Without trying to pick a fight, I think most people can comfortably live on 188E a week -rent allowance. i.e. 155 euros after accomadation.

Indeed, I’m living on less than that right now.

My basic approach is 50 quid for food, 30 quid for bills, and the rest is for extras like clothes, entertainment, transport etc.

Maybe you have avoidable outgoings?

It may be worth examining where your money is going. Sometimes, (I am definitely guilty of this) we can put pressure on ourselves to buy things we neither need nor can afford. I know a few years ago, I would feel absolutely terrible not buying a round of drinks with my friends. But once I moderated this habit a bit, I found that I could still afford a modest night out, as long as they weren’t too expensive or too frequent.
Also, changing accommodation is one of the best things you can do to save money -many of us feel that moving into a smaller/cheaper/less well located place is a regressive step and cannot be considered. But if you are willing to get over this and look at cheaper accommodation -nothing you can do will do more to cut your costs. Living in a downmarket area can give you a lot of breathing space in your finances -it’s definitely worth it if you’re struggling. If you own your own home -sell it or rent it and then move.

If you’re willing to really address your costs, then it is very possible to live on JB and rent allowance. You just have to be willing to make the adjustments -even if they were previously unthinkable.

A short reply when it deserves more but sorry to say I’m very busy at the moment.

If you - an isolated/individual member of the public - want to capture the attention of the country, you need to leverage mass media: TV, national paper, certain elements of social media (e.g. Facebook, Youtube) in particular. Specialist blogs such as this, good though it is, has limited readership and influence. Radio is not that great in Ireland either (but better than nothing and don’t turn down if offered a slot as it may lead to others taking up your story if they hear it).

A good example of this is the letter that was written to the Irish Times (IT) last year (and I am sorry I forget the exact detail) from the guy saying his children only had breakfast cereal to eat that day.

For several reasons that I won’t bore you with, I would start by getting one of the national papers interested in your story. Try to draft an op-ed style piece (look in the IT for examples of style and length) that puts forward the problem and argues what needs to be done to solve it. Try to find a unique angle if you can. You then need to find a journalist (try starting with Fintan O’Toole in the IT?) who sympathises and at least has your draft as a starting point to write something. Just approach them directly - it’s not hard to find contact numbers and email addresses on the web if you look hard enough.

Next, take your draft op-ed piece and summarise it in the form of a letter to the editor. Might be best to take the angle “do people out there really understand what’s going on and the consequences of that?” If you can’t find a journalist as above, email your letter to the editor.

Above all, be articulate and don’t rant or it will just end up in ‘file 13′ (the bin).

An alternative route (that may get press coverage) is to get hold a Sinn Fein TD and get them to make a big noise in the Dail about your case (you won’t get any other party to do it). Their spokesperson on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation is Deputy Peadar Tóibín.

http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/20208

I would still get hold of a video camera and make a short documentary and stick it on Youtube - with a controversial title.

Finally, if emigration is deemed essential by Richard Tol, I wouldn’t argue with him. I’ve done it myself in the past and it was a fantastic experience. Personally, I suspect things are only going to get worse over the next couple of years at least.

A final thought, there is a website in Ireland for unemployed people called halfaloaf dot ie (look it up on Google) - they may have some experience of campaigning/good press contacts.

Apologies to rest of the readership for going off topic.

Is it time to accept that blogs are really just a jostling for position in a virtual and parallel social order rather than a means to change the real one. Is the real way of instigating change going to be through posters and pamphlets and public meetings rather than this internet? Is PR about to understand that the internet does nice things well but when you want real stuff to really happen it’s more of a hinderance than anything else?

Sadly, I am an unimportant financial services PR Guy, not a political one. I hear you have to get Enda to butt in on your behalf these days if you want to be one of those (and earn above the set limits).

I have a lot of time for what Catriona is saying though as I see lots of abuse of internships in PR and the media. I would advise her to make a documentary and Youtube it or use other forms of social media to get the message across rather than go through so-called official channels. Campaign.

I don’t buy the informed despondancy lark either. F*** despondancy. I have two kids who are going to grow up into this country. I cannot afford to be despondent. Nor I suspect can many others. We’ve got to stop this self flagellation bull and start making stuff happen.

@ Catriona
Just tell us who your local TD was and how you told him. Then somebody here (maybe PR guy) let us know the correct avenue (is it Richard Bruton). We are a small democracy - let’s start changing stuff. Now

Energy economists such as Richard are prepared to reduce capital spend to sustain consumption and then reduce consumption to prevent more resourses going into capital spending that would reduce the consumption of the rich.
Although I agree to a large extent on his skepticism of wind to do any decent industrial job.
We will become a milder wetter Detroit me thinks
As late as 1987 something very substantial could have been done - but that was a seminal year.
Now it seems -there is no way out.

well said

@ Garry

i also like the term the sheltered sector
it incorporates the strong resistance to change and advocates most of the muddle along attitude to getting us out of this crisis

@Paul Hunt As ever you’ve nailed it. You and @Robert Browne write some of the most compelling stuff on this subject on the whole the Internet.

I sense you speak for many here and throughout Ireland. This sentiment, which appears to be gaining popular traction runs along the following lines: we will sit here in the sh1t, that we mostly produced ourselves, but with some help from external parties, and we will do as little as possible that is in our power to clean it up until the external parties, who helped to produce some of it, come to our assistance first.

This is totally unrealistic, self-defeating and counter-productive. In the first place, most of the external parties which facilitated some of the sh1t production in Ireland have more than enough of their own to clear up. Secondly, any asistance they might be encouraged to provide is entirely contingent on Ireland making its best efforts to clear up the sh1t it produced entirely on its own.

This post - and the subsequent thread - is, and should be, about some of the sh1t we produced ourselves. It is totally in Ireland’s power to clear this up and external parties have no role to play in this other than to provide encouragement and to make arrangements to provide some assistance in clearing up some other sh1t. This is what they are doing and they are reluctant - and believe they are not empowered - to go any further as it would infringe on Ireland’s sovereignty to make its own decisions about clearing up the sh1t it has produced.

But while a significiant tranche of public opinion supports wallowing in the sh1t that has been produced - and while many find it comforting and rewarding and will fight steadfastly to defend their right to wallow in this way - it is almost impossible for government (even if it had the will - which it doesn’t) to take the steps necessary to clear up this sh1t. And the external parties will find it even more difficult to justify the allocation of resources from others required to clear up other sh1t.

And all the commentators who have some standing and the opinion formers who wail about the apparent reluctance of external parties to pile in resources to clear up the sh1t produced with external assistance are simply simply giving credence to this sentiment supporting sh1t wallowing; and it builds resistance to any efforts to clear up the domestic sh1t production.

Ireland has to clear up - and be seen to clear up - the sh1t it has produced itself before external parties will be encouraged to provide meaningful assistance. Salami-slicing public expenditure and introducing or increasing taxes incrementally will also be self-defeating while mounds of domestically-produced sh1t remain.

But nothing will happen while those who point at these mounds and make suggestions about their removal are villified, pilloried and isolated.

It is harsh to be calling for this but their actions should have personal consequences.

Agree 100% on reform but think that a lot of people in the sheltered sector genuinely dont see what the problem is. Some of those who are both public and protected see any reference to this as just public sector bashing…

I used to think these people were merely game playing but Ive came around to the view they genuinely have had very sheltered careers, which has shaped their world view.

Id recommend using the word sheltered rather than public, because it is more accurate…. To me it covers the vast majority of the public sector, plus the bank employees, the legal profession, the big farmers, the connected…. if you belong to an organization that paid people to sit around the social partnership table, chances are youre part of the protected sector.

‘tax increases’ are two things:

1. an underhand way to cut the pay of public servants (who don’t really pay tax - but how can you, who are paid by my tax, pay your own tax).

2. (real) tax increases on the private sector who shoulder ALL of the burden of economic adjustment up to and including emigration.

Things are tougher in the private sector than in the public sector. In fact the real and (re)emerging social divide is not between the ‘Bankers’ but between the public and private sector. That things are harder for the latter is the price to be paid for the Croke Park Agreement - i.e. making things easier for the former.

Does any sane person doubt that this is true?

Does any statement about the Bank bailout, the Troika, children on waiting lists (insert stuff from Charles Dickens here:_______________…) render it less true?

Remember this points are made not to distract attention from the Bank bailout. Economic liberals like me were as opposed to it as Joe Higgins (and for pretty much the same reasons). They are made to draw attention to the truth.

Yes. The planned fiscal strangulation is going to have some very distrubing outcomes. Given that large parts of the UK have never recovered from the de-industrialisation process, one has to wonder what sort of periphery Ireland is going to become.

http://www.nj.com/newark/davidkerr/index.ssf/2010/03/unemployment_and_addiction.html

“If the government had any sense if would approach the unemployment crisis as the equivalent of a wartime emergency. ”

I think that is what it would take to tackle this problem. Sadly, I don’t see it happening.

The media (amongst others) should be putting far more pressure on the government over this but they aren’t. It’s all just too cosy between them here.

Can’t quite remember the exact words and would prefer not to engage with Stephan directly via e- mail.
But here goes.
10 years of austerity is a nonsense
Yee guys have clearly not read history books.
The creditors may have powerful bullshit medicine but there is a limit to everything I guess.
Irish society has already been dramatically weakened by the near hyperinflation of credit.
Now a collapse in the money supply is on the verge of creating a final social collapse.
Ireland has been thee biggest sociological experiment in the western world - it is not economists we need in this country but ecologists with a understanding of dramatic changes in habitat.
Stephan Jay Gould and his thoughts on punctuated equiliberium come to mind when I think of the changes in the Irish economic ecosystem over the years both during the intense monsoon period and now the dramatic drought with some forecasters proclaiming no rain will fall for 10 more years !!! - this after 4 years of failed harvest.

Anyhow we are all test tube babies in this country with no context to anything of substance.
Both we & Ireland as a unit is a embarrassing absurdity.

Richard is a smart guy - he is fleeing because he sees total societal collapse in my view.

PS did not mention test tubes in my first erased comment but am just waiting for politically correct smart asses to eat bone marrow or whatever vultures do these days.
I am so disappointed in this farce really.
Not one maverick in the Irish establishment is willing to cut loose and tell it like it is.
We are all alter boys………. no I will not go any further on that one as even Dorks have social mores I guess.

I read last week that 7000 people in Ireland had been jailed or given a custodial sentence of some sort (whether they made it inside a cell of course is another matter) for nonpayment of fines. Phil Hogan talks of making deductions at source from those who refuse to pay a property tax. A group of TDs on 100K+ think a property tax is onerous, even though the number of exempt categories likely will include most of their electoral base. The government promotes a salary cap for advisors, and the Taoiseach promptly reverses it in one special case. The list of head-shakers is endless.

A week of two before Xmas a group from the UK felt there was sufficient interest among distressed property developers to host a ‘DIY UK Bankruptcy’ show. Several major developers have either left the country for domicile in more welcoming jurisdictions or have subjected themselves to the terrible penance of foreign bankruptcies. And as for prosecutions over the banking collapse, the Shannon will be drained first.

The debts of several of the bankrupts via their investment companies are being managed, handled, underwritten, paid off, call it what you want, by the taxpayer. That the previous government signed up Irish taxpayers to this arrangement is beyond belief, but they did and the current government has continued the policy.

If the name of some notional banana republic was substituted for ‘Ireland’ it might all seem more credible. And may be therein lies the lesson. There is no appetite within Irish political culture to resolve the shocking dissonance in public life. There is almost no transparency surrounding big ticket expenditure.

I have posted here several times on my own belief that a NAMA for the little people was necessary, that default begins at home, that intelligent reduction of the public sector be pursued, that a comprehensive workfare program be developed.

Someone who was 40 in 2008, and lost his or her livelihood is probably deeply in debt, is now approaching 44 and in the vast majority of cases is more likely to face a future of unemployment than employment. Someone was was 50 in 2008 or 55, is highly unlikely to work again. And I believe that this is where a workfare program which provides a basic unemployment package and ‘credits’ in some form to cover at least the interest on mortgage debt is required. The ideal solution would involve some kind of debt write-down in conjunction with very diminished welfare entitlements. In particular, whatever the notional average industrial wage is, no one should earn more than it on welfare.

If the government had any sense if would approach the unemployment crisis as the equivalent of a wartime emergency. There is no substitute for being in work. Not only does it have obvious psychological benefits but it also opens more possibilities for spinning out further enterprises.

Would cuts in non-wage costs and increased efficiency and productivity (without cutting wages) in the sheltered sectors not help at all? This is what Colm’s initial post was all about, but nobody wants to address it. I wonder why?

Take the retail sector. It employs more than all the multinationals together but does it get much of hearing at government level? Rates.Upward only rent reviews. Sick pay responsibility mooted. Fixed minimum wage. These are just a few of the issues.

There is no talk whatsoever in government about a comprehensive workfare program. And apart from the usual patriotic opposition to anything radical, the opposition most likely comes from all those in the public purse who realize that a workfare program would ultimately mean low, much lower wages all round.

Can we please lay off the ESRI staff.

Afraid not, they’ve proved to be absolutely useless in our meltdown. But I’d rather that this view not be based on my opinion alone.

What I would like is for the ESRI growth forecasts over the past 3 years to be empirically analysed in a paper charting on a quarterly basis a) their actual growth forecast for the economy going forward 12 months b) the actual results achieved.

Apart from the above it would be interesting to look at the indices used for these growth forecasts. Interesting to see how the ESRI has been culling its own growth forecasts over recent times for the Irish economy.

When many were issuing dire warnings over NAMA and the impossibility of 3% growth forecasts over the next decade for the Irish economy; when Lehmans told the rest of the world of a coming global recession, how were the ESRI growth forecast figures used to buttress NAMA. ITS my impression ESRI have consistently buttressed the over inflated views of successive Ministers of Finance in Ireland as to our ability to grow our way out of recession.

Even more interesting would be to look at the criticism of public policy by the ESRI going back over the past 10 years.

Apart from Sean’s link, I suspect you would find it very sparse indeed.

I wonder why…….hmmmmmmmm?

Perhaps because the ESRI is a privately funded organisation whose main financial support would come from government projects ?

Perhaps the ESRI is influenced by that symptom whereby the subject won’t bite the hand that feeds it? ESRI Pravda more like it.

China’s rise can succeed only if US and EU go down. Mind you, neither of the latter two will go quietly. To whom will China then sell its surplus manufacturing output? To those states who are so indebetted that they have to further impoverish their own citizen consumers, so that these same consumers will consume more? Contiguous states? Africa? South America? Maybe, but I have significant doubts.

Their ‘deep base’ is the state-sponsored theft of the intellectual property of their erstwhile partners and customers. That works for while. Then its ‘Tariff Time’ - again! After the US elections in November? Maybe even before?

You are right about their historical dominance. But things are a tad different now. They are like a dirty dog (shitting on his own doorstep) polluting their freshwater and arable land with lots of delightful heavy metal toxins. And only impolite adjectives could be used to describe a lot of their air quality. China has a bad future in prospect. They can neither feed their population, nor can they increase their use of liquid fossil fuels -
without someone else paying for that lunch. Guess who won’t pay? OK, they can ‘lease’ arable land in east Africa. That’s hardly next door is it? And who will ‘work’ this land? That is, not flog it to aridness by emptying the geological aquifers and enhancing the saline content by overuse of inorganic fertilizer.

Nigeria is a tad frisky at the moment. If this ‘excitement’ spreads to the Delta region, things will get very interesting, very fast.

Similarly, we need planes that fly and don’t endanger humans.

But we don’t need over regulation or wrong regulation. Most of all we don’t need regulation that becomes an end in itself. Arguably, the last 30 years have seen deregulation lead to Finance Insurance Real Estate FIRE economy that has now brought the euro world to financial Armageddon.

Here’s a piece from Friedman Vs Socialist. Anti Friedman in the main, anti Austrian school, anti Greenspan FIRE economy, but here I give him a point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOMI0ORGH44&feature=related

What even Friedman is being forced to allow here is:

1. We need regulation that is efficient, effective, professional that at the end of the day provides effective medicare for the elderly avoiding demagoguery, waste, too much wasteful PS and government.

2. We need government to be small, avoid bureacucracy, avoid corruption that comes with inefficiency and Big Brother….(aside, we need to get out of the euro asap).. and get government out of business: be it banking or where business and innovation may be stifled eg O Leary link earlier post.

Instead, we have creeping evil empire of banking, of EU Commission and national PS with too much totalitarian bureaucracy. This leads to suffocation of free capitalism. Enterprise, innovation replaced with puppet socialism/political cronyism for the banks.

The fingers of totalitarian bureaucracy now extend into the media, into economics, into Public Service in Ireland eg in the field of education and health. Dissent, innovation is stifled.

Where in the world would you have a media as subservient as our own such that its now largely unquestioned whether we pay back ¢63 bn capital given to revive our broken banking system.

This is planned to follow five years at least of austerity required to bring our balance of payments back to equilibrium; where the evidence before our eyes is that our economy is being broken and destroyed by the false obligations imposed upon us by external forces Troika and otherwise; of debt that was private debt and not public debt?

We must turn our eyes away from emigration, unemployment, destruction of business and enterprise in Ireland to feed the foreign debt of private capital in Ireland?

Its actually impossible to do that!

But how do you persuade the electorate to not only live with this lie but to live comfortably with this lie?

The way you do that is to say you are working on the problem. You use blackwhite logic, eg our creditors will not allow the country to sink, but will keep it on life support to extract as much bodily organs as they can from it to pay off as much debt above is possible.

Once they keep doing that and we and enough can sleep on our soft pillows, we can live with that

We need tight regulation that is effective and focused and beneficial to all. Tight regulation can even benefit business when it protects the market and the market place.

None of this is possible in a market cornered by the banks, the private banking interests of bureaucracy and government fed by even larger bureaucracies even more inefficient at ECB, EU Commission and TROIKA/IMF level.

More opportunities lie ahead in improving the situation when the Irish Hindenberg eventually crashes. Perhaps then the real mess will be cleaned up.

“While the possibility of a financial crisis was adverted to, this concern was not given much attention. In October 2006, a paper given at this conference by a colleague (later published in the ESRI QEC as Traistaru-Siedschlag, 2007) raised concerns about financial stability. These concerns were reiterated later in an Irish Times article by Kelly at the end of 2006 and subsequently in a paper by him in the ESRI QEC in mid 2007. However, even then the focus of attention of the economic community remained on the housing market rather than on the risks to the financial system. It was really only from the end of 2007 that very real concerns were being discussed in private, and even then it was felt to be difficult to air them in public without having undertaken the necessary background research.”

The footnote to this paragraph is particularly poignant:
“There was also the danger of legal action if too trenchant views were expressed on the stability of an individual bank.”

He goes on to assert that “the primary failure in policy rests with the responsible authority which had all the resources needed to undertake its task – the IFSRA”.

We had ‘world-class’ bank supervision and financial regulation; what could possibly go wrong? And imagine the uproar if the ESRI or anyone else had started to poke their noses in to how they were doing their job.

Yes, indeed. We had ‘world-class’ regulation and we were getting ‘more competition and better regulation’. In the same way that we continue to have ‘world class’ economic regulation in every other sector. Excuse me while I roll on the floor laughing…