Author: Karl Whelan

Debate Questions

I found last night’s debate a bit depressing. Many people had suspected that the five-way debate would prove to be an unsatisfactory format for useful discussion. In the event, it was worse than I had expected. In particular, the combination of poorly phrased questions from the audience (two of the first three questions were essentially “what are you going to do about emigration?”) and ad hoc and unevenly distributed follow-ups from Pat Kenny, served the audience at home fairly poorly.

There’s two more debates to go, albeit one of them as Gwaelge (as they say in RTE). How about we open a thread for Irish Economy blog participants to suggest questions that could be used in the remaining debates?

Here’s a few starters for ten:

1. Fine Gael are planning to reduce public sector employment by 30,000 and Labour by 18,000. Can this be achieved without breaking the Croke Park agreement ruling out involuntary redundancies or without affecting front-line services? (The core administrative civil service only has about 30,000 employees).

2. The European Commission says that it expects Ireland to be borrowing in the bond market again in the second half of next year. Should Ireland look for a bigger lending package from the EU and IMF to delay this return to the bond market or, if you accept this timeline, how do you plan to raise these funds?

3. It appears that the EU authorities want the Irish banks to repay the almost €100 billion they have borrowed from the ECB and the €50 billion that they have borrowed from the Irish Central Bank and to do this soon. How do you plan to deal with these requests?

FG Banking Policies

Fintan O’Toole has a piece in today’s Irish Times that criticises Fine Gael for various flip-flops and changes of position on banking issues. You can read it yourself and decide if these points are important or whether Fintan is over-egging it a bit.

I’m reluctant to get into political argument on this point. However, I would note that Fintan seems to have missed the biggest change in Fine Gael position. While Fine Gael are currently placing a lot of emphasis on haircutting senior bank bondholders, as recently as October this was not their position at all. Here’s a link to a Bloomberg piece quoting Michael Noonan as follows

Fine Gael, Ireland’s biggest opposition party, said Oct. 8 that it would also repay Anglo Irish senior bondholders in full. In September, the party had demanded that Finance Minister Lenihan negotiate with bondholders.

The party doesn’t want to “risk the reputation of the country” as a re-payer of its debt, said Fine Gael finance spokesman Michael Noonan.

Bloomberg also have a more detailed story on this interview which, unfortunately, is not on the web. However, here are some excerpts:

Anglo Irish Senior Bondholders Should Be Repaid, Opposition Says

2010-10-08 12:06:09.402 GMT

By Joe Brennan

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) — Anglo Irish Bank Corp. senior bondholders would be repaid in full by an Irish government led by Fine Gael, the countrys biggest opposition party, finance spokesman Michael Noonan said.

Last month, the Dublin-based party demanded Finance Minister Brian Lenihan sought negotiations on all Anglo Irish bonds, including 4 billion euros ($5.5 billion) which lost the government guarantee on Sept. 30. Noonan said yesterday that circumstances had changed.

“The advice I got was you might get half a billion euros out of it on a negotiation”, Noonan, 67, said in an interview in the parliament in Dublin. “Now, I don’t think we should risk the reputation of the country for the sake of a half billion.”

and

Lenihan said yesterday the government wouldnt impose losses on senior bondholders via new laws.

“It was an option two years ago when there was very serious amounts, about 17 billion, of senior bonds there that wasn’t under guarantee”, Noonan said. “ The debate is effectively over now.”

One can, of course, argue that circumstances have changed again since October. But the general point that Fine Gael have been inconsistent on banking policy seems a fair charge.

Lucey: Time for Debt Write-Down

Brian Lucey writes in today’s Irish Times “Time to persuade Europe debt write-down is needed”

Moody’s Downgrades Unguaranteed Irish Bank Debt

Another day, another downgrade. However, the language in this one is particularly interesting.

Anglo Trading Update & Orders on Deposits

A busy day for our grossly insolvent banks. Anglo has issued a trading update. In addition, the Minister for Finance has obtained direction orders from the High Court for Anglo and INBS to allow for deposits to be transferred and to enable other aspects of the restructuring plans. Nearly identical statements from Department of Finance and NTMA (with an FAQ here.)