessarily to lead the country.

For a lot of folks, their political parties are like their GAA clubs. You could interchange the clichés too.
- One life, one club.

Cowen is a classic case of this. He was in his element sewing into the opposition in the Dail, like a man swinging timber in a local derby. Goring the opposition was what he was best at, any great visions he had for the country he kept quiet on.

While tribal politics exist all over the world, it is particularly unhealthy in Ireland. If the current economic meltdown removes some of the party narrow-mindedness, then perhaps it won't have been all bad.

In its short history, the Irish economy has been run into the ground a few times now by political machining and perhaps its time for a new direction.

[TheManFromFerbane]

This whole concept is alien to FF who think that their sole job is to guarantee re-election.

You can get down of your moral high ground right now if you think FF TDs are the only ones whose #1 objective is to keep their seats for the length of time they wish to be TDs.

Secondly, during the HEIGHT of the Celtic tiger people were bitching about the government. There are in my opinion, very few straight people in the national media anymore. There is no difference between how the broadsheets, the tabloids, Radio and Television potray news. All sections of the national media paint the picture in the way that suits them, and the way that suits them is to whip people up into a mass anger so as to sell more papers and advertising space on radio and television.

I ask anyone here to listen and read very carefully to articles\pieces in the media and see how much of that piece is actual fact and how much of it is personal attacks, personal opinions, assumptions based on "sure we all know that" and emoitive language.

There are constant reports on negative statistics but how much have you heard about the fact that there are 1.8 million people working in Ireland today (close 2004 levels)? Have you heard that new car sales are up 56% percent this year, there are nearly 700,000 digital TV subscribers in Ireland. Paddy Power's Profits in Ireland have grown by 50% in the last six month? There have been a rake of job announcements in the high-end IT and R&D industries, they may have been reported on, but were they discussed, were they talked about the same way that job cuts are?

I know that their are hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs and are in genuine trouble, people who are working and whose margins were so tight that they are now in real trouble, but there are also people who got themselves into huge amounts of personal debt, its very easy to take shots at the developers who lived such opulant lifestyles beyond their means but when you do so you should first look closer to home and when you do so, identify what really are necesaties, a home for your family, food on the table, clothes on your backs.

Banks are very willing to look at peoples financial situations to structure repayments so they can be made (not out of the goodness of their hearts but because it’s in their interests), and now, due to legistlation brought in about 6 months ago, this restructuring can't penalise the borrower, but I have heard annacdotal evidence of people coming into banks looking for loans to be restructured when they are sitting on 70e a month sky subscriptions and multi-hundred a year gym memberships.

As a nation we have gone soft, thinking that luxuries are our right and not really willing to work harder for those extra little things.

It is horrible that we as a country had to bail out our banks, and it is horrible that as a result of doing that we had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF and the EU, but the fact remains that if we let the banks fail it would not just be a case of "f*ck them sure, it's not our fault if they gambled all their money". Ordinary people, people just like us would not be able to get money out of an ATM, pension funds would be decimated, savings accounts gone. And don't think that just because the bank is gone you've got your house free and clear, of course it doesn't work like that, your banks creditors would take your mortgage and you would continue to owe them. There would be riots, not marches, riots, in the streets, looting, murders the whole shabang. FG would have done it too and despite all the goods things about the way labour talk, it worries me that they say they wouldn't have.

I am not trying to argue that FF were perfect, there were mistakes made (I won't detail them because enough people have and will) but I just urge people to listen to facts, make up their own minds and not be led around by the nose by the media. After hearing these facts and you come to the conclusions we have above then fair play, I'll accept your argument and that's why we're in a democracy. But in my opinion, time will show that this Governments biggest failing was that they used capital income on current expenditure, wildly over spent in the boom years (goaded and driven on by large sections of the media, oppisition and public expenditure) and when the global credit crunch and recession came, the house of cards came down. But after that point, I believe that in the main the goverment made the right decisions in the majority of the cases and especially Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan, did so with the country's interests at heart all of the time and I believe in the future will be recognised as people who made mistakes, but who did what was best for their country in the long run despite the personal affects it had.

<rant over>

[Bord na Mona man]

There are constant reports on negative statistics but how much have you heard about the fact that there are 1.8 million people working in Ireland today (close 2004 levels)? Have you heard that new car sales are up 56% percent this year, there are nearly 700,000 digital TV subscribers in Ireland. Paddy Power's Profits in Ireland have grown by 50% in the last six month? There have been a rake of job announcements in the high-end IT and R&D industries, they may have been reported on, but were they discussed, were they talked about the same way that job cuts are?

Indeed the real economy will come around and some sectors are showing signs of doing so. Though some of our economic recovery will be predicated on couple of hundred thousand more people emigrating.

I believe the bank guarantee and Nama will still pull the whole thing down though.
I'll admit that during the boom, I never realised that the banks could and would be bailed out by the ordinary Joe when it went tits up.

I naively assumed that banks were private money making entities that weighed up their decisions on a commercial basis. After all they were never going to share their profits with the taxpayer, so the idea that we should cover their self inflicted losses is absurd.

Would the general public have turned a blind eye to all the boom time housing developments in Leitrim, hotels in Longford and shopping centres in Roscommon, if they knew they'd be picking up the tab if they weren't commercially viable?

[Lone Shark]

Game on .....

This whole concept is alien to FF who think that their sole job is to guarantee re-election.

You can get down of your moral high ground right now if you think FF TDs are the only ones whose #1 objective is to keep their seats for the length of time they wish to be TDs.

Of course not. However I was not singling out individual TD's - I was saying that most political parties seem to have some sort of raison d'etre. A look at their actions and policies could determine some sort of underlying ethos - with FF, this is completely absent. It is seat-of-the-pants government, making decisions with no coherent strategy only to get a bounce in the polls. Of course individual TD's look after their own patch and spent countless hours in clinics and at funerals, but once they get into government (as opposed to parliament) that's usually balanced with some sort of attempt to look after the country. FF don't even pretend to do that. Listen to all the interviews with Bertie Ahern, and he's most proud of the fact that he won three elections. Those are his words, not some media commentator or analyst. It's not what he did with the power, but the fact that he obtained it that makes him proud.

Secondly, during the HEIGHT of the Celtic tiger people were bitching about the government. There are in my opinion, very few straight people in the national media anymore. There is no difference between how the broadsheets, the tabloids, Radio and Television potray news. All sections of the national media paint the picture in the way that suits them, and the way that suits them is to whip people up into a mass anger so as to sell more papers and advertising space on radio and television.

I ask anyone here to listen and read very carefully to articles\pieces in the media and see how much of that piece is actual fact and how much of it is personal attacks, personal opinions, assumptions based on "sure we all know that" and emoitive language.

Granted, no question. However I would again argue that in the shape RTE, FF had the biggest cheerleader they could hope for. George Lee was the exception while he was there, but Joe Duffy, Ryan Tubridy, Miriam O'Callaghan, Bryan Dobson and several others all gave FF a free ride, due to their family connections and personal political inclinations. Secondly, advertisers were helping sell FF's message - because they want a general feelgood factor, that everything is going to be fine and to go spend money like good little puppets. The biggest advertisers were property, cars, luxury goods - all stuff that we couldn't afford so we "released equity". Of course there are other factors such as reductions in costs that influence this too, but my point is that the media have generally been very kind to FF.

Secondly, most of the stuff that has me most angry is not the stuff in the papers - it's the stuff that you have to talk to journalists to find out, but that they can't print. Even when stuff does get printed, the message gets lost. I'm not talking about the various he said she said crap, but the actual actions.

http://thestory.ie/2010/02/07/the-closu ... ax-relief/
http://www.independent.ie/national-news ... 32634.html

And as well know, we could go on......

There are constant reports on negative statistics but how much have you heard about the fact that there are 1.8 million people working in Ireland today (close 2004 levels)? Have you heard that new car sales are up 56% percent this year, there are nearly 700,000 digital TV subscribers in Ireland. Paddy Power's Profits in Ireland have grown by 50% in the last six month? There have been a rake of job announcements in the high-end IT and R&D industries, they may have been reported on, but were they discussed, were they talked about the same way that job cuts are?

There are 1.8 million people working, many of which are for businesses that are underwater, many more are collecting the dole at the same time, still more are self employed people who can't get dole so they don't bother deregistering, a huge chunk are in the public service where they are overstaffed in many sectors, more again are in contrived courses in Fás that achieve nothing but massaging the unemployment statistics and many more are in sectors where there is no future.

The car example is typical - Bill Cullen has done a hell of a PR job here. High numbers of new car sales, from an Irish point of view, are a BAD THING. We don't have a motor industry, we have a motor retail industry - where most of the money goes abroad. If I have a ten year old car and I choose to buy a new one, the money mostly goes to Japan, Germany, or some other motor producing nation. If I keep my car, I have more money to spend on servicing debt and spending on Irish produced goods and services, while I spend more on maintenance with Irish mechanics. Yet for some either corrupt or ridiculously idiotic reason, we subsidise the new car purchases. Lunacy.

Yes huge numbers of people have digital TV, but how many of those people have no health insurance? Why are we in a country where the need for health insurance is just accepted but the idea that the Six Nations mightn't be free to air gets us all up in arms? Bread and circuses.

It's great that there are new job announcements by times, but in the overall scheme of things there might be two or three new job announcements for 100 new jobs a month at best, in the meantime 100 people a day are leaving Ireland, splitting up families and causing huge heartache because they can't get work here.

I know that their are hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs and are in genuine trouble, people who are working and whose margins were so tight that they are now in real trouble, but there are also people who got themselves into huge amounts of personal debt, its very easy to take shots at the developers who lived such opulant lifestyles beyond their means but when you do so you should first look closer to home and when you do so, identify what really are necesaties, a home for your family, food on the table, clothes on your backs.

Banks are very willing to look at peoples financial situations to structure repayments so they can be made (not out of the goodness of their hearts but because it’s in their interests), and now, due to legistlation brought in about 6 months ago, this restructuring can't penalise the borrower, but I have heard annacdotal evidence of people coming into banks looking for loans to be restructured when they are sitting on 70e a month sky subscriptions and multi-hundred a year gym memberships.

As a nation we have gone soft, thinking that luxuries are our right and not really willing to work harder for those extra little things.

Of course there is personal responsibility, and the era of handy jobs paying 50k a year is over, and that was never going to last. The problem is that even if you do want to work hard and make sacrifices, in many cases you are trapped. In some cases people bought/built monstrous houses that they could never afford and of course it's wrong if we try and propagate a system that sees two people bringing in well under the average wage stay in a six bedroom mansion with four bathrooms, and a kitchen that cost the same price as a two bedroom apartment, but equally the system has ensured that an unemployed homeowner in Cork cannot realistically take a paying job in Drogheda, Castlebar or Sligo.

Those who are willing to work, often can't. It's not Fianna Fáil's fault that a tradesman or a hairdresser can't afford two sun holidays a year and a new 30k car every three years, but it is their fault if they are trapped in a mortgage that does not allow them to move, or if there is no work out there to be had.

It is horrible that we as a country had to bail out our banks, and it is horrible that as a result of doing that we had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF and the EU, but the fact remains that if we let the banks fail it would not just be a case of "f*ck them sure, it's not our fault if they gambled all their money". Ordinary people, people just like us would not be able to get money out of an ATM, pension funds would be decimated, savings accounts gone. And don't think that just because the bank is gone you've got your house free and clear, of course it doesn't work like that, your banks creditors would take your mortgage and you would continue to owe them. There would be riots, not marches, riots, in the streets, looting, murders the whole shabang. FG would have done it too and despite all the goods things about the way labour talk, it worries me that they say they wouldn't have.

I am not trying to argue that FF were perfect, there were mistakes made (I won't detail them because enough people have and will) but I just urge people to listen to facts, make up their own minds and not be led around by the nose by the media. After hearing these facts and you come to the conclusions we have above then fair play, I'll accept your argument and that's why we're in a democracy. But in my opinion, time will show that this Governments biggest failing was that they used capital income on current expenditure, wildly over spent in the boom years (goaded and driven on by large sections of the media, oppisition and public expenditure) and when the global credit crunch and recession came, the house of cards came down. But after that point, I believe that in the main the goverment made the right decisions in the majority of the cases and especially Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan, did so with the country's interests at heart all of the time and I believe in the future will be recognised as people who made mistakes, but who did what was best for their country in the long run despite the personal affects it had.

The banks got in such bother because they were allowed run amok unsupervised. It was the government's job to supervise them and they didn't do it.

Of course it would be chaos if someone went to withdraw their own money and the ATM was empty, but is there anyone on this board who has their current account with Anglo Irish Bank? Why did we save them? Why save Irish Nationwide? We don't need that many banks, we just need the "systematic" ones. Why guarantee all bonds? Why did Brian Lenihan block an amendment to legislation that would mean that if a developer had 5m on deposit in one bank and 10m in loans in another, he couldn't take out the 5m? Why wait so long before sending in the fraud squad into Anglo's head office? These are questions that honest men would look to answer, and the best FF can do is "Trust us, we were right. Now run along and buy a car."

The problem is not that a guarantee was put in place, the problem was the FF allowed the conditions to come about that on a fateful night in September over two years ago, they gave themselves six hours to make the biggest decision in the history of the state, one which I still believe was unconstitutional as I don't believe that any finance minister should have the right to make a single decision that could lead to the loss of sovereignty of the nation. However I'm not a Supreme Court judge,so I may be wrong on that. If FF were doing their job, that situatiion would never have come about, and if it did they would have had more time to come up with a solution. The government created a situation where Roman Abrahmovic could buy Anglo bonds onthe free market for 40c in the euro and then threaten to sue the state if they are not paid in full. This is FF doing their best?


The future legacy will tell one of two things - either that the Irish people, as was predicted in Westminster almost 100 years ago, are not fit to govern themselves if this is the best we can do, or else that Ahern/Cowen/McCreevy/Lenihan will be remembered in the same vein as Oliver Cromwell or the Black and Tans; except that they weren't destroying a country out of patriotism, they were doing it to save themselves and their mates. I'm not sure which it is yet myself - and this next election will tell a lot. If they still manage to poll 20% or anything close to it, it's time to give Betty Windsor a call and ask if we can come home.

[Bord na Mona man]

George Lee was the exception while he was there, but Joe Duffy, Ryan Tubridy, Miriam O'Callaghan, Bryan Dobson and several others all gave FF a free ride, due to their family connections and personal political inclinations.

To jump in on a small point.

It was funny on the Late Late the other night. Every time Jim Corr wanted to complain about the bank bailout, Ryan Tubridy quickly dived in to stop him.
Possibly not wanting an anti-Fianna Fail rant on his show. Tubridy got fairly snotty ticking him off and Corr sulked for a bit.

If Corr had pulled out a new album of his he wanted to plug, Tubridy would have given him a free rein.

[Doon Massive]

I'll never forget the night TV3 had Jim Corr and Denis Hickey "debating" the pro's and cons of the lisbon treaty

Regarding Cowen and his cronies, its the Peter principle, plain and simple.

[uibhfaillian]

I think Olivia O'Leary hit the nail on the head on Friday night when she said that Cowen's lifetime ambition was to lead Fianna Fail, not necessarily to lead the country.

For a lot of folks, their political parties are like their GAA clubs. You could interchange the clichés too.
- One life, one club.

Cowen is a classic case of this. He was in his element sewing into the opposition in the Dail, like a man swinging timber in a local derby. Goring the opposition was what he was best at, any great visions he had for the country he kept quiet on.

While tribal politics exist all over the world, it is particularly unhealthy in Ireland. If the current economic meltdown removes some of the party narrow-mindedness, then perhaps it won't have been all bad.

In its short history, the Irish economy has been run into the ground a few times now by political machining and perhaps its time for a new direction.

You would hope that this will be the case. Ultimately people get the representation they deserve. Look at Tipperary for example, in Tipp North there's the corrupt spiv Michael Lowry who perennially tops the poll. Then in Tipp South another gombeen Mattie McGrath (jumped ship from FF) will likely keep his seat. Healy-Rae is another gombeen chief down in Kerry and these characters are supposed to be independents.

Hopefully FF will be wiped out, this country does not need Fianna Fail and Fine Gael clogging up the political scene. One of them - at least - must go and I don't care which it is. At the end of the day the people will have to cop themselves on and pay more attention to how their country is run. If Cowen was running again, he'd probably still top the poll in Laois/Offaly even though he has proven to be incompetent in his role as Taoiseach.

[Phoenix]

I don`t have any political affiliation but I`d vote for The Man From Ferbane if he puts himself forward for election as Taoiseach, President or anything he wants! Brilliant summary of events!! Put down those pitchforks!!

[uibhfaillian]

I don`t have any political affiliation but I`d vote for The Man From Ferbane if he puts himself forward for election as Taoiseach, President or anything he wants! Brilliant summary of events!! Put down those pitchforks!!

The man from Ferbane does appear to have a political affiliation though. He makes some interesting and entirely plausible points about personal responsibility where individual people borrowed too much for new cars or fancy houses etc. However he contradicts himself by stating that the new car sales figures that have been promoted by government policy is a good thing somehow. It's obvious to me that the new car sales thing was done as a political favour to FF's buddies. Also what about the personal responsibility that people have for voting for politicians who offered short term quick fix goodies during the boom especially, that hasn't lead to the betterment of society at large. People want great health services and schools but demanded low personal taxes at the same time during the boom years. They wanted it both ways and we as a country ended up p*ssing a lot of the money away. Bertie Ahern was first in line to give them what they wanted, short term goodies for the masses in terms of low taxes and placating deals for unions.

Yes people do need to take more personal responsibility for their actions, the first way of showing this is by wiping out Fianna Fail for good and demanding a more mature and intelligent form of governance from our politicians going forward (as Cowen used to say). By the way it looks like Cowen isn't going to run in the next General Election, hopefully that'll leave FF in serious bother in Laois/Offaly. As I said earlier we don't need Fianna Fail and Fine Gael clogging up our political system, they essentially offer the same thing. One or the other must go if our political system is to develop and undergo the radical changes that are needed.