Eh no it wasn't a deflection I would have thought it a reasonable question to ask. You pick Ireland between 1937 and 1972. An unmitigated insular disaster. Languishing in poverty ruled and dominated by the catholic church. De valera's approach kept us in the dark ages.He held Ireland back. One could argue because of what we came through over the previous 100 years he took the correct approach and kept us out of WW2 but the country was backward and completely undeveloped. That is a startling choice but you have answered the question. Maybe you are not trolling just a person caught with a desire for nostalgia. I wouldn't subscribe to that.The world moves relentlessly on. BTW De Valera liked himself a lot!
Every country isn't on a different planet. Argentina. Brazil is still riddled with poverty. Most of South America is still struggling. Lots of poverty still in Asia.
The figures completely support what joining the EU has done for Ireland. We did ourselves in with weak regulation and a Fianna Fail government that still believed it could do the boom bust cycle, devaluation trick and not have sustainable tax policies. The EU because of the likes of the UK holding back integration did not or could not ensure proper oversight in our banks/lending institutions.
The Celtic Tiger years stretch from mid nineties to 2008. Most of the growth occurred post 2000 when the euro kicked in. It would be incorrect to suggest the celtic tiger roared on a floating exchange rate. Full employment occurred circa 2005.
Re the Fishing fleet the Irish and English for some unearthly reason didn't understand the value of fish. We just did fish and chips or maybe salmon with boiled potatoes. The Europeans always knew the value. Look there are myriad reasons to rail against the EU and feeling there are injustices but the majority of people in Ireland have benefited with EU membership. We have become more educated or society is multicultural with no colonial baggage. We have gained a march in techlogicial and science areas. We have been clever with corporation taxes. Farming thrived under the EU. Of course there have been failings. But I am unaware of a better alternative to the path we took. The only dreadful mistake which I agree is catastrophic was the crash and subsequent saddling of debt. If we had a sensible government at that time that put caps on borrowing it wouldn't have been so bad. But it is what it is and we like all the other countries have to get on with it and see what happens.
Trying to understand your points it seems you want all nations to become insular again. Maybe it will happen if resources become scarce but for now size matters. Ireland is nothing on its own. We are a dot on the earth.
Strange choice by ET alright. I have never heard the view he expressed having any traction here. I lived through the seventies and eighties and it was only then we started making small headway. Oil crisis, Cold war, NI conflict, massive emigration as there was no jobs. Hummus, Babaganoush and falafel's in the early to mid-nineties was like a discovery of a new universe
I don't ever want either myself or my children to have to go back to that time. I remember also the poverty we lived in the sixties. Going to school with a pair of trousers barely hung together. That is ET's potential Utopia
I still can't quite work out why you felt it such an important question to ask, but never mind. I note that once again you have attributed to me notions of utopia, which I've already rejected.
Your response to my question has picked up not on those basic principles of democracy as enshrined in the Irish Constitution and to which I expressed admiration, if that is the right word, but in the manner in which the Irish ran their affairs in the terms of de Valera's austere catholicism, and in the malign power of the Catholic church. However, it does perhaps go some way to explaining the rather myopic, unquestioning Europhilia which characterises your outlook, and more widely, that of the Irish press and political establishment. I recall travelling across Ireland in about 1974 to buy a horse in Galway, and at times it was like driving the through the set of Ryan's Daughter. It was certainly austere, and I have recollections of cold, damp hotels and boarding houses, as well as of alternately either very hostile or very friendly, welcoming towns, villages and communities. It might be borne in mind that at the time Ireland was already a member of the EEC.
Yes, much of the world is still riddled with poverty. Perhaps you think the rest of the world should join the EU.
The Celtic Tiger did indeed roar most loudly after the Euro came in. The unsuitably low interest rates, geared to the requirements not of Ireland but of Germany and France, 'made the boom boomier' (Ahern?), foreign money flooded into the banks who abandoned all of their former principles of fiscal discipline and lent recklessly into the overheating property market, the ECB turned a resolutely blind eye, and the boom turned to bust in 2008. The government had guaranteed the country's banks, which directly precipitated the EU troika bailout two years later, and the ensuing austerity regime imposed by Brussels and Berlin. In a post of a couple of weeks ago (and again here) you placed the blame entirely upon the banks (and I note now the UK for 'holding integration back'), and the government's failure to introduce sufficient regulation, when in fact the culpability for the depth and breadth of the crisis lies directly with the government's decision to join the Eurozone in 1999. Had a sovereign government retained control of interest rates, and the currency had been able to float on the world markets, the crisis could have been to some degree mitigated. Instead Ireland went from having full employment and a strong economy in 1999 to losing 10% of its GDP (14% of GNP), 200,000 people to emigration and aquiring what remains the highest debt per capita in the EU, and amongst the highest in the world. The Euro has been an unmitigated disaster for the country, and it will be again.
The figures don't support 'what joining the EU' has done for Ireland. Average annual growth of 4.4% in the 13 years prior to accession fell to 1.5% in the period 79-86. GNP figures actually show a retraction in that latter period. Sure, the country has been a beneficiary EU largesse in the form of German, French and British taxpayers cash which has undoubtedly softened the blow, but I would suggest that Ireland's more recent economic transformation and growth has been largely due to your 'cleverness' with corporation tax and what amounts to progressive supply-side reforms, not the EU. Indeed, tax Irish corporation tax policy contravenes the EU's policy and wishes, and is likely sooner or later to be challenged. I would suggest that when the forthcoming global economic train crash happens, it will be sooner.
Fishing - you may well have been confined to cod & chips, but Spaniards and Frenchmen weren't, which is why they have been so happy to hoover up your fish. Had you retained control of your fisheries, you could instead have
sold the fish to them. Farming thrived...mmm, big farming did, for sure, as the CAP favours big farmers. A scheme to support dairy farmers that tapered off with size had to be abandoned when the country joined the EEC.
I find it very difficult to understand how you can assert that Ireland has shed its 'colonial baggage' when it has effectively rendered itself a colony of Brussels, where, dare I say, it has very substantially fewer voting rights than when it had representatives in the British parliament prior to 1922. I accept that history judges Britain's association with Ireland in the most malign terms, but I fail to see that your new colony status is as benign as your wishful thinking might render it. Two thirds of Ireland's trade in both goods and services is not with the rEU, but with the rest of the world, primarily the Anglosphere in the form of America, Canada and the UK, and as with us, the stasis-ridden EU is progressively decreasing as a proportion of that trade. Your economic cycle sits more closely with the US/Canada/UK, language and system of law derive historically from the UK. EU intransigence over Brexit, which has been very effectively whipped up by Mr Varadkar, is threatening to throw the UK out of Europe's orbit into that of the US, where is is likely to stay. You seem to be one of the already pretty diminutive and ever shrinking consituency that advocates full union of the EU countries. I may well be wrong, but I am far from convinced that that is the right thing to be wishing for, but you never know, with the UK no longer holding integration back...
