Draft National Risk Assessment

Here.

Comments welcome until 30th June to nra at taoiseach.gov.ie

5 replies on “Draft National Risk Assessment”

One word Taoiseach: Governance

Governance failed abysmally, and today’s Governance is, sadly, much the same.

The greatest risk.

fyi A score from Vincent Browne

In the 20 years I have been writing this column for The Irish Times , there have been changes but much has remained depressingly the same. The major changes have been the Belfast Agreement, joining the euro and the financial crisis. There has remained a virulent sectarianism in Northern Ireland, the prevalence of petty political corruption, the persistence of a corrupt society with its insidious inequalities, and a democratic deficit that still seems to bother nobody.

http://www.irishtimes.com/debate/twenty-years-a-commenting-some-things-don-t-change-1.1763063

One of the greatest risks to the Irish economy is not even MENTIONED it is the dominance of “insiders” which openly manifests itself in “group think”which we have developed to a fine art by incessantly drawing on the same pool of known and approved insiders. I include in my definition of insiders the ESRI, CSO, IBEC ICTU and NAMA the Irish Central Bank and Regulator can also be guaranteed to sing from the same sheet.

Insiders, who to a large extent, completely and utterly failed to see any real dangers to the Irish economy until it was staring them in the face in big bold print.

Economic outsiders and nay sayer’s are treated akin to whistle blowers. Bertie Ahern famously saying “he did not know why they did not go and commit suicide?” Later, he lamented that nobody warned him of the impending implosion of the countries banking and property sectors.

Three outsiders who should be insiders are Gurdgiev, Kelly, Mathews. If I was to name a fourth I would name Paul Sommerville because of his day to day experience in trading and trading risks. Until these people are taken on board we can be 100% certain that group think is what we are getting.

Reminds me of a government working group established some years ago to examine various ways of dealing with an impending residential and BTL loans debacle. Not once was the word debt forgiveness even mentioned. Now a similar word search would bring up hundreds of matches. These experts could not bring themselves to mention or even contemplate the full gamut of alternatives.

I am sorry to say that I see this exercise as being only for widow dressing!

Oh I made a glaring omission… Cormac Lucey. “Plan B” should be required reading for every TD in the Dail.

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