Ireland under austerity: Neoliberal crisis, neoliberal solutions 9781784997120

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Neoliberal crisis, neoliberal solutions ‘The word austerity, with its hint of a decent plainness and admirable self-discipline, is one of the more fraudulent of contemporary euphemisms. As this compelling volume suggests, it is rather a question of violence, deprivation and despair, as the powerful and privileged once more unload their problems on to the poor. There are many fine books around, but few are as urgently necessary as this one.’ Professor Terry Eagleton, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University and Professor of Cultural Theory at NUI Galway Once held up as a ‘poster child’ for the benefits of untrammeled capitalist globalisation, the Irish Republic has more recently come to represent a cautionary tale for those tempted to tread the same neoliberal path. The crash in the world economy had especially grave repercussions for Ireland, as it only narrowly escaped bankruptcy by negotiating emergency loans at punitive rates from the IMF, EU and ECB. A series of austerity measures introduced by successive Irish governments and overseen by the institutions of global finance has seen the country endure what some consider the most substantial ‘adjustment’ ever experienced in a developed society during peacetime.

Colin Coulter is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University, Ireland

Cover photo: After the ball: an election poster lies discarded in the abandoned mansion of the disgraced former Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader, Charles J. Haughey. Photo credit: Kevin Keogh.

Neoliberal crisis, neoliberal solutions

(Eds)

Angela Nagle received her PhD from Dublin City University, and is a contributor to the Dublin Review of Books, the Atlantic and the Irish Times

Ireland under austerity

Coulter • Nagle

In this collection of essays, a range of academics, activists and political commentators delineate the reactionary course that Ireland has followed since the ignominious demise of the Celtic Tiger. A central thread that runs through the book is that the forces of neoliberalism have employed the economic crisis they caused to advance policies that are in their own very narrow interests. The host of regressive measures imposed since the onset of global recession has fundamentally restructured Irish society and will continue to do so long after public anger recedes and the national humiliation of the ‘bailout’ fades from memory. Ireland under austerity provides a critical and engaging account of what has happened to a society that in recent years has, more than most, mapped out the pernicious cycle of boom and bust that remains an essential hallmark of contemporary capitalism.

Ireland under austerity

Ireland under austerity

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

ISBN 978-0-7190-9198-8

Edited by 9 780719 091988

Colin Coulter • Angela Nagle

Ireland under austerity

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Ireland under austerity Neoliberal crisis, neoliberal solutions edited by c o l i n c o u lt e r

and a n g e l a n a g l e

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2015 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express ­permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for isbn  978 0 7190 9198 8  hardback       978 0 7190 9199 5  paperback First published 2015 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or ­appropriate.

Typeset in Sabon by Koinonia, Manchester Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

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The magnetic power which ideologies exert over human beings, while they have become entirely threadbare, is to be explained beyond psychology, in the objectively determined decay of logical evidence as such. It has come to the point that lies sound like truth, and truth like lies. Every statement, every news report, every thought is preformed by the centers of the culture-industry. What does not bear the trusted mark of such preformation lacks credibility in advance, all the more so that the institutions of public opinion garnish what they send out with a thousand factual proofs and all the power of conviction which the total apparatus can bring to bear. The truth which would like to do something against this, bears … the character of something i­mprobable  … Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from damaged life, 1951 The precious advantage which the spectacle has acquired through the outlawing of history, from having driven the recent past into hiding, and from having made everyone forget the spirit of history within society, is above all the ability to cover its own tracks – to conceal the very progress of its recent world conquest. Its power already seems familiar, as if it had always been there. All usurpers have shared this aim: to make us forget that they have only just arrived. Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, 1988 If it feels like there’s nothing new under the sun, that’s because there is nothing new under the sun. Luke Haines, Post Everything: Outsider Rock and Roll, 2012

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Contents

List of figures and tables List of contributors Acknowledgement

page ix xi xiii

  1 Ireland under austerity: an introduction to the book Colin Coulter 1

  2   3   4   5

Part I: The political economy of crisis in Ireland False economy: the financialisation of Ireland and the roots of austerity  Conor McCabe 47 Interpretations of the Irish economic crash  Kieran Allen 66 A perfect storm: crisis, capitalism and democracy Sinéad Kennedy 86 Ireland and the new economy  Angela Nagle 110

  6   7   8   9

Part II: Casualties of the crisis in Ireland Ireland’s disappeared: suicide, violence and austerity Michael Cronin 133 The impact of the crisis on Irish women  Alison Spillane 151 Defiance and hope: austerity and the community sector in the Republic of Ireland  John Bissett 171 All aboard the migration nation  Gavan Titley 192

Part III: Lessons of the crisis for the Irish left 10 Lessons from the era of Social Partnership for the Irish labour movement  Francisco Arqueros-Fernández 219 11 Ireland, the left and the European Union  Daniel Finn 241 12 Business in Ireland is too important to be left to Irish business  Michael Taft 260

Index 289

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Figures and tables

Figures 12.1 Foreign multinationals as a proportion of total for internationally traded sectors, 2011 12.2 Indigenous manufacturing employment as a % of total employment, 2008 12.3 Indigenous enterprise value-added per capita (working age population), 2009 (€) 12.4 Social wage (employers’ social insurance payments) as a % of gross wages, 2011

268 271 272 283

Tables 3.1 Government deficit and debt to GDP: Germany and Ireland, 2003–2007 3.2 Gross domestic fixed capital formation (€m) 10.1 Share of wages in the total economy 12.1 Foreign-owned enterprises: profits, tax and investment, 2011 12.2 Construction employment growth as a % of total employment growth in the market economy 12.3 Domestic corporate investment as a % of GDP, 2009 12.4 Employment and direct expenditure by national ownership in the food and drink sector, 2011

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71 81 221 268 270 273 274

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Contributors

Kieran Allen is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University College Dublin. Among his books are The Corporate Takeover of Ireland (Dublin: Irish Acdemic Press, 2007), Ireland’s Economic Crash: A Radical Agenda for Change (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2009) and the co-authored (with Brian O’Boyle) volume Austerity Ireland: The Failure of Irish Capitalism (London: Pluto, 2013). Francisco Arqueros-Fernández holds a PhD from the Department of Anthropology, Maynooth University, Ireland and is presently conducting postdoctoral work in the Department of Sociology in the same institution. His current research project is funded by the Irish Research Council and examines the experience of unemployment in Spain and Ireland. John Bissett is a community worker based in south inner city Dublin. The author of Regeneration: Public Good or Private Profit? (Dublin: New Island, 2008), he is a central figure in the community based arts protest initiative The Spectacle of Defiance and Hope (www.facebook.com/spectacle.defiance). Colin Coulter is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Maynooth University, Ireland. Among his previous publications is the edited volume The End of Irish History? Critical Reflections on the Celtic Tiger (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). Michael Cronin holds a Personal Chair in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Dublin City University. He is the author of numerous publications on Irish society, language, and culture, including Translation in the Digital Age (London: Routledge, 2012). Michael is co-editor of The Irish Review and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. Daniel Finn is a journalist and historian from Dublin. He holds a doctorate from University College Cork and is deputy editor of the New Left Review. Sinéad Kennedy is a Marxist and feminist activist. She teaches in the School of English, Theatre and Media Studies at Maynooth University, Ireland. She is one of the editors of the forthcoming The Abortion Papers Volume 2 and is currently completing a book on Marxism, Feminism and Neoliberalism.

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xii

Contributors

Conor McCabe is Research Fellow in the Equality Studies Centre, University College Dublin. He is the author of Sins of the Father: Tracing the decisions that shaped the Irish Economy (Dublin: History Press, 2nd edn, 2013) and writes at www.dublinopinion.com. Angela Nagle is a PhD graduate from Dublin City University and a contributor to the Atlantic and Dublin Review of Books. Her research is concerned with online subcultures and the political economy of the internet. Alison Spillane is a reproductive rights activist, and has been involved with both the Abortion Rights Campaign and Action on X. Until September 2014 she worked as a parliamentary researcher in Dáil Éireann. Alison previously held a co-ordinator position with the Irish Feminist Network, where she focused predominately on reproductive rights and gendered economic inequality. Michael Taft is Research Officer for Unite the Union (Ireland) and is author of the political economy blog, ‘Unite’s Notes on the Front’ (www.notesonthefront. typepad.com). Gavan Titley lectures in the Department of Media Studies, Maynooth University, Ireland. His research broadly focuses on racism and multiculturalism in Western Europe. His books include The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (with Alana Lentin, London: Zed 2011) and the edited collection National Conversations? Public Service Media and Cultural Diversity (Bristol: Intellect 2014).

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Acknowledgement

The editors wish to acknowledge the generous support offered by both Maynooth University and the National University of Ireland in the form of grants to facilitate the publication of this book.

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1

Ireland under austerity: an introduction to the book Colin Coulter

#tbscitwiwtat In the closing days of October 2013, Dublin hosted a major gathering at which technology corporations at various stages of development exhibited their wares and explored investment opportunities. Although only in its fourth year, the Web Summit had grown at a remarkable rate and was now capable of attracting ‘9834 attendees from 97 countries around the world’.1 The centrepiece of the two-day event was an informal roundtable discussion of which the undoubted star was the web entrepreneur Elon Musk.2 Over the course of the 45-minute session, the founder of a range of companies – most notably the online payment facility Paypal, the electric car company Tesla Motors and the space exploration undertaking named, appropriately, SpaceX – was feted with a sequence of breathless testimonies to the vision and courage he has seemingly brought to the business world. In response, the evidently discomfited Musk offered a series of disarmingly earnest monologues, the tone of which was offset by that of the contributor seated immediately beside him, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny. The Fine Gael leader seized his quite explicit position down the billing as an opportunity to act as a comic foil to the South African web capitalist, offering himself as the genial ageing luddite who has somehow stumbled into a gathering of the technologically adept whose arcane vocabulary has left him b ­ efuddled. While Enda Kenny’s previously undisclosed flair for comic playacting went down a treat with the audience, his motivation for attending the Web Summit was of course entirely serious. In his period in office, the Taoiseach has increasingly come to stress his role as economic ambassador for Ireland. The gathering of high-tech companies in Dublin offered an invaluable setting in which the Fine Gael leader could promote the twenty six counties as what he is wont to call ‘the best small country in the world in which to do business’.3 The phrase has been rehearsed with such regularity that it now even has its own hashtag – #tbscitwiwtdb. At

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one point in the ‘fireside chat’ at the Web Summit, Elon Musk responded to an invitation to outline his future business ventures. As the South African native sketched out some of his plans, the Taoiseach – grinning and ‘hamming it up’4 for a graciously amused audience – interjected to comment that if Tesla Motors were looking for a European base for their operations he might just know a country that would be ideal. If the company were to produce its innovative electric car in Ireland, Kenny continued, it would be guaranteed an excellent labour force, prompting him to confide in Musk: ‘Our workers will not let you down, believe you me.’ It was quite a performance to behold. Anyone attending the summit who had come from abroad and arrived late, missing the introductions that prefaced the roundtable discussion, would have been forgiven for thinking that the incongruously attired elderly gent at the front of the room was the owner of some medium sized commercial enterprise – the purveyor, perhaps, of reputable incontinence attire fashioned in some estimable though instantly forgettable midlands backwater – rather than the leader of an independent state only weeks away from the ostensible and widely broadcast restoration of its full powers of sovereignty. The bonhomie and horseplay that defined proceedings at the Dublin Web Summit served of course to conceal certain rather darker realities that cannot be allowed to intrude into such exalted settings. Since the early 1990s, the prevailing official narrative has sought to suggest that companies such as those represented at the two-day gathering at the Royal Dublin Society conference centre are drawn to Ireland by the prospect of operating in a technologically advanced country with a skilled and industrious workforce. This is a representation, however, that could not be said to square entirely with the facts. In actuality, Ireland is one of the most technologically backward countries in the developed world. To take the most obvious and pertinent illustration, the scale and quality of internet provision in the twenty-six counties lag far behind those of other wealthy nations. In the rankings of countries in terms of broadband speed, for instance, Ireland languishes in the lowly position of forty-third.5 It might reasonably be concluded then that whatever it is that persuades foreign high-tech corporations to establish Irish offshoots it has relatively little to do with technology. The principal attraction that Ireland holds for multinational capital is of course that it offers a scarcely equalled environment in which to avoid tax liabilities both at home and abroad. Foreign enterprises operating in an Irish context are subject to rates of taxation well below the norm in other developed countries. While the official level of corporation tax presently stands at 12.5 per cent, the absence of adequate fiscal regulation and investigation means that foreign companies often pay

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rather smaller proportions of their profits to the Irish state. One of the various incarnations of the American corporate giant Apple operating in Ireland, for instance, registered profits of $7.11 billion between 2004 and 2008 but paid only $36 million in tax, an effective rate of half of one per cent.6 The disclosure of figures such as these has nurtured a growing sense that several major multinationals have struck secret deals with the Irish authorities, prompting members of a subcommittee of the US Senate to describe the country as ‘a tax haven’. The generosity that is extended to multinational capital reveals a version of contemporary Ireland that is starkly at variance to the one that is offered to the world in contexts such as the Web Summit. If the political establishment does in fact have a vision for the Irish state it is evidently one in which it can compete convincingly for the mantle of ‘the best small country in the world in which to avoid tax’.7 In the course of the conversation that headlined the Dublin Web Summit, there was a minor, seemingly innocuous occurrence that becomes darkly ironic when placed in its proper context. At one stage, the host of discussion, Mark Little, noticed that the speakers had not been provided with water, as custom not unreasonably dictates. The erstwhile rich emollience of the former journalist and newly minted web entrepreneur’s voice sharpened momentarily as he instructed the hired help to rectify the situation, lest an unslaked thirst might interrupt the steady slew of tales of corporate endeavour. Within seconds, as one might anticipate, some unfortunate appeared on stage and placed bottles of water in front of each of the speakers. At that precise moment, there were across Dublin literally thousands of people who would have been deeply envious of this development. On the days that the Web Summit was taking place, the Irish capital was in the midst of a drought that saw water supplies suspended to various parts of the city for hours on end.8 While the Taoiseach sat enraptured listening to a multibillionaire enthusing about his ambitions for living on another planet, many of his own citizens were being deprived of the most essential resource for living on this one. It would be hard to think of a coincidence that evinces more starkly the skewed priorities that continue to animate official Ireland even after all the harsh lessons of the last few years. The ‘fireside chat’ that dominated media coverage of the hightech conference offers certain indelible insights into the version of Irish society that has been forged out of the experience of crisis and austerity. In particular, the musings during the Web Summit offer the timely reminder that for all the profound changes that have occurred in Ireland in recent years, crucial vestiges remain of the world that existed before the flood. If we were to delineate the most insidious traits of the

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Celtic Tiger we might call to mind the veneration of the ‘risk taking’ entrepreneur, the poverty of public provision of essential resources for living, the adulation of multinational capital, the tiresome charade that Ireland is a ‘knowledge economy’ and all the rest. Watching the very public canonisation that passed for a conversation at the Dublin Web Summit reminds us that for all that was erased when the long years of boom finally turned to bust, these fundamental iniquities of the old order remain. When the world falls apart, some things stay in place. This is the time of our great undoing The world in which we live has been shaped overwhelmingly by an originally obscure and especially virulent version of capitalist ideology that is typically designated as ‘neoliberalism’. Formulated by a small band of central European philosophers and popularised by economists in the United States, the ‘neoliberal’ project would assume political power in much of the Anglophonic world during the 1980s.9 The seismic geopolitical events that concluded that pivotal decade would of course offer the evangelists of neoliberalism the rather broader canvas on which they had always aspired to work. With the end of the Cold War, an unparalleled volume of capital flowed out of the United States in particular as multinational corporations pursued new markets and opportunities for profit. The triumphalism that attended the economic expansion of the nascent era of ‘globalisation’ was captured most famously in the writings of the neoliberal political scientist Francis Fukuyama.10 The facility of the free market to afford optimal prosperity and freedom for the individual had, Fukuyama insisted, secured an ideological victory for capitalism that would over time be translated into the political realities of the world. With the battle of ideas that animated the era of the Cold War decisively won, we were now living ‘at the end of history’. The hubris that characterised the outlook of neoliberal political scientists was amplified in the writings of academic economists. Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas, for instance, asserted that in the era of globalisation the ‘central problem of depression-prevention has been solved’ ensuring that there was simply no prospect that the ongoing boom might turn to bust.11 This optimism was echoed in somewhat more colourful terms in the enthusiasm of the technoutopians of Silicon Valley for the ‘new economy’ being nurtured by the Clinton administration. In July 1997, their trade bible Wired instructed readers to ready themselves for the ‘long boom’ of ‘25 years of prosperity, freedom and a better environment for the whole world’.12 And for a decade or so it often appeared that they might just be proved right.

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The golden age of neoliberal capitalism would of course find an unlikely ‘poster child’ in the guise of the Irish Republic.13 Throughout almost all of the twentieth century, Ireland had lagged behind its neighbours in terms of economic growth and was often characterised as among the ‘poorest of the rich’ nations of the world.14 In the 1990s, however, the country experienced a remarkable reversal in fortunes that at times seemed to amount to an economic miracle. A combination of low corporate tax rates and an educated and at the time still relatively low paid workforce enabled Ireland to attract a disproportionate amount of the American multinational capital that flowed into Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall.15 In per capita terms, the Irish Republic drew five times more foreign direct investment than the European average and managed to secure one third of all the funds directed towards the region by US software companies. Throughout the 1990s, the number of American multinationals operating in Ireland grew exponentially and by the end of the decade two thirds of all investment in the country would owe its origins to the United States.16 This influx of transnational capital was widely seen as the principal catalyst for a remarkable period of economic growth that would give rise to the ubiquitous metaphor of the ‘Celtic Tiger’. In the seven years after the phrase was coined in August 1994, Ireland registered annual economic growth of around 8 per cent, a rate without parallel anywhere else in the western world, even at a time of global expansion.17 The astounding progress that Ireland appeared to have made throughout the 1990s was halted momentarily early in the new century by the worldwide economic dip that followed on the heels of the atrocities in the United States on 11 September 2001. In the face of the first serious disinvestment by American multinationals since the advent of the Celtic Tiger, the Irish government began to shift focus from attracting foreign corporations to boosting the domestic construction industry. This change of priorities in 2002 is widely regarded by commentators as the moment at which the boom became a ‘bubble’.18 Over the next five years, Ireland would experience a period of house building even more frenzied than that in most other developed societies. This construction boom was both the symptom and cause of a further steep acceleration in property prices in the country. In the course of the Celtic Tiger period – 1994 to 2006 – the price of a second-hand home in Dublin rose an astonishing 511 per cent.19 The inflation of the Irish property market was facilitated by a banking sector that availed of the cheap funds generated by the advent of the Euro to lend to a growing body of customers wishing to buy or build homes. As the housing boom gathered pace, the volume of money lent by the banks grew exponen-

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tially and the eligibility criteria for these loans became ever more lax. In 2007, the Irish banking system issued €342 billion in loans, around twice the size of the entire national economy of which it was part.20 In the increasingly reckless banking culture that marked the twilight years of the Celtic Tiger, the most cavalier of the financial institutions was the now infamous Anglo Irish Bank. This was not a bank in the conventional ‘high street’ sense of the term. Anglo only had a handful of branches and did not provide even one instance of the facility that Paul Volcker has identified as the only innovation since the financial ‘big bang’ that has actually benefited ordinary people – the automatic teller machine.21 This is hardly surprising given that the bank existed not to provide banking services for the Irish public but rather to cater exclusively for the financial needs of the small circle of men who were the principal authors and beneficiaries of the property boom. The twenty property developers who borrowed most heavily from Anglo owed in total some €41.7 billion.22 For a time, these loans were the source of further untold riches. The small knot of developers who drove the frenzied property boom in Ireland would spend the early years of the new century rapidly ascending the annual ‘rich lists’ that emerged as one of the many cultural reflexes of adoration towards their kind. Figures such as Sean Quinn, Johnny Ronan and Sean Dunne would assume a certain star status, widely lionised as embodying the entrepreneurial spirit that had, at last, made the country great. It would soon become painfully apparent, however, that the small band of celebrity property developers endlessly venerated throughout the Celtic Tiger years were in fact the authors of Ireland’s great undoing. In early 2007, there was the first premonition of the economic perils that lay ahead when Irish house prices peaked and began a plunge that over time would see property lose more than half of its value. The strategy of the state in the latter years of the Celtic Tiger, as we have seen, had been to promote a construction sector that had come to comprise a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP). In view of this dependence, the bursting of the property bubble that occurred in many countries around the same time inevitably proved especially disastrous in an Irish context. As new homes remained unsold or uncompleted, building workers began to lose their jobs in droves, the large developers found that they had no income stream to repay their loans, which in turn ensured that the banks could not reimburse their creditors. Thus began a vicious circle that would in short order bring the Irish state to the very verge of bankruptcy. The full scale of the problems that began to surface in early 2007 would not become apparent for another eighteen months when the crisis

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nascent in the global economy finally broke in earnest. In the intervening months, the Irish public was reassured by a range of economic commentators both at home and abroad that the ‘fundamentals of the economy were sound’ and that the property market was heading for a ‘soft landing’. As would prove to be the case with almost numbing regularity, the blandishments of practitioners of the dismal science would prove sharply at odds with the facts. In September 2008, Lehman Brothers became the largest corporation ever to go bust in the United States, sparking a sequence of bankruptcies that would swiftly aggregate as the biggest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. It would soon become apparent that the entire Irish banking system was in difficulties, and that several institutions faced going out of business in the immediate future. Having been convinced by senior executives in the banks that the problems they were dealing with were temporary matters of liquidity rather than structural ones of solvency, the Finance Minister Brian Lenihan took a fateful decision that may well haunt Ireland for many decades to come. In the dead of night on 30 September 2008, with most of his cabinet colleagues safely tucked up in their beds, Lenihan issued a guarantee that the Irish government would honour all of the deposits in six large banks over the next two years. The sum covered by the scheme amounted to €440 billion,23 more than twice the entire value of the Irish economy. In a stroke, the Minister of Finance had socialised the vast debts of private financial institutions and in effect ‘put up the entire State as collateral’.24 It would soon transpire of course that the banks were not encountering short-term difficulties in terms of cash flow but were in fact close to insolvent. Faced with the prospect of the collapse of the country’s principal financial institutions – whose liabilities were now effectively the responsibility of the state – the Irish government began sinking large sums into the banks in the hope of keeping them afloat. Each time the state gave notice that it was going to inject more cash into the banking system, the sums involved seemed to get larger until ultimately the bailout amounted to the princely sum of €64 billion.25 The process would entail each household in the country giving €37,000 to banks that had spent the halcyon days of the Celtic Tiger registering astronomical profits while flagrantly over charging their customers. Although the bailout in general was a huge source of rancour in Ireland, the public resources injected into one specific bank would produce a particular and enduring sense of grievance. Almost half of the funds that the state invested in the banking system ended up in the reserves of Anglo Irish Bank. In the course of the bailout, the people of Ireland gave around €30 billion to Anglo, an institution with which almost none of them

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had ever had any previous dealings. The keen sense of anger at being required to squander vast sums propping up a phantom institution that was in any case doomed was rekindled in the summer of 2013 when the Irish Independent published records of conversations between managers in Anglo Irish that took place either side of the momentous bank guarantee. Amid the obscenities and puerile bravado, the audio tapes reveal an explicit strategy among the senior office bearers at the bank to lure the state into making an initial investment, in the anticipation that the government would then be compelled to throw good money after bad. The recordings offer a chilling insight into the heroic corporate culture of an institution that had only the previous year been nominated by financial consultants Oliver Wyman as the best bank in the world.26 The vast sums sunk into the banks placed further unbearable pressure on an Irish state whose financial position was already deteriorating apace. The collapse of the housing market deprived the government of property taxes that had grown enormously during the Celtic Tiger. At the same time, the tens of thousands of construction workers, among others, cast onto the dole sent the social welfare bill soaring. As the void in the public finances grew, the downgrading of Ireland’s credit rating made it increasingly expensive to borrow in order to plug the gap. It became ever more apparent that the only option remaining was for Dublin to ask for emergency assistance from the institutions of global finance. While Ministers stood in line to officially deny such an eventuality, it would not be long before the government bowed to the inevitable. On 18 November 2010, the Governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, stole a march on the politicians when he disclosed on an early morning national radio programme that Ireland would in fact be negotiating financial assistance from what would come to be known as ‘the troika’ of institutions, namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB). There had of course been many developments over the previous couple of years that had indexed the scale of the crisis in Ireland. The number unemployed had grown to record levels and mass emigration, which many had hoped had been banished to the past, had returned. But it was apparent loss of sovereignty entailed in the troika deal that appeared to represent most graphically for many, not least in the media, the sheer scale of Ireland’s swift and ignominious decline. The normally reserved Irish Times reflected the sense of shock at recent developments in an unnervingly lachrymose editorial in which the newspaper r­ egistered ‘the shame of it all’ and enquired whether it was ‘for this’ that those who had fought for Irish national independence had taken up arms.

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The terms of the deal struck between the troika and the Irish government would see the three bodies advance €67.5 billion in installments over the next three years. It would become commonplace for commentators to refer to the agreement as a ‘bailout’, a term whose genial connotations suggest that the financial assistance involved represented an act of selfless benevolence. The reality was rather different.27 The various elements of the troika stood after all to make a considerable profit from the deal, having borrowed the cash at 3 per cent and loaned it to the Irish government at almost twice that rate.28 Furthermore, the terms of the deal gave the three institutions considerable authority to direct and oversee the conduct of public policy in Ireland. The troika sought to employ these newfound powers in ways that were predictably regressive. The measures that were negotiated with the Irish government were broadly in line with those introduced in any country that finds itself in the unenviable position of having to take the cash and counsel of the IMF. If Ireland were one of the poorest countries in the world instead of – what it remains for all of its recent travails – one of the richest, then the scheme envisaged by the troika would from the outset have been named precisely what it was – a ‘structural adjustment programme’. As has been the case in many other, rather poorer countries, the structural adjustment of Ireland has centred upon the hollowing out of the public realm. In the era of austerity, some 30,000 state employees have lost their jobs while their former colleagues have faced pay cuts in excess of 20 per cent.29 Moreover, a series of punishing budgets has seen the erosion of many essential forms of public provision. Some of the swingeing cuts have eroded forms of social welfare – child benefit, the single parent family allowance, pensioners’ medical cards and carers’ allowances among many others – that would have previously been considered untouchable.30 In total, the era of austerity has seen some €28 billion removed from the Irish economy in the guise of tax increases and reductions in state services. This represents around one fifth of the country’s GDP, meaning that the austerity measures introduced in Ireland have effected the greatest economic adjustment ever experienced in a developed country outside of wartime.31 What is perhaps the most remarkable facet of the austerity programme imposed by the Irish government under the panopticon of the troika has been that its introduction has, unlike elsewhere, provoked relatively little protest, let alone moments of serious public disorder. The chiding of Greek protestors that ‘we are not Ireland, we will resist’ might well smart for those on the Irish left but it is an insinuation that would be hard to refute. The trade union movement did, admittedly, organise a one day strike as well as three protest demonstrations that each drew

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crowds of around 100,000 onto the streets of Dublin. These events were, however, less a form of resistance than its simulacrum, evidently designed as they were to dissipate the energies of the crowd rather than channel them into more sustained or radical forms of political engagement. The compliance of an increasingly supine national trade union leadership has been absolutely indispensible in the almost seamless unfolding of a political programme that has entailed the decimation of the incomes and working conditions of their members. Three tropes of the crisis The imposition of the austerity agenda has necessarily posed serious ideological difficulties for the Irish state. Since the onset of the recession, successive governments have had to manage a population that has seen its living conditions deteriorate on a scale that few other western societies have experienced in living memory. The apparent success of this strategy has hinged upon the adoption of a deceptively simple discursive strategy, one that survived the transition from the Fianna Fáil/Green Party government that oversaw the crash to the coalition of Fine Gael and Labour that took office in March 2011. Since the onset of the current crisis, powerful figures in the political and cultural establishment in Ireland have incanted a series of mantras that are intended to mollify ordinary citizens and guide them towards a specific destination. These tropes mimic the idiom of the everyday and have been repeated with such relentlessness that it has become increasingly difficult to remember a time when we had not heard them – the genuine hallmark of the hegemonic. Three of these discursive threads are considered in the discussion that follows. The ways in which the Irish political class has sought to represent the present crisis inevitably reflects the proclivity of the powerful to deploy what Richard Sennett has termed the ‘dangerous pronoun’.32 The pronouncements of Ministers and others are typically littered with the term ‘we’ in an attempt to manufacture a sense of collective experience and interest that does not in fact exist. In seeking to explain the origins of the crisis, for instance, Irish politicians will often invoke the common idiom of the country to assert that in the days of the Celtic Tiger ‘we all lost the run of ourselves’.33 This trope readily translates into the insinuation that the responsibility for the boom turning to bust is something that everyone shares equally. In official discourse, the origins of the crash are often located in a certain presumed pathology among the Irish people. Retrospective accounts of the Celtic Tiger period are often replete with the language of lunacy, a propensity that would

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find its clearest and most controversial expression in Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s pronouncement at the annual Davos gathering of global wealth that what had gone wrong in Ireland was that ‘people simply went mad with borrowing’.34 The discourse of the asylum is often supplemented with that of the confessional. Official narratives of the recession at times reveal the vestiges of a particular religious heritage in their insistence that the boom years were a period in which the Irish people lost their way and fell for the lure of Mammon.35 This repugnance for the brash consumerism of the Celtic Tiger era – often issued by people who expressed no such distaste at the time – is frequently expressed through one of the more ubiquitous catch phrases that circulates in austerity Ireland – ‘we all partied’.36 The endless reiteration that ‘we all lost the run of ourselves’ represents of course an ideological ruse that has been used to deflect and disperse the responsibility for the current crisis. The specific allegation that lies at the heart of this seemingly innocent trope insists that during the Celtic Tiger everyone spent and borrowed in ways that were so reckless that they would ultimately bring the state to the verge of bankruptcy. This particular reading does not, however, stand up to close examination. Indeed, it would be hard to disagree with Gene Kerrigan’s assertion that it represents the ‘big lie’ of the austerity years.37 It is certainly true that the Celtic Tiger saw the Irish public engage in levels of consumption that would have been unthinkable before. Many people enjoyed their first new car or spent extended periods travelling to places of which their parents had never even heard previously. The opportunities afforded by cheap credit inevitably ensured that many in Ireland spent in haste and then regretted it at leisure. Even in an age of ready finance, however, there were ultimately limits to the opportunities to spend. As the Celtic Tiger era came to a close, it is worth remembering, two thirds of the workforce in Ireland were drawing salaries of €38,000 or less, modest sums in the context of a country that was then, and indeed remains, among the more expensive places in the world to live. Even during the seemingly golden years of economic growth, most ordinary Irish people simply did not have the resources to have ‘lost the run of themselves’. And they certainly did not have the incomes to enjoy the lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous endlessly documented in soft focus detail in the festival of prosperity porn that often passed for journalism during the Celtic Tiger. It is also true that during the boom many Irish people borrowed money on a scale that would not previously have been possible let alone believable. The principal reason for the explosion of personal debt during the Celtic Tiger, however, was not because individuals

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were sustaining celebrity lifestyles but rather because of the not entirely unreasonable ambition of owning their homes. According to the Minister of Finance who oversaw the onset of the crisis, the late Brian Lenihan,38 each of these decisions to purchase a place in which to live contributed to a shared agreement to inflate the market: ‘We decided as a people, collectively, to have this property boom’. Here we find a rare instance of apparent belief in the existence of that most chimerical of economic conditions, namely perfect competition. Lenihan would seem to have believed that every single person operating in the property market had an equal knowledge of it and influence upon it. This does not of course even begin to make sense. The person who borrowed a few hundred thousand euro to buy her own home simply could not have exerted the influence over the property market of a developer who borrowed several hundred million euro to jerry build scores of apartments on flood plains for other people. While those individuals that bought property at the height of the boom certainly made their own decisions they did so, then, under circumstances that were not entirely of their own making.39 It is worth underlining, moreover, that the responsibility for these decisions has been assumed solely by the people who made them in the first place. The collapse of the employment and property markets has left many households in negative equity and struggling to make the monthly mortgage payments. At present, there are almost 100,000 mortgage accounts that are more than three months in arrears.40 Although many households have been enduring real hardship for several years, there has never been any real prospect of even a partial amnesty being called on their debts. The contrast with the manner in which the Irish state has chosen to deal with the banks and the builders is telling. While the vast debts of the institutions and corporations that fuelled the property boom are now in public hands, those of individual citizens remain matters of purely private concern. We may all have partied, but apparently not everyone is required to stay behind and clear up the mess. A second discursive strategy that has marked the period of crisis centres on a particular tautology designed to establish and police the narrowness of the field of political possibility in Ireland. From the onset of the recession, Irish politicians have been at pains to establish that the gravity of the problems facing the country means that they have very little room to manoeuvre. If Ireland were to navigate the crisis successfully, it was insisted, people would have to face up to the new realities, to accept that ‘we are where we are’. Once this had happened, the general public would realise that austerity measures were simply unavoidable if the country were to avoid an even greater catastrophe.

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If it were not for its unfortunate Thatcherite connotations, we would almost certainly have heard Irish politicians issue the phrase ‘there is no alternative’ a lot more often than has been the case. The familiar incantation that ‘we are where we are’ was central to the ideological strategy to establish that the austerity measures implemented by the Irish government, while unpalatable, were necessary and indeed simply unavoidable.41 Anyone who said otherwise was depicted as having taking leave of all reason. In reality, however, it was the austerity agenda that was unreasonable, a strategy informed by questionable social science and directed by very partial economic interests. The intellectual rationale for policies of the kind introduced in Ireland and elsewhere was provided originally by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. The Harvard economists argued that if national debt is allowed to increase beyond 90 per cent of GDP, the prospects of economic growth are damaged. Their prescription was that countries facing such circumstances had no alternative but to reduce public expenditure in order to bring their indebtedness under control. The musings of Reinhart and Rogoff inevitably invited a great deal of scrutiny, and other academics examining their work discovered that many of the pair’s calculations were simply incorrect. The celebrated economists who had offered a key intellectual fig leaf for policies that had brought untold misery to millions had simply got their sums wrong.42 The revelations concerning the innumeracy of Reinhart and Rogoff have served to discredit at the level of principle an austerity agenda that had long since been discredited at the level of practice. Nonetheless, the Irish government has steadfastly refused to countenance another political course. Successive budgets have inflicted widespread hardship on ordinary people, but the recovery that politicians assure us lies just out of view seems rather reluctant to materialise. The persistence of the Irish government with policies that evidently do not work suggests that the austerity agenda is animated by sentiments other than the logical or the pragmatic. To inflict pain on someone else on the promise that it will help but in the knowledge that it will not is to engage in acts that most of us would deem sadistic. And there is more than a hint of sadism in the way in which the Irish state has chosen to conduct itself since the boom turned to bust.43 It reveals itself, for instance, in the quite apparent pleasure with which government Ministers set about the incessant harrying and denigration of a whole host of public sector workers.44 One only has to recall the profoundly unedifying sight of the likes of Ruairi Quinn or Brendan Howlin seeking to establish their statist credentials by hectoring teachers and nurses among others to witness the evident relish with which they choose to wield power.45

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While the vindictive nature of the austerity programme finds voice in the threats and slights that trip so readily from the tongues of government Ministers, it assumes a more critical and perhaps enduring form in the network of disciplinary practices and processes that has emerged since the demise of the Celtic Tiger. The manner in which the crisis has been represented in official circles has, as Allen and O’Boyle observe, often borne traces of the vocabulary and categories of understanding associated with a religious tradition that was until recently prevalent in Ireland.46 In the dominant narrative of recent years, Irish people are often depicted as having strayed from the path of righteousness – to have fallen prey to the vice of usury and to the pleasures of cosmetically altered flesh – and now need to be brought back into the fold. In its concern to allow the plain folk of Ireland to ‘atone for their sins’, the state has installed an entire new system designed to discipline and perhaps even punish.47 This network assumes the guise of a whole sequence of processes and practices that often entail a pettiness that seems designed for the humiliation of those within its purview. One thinks here of the couple who took out a mortgage in good faith at the height of the boom and have fallen behind on their payments who now have to explain their satellite television subscription during the ‘lifestyle coaching’ sessions they are forced to have as part of the deal to reschedule their loan; or the 25-year-old being informed that his unemployment benefit has been cut because he does not happen to be twelve months older; or the university lecturer on contract forced to reapply for her own job every academic year; or the cancer patient forced to pay up front for his chemotherapy; or the young woman from a deprived neighbourhood who recently became the first graduate ever in her family compelled under threat of having her benefits cut to work for free for a profitable corporation in the ultimately vain hope that, after the all the internees who went before her and were never retained, she might just be the one who lands the permanent job. These instances of surveillance and humiliation are not an accidental by-product of the austerity programme but rather are central to its reason for existence. In the crisis years, the state has installed a disciplinary system that will survive any prospective change in Ireland’s economic fortunes. The punishments that have been meted out in the age of austerity are, after all, intended as ‘a school rather than a festival; an ever-open book rather than a ceremony’.48 The third and final discursive strategy we will consider here once again entails the construction of an ideologically convenient sense of collective experience and purpose. Irish politicians have sought to suggest that the origins of the present crisis were communal and that the solution will, therefore, have to be as well. With the very sovereignty of the state at

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stake, everyone will have to make the sacrifices that will in time allow us to emerge together as a nation that can once again stand tall in the world. This sequence of assumptions was condensed with some success in the all too familiar trope ‘we are all in this together’. It was, at heart, an attempt to rekindle the spirit of the Blitz in a country that never had one. Even by the standards of the other phrases that we have examined, the notion that ‘we are all in this together’ emerges as absurdly threadbare. It is of course the case that enormous sacrifices have been imposed upon most ordinary Irish people since the end of the boom. The sheer scale of the collapse of living standards in Ireland was intimated by one economist who suggested that no other country in the developed world had experienced such a decline since the Great Depression and that in the modern period one would have to turn perhaps to Zimbabwe to find a state that has experienced a steeper decline.49 A nation that within a generation had been lauded by The Economist as ‘Europe’s shining light’ had by the summer of 2013 become one in which more than a third of its citizens, some 1.7 million people, lived in households that only had €100 a month to spare once the bills and cost of accommodation had been covered.50 The years since the crisis broke have, in contrast, been rather kinder on Ireland’s domestic and foreign economic elite. Michel Foucault once insisted that the state is nothing but the effect of its own flux of transactions and therefore has no ‘interior’ or ‘essence’.51 One only has to examine the conduct of the Irish political establishment since the end of the boom to reveal this characterisation as fallacious. If there is a thread that runs through the ‘transactions’ of the Irish state in the age of austerity it has been the ambition to defend at all costs the interests of the wealthy.52 The entire financial resources of the state were put on the line in order to bail out the banks, the most venal and costly of which existed as little more than a phantom in the public life of the country.53 The coalition that oversaw the onset of the crisis created a specific body – the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) – to handle the largest debts arising out of the housing boom and effectively became the principal creditors to the property developers who had been central to the chaos, some of whom were even retained on six figure salaries as advisors. And the state resisted at every turn the suggestion that at a time of emergency those rich Irish men and women domiciled abroad for tax purposes might be required to make a contribution to the national coffers. In view of such sterling defence of their interests by the political class, it scarcely comes as a surprise to discover that the age of austerity has seen the star of Ireland’s wealthy elite in the ascendant.54 Some individuals – most notably Sean Quinn, once the

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richest person in the country – have inevitably lost their fortunes in the chaos of the last few years. But the wealthy as a class have survived and indeed prospered.55 The 2014 edition of the Sunday Independent Rich List reveals that the 300 top ‘high net worth’ individuals in Ireland currently possess €71 billion of wealth, an increase of €21 billion on four years previously and more than enough to have funded the entire troika ‘bailout’. The overriding concern of the Irish state has been to defend the interests not only of indigenous capitalists but those of their foreign counterparts as well. In the discussions that led to the troika extending emergency financial assistance, the sole item that the Irish government identified as not being up for negotiation under any circumstances was, predictably, the favourable rate of taxation available to multinational corporations.56 The devotion of the Irish political establishment to the interests of foreign corporations was illustrated vividly in May 2013 when a US Senate Committee identified Ireland as a ‘tax haven’ that had struck a deal with Apple to allow the company to evade its responsibilities to the Internal Revenue Service.57 The response of the Irish government was uncharacteristically robust, as it rebuffed the allegations that it was a tax haven and insisted that its relationship with the technology giant was entirely legal and proper. While the Irish state meekly and readily facilitated the appropriation of Shannon airport by an American military en route to an illegal war against Iraq, the merest criticism of its collusion in the tax evasion strategies of US corporations had politicians in Dublin ready and willing to cross swords with the political elite in Washington. The discursive practices of the Irish political establishment since the end of the boom have, as we have seen, centred on the endeavour to construct a sense of collective experience and purpose essential to ‘cooling out’ a populace that has witnessed a sudden and substantial fall in its standard of living. While the austerity agenda is invariably depicted as serving the interests of all, in reality it has served the interests of only a few. The measures introduced by the Irish government have ensured, in other words, that the neoliberal crisis would have neoliberal solutions. The onset of the global financial recession appeared for a time to have discredited the very ideas upon which neoliberalism was constructed.58 In a stroke, the bank bailouts that happened across the developed world punctured the central neoliberal nostrums that corporations know better than governments how to run economies and that the state should, therefore, refrain from intervention in the free working of the market. Although the onset of the current global slump may well have represented an intellectual crisis for neoliberalism it has not,

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however, transpired ultimately to be a political crisis. Indeed, as Colin Crouch has observed with understandable incredulity, the neoliberal project appears to have emerged from the chaos that it caused ‘more politically powerful than ever’.59 The version of neoliberalism that currently exists is radically different, however, to that which assumed hegemonic status before the fall of Lehman Brothers. The brash optimism of yesteryear has been replaced by a ‘glum pessimism’, the previous rhetoric of prosperity and play giving way to the counsel of austerity and discipline. While the form that neoliberalism takes may have altered, its substance remains essentially the same. The fundamental ambition of those who continue to advance the neoliberal project is to effect a change in the balance of social forces so as to recreate conditions conducive to profit. This imperative articulates itself most crucially in moves to dismantle what remains of the postwar social democratic consensus that neoliberalism originally set out to displace. The facility of the neoliberal project to turn into an opportunity the crisis for which it is responsible is no more apparent than in an Irish context. The years since the end of the Celtic Tiger have seen a fundamental shift in public policy from the state towards the market. Essential forms of public provision and expenditure have been eroded and the ground has been prepared for a more radical programme of privatisation that will in the near future incorporate the essential state utility of water services. Even more critically perhaps, the years of austerity have seen a fundamental tilt in the balance of social forces from labour to capital. The experience of the crisis has been to create a workforce that is fearful of unemployment, ‘docile with mortgage debt’60 and mindful that when it really matters the national leadership of the trade unions would sooner nuzzle up to power than serve its members’ interests. These are of course conditions that are optimal to the interests of capital, precisely the sorts of conditions in fact that enable American multinationals to register in Ireland rates of profit per employee that are a scarcely credible thirteen times greater than those in branch plants located elsewhere.61 While a great many criticisms might be levelled at the golden circle of interests that are served by the neoliberal agenda, it could not be said that they would ever allow a good crisis to go to waste.62 Static and silence In the official discourse that has attended the age of austerity, the cause of progress is typically held to require a transformation of the values and attitudes of Irish people. It has become commonplace to hear politi-

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cians counselling against ‘talking ourselves back into a crisis’ that we are yet to leave.63 In addition, a recent sober and substantial account of Ireland’s economic decline by Donal Donovan and Antoin Murphy concluded that a reversal of the country’s fortunes would in the first instance hinge upon a ‘rebound of confidence’.64 The propensity of politicians and others to locate the solution to the current crisis in the realm of the ideal is echoed in the arguments of those who underscore the contribution that intellectuals have to play in charting the path to progress. This perspective was expressed most succinctly in a collection of essays published in 2012 and entitled Reflections on Crisis: The Role of the Public Intellectual.65 In her introduction to the text, co-editor Mary Corcoran asserts that in these troubled times ‘people want some explanation’ of the catastrophe that has befallen them. In this context, there is a pressing need for public intellectuals who can provide ‘imaginative thinking’ and speak ‘without fear or favour’. The promise and purpose of the public intellectual, Corcoran suggests, are substantiated in the form of Michael D. Higgins who is apparently spending his period as President engaged in an enterprise no less ambitious than the ‘re-visioning’ of Ireland.66 While the emergence of certain voices underscoring the palliative power of ‘new thinking’ ostensibly represents an endeavour to clear a path towards the near future, it is hard to avoid the impression that it actually marks an attempt to cover the tracks of the recent past.67 The contention that it is the imagination of the public intellectual that will lead us out of crisis does perhaps invite a certain inference to be drawn, namely that there were during the Celtic Tiger an entire host of figures brimming with progressive ideas who were marginalised and ignored by the political rulers of the day, which contributed ultimately to the downfall of the country. The reality was of course entirely otherwise. While the public space for critical and radical ideas was certainly very narrow during the period of the boom, it did nonetheless exist. The problem was that there were in fact very few intellectuals who were inclined to use this space to challenge the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxies of the day.68 When we return to consider what was actually written and said during the Celtic Tiger, it becomes immediately apparent that the overwhelming majority of academics, journalists and other commentators were either ‘hired applauders’69 of the boom or content to say nothing critical about it.70 In the context of the academy in particular, there are ongoing attempts to persuade us that this was not really the case. The recent proliferation of blogs with sonorous and even occasionally apocalyptic titles and seminars with apparently radical ambitions cannot conceal the reality that academics were in the

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main deeply complicit – in what they said and, more importantly, what they did not – in a social and political project that would ultimately almost devour Ireland. Indeed, it is tempting to conclude that many of the radical noises that have begun to emerge from certain sections of the academic community confirm that these ideas have now passed into a realm of ‘legitimate controversy’ in which they no longer pose any real threat or serve any discernible purpose.71 In his influential examination of the postmodern, Fredric Jameson suggests that among the many boundaries that have collapsed in late capitalism are those that demarcate historical time. This blurring of temporal distinctions finds expression, Jameson suggests, in a pervasive cultural amnesia that often takes playful forms but nonetheless has very serious consequences. The salience of this depiction of late capitalism is exemplified clearly in the context of Ireland after the boom, a land in which almost all of the erstwhile gatekeepers now claim to have been poachers all along. The revisionism that has defined the period since the demise of the Celtic Tiger reveals itself in one particular essay that features in Reflections on Crisis. In her contribution to the slim volume, Frances Ruane reflects on how the boom years were experienced by academic economists and in particular those working in the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) of which she became Director in 2006.72 The tale that Ruane recounts is one of systematic marginalisation. The views of academic economists were, she suggests, largely ignored by politicians and the media who tended to prefer the more colourful pronouncements of commentators from the private sector. In addition, there is the suggestion that the dispassionate views of the academic economist often went against the grain of the prevailing orthodoxies and hence tended to draw pressure from the political establishment. Ruane cites, for instance, an occasion in 2008 when the ESRI invoked the wrath of the government for suggesting that Ireland might be entering recession.73 The account of how academic economists fared under the Celtic Tiger tendered by Frances Ruane offers an image of a doughty band of dispassionate professionals whose contrarian views drew fire from the political establishment but who nonetheless continued to speak truth to power. Reading her recollections, one might be forgiven for assuming that the ESRI is a small organisation that has been a font of critical opinion and has therefore been exiled to the margins of public life. The reality could scarcely be more different. The ESRI is in fact the most substantial social science research body in the state, with a staff of around seventy and an annual budget of €13 million funded principally by the Department of Finance.74 The considerable resources at the disposal

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of the institute have ensured that it has long since been a prominent player in mainstream public debate in Ireland. It is commonplace, for instance, for the latest pronouncements or reports issued by the ESRI to be headline news in both the print and broadcast media. Over the course of the period of economic boom in Ireland, the ESRI employed its profile and influence principally to commend the particular direction that the country had taken. The status of the research institute as one of the foremost cheerleaders of the boom was evinced most significantly in the summer of 2007 when it published a collection of essays that represents arguably the most significant hagiography of the Celtic Tiger ever published. In the volume entitled Best of Times?, a series of researchers drawn almost exclusively from the ESRI set out to consider the ‘social impact’ of the boom years.75 In their introduction to the book, the editors sketch out the methodological procedures that informed the research documented in the text.76 The findings that are presented were gathered, seemingly, by bracketing away almost every qualitative variable indispensable for understanding social reality on the grounds that they cannot be measured, before proceeding to put numbers on a whole range of other social phenomena that really cannot – or, at least, should not – be enumerated. This absurdly positivist framework inevitably leads to a whole sequence of findings that are scarcely meaningful let alone believable. We are informed at one point, for instance, that Irish ‘national morale is among the highest in Europe’.77 Apparently the complex collectivity of millions of people that we choose to call ‘the nation’ can have ‘morale’ and this sentiment can in turn be allocated a number. Amid the jumble of questionable data and glaring omissions that comprise Best of Times?, there is, predictably, a common thread of evaluation. It soon becomes clear that the question mark that adjoins the title of the book represents a strategic gesture towards the conventions of academic objectivity and that the authors of the text had already answered this rhetorical question before they began. Over the course of fifteen chapters, we are invited to marvel at the riches that the boom has bestowed on Ireland. At various stages, we are informed that the era of the Celtic Tiger has been ‘good for family life’; has seen widespread improvements in living standards and employment conditions; has facilitated growing mobility creating a ‘more open society’; has entailed a housing boom that poses no real difficulties for first time buyers; and has witnessed the expansion of suburbs to which most of their residents ‘electively belong’.78 Given this litany of achievements, it is entirely predictable that the editors of the book should consider that the boom years certainly deserve a positive evaluation: ‘two cheers and

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perhaps even three’.79 The final word on the matter is left to Robert Erikson – a Swedish social scientist whose outsider status is presumably intended to suggest a certain objectivity – who concludes the text with a ringing endorsement that the Celtic Tiger ‘has brought both more freedom and more security to the Irish. “The best of times” would then be a good description of the current living conditions of the population of Ireland’.80 The tone and substance of Best of Times? offers a stark reminder of precisely how close the ESRI, and indeed much of Irish social science, was to the neoliberal orthodoxies of the Celtic Tiger era. The institute spent the decade and a half of economic boom not so much speaking truth to power as whispering sweet nothings in its ear. The tendency of the ESRI to accord with the prevailing economic wisdom of the day was perhaps illustrated even more dramatically in May 2008, when it issued its predictions for the Irish economy over the next seven years.81 In its Medium Term Review, the institute insisted that the ‘fundamentals of the Irish economy are sound’ and forecast that gross national product would continue to grow at a rate of around 3.75 per cent per annum.82 For the economists working at the ESRI this was something akin to what would perhaps on the other side of the Irish Sea be termed a ‘Michael Fish moment’.83 As storm clouds gathered over global capitalism, with a series of banks already having narrowly avoided going bust, the institute was predicting a gentle tailwind for the Irish economy. In many other settings, calamitous forecasting like this would permanently discredit all of those involved.84 The fog of cultural amnesia that has descended upon post-Celtic Tiger Ireland means, however, that inconvenient details such as these are erased from the official record. Economists and other intellectuals who said that which was irretrievably erroneous in the past will of course be forgiven and their errors forgotten so long as they continue to say that which is ideologically convenient in the present. Each prediction from the ESRI of modest economic growth that never quite materialises will be reported as though it were the first, each assertion that ‘we have turned a corner’ that never quite comes into view greeted as the musings of the oracle.85 Orphans of the Cold War left The publication of Reflections on Crisis gave voice to a school of thought that considers that the present crisis owes its origins in a crucial sense to the marginalisation of intellectuals within Irish public culture. It might be countered, however, that the anti-intellectualism that is certainly pervasive in Ireland is not merely the cause of the poverty of intellec-

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tual life in the country but its symptom as well. Looking back on the Celtic Tiger period, it is all too apparent that academics, journalists and other cultural producers in the main simply had very little critical to say about a society that was evidently in the process of consuming itself. The critical silence that pervaded the boom years is often attributed to the material and professional interests of intellectuals themselves. Kieran Allen, for instance, has noted that the acquiescence of many fellow academics in the era of prosperity was induced by salary scales which, at senior levels at least, distanced them from the experience of the wider population, and by patterns of career progression in which speaking well of the Celtic Tiger was unlikely to damage the prospects of promotion.86 While these observations have more than a kernel of truth, they offer at best a merely partial explanation of the intellectual silence of the boom years. The fundamental reason that liberal intellectuals in particular remained quiet throughout the Celtic Tiger was that in certain regards it resembled quite closely the ideal society to which they had always aspired. In order to understand what might seem at first a rather counter-intuitive claim, we need to provide a necessarily brief intellectual genealogy. In their important critique of the Celtic Tiger period, Kirby et al. note that the ideas that have dominated public life in Ireland since the 1960s have chimed with the tenets of ‘modernisation theory’.87 Nurtured in the quarter century that followed the Second World War, the arguments of the ‘modernisation school’ were central to the ideological contests of the Cold War. Key figures such as James Burnham, David McLelland, Walt Whitman Rostow and Daniel Bell mapped out a path of development that was in principle available to all countries and that had, predictably, as its acme an increasingly post-industrial consumer society that bore more than a passing resemblance to the United States.88 A central tenet of the diverse perspectives that gathered under the umbrella of the modernisation school was that progressive social change necessitated a fundamental shift in social values. The drive towards economic development required the adoption of a more ambitious and acquisitive disposition by the population in general and, more importantly, by the prospective ‘new élite’.89 In the transition towards modernity, Rostow asserted, ‘new types of men’ emerged who ‘knew where they were going’. It was this coterie of the gifted – managers, intellectuals, above all entrepreneurs – who were willing and able to ‘undergo the strain and risks of leadership’ that would guide their societies towards the promised land of ‘high mass consumption’.90 The central tenets of modernisation theory would of course prove hugely influential in political terms during the early years of the Cold

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War. Several theorists associated with the school were, after all, drafted in as special advisors to a succession of Democratic administrations in Washington in the 1960s. As that decade turned, however, shifting fashions in the intellectual world conspired with material events in the real world to sideline the modernisation school. The emergence of new radical perspectives offering alternative pathways to development, coupled with the rise of poststructuralism with its disdain for the very notion of the ‘grand narrative’, served to tarnish the already questionable credentials of modernisation theory as an intellectual enterprise. In addition, the recurrent crises in the global capitalist economy, added to the status of Rostow as a principal architect of the slaughter in Vietnam, acted to fatally undermine the modernisation perspective as a political project.91 It would, ironically, require the end of a Cold War that had originally breathed life into modernisation theory to spark a revival in its fortunes. In the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin wall, there emerged various strands of social theory preoccupied with the notion of ‘the modern’, and two of these are germane for our purposes here. In the early 1990s, the most resonant echo of the modernisation school was to be found in the hugely influential writings of a neoliberal political scientist. As we saw earlier, Francis Fukuyama appeared to chime with events in a world reeling from the collapse of Stalinism when he asserted that liberal capitalism had triumphed in the ideological contests of the Cold War because it offered the individual optimal wealth and freedom. We were, Fukuyama famously declared, living at ‘the end of history’, a moment in which everyone would, in time, come to enjoy the liberty both to vote and to shop. The writings of Francis Fukuyama share a great deal in common with those of the modernisation school – the designation of culture as the catalyst for economic change, the identification of the free market system as the source of personal liberty and wealth, the valorisation of the United States as the pinnacle of social development. It would be understandable, therefore, to see the neoliberal project that Fukuyama most famously represents as the sole or principal heir to the modernisation tradition. It is important to remember though that the original modernisation theorists typically began their political careers on the far left and having abandoned socialism regarded themselves not as conservatives but as ‘liberals’.92 If they had been living in Europe rather than the United States they almost certainly would have designated themselves as ‘social democrats’. Once we acknowledge the political biographies of the members of the modernisation school, it becomes rather easier to appreciate that while they have a neoliberal legacy they have an often overlooked liberal or social democratic one as well.

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The latter incarnation of modernisation theory would be articulated most explicitly in the 1990s by the prominent sociologist Anthony Giddens. In his writings during the period, Giddens attests that capitalism, for all is flaws, represents the form of social organisation that affords the individual optimal wealth and the opportunity to transcend the restrictions of traditional or collective identities. In particular, the rapid evolution of information technology has ‘disembedded’ individuals from their locale, allowing them a ‘biographical autonomy’ that entails the freedom to ignore the strictures of class, nation or ethnie in order to construct bespoke identities out of the myriad possibilities afforded in an ever more ‘globalised’ world. While broadly positive in his appraisal, Giddens remains rather less adulatory of capitalism than Francis Fukuyama. For all the benefits that accrue from the operation of the free market, he suggests, it creates a certain chaos that requires the counterweight provided by civil society and the state. Accordingly, the political path that Giddens prescribes is that of the ‘third way’ that seeks to wed the creative energy of capitalism with the necessary order of social democracy. While the unadulterated neoliberalism of Francis Fukuyama and the reconstituted social democracy of Anthony Giddens are clearly rather different ideological formations, they share a great deal in common which betrays their shared heritage as the distant progeny of the modernisation school. Both men acknowledge the free operation of the market as the key to widespread prosperity, depict values and ideals as the engine of social change and underscore the liberties of the individual as the most important achievement and register of social progress. In view of how much they share in principle, it is entirely logical that the political programmes to which Fukuyama and Giddens have given their names should have often proved virtually indistinguishable in practice. The principal political manifestations of the ‘third way’ project were of course the Clinton Presidency in the United States and the ‘New Labour’ government in the United Kingdom. These overlapping administrations saw the implementation of policies that were neoliberal in all but name. It was, after all, Bill Clinton who repealed the Glass Steagall Act and placed in its stead the Financial Services Modernization Act, removing the few remaining constraints on the operations of finance capital and preparing the ground for the global crisis that we are currently living through. And it was of course Tony Blair who set out to ‘transform’ the British state by compelling public bodies to conduct themselves like private corporations, driving down the quality of essential life services while simultaneously providing lucrative strip mining opportunities for capital. It would be hard to contest the assertion of the late Margaret

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Thatcher that the legitimate heir to her own neoliberal ideology was the formally social democratic one of ‘New Labour’. An appreciation of the close resemblance between the neoliberal and the liberal is indispensable if we are to understand the manner in which Irish intellectuals – and in particular those of the latter disposition – responded to the challenges and opportunities of the Celtic Tiger. Over the last half century, as we have noted already, mainstream social and cultural thought in Ireland has existed in the long shadow of the modernisation school. This influence has down the years expressed itself primarily in a liberal disposition that has sought to diminish the power of the Catholic Church, transcend those forms of traditional nationalism that have in particular shaped attitudes to the conflict in Northern Ireland and create a modern prosperous society in which the individual can enjoy a range of personal freedoms especially in the realm of sexuality. This prevalent and enduring thread of sentiment would drive in part the campaigns to introduce divorce and legalise homosexuality, find a voice in certain sections of the media such as the music magazine Hot Press, reach its zenith with the election of Mary Robinson as President, and draw comfort from the ‘post-nationalist nationalism’ articulated by the ringing endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement south of the border. While the influence of the modernisation school would in the 1970s and 1980s be expressed primarily in the guise of this liberal perspective, the advent of the Celtic Tiger would see the growth of more radical, neoliberal disposition with which it shared a certain pedigree. Although different ideological formations in many respects, the liberal and the neoliberal strands of thought that breathed the same air during the boom years also shared a certain vocabulary and categories of understanding. They shared, that is, a fundamental faith in the generative power of capital, a conviction that there needed to be a change in ‘the way things are done’ and a belief in the sanctity of the individual. That the boundaries between these formally distinct political undertakings are in fact profoundly porous becomes manifest in the curious biographies of some of Ireland’s most recognisable cultural producers. It explains, for instance, how it is that figures such as Bob Geldof and Bono can in the one breath be both significant advocates of a whole range of personal freedoms that are the hallmark of the ‘modern Ireland’ and fierce advocates of the kind of free market economics that all but destroyed it. It also sheds some light on why it is that the doyen of liberal Ireland Fintan O’Toole has shared platforms with neoliberal figures such as David McWilliams and Shane Ross and indeed at one stage almost agreed to join them in standing for parliament.

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The profound resemblance between the liberal and neoliberal dispositions was reflected in their response to the years of economic boom. The energetic, individualised, heavily sexualised and seemingly prosperous society that emerged in Ireland in the 1990s came remarkably close to the model to which liberals and neoliberals alike aspired. In other words, the Celtic Tiger was, in broad outline at least, the kind of society that the ‘modernisers’ had wanted all along. It is perhaps this that explains why so many intellectuals – even liberals or those who mistakenly considered themselves of the left – remained silent for so long as Ireland dug its own grave. While the emissaries of the modern may have approved of the society that emerged in the boom years in broad terms, the devil, however, as always would be in the detail. The liberal and neoliberal perspectives share at least two crucial criticisms of the version of Irish society that has emerged over the last two decades. While these misgivings were at times expressed sotto voce during the boom, they have been given full voice in the age of austerity. The first critique suggests that the problems facing modern Ireland have arisen largely from the inability or refusal to transform its archaic political cultures and structure. While the Celtic Tiger represented a remarkable transformation of the Irish economy, the opportunities that this afforded, the argument goes, were squandered because of the country’s antediluvian political system. These problems tend to be read somewhat differently within the respective camps of the modernisers. The liberals tend to criticise the clientelistic political culture that fosters a version of ‘crony capitalism’ that fritters public resources on the well connected but not necessarily entrepreneurially gifted. The neoliberals, on the other hand, are wont to insist that the remaining vestiges of the public sphere – and in particular the corporatist structures of ‘social partnership’ – are an unnecessary burden on capital that distorts the efficient operation of the inviolable free market. While the two camps may well quibble over matters of detail, they remain broadly in agreement on the blueprint for political transformation, at times allowing people as politically divergent as Fintan O’Toole and Shane Ross to talk as though they were one. The second critique forwarded by liberal and neoliberal thinkers alike is the logical associate of that we have just discussed. It is apparent that many of those who cast themselves as intellectuals in Ireland disapprove not merely of the country’s political structures but of those who have traditionally controlled them. The political culture that obtains in the twenty-six counties diverges widely from those of other developed states and can be difficult to read for the outsider. The divisions that exist within Irish political life owe their origins to the civil war

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almost a century ago and do not translate readily into what might be considered more conventional ideological distinctions. In addition, the clientelistic nature of the electoral system means that even senior politicians in Ireland are often required to conduct themselves as local ‘fixers’ attending to the more menial needs of their voters as well as serving the interests of provincial wealth. The inevitable outcome has been that the Irish political class has often appeared to be of poor calibre, more concerned with the parochial interests of the ‘parish pump’ than wider national and indeed international concerns. The peculiar and admittedly retarded nature of Irish political culture is central to the lacerating indictment advanced by the chief liberal intellectual Fintan O’Toole in his account of the fall of the Celtic Tiger. The crisis that has befallen Ireland, O’Toole argues, is not merely economic but ‘moral’ as well and requires the ‘sweeping reform of the institutions of government’ in order to complete the ‘unfinished business of democratic modernity’. While damning in his comments of the political culture, the Irish Times journalist is even more so when he turns to consider the politicians that benefit from it. It was the ‘stupidity and corruption’ of the Irish political class among others, he asserts, that ‘sank the Celtic Tiger’ and heralded the onset of years of misery.93 It is of course difficult to avoid nodding in agreement with the version of events that Fintan O’Toole provides. His book Ship of Fools offers dozens of illustrations of how the venal conduct of the Irish political and corporate elite brought the country to its knees. However, to speak simply in terms of immorality or incompetence as O’Toole does is, as Conor McCabe observes, to almost entirely miss the point.94 The particularities of the political culture that operates within Ireland certainly did lend a particular gravity to the crisis here. But to focus on the immorality or incompetence of the Irish political class is to overlook the more pressing matter of the ways in which the country is located within the generalities of an economic system whose imperatives and actors are truly global. Had the Irish political system been reformed a generation ago and a new breed of ‘modern’ politicians emerged, the present crisis may well have been less grave but not perhaps as much as is often assumed. It might be instructive here to draw comparisons with the contexts ‘transformed’ by the ‘third way’ visionaries so beloved of liberal intellectuals in Ireland. The versions of the United States and the United Kingdom overseen by the Clinton and Blair administrations were of course rife with both ‘stupidity and corruption’ and indeed remain so, although the sheer scale of vastly larger countries like these can of course fool the eye. It might be mentioned that the ‘New Labour’ regime ‘transformed’ the treasured National Health Service by ravelling it in bureaucracy, diminishing the

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quality of treatment to patients and offering the prospect of vast profits to corporations tendering for privatised services. It might also be remembered that the only time Tony Blair seriously disagreed with George W. Bush was not, of course, over the Iraq War but rather in defence of the interests of the billionaire naturalised Briton Lakshmi Mittal in the course of a spat over steel tariffs.95 If we take a glance at the thoroughly ‘modern’ political culture on the other side of the Irish Sea, then, we will find no end of folly or clientelism. The crisis that Ireland faces owes rather less to its admittedly absurd political system than to its position within the global capitalist system. It is the perennial plight of the liberal intellectual to find themselves looking for e­ xplanations for the ills of the world in places other than the iniquitous mode of economic organisation in which they have, ultimately, invested their hopes. While the often entirely accurate criticisms that the Irish intelligentsia has directed at the political class are typically offered as disinterested statements of fact, it is not difficult to discern a rather less altruistic impulse behind their ire. Among the many traits that liberal and neoliberal commentators inherited from the modernisation school was the conviction that they would be the anointed class of gifted intellectuals that would be the architects of the new progressive social order. The peculiar development of Irish political culture has, however, ensured that many thinkers of a liberal disposition in particular have been deprived of their ‘rightful’ position at the table of political power. The sense of grievance that has attended this marginalisation is vented in the denunciation of those who wield power in Ireland as ‘stupid’, ‘corrupt’, economically ‘illiterate’.96 The thread that runs through the critiques issued by Irish intellectuals is that the state is simply being run by the wrong sort of people. While the politesse of the bourgeois salon prevents it being said in public, it is not difficult to imagine the term ‘gombeen’ being bandied about once the cameras stop rolling. The discernible prejudice that provides one of the many subtexts of their criticism of the political class begins to reveal the particular interests that animate those in Ireland who would seek to install themselves as public intellectuals. The insistence that Ireland needs the services of those able to provide ‘imaginative thinking’ that has become more vocal in recent years is typically offered as a dispassionate agenda intended to transform the fortunes of the entire country, to ‘re-found the Republic’ even.97 In reality, however, the discourse around the notion of the public intellectual represents a very partial political agenda, one that serves the interests of a specific tranche of Ireland’s complex class structure. In their calls for the ‘re-visioning’ of the country, elements of the Irish cultural and intellectual elite are seeking to appropriate power for themselves in

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order to remould the state in their own image. The realisation of this particular enterprise would entail not the transformation of political power but merely its reconfiguration. The lives of ordinary Irish people would continue to be governed by the essentially untrammelled operation of a free market that would continue to serve the interests of the few. Multinationals would still register record profits in Ireland and use the country as a medium for tax avoidance; the financial services sector would continue with phantom operations that generate boundless wealth but leave very little in the state; it would remain the case that barristers continue to earn vast sums while nurses survive on a pittance. The brave new world of ‘modern’ Ireland might well then bear rather less resemblance to ‘the Second Republic’ than to ‘the Eighteenth Brumaire’. Motes and beams During the decade and a half of unprecedented economic growth that Ireland experienced as the century turned, there is remarkably little record of academics, journalists and other cultural producers offering meaningful criticism of a society whose flaws were all too evident even at the time. While many have subsequently sought to imply otherwise, the evidence suggests that the consensus among liberal intellectuals in particular was that the Celtic Tiger era was indeed, on balance, the ‘best of times’. Almost all of the critiques voiced during the boom years would, predictably, have their origins on the academic left. The response of leftist academics to the Celtic Tiger was, however, far from uniform or consistent and entailed at least one critically important silence. It might perhaps be fair to say that that the body of intellectuals operating in Ireland that enjoys the strongest academic reputation is that operating within the orbit of the Field Day project. Beginning as a theatre company in 1980, Field Day would over time give rise to a whole range of artistic and scholarly projects. The origins of the enterprise reflected a desire to resist ‘revisionist’ accounts of Irish history and to engage with postcolonial theory to map out the imperial origins of the multiple forms of partition on the island. The critical disposition and theoretical sophistication of the Field Day associates meant that they would have made likely and potentially valuable allies in the attempt to construct a more persuasive leftist critique of the Celtic Tiger. Moreover, the fact that the group contained several internationally renowned scholars would have meant that whatever it had to say would carry a great deal of weight. In the end, however, all this would count for little as the Field Day intellectuals opted to proceed as though the Celtic Tiger had never existed.

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The silence of the postcolonial theorists in the face of the increasingly egregious inequalities of the boom era would be documented in one their landmark publications. A sumptuous undertaking featuring a range of global intellectual heavyweights, the Field Day Review was launched in palatial surroundings in central Dublin in the summer of 2005. Given the timing of its appearance, the journal was, presumably, conceived and nurtured against the backdrop of international economic and political turmoil. The Field Day Review was, in other words, fashioned in the context of the dip in the global economy that followed the 11 September 2001 atrocities and the subsequent US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. While the essays compiled in the journal certainly engaged with these global processes and events, they systematically overlooked the ways in which Ireland happened to be bound up with them. The various inequalities and injustices of the Celtic Tiger were essentially ignored by the editors of the Field Day Review, and by the time the first serious engagement with the recent course of social development in Ireland saw the light of day the Irish government was already under instruction from the troika.98 In addition, the publication featured a fascinating examination of the ‘war on terror’ by Terry Eagleton but this typically elegant account of a world dominated by the Iraq war failed even to mention the tens of thousands of American troops that passed through an ostensibly civilian Irish airport en route to the slaughter in the Persian Gulf.99 The glaring omissions that have defined the Field Day Review suggest an inexplicable refusal to deal with some of the most pressing social and political realities of contemporary Ireland. The frequently impressive essays that appear in the journal are rather more likely to mention Bloody Sunday or the Great Hunger than to address the practice of transfer pricing or the colonisation of Shannon airport. It would seem that the Field Day scholars would prefer to dwell on the memory of British imperialism than confront the actuality of its American successor. This baffling refusal to deal with the here and now would deprive the academic left of some crucial figures and resources that should have been essential to developing a critique of Celtic Tiger Ireland. The first substantial attempt to provide a leftist perspective on the ‘new Ireland’ was advanced in Denis O’Hearn’s Inside the Celtic Tiger published in 1998.100 This was in many respects a landmark text that set out to puncture the myths that surrounded Ireland’s seeming ‘economic miracle’ by locating it empirically and theoretically within an appropriately wider, international context. While Inside the Celtic Tiger certainly showcased the value of leftist political economy, the book also illustrated the limits of this approach. The theoretical perspective that informed the text drew upon the radical development approaches that came to

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prominence in the 1970s and insisted that relatively underdeveloped countries would be unable to experience economic advancement without breaking the chains of dependence that ensnare them within the global capitalist system. The conceptual baggage that he brought with him almost inevitably ensured that, in spite of protestations to the contrary, O’Hearn appeared at times simply unwilling to believe that the Celtic Tiger actually existed.101 While the central thesis that much of what appeared to be economic growth was not in fact ‘real’ made a great deal of sense, it was perhaps overstated to the extent that it failed ultimately to convince entirely even those who were ideologically predisposed to believe it. As anyone living in Dublin at the turn of the century might attest, the boom that had overtaken the city really did feel a great deal more ‘real’ than many of us on the left were at the time willing to concede. While Denis O’Hearn might not quite have succeeded in his attempt to vanquish the mainstream ideologies that venerated the boom, he was at least looking in the right places for ammunition. The many attributes of Inside the Celtic Tiger offered a template for a radical political economy that should perhaps have inspired a wider body of critical materialist analysis during the years of seeming prosperity. As the century turned, however, the analysis that was advanced by the academic left came increasingly to be located in a realm other than the material. The advent of the Celtic Tiger had a profoundly disorientating impact upon leftist intellectuals in Ireland. The breathless procession of record rates of economic growth recorded in the country seriously questioned some of the most essential assumptions that informed the work of Marxist critics in particular. Not quite sure how to respond to the boom, there was a quite palpable loss of confidence among leftist academics in their existing forms of economic analysis, and it was perhaps this that was instrumental in prompting a sharp shift in focus away from the material and towards the cultural. This ‘cultural turn’ was of course far from total. The important work of Kieran Allen, for instance, would retain an overwhelmingly economic focus.102 This principally materialist analysis would for a time, however, represent an exception to the rule that governed the writings of leftist scholars. The cultural turn within the Irish academic left was signalled most explicitly perhaps in the publication of two collections essays that appeared within twelve months of one another and might be seen as companion volumes. Reinventing Ireland by Peadar Kirby, Michael Cronin and Luke Gibbons was published in 2002, while The End of Irish History?, which originated in a conference organised by this writer, was launched the following year.103 Both of these texts set out

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to challenge what were then the overwhelming neoliberal verities of the day, and chose to locate that challenge primarily on the terrain of culture. The analysis put forward sought to depict the Celtic Tiger as a deeply unequal society governed by neoliberal ideals that sought to obliterate the valuable cultural traditions of the past and to install cultural practices in the present that centred upon the most vacuous forms of consumption. A great deal of that reading continues to hold true and some of the more astute pieces in both volumes have arguably stood the test of time rather well. It remains the case, however, that both of the books under consideration here marked a shift of focus from the material towards the cultural that would ultimately prove distinctly debilitating for the left. It is worth underlining that cultural analysis is absolutely central to the various intellectual traditions that form the left. The cultural is a fundamental realm in which the power of capital is represented and reproduced and hence is one of the spaces in which leftist scholars must seek to operate. It also remains true, however, that the dominance of the capitalist class, as Jodi Dean104 notes, has its origins in the first instance at the level of the economic. This necessitates that a genuinely critical leftist perspective must have at its heart sustained materialist analysis. One of the difficulties of the Celtic Tiger period was that it induced too radical a shift in the balance within leftist critiques away from the material and towards the cultural. Precisely at the moment that we should have been finding what was happening in the gentrified zone of the financial services quarter we were cruising the phantasmic streets of Fair City and just as we should have been pouring over the arcane accounts of multinational corporations we were musing on the semiotic power of an advertisement starring some toned and tattooed Irish American rock star or other.105 The sense that the left spent the Celtic Tiger years asking mostly the right questions but looking for answers mostly in the wrong places has been instrumental in the conception of this edited collection. The essays that comprise Ireland Under Austerity are inevitably diverse, and many entail a critical engagement with the cultural forms and practices that define contemporary Ireland. In general, however, the text marks a deliberate attempt to reverse the balance within leftist analysis that emerged during the Celtic Tiger and place issues of what might be termed political economy to the fore. The essays that follow seek to challenge the representations of the crisis that are advanced within the political establishment and the mainstream media, and to map out the ways in which a neoliberal crisis has become an opportunity for ­neoliberal solutions. It is hoped that the collection as a whole will provide an

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engaging and critical account of a society that has in recent years gone from what often felt like prosperity to what could not be mistaken for anything other than austerity. By their works shall you know them On the evening of Sunday 15 December 2013, the Taoiseach took the unusual step of ‘addressing the nation’ live on television. With Christmas little more than a week away, Enda Kenny had glad tidings to bring to the beleaguered people of Ireland. The Fine Gael leader announced that the ‘bailout is over’ and with that indignity overcome ‘we’ – a pronoun that appears no fewer than 31 times in a speech lasting barely seven minutes – could now look forward with cautious optimism towards a brighter future. While the tone of Kenny’s national address was suitably sober, other Ministers were evidently providing more bullish briefings, and many journalists obliged with broadly positive renditions of the events that were unfolding. In the days that followed the Taoiseach’s appearance on television, the national and international media were replete with feel good tales of how Ireland had now ‘turned a corner’. This choreographed optimism contrasted sharply, however, with the stubborn realities of the matter. Whatever the headlines might have said, the ‘end of the bailout’ in fact left intact most of the fundamental difficulties that have confronted Ireland since the crisis broke.106 The vast sums that were borrowed from the troika in order to fill the void in public finances that had haemorrhaged billions into the banks, for instance, still remained to be repaid. Hearing the accounts that circulated in the media immediately after Kenny’s address one might be forgiven for thinking that what was happening was that Ireland had just finished honouring its debts rather than receiving the final instalment of its foremost one. Furthermore, for all the talk of ‘the return of sovereignty’, the Irish state remains under the surveillance of the troika institutions, and the IMF in particular continues to be a frequent interested commentator on its economic affairs.107 While Ireland may no longer be a ward of the institutions of global finance, it remains their star pupil, the exemplary country that can be relied upon to use its restored sovereignty to assuage the markets and implement policies that serve the interests of global capital rather than its own people.108 Although the principal party of government, Fine Gael, inevitably took most of the accolades that followed the ‘end of the bailout’, their junior coalition partners were understandably keen to claim their own share of the limelight. On the eve of his party’s annual conference in late

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November 2013, then Labour leader Eamon Gilmore109 had prefaced the national address that Enda Kenny would make a couple of weeks later. The decisions that his party had taken in government, Gilmore insisted, had been very difficult but nonetheless entirely necessary to exit the bailout and ‘save the country from ruin’. It would scarcely tax the imagination to envisage how Mandy Rice-Davies might have responded to such a claim.110 The Irish Labour Party is perhaps an anomaly among the political cultures of western Europe. A historically small organisation with the ‘weakest of social democratic credentials’,111 the party enjoys strong links with the trade union movement but its principal constituency exists among the Dublin liberal professional classes.112 Labour provides a political home, in other words, for many of those academics and cultural workers who have sought to raise the profile of the public intellectual in Ireland, and the figure that they typically embrace as their champion in this cause, President Michael D. Higgins, is of course an elder statesman of the party. It might be said then that examining the conduct of the Labour Party in office provides us with the opportunity to ascertain how the ‘imaginative thinking’ coveted by those who rail against the pervasive ‘anti-intellectualism’ in Ireland might be translated into practice.113 In the run up to the 2011 general election, Labour had made a sequence of bold claims, the most resonant of which centred upon the promise to force some of those who lent money to Irish financial institutions to share some of the burden of bailing out the banks. Once the party had assumed office, however, these radical commitments were swiftly abandoned. The Labour Party would never make good on its commitment to ‘burn the bondholders’, buckling in the face of an international pressure which while considerable was, tellingly, never sufficient to persuade them to rethink the level of corporation tax in the country.114 As the government invented ever more elaborate schemes to channel billions of euro to speculative creditors who in many cases had not even provided the original loans to the banks, a sequence of austerity budgets brought misery and humiliation to the poorest sections of Irish society. This glaring disparity offers perhaps the most substantial indictment of the political agenda that gives pernicious form to the seemingly lofty ideals of Ireland’s liberal intellectual elite. President Higgins may well be whiling away the hours in a stately home in one of the largest parks in Europe by engaging in the ‘re-visioning’ of Ireland. But at the same time the party of which he is a longstanding member has chosen to squander billions on speculators who have no legal claim to be paid while at the same time brutalising entire working-class communities. The iniquity of the policies implemented while Labour has been in office was illustrated in a statistic widely reported on the

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same day that the leader of their coalition partners prepared to address the nation. In its online edition that Sunday, the Irish Times reported that 10 per cent of people in Ireland lack the money to have enough to eat every day.115 In what remains one of the richest countries in the world – a country, moreover, that is governed in part by individuals who claim to be of the left – one in ten people are currently enduring ‘food poverty’. In order to ‘save’ the country, it would appear, it was necessary first to destroy it. The greatest weight During the prolonged period of frenetic economic growth that followed the end of the Cold War, powerful voices within and without the academy were at pains to stress that global capitalism had now resolved the vagaries of what is often coyly termed ‘the business cycle’. These brash assurances were of course dramatically punctured in the autumn of 2008 when a series of seemingly impregnable financial corporations went to the wall. Among the many lessons to be drawn from the recent convulsions within the world economy is that capitalism remains defined by the same cycle of boom and bust that has existed from the moment of its inception. While it was entirely predictable that the era of breathless economic growth that was the Celtic Tiger would be followed by a period of severe contraction, it is also to be expected that the present regime of austerity will in time give way to a time of expansion in the Irish economy. Bold predictions that Ireland is on its way to economic recovery have been around for some. As far back as October 2012, for instance, the influential magazine Time featured a suitably statesmanlike shot of Taoiseach Enda Kenny on its front cover accompanied by the headline ‘The Celtic Comeback’.116 In recent months, prognoses suggesting that Ireland faces a rather brighter economic future have appeared with growing frequency in the mainstream media at home and even abroad. The thirteenth anniversary of the 11 September atrocities saw the publication of a remarkable supplement in the opinion forming New York Times. A glossy infomercial masquerading as news, the eightpage insertion employed a now familiar metaphor to ring out the good news in a banner headline reading ‘Ireland: Turning a Huge Corner’. Over the last few years, there have been scores of similar optimistic predictions that have been quickly dashed by the sobering realities of the world of actually existing capitalism. The abiding nature of the ‘business cycle’ will inevitably mean, however, that at some stage those powerful forces that occasionally join hands and seek to summon the spirit of the Celtic Tiger will eventually be proved right. Even a disci-

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pline as irretrievably broken as bourgeois economics can, after all, be relied upon to tell the right time once or twice a generation. The anticipated upturn in the Irish economy has inevitably been accompanied by reassurances that the era of austerity was an unfortunate though necessary interlude that is now drawing to a close. It is likely that this will transpire to be at best a very partial truth. The era of austerity in part entailed contingent and temporary measures designed to deal with a very specific moment of crisis. It should be remembered, however, that the decimation of the social that followed the crash also constituted an attempt by those at the helm of the neoliberal project to effect a rather more structural and long term realignment of the balance of forces within western societies. This altogether grander ambition means that the era of austerity is likely to have a prolonged afterlife in Ireland and indeed elsewhere. The cuts to their incomes and working conditions endured by ordinary people will never be fully restored; the erosion of essential public services will remain a dread reality; families sundered by involuntary emigration will continue to keen for their loved ones; a whole host of unjust charges introduced under cover of the crisis will make claims on the living standards of the plain folk of a country that continues to allow wealthy individuals and corporations to pay little or no tax. To what extent the measures introduced after the crash survive once the end of austerity is declared will hinge crucially upon the resources and dispositions of more progressive forces within Irish society. The nurturing of a more equal society in Ireland will, as ever, require a rejuvenated left more skilled than before at evading the familiar bear traps set by sectarian interests. It will, in particular, demand the replacement of a grotesquely overpaid and politically reactionary trade union leadership that has time and again sacrificed its members on the altar of a fictive ‘national interest’. The proliferating claims that the Irish economy is on the verge of ‘turning a huge corner’ are often accompanied by reassurances that the lessons from a previous period of prosperity have been learned and that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated. It is rather more likely that the opposite will be the case. Over time, it has become ever more apparent that the boosters who are again coming to dominate public debate in Ireland are intent not on banishing that previous, ultimately disastrous period of boom but rather on recreating it. In recent months, the imperatives and discourses that marked the Celtic Tiger have become increasingly prevalent. This return is most apparent perhaps in a revived preoccupation with what was in the popular imagination the most telling of the various indices of seeming progress that charted the boom years. At present, Ireland is in the throes of a new property

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bubble that may see the price of homes rise 20 per cent in 2014 alone.117 This steep spike in property prices has seen rents return to levels close to the extortionate rates that existed before the crash. While the political class has occasionally expressed some concern about developments in the housing market, the more prevalent response within official Ireland has been to declare rising prices as illustrative of that great totem of economic progress, restored ‘consumer confidence’. Not only does the plot currently unfolding in Ireland resemble that which only recently brought the country to its knees, even the cast of that previous drama has begun to reassemble. It is widely agreed that the severity of the crisis in Ireland was largely attributable to the activities of a small number of property speculators who borrowed enormous amounts from the venal Anglo Irish Bank in particular. In assuming responsibility for the loans accumulated by these builders, the Irish state reduced itself to a state of bankruptcy. While most of these enormous debts remain unpaid, many of the property developers who brought the state to its knees have nonetheless been able to borrow further prodigious sums recently and are now back in business. The return of ‘colourful’ and ‘maverick’ figures such as Johnny Ronan or Gerry Gannon has been greeted within the media not with indignation but rather as a metaphor of a revived sense of ambition in a country that only recently surrendered its economic sovereignty.118 Reading a recent soft focus hagiography in the national ‘paper of record’ of a new housing development masterminded by Gannon, for instance, one might be forgiven for thinking that the crash had never occurred in the first place.119 The amnesty seemingly extended to the property speculators who brought ruin upon Ireland is perhaps the most critical emblem of a widespread cultural amnesia that has descended upon the twenty-six counties. While those who exercise power within and without Ireland still occasionally mark the weaknesses of the brazenly neoliberal model of development that preceded the crash, they do so with diminishing frequency as they prepare to guide the embattled citizens of the country down a very similar path once more. The first rendition of the Celtic Tiger would transpire to be a tragedy and this time around we will be fortunate indeed to escape merely with farce. Notes  1 This quotation is from the official Web Summit blog. See: http://blog.the summit.co/2013/10/28/infographic-web-summit-2013. Consulted 17 March 2014.   2 The discussion can be viewed in full at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=adnjf OlYpCA. Consulted 25 January 2014.

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 3 See, for instance, Kenny’s speech to the 2013 MacGill Summer School, available at: www.merrionstreet.ie/index.php/2013/07/macgill-summerschool-2013-speech-by-an-taoiseach-enda-kenny-td-looking-to-2016-howstands-the-republic/?cat=11. Consulted 17 March 2014.   4 David O’Dwyer, ‘Wonderful circus of ideas draws to end’, Irish Times, 1 November 2013, p. 5.  5 John Hearne, ‘Is Ireland living with a great broadband myth?’, Irish Examiner, 30 August 2013. Available at: www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/ features/is-ireland-living-with-a-great-broadband-myth-241405.html. Consulted 12 January 2014.   6 Mark Paul, ‘Apple paid $36m tax on $7.11bn profits at Irish unit’, Irish Times, 7 March 2014, p. 1.  7 Kieran Allen and Brian O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland: The Failure of Irish Capitalism (London: Pluto Press, 2013), p. 91.  8 Mark Hilliard, ‘Dublin area “faces ten more years of water shortages”’, Irish Times, 31 October 2013, p. 1.   9 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 10 Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 3–18; The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992). 11 David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (Oakland: PM Press, 2011), p. 15. 12 Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden, ‘The long boom: a history of the future, 1980–2020’, Wired 5 (7) (July 1997). Available at: http://archive.wired. com/wired/archive/5.07/longboom.html. Consulted 12 July 2013. 13 Fintan O’Toole, Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger (London: Faber & Faber, 2009), p. 10. 14 Brendan Kennelly, Robert Thornton, J. Richard Aronson and Vincent G. Munley, ‘Whither the Irish economy: introduction and overview’, The World Economy 35 (10) (2012), pp. 1215–19, p. 1215. 15 Nicola Jo-Anne Smith, Showcasing Globalisation? The Political Economy of the Irish Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 66–9. 16 Denis O’Hearn, ‘Macroeconomic policy in the Celtic Tiger: a critical reassessment’, in Colin Coulter and Steve Coleman (eds) The End of Irish History? Critical Reflections on the Celtic Tiger (Manchester: Manchester University, 2003), pp. 34–55, p. 39. 17 Donal Donovan and Antoin Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger: Ireland and the Euro Debt Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 19. 18 Ibid., p. 28. 19 O’Toole, Ship of Fools, p. 101. 20 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, p. 3. 21 David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement (London: Allen Lane, 2013), p. 101. 22 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 73.

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23 Ibid., p. 200. 24 Conor McCabe, The Sins of the Father: Tracing the Decisions That Shaped the Irish Economy, Second Edition (Dublin: The History Press, 2013), p.  169. 25 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, p. 7. 26 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 73. 27 It should perhaps be noted here that in the course of the interview in which he made public the imminent intervention of the troika, Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan was very explicit that what would be called the ‘bailout’ was in fact nothing of the sort. This early insistence on respecting the actual meaning of words would soon disappear, however, and the distinctly profitable loans extended to Ireland by the three institutions would come to be designated habitually as though they were gifts. See Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 297. 28 Peadar Kirby, ‘When banks cannibalize the state: responses to Ireland’s economic collapse’, Socialist Register 48 (2012), pp. 249–68, p. 256. 29 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, pp. 28–30. 30 Gene Kerrigan, The Big Lie: Who Profits from Ireland’s Austerity? (Dublin: Transworld Ireland), p. 136. 31 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, pp. 5, 255–6. 32 Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: WW Norton, 1999). 33 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 274. 34 Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. 24. 35 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, p. 30; Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. 6. 36 Conor McCabe, The Sins of the Father, p. 223; Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. 24. 37 Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. xiii. 38 Ibid., p. 104. 39 Ibid., p. 87. 40 According to the Central Bank of Ireland, in March 2014 there were 96,474 mortgages, some 12.6 per cent of the total, in arrears for three months or more. See: www.centralbank.ie/press-area/press-releases/Pages/Residential MortgageArrearsandRepossessionsStatisticsQ42013.aspx. Accessed 29 April 2014. 41 McCabe, The Sins of the Father, p. 220. 42 Ibid., p. 238. 43 Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. 187. 44 Kieran Allen, Ireland’s Economic Crash: A Radical Agenda for Change (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2009), p. 3. 45 Quinn was Minister for Education and Skills between March 2011 and July 2014 while his Labour colleague Howlin remains, at the time of writing, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. 46 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, pp. 28–30. 47 Gene Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. 6. 48 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Allen Lane, 1977), p. 111.

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49 Allen, Ireland’s Economic Crash, p. 6. 50 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 15. 51 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978–1979 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan), 2008, p. 77. 52 ‘Editorial’, Irish Left Review 1, 2 (Autumn 2013), p. 5. 53 Donagh Brennan, ‘Guaranteeing recidivism’, Irish Left Review 1 (2) (Autumn 2013), pp. 9–10. 54 Kirby, ‘When banks cannibalize the state’, p. 265. 55 McCabe, The Sins of the Father, p. 221. 56 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 245. 57 McCabe, The Sins of the Father, pp. 241–3. 58 Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon (London: Verso, 2013), p. 21; Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester: Zero Books, 2009), p. 78. 59 Colin Crouch, The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2011), p. vii. 60 McCabe, The Sins of the Father, p. 40. 61 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, p. 102. 62 Philip Morowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown (London: Verso, 2013). 63 Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. 178. 64 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 257. 65 Mary P. Corcoran and Kevin Lalor (eds), Reflections on Crisis: The Role of the Public Intellectual (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2012). 66 Mary P. Corcoran, ‘Introduction: challenging intellectuals’, in Corcoran and Lalor, Reflections on Crisis, pp. 1–11. 67 Louise Hogdson (ed.), New Thinking, New Ireland (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 2013). 68 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 149. 69 Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (London: Verso, 1977 [1951]), p. 100. 70 Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. 63. 71 The timidity and posturing of the contemporary public intellectual is captured archly in the serenely scripted libertarian manifesto The Coming Insurrection (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009). In the following passage, the Invisible Committee are talking of the collusion between the political and academic elites in their native France, but they might well be speaking of Ireland: ‘In France, literature is the prescribed space for the amusement of the castrated. It is the formal freedom conceded to those who cannot accommodate themselves to the nothingness of their real freedom. That’s what accounts for all the obscene winks, for centuries now, between the statesmen and the men of letters in this country as each gladly dons the other’s costume. That’s also why intellectuals here tend to talk so loud when they’re so meek, and why they always fail at the decisive moment, the only moment that would’ve given meaning to their existence, but that also would’ve had them banished from their profession’ (pp. 87–8).

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72 Frances Ruane, ‘Public intellectuals in times of crisis: the role of academia’, in Corcoran and Lalor (eds), Reflections on Crisis, pp. 41–54. 73 Ibid., p. 42. 74 See: www.esri.ie/about_us/the_institute/funding/?. Consulted on 20 January 2014. 75 Tony Fahey, Helen Russell and Christopher T. Whelan (eds), Best of Times? The Social Impact of the Celtic Tiger (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2007). 76 Ibid., pp. 3–6. 77 This assertion was made in the press release that prefaced the issue of Best of Times? Available at: www.esri.ie/news_events/press_releases_archive/2007/ best_of_times_the_social_/index.xml. Consulted 14 January 2014. The book was launched by then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in the summer of 2007. Within twelve months, the Fianna Fáil leader would leave office in disgrace. The multiple charges of corruption that would bring Ahern’s period in power to an end were already widely known at the time that he commended Best of Times? to the reading public. See O’Toole, Ship of Fools, p. 41. 78 Fahey et al., Best of Times?, pp 174; pp. 39–88; p. 68; p. 138; p. 196. 79 Ibid., p. 10. 80 Fahey et al., Best of Times?, p. 276. 81 Donovan and Murphy, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, p. 113. 82 John Fitzgerald, Adele Bergin, Thomas Conefrey, Seán Diffney, David Duffy, Ide Kearney, Seán Lyons, Laura Malaguzzi Valeri, Karen Mayor and Richard Tol, Medium-Term Review 2008–2015 (Dublin: Economic and Social Research Institute, 2008). 83 Michael Fish was a weather forecaster on BBC television in the 1970s and 1980s, renowned for the perhaps unwitting outlandishness of his attire. In October 1987, Fish dismissed with no little condescension the concerns of a female viewer who had rung to warn that a hurricane was heading towards Great Britain. The weatherman’s reassurances would prove dramatically misguided as, during the following night, southern England was devastated by one of the fiercest storms ever to hit the region. Ever since, Michael Fish’s name has become synonymous in the English popular imagination with disastrously inaccurate forecasting. 84 Allen, Ireland’s Economic Crash, pp. 121–5. 85 ‘ESRI: We’ve turned a corner and end of austerity in sight’, Irish ­Independent, 18 December 2013. Available at www.independent.ie/irish-news/esri-weveturned-a-corner-and-end-of-austerity-in-sight-29847498.html. Consulted  on 22 January 2014. 86 Kieran Allen, ‘The Irish political elite’, Paper presented at the ‘Are the Irish Different?’ conference, University College Dublin, 12 September 2012. 87 Peadar Kirby, Michael Cronin and Luke Gibbons (eds), Reinventing Ireland: Culture, Society and the Global Economy (London: Pluto, 2002), pp. 14–15. 88 Richard Barbrook, Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village (London: Pluto, 2007), pp. 80–107.

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89 Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 26 90 Ibid., pp. 6, 70, 20. 91 Barbrook, Imaginary Futures, pp. 222–51. 92 Ibid. 93 O’Toole, Ship of Fools, pp. 213–20. 94 McCabe, The Sins of the Father, p. 7. 95 BBC News, ‘Blair faces new “Steelgate” row’, 6 March 2002. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1855489.stm. Consulted on 22 January 2014. 96 O’Toole, Ship of Fools. 97 Ibid., p. 219. 98 Luke Gibbons, ‘The “Wild West of European finance”: anachronism, modernity and the Irish crisis’, Field Day Review 7 (2011), pp. 122–37. 99 Terry Eagleton, ‘Culture, atheism and the war on terror’, Field Day Review 6 (2010), pp. 166–77. 100 Denis O’Hearn, Inside the Celtic Tiger: The Irish Economy and the Asian Model (London: Pluto, 1998). 101 Ibid. See especially pp. 78–87. 102 Kieran Allen, The Celtic Tiger: The Myth of Social Partnership in Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); The Corporate Takeover of Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007). 103 Kirby et al. (eds), Reinventing Ireland; Colin Coulter and Steve Coleman (eds), The End of Irish History? Critical Reflections on the Celtic Tiger (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). 104 Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon (London: Verso, 2012), p. 5. 105 The Hiberno-American rock star in question here featured prominently in my introduction to The End of Irish History? 106 Kerrigan, The Big Lie, p. 129. 107 ‘Final IMF report suggests tougher budget in 2015’, Irish Independent, 19 December 2013. Available at: http://cached.newslookup.com/cached. php?ref_id=474&siteid=2392&id=4131690&t=1387468566. Consulted 20 December 2013. 108 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, p. 23. 109 After Labour performed predictably poorly in the 2014 local and European elections, Gilmore was replaced as party leader by Joan Burton. 110 In the early 1960s, Mandy Rice-Davies worked as a ‘show girl’ and moved in the elevated social circles around the senior Conservative figure John Profumo. In time, the various improprieties of the War Minister’s personal life became a matter of public scandal leading to an infamous trial. When informed in court that one of Profumo’s elite social network, Lord Astor, denied ever having met her, Ms Rice-Davies replied with a phrase that is often misremembered as: ‘Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?’ More than half a century later, this searing riposte still springs to mind when exposed to the self-serving claims of the political class in Ireland or elsewhere.

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111 Kirby, ‘When banks cannibalize the state’, p. 249. 112 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, p. 124. 113 President Higgins has, after all, counselled the Irish political class on the perilous void that can separate words and deeds. See Michael D. Higgins, Renewing the Republic (Dublin: Liberties Press, 2011), p. 14. 114 Allen and O’Boyle, Austerity Ireland, p. 110; McCabe, The Sins of the Father, p. 225. 115 Irish Times ‘One in ten people suffers food poverty in Ireland’, Irish Times, 15 December 2013. Available at: www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/ one-in-ten-people-suffers-food-poverty-in-ireland-1.1628724. Consulted 6 January 2014. 116 http://content.time.com/time/covers/europe/0,16641,20121015,00.html. Consulted 15 September 2014. 117 Charlie Weston, ‘Property prices tipped to rise to 20pc this year’, Irish Independent, 12 July 2014. Available at: www.independent.ie/business/ personal-finance/property-mortgages/property-prices-tipped-to-rise-upto-20pc-this-year-30425812.html. Consulted 15 September 2014. 118 Ronald Quinlan, ‘When the dust settles, who’s still standing?’, Irish Independent, 9 March 2014. Available at www.independent.ie/ business/irish/when-the-dust-settles-whos-still-standing-30069832.html. Consulted 15 September 2014. Nick Webb and Niamh Horan, ‘Johnny Ronan to clear €400m Mama debt after deal’, Irish Independent, 15 June 2014. Available at: www.independent.ie/business/irish/johnny-ronan-toclear-400m-nama-debt-after-deal-30354452.html. Consulted 15 September 2014. 119 Madeleine Lyons, ‘Houses worth queuing for? Inside the new Gannon Homes scheme’, Irish Times, 4 September 2014. Available at www. irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/new-to-market/housesworth-queuing-for-inside-the-new-gannon-homes-scheme-1.1916656. Consulted 15 September 2014.

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Part I

The political economy of crisis in Ireland

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False economy: the financialisation of Ireland and the roots of austerity Conor McCabe

Introduction Although the financial world has a powerful presence within Irish society, it is among the most opaque and little understood facets of the state. It provokes strong reaction, no doubt, and protests, column pages and character-driven accounts, but relatively little by way of structural investigation and analysis. There are moves, however, to redress that imbalance, and this chapter is put forward as a small contribution to that process. It will focus on the mechanisms by which finance in Ireland sustains and reproduces itself, in particular how it was able to protect itself during the 2008 crisis. Part of the story lies with the role that Irish finance has carved out for itself within the global financial system, but mostly it has to do with its relationship with the Republic. The purpose here is to present a picture of its power and influence. ‘Real elites only enter the day-to-day operations of government in periods of crisis’ wrote William K. Tabb in his seminal work on the 1970s New York fiscal crisis, ‘they move to the background as soon as possible, after they have restructured the context of decision-making in ways they find congenial’.1 Ireland during the 2008 financial crisis was no different. There is of course an international dimension to Irish finance. Buried within the footnotes of Nicholas Shaxson’s Treasure Islands is a reference to the formation of the international financial centre in Dublin, also known as the IFSC. The author, a prominent journalist, had spent almost fifteen years investigating the labyrinthine world of tax havens, money-laundering and offshore banking. ‘Although Ireland lies in the Eurozone’ wrote Shaxson, ‘its emergence as a secrecy jurisdiction in the late 1980s was substantially linked to and promoted by interests in the City of London.’2 At first this appears to be at odds with the mainstream narrative in Ireland, which puts the creation of the IFSC down to two men: Dermot Desmond and Charles J. Haughey.3 However, Ireland has a business class that has positioned itself between foreign capital and the resources of the state. It is the ability of a sovereign state to set its own

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tax laws and to have those laws recognised internationally that is traded by this class, and it has made elements within that class very rich indeed. The underlying thesis presented here is that the Irish state is best understood as one dominated by, and shaped towards, the interests of an indigenous middleman, or comprador, class. This is not a new class within Irish society, nor is this a new relationship. It is one that routes itself through the very structures of the state, and has done so since that state’s formation in 1922. In the past the middlemen were strongest in the cattle industry and banking, in construction, real estate and the sale of natural resources. Today their presence is most keenly felt in stockbroking, accountancy, law and commercial property speculation. The type of business activities in Ireland which have the deepest influence over national economic policy today are defined not by production but by speculation and administration. This is not to say that indigenous producers of goods are non-existent or unimportant, but in terms of national economic policy the influence of administration – and in particular financial administration – is out of proportion to that sector’s size and population within Irish society. In the repeated defence by politicians and professionals of Ireland’s ‘sacrosanct’ corporation tax rate and tax haven status, the lack of proper investigation and prosecution regarding the financial industry, the long history of outright criminality regarding tax, finance and banking involving the highest echelons of the political system – we are witnessing an indigenous Irish class using the state to protect itself from the democratic oversights of that state, as well as from its own socially destructive behaviour.4 The relationship between foreign capital and Irish finance is not without its tensions. Yet it would be wrong to see these tensions in nationalistic terms. For example, there is a satirical show on Radio Telefis Éireann, the state broadcaster, which had a comedian in drag stroking a teddy bear and speaking in broad teutonic tones in clear reference to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. ‘Young people of Ireland’ the comedian said, ‘I own you.’5 Since the fallout from Ireland’s disastrous bank guarantee there has been a concerted effort to portray the guarantee as something foisted on the Irish people by nefarious forces in mainland Europe and the US. Again, Ireland is hardly isolated from global finance – the IFSC and indigenous banking sector depend on these links – but when discussing power we need to be careful in accepting cries of ‘foul!’ from those who not only wield power in Ireland but also happened to benefit from the decisions that were made in 2008. To return to William K. Tabb, the present crisis allows us an opportunity to see the nature of financial and political power in the republic, and we should use it as such.

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This chapter lays out a narrative of the events from 2007 to 2014. It does so to shine a light on the power relations which lurked in the background during what one former Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) called the ‘boomier’ times.6 As stated, the underlying thesis is that of an indigenous middleman/comprador class with business interests concentrated mainly on financial administration and property speculation which used the full power of the Irish state to protect itself from its own profit-seeking strategies. These interests cross over naturally into the political arena – economic power, after all, is rarely monogamous – and are made real not only through the actions and ambitions of the actors on this stage, but also through the state apparatus itself. The democratic deficit within the Irish state did not begin in 2008, but the events which emanated from that year brought it into sharp and depressing focus. ‘The slow, sad decline into winter aches has begun’7 The Irish Independent reported in October 2007 that the volume of Irish commercial property sales in the first half of the year was down by almost 35 per cent. It also noted that in the previous year ‘Irish investors accounted for virtually 100 per cent of Ireland’s €2.99bn commercial property market.’8 ‘Ireland doesn’t really attract international property investors’ said Marie Hunt of CB Richard Ellis, ‘for three reasons: the market here is very small, then there’s the 9 per cent stamp duty investors have to pay, and commercial buyers usually want large stock while the property that does come onto the Irish market tends to be in the €5m to €10m range.’ Ms Hunt neglected to mention the wide range of exemptions which exist regarding stamp duty – the Revenue Commissioner’s guide to those exemptions runs to twenty-four pages – nor did she mention that in Ireland commercial property is used as a form of tax shelter. Its use-value is not so much in the building itself but in the tax avoidance mechanisms which come with it. In Ireland, construction is used as a tax write-off, and this has been state policy for decades. The residential property market was also experiencing difficulties. In an article for the Irish Times, the University College Dublin economist Morgan Kelly argued that the issue ‘is no longer whether the Irish [residential] property market will have a soft landing or a hard landing but what kind of hard landing it will have.’9 His points were dismissed by Austin Hughes, chief economist with IIB bank, with a series of Tao-like observations. ‘Not every shower brings with it a flood’, he said, ‘not every cough threatens a fatal ailment’.10 Three months earlier, An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, told a conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions that he was fed up with people who raised problems with

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the Irish economy. ‘Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity’, he said, adding that he didn’t know ‘how people who engage in that don’t commit suicide’.11 He later apologised for the remarks, which nonetheless captured the attitude of both government and the property industry that the structural issues with property speculation in Ireland were best papered over with some motivational clichés and a healthy, confident smile. The Irish property bubble – both commercial and residential – did not exist in a vacuum. It was part of a global asset bubble. In 2005 The Economist published an article which gave a detailed, sober account of the level of property speculation worldwide. It said that the ‘estimated total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries’ combined GDPs’.12 It pointed out that house prices had hit record levels in relation to both rents and wage income in ‘America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium’. It concluded that it looked like ‘the biggest [asset] bubble in history’. The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet, tackled the issue of asset bubbles in a speech he gave in Singapore in June 2005. ‘Consumer price inflation has been successfully contained for quite some time now at least in the major OECD economies’ he said, ‘but at the same time we are observing large cycles in a variety of asset prices accompanied by ample global liquidity.’13 He asked, rhetorically, should this be a concern for the ECB, answering that, on balance, no it should not: The ECB’s primary objective is unambiguously the maintenance of price stability. The Governing Council aims at an HICP [Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices] inflation rate of below and close to 2% with a mediumterm orientation … Maintaining price stability in times of financial crises is a very difficult task. It is thus reasonable for the monetary authority to monitor carefully unusual asset price developments at an early stage. As discussed a moment ago, allowing some short-term deviation from price stability in order to better ensure price stability over more extended horizons might – under very restrictive assumptions – be the optimal policy to follow. The principle behind it should not be misunderstood as a systematic reaction to asset price booms, but rather as a selective response based on the careful analysis of all the available information. With respect to the ECB’s monetary policy strategy, the important point to note is the following: this strategy enables boom developments to be taken into account without any amendments to the strategy and without assigning any additional role to asset prices.

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Trichet did not tell the nay-sayers to commit suicide, but his answer was just as dismissive: regardless of the facts, the ECB’s ‘hands-off’ policy regarding financial markets and asset bubbles was the most logical, rational and balanced one available, with the 2 per cent inflation target the rock on which the bank was built. Six years later Dean Baker, co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, wrote on the occasion of Trichet’s retirement that ‘in terms of public service failures, Trichet’s performance ranks a notch or two below Michael Brown watching New Orleans drown when he was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’.14 Trichet, as with the financiers and politicians in Ireland, drew upon the tenets of neoclassical economics to justify profit-seeking via asset speculation. The speech made by Trichet, along with The Economist article, serve to highlight the financial flows which fuelled the bubble. Trichet acknowledged their existence and power: he just didn’t see them as a problem. It was the same approach taken by the law-makers and regulators in Ireland. Finance was not an issue until it became one. The turmoil in the financial markets, bubbling under the surface for much of 2007, hit the front pages in September of that year with the bailout of UK bank, Northern Rock. The Bank of England was forced to provide direct funding after Northern Rock was all but frozen out of the interbank lending markets. According to the Financial Times, Northern Rock had been ‘a pioneer among European banks in using the world’s capital markets to fund its business’, but by mid-2007 it found that ‘all its traditional sources of funding – the investors who had queued up to buy commercial paper, mortgage-backed securities and bonds backed by Northern Rock mortgages – had dried up’.15 A similar funding model underpinned both Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society. The reaction of European finance ministers and officials to the Bank of England’s move was one of surprise. ‘We had no idea this would happen’ said one, while Trichet gave a somewhat spiky, yet typically neoclassical, answer: ‘each of the central banks in the world has its own response when trying to ensure price stability and anchoring inflation expectations’.16 The reaction of the public was to withdraw deposits, leading to the first bank-run in the UK in fifteen years. It forced the UK Treasury to issue a guarantee for all Northern Rock deposits. Within five months the bank was nationalised. The global investment bank, Bear Sterns, also ‘relied on short-term funding, notably lending securities for cash in the repurchase market’.17 It had issued huge amounts of asset-backed securities and derivative financial instruments and by the end of 2007 found itself facing a multi-

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tude of court actions with a loan book valued at $395 billion which was supported by a net equity position of $11.1 billion. On 14 March 2008 the Federal Reserve authorised the provision of emergency funding for Bear Sterns, stating that the bank was ‘too interconnected to be allowed to fail at a time when financial markets are extremely fragile’.18 The bank was sold two days later to its one-time rival, J.P. Morgan Chase, as part of the federal funding deal. Six months later, on 7 September 2008, both Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac were placed under the conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The following week Merrill Lynch, on the verge of bankruptcy, was sold to Bank of America for $50 billion while Lehman Brothers filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The US government’s decision to allow Lehman Brothers to go to the wall sent shockwaves around the world. The Irish Central Bank said that it was ‘carefully monitoring the emerging developments on the global financial markets’, while the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, told reporters that whatever response the government took, it was informed by the principle that it ‘must do its duty in the long-term interests of the Irish people’.19 Two weeks later the US Congress rejected a €700 billion bailout of the country’s financial system, which had been proposed by the Bush administration. The resulting panic saw markets in freefall around the world. In Ireland, ‘shares in Allied Irish Banks tumbled 16.7 per cent, Bank of Ireland slid 20.2 per cent, Irish Life and Permanent sank 39.9 per cent and Anglo Irish Bank plummeted 46.2 per cent’.20 Three European banks were rescued in state bailouts that day – Bradford and Bingley in the UK, Hypo Real Estate in Germany, and the Dutch-Belgian financial giant Fortis – while Irish stocks shed almost €6.5 billion in value. The Taoiseach told the press that while Ireland was officially in recession, he wished to reassure the country that these events were simply part of the economic cycle. ‘We must not at any time underestimate the capacity of our own people to confront these challenges’, he said, ‘to face up to them and to do whatever is necessary to protect the achievements to the greatest extent we possibly can’.21 On 29 September 2008 a meeting to discuss the government’s approach to the bank crisis took place between representatives of Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank (AIB), the Irish Central Bank, and the Department of Finance. It was held at Government Buildings. The details of the meeting – even who exactly was in attendance – are still subject to controversy. One thing is certain: the government decided to ‘guarantee all the liabilities – the customer and interbank deposits, and also the vast majority of bonds – of the six Irish banks’.22 At 6.45am on Tuesday 30 September, the government released the following press statement:

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The Government has decided to put in place with immediate effect a guarantee arrangement to safeguard all deposits (retail, commercial, institutional and interbank), covered bonds, senior debt and dated subordinated debt (lower tier II), with the following banks: Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Life and Permanent, Irish Nationwide Building Society and the Educational Building Society and such specific subsidiaries as may be approved by Government following consultation with the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator ... This very important initiative by the Government is designed to safeguard the Irish financial system and to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy caused by the recent turmoil in the international financial markets.23

Later that day, Brian Lenihan outlined in the Dáil the bare bones of the Credit Institution (Banking Support) Bill. The government would guarantee ‘deposits and debts totalling €400 billion at six Irish-owned lenders in a move to protect the country’s financial system … the liabilities amounted to almost 10 times the value of the national debt of about €45 billion’.24 The apparent rationale of the government was that the Bill would allow Irish banks access to the ‘short-term funding that enables Irish financial institutions to fund their day-to-day operations [and which] had become scarce in the global banking system since the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers’.25 The guarantee was praised by a flurry of economists, columnists, agencies and experts. The credit rating agency, Fitch, continued with Ireland’s top triple-A ranking, saying that ‘this proactive measure should help buttress confidence in the Irish financial system and limit the risks of a deeper and more prolonged than necessary recession at a time of unusual stress in global banking markets’.26 The source of its confidence was the announcement that the government intended to charge the six institutions a fee for the cover provided by the guarantee. ‘While the amount of liabilities covered by the guarantee is more than double Irish gross domestic product’ said Fitch, ‘the government will receive fee income to help protect taxpayers against any potential costs relating to possible calls on the guarantee.’ Simon Carswell of the Irish Times said that although the size of the liabilities covered by the legislation was something the government could hardly afford, ‘the guarantee would only be triggered if one of the six institutions defaulted on some of their debt, and this is regarded as unlikely’.27 In fact, the Bill would act as a boon for the economy as it ‘will also attract foreign deposits to the Irish banks at a time of turmoil when cash is king’. It did not take long, however, for the genius stroke to unravel.

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The political economy of crisis in Ireland ‘An Irish solution to what is a global problem’28

The bank guarantee was a solo run. The state had not consulted its Euro­­ pean partners on the measure, informing them only when it was a fait accompli. ‘[The guarantee] is a tendency towards economic ­nationalism and I regret that’, said Brian Lenihan, ‘but we are on our own here in Ireland and the government has to act in the interests of the Irish people’.29 He added that while it is important for Europe to protect its financial system, ‘in the absence of a Europe-wide system there is an onus on the Irish government as the sovereign body with responsibility in this state to take action’. The Financial Times reported that the ‘Irish decision enraged British and European officials and may fall foul of the European Commission’s rules on state aid by offering competitive advantages to some Irish banks’.30 The newspaper’s editorial pointed out that ‘the Celtic tiger has extremely high debt levels, declining growth and a current account deficit of about 8 per cent of gross domestic product – on a par with that of the UK, but without the safety valve of flexible exchange rates’.31 The unilateral decision by Ireland to give such a wide-ranging guarantee was a decision that other governments in the EU saw ‘as a beggar-thy-neighbour policy’.32 It was also seen as extremely reckless. On 3 October the ECB wrote to the Department of Finance, outlining its concerns regarding the scale and depth of the guarantee. It noted that the Irish authorities ‘opted for an individual response to the current financial situation’ and had not sought ‘to consult their EU partners’.33 It added that ‘in view of the similarities of the causes and consequences of the current financial distress across EU member states, it would have been advisable to properly consult other EU authorities on the envisaged legislative plans’.34 It also made the following observation: A further point relates to the risks to the Government’s budgetary position arising from any financial support to Irish credit institutions. While the ECB appreciates that any guarantees provided by the Minister under the draft law would be contingent in nature, given that the financial exposure of the Irish Stare under such guarantees is potentially very large, the Irish Government could be obliged to make significant payments in case these guarantees are called over the next two years. At a point in time when the Irish budgetary position is deteriorating and may risk exceeding the 3% of GDP reference values for public deficits, as specified under community law, this is a cause for concern, even when the provision of financial support would, under the draft law, as far as possible ultimately have to be recouped from the credit institution or subsidiary in question.35

Trichet’s remarks appear to support the conclusion of the US Ambassador to Ireland, who said in a confidential memo on 9 October 2008

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that the guarantee did not win the Irish ‘any friends in Europe’.36 Nor did it take long for the ‘confidence’ so costly bought with the guarantee to unravel. On 28 November 2008 the Central Bank and financial regulator submitted a report to Brian Lenihan on the financial position of the six institutions covered by the guarantee. It stated that the ‘capital position of each of the institutions reviewed is in excess of regulatory requirements as at 30 September 2008 [and] that even in certain stress scenarios the capital levels in the financial institutions will remain within regulatory requirements in the period to 2011’.37 Lenihan added to the optimism of the report, saying that the guarantee scheme had been successful in ‘safeguarding the stability of the Irish banking sector and in restoring its liquidity position’. He did concede, though, that in ‘certain institutions the need for additional capital may be very modest, whereas for others the need may be greater’. These capital funding needs would be provided by the markets, although ‘in certain circumstances it would be appropriate for the state, through the National Pension Reserve Fund or otherwise, to consider supplementing private investment with state participation, where in doing so the aim of securing the financial system can be better met’. The message the minister sent out was confused and contradictory. He said that the banks were fine and well-capitalised up to at least 2011 – except in cases where they weren’t – but that was ok because private financiers will step in to provide the gaps in capital funding – which according to the Central Bank and financial regulator didn’t exist – but in any case the National Pension Reserve Fund could always be used to shore up the capital funding needs of the banks – if the banks needed shoring up which they don’t – but if they did the money is there – but they don’t so none of that matters – so everything is ok. Not surprisingly, no-one believed such a jumbled message. The shock for many was not that the government’s plan was not working, but that it decided to keep on digging. The idea that the government’s response was an economic response – however ill-thought out that response may have been – still held sway among the majority of citizens, commentators and journalists. Here, as so often, Morgan Kelly proved to be the public exception. In late October 2008 he wrote that ‘three weeks ago ... Brian Lenihan was faced with a choice between rescuing two banks [Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society] and the handful of developers through whom they placed real estate bets, or recapitalising the financial infrastructure on which the other four million of us depend. He chose the former.’38 The conclusion as to the reasons behind the government’s actions – that a tiny yet powerful section of

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Irish society was doing everything it could to protect itself, even if that meant the financial collapse of the state – seemed almost impossible for most people to accept. It did not take long, however, for that sentiment to change. On 14 December 2008, after weeks of speculation, the government announced that it was supporting a recapitalisation programme of up to €10 billion for the state’s credit institutions. It was doing so because ‘in current market conditions even fundamentally sound banks may require additional capital to respond to widespread market perception that higher capital ratios are appropriate for the sector internationally’.39 The National Pension Reserve Fund was opened up to help finance the operation. In order to assuage any fears the public may have had on such a move, the government declared that it was committed to fully safeguarding the interests of the taxpayer. ‘State investment will be assessed on a case-by-case basis in an objective and non-discriminatory manner’ it said, ‘having regard to the systemic importance of the institution, the importance of maintaining the stability of the financial system of the State, and the most effective and economical use of resources available to the State and each credit institution’s particular requirement for capital’.40 It was reported that Irish banks had ‘lost more than €56 billion of their market capitalisation since the stock market peaked in February 2007’.41 The banks, at first, were reluctant to support recapitalisation. However, with international financial investors demanding that banks hold more capital, this resistance soon dimmed. As Shane Ross put it: The alternative to state bailouts was a takeover by private equity groups, which were hovering over the carcasses of the Irish banks. If the private equity groups were allowed inside the door, the board, staff, and culture of the banks would have been filleted. Recapitalisation suddenly seemed a trifle more appetizing.42

Michael Casey, former chief economist with the Central Bank and a board member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), made a similar observation. ‘Politicians and senior public officials (including former central bankers and regulators) are regularly invited on to the boards of banks’, he wrote in the Irish Times, adding that ‘if foreign banks took over, would these perks continue?’43 The government’s handling of the crisis had all the hallmarks of a state doing everything it could to save individuals within a broken system, rather than trying to fix the system itself. In its first round of recapitalisation, the government gave €2 billion each to AIB and Bank of Ireland. It also gave €1.5 billion to Anglo

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Irish. In the days after the capitalisation was first announced, it was revealed that the chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, Seán Fitzpatrick, had temporarily transferred loans worth €87 million that were in his name to Irish Nationwide Building Society. This was done in the days before the group’s 30 September year-end audit, and was undertaken in order to avoid disclosing the loans to the group’s shareholders. The loans were transferred back a few weeks later. Fitzpatrick had done this every September for the past eight years. He was forced to resign in light of the revelations. Anglo Irish Bank was not of systemic importance to the Irish economy. In January 2009 the Department of Finance, in a report to the EU Commission, said that the bank operated within a ‘niche market rather than [the] broad market’.44 That niche was property speculation. On 15 January 2009 Brian Lenihan announced that Anglo Irish Bank would be placed under public ownership. The previous week the financial management and advisory company, Merrill Lynch, in a report that cost the government €7.4 million, had said that the bank was ‘fundamentally sound’.45 ‘The proposed Anglo nationalisation marks a decisive watershed in Irish democracy’, wrote Morgan Kelly. ‘With it, an Irish government has coolly looked its citizens in the eye and said: “Sorry, but your priorities are not ours.”’46 The Irish government brought in three budgets in the wake of the banking crisis. Each one had a deflationary impact on the Irish economy. The first of these budgets was put to parliament on 14 October 2008, less than two weeks after the bank guarantee was signed into law. Normally, Irish budgets are put before the Dáil during the first week in December. Brian Lenihan said that the decision to move the budget forward by two months was made so that the government could ‘seize the initiative [and provide] political leadership in the time of changed economic realities’.47 He added that ‘while the strength of the economy in the past decade has given us some room for manoeuvre, we cannot put our reputation for fiscal responsibility in jeopardy’. With this in mind, Lenihan told the Dáil that the government planned ‘to reduce public expenditure as much as possible on the current side and as much as is sensible on the capital side’. Lenihan said that the choices made in the budget did not serve any vested interest. ‘Rather’, he said, ‘it provides an opportunity for us all to pull together and play our part according to our means so that we can secure the gains which have been the achievement of the men and women of this country’. He ended the speech by saying that the budget was ‘no less than a call to patriotic action’ – thus proving that while patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, it’s the first port of call for a government minister under pressure.

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The debt obligations bestowed on the state by the banks and speculators, however, had become almost impossible to bear. In May 2010 Greece was forced to accept EU/IMF funding in return for a series of austerity budgets. It was reckoned that either Ireland or Portugal was next. The pathological rush to deflate the Irish economy, the obvious instability of the Irish banking system, and the announcement that the government intended cutting a further €15 billion from its budget, saw the state slouch towards its endgame. On 18 November 2010 a delegation from the IMF and EU arrived in Dublin to discuss a funding strategy for Ireland, despite a deluge of almost surreal denials by the government that such meetings were due to take place. By the end of the week an announcement was made that Ireland had accepted a three-year, €85 billion bailout. Ireland would contribute €17 billion from its National Pension Reserve Fund while the remaining €68 billion would come from the EU, the IMF, and individual states within the European Union. The news shook the ruling Fianna Fáil/Green coalition to its core, eventually leading to a general election in February 2011. Both government parties were decimated at the polling stations. The Taoiseach-in-waiting, Enda Kenny, assured the Irish public that he would not shirk from the ‘tough choices’ to be made regarding cuts in social provisions. He also promised that, above all else, Ireland’s corporation tax rate would remain untouched. The parties may have changed but the approach and analysis remained the same: just keep on digging. On 1 July 2011 Irish Nationwide was taken over by Anglo, with the new merged entity named Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC). The chief executive of Anglo, Mick Aynsley, said that the name change was ‘of symbolic importance to all of us as we move on from the past’.48 The Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, echoed the sentiment, adding that the merger would ensure ‘a concentrated and vigorous work-out of the existing loans’.49 The purpose of IBRC was to fully dispose of the existing loan book over a ten-year period.50 Anglo and Irish Nationwide had about €3.8 billion in senior unsecured unguaranteed bonds outstanding at the time of the merger. On 2 November 2011 the first of these bond repayments was due, a figure of $1 billion or around €720 million. As IBRC did not have sufficient funds to meet the payment, it drew upon the Central Bank of Ireland and the exceptional liquidity assistance (ELA) procedure to meet the call. The bank’s main sources of income were repayments from outstanding loans, its collection of government promissory notes, and the proceeds of the sale of Anglo’s US loan book for somewhere around $7–8 billion.51 The Irish Times reported that the bond in question traded at 50 cent in the Euro in early 2011, ‘amid investor fears that the new

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government would force losses on Anglo’s senior unguaranteed bonds after the February election’.52 On 31 March, three weeks after the formation of the new government, Noonan ruled out burning senior bondholders in AIB and Bank of Ireland, and said that he would not be seeking any burden-sharing with regard to Anglo. ‘Burden-sharing is not the majority opinion’ within the ECB, he said, ‘so we’re not going to go there until we go with our European colleagues’.53 The same day the government announced a €24 billion recapitalisation of AIB, Bank of Ireland and Irish Life and Permanent. It had done so ‘without attempting to force senior bondholders to share the burden’.54 Despite the fact that commercial property was the crucial element in the collapse of these banks, mortgage-holders were routinely listed as the root cause of the problem. When Brian Lenihan said on RTÉ’s Prime Time in November 2010, ‘let’s be fair about it: we all partied’, he was referring to wage-workers and home purchasers, and not to those tied up with the speculative and securitised land-banks, hotels and office blocks that destroyed Anglo, Irish Nationwide and indeed the Irish banking system.55 The damage done by commercial property can be seen in the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) where the government concentrated the riskiest part of Irish bank portfolios. This was highlighted by the EU Commission in its decision on NAMA in February 2010, when it stated that ‘the assets targeted by the measure are all loans issued for the purchase, exploitation or development of land as well as loans either secured or guaranteed by land, and some of their associated commercial loans’.56 There is no mention of a mortgage or residential crash. In the end, of the 230,000 permanently vacant housing units recorded in the 2011 state census, only 4,000 ended up in NAMA.57 The banks most exposed to commercial property were Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide – the two banks at the heart of the guarantee and subsequent bailout. In June 2012 Professor Karl Whelan of University College Dublin Economics Department authored a report on the ECB’s financial assistance programmes. It was requested by the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. It highlighted the tightening of lending on the international capital markets in 2007 and 2008, making it increasingly difficult for banks to roll over their funding. As a consequence of this, Irish banks ‘began to borrow from the Eurosystem to pay off maturing bonds’, he said, adding that ‘when Anglo Irish Bank ran out of Eurosystem-eligible collateral in September 2008, the Irish government chose to offer a blanket guarantee to all depositors and the vast majority of bondholders in the domestic Irish banks’.58

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On 6 February 2013 the government moved to liquidate IBRC. It was a move completely out of the blue, and one foisted upon an unprepared parliament. The Taoiseach tried to present the decision as a wiping of the slate, a clearing of the decks: The bailout of private bank creditors cost Irish taxpayers, in total, an astonishing €64 billion, which is more than 40% of GDP or €35,000 for every household in the country – over ten times the cost of bank rescues in any other Eurozone country. At €35 billion, the cost to date of the bailout of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society remains, even to this day, shocking. This is the equivalent of almost €20,000 for every household in the country ... Were it not for the bail-out of banks, Irish public debt levels would be now below those of Germany. This debt weighs heavily on the country as it seeks to re-enter the markets at sustainable interest rates.59

Yet, none of this would be tackled by the Bill before the Dáil. In fact, in the case of the promissory notes, what was internal EU debt – and open to an internal EU solution – would now be transformed into cold, hard sovereign debt, subject to the whims of speculators and rating agencies. As Richard Boyd Barrett TD60 pointed out, once the Bill was passed as legislation, The last bit of leverage with the ECB in terms of demanding a write-down will be gone. We were told that the winding up of the IBRC was part of the discussions as a prelude to any deal, but once this is done the ECB does not have to give the Government anything at all, despite any promises it may have made to the Government in the negotiations. That is because we will have fully taken on board the liability for the promissory note61

The Dáil was given fifteen minutes at committee stage to debate the legis­­­lation. It was signed by President Higgins at 7am on Wednesday morning, less than ten hours after its first reading. The President had been rushed back to Ireland that night from an official visit to Rome in order to ensure the smooth passage of the Bill. The legislation was summed up by the Irish Times as offering ‘a much-needed psychological boost’ but little else to the Irish people.62 The president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, was asked at a press conference on 7 February for his opinion of the liquidation of IBRC. ‘I am going to refer you to the Irish government and the Irish central bank for the details of this operation, which was designed and undertaken by the Irish government and the Irish central bank’, he said. ‘I can only say today we took note of this. We all took note of this.’63 It was put to Draghi by a journalist that the rushed nature of the legislation was a strange form of choreography between the Irish government and the

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ECB, and that it was not clear as to what was actually reached with the liquidation of IBRC. ‘Well, you are absolutely right about not being clear’, he said. ‘We took note of an action that has been undertaken by the government. And I would not actually speak about choreography. It has been Irish government and Irish central bank actions. And we took note of these actions.’ Once again, the Irish state had taken a solo run. On 9 February the Irish Times wrote that although the Irish state was obliged under the Eligible Liabilities Guarantee scheme to compensate the mainly corporate deposit holders in IBRC, it was by no means certain that it would be repaid these monies from the liquidation of the bank’s assets. The total bill for depositor compensation stood at between €900 million and €1.1 billion.64 It also emerged that certain IBRC tracker bonds sold to Irish credit unions were not covered by the Eligible Liabilities Guarantee. As a result of the liquidation a total of sixteen credit unions suffered losses of around €15 million.65 Minister Noonan told the Dáil that the credit unions would have to join the queue for reimbursement. ‘Preferred creditors will be paid first and then the debt which NAMA will have purchased from the Central Bank will be paid’, he said.66 ‘If there are proceeds available after repayment in full of the NAMA debt, these proceeds will be applied to remaining unsecured creditors. This would include credit unions to the extent that their deposits are unguaranteed.’ The Chief Executive of the Irish League of Credit Unions, Kieron Brennan, said that ‘the Irish authorities are doing precisely what they said they would not do … this is a deposit-based instrument and it has been burned.’67 It was a stark reminder that in the world of Irish finance, community-based credit unions were of little concern to the state. The liquidation of IBRC also revealed tensions between the Irish state and the ECB. Ireland, however, was very much the poster-boy for austerity. The country had not witnessed any riots; there had been no major strikes, nor any national counter-austerity protest of any real consequence outside of an anti-property tax campaign that ran out of steam in the early part of 2013. When it came to austerity, the ECB needed a success story, and Ireland was its best, possibly only, chance. The ECB’s need for an austerity fiction gave Ireland’s financial class a certain amount of leverage at EU level, and they used it to address some of the intra-class tensions and conflicts which surrounded the death throes of Anglo. They did not use it to counter the effects of austerity. This may have been because the policies of austerity are inextricably linked with the monetary policies of the EU and ECB. At the heart of the European project today is the idea that what is needed for a stable economy is tight monetary policy, low production costs and low debt.

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This has been proved to have been wrong, yet the policies remain. There is an ideological battle at the heart of Europe today, and the Irish state, despite tensions with the rest of the Eurozone, is very clearly on the side of finance. Its middleman class has been protected at immense social cost to the citizenry. Meanwhile the game carries on. The opening months of 2014 saw a return of property exuberance to the national media, as a bubble took hold in certain parts of Dublin. At the same time it was reported that a number of speculators who had been bailed out by NAMA were in the process of buying back their loan book at marked-down prices. ‘As far as we know’, wrote the Irish Times on 13 May 2014, Michael O’Flynn, chairman of the O’Flynn Group, ‘owed his banks €1.8 billion when he went into Nama in 2009 and has now left Nama owing [the investment group] Blackstone considerably less money – the figure of €1.1 billion being reported.’ O’Flynn remained in control of the O’Flynn Group. However, the change in bankers – from NAMA to Blackstone – saw him receive a €700 million write-down in debt which was paid for by the Irish taxpayer. Others in NAMA will follow. Ireland’s moneyed class may have suffered a few causalities along the way, but the class itself, and the system that protects it, remains in charge. Notes   1 William K. Tabb, The Long Default: New York City and the Urban Fiscal Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982), p. 20.   2 Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World (London: Vintage Books, 2011), p. 295.   3 See Fiona Reddan, Ireland’s IFSC: Story of Global Financial Success (Dublin: Mercier Press, 2008), pp. 15–17.   4 For more on this see Conor McCabe, Sins of the Father: The Decisions That Shaped the Irish Economy (Dublin: The History Press Ireland, 2013).  5 Irish Pictorial Weekly, 21 November 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ M4Sob8NeQ (accessed 18 April 2014). The phrase ‘young people of Ireland’ is taken from a mass said by Pope John Paul II in Galway in 1979. The original line is: ‘young people of Ireland, I love you’.  6 Marc Coleman, ‘Economic growth shows little sign of letting up’, Irish Times 14 July 2006, p. 1. The full quote reads: ‘Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said yesterday higher inflation was a sign of a strengthening economy: “In actual fact the reason it’s on the rise is because probably the boom times are getting even more boomier.”’   7 ‘Weather Eye’, Irish Times, 3 September 2007.  8 ‘Commercial property sales down 35pc’, Irish Independent, 18 October 2007.   9 Morgan Kelly and Austin Hughes, ‘Are we heading for a property crash?’, Irish Times, 8 October 2007, p. 14.

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10 Ibid. 11 ‘This week they said’, Irish Times, 7 July 2007, p. 15. 12 ‘In come the waves’, The Economist, 18 June 2005, pp. 73–5. 13 ‘Asset price bubbles and monetary policy’, Speech by Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB Mas lecture, 8 June 2005, Singapore. www.ecb.europa. eu/press/key/date/2005/html/sp050608.en.html# (accessed 20 April 2014). All subsequent quotes from this speech are from this source. 14 Dean Baker, ‘Jean-Claude Trichet’s dire tenure at the ECB’, Guardian, 24 October 2011. Available at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif america/2011/oct/24/jean-claude-trichet-tenure-ecb (accessed 14 February 2013). 15 Chris Giles and Peter Thal Larsen ‘Drama ends after weeks of upheaval’, Financial Times 15 September 2007, p. 2. 16 Tony Barber, John Murray Brown, Ivar Simensen and Gillian Tett, ‘Bail-out surprises eurozone policymakers’, Financial Times, 15 September 2007, p.  2. 17 ‘Injection an unusual end to week of high-stakes drama’, Irish Times, 15 March 2008, p. 19. 18 ‘Fed aid to Bear Stearns a rare act’, Irish Times, 15 March 2008, p. 19. 19 Fionnan Sheahan, ‘Taoiseach delivers his gloomiest prediction yet to the party faithful’, Irish Independent, 16 September 2008, p. 11. 20 Joe Brennan, ‘Shares in freefall after US congress rejects plan’, Irish Independent, 30 September 2008, p. 18. 21 Harry McGee, ‘Cowen is confident economy can make strong recovery’, Irish Times, 30 September 2008, p. 1. 22 Shane Ross, The Bankers: How the Banks Brought Ireland to its Knees (London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 193. 23 Department of the Taoiseach, ‘Government Decision to Safeguard Irish Banking System’, 30 September 2008. www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/­Government_ Press_Office/Government_Press_Releases_2008/Government_Decision_to_ Safeguard_Irish_Banking_System.html (accessed 13 February 2011). 24 Stephen Collins, Simon Carswell and Mark Hennessy, ‘Bill allows State to take stake in any financial institution given aid’, Irish Times, 1 October 2008, p. 1. 25 Simon Carswell, ‘Decision taken to protect financial stability’, Irish Times, 1 October 2008, p. 8. 26 Simon Carswell, ‘State bond is double total value of Irish economy’, Irish Times, 1 October 2008, p. 8. 27 Ibid. 28 Financial Times, 1 October 2008. 29 Simon Carswell, ‘Foreign-owned Irish banks lobby to be included in state guarantee’, Irish Times, 1 October 2008, p. 8. 30 John Murray Brown, Nikki Tait, George Parker and Peter Thal Larsen, ‘Irish move turns up heat on UK premier to extend savings promise’, Financial Times, 1 October 2008, p. 1. 31 John Murray Brown and Nikki Tait, ‘Irish banks given debt pledge’, Financial Times, 1 October 2008, p. 17.

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32 Ben Hall and Bertrand Benoit, ‘EU to show united front on bank bail-out plan’, Financial Times, 13 October 2008, p. 7. 33 Opinion of the European Central Bank of 3 October 2008 at the request of the Irish Minister for Finance on a draft Credit Institution (Financial Support) Bill 2008. CON/2008/44, paragraph 2.4 34 Opinion, paragraph 2.4. 35 Opinion, paragraph 2.5. 36 ‘US embassy cables: Washington warned Ireland being a bit optimistic about banking prospects’, Guardian, 10 December 2010. www.theguardian.com/ world/us-embassy-cables-documents/173158 (accessed 24 April 2014). 37 Announcement in Relation to Covered Institutions, Dept. of Finance press release, 28 November 2008. http://oldwww.finance.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp? DocID=5553&CatID=1&StartDate=01+January+2008 (accessed 23 April 2014). 38 Morgan Kelly, ‘Things are going to get much worse’, Irish Times, 24 October 2008, p. 16. 39 Statement by the Government on the Recapitalisation of Credit Institutions, Dept. of Finance press release, 14 December 2008. www.finance.gov. ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=5604. Accessed 13 February 2011. 40 Recapitation of Credit Institutions. 41 Arthur Beesley, ‘Government to underpin banks with €10bn plan’, Irish Times, 15 December 2008, p. 1. 42 Ross, The Bankers, p. 207. 43 Anonymous, ‘Irish banks and golden circles’, Irish Times, 27 December 2008, p. 13. 44 Dáil Debates, 4 November 2009, vol. 693, no. 2, paragraph 619. 45 Senan Molony, ‘Failed bank got all clear in €7.4m report’, Irish Independent, 5 November 2009, p. 14. 46 Morgan Kelly, ‘Piling Anglo losses on to national debt risks bankrupting the State’, Irish Times, 20 January 2009, p. 14. 47 Brian Lenihan, ‘An opportunity for us all to pull together and play our part’, Irish Times, 15 October 2008, pp. B12–B13. Subsequent quotes from the minister’s speech are taken from this source. 48 Simon Carswell and Mary Carolan, ‘Court orders Nationwide takeover by Anglo bank’, Irish Times, 2 July 2011, p. 16. 49 Ibid. 50 IBRC, Annual Report and Accounts 2011 (Dublin, 2012), p. 3. www.ibrc. ie/About_us/Financial_information/Annual_Report/Annual_Report_2011. pdf (accessed 1 July 2013). 51 Karl Whelan, ‘ELA, promissory notes and all that: the fiscal costs of Anglo Irish Bank’ (UCD: September 2012), p. 2, www.karlwhelan.com/Irish Economy/Whelan-PNotes-September2012.pdf (accessed 28 July 2013). 52 Simon Carswell, ‘Central Bank loans will be used to repay bondholders’, Irish Times, 26 October 2011, p. 18. 53 Paul Cullen, ‘Bondholder “burning” at main banks ruled out’, Irish Times, 1 April 2011, p. 11.

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54 Stephen Collins, Harry McGee, Simon Carswell and Arthur Beesley, ‘Bond­­­ holders escape as €24bn put into banks’, Irish Times, 1 April 2011, p. 1. 55 Prime Time 24 November 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK7w6fXoY xo&feature=youtu.be (accessed 23 July 2013). 56 Commission Decision N725/2009: Irish Asset Relief – NAMA (26 ­February 2010), p. 4, http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cfm? proc_ode=3_n725_2009 (accessed 23 July 2013). 57 Parliamentary Question no. 91 to the Minister for Finance, 21 March 2013, http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail2013032100054?opendocument#WRH01650 (accessed 24 July 2013). 58 Karl Whelan, The ECB’s Role in Financial Assistance Programmes (Brussels: European Union, 2012), p. 5. ­ ebruary 2013), 59 Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Bill 2013: Second Stage (6 F pp. 80–1, http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/deba teswebpack.nsf/takes/dail2013020600080?opendocument (acces­­­sed 30 July 2013). 60 TD (Teachta Dála) translates into English as ‘Member of Parliament’. 61 Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Bill 2013: Committee and Remaining Stages (6 February 2013), p. 97, http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20 authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail2013020600097?opendocument (accessed 30 Jul 2013). 62 Fiona Reddan, ‘Q&A Promissory Notes’, Irish Times, 7 February 2013, p. 2. 63 ECB Press Conference, 7 February 2013, www.ecb.int/press/pressconf/2013/ html/is130207.en.html (accessed 30 July 2013). Subsequent quotes from this press conference are from this source. 64 Barry O’Halloran, ‘State not guaranteed to be repaid 1 billion’, Irish Times, 9 February 2013, p. 5. 65 Stephen Collins, ‘Credit unions chief seeks help for depositors from European Parliament’, Irish Times, 22 March 2013, p. 4. 66 IBRC Liquidation, 21 Mar 2013, http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/ debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail2013032100041?ope ndocument#OO01350 (accessed 3 August 2013). 67 Stephen Collins, ‘Government accused of behaving worse than Cypriot authorities in imposing losses’, Irish Times, 22 March 2013, p. 1.

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Interpretations of the Irish economic crash Kieran Allen

Introduction ‘Ireland is not Greece’ is one of the slogans most beloved of the Irish elite. It provides both a comforting image of stability and a threat that life could be far worse if people do not conform. It also helps to change frames of reference so that instead of a focus on what has been lost since the crash of 2008, the comparison becomes how much worse it could have been. Yet the scale of economic devastation that has occurred is truly astounding. Let us take just two indicators. In 2008, the rate of unemployment was 6.4 percent – an increase on the previous year because it reflected some of the initial downturn in construction. Five years later in 2013, the rate was 12.8 percent but this figure disguised even more worrying trends. First, the level of unemployment has broadly remained at this level despite the return of mass emigration. The labour force has shrunk from 2,278,300 to 2,159,100 – a decline of 119,200. This is all the more surprising as the Celtic Tiger was supposed to have a demographic advantage. Ireland’s combination of a youthful population and an influx of migrant workers provided an expanding labour force that drove the boom. Now, however, most official projections assume a high level of unemployment rate until 2016.1 There may be slight drops in the unemployment figures on a year to year basis but this is mainly explained by the higher levels of emigration and labour activation policies which have already conscripted 80,000 workers into very low paid work though interships and Tús programmes. Second, the figure disguises salient features such as the level of youth unemployment, long term unemployment and underemployment. Youth unemployment has reached 33 percent in the 15–19 age bracket and 26 percent for the age bracket 20–24.2 Long term unemployment, defined as being out of work for more than a year, has reached 60 percent. Many who are seeking full time employment have settled for part time employment. Others have become discouraged by the lack of response and have stopped looking. Still others may have a promise of work in the

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future and cannot take a job today. All of these fit into the category of ‘under-employment’ and, when added to the officially unemployed, they account for a quarter of the Irish labour force.3 The second dramatic area of change has been in housing. Property was at the centre of the second phase of the Celtic Tiger boom after US investment in manufacturing began to decline. The crash did enormous damage to this sector and the problem is persisting in a quite dramatic way. Irish household net worth, for example, has declined by €270 billion from its peak in 2007 to 2012 before starting to rise again.4 Property ownership has a deep cultural significance in Irish society and was often seen as a guarantee of economic security. Contrary to the mythology, the value that was placed on ownership did not arise as a reflex caused by the historic memory of dispossession. It was more a product of state policies which privileged it over social housing and set out to create a conservative property owning democracy.5 However, the sense of security associated with home ownership is now unravelling as many experience negative equity or are unable to meet their mortgage payments or suffer both. It is estimated that 33 percent of properties with loans outstanding are currently in negative equity.6 Central Bank figures at the end of 2012 also showed that 94,488 households are in arrears for more than ninety days and 79,582 had their mortgages ‘re-structured’, which means they have reached an agreement with their lending agency on reduced payments. Nearly half of the latter category had fallen into arrears, despite the fact that the most common form of restructuring was moving to an interest only payment. Irish banks, which have already been generously re-capitalised, may, therefore, find that their loan loss account is far higher than the projected figure of €9.4 billion assumed in stress tests.7 Should this occur further ‘bail outs’ may be required but even if this scenario does not develop, the social costs of the continuing housing crisis will be enormous. Sometimes these features of the ongoing economic crisis slip out of focus because of a process we might refer to as normalisation. Normalisation in post-crash Ireland entails a constant repetition of an official discourse which suggests that the original causes of the crisis arose from both the moral weakness of the majority and the policy mistakes of the elite. Once these specific failings are addressed, it is suggested, ‘normality’ can return. In the former category belong statements such as ‘we lost the run of ourselves in the Celtic Tiger’ and in the latter category belong arguments about the ‘incompetence’ of state officials who ‘fell asleep at the wheel’. Both provide readily ‘understandable’ accounts that imply that a certain amount of pain must be experienced before economic growth can be resumed. If the majority of the population had a moral

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weakness and became ‘too greedy’ during the boom years, then atonement is deemed necessary. After all, anyone who parties knows that a hangover follows and must be simply endured. If, in addition, the crisis arose from the ‘incompetence’ of officials then it is a matter of hiring more experts who can guide the state back to normality. According to the Wright Commission, for example, one of the key reasons for the crash was that the Irish Department of Finance had an ‘extraordinarily low’ number of professional economists in its employment and it failed to have ‘sufficient engagement with the broader economic community in Ireland’.8 The solution was the creation of an ‘independent’ Fiscal Advisory Council composed of such experts. The discourse about the moral failing of the majority leads to an interesting sleight of hand. When an economy is successful, it is often assumed that ‘dynamic entrepreneurs’ and ‘Teflon’ political leaders are responsible. Rarely is it asserted that economic success derives from the efforts of the majority who are working hard or creating demand through their spending power. During the boom years, for example, there is little talk of sharing its fruits because it arose from ‘our’ c­ ollective efforts. It is only in times of difficulty that the ‘we’ word is invoked as a primary category. Socially constructed collective guilt is then deployed to suggest new forms of economic rule which can both restrain our ‘natural’ instincts for greed and compensate for the policy mistakes or incompetence of state officials. The suggestion is that ‘we’ need to listen more to the warnings of economic experts and accept more external constraints. One of the main outcomes of the crisis, therefore, has been a bureaucratic and authoritarian imposition of ‘economic expertise’ on society. The principal mechanism through which this has been achieved is the EU. Since the crisis, member states have become subject to a new regime of economic surveillance known as the ‘six pack’. Statistical measures based on scorecards of key economic indicators are used to benchmark countries against each other. Each country must establish what its medium term rate of gross domestic product (GDP) growth will be and then devise annual budget reduction targets based on this. They must also reduce their overall debt to less than 60 percent of GDP and set specific targets for reaching that. If they fail, they are ‘named and shamed’ as part of an ‘excessive deficit procedure’ and, after a number of warnings, can be fined. They also have to deposit 0.2 percent of the size of their economy with the EU and if they fail to reach reduction targets, they may have to forfeit their money. This elaborate control structure assumes a high degree of bureaucratic management of an economy but one where neoliberal principles have been strengthened.

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‘Structural reform’ has become code for an intensified neoliberalism that deregulates labour markets, imposes more indirect taxes, and introduces user fees for previously free public services. What is involved here is not simply a ‘restoration’ of class power to financial capitalists but an intensification of levels of exploitation to compensate for declining rates of profit. New forms of numerical and time flexibility, reduced fringe benefits, cuts in pay for younger workers and, above all, an intensification of the labour process itself – these are all the hallmarks of a society undergoing ‘structural reform’. What is novel is that this process is accompanied by both more state hand-outs to those at the top and more bureaucratic supervision, based on artificial targets, for those at the bottom. Predicting a figure for ‘medium term growth’ – as the EU demands – in such a scenario is no easy task. It assumes a degree of economic ‘science’ that was previously deemed unattainable by those who celebrated the uncertainty principle of markets. Nevertheless it expresses the high status that has now been attained by economic experts, who, irony of ironies, rarely predicted the crash. The elevation of economic expertise to a neutral role that stands above society and provides technical solutions is a highly ideological strategy. Economics cannot be an objective science in the same way as chemistry or physics because its principal object of study is the creation and distribution of wealth. These are subject to struggles between different social classes and, therefore, it is not possible to simply rise above these conflicting claims and offer prescriptions for ‘the economy’ as a whole. Attempts to do so invariably mask a distinct class bias that functions under the guise of academic neutrality. A simple and banal example may be used illustrate this elementary truth. How many times have economists called for wage restraint and cuts in public spending? The answer must be: quite frequently. But if we de-naturalised this practice and asked: how many times have economists called for a limit on profits and controls on distribution of dividends? The answer would be: very rarely. Despite the official elevation of ‘economic expertise’ to a strong institutional position, there can in fact be no conclusive, uniform economic analysis or policy prescriptions that are uncontested. Rather there are different economic analyses which lead to different conclusions and which have different impacts on rival social classes. While much of economic analysis is conducted at an austere academic level and is organised through its own specific institutional structures, popular versions increasingly intrude into the wider media. The population at large is increasingly subject to ‘economic speak’ in the media but it is delivered in a way that contradicts an overall ethos of ‘balance’.

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Generally, the Western media structures its discussions around the concept of ‘balance’ to reflect the nature of liberal democracy. Audiences are invited to choose between conflicting views – much like they chose between rival commodities. Yet when it comes to economic discussions, there is a dominant expertise and other views are framed as more marginal. Debates are also conducted in terms of scientific, technical knowledge versus resentment or social justice sentiments. As the Frankfurt School long ago pointed out, this type of technical rationality, which is used to marginalise value judgements, in fact hides its own values. Instead of a conflict over real and rational choices, a one sided view of the world is presented. The economic expert is often called upon to adjudicate on conflicting claims and is listened to with a particular respect. But his own particular agenda of accepting profit and the market as ‘natural’ are not even questioned. Like other debates framed within a context of what Marcuse called ‘repressive tolerance’ there is a paradigm that avoids questions on the nature of capitalism.9 Respondents are typically asked to give answers posed to the problems thrown up by an underlying system – without questioning the system itself. Nevertheless, within these confines it is worth examining the popular economic debate in terms of a dominant mainstream and two contesting more ‘marginal’ alternatives. The mainstream view The mainstream view in Irish economics is well represented in a special issue of World Economy which contained articles written by prominent figures such as John Fitzgerald, John McHale, and Philip Lane.10 From these articles and other supplementary material we can construct the outlines of the mainstream view as it is promoted in the wider media. The mainstream economists argue that the underlying model of the Irish economy that preceded the crash was fundamentally sound. This was based on attracting Foreign Direct Investment by identifying areas where Ireland had a comparative advantage. These were primarily an attractive rate of corporation tax and competiveness in wage costs. The model, it is suggested, only went wrong because of certain policy decisions taken in the first decade of the twenty-first century. These primarily relate to a failure to adjust taxes and public spending. As Fitzgerald put it, ‘What should have happened is that from at least 2003, fiscal policy should have been progressively tightened. This would have reduced inflationary pressures in the economy.’11 The failure to do so contributed to both a housing bubble and an over-reliance of the state on ‘pro-cyclical’ taxes such as stamp duty and

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corporation profits taxes. The future governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, suggested that there was a ‘systematic shift towards cyclically sensitive taxes over the past two decades’.12 From this analysis is derived the crucial concept which has guided the mainstream response – that of a ‘structural deficit’. As McHale put it: ‘It was not apparent to the majority of observers that Ireland has a large underlying structural deficit related to the underlying structural imbalances of the bubbledriven economy.’13 A structural deficit refers to the annual, cyclically adjusted balance in state revenues net of one-off and temporary measures. However, the mainstream economists’ claim to be able to measure a deficit that is independent of the business cycle contains its own problems. According to the German Bundesbank, for example, the calculation of the structural deficit is ‘relatively complex, opaque and elastic on account of discretionary modelling options’.14 One illustration of the difficulty is the manner in which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised figures on Ireland’s structural deficit. Before the crash, they issued a report claiming that Ireland’s structural deficit was non-existent but later issued a revised report claiming it stood at 8.7 percent.15 This uncertainty may help to explain McHale’s assertion that this mysterious concept was ‘not apparent to the majority of observers’. Empirical evidence on actual deficits in public spending fails to show a major problem in Ireland before the crash. Table 3.1  Government deficit and debt to GDP: Germany and Ireland, 2003–2007 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 German government deficit –4.0 German central government debt to GDP 65% Irish government deficit 0.4 Irish central government debt to GDP 34%

–3.8 68% 1.4 33%

–3.3 71% 1.6 33%

–1.6 69% 2.9 29%

0.3 69% 0.1 29%

Source: OECD country statistical profiles key tables various years.

As shown in Table 3.1 it is clear that the Irish state adhered more strictly to the EU Growth and Stability Pact than even Germany and that it was the private sector that engaged in extensive borrowing. Never­ theless, mainstream economists insist on using the ‘structural deficit’ as the master concept because the success of the state in raising revenue during the Celtic Tiger era is attributed to its reliance on taxes from construction and profits more generally. Lane concludes, for example that ‘[w]e find that Ireland failed to sufficiently adapt to the rigidities of

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EMU [Economic and Monetary Union] membership, in that the fiscal stance was insufficiently counter-cyclical during the pre-crisis period.’16 This focus on the sources of state revenue as a major causal factor of the crash ignores the underlying structure of Irish capitalism. The issue becomes how taxes were gathered rather than the historic failure of Irish capital to embark on a sustained investment strategy when US capital in manufacturing began to decline. The mainstream paradigm is confined to state policy as if politicians were the key decision makers within the economy. The activities of private capitalists are bracketed out and then naturalised. The engagement of the banks in fuelling a property boom, for example, is attributed to an unfortunate psychology rather than any inherent tendency to place their own profits ahead of the welfare of society. Honohan argues that: The banks got into trouble because they got caught up in the mass psycho­­ logy of an unprecedented property bubble – the steepest and longest of the several national property bubbles of the late 1990s and early 2000s around the world.17

While this was unfortunate and more regulation will be required in the future, there is, apparently, nothing inherently wrong with the existing model of private ownership. It might be thought that nationalising the banks on a semi-permanent basis and requiring them to pursue government objectives instead of profit would ensure an increased flow of lending enhancing the public good. But the evidence from around the world is that private for-profit banking systems have, in normal times, contributed more to growth (and poverty reduction) than government-controlled ones. Nevertheless, the danger of regulatory over-reaction must be present.18

The mainstream economists acknowledge that regulation should be improved and there should be a greater scepticism about loan loss provisions and higher reserve ratios. But they are equally determined to ensure that it should not be too burdensome. In the meantime, banks need to be re-capitalised at public expense because they are the ‘life blood’ of the economy. Mainstream economists make some acknowledgement that the huge scale of re-capitalisation creates problems for state spending but, ironically, given the focus on the structural deficit this is deemed both necessary and manageable. Thus John Fitzgerald has claimed ‘the Irish debt burden will stabilise at a manageable level in 2013 and 2014’, though there would be considerable uncertainty in the future.19 An analysis which primarily targets state spending and, even after the crash, naturalises existing models of private ownership in banking has laid the foundations for an ardent embrace of austerity policies.

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Mainstream economists have promoted a need for both an increase in taxes in the midst of a severe recession and a ‘broadening of the tax base’ so there is a change in the sources of revenue. Their primary aim is to increase taxes in a way that does not lead to greater pressure for wage increases as this would endanger Ireland’s attractiveness to multinational corporations: In implementing the necessary fiscal adjustment, it will be important to ensure that any increase in the tax burden is undertaken in a way that minimises the negative impact on the labour market. This means, as far as possible, avoiding further taxes on labour. Marginal tax rates should be kept as low as possible, while achieving the desired distributional impact on individual households by other means. Where possible, tax measures should be adopted that broaden the tax base (e.g. property tax, carbon tax and water charges), easing pressure on the labour market.20

Tax increases during a recession and cuts to public spending could only lead to a shrinking in domestic demand and a prolonging of that recession. However, mainstream economists get around this issue by suggesting that exports are the key driver of Ireland’s recovery. This in turn leads to a re-enforcement of support for the existing model based on attracting foreign direct investment. Ireland, it is suggested, should both implement tough austerity policies and get better at attracting more foreign direct investment (FDI). One of the key ways of doing this is through increasing ‘competitiveness’ and the primary ­mechanism for this is cutting wages. Fitzgerald put the matter succinctly in an article entitled ‘How Ireland can stage an economic recovery’. He suggested that ‘if cuts in public sector pay rates mirrored cuts in private sector wage rates there would be a very significant gain in competitiveness, with a consequent big reduction in employment after three or four years’.21 The mainstream approach can therefore be summarised as tax increases+public spending cuts+bank capitalisation+wage cuts. To those who worry that this lethal cocktail might destroy the very economy it purports to serve, intellectual assurance is at hand. Thus Kevin O’Rourke, Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin, informed the population in a piece in the Irish Independent that ‘the cross-country evidence from the Great Depression is unambiguous: the more wages fell during the 1930s, the less output declined’.22 And beyond this re-assurance, it is asserted that the earlier model that led to the Celtic Tiger can be re-established simply by correcting policy mistakes with a short dose of austerity. At the core of the mainstream approach therefore there is a belief in ‘expansionary austerity’. If governments can reduce their debt to GDP ratios, this is supposed to bring confidence to the markets and

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i­nvestment will resume. This has drawn on a prestigious international literature which purported to challenge the need for state spending during a downturn. The key text that tackled earlier Keynesian notions of a need for a stimulus to help economies out of recession came from Rheinhart and Rogdoff.23 Here it was suggested 90 percent of GDP was the threshold beyond which levels of sovereign debt would precipitate decline and so the key focus even in a recession had to be debt reduction. In a searing critique, however, Herndon, Ash and Pollin have shown that there were significant empirical mistakes in the historical evidence used to support this proposition.24 A similar argument to Rheinhart and Rogdoff that was highly influential in Europe came from Alesina and Ardagna25 but once again its claim that spending cuts could lead to increased output has been substantially debunked.26 Even the IMF has joined in the chorus of criticism, with Blanchard and Leigh suggesting that the ‘pace of fiscal consolidation should depend on, and be adjusted as a function of, the strength of private demand’.27 The intellectual foundations which have underpinned mainstream Irish economic analyses are, therefore, under severe attack. Moreover, the predictions of many mainstream economists have simply come unstuck. Five years after the Irish economy began to slide, there is still no sign of a sustained recovery. There is quite simply no evidence to support, for example, Fitzgerald’s claim that cuts in wage levels would lead to a ‘big reduction in unemployment’. Profits have recovered since the original crash – but they have not been accompanied by any significant increase in investment that might create jobs. The main indicator of ‘success’ that is used to justify austerity policies is the ‘confidence’ of the financial markets as measured by the spread on bond yields. But, aside from other factors which reduced global bond yields, this only indicates that financial speculators are well pleased with Ireland’s ‘progress’. The security of their investments has been placed ahead of the welfare of the local population. Finally, the mainstream economists assumed a stronger recovery in the global economy and that an export based strategy could work. Ironically, much of the weak recovery that occurred in the global economy was dependent on a stimulus package that the Obama administration mounted and, to a lesser extent, the ‘quantitative easing’ in the EU where funds were made available to banks at very low interest rates. But its anaemic nature meant that even when Irish exports grew they were not sufficient to drive the rest of the economy forward. Moreover, as the mainstream economists dealt primarily in abstract models they failed to examine developments in specific sectors dominated by multi-nationals. In particular, they under-estimated the impact of the ‘patent cliff’ on the

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Irish pharmaceutical industry. FDI in manufacturing is highly concentrated in pharmaceutical, chemicals and medical devices and the former is now facing considerable problems. This has meant that the Irish export ‘success’ is more reliant on the export of services and on financial services in particular. Far from a return to an old model that appeared to work, the Irish economy has become more dependent on its status as a tax haven. This makes the country even more vulnerable to external shocks generated by changes in tax policies in other countries. The populist right The mainstream of the Irish economics profession has developed close connections with the Irish political elite and have provided an intellectual framework to justify its austerity policies. However, a more radical and populist discourse has also emerged to target state spending as the key causal factor in both the origins and continuation of the crisis. It does not have the same intellectual coherence as the mainstream version as it often seeks to incorporate expressions of popular anger within its paradigm. However, its central theme is that a purer, fairer capitalism can be achieved in Ireland Two years into the crisis, the economist David McWilliams put on a play, The Outsiders, at the Abbey Theatre. More a performing lecture than a conventional piece of theatre, its main theme was that Ireland’s crisis was caused by gombeen or crony capitalism. The country was run by a kleptocracy who helped insider friends and did not have proper, transparent capitalist structures. ‘The idea is that in the crisis’, he argued, ‘Ireland splits not so much between rich and poor, or urban and rural or young and old – but between insiders and outsiders.’28 A somewhat harder version of this argument came from Constantin Gurdgiev. Drawing on the Ayn Rand school of the libertarian right, he located the crash in the ‘corporatist’ arrangements built up by the Irish state. With a somewhat overblown rhetoric, he suggested that the crash had happened because the Celtic Tiger was ‘plagued by “socialist policies” which brought rising taxation, rampant government spending and public sector inefficiencies’.29 The bloated state led to nepotism and patronage that is promoted by ‘elites of the Right and Left’.30 The principal mechanism by which it is perpetuated is social partnership: Social partnership has constituted a closed shop with membership restricted to select organisations, representing certain subsets of Irish society. Since this membership restriction is codified and since Partnership is explicitly concerned with fixing prices for some forms of capital and inputs into production, it is both de jure and de facto a cartel.31

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Social partnership created a protected form of capitalism that favoured big business, which had political connections, and ‘cosseted’ public sector unions who maintained privileged insider positions. The solution, naturally, was more tooth and claw, red blooded capitalism. These arguments bear a remarkable similarity to the positions taken up by the IMF after the crash of the Asian Tigers in 1997. Before the crash, the IMF praised them as offering a new development model for poorer countries by exporting to the global economy. But afterwards, they were denounced as ‘crony capitalist regimes’ which lacked transparency. Michel Camdessus, the managing director of the IMF, claimed that the collapse was caused by weak local institutions which led to ‘inappropriate ... lending based on personal relationships’ and poor bank supervision.32 The IMF sought to fast track capitalism by intensifying – rather than retreating from – neoliberal fundamentals. In a similar fashion, McWilliams and Gurdgiev hold up an idealised model of how capitalism is supposed to work against its grubby reality in Ireland. It is based on an earlier capitalism in the nineteenth century and is drawn from the classic text of Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. This constructs a picture of companies operating as ‘price takers’ in a market economy. No one company is big enough to dominate the market or form a cartel with others to do so. The ‘invisible hand’ of competition works perfectly by setting the prices of goods and services, and companies have no choice but to reduce costs to survive. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, this picture was already out of date. Capitalism emerged from the great depression of 1875 through the formation of giant oligopolies that carved up the market between them. Standard Oil or DuPont or Kodak no longer operated like small family firms that competed on price. They were big enough to set prices themselves and to eliminate rivals by artificially lowering them to drive them out of business. The transition from small firms to oligopolies was the logical outcome of the market itself. If the purpose is to eliminate rivals, then clearly this leads to a small number of larger, surviving firms. Claiming, therefore, that you can have market competition without oligopolies, is like saying you can have a war without mass murder. By the twentieth century, the big corporations grew closer to their national states to form a symbiotic relationship between them. States promoted their national corporations in order to gain increased tax revenue from income, sales and profit taxes. Corporations sought the help of their nation state to increase markets by military expansion or to simply represent their interest at international trading forums. Soon a revolving door developed as elites from the state sector moved into the private sector and visa versa. In Ireland, entrepreneurs like

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Peter S­ utherland or Tony O’Reilly began their career in the public sector and used the experience to gain a foothold in private wealth creation. Similarly, ex politicians such as Dick Spring or Ray MacSharry made an easy transition from sitting at cabinet tables to sitting on boards of directors. This pattern prevails in all capitalist counties and has little to do with the specific institutional arrangements of social partnership. Cronyism and capitalism are not opposites but rather first cousins. Cronyism cannot, therefore, explain the abject collapse of the Irish economy. There were undoubtedly ‘insiders’ who gained from state patronage but this occurs in all advanced capitalist societies. Strangely, however, only the less developed countries get labelled as ‘crony capitalist’. One reason is that the ties that link the public and private worlds are often cruder and involve overt corruption. Advanced economies develop more sophisticated practices over time and are able to use rhetoric of transparency – even while the same symbiotic relationship between the corporate and state elites persist. Goldmann Sachs, for example, has such a close relationship with the US state that it is labelled ‘Government Sachs’. US Treasury secretaries Robin Rubin and Henry Paulson both worked as Goldman Sachs executives, with Paulson even being nominated by another former Goldman Sachs executive, John Bolton. Although the institutional structures in the US and Ireland may be different, there is little difference between the Irish state promoting ‘national champions’ like Goodman International and the US promoting Boeing. The connections between particular, big ‘insider’ companies and nation states are a necessary feature of late capitalism that cannot be wished away by returning to Adam Smith’s text. The focus on crony capitalism, however, serves a political purpose because it leads to a type of anger displacement. Instead of looking at the underlying economic system, it suggests that anger should be directed against individual corruption or state spending that is supposedly preventing ‘pure’ capitalism working. In a period of deep crisis, this rhetoric can sometimes resemble the discourse of the left. But in reality, it expresses the outlook of the small business person who feels crushed by both big business and big unions. And because they resent – but still aspire to become – bigger business people the main focus becomes unions. The Independent News and Media group (INM) has also developed a particular speciality for this form of capitalist rage as they direct anger against ‘privileged’ public servants rather than millionaire tax fugitives such as Denis O’Brien or Tony O’Reilly who are respectively the present and past main shareholders of the INM group. The practical implications of this analysis are rarely spelt out. ­McWilliams at least has the benefit of inconsistency and denounced

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‘crony capitalism’ even after he advocated a state guarantee scheme for the banks.33 Others, however, dream of using the crisis as a form of ‘shock therapy’ to re-structure Irish capitalism more permanently. Wages and social welfare are to be slashed in order to reduce government spending in one fell swoop. Wholesale privatisation ­ is deemed necessary to eliminate a government deficit. Public sector pensions are to be savaged or eliminated to create a signalling effect for the private sector. Instead of any company having to provide for retired workers, all employees should be obliged to enter private schemes. Such a futile attempt to restore a pure capitalism could only bring immense hardship. The Keynesians Keynesianism has been effectively marginalised within Irish academic economics as a practical policy for dealing with the crash. The orthodox view assumes that as Ireland is an ‘open’ economy, any stimulus package would have a limited impact. Keynesian policies, therefore, tend to be advocated in the Irish media by spokespersons for civil society groupings such as the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Nevin Institute, Social Justice Ireland and Claiming our Future. Keynesians reject the idea of a self-regulating market and, in the Irish context, point to the role of neo-liberal ideas in promoting a ‘light touch’ regulation which caused the economic crash. Broadly, they supported social partnership during the boom years but wanted to see greater state regulation to curb the excesses of the market. The key to resolving the current ongoing crisis, according to this approach, is augmenting consumer demand. Instead of a self-defeating austerity, Keynesians argue for a stimulus to compensate for the lack of private investment in the economy. Claiming our Future – a radical alliance of non-­governmental organisations and community organisations – summarise the general approach: Cutting spending on welfare, public services and the wages of public sector workers and raising taxes on lower and middle income households takes further money out of the economy and thus reduces further domestic demand and growth and puts more people out of work – thus requiring higher spending on welfare. We are in a vicious downward spiral that requires an alternative policy.34

They argue that a state stimulus can have a ‘multiplier effect’ as every job created through the injection of state funds leads to greater spending in the economy.

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The Irish Keynesians tend to develop quite concrete proposals for such a stimulus programme. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), for example, produced a detailed plan before the 2011 election which argued that: We could for example, invest €2 billion per year – over three years – in a range of projects that would create jobs and upgrade our infrastructure: the creation of a National Water Utility; in a high speed Next Generation Broadband system across the country; a national programme for Retrofitting and Insulation of homes; the building of key transport links like Metro North / the Dart Underground Connector.35

The more moderate Keynesians in the trade union movement argue that funding for a stimulus programme can come from sources that do not involve any challenge to private capital. Typically, they cite the National Pension Reserve Fund as a major source and also argue for the ‘incentivisation’ of Irish pension funds to contribute to local investment by, for example, exempting them from a 0.7 percent levy. They also remain firm supporters of the EU and invoke a rhetoric of a ‘social Europe’ to call for help from the European Investment Bank. More radical Keynesians such as Michael Taft or Claiming the Future go further and place greater emphasis on wealth taxes and borrowing to fund the stimulus programme.36 The Unite trade union has also demanded a €1 billion enterprise fund and a special investment fund equivalent to 1 percent of GDP. Much of this is to be sourced from taxes on wealth, and it is hoped that this stimulus will help the economy recover.37 In the popular media, varying versions of the Keynesian approach have emerged as the main alternative to mainstream economics. Their critique of the self-defeating nature of austerity has gained support due to the new acknowledgement of the ‘limits’ of austerity that is now accepted by even the IMF. However, the Keynesian critique contains a number of weaknesses that stem from its architects’ acceptance of the permanence of capitalism. As a recent intellectual biography makes clear, Keynes ‘rejected many aspects of capitalism yet ultimately felt it was the best economic system available’.38 Far from seeking to weaken or destroy the system, his aim was to strengthen it. He defended inequality as a necessity but thought that the shift to rentier capitalism with its pursuit of exorbitant profits endangered the system itself: No man of spirit will consent to remain poor if he believes his superiors to have gained their goods by lucky gambling. To convert the business man into a profiteer is to strike a blow at capitalism, because it destroys the psychological equilibrium which permits the perpetuance of unequal rewards. The economic doctrine of normal profits, vaguely apprehended

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by everyone, is a necessary condition for the justification of capitalism. The business man is tolerable so long as his gains can be said to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.39

This intellectual acceptance of capitalism makes Keynesianism more acceptable in the dominant media – but also underpins some of its weaknesses. The first difficulty is the sheer modesty of many of the proposals. The ICTU, for example, suggested a stimulus package of €2 billion a year for three years yet the austerity programme has meant that €25 billion has been removed from the Irish economy. However, it is not simply a matter of modesty of the figures. The ICTU also seeks to promote a stimulus programme within the strictures which have been imposed on Irish capitalism by the EU. In a ‘Plan B’ proposal outlined by the Nevin Institute, for example, the troika programme of reducing the government deficits to 7.5 percent of GDP is accepted.40 The only argument is that the reduction targets should be extended by a year or two. The moderate Keynesians also assume that any direct state investment will be limited and see a stimulus programme primarily in terms of boosting private sector confidence. Their moderation is a reflection of a long standing commitment to operate within a model of development that seeks to attract FDI through increased ‘competitiveness’. This also helps to explain the extraordinary inconsistency between an antiausterity rhetoric and acceptance of austerity in practice. Union leaders, for example, who called a major demonstration on 13 February 2013 against austerity and in support of the ICTU’s ‘better way programme’, retreated a few months later and urged acceptance of Haddington Road proposals which took another €1 billion from the pay and pensions of public sector employees. It meant that workers agreed to longer hours, reduced overtime rates and further pay cuts for higher earning employees. The radical Keynesians are exempt from this criticism but face a deeper problem. The master concept of Keynesianism is consumer demand and the focus is on a stimulus package to increase that demand. The assumption is that if demand is increased, capital will respond in a rational way to new opportunities for investment. However, there is no guarantee that it will do so. It may be, for example, that better opportunities for profit making are to be found in the London commercial market or in speculation on an index of global food prices. The central weakness of Keynesianism is that it cannot tackle investment decisions because it still assumes that control of capital must lie in the hands of a tiny few. It fails to locate the central dynamic of the system in a drive towards the self-

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expansion of capital and instead assumes that capitalism is consumer driven. The contradiction that Marx alluded to in Volume 3 of Capital seems to escape even the most radical Keynesian. The true barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. It is that capital and its self-valorization appear as the starting and finishing point, as the motive and the purpose of production; production is only production for capital and not the reverse, i.e. the means of production are not simply means for a steadily expanding pattern of life for the society of the producers.41

Or to put it more simply, capitalist investment is not driven by a desire to meet consumer demand but rather to achieve a rate of profit that satisfies its need for self-expansion. This elementary feature of capitalism is extremely relevant to postcrash Ireland. The global system is increasingly reliant on bubbles to stimulate capitalist investment to achieve a desired rate of profit. Even when economies enter a relative upturn, there is a difficulty achieving a high enough rate of investment to carry it forward. Gross fixed capital formation – one of the main measures used for investment – for example, fell dramatically in advanced countries in the period 2000–2009 when compared to an equivalent period in the 1990s – from an average of 3.4 percent a year to 1.8 percent.42 In Ireland, the collapse in investment since the crash has been particularly severe as Table 3.2 indicates. Table 3.2  Gross domestic fixed capital formation (€m) Year

Amount

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

48,311 48,377 39,620 26,096 19,293 17,266 17,434

Source: CSO, Quarterly National Accounts Q3 2013 Table 2.

This then gives rise to a fundamental difficulty for Keynesians. If there is already a global slowdown in investment – outside of bubble conditions – and if the level of investment is determined not by demand but by an expectation of a rate of profit, how can even a relatively ambitious stimulus package restore investment to Celtic Tiger levels? Moreover, if in its most successful phase, Irish capitalists focused their investment on

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construction where it was assumed that quick profits could be made, what chance is there that a more broad based and balanced form of investment will emerge in future? The third and final difficulty even the most radical Keynesians face is how their programme of shifting the burden of adjustment onto the shoulders of the wealthy can be achieved. Wealth taxes, debt writeoffs and the nationalisation of the Corrib gas field are highly laudable objectives. But clearly, they would involve a major conflict with both indigenous and foreign corporations. A debt write off, for example, would put the Irish state into an immediate conflict with the European Central Bank, which still provides a high degree of emergency liquidity funding for the Irish banking system. While neoliberals may exaggerate, it nonetheless remains the case that a wealth tax would provoke some response from a rich elite who might seek to move their money abroad. Given such a possibility, some forms of capital control would be necessary to prevent the sabotage of the economy – but this would lead to major confrontation with the EU. These difficulties and scenarios do not mean that one should not attempt such policies and the radical Keynesians are right to point to them as necessary measures. They imply, however, that they cannot be won without a major social upheaval that challenges the limitations of capitalism itself. Or to put it differently, in a country where capitalism has been quite weak, investors have come to expect a high degree of state support and subsidy for their private gain. A challenge to that pattern could only emerge through a social struggle that shook the roots of Irish society. But if such a struggle is necessary, then why would it settle for accepting continuing control of investment by a small elite – when such control has brought enormous destruction in Irish society? We are, therefore, back to the central question which is bracketed out of the current economic speak which dominates Irish society: can Irish capitalism offer society a viable means of overcoming unemployment and forced emigration without decisively lowering living standards? Indeed it is not simply a matter of Irish capitalism. There is every indication that we have entered a systemic crisis whose nearest equivalents are the Great Depression of 1875 or the Wall Street crash of 1929. There may be short lived recoveries in parts of the global economy but the system faces major problems in dealing with an over-accumulation of capital and an overhang of huge levels of debt in the financial system. In the past, economic crises led to a clearing out of surplus capital, and created opportunities for a renewed cycle of expanded investment. But these mechanisms are not working so effectively because of the degree of concentration and centralisation of capital.

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If, as we expect, there is a long period of difficulties for the system, there is greater scope for a more fulsome anti-capitalist politics. Such an approach may mean starting with radical Keynesian demands for greater state investment to alleviate unemployment. But an anticapitalist perspective will go further and suggest that society at large needs to take control of investment away from a tiny corporate elite and replace domination by mysterious market forces with conscious democratic planning. The United Left Alliance made a start with such an approach but then fell victim to a sectarian purity that led to endless debates about whether ‘programme’ was socialist enough. If the Irish left is to win a space for an anti-capitalist agenda, it will need to win its spurs by enmeshing itself in the many small struggles against austerity and by working with diverse forces. Only by so doing can it win a hearing for the most radical of economic agendas. But it will also need to be up front about its own viewpoint – taking the language of anticapitalism out of the fringes of academia and the hothouses of small group politics. Notes   1 See Nevin Institute, Quarterly Economic Observer, Spring 2013 (Dublin: Nevin Institute, 2013), p. 16 for summary of projections.   2 Central Bank, Quarterly Bulletin, April 2013 (Dublin Central Bank, 2013), pp. 20 and 21.   3 Nevin Economic Research Institute, Quarterly Economic Facts Spring 2012 (Dublin: NERI, 2012), p. 28.   4 Reamonn Lydon and Brídín O’Leary, ‘Housing equity withdrawal trends in Ireland’, Central Bank Quarterly Bulletin, January 2013, pp. 90–103.  5 Conor McCabe, Sins of the Father (Dublin: The History Press, 2011), Chapter 1.  6 Gerard Kennedy and Tara McIndoe-Calder, ‘The Irish mortgage market: stylised facts, negative equity and arrears’, Central Bank Quarterly Bulletin, January 2012, pp. 85–108.   7 Central Bank, The Financial Measures Programme Report (Dublin: Central Bank, 2011), p. 9, Table 1.  8 Rob Wright, Strengthening the Capacity of the Department of Finance: Report of Independent Review Panel (Dublin: Government Publications, 2010), pp. 45 and 46.   9 Herbert Marcuse, ‘Repressive tolerance’, in Robert Wolff, Barrington Moore and Herbert Marcuse (eds), A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 95–137. 10 World Economy, Vol. 35, No. 10, October 2012. 11 John Fitzgerald, ‘The Irish economy today: albatross or phoenix?’, World Economy, Vol. 34, No. 10, October 2010, p. 1244.

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12 Patrick Honohan, ‘Why is Ireland’s tax collapse so severe?’, Irish Economy. ie blog, 5 January 2009. Available at www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009 /01/05/why-is-irelands-tax-collapse-so-severe/. Consulted 15 March 2013. 13 John McHale, ‘An overview on developments in the Irish economy in the last ten years’, World Economy, Vol. 35, No. 10, October 2012, pp. 1220–38. 14 Quoted in Pat McArdle, The Euro Crisis: The Fiscal Compact and Fiscal Policy (Dublin Institute of International and European Affairs, 2012), p. 8. 15 Ibid. p. 14. 16 Philip Lane, ‘The cyclical conduct of Irish fiscal policy’, World Economy, Vol. 35, No. 10, October 2012, pp. 1277–90. 17 Patrick Honohan, ‘ Resolving Ireland’s banking crisis’, The Economic and Social Review, Vol. 40, No. 2, Summer 2009, pp. 207–31. 18 Ibid. 19 John Fitzgerald and Ide Kearney, ‘Irish government debt and implied debt dynamics: 2011 to 2015’, in Joseph Durkan, David Duffy and Cormac O’Sullivan (eds), Quarterly Economic Commentary, Autumn 2011 (Dublin: ESRI 2011), p. 27. 20 Fitzgerald, ‘The Irish economy today’, p. 1251. 21 John Fitzgerald, ‘How Ireland can stage an economic recovery’, Irish Times, 24 January 2009, p. 15. 22 Kevin O’Rourke, ‘Currency devaluation may look an easy option but it is a trick on workers’, Irish Independent, 26 February 2009, Business section, p. 7. 23 Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogdoff, ‘Growth in time of debt’, American Economic Review, May 2010, pp. 573–8. 24 Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth; A Critique of Rheinhart and Rogdoff, PERI Working Papers No. 322, April 2013. 25 Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes Versus Spending, NBER Working Papers No. 15438, October 2009. 26 Arjun Jayadev and Mike Konczal, The Boom Not The Slump: The Right Time For Austerity (New York: The Roosevelt Institute, 2010). www. rooseveltinstitute.org/sites/all/files/not_the_time_for_austerity.pdf. 27 Olivier Blanchard and Daniel Leigh, ‘Fiscal consolidation: at what speed?, Vox, 3 May 2013. 28 Miriam Cotton, ‘David McWilliams: The “Rock Star” Economist’, M ­ ediabite. Available at: http://mediabite.org/2010/06/18/the-rock-star-economist/. Consulted 23 March 2014. 29 Constantin Gurdgiev, ‘Ireland’, in The State of the Union (London: Stockholm Network, 2008), p. 29. 30 Constantin Gurdgiev, ‘Social partnership is corruption’, Village Magazine, 1 May 2012. 31 Ibid. 32 Michel Camdessus, ‘Challenges facing transition economies in central Asia’, Speech 27 May 1998. Available at: www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/ 1998/052798.HTM. Consulted 25 August 2012.

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33 Matt Cooper, How Ireland Went Bust (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2011), p. 165. 34 Claiming our Future, There is an Alternative to Austerity. Leaflet. 35 ICTU, Better Fairer Way (Dublin: ICTU, 2009) www.betterfairerway.org/ keyissues/fivekeyissues/issue2.html. 36 Michael Taft, ‘Towards a new economic narrative’, Irish Left Review, 26 November 2008. 37 Unite, Beyond Austerity – Pre-Budget Submission, 2014 (Dublin: Unite, 2013). 38 Roger Backhouse and Bradley Bateman, Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011) p. 19. 39 John Maynard Keynes, A Tract on Monetary Reform (London: Macmillan, 1923) pp. 23–4. 40 Nevin Institute, Quarterly Economic Observer, Autumn 2012 (Dublin: Nevin Institute, 2012), p. 16. 41 Karl Marx, Capital Volume 3 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), p. 358. Emphasis in original. 42 International Monetary Fund Statistical Annex, World Economic Outlook, October 2008, Table A3.

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4

A perfect storm: crisis, capitalism and  democracy Sinéad Kennedy

Introduction In the spring of 2013 a national advertisement campaign for Ireland’s largest-selling daily newspaper, the Irish Independent, appeared in the print and visual media. The campaign used a series of provocative juxtaposed images, designed to illicit polarising responses to some of the key debates in contemporary Irish society.1 Each pairing was accompanied by the tagline ‘We are defined by the choices we make’,2 invoking the key ideological tropes of the Irish crisis: that Ireland’s current crisis is a consequence of poor choices made by individuals, and that the resulting austerity is a necessary, even common sense, corrective that ‘we’ all must collectively endure.3 Within this narrative, austerity is no longer presented as a hardship, but as a responsibility – an unwelcome legacy of Ireland’s collective mistakes. There is no acknowledgement of how specific class interests have been rapidly reclassified into national interests, as the private debts of bankers and speculators were socialised, the narrative insists, not to protect the interests of Irish and European capital but because ‘we’ all made poor ‘choices’. Not surprisingly, this chronicle offers little understanding of how Ireland ended up in effective receivership as the mainstream economic and political wisdom since the onset of recession has amounted to little more than a sophisticated version of ‘we lost the run of ourselves’. This chapter seeks to explore how the political economy of Ireland’s current crisis has been reduced to the neoliberal ideological tropes of ‘choice’ and ‘compliance’. The crisis is not Irish in peculiarity or origin, although it may possess certain national particularities; rather, this chapter will argue that to be properly understood it needs to be situated in the international, and specifically European, crisis of capitalism. This crisis is not only economic but also ideological in its dimensions, unleashing an intensive ideological assault designed to rid the political system of the last vestiges of democratic accountability: in Europe right now, country after country is undergoing the wholesale restructuring, not just of the

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economy, but of social and political life. None of the unprecedented economic ‘solutions’ are discussed or approved beyond a small number of government insiders and unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. While capitalist democracy is increasingly unable to produce viable solutions, the social democratic left’s acquiescence towards capitalism has led to the depoliticisation of economics and the acceptance of market mechanisms as little more than a series of neutral procedures to be exploited. This chapter will conclude by arguing that one of the major challenges of developing a radical left critique has to be to offer not simply a critique of the ideological assumptions of capitalism, but must include some alternative to the system. Simply reverting to some version of Keynesianism, as mainstream left critics of capitalism are prone to do, is not sufficient, most immediately because this approach fails to confront the fact that conflicting class interests are at play in the different economic strategies currently being advanced. A crisis of global and national dimensions The global capitalist system is in the grip of an economic crisis that displays few signs of abating; a crisis now considered, by increasingly common agreement, to be without precedent since the catastrophic collapse of 1929–33. This analysis is accepted by even mainstream pro-austerity economists like Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff who argue that ‘[t]he global financial crisis of the late 2000s … stands as the most serious global financial crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis has been a transformative moment in global economic history whose ultimate resolution will likely reshape politics and economics for at least a generation.’4 The basic contours of this crisis can be delineated as follows: Banks in two of the crucial zones of contemporary capitalism, namely the United States and the European Union, were consumed by debts accumulated following the collapse of the credit boom of the mid-2000s.5 A catastrophic depression was only prevented by a series of determined state interventions, primarily in the form of bank bailouts, which involved an enormous transfer of wealth from the public – in the form of the state – to private corporations and individuals. The cost and scale of this wealth transfer was without precedent in the history of capitalism and is only now becoming clear with one study by the Bank of England estimating that ‘intervention to support the banks in the UK, US and the euro area during the current crisis  ... totals over $14 trillion or almost a quarter of global GDP’.6 The Marxist economist David McNally in his book Global Slump estimates this figure to be far higher in reality. He calculates that the world’s major

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treasuries and central banks poured at least $21 trillion into the global financial system, bailing out not just banks and multinational firms, but also launching ‘stimulus’ programmes to revive flagging economies. This figure is equal to one and a half times US GDP.7 By comparison, the annual cost of ending extreme poverty – the amount needed to lift the 1.4 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day above this threshold – is $173 billion.8 The tactics employed by the ruling elites – rescuing the banking system, flooding the markets with vast quantities of effectively free money and, in some cases, increasing public spending to counter the fall in demand for goods and services – brought a degree of temporary stability to the world economy and succeeded in averting a collapse of financial markets. Yet, despite some of the more optimistic of these economists and commentators predicting a slow end to the recession and a gradual return to economic growth, the state of the global economy remains precarious. In the absence of any self-sustaining recovery, economies remain heavily dependent on state action, if not, Alex Callinicos argues, in the shape of fiscal stimuli, then in the form of the cheap money policies that are still being pursued by global central banks.9 Several years into the crisis, the pages of the national and global financial press continue to be littered not with optimistic cries of recovery, but rather with loud sighs of relief that the economy has not nose-dived into another recession. That is because, in short, the crisis never went away; it simply mutated from a private debt crisis to a public one. The crisis produced what Mark Blyth terms ‘the greatest bait and switch operation in modern history’, where private-debt sector problems were rechristened overnight as ‘the Debt’ engendered by out-of-control public spending.10 The supposed cure for this ‘Debt’ was austerity – the policy of cutting the state’s spending in order to promote economic growth. Pro-austerity advocates argue that the theory behind austerity is just straightforward, common sense: ‘Every dollar of increased government spending must correspond to one less dollar of private spending. Jobs created by stimulus spending are offset by jobs lost from the decline in private spending. We can build roads instead of factories, but fiscal stimulus can’t help us build more of both.’11 The key problem with this strategy, Blythe argues, is that it is ‘completely and utterly wrong’ and actually ‘produces the very outcomes that it is trying to avoid’.12 In Europe, countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland dramatically cut their budgets but instead of austerity introducing the road to recovery, their economies shrank and the debt levels increased. So spectacular was the failure of austerity that even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of the principal advocates of austerity, was forced to admit in May 2013 that the policy had been an abject failure.13

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Nowhere was this ‘bait and switch’ game more obvious than in the case of Ireland. Once a global success story during the Celtic Tiger years (1994–2007), when it was hailed as the world’s most globalised society, it quickly became the first fault line and later the front line of Europe’s economic crisis, enduring the deepest, swiftest contraction suffered by a western economy since the Great Depression.14 In the autumn of 2008, when the first wave of the global financial crisis hit, the first crisis strategy of the Irish government was to issue a blanket banking guarantee covering all the major domestic financial institutions in the state, thereby ensuring that no bank, however toxic, would go the way that Lehman Brothers had in the US. The Irish state guaranteed a total of €440 billion worth of banking debt, thereby ensuring that the fate of the Irish state and the fate of the Irish banking system would be intimately entwined. All the accounts15 of the events on the fateful night of the banking guarantee share one striking feature: despite an awareness by government ministers of the unprecedented nature of the risk that they were about to assume on behalf of the Irish people, no effort was made to consult with anyone other than a series of ‘experts’ – costing the state over €10 million – and the majority of whom had everything to gain from the installation of the bank guarantee.16 Simon Carswell in his account of the events surrounding the guarantee – introduced in infamous haste in the early hours of the morning of 30 September 2008 – remarked that: ‘The government’s guarantee of the Irish banks was the biggest financial decision taken in the history of the state. It made the state guarantor of deposits, bonds and loans worth €440 billion … This amounted to more than twice the economic output of the country and over ten times the national debt. No other country in the world had taken such a step in response to the financial crisis. It was a huge gamble.’17 It was indeed a huge gamble, and despite Brian Lenihan, the then Minister for Finance, joking that his government was providing ‘the cheapest bank rescue in history’, the consequences for Ireland proved to be catastrophic.18 The bank guarantee would eventually cost the Irish state over €60 billion as the government was repeatedly forced to inject money into the banking system to compensate for the black holes created by bad debts and deposit flights.19 To fund this enormous corporate welfare and to keep the markets stable, the government responded with package after package of draconian cuts to the public finances. Yet, despite these cuts, dubbed ‘masochistic’ by the Financial Times, Ireland’s economy continued to stagnate and its debt levels increased.20 The strategy quickly became unstuck when the ECB became ­increasingly concerned about the level of the eurozone’s exposure to Ireland’s now

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toxic banking system. The structure of inter-European lending over the previous decade of monetary union meant that ‘core’ banks and financial institutions held large swathes of bonds issued by ‘peripheral’ banks, particularly from Spain and Ireland. The European Central Bank (ECB) feared that a ‘contagion’ resulting from a defaulting bank like Anglo-Irish could infect the entire European financial system causing the collapse of the European banking system and the project of monetary union. As a result, the economist Antoin Murphy argued, while the Irish crisis was initially perceived as a ‘fiscal/funding crisis’, a policy shift within the ECB saw it shift ‘to a full-scale crisis about liquidity and the solvency of the Irish banking system’.21 Between October and December 2010 the ECB injected a total of €90 billion into Irish banks, with the Irish Central Bank adding a further €52 billion,22 and it was eventually forced to acknowledge that a staggering one fifth of its total funding for European banks had gone to the Irish banking system. The entire future of the eurozone was resting on what the economist Brian Lucy memorably described as mortgages on ‘soggy fields in Leitrim’.23 Peadar Kirby argues that it was the ECB’s desire to divest itself of this burden of responsibility that led it ‘to discontinue lending to Irish banks and seek a new arrangement … to provide an alternative bailout strategy that forced the Irish government to accept the bailout’.24 In other words, the Irish elite was presented with a fait accompli as European capital came looking for its money. In November 2010 a ‘troika’ of institutions (the EU, the ECB and the IMF) constructed an €85 billion loan package to ensure against a sovereign default. This comprised of €10 billion for the re-capitalisation of the Irish banking system; a €25 billion bank contingency fund and €50 billion to fund state borrowing for three years. The agreement locked Ireland into a very specific neo-liberal economic model dominated by policies that have imposed immense hardship on working people, communities, the poorest and the most vulnerable sections of society, by focusing almost exclusively on indirect tax increases and expenditure cuts, rather than on job creation or economic stimulus. The conditionality of the bailout and the austerity measures required were outlined in the IMF’s Memorandum of Understanding.25 This agreement gave huge powers to unelected and unaccountable technocrats in terms of economic decision-making. The agreement also emphasises the need for a ‘business friendly environment’, ‘vigorous action to remove remaining restrictions on trade and competition’ and a strong emphasis on private sector involvement in, for example, public utilities like water, electricity and gas. It required the Irish state to empty all its reserve funds and demanded that any additional revenue raised in the future through, for example, the sell-off of state assets, be utilised for no purpose other

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than debt repayment. Journalist Fintan O’Toole summed up the spirit of the deal judiciously, writing: There is no sharing of the burden. There is no evidence of a single thought for the consequences of mass unemployment, mass emigration and war on the most vulnerable. There is no European solidarity. And there is not even a genuine sense of self-interest. The sadistic pleasures of punishment have trumped the sensible calculation that an Ireland enslaved by debt is not much use to anyone.26

Both the previous and the current governments have, to date, enthusiastically complied with the majority of these demands, notwithstanding the occasional invocation of the ‘we have no choice; the troika made us do it’ defence. The total budget cuts between 2008 and 2014 are close to €30 billion. With the 2015 budget the government has indicated that it intends to remove a further €2 billion from the economy through increases in taxes and decreases in public expenditure. This will bring the overall total of budgetary ‘adjustments’ (2008–2015) to nearly €33 billion – equivalent to 18 per cent of the GDP forecast for 2015.27 While these ‘adjustments’ are routinely presented as technical necessities, the human costs of these budgetary cutbacks have been severe. Austerity – a term that sanitises human misery – has become the watchword of the Irish elites, resulting in the return of the dual social ghosts of the 1980s and the early 1990s: unemployment and emigration. In 2006, over 4 per cent (90,300) of the labour force were unemployed. By 2012 this figure has more than tripled to 14.2 per cent (439,600).28 Preliminary estimates from the Central Statistics Office suggest that net outmigration was running at over 34,000 a year in 2011. The following year that figure had increased to 46,500.29 Seven successive budgets have cut public spending, targeting, in particular, public services like health, education, social welfare and the voluntary and community sector – what the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan referred to ‘low hanging fruit’.30 As unemployment increases, the government has shifted its focus away from direct taxes on income towards increases in indirect taxation, the most inequitable form of taxation, through the introduction of property and water taxes and VAT increases. The mere suggestion of a small increase in Ireland’s low corporation tax (12.5 per cent) is met with howls of outrage and indignation.31 According to Social Justice Ireland, ‘the proportions of the population at risk of poverty or in consistent poverty and the deprivation rate all increased despite commitments by government to protect the most vulnerable’.32 A study by Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), published in late 2013, for the period 2008 to 2011 (the period for which the most up-to-date data was available) revealed that the changes

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to earnings, welfare and taxes over this period impacted the poorest section of society the hardest: The poorest 10 per cent of the population saw their real disposable income fall by 18.4 per cent over three years, while the richest 10 per cent of the population experienced a fall of only 11.4 per cent.33 The wealthiest sections of the Irish population also quickly recovered these losses. A study by Merrill Lynch in 2010 found that the number of individuals with more than $1million (€814,640) to spend had increased by almost 2,000 by the end of 2009, having decreased drastically in 2008 mainly due both to a fall in the stock market and the collapse of property values.34 The Sunday Times 2014 ‘rich list’, revealed that despite the recession and Ireland’s economic downturn, the fortunes of Ireland’s 250 wealthiest individuals increased by 12 per cent in one year to €57 billion so that their combined wealth is now equivalent to 35 per cent of Ireland’s GDP.35 And the future looks good for the Irish wealthy as the number of ‘High Net Worth Individuals’ (the super rich)36 is expected to increase from 554 in 2013 to 1344 in 2022.37 This is where Ireland finds itself more than seven years into the crisis and close, the politicians claim, to the end of austerity. An Ireland where social considerations are widely thought to be subservient to the imperatives of austerity and economic growth and where banks, multinational corporations and wealthy individuals are protected and insulated from the effects of austerity. Europe’s fatal flaw While the origins of the current crisis – the infamous subprime mortgages – were American, it is within the eurozone that the epicentre of the crisis can be located. The 2008 financial crisis and the varied responses that it has provoked have been defining events for Europe, generating an immense social swing in favour of capital and against labour; determining a dramatic geopolitical shift by turning the eurozone into a German-led project, and revealing the vacuous rhetoric behind the European ideals of partnership, equality and social justice. More than half of the eurozone’s population has fallen into perpetual recession, courtesy of the European Union’s centrally enforced austerity policies. It is not only Ireland that is enduring the hard reality of austerity; Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Portugal and, in particular, Greece – the contemporary laboratory for austerity – have all suffered under the tyranny of EU dictated deficit reduction. The response to the crisis by the European ruling classes – both core and periphery – has been profoundly neoliberal: cutting public spending, raising indirect taxes, reducing wages, attacking the welfare state, privatising public assets and further market

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liberalisations. Their paramount concern has been, at all times, to protect monetary union, regardless of the economic and social cost. While it is still too early to accurately predict how the current crisis will play out, what looks increasingly certain is that it will leave behind at least one casualty; the so-called European Project of integration, embodied in the institutions of the EU, at the core of which is economic and monetary union. Considering, as Stathis Kouvelakis argues, that this project has been the only one of any real importance consciously designed by the European elites, it has become increasingly clear that we are ‘witnessing a turning point of world historical importance, comparable in some senses to the victory of the West in the Cold War’.38 Therefore, if we are to imagine an alternative to the economic and political project that is austerity, how we understand this upheaval is of some importance. The EU has powerful and influential defenders including some of the key figures within the European intelligentsia, many of whom possess impressive radical left or social democratic credentials; they include Ulrich Beck, Jürgen Habermas and Daniel Cohn-Bendit.39 All three have produced recent analyses of the current conjuncture that, strikingly, share in common a profound belief in the economic and political project of European integration. While they may acknowledge that the project in its current form is troubled, most notably for the limits that it places on democracy, all embrace an acceptance of these democratic limits as an unavoidable consequence of the wider necessity of preserving the European project. Even those on the European left who are critical and have opposed certain aspects of the project often reject systematic explanations in favour of an analysis that understands the process of European construction has having been ambushed by neoliberalism in a manner that has prohibited national economic regulation being extended to the European level and further diluted the already limited forms of democracy available under capitalism. Undeniably there is much truth in the latter explanation but it implies that there is something progressive and salvable about the nature of the European project, as opposed to understanding the EU as itself a construction of neoliberalism. While the democratic crisis within the EU has been subjected to critique for some time now, as individual national states surrender various competencies to Brussels and following the disastrous attempt to draft a European Constitution (2005),40 the political economy of the European project has been more opaque. However, one of the features of the current crisis is that it has acted as a ‘detonator’, bringing to the fore the economic and political architecture of Europe, revealing the pre-existing contradictions and allowing us to reflect theoretically upon them.41

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Andrew Gamble argues that one of the most notable features of ­ eoliberalism was that it forced ‘the convergence of all capitalist models n and all national economies towards neoliberal institutions and policies’.42 The EU was one such project, designed, Susan Watkins writes, ‘to give free rein to financial liberalisation across the continent’ thereby allowing market efficiency to create a general economic convergence among the eurozone economies.43 The project was supported by institutions like the ECB, as well as numerous treaties and multilateral agreements including the Maastricht treaty (1992), the Stability and Growth Pact (1997), and the Lisbon treaty (2007). The difficulty was that economic convergence failed to materialise, and instead the common currency exacerbated the underlying differences between core and peripheral states, effectively creating a two-tier Europe with Germany at the core. This argument has been well articulated by Costas Lapavitsas and his collaborators in the Research on Money and Finance group: Financialisation in the periphery has proceeded within the framework of the monetary union and under the dominant shadow of Germany. Peripheral economies have acquired entrenched current account deficits. Growth has come from expansion of consumption financed by expanding household debt, or from investment bubbles characterised by real estate speculation. There has been a general rise of indebtedness, whether by households or corporations. Meanwhile, pressure has been applied to workers’ pay and conditions across the periphery, but not as persistently as in Germany.44

When the crisis hit the eurozone in 2008 the structural weaknesses of monetary union exploded, taking the form of a public debt crisis in the peripheral member states: Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain and Italy. The institutions of the eurozone were always more than a series of technical arrangements designed to bolster the euro. They have also had serious social and political consequences, undermining the position of labour while protecting the interests of capital. Like all neoliberal institutions, the EU has sought and utilised every opportunity to insulate itself from democratic control and scrutiny. Harold James’s recent history of the origins of the Economic and Monetary Union, which drew heavily on the archives of the ECB, illustrates how the neoliberal agenda was a defining and integral presence to the entire European project from its inception. Profoundly influenced by Hayekian liberalism, there was a consistent anxiety among the early architects of the EU that governments were far too susceptible to the influence of popular electoral opinion. Indeed Hayek –one of the key theoreticians of neoliberalism – went so far as to argue for the abolition of democ-

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racy in favour of economic freedom and civil liberties, noting in 1981, during a visit to General Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, that he himself would prefer a supposedly ‘liberal’ dictator to a ‘democratic government lacking in liberalism’.45 While many economists might consider Hayek’s position extreme, the dominant ideology of economic theory remains disturbingly Hayekian, uncritically accepting the now ‘common sense’ assumption that for capitalism to operate efficiently it requires an unregulated market that is constitutionally protected against political interference and electoral pressures and preferably controlled by politically insulated institutions like, for example, in Europe, the European Commission or, in Ireland, the Fiscal Advisory Council. Increasingly, key economic decisions – that result in the impoverishment and immiseration of significant portions of the population – are entrusted not to elected politicians but to unelected and unaccountable technocrats, the majority of whom possess no democratic credentials or have been summarily rejected by the electorate.46 The result is what Perry Anderson memorably described as ‘an apparently illimitable narcissism, in which the reflection in the water transfigures the future of the planet into the image of the beholder’.47 Under the cover of the eurozone debt crisis, these powers of economic surveillance and enforcement have been extended. For example, the most recent European treaty, the Fiscal Compact treaty, inserted neoliberal economic policy – austerity – into law. The Treaty requires member states to meet harsh ‘structural deficit’ targets and to reduce their debt to GDP ratio to 60 per cent. Member states that fail to reach these targets must initiate a ‘budgetary and economic partnership programme including a detailed description of the structural reforms which must be put in place and implemented to ensure an effective and durable correction of their excessive deficits’.48 Member states that do not have balanced budgets will be forced to surrender their budgetary and economic policies to Brussels. When the Treaty was finally agreed in January 2011, the pro-austerity German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, commented that ‘the debt brakes [the Treaty rules] will be binding and valid forever. Never will you be able to change them through a parliamentary majority’.49 These changes are the direct result of a deliberate restriction of democratic control over the economic realm and have resulted in the EU becoming, what Zygmunt Bauman terms, ‘a laboratory … in which ways to deal with the outcomes of the present dis-coordination of power and politics are designed, explored and put to tests.’50

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Austerity is not simply an economic strategy; it is part of a political project designed to re-engineer social and political life in the interests of profits, consumerism and financial capital. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s then Chief of Staff, casually remarked that: ‘You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.’51 Emanuel’s comments echo those of Milton Friedman, one of the key architects of neoliberalism, who wrote in the 1982 Preface to his Capitalism and Freedom (1962), the neoliberal textbook: ‘Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.’52 Governments across North America and Europe have eagerly embraced Emanuel’s and Friedman’s advice, using, as we have seen, the financial crisis as a means of further entrenching the neoliberal political model. Not only have they implemented austerity measures designed to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich, they have seized the opportunity to restructure state and society along market lines encouraging and enabling market solutions to social problems. Every aspect of social and economic life is exposed to the values and rationale of the market. As we have seen in the previous sections, this shift is acutely obvious in Europe at the moment; where to protect the banks that lent to Ireland, to Greece and to other peripheral European states, and to protect wealthy corporations and individuals from unwelcome taxation, these countries have all been stripped of their sovereignty, as EU and IMF officials draft national budgets, privatise public services and sell off state assets. Democracy is replaced by a new buzzword ‘governance’, which allows for the creation of the conditions more favourable for capital accumulation with no legitimation beyond the emergency. We have seen two democratically elected governments replaced by ‘technocrats’.53 When the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, announced his intention to hold a referendum on the Greek ‘rescue package’ the European ruling class reacted with fury and he was informed that under no circumstances would a referendum be permitted. Two days later Papandreou conceded and a week later he resigned. He was replaced with the unelected Lucas Papademos, former governor of Bank of Greece and vice President of the ECB. Similarly, in Italy, when it became increasingly clear that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was no longer capable of introducing the levels of austerity deemed necessary by Europe to ‘manage’

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the mounting Italian debt crisis he too was summarily dismissed and replaced by another unelected technocrat, Mario Monti (former European Commissioner and international adviser to Goldman Sachs), as the head of the ‘national unity government’. One way to understand what is happening in Europe and in Ireland is to utilise the concept of the ‘shock doctrine’ developed by Naomi Klein in her 2007 book of the same name. Klein argues that the history of the contemporary free market is written in shocks: [that] disasters have become the preferred moments for advancing a vision of a ruthlessly divided world, one in which the very idea of a public sphere has no place at all … Every time a new crisis hits – even when the crisis itself is the direct by-product of free-market ideology – the fear and disorientation that follow are harnessed for radical social and economic re-engineering … The end result is the same kind of unapologetic partition between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned.54

In other words, a disaster, like, for example, a severe economic crisis, allows those in power to create and stage an ‘exceptional’ situation, a situation of emergency, in which, somehow, ordinary life is disrupted and what seemed until quite recently inconceivable simply happens. However, what is distinctive about the current crisis is not its acute character, but rather its chronic nature: The condition of the majority of the global population is now one of long-term wearing down and wearing out. ‘Crisis’ has become reconfigured not in temporal terms as a critical flashpoint in time, but as the environment of the endemic and the chronic or what Lauren Berlant terms the ‘crisis ordinariness’.55 If we understand the crisis from this perspective, it allows us to understand the meaning of the current Irish and European situation as an attempt to reconfigure class relations through the socialising private debt and as a constitutive element of the neoliberal attack on democracy. For example, the majority of responses to the financial crisis have focused on European budget austerity, what is comparatively unheralded is the attack on labour and how the European elites have seized the opportunity to dismantle workers’ protections in an attempt to reduce the cost of labour. In 2008, 1.9 million Portuguese workers were covered by collective bargaining agreements; by 2012 that number had fallen to 300,000.56 The rationale is that this is the only effective method ­available to restore competiveness, increase employment and re-establish creditworthiness. In Ireland, one of the government’s first responses to the crisis was to attack public sector workers, first by assaulting their pay and conditions, and then later by entrenching neoliberal-style work practices within the public sector. The intention was very clearly to discipline labour, not just in the public sector but, in the workforce as a whole.

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Neoliberalism was not a deliberate strategy imposed by the capitalist class. It was, David Harvey argues, ‘stumbled towards’57 as a solution to ‘a structural crisis of capitalism’ that emerged in the early 1970s as profit rates declined and the policies and practices associated with Keynesianism ceased to effectively serve capital accumulation. The result was that capitalism abandoned the Social Democratic compromise and embraced neoliberalism in the hope that it ‘could improve profit rates and accumulation performance’.58 This shift to neoliberalism involved a political and ideological assault requiring what David Harvey terms the penetration of ‘common-sense’ understandings.59 In the case of neoliberalism, this involved the creation of the fiction of the self-regulated market. This fiction, Alex Callinicos argues, has served to naturalise economic relations, presenting them as both unchanging and beyond any collective control.60 These assumptions become so naturalised that the very fact that they are assumptions is rarely even addressed. Wolfgang Streeck diagnoses our current conjuncture as the final destabilisation of ‘democratic capitalism’. He argues that as profit rates began to fall in the 1970s it became increasingly difficult for politicians to balance the increasingly divergent demands of capitalism and the electorate as economic power became political power. Capitalist democracy today has not one but two sovereigns: the ‘people, below, and the international “markets” above’. The outcome of the battle, he concludes, will be either one or the other, capitalist or democratic.61 In Ireland, the dominant trope of crisis is the pervasive justifying tautology we are where we are, which was utilised in Dáil [Irish Parliament] debates by some 80 politicians on no fewer than 270 occasions between the summer of 2008 and the spring of 2014.62 The repeated use of this tautology cannot be explained alone by the Irish political class’s fondness for cliché and folksy homespun charm. Rather, tautologies, as Roland Barthes observed, emerge when other rhetorical tools seem to break down.63 In the absence of adequate and reasoned argument there is a tendency to seek ‘refuge in tautology’ as a blunt rhetorical weapon for subsidising power: Since it is magical, it can of course only take refuge behind the argument of authority: thus do parents at the end of their tether reply to the child who keeps on asking for explanations: ‘because that’s how it is’, or even better: ‘just because, that’s all’ – a magical act ashamed of itself, which verbally makes the gesture of rationality, but immediately abandons the latter, and believes itself to be even with causality because it has uttered the word which introduces it. Tautology testifies to a profound distrust of language, which is rejected because it has failed. Now any refusal of language is a death. Tautology creates a dead, a motionless world.64

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Everyday tautologies like we are where we are are instruments used by authority figures when they find themselves exasperated with their subordinates. The failure of reason provokes a response that must be concealed within a ‘gesture of rationality’. Theodor Adorno makes a similar argument, writing that to wield tautologies is to create the impression ‘that it is necessary to obey, since what is demanded already occurs factually’: Things are the way they are, not because of ‘the will of the superior’, but because that is the way they must be.65 In other words, the actions of those with political and economic power in Ireland and Europe were not defined by a series of choices or decisions for which individuals or institutions must be held accountable; rather they were a response to abstract, technocratic requirements which must be unquestionably adhered to. A sense of disjunction is created between what is and what ought to be so that those without political and economic power can insulate themselves from the pain of d ­isillusionment by nodding fatalistically to one another that we are where we are. Within this narrative framework no alternative can be permitted or even debated, an idea, Costas Douzinas remarks, that does not exist in politics. The very nature of democracy is predicated on ‘the expression of disagreement and conflict’. Politics is supposed to be the arena where difficult problems can be put to debate and solutions arrived at. Under n ­ eoliberalism, governments and experts strive to ‘pre-empt public opinion by announcing that the most serious problems of our age do not belong to evaluation and judgement but to the truths of objective knowledge’.66 One of the ways that proponents of neoliberalism achieve this, Philip Mirowski remarks, is by ‘treating politics as if were a market, and promoting an economic theory of “democracy”’.67 It was an ideological shift that proved to be terrifyingly effective, involving the wholesale restructuring of social and political life. Understanding how this was achieved is of some importance. Slavoj Žižek argues that the concept of ideology is the classic one in which the illusion is located in knowledge.68 What he means by this is that one of the things that capitalist ideology is particularly adept at is not making an ‘explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does’; rather, Mark Fisher contends, it successfully conceals the ‘fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief’.69 In other words, capitalism can proceed perfectly well without the need to advocate for it. Understood in these terms we can see how the central task of ruling-class ideology in the context of the financial crisis has been to impose a narrative which will place the blame for the meltdown not on the global capitalist system itself but on secondary or contingent deviations (too little regulation of

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financial markets, the corruption of the financial markets, or a bloated public sector). The crisis becomes no one’s fault because it was really everyone’s fault.70 Building an alternative There is no easy exit strategy from the current crisis available to either the Irish or European elites. Indeed, attempts by governments to develop such a strategy is leading to an ideological crisis as tensions erupt within and between states and it is likely that we will continue to see conflicts emerge around the measures needed to overcome the crisis as national capital interests are played off against one another. This is also creating a crisis of politics itself. Over the course of the past three decades there has been, what Peter Mair terms, a ‘hollowing out’ of democratic politics.71 Mainstream political parties have seen a collapse in both active membership and passive political support, producing a crisis of standing, legitimacy and effectiveness within modern democracy. This fragmentation of politics has produced both an electorate and a political class that have effectively withdrawn from formal political engagement. As a result, the influence of executive non-governmental institutions and practices is increasing, as politics is no longer considered to be a matter of ideological passion but rather, a bidding war of coalition building. In Ireland, for example, the austerity delineated above was implemented by two different centre right–centre left coalition governments. The transition from a Fianna Fáil/Green coalition government to a Fine Gael/Labour coalition government was seamless both in terms of policy and practice, despite the latter taking power on a platform of change and ‘democratic revolution’. The similarity between these two administrations is instructive in many ways, not least in terms of the prevalence of the technocratic assumptions concerning what is needed or indeed possible within contemporary politics. It is not that that the political class today are somehow less ‘representative’ of their social base than at previous historical moments, rather, as Elizabeth Humphrys and Tad Tietze argue, it is that the lack of social base that makes the political class’s actual role in representing the interests of the state more apparent. Under capitalism, the ruling class does not always appear to govern directly, creating an artificial or perceived separation between economics and politics that masks the underlying social relations of domination.72 With the crisis this ­appearance is dissolving and producing a political crisis of legitimacy as the ruling class begins to lose its consensus. As Antonio Gramsci argues:

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If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer ‘leading’ but only ‘dominant’, exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously, etc. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.73

The ruling classes appear to be structurally incapable of escaping from their current predicament and it is becoming increasingly obvious that the politics of the current period will be determined by the clash between the pressure for governments to impose austerity and the reluctance of people to accept it. Benjamin Kunkel in his consideration of the ideological impact of the current crisis, writes that what is most decisive about the current conjuncture is ‘that capitalism has forfeited the allegiance of many people who are today under thirty’.74 The key question will be what form those politics take. In the absence of ideologically rooted political parties, opposition to the crisis has tended to splinter into a variety of pressure groups, nebulous internet organisations like Anonymous, ideologically ambiguous movements like Occupy and explicitly ‘anti-politics’ movements like the Spanish 15M (Indignados) and the Italian Five Star Movement. The limited political nature of these projects has meant that they have created few effective challenges to the capitalist state and in some cases have just collapsed into a moralistic opposition to the existing state of affairs. The radical left across Europe is weaker than it has been in decades and is struggling to build a mass movement capable of challenging and building an alternative to austerity (Syriza in Greece is the notable exception75). In the months leading up to the 2011 General Election, it did appear that such a radical left party could emerge in Ireland, despite a long history of left sectarianism. A number of individuals, small left parties and organisations (People Before Profit Alliance, the Socialist Party and the Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group) came together on an anti-austerity platform to form the United Left Alliance (ULA). Five TDs were elected and the strategy initially proved successful with over a thousand people attending ULA meetings across the country. However, its success was short lived. Political differences polarised around the alliance’s future strategy and the project quickly stalled.76 At a time when thousands of people were looking for an alternative to the political establishment, the inability of the Irish left to forge a viable, broad left party is a serious failure that has damaged the prospect of developing a viable alternative to austerity. Nevertheless, the prospects for the radical left in Ireland continue to be highly favourable as people abandon the mainstream political parties. In the May 2013 local elections the far

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left again made significant gains but what continues to be unclear is whether the Irish left are capable of effectively seizing the opportunity with which they have been presented. Conclusions Let us return to the Irish Independent advertisement campaign that introduced this chapter. Arguably, the most provocative image from the campaign is a contrasting photograph of, on the one hand, ‘rioting’ protesters on the streets of Athens, Greece and, on the other, an empty, pristine O’Connell street in Dublin. The image is a perfect illustration of the media’s myopic view of protest and struggle, constructed so as to demonise certain forms of political activity and to suggest a selfcongratulatory acceptance of Ireland’s compliance, echoed in a slogan chanted by protesting Greek workers in 2011: ‘We are not Ireland, we will resist’.77 It is notable that the image chosen by the Irish Independent is of a major Irish city street devoid not just of protest but largely of people. In the context of the neoliberal assault on democracy this image suggests either a neoliberal fantasy or nightmare, depending on one’s political perspective. Cities are sacred spaces that conflicting political forces have battled to control. David Harvey argues that ‘the urbanization of capital presupposes the capacity of capitalist class powers to dominate the urban process … That level of control does not come easily, if at all. The city and the urban process that produces it are therefore major sites of political, social, and class struggles’.78 In the battle to replace what Antonio Gramsci termed ‘common sense’ with ‘good sense’, large-scale popular protests, occupations, mobilisations and civil disobedience are critically important democratic tasks. But the major task confronting any effective alternative project has to be to offer not simply a critique of the ideological assumptions used to justify austerity, but some account of alternative ways out of the crisis. Simply reverting to some version of Keynesianism, as mainstream critics of austerity are prone to do, is not sufficient, most immediately because this approach fails to confront the fact that conflicting class interests are at play in the different economic strategies currently being advanced. The specifically European dimension to the Irish crisis also means that any solution must be understood in European terms. Some of the alternatives that are beginning to emerge include: at a European level, the Research on Money and Finance group who argue that indebted countries like Ireland and Greece should default on their debt and withdraw from the euro, concentrating instead on public investment (these arguments have found some advocates in the Greek radical left (Syriza); at a national level,

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left parties like the People Before Profit alliance, the Socialist Party and other left anti-austerity groups advocate the nationalisation of the banks, the creation of a state banking system, public works programmes, the development of new strategic industries, and genuine tax and pension reform to end the Irish economy’s dangerous dependence on neoliberal financialisation.79 These alternative agendas are certainly important but in the absence of the political will and social power to translate them into reality they are easily dismissed. Therefore, one of the most pressing tasks has to be to create the necessary political conditions for these progressive measures to be implemented. Notes  1 The campaign’s tagline – ‘we are defined by the choices we make’ – is reminiscent of the 2001 campaign by the French fascist party, Le Front National, which urged voters to choose between two different and, it is implied, mutually exclusive, images of France. The image of Seine-Saint Denis, a poor migrant suburb in the northeast of Paris, burning in the midst of a riot is contrasted with an image of a white, middle-class family relaxing in the sunlight of a pretty and affluent suburb. The tagline, in the clearly racist campaign, was ‘Choisis tu France’ (‘Choose your France’). See: http:// rabble.ie/2013/05/07/daddy-or-chips-new-adverts-invoke-french-fascist-adcampaign/. Consulted 22 July 2013.  2 The Irish Independent is Ireland’s largest-selling daily newspaper and is the flagship publication of Independent News and Media. For an overview of the 2013 advertisement campaign see the Independent’s dedicated campaign website: www.independent.ie/lifesaboutchoices/thank-you-for-making-thischoice-29254351.html.   3 My comments here draw on the insightful commentary of the Independent campaign from the Critical Media Review blog ‘We are defined by the choices they make’. Available at http://criticalmediareview.wordpress. com/2013/05/21/. Consulted 30 May 2013.   4 Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 208.   5 The Marxist economist Michael Roberts estimates that the EU alone faces a total exposure in the region of €750 billion: ‘Adding up what the Greek government owes to other EU governments from the two bailouts, what the central bank debts are to the Eurosystem and how much the ECB has already lent to Greek banks and holds in Greek government debt, we find that the eurozone is exposed to around €500 billion of potential losses, or near 5 per cent of eurozone GDP … Germany and France alone are exposed to around €150 billion each. And this is just exposure to sovereign debt. If the Greek private sector should also default on its loans, French and German banks will take a sizeable hit (French banks have about €25 billion

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lent to Greek companies). When you add all this in, the total exposure is closer to €750 billion.’ See Michael Roberts, ‘Greece: heading for the exit?’, The Next Recession blog, 17 May 2012. http://thenextrecession.wordpress. com/2012/05/17/greece-heading-for-the-exit/. Consulted 30 May 2013.  6 From a Bank of England presentation by Piergiorgio Alessandri and Andrew Haldane, available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches/ 2009/speech409.pdf. Consulted 2 July 2013.   7 David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (Oakland: PM Press, 2012), pp. 2–3. For the sources McNally used to compute this figure of $21trillion see p. 197, n.4.   8 See ‘Bank bailout could end poverty for 50 years – Oxfam tells G20’. April 2009. www.oxfam.org/en/eu/pressroom/pressrelease/2009–04–01/bank-bail out-could-end-poverty. Consulted 2 July 2013.  9 Alex Callinicos, ‘Contradictions of austerity’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2012, p. 66. 10 Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 73. 11 Ibid., p. 7. 12 A paper ‘Growth in a Time of Debt’ by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, acquired touchstone status in the debate over austerity. The paper claimed that economies reach a state of acute crisis once government debt exceeds 90 per cent of GDP and was repeatedly cited by Olli Rehn, President of the European Commission as justification for the eurozone’s policy of enforced austerity. These claims were echoed by economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna who argued that dramatic cuts in government spending would have little adverse impact on economic growth and might in face even encourage it. Both papers were spectacularly discredited when the data which they based their claims was discovered to be intrinsically flawed. For an overview of the debate see Paul Krugman, ‘How the case for austerity has crumbled’, The New York Review of Books, 6 June 2013. www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/06/how-caseausterity-has-crumbled/?pagination=false. Consulted 3 July 2013. 13 Larry Elliott, Phillip Inman and Helena Smith, ‘IMF: we failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece’, Guardian, 5 June 2013. www. theguardian.com/business/2013/jun/05/imf-underestimated-damage-austerity-would-do-to-greece. Consulted 3 July 2013. 14 See ‘Globalisation’s last hurrah?’, Foreign Policy, Vol. 128, No. 2, 2002, pp. 38–51. 15 These accounts include Simon Carswell’s Anglo Republic: Inside the Bank that Broke Ireland (Dublin: Penguin, 2010) and RTÉ’s Prime Time Special: The Bail Out (28 November, 2011) www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2011/1128/309231thebailoutblog_primetime/ and Colin Murphy’s dramatisation of events Guarantee! (2013) http://fishamble.com/guaranteed. 16 Documents released in October 2010 reveal that in the days leading up to the bank guarantee the Department of Finance spent €10.8 million on consultation fees, the bulk of which went to lawyers Arthur Cox and a­ ccountants

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PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In addition, the National Treasury Management Agency spent €11 million on advisors that included Merrill Lynch, Rothschild, Arthur Cox and PwC. The Financial Regulator spent a further €8.4 million on advice from PwC, and accountants Ernst & Young, KPMG and Deloitte. See www.rte.ie/news/business/2010/1019/136994– banks/. Consulted 12 July 2013. 17 Carswell, Anglo Republic, pp. 219–20. 18 Simon Carswell (2008) ‘Irish bailout cheapest in world, says Lenihan’, Irish Times, 24 October 2008. Available at: www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2008/1024/1224715115776.html. Consulted 12 July 2013. In March 2011, Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan described the crisis as ‘one of the most expensive banking crises in world history’. Honohan quoted in Vincent Browne (2011) ‘Lets own up to our part in the burst bubble’, Irish Times, 6 April 2011. Available at: www.irishtimes.com/ debate/let-s-own-up-to-our-part-in-the-burst-bubble-1.564844. Consulted 14 July 2014. 19 ‘Written answers – banks recapitalisation’, Wednesday, 18 April 2012. Dáil Éireann Debate, 
Vol. 761 No. 3 http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/ 2012/04/ 18/ 00157.asp. 20 Editorial, ‘Debtors in Dublin’, Financial Times, 10 December 2009. Available at: www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c8dc757c-e5c0–11de-b5d7–00144feab49a. html#axzz2cA9RlqCa. Consulted 14 July 2013. 21 Antoin Murphy cited in Peadar Kirby, ‘When banks cannibalize the state’, in Leo Panitch, Gregory Albo and Vivek Chibber (eds), Socialist Register: The Crisis and the Left (London: Merlin Press, 2011), p. 256. 22 Ralph Atkins, ‘ECB raises fears over Irish collateral’, Financial Times, 20 December 2010. Available at: www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c21c7844–0b59– 11e0–a313–00144feabdc0.html#axzz2cGHIALIC. Consulted 14 July 2013. 23 Brian Lucy quoted in Emmet Oliver, ‘No sparing our blushes as big guns come to the rescue’, Irish Independent, 22 November 2010. Available at: www. independent.ie/opinion/analysis/emmet-oliver-no-sparing-our-blushes-asbig-guns-come-to-the-rescue-26701622.html. Consulted 15 July 2013. 24 Kirby, ‘When banks cannibalize the state’, p. 256. 25 International Monetary Fund, Ireland; Staff Report for 2010 Article IV consultation. Country Report (Washington, DC: IMF). 26 Fintan O’Toole, ‘Abysmal deal ransoms us and disgraces Europe’, Irish Times, 29 November 2010, p. 11. 27 See Department of Finance (August 2014) Ireland’s Continuing Progress. www.finance.gov.ie/sites/default/files/ReportCardAug2014fin_pub.pdf. 28 Central Statistics Office, Live Register January 2012, 1 February 2012. Available at: www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/ labourmarket/2012/lreg_jan2012.pdf. Consulted 15 July 2013. 29 Figures quoted in Social Justice Ireland, What Would Real Recovery Look Like? Securing Economic Development, Social Equity and Sustainability (Dublin: Social Justice Ireland, 2013), p. 58–9. 30 Michael Noonan quoted in Jamie Smyth, ‘IMF boost Irish debt relief

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case’, Financial Times, 10 September 2012. Available at: www.ft.com/intl/ cms/s/0/b08e0720–fb60–11e1–b5d0–00144feabdc0.html#axzz2cvrF95Gh. Consulted 15 July 2013. 31 See Donagh Brennan, ‘Ireland’s for sale sign: the 12.5% corporation tax rate’, Irish Left Review, January 2013 for an excellent discussion of Ireland’s policy on corporate taxation. Available at: www.irishleftreview. org/2013/05/27/corporation-tax-irelands-sale-sign/. Consulted 14 July 2013. 32 Social Justice Ireland, What Would Real Recovery Look Like?, p. 60. 33 T. Callan, B. Nolan, C. Keane, M. Savage and J. R. Walsh, ‘Crisis, response and distributional impact: the case of Ireland’, ESRI Working Paper, No. 456 (Dublin: ESRI, 2013). Available at: www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publications/ WP456/WP456.pdf. Consulted 14 July 2013. Social Justice Ireland noted that as the data for 2012 and 2013 is not yet available the levels of inequality can be expected to be higher again given that the budgets in each of those years was particularly regressive. See Social Justice Ireland, Who Really Took the Hits During Ireland’s Bailout? (Dublin: Social Justice Ireland, 2013). Available at: www.socialjustice.ie/sites/default/files/file/Policy%20Issues/ Poverty%20and%20Income%20Distribution/2013-12-02-%20Who%20 really%20took%20the%20hits%20during%20Irelands%20Bailout.pdf. Consulted 10 May 2014. 34 The study recorded the wealth of anyone who had more than $1m in cash and assets excluding their primary residence and jewellery, art or other collectables. The rise in millionaires by 2,000 people marked the first rise in the number of ‘super-rich’ in the country for two years, moving back towards its peak of 2007. Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini, 14th Annual World Wealth Report, June 2010. 35 Laura Slattery, ‘Fortunes of Ireland’s wealthiest 250 equals third of GDP’, Irish Times, 18 May 2014. Available at: www.irishtimes.com/business/ personal-finance/fortunes-of-ireland-s-wealthiest-250-equals-third-ofgdp-1.1800238. Consulted 3 June 2014. There is limited up-to-date information available on wealth in Ireland and different reports use different measurement so accurate figures are difficult to ascertain. 36 High Net Worth Individuals are defined as having net assets of over US$30 million. Net assets include homes and take into account debt and liabilities where ascertainable. 37 Knight Frank, Wealth Report 2013: The Global Perspective on Prime Pro­­­ perty and Wealth. Available at: http://my.knightfrank.com/research-reports/ the-wealth-report.aspx. Consulted 14 June 2014. 38 Stathis Kouvelakis, ‘Introduction: the end of Europeanism’, in Costas Lapavitsas et al., Crisis in Eurozone (London: Verso, 2012), p. xv. 39 See Jürgen Habermas, The Crisis of the European Union: A Response (London: Polity, 2012); Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Guy Verhofstadt, For Europe! Manifesto for a Postnational Revolution in Europe (Munich: CreateSpace, 2012); Ulrich Beck, German Europe, translated by Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: Polity, 2012).

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40 The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was finalised in October 2004 but following the rejection of the document by French and Dutch voters in May and June 2005 it was abandoned. Two years later the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) was created to replace the Constitutional Treaty. This contained many of the changes that were originally placed in the Constitutional Treaty but was formulated as amendments to the existing treaties and could be passed by parliaments in all countries except Ireland. 41 Kouvelakis, ‘Introduction’, p. xvi. 42 Gamble, Andrew, ‘Neo-liberalism’, Capital and Class 75 (Autumn 2001), p.  133. 43 Susan Watkins, ‘Vanity and venality’, London Review of Books, 16–29 August 2013. Available at: www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n16/susan-watkins/vanityand-venality?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign =3516&hq_e=el&hq_m=2687935&hq_l=5&hq_v=24af558402. Consulted 11 September 2013. 44 Lapavitsas et al., Crisis in Eurozone, p. 2. 45 Hayek quoted in Andrew Farrant, Edward McPhail and Sebastian Berger, ‘Preventing the “abuses” of democracy: Hayek, the “military usurper” and transitional dictatorship in Chile?’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 3, 2012, p. 517. 46 They include the head of the IMF and the former French Finance Minister, Christian Lagarde; the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso; the former chairman of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker; ­President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy; former technocratic Italian Prime Minister, President of the ECB and Vice-President of Goldman Sachs, Mario Draghi and Olli Rehn, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro and Vice-President of the European Commission. 47 Perry Anderson, The New Old World (London: Verso, 2009), p. 49. 48 See Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (2012) Article 5. Available at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressrelease_DOC-12–2_en.htm. Consulted 14 July 2014. 49 Angela Merkel quoted in Ian Traynor, ‘Germany to set the terms for saving the euro’, Guardian, 31 January 2012. Available at: www.theguardian.com/ business/2012/jan/30/eu-summit-eurozone-treaty-deal. Consulted 12 July 2014. 50 Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Europe is trapped between power and politics’, Social Europe, 14 May 2013. Available at: www.social-europe.eu/2013/05/europeis-trapped-between-power-and-politics/. Consulted 11 September 2013. 51 See Rahm Emanuel’s interview with the Wall Street Journal, 19 November 2008. Also available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mzcbXi1Tkk. Emanuel went on to embrace this strategy himself when he became mayor of Chicago in 2011. During his first year in office he explicitly attacked public services and jobs, introducing cuts totalling $67 million to the city’s budget. His particular target was public education. After announcing his intention to close over 100 public schools and ‘renegotiate’ the pay and

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conditions of teachers, he found himself locked in a head-to head-battle with Chicago’s teachers’ unions who successfully went on strike as part of campaign to protect the Chicago public education system. 52 Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. xiv. 53 Arguably, the term ‘technocrat’, like so much of the vocabulary of the crisis (‘bailout’, ‘haircut’, ‘rescue’, ‘markets’ etc.), is designed to conceal and to mystify the reality of what is actually happening. 54 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (London: Penguin), 2007, p. 7. 55 Lauren Berlant, ‘slow death (sovereignty, obesity, lateral agency)’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2007, p. 761. 56 Eduardo Porter, ‘Americanized labor policy is spreading in Europe’, The New York Times, 3 December 2013. Available at: www.nytimes. com/2013/12/04/business/economy/the-americanization-of-european-laborpolicy.html. Consulted 30 May 2014. 57 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 13. 58 Al Campbell, ‘The birth of neoliberalism in the United States’, in Alfredo Saad Filho and Deborah Johnston (eds), Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader (London: Pluto), 2005, p. 189. 59 Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Chapter 2. 60 Callinicos, ‘Contradictions of austerity’, p. 75. 61 Wolfang Streeck, ‘The crisis of democratic capitalism’, New Left Review, Vol. 2, No. 71, 2011, p. 29. 62 An audit of how frequently the phrase ‘we are where we are’ has been used by Irish political figures can he found here: www.kildarestreet.com/search/? s=%22we+are+where+we+are%22&o=p. Consulted 14 July 2014. 63 This discussion draws on Paul Allen Anderson’s analysis of tautology in his article on the HBO drama The Wire in ‘“The game is the game”: tautology and allegory in The Wire’, Criticism No. 52, Vol. 3 (2010), pp. 373–98. 64 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1971), p. 152. 65 Theodor Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity (Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 88. 66 Costas Douzinas, Philosophy and Resistance in the Crisis (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), p. 67. 67 Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis go to Waste (London: Verso, 2013), p. 58. 68 Slavoj Žižek, ‘How did Marx invent the symptom?’, in Slavoj Žižek (ed.), Mapping Ideology (London: Verso, 2012), p. 316. 69 Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there No Alternative? (Winchester: Zero Books, 2009), p. 13. 70 Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis go to Waste, p. 100. 71 Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy (London: Verso, 2013). 72 Elizabeth Humphrys and Tad Tietze, ‘Anti-politics: elephant in the room’,

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Left Flank, 31 October 2013. Available at: http://left-flank.org/2013/10/31/ anti-politics-elephant-room/#sthash.sSLD6wh2.dpbs. Consulted 8 February 2014. 73 Antonio Gramsci, Selections From The Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), pp. 275–6. 74 Benjamin Kunkle, Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis (London: Verso, 2014), p. 19. 75 For an overview of Syriza see Helena Sheehan, ‘To the crucible: an Irish engagement with the Greek crisis and the Greek left’, Irish Left Review, 21 January 2013. Available at: www.irishleftreview.org/2013/01/21/crucibleirish-engagement-greek-crisis-greek-left/#sthash.Jl5qaZTJ.dpuf. Consulted 12 July 2013. 76 See Kieran Allen, ‘Whatever happened to the ULA?’, Irish Marxist Review, Vol. 2, No. 6, 2013, pp. 17–21. Available at: www.irishmarxistreview.net/ index.php/imr/article/view/67/69. Consulted 14 July 2014. Socialist Party Statement: ‘The ULA, the fight against austerity and building a new party of the working class’, 26 January 2013. Available at http://socialistparty. ie/2013/01/the-ula-the-fight-against-austerity-a-building-a-new-party-ofthe-working-class/. Consulted 14 July 2014. 77 Helena Smith, ‘Athens protest: “We are at war with them, as they are with us”’, Guardian, 10 February 2010. Available at: www.guardian.co.uk/ world/2010/feb/10/athens-greece-protest-strike. Consulted 11 September 2013. 78 David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso, 2013), p. 65. 79 See Research on Money and Finance, available at: www.researchonmoneyandfinance.org. Kieran Allen, Ireland’s Economic Crash: A Radical Agenda for Change (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2009). People Before Profit, Alternative Economic Agenda. Available at www.peoplebeforeprofit.ie/economy/. Consulted 12 July 2014. See also: Anti-Austerity Alliance, available at http://antiausterityalliance.ie/what-we-stand-for/. Consulted 12 July 2014.

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Ireland and the new economy Angela Nagle

Introduction When the US internet sector began to boom in the 1990s, Wired editor Kevin Kelly claimed that the net had created a ‘new paradigm’ in production that had transcended the boom and bust cycle.1 Commentators like MIT economist Rudi Dornbusch claimed ‘The U.S. economy will not see a recession for years to come. We don’t want one, we don’t need one, and, as we have the tools to keep the current expansion going, we won’t have one. This expansion will run forever.’2 Within the universities, a common theoretical frame developed by thinkers like Manuel Castells, who wrote a multi-volume celebration of the post-industrial networked society. Wired ran a cover, proclaiming: ‘We’re facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that?’ This vision of the future of capitalism being frictionless, post-industrial and based on knowledge, information and post-scarcity desires, was not just dominant in tech magazines and in Silicon Valley. The Chair of the American Federal Reserve at the time, Alan Greenspan, was one of the most fervent new economy ideologues. It was at this moment, during the ascent of what was then called the ‘new economy’, that the Celtic Tiger emerged. Praised in the pages of Wired as ‘the Silicon Isle’3 and as ‘Europe’s shining light’4 in The Economist, Ireland was depicted as a positive example of an open globalised economy ‘leapfrogging’ from a pre-industrial to a post-industrial style economy. During the period after independence Ireland lagged behind the rest of Europe for many generations and after several failed attempts at the difficult task of building an indigenous productive economy of its own, it began instead incentivising foreign direct investment. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that this series of economic failures was instead given a supremely fashionable new economy spin by the state. Ireland’s ability to attract the European headquarters of global new media giants like Google and Facebook had enormous symbolic significance for a country that had for so long existed in rural isolation

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compared to its industrial neighbours. According to this post-industrial vision of the trajectory of human progress, we had not merely caught up with the European industrial powers but passed them out. But the economic policies that gave the boom its new economy glamour in the 1990s can be viewed somewhat differently now. As Michael Taft has argued,5 we have an underdeveloped indigenous productive economy and a continued overemphasis on finance, services and property speculation, as well as an enormous debt burden, low public and private investment and high unemployment. Although the term new economy quickly fell out of use after the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, as the outrageous hyperbole of the claims made for the term came to look absurd, today its central ideology is still with us. With the added rolling back of the state’s developmental role, the dotcom neoliberalism that Barbrook and Cameron called ‘the Californian Ideology’6 is perhaps more at work in Ireland now than ever. It has remained a consistent part of Ireland’s state ideology over successive governments. Before the bailout the government was rolling out plans for Ireland to become a ‘world-class knowledge economy’ but equally, in 2009, as the economy was sinking into a recession, Brian Cowen expressed his vision for Ireland to become the ‘European Silicon Valley’. In 2013 there was Enda Kenny’s ambition to be the ‘digital capital of the world’ and then Richard Bruton’s ‘global technology hub’.7 A less discussed and seemingly contradictory dimension to this period of new economy, and the state’s embrace of the networked and the postindustrial, is its shared roots with what has emerged at the same time as a countercultural aesthetic and a diffuse wave of protest movements, which equally embraced the network and the post-industrial. Since 2008, across the world, we have seen the rise of the politics of what Barry Wellman called ‘networked individualism’,8 the transition from organisation-based relations to loosely connected networks. In 2009, when Iranian protesters poured onto the streets demanding the resignation of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Western blogosphere and mainstream media overwhelmingly framed the uprising in internet-centric terms. Cyberutopian commentators like Clay Shirky cheered, ‘The Revolution Will Be Twittered’ and ‘This is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto the global stage and transmitted by social media.’9 The events that followed were dubbed a ‘Twitter Revolution’. In the summer of 2011 thousands of protesters gathered in squares and public spaces across Spain. Adbusters, the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine, published an article by Manuel Castells called The Disgust Becomes a Network. He wrote, ‘they discovered new forms of organization, participation and mobilization that burst the traditional channels

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belonging to those whom a large section of society, and the majority of young people, distrust. Parties and institutions will have to learn to live with this emerging civil society.’10 Then the Occupy movement, which began in New York’s Zuccotti park and spread to many countries across the world, emerged in Ireland with its biggest and most sustained camp on Dame Street, one of the capital’s busiest streets and home to the central bank, as well as other camps in Cork, Kilkenny, Waterford, Galway and Letterkenny. Globally, the movement’s celebrated appeal was due to its perceived break from ideology. To many, the Occupy movement and new forms of social media activism mark a positive turn. In Heather Brooke’s paean to hacktivism, internet freedom and digital revolution, The Revolution Will be Digitised, she claims: ‘Technology is breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography, replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency’.11 The events involving social media, from the Arab Spring, to Occupy, seemed to prove Manuel Castells right, who had argued for many years that ‘once in cyberspace, people may have all kinds of ideas, including challenging corporate power, dismantling government authority, and changing the cultural foundations of our aging/aching civilization’.12 In the New York Times, the Occupy movement was characterised as ‘a new form of what could be called “political disobedience” as opposed to civil disobedience, which fundamentally rejects the political and ideological landscape we inherited from the Cold War’.13 BBC journalist Paul Mason celebrated the arrival of this new radicalised networked individualism found in Spain, Egypt and Zuccotti Park in his book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, in which he described the turn away from the Cold War ideologies toward social media-based protest as feeling like ‘a handbrake turn for humanity’.14 One socialist who was involved in Occupy Dame Street in its early days but later became more critical, wrote: ‘When I proposed a series of talks at the assembly on day three, everyone was all for giving us the go ahead. When I started elaborating further on topics and speakers and mentioned that Michael Taft was a trade union economist, the antitrade-union reflex was triggered.’15 There were several heated arguments in the early days of the camp between the campers and the organised left, who were attempting to be involved, with many of the campers making the case against left organisation banners and against involvement with the trade unions. While the power of the trade unions has not risen to the challenge presented by the period since 2008, the ideology of the information society that regards social media as the primary agent of progressive social change has strengthened, within government policy

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and within countercultural and protest movements albeit with different ends in mind. To the state, the promise of the information society is its ability to make Ireland modern without having to do any of the heavy investment a modern economy requires, and to the protest movements and the counterculturalists as an escape from the anxiety of influence of the 1960s, with something seemingly fresh and new, unique to our generation. In recent years, Ireland has seen a strengthening of finance, perhaps the most naked incarnation of the ‘information society’, met with disorganised, and often aimless, social movements such as Occupy that have fetishised the network, leaderlessness and social media. While the government exalts the high-tech multinationals, social media start-ups and financial services, and the capitalist class increasingly withdraws from the capital-intensive productive economy in favour of speculation, counterculturalists and anti-government protesters extol the virtues of social media. Along with the Occupy movement in Ireland we have seen the rise of a shared aesthetic, with temporary pop-up spaces, free culture, hacktivism, Twitter and Facebook campaigns, celebrated for having at last moved beyond the Cold War ideological dichotomy, dispensing with class terminology, putting to rest the battles over production and instead focusing on all things digital, post-material, creative and self-expressive. Years after the bank bailout with no serious challenge mounted against austerity but a constant daily flow of radical social media sentiment, it is worth asking here if this cyberutopian dissent is the most appropriate response to a cyberutopian ruling ideology. This chapter looks at how Irish state ideology has invoked a postindustrial cyberutopian vision of the future, one that originates in Cold War think tanks, to make Ireland’s poor level of infrastructure and indigenous productive enterprise look like a virtue. It then looks at how this post-industrial aesthetic, which blended anti-industrial back-to-nature nostalgia with personalised self-expressive information technologies, has also been employed by putatively oppositional voices throughout the post-bailout period. Ireland as a ‘world-class knowledge economy’ In 2004, the Enterprise Strategy Group recommended, in a report, ‘Ahead of the Curve – Ireland’s Place in the Global Economy’, that Ireland should use the growth and revenue from the property boom to expand the number of knowledge workers in the economy. As part of a model through which, it was believed, the West could function as a knowledge economy while manufacturing would be done in the

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­ eveloping world, economists called this process ‘moving up the value d chain’. Around the same time that the social media revolutions narrative began taking off in 2009, then Taoiseach Brian Cowen, in a speech at the inaugural meeting of the Global Economic Forum, asked for help to create a ‘European Silicon Valley’ in Ireland that he claimed would be even bigger than the original. This ostentatious display of national ambition was publicly launched at a time when Cowen’s government and his party were extremely unpopular, after a vast bank bailout of private debt. But policy insiders, university presidents and managers of multinational operations in Ireland endorsed the goal. The Innovation Taskforce envisioned that within a decade up to 215,000 science and technology jobs could be created, which would enable Ireland to surpass Silicon Valley.16 But as Michael Hennigan has argued, this pronouncement was always wildly unrealistic. As a point of comparison, he argues, the oldest technology cluster in Europe, in the area around Cambridge University, has managed to grow to only 48,000 jobs after 50 years. In Ireland, ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) employs only 4 per cent of the workforce. In the high-tech sector, there were only 3,300 permanent net jobs added by US firms in Ireland in 2007–2012 and 1,600 by indigenous firms. Research in the US and the UK shows that high growth firms are not typically in high-tech and that high-tech firms have a high failure rate. Of 2,600 high-tech firms that were founded in Silicon Valley in 2000, fewer than 1 in 5 were still in business in 2009.17 It was, therefore, a distinctly questionable growth strategy to be laying out just as the country was plummeting into debt and recession. In 2013, at the International Web Summit, Enda Kenny declared Ireland’s ambition to become ‘capital of the digital world’. The Irish Independent reported the event using the subheading: ‘Taoiseach Enda Kenny declared Ireland the new capital of the digital world today during a massive internet summit in Dublin where thousands of visitors struggled to get online.’18 As Colin Coulter has noted, even Ireland’s basic infrastructure failed during the summit, with water supplies being cut off in the capital city. Jobs, enterprise and innovation minister, Richard Bruton, then launched a strategy document called ‘The global technology hub: how Ireland enables success for international and indigenous technology companies’.19 Despite having among the lowest corporation tax rates in Europe, the document recommends a reduction in tax to attract investment and encourage entrepreneurship. It also set out a need for greater tech skills and education, despite the fact that language skills,

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not tech skills, have repeatedly been shown to be lacking in the Irish workforce for jobs in high-tech services companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook, whose majority non-Irish workers employ their much needed language skills in administration, not high-tech research and ­development.20 2013 was also the year when Ireland was meant to have become a ‘world-class knowledge economy’, a plan laid out by Fianna Fáil’s Michael Martin, before the bailout and the economic recession, by signi­ ficantly expanding science and technology sector jobs in the economy. The strategy of putting science and innovation at the heart of enterprise policy, followed by successive governments, was described by Michael Hennigan as ‘faith based’ and its outcome as ‘a failure’.21 According to Hennigan, the level of commercialisation of third level ICT research is poor and patent applications from both universities and businesses are at a 30-year low. Less than a third of foreign-owned firms supported by IDA Ireland, the public inward investment agency, do any R&D (research and development).22 Business R&D investment is at a low level that does not merit patent filings. In a small economy like Ireland, any product from university research with potential would be sold to bigger overseas firms. Despite the obsession of successive Irish governments with them, technology start-ups appear to grow slowly, have a poor survival rate and contribute little to the wider economy. In Europe, after seven years, new start-up high-tech firms comprise, on average, 18.5 employees with revenues of £250,000 and only a 36 per cent likelihood of surviving beyond a decade. In the UK, over 2,900 of these surviving companies have been in business since 1991. Despite massive investment, they were responsible for only 40,000 jobs.23 Up to 90 per cent of US high-tech start-ups fail and this estimate includes both venture capital backed and other firms that are not able to raise external funding.24 Even the consistent rhetoric about encouraging high-tech entrepreneurship among Ireland’s youth is based on empty new economy mythology. Silicon Valley’s cult of youth envisions young rebel capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg, Castells’ ‘no collar worker’, subverting convention and shaking up the system. But over the past decade or so in the US, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to the 55–64 age group. The 20–34 age bracket, meanwhile, which is usually associated with big tech names such as Facebook and Google, has the lowest rate.25 So why does this mythology, this fetish for all things digital – from the belief that hash tags will bring about revolutionary political change, to the government’s belief that social media start-ups will lift the economy out of recession – hold such appeal? To answer this question, we must

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first go back and look at the origins of the cyberutopian imaginary and the origins of the dream of a post-industrial future that has so captured the imaginations of sections of the right and left. Origins of the post-industrial society A 1995 edition of Time magazine entitled Welcome to Cyberspace ran an article, ‘We owe it all to the hippies’, arguing that the real legacy of the hippy counterculture was the computer revolution.26 The author was Stewart Brand – a radical horizontalist who went on to influence both underground hackers and the more mainstream sensibilities of Silicon Valley today. The free speech movement and the back-to-theland hippy counterculture of the 1960s influenced Stewart Brand, whom technology historian Fred Turner has argued was the most significant networker in tying together many diverse people and ideas, from the military think tanks to the hippy counterculture with one coherent contact language. His primary vehicle for this was The Whole Earth Catalog, which Steve Jobs would go on to quote in his famous Stanford Commencement Speech and was read by all of the key figures of the cyberutopian tendency of the 1990s, from free market dotcom neoliberals to hacker subcultures.27 As Barbrook and Cameron have argued, the ideology that emanates from the social media giants today is both counterculture and corporate culture: ‘This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley ... the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies.’28 They contest that during the 1990s, an American entrepreneurial class mixed the ideas of Marshall McLuhan with the information society, radical individualism, libertarianism and neoliberal economics. The Californian Ideology, Barbrook and Cameron suggest, mixed the anti-statism and technoutopianism of the right and the left, believing that the decline of old power structures and rigid ideologies would result in a frictionless capitalism whose growth would be driven by information and individual choice. In Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution,29 Steven Levy traces the origins of hacking. For the original hardware hackers, Levy argues, hacking was a form of political rebellion but many of them would go on to become the capitalist class of Silicon Valley. This generation of hackers included Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. For them, computers had been the preserve of institutionalised experts and were central to the organisation of the Vietnam War but they wanted to

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put them to new uses. The next generation, the ‘young game hackers’ of the 1980s had grown up working with minicomputers and sought to use computers for fun, going on to influence gaming and research developed along fluid, collaborative and non-hierarchical lines. Levy described the hacker ethic as defined by a distinct set of values: access to computers for all, information to be free, a mistrust of authority, and a belief in meritocracy. The Guy Fawkes mask, a reference to the comic book adaptation film V for Vendetta, became the iconic image of the Occupy movement and the broader wave of leaderless protests. It originated within the culture of the hacker collective Anonymous, who emerged from the anonymous, irreverent image messaging board 4chan/b/. Gabrielle Coleman has described the hacker culture that exists around Anonymous, 4chan/b/ and Wikileaks as ‘rhizomatic’ and ‘premised on a robust antileader, anticelebrity ethic’. Coleman’s largely flattering analysis of hacker and geek cultures celebrates their ‘novel modes for collaborating, organizing and protesting’.30 Throughout these occupations and protests, as in other countries, live streaming and hash tags were used in the ethos of user generated content and disintermediation and the Anonymous brand was used in some of the media to promote the occupation. But the Occupy movement and these underground hacker collectives share many of their hacker values, outlined by Levy above, with the dotcom neoliberals of Silicon Valley, who originated from hacker movements themselves. The simultaneously countercultural and capitalist culture of Silicon Valley has even earlier origins. The core idea of the new economy has not only outlived but long predates its 1990s brand. The vision of a future in which the power of the environment-spoiling, capital investment-intensive proletarian industries and the kind of organising that tended to come with them would be replaced by information, automation, globalisation and post-material values, in which the competition of the Cold War ideologies was transcended, goes back unsurprisingly to the Cold War. The post-industrial society, the network society, the information age and the post-material economy have been among the names given at different stages to a vision that has its point of origin in Cold War research facilities and think tanks. Richard Barbrook later expanded the idea of the Californian Ideology into a history of the post-industrial imaginary that extended back to the Cold War, forged in the environment of cybernetics military research, government-funded think tanks and commissions, in the USSR and in the USA.31 After the death of Stalin, Barbrook writes, the technological reformers were given their chance to challenge the ideological consensus of industry as the only route to modernity. After years of planning disasters, the field of

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cybernetics was embraced by this generation of high-tech reformers. In 1961, the Communist Party formally adopted the goal of computerising the economy and Krushchev promised in his leader’s speech that within two decades the Russian people would be living in a cybernetic, postindustrial society In a drive to create the information society first, the US government poured money into ARPA, the project that led to the creation of the internet. In the soft power war with Russia, The Commission on the Year 2000 was set up to devise an alternative vision of the future that would be more modern, more ambitious and more attractive than communism. One of its leading intellectuals, Daniel Bell, formalised their ideas in ‘The coming of the post-industrial society’.32 Bell argued that bureaucrats and technicians were replacing the role of the working class as the most important members of the economy, and that better education and automation would replace factory jobs with office jobs. Building on Rostow and Galbraith’s ideas on the emergence of postscarcity desires, the commission had been given the task of planning the transition from the industrial stage of growth into the post-industrial computer age. They predicted that the production of goods would be supplanted by the production of services and that the nation state would be subsumed into the global village. This is the imaginary that the Irish state is invoking when it unfolds plan after plan to skip the expensive industrial phase of economy building and instead become an economy made of information. Cybernetic meadows and the investment strike of capital The austerity of the period has often been characterised in some of the more populist left commentary and sloganeering as one of a dramatic drop in government current spending. However, the most dramatic decline has been in government capital expenditure – spending on long term assets such as infrastructure – which has gone quite staggeringly into free-fall, dropping consecutively in the years between 2009 and 2013 by annual rates of 18.6 per cent, 12.9 per cent, 29.3per cent, 18 per cent and 7.3 per cent respectively.33 Alongside a dramatic drop in government investment in capital expenditure, we have seen a collapse in private investment. Over a prolonged period leading up to the crisis PNFCs (Private Non-Financial Corporations) operating in Ireland invested much less than firms in the other industrialised countries, but since 2009 private investment has fallen by 47 per cent. Since 2008 these firms’ profits have actually risen in cash terms, by €6.7 billion. Investment in transport equipment and other equipment have both fallen by

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€1 billion; road building and other construction apart from homes have slumped by €5.4 billion.34 Engineers Ireland’s 2014 report, which is very modest in its recommendations compared to the ambitious demands of its UK equivalents, warned that Ireland’s flooding and rail infrastructure is ‘below standard, poorly maintained, with frequent inability to meet capacity’ and that the water, sea ports and waste infrastructure is ‘inadequately maintained and unable to meet peak demand’.35 During the boom, investment favoured property speculation at the expense of productive activities, squandering perhaps Ireland’s greatest opportunity for a major leap forward in industrial development. Even in areas like information technology, which gave the Celtic Tiger its new economy glamour, the cost and quality of Ireland’s broadband infrastructure still compares poorly with other EU countries.36 And yet, it has been in this period of low investment and low growth that various alternative voices, like those found at Occupy Dame Street, have advocated growth scepticism and attacked any meagre infrastructural development we have seen. Occupy Dame Street’s network sensibility and social media-centrism mixed with a conspiratorial and at times anti-development politics. Anti-fluoride activists and ‘the Turf cutters’, a movement who wish to retain an old tradition of local individual use of the bogs in rural Ireland, filled the void left by anti-politics. Liam Mac an Bhaird, a kind of neo-primitivist who became known for his YouTube videos dedicated to his love of turf, rose to prominence within the Occupy movement. While he graced our computer screens, Village magazine dedicated a front cover to the cause of ‘de-growth’. After the Occupy movement, many similar campaigns grew, such as the antipylon campaign and the peculiar Freemen movement, which encourages its followers to think of themselves as clansmen and to reject unwanted tax paying and ignore fines. This may be the more absurd end of the protest politics of that moment – many other campaigns focused on practical matters such as debt repayments and household charges, and there may be valid arguments in each case for the conditions of development – but looked at in broader terms, it is strange that growth scepticism, anti-development politics and cyberutopian activism should emerge just as the government imposed anti-growth policies, slashed capital expenditure and capitalists stopped investing. During this time the establishment and many strands presenting themselves as its opposition became a mirror image of each other, the latter effectively encouraging capitalism to do what it was doing anyway. The post-bailout period also saw a fashion within countercultural circles for urban gardens, an odd fetish for a nation not long out of a

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dark past of hunger and subsistence living. What seems significant to me is that just at the moment when Irish state ideology makes growth and consumption more difficult, alternative voices argue for less consumption and for limits to be placed on growth and when the state ideology preaches information not infrastructure, the alternative voices rally against infrastructure using social media. This mixture of antimodern, libertarian, anti-institutional and internet-centric politics may seem contradictory, because it has both reactionary and pro-technology elements, but it is one witnessed across the Occupy movements around the world. These seemingly unrelated strands can be traced throughout the history of the post-industrial imaginary and, I argue, infuse both today’s dominant ideology and those seeming to challenge it. To understand their strange resemblance we must return again to California and look at their shared cultural history. Built on a DIY ethic, The Whole Earth Catalog used the language and the ideas of military research cybernetics to bring together the backto-the-land Communalists and the language of technology. In 1967 it published Richard Brautigan’s poem All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, in which he wrote in a Romantic style of ‘cybernetic meadows’ where ‘we are free of our labours and joined back to nature’.37 This post-industrial but high-tech imaginary born in the military think tanks was immensely appealing to these American back-to-the-landers who had shunned the hard working Fordist straight society built by their parents’ generation. Many of the figures involved in this movement were also involved in the ‘appropriate technologies’ movement, which aimed to help third world countries to remain pre-industrial while having the technology to leap frog the industrial age and still provide enough for small communities to be self-sufficient, like the American communes themselves. The hippie-hacker cross-over community that had been brought together explored a vision of technology and the future, which merged the ideological persuasions of both. Small-scale technologies were envisaged as tools that could be used by free-floating individuals instead of centralised state infrastructural projects. Geosidic domes were put to use on the plains of Colorado by the back-to-the-land movement, allowing networks of individuals to commune with nature on what they felt was a localist, DIY basis. This culture spawned many of the influential members of the appropriate technology movement, which spurned heavy industry and complex national infrastructure for this small-scale social technology. This imaginary has informed our understanding of technology and its uses profoundly, reaching its apogee with the internet-connected personal computer. Kevin Kelly’s nature-

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derived technological doctrine of ‘the swarm’ and ‘the hive mind’, has been central to the methods fetishised by the new networked protest movements and has also been embraced by business.38 Peter Miller’s new economy business manual Smart Swarm advised how corporations can learn from bees, termites and fish to streamline their out-dated twentieth-century organisations.39 It is a testament to the power of ideology that today, the positive word ‘technology’ is more likely to make one think of lighter-than-air, miniature, personalised information technology connected invisibly to ‘the cloud’ than anything used for producing plastics or rerouting rivers. This back-to-the-land techie ideology of appropriate technologies and third world leap frogging has emerged from advanced economies like the US that have already benefited from long periods of industrial development and wealth. Dani Rodrick has warned that the developing world’s pattern of industrialisation has been slower but also that de-industrialisation has set in sooner, and that this has caused them to turn into service economies at substantially lower levels of income and development.40 To put the role of digital personal technologies, loved by Silicon Valley’s advocates of third world leap frogging, in perspective, out of the world’s estimated 7 billion people, 6 billion have access to mobile phones but only 4.5 billion have access to working toilets.41 Industry and technology were historically championed by the ­political left, from Sylvia Pankhurst’s vision of ‘a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume’, to Harold Wilson’s vision of a nation forged in the white heat of the scientific revolution. Under today’s postmodern gloom, such sentiments seem naïve and the post-industrial information society that mixes a green pastoral nostalgia with small, personalised and self-expressive information technologies has much greater appeal. But the rise in this internetcentric anti-industry politics, casting itself as a radical alternative to the ruling ideology, has emerged along with deindustrialisation in the West and the rise of finance in Ireland, as capital finds ways to liberate itself from the burden of making things. When internet boosters are not condemning the productive economy, they are claiming it no longer exists. John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the hacker and internet freedom organisation, wrote a rather cringe worthy but stylistically influential manifesto in 1996 entitled A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which declared ‘Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the home of Mind. On behalf of the future I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather’.42

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In 1976 Baudrillard wrote, ‘No more myths of production, no more content of production: GNPs merely recount a numerical, statistical growth, void of meaning – an inflation of accounting signs’.43 In 1988 at a speech in the University of Moscow, Ronald Reagan explained: ‘In the New Economy human invention increasingly makes physical resources obsolete. We’re breaking through the material conditions of existence’.44 Former editor of Wired magazine Chris Anderson claimed that nanotechnology ‘promises to turn manufacturing into yet another information industry, as custom-designed molecules self-assemble’.45 In After the New Economy, Doug Henwood’s polemic after which this chapter takes its name, he describes the ubiquity of this set of ideas in the mid-nineties as ‘the latest incarnation of the old elite desire to put workers and the ugly things that sometimes come with them out of sight.’46 Post-material values, free culture and austerity chic With rising youth unemployment and mass youth emigration, the Irish government began an internship scheme in 2011 called Job Bridge. The term ‘internship’ gave a rather unconvincing creative economy spin to what was typically unskilled labour in exchange for social welfare. In many cases, this scheme allowed massively profitable companies who did not require and were not providing significant skills training to hire service sector staff for free through government subsidy. Meanwhile, the Irish apprenticeship system for young people remains of the poorest quality in Western Europe. But the respectability of internship culture, an outrageous system of unpaid labour, did not originate from the shopping centres, petrol stations and hotels that today benefit from the scheme. It was given its enduring glamour with the allure of cultural capital that came from the creative economy, and was given an edgy veneer of the post-material values of free culture by the early hackers who preached the virtues of voluntary labour and who went on to be the architects of Silicon Valley and of the new economy. Kevin Kelly, who preached liberalisation and privatisation in the 1990s, argued that the ‘new web’, where people ‘work toward a common goal and share their products in common ... contribute labour without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge’, constituted a ‘digital socialism’.47 In 2009, former Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson, wrote a kind of countercultural business manual, Free: The Future of a Radical Price,48 in which he explains how business must adapt to the digital race to the bottom, as automation and information abundance undercut existing profit models. Unlimited downloading and free culture, all hostile to

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monetising culture, were encapsulated in Stewart Brand’s hacker slogan ‘information wants to be free’. Job Bridge would have been unthinkable if the cultural and aesthetic work had not been done for them. During the period since the bailout in Ireland, a DIY free culture ethic has seen the proliferation of free events, free magazines and endlessly free online content in countercultural circles. But in each case, these anti-establishment gestures were made possible by massive amounts of free labour. Echoing Castells’ characterisation of the spirit of the ‘no collar worker’, Anderson celebrated the ‘gift economy’ of the internet based on community, personal growth and self-actualisation, ‘doing things we like without pay makes us happier than the work we do for a salary’.49 As Doug Henwood has argued, these ideas of post-materiality, casting aside that old shallow materialistic wages-for-work paradigm, also gave a potent ideological boost to those seeking to outsource labour, automate industry and decrease the stability of their workers’ terms of employment. ‘To be human is, in almost every case, to crave two things above all else: intimacy and information. The Internet offers us a superabundance of both, which is one of the reasons it sends existing power structures into panic’50 wrote radical Twitter personality and young feminist voice of the Occupy movement, Laurie Penny. But Jodi Dean has offered quite a different critique, arguing that the economic mode ascendant in the age of the internet, which she calls communicative capitalism, ‘strengthens the grip of neoliberalism. Our every day practices of searching and linking, our communicative acts of discussing and disagreeing, performing and posing, intensify our dependence on the information networks crucial to financial and corporate dominance of neoliberalism. Communicative capitalism captures our political interventions, formatting them as contributions to its circuits of affect and entertainment.’51 Penny’s is a common sentiment among internet boosters but she is also expressing the post-material values that originate with Bell’s Commission on the Year 2000. For the Communist reformers of the late 1950s, primitive accumulation and industrialisation had been reached, while in the US, Rostow and Galbraith asserted that America should pioneer a new stage of growth, in which the completed satisfaction of material necessities would lead to a society based on post-scarcity desires. The Bell commission helped to plan this transition, which placed information technology at the heart of its vision. In the post-material economy, autonomy and self-expression, ‘intimacy and information’, rank higher in the symbolic order as a measure of progress than material concerns such as food and housing or, in its post-material expression, are more important than material greed. Social media has reinvigorated the idea

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of what Barry Wellman called the ‘the internet way of life’, meaning that people in the networked individualist post-industrial West prefer, in Paul Mason’s words ‘multiple networks, flat hierarchies and weak commitments’.52 But as James Heartfield has put it, the prevalence of the postmaterial approach to need and desire ‘reflects the fact that the contest over production – the dispute between the workers and employers over their respective share of the product – has been shut down. What the post-materialists are saying is not that production need not take place, but rather that it is a question of no real importance.’53 Across the financialised West, countercultural aesthetics romanticise the transition of old industrial cities into postmodern playgrounds, in which the triumph of desire – creativity, self-expression, self-actualisation – over need is expressed through pop-up spaces in abandoned warehouses and urban gardens in former high rise social housing projects. Cities like Detroit and Berlin are said to be at the forefront of turning post-industrial gloom into a bourgeois bohemian paradise of high-tech start-ups, urban farming, organic markets and the creative economy. This gentrifying hipster aesthetic was parodied in the viral YouTube song Being a Dickhead’s Cool: ‘Got on the train from Cambridgeshire. Moved down to an East London flat … 20–20 vision, just a pair of empty frames. Dressing like a nerd although I never got the grades. I remember when the kids at school would call me names. Now we’re taking over their estates.’ One prolific and influential Irish blogger on city life, food and tech culture described the hip Fumbally Café, part of a larger start-up development block: My ambition is to make Dublin more like Berlin one day and get rid of all the poncey bullshit like licensing laws that say no selling booze after 10.30, no drinking in parks, no pets on public transport and all the other anal laws our gobshite politicians force us to live with. Cafes are a huge part of Berlin culture and I’ve finally found one in Dublin that ticks all the boxes. Full of hipsters, check. Reasonably priced, check. Healthy food and drink, check. In a dodgy area, check. People with macbooks everywhere working on start-up type stuff, check.54

This aesthetic brings together an anti-authority, anti-government, and libertarian sentiment with a kind of hipster gentrification and a love of social media and the post-industrial. In response to similar poses among Berlin’s creative economy and start-up pioneers, one German business consultant put it succinctly: ‘Instead of pilgrimages to San Francisco, start-up founders should travel to southern Germany. This is the home of the Mittelstand, the small and medium-size enterprises that are the reason for Germany’s success as an export-driven nation.’55 Contrary to the narrative of the urban pioneer and the young hip tech entrepre-

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neur, it is the strength of this productive indigenous economy, producing unglamorous products in the unhip heartland of Germany for export, benefiting from the nation’s apprenticeship system, which produces the kind of economic growth that those who glamourise Berlin’s creative economy benefit from but remain blissfully ignorant of. In Ireland too, a countercultural aesthetic glamourises a dismal economic reality and low economic horizons. ‘Yes, the city is broke. Yes, properties lie empty. Yes, it’s like the 1980s all over again’ conceded the Guardian when characterising Dublin in 2010, before adding: ‘local artists, designers and writers are making the most of the situation … They have taken over closed-down shops, unused garages and vacant warehouses, and turned them into spaces for art exhibitions, performances and gigs.’56 The Irish capital had become an exciting ‘city of pop up spaces’ made from ironic temporary reworkings of the ruins of the Celtic Tiger era. This was one of the more flattering portrayals of a period in which Ireland was seeing the biggest upward transfer of wealth in the history of the state and the state subsiding of property speculation that resulted in such ‘spaces’. Another such project involved an online crowd sourced pop-up park, built on the site of the demolished Dominick Street social housing project. The site has been described by the Irish Times as a ‘waste of space’57 but it had been earmarked for Public Private Partnership regeneration. As property prices and thus the expected profits from the rent seeking venture declined, the developer McNamara/Castlethorn pulled out, leaving the site empty.58 The National Assets Management Agency, a government project that shelters property speculators from the discipline of the market, has allowed many buildings to go unused throughout this post-bailout period. The pop-up park, much celebrated in the Irish media for its quirky hipster chic and its edible urban garden plants, teamed up with community groups, drawing in some people formerly from the Occupy movement and with some sympathy from the left. But its effect was, like so many pop-up ventures, to glamourise economic failure and the rolling back of the state’s role in providing basic services, along with the expansion of its role in protecting investors, writ large in the form of demolished housing as ironic countercultural playground. The park used online crowd funding and utilised social media to great effect. The aesthetic and political roots of such pop-up enterprises, Owen Hatherley has argued, lie in the history of squatting, the relational art movement and what Hakim Bey called the ‘temporary ­autonomous zone’, later derided by Murray Bookchin as a kind of ‘lifestyle anarchism’. The temporary autonomous zone, Bey argued, should create a temporary

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space in the present for eluding formal structures of control, such as the state, taboos and constraining social norms. He took inspiration from what he called ‘pirate utopias’, an enormously influential idea on hacker culture, and argued that attempts to form a permanent culture or politics inevitably deteriorates into a structured system that stifles individual creativity, a view we can see echoed in the Occupy movement. These seemingly unrelated tendencies – the IT start-ups, the idea of free labour as a virtue, the hatred of industry and large ambitious infrastructural projects, the suspicion of the modern mixed with a love of light, individual ego-centred technologies, the love of the temporary and the suspicion of political institutions and organisations – all unknowingly share a linked history. The hipster blogging anti-authority sentiments from the Fumbally Café, shares his vision of a post-industrial creative and knowledge economy with Enda Kenny. Those who evoke the imaginary of pastoral scenes mixed with digital technologies, tweeting against infrastructure, share an aesthetic that began in the Cold War research facilities, was adapted by the back-to-the-land movement and is today transmitted through the dominant ideology of Silicon Valley. Rather than ‘kicking off everywhere’, the forms of anti-organisational, self-expressive, social media-centric protest we have seen in this period, with its DIY aesthetic and distrust of political organisations and big trade unions, has appealed to a prevalent crippling antipolitics. Looking back, it has produced weakness and incoherence but also a flattering feeling of democratic self-expression for a small group of Twitter politicos, bloggers, pop-up space collectives, romantic anticapitalist occupiers and others. While elsewhere there has been a rich left critique of social media evangelism, in Ireland right and left opinion has lined up neatly into Luddite and cyberutopian, respectively, with depressing regularity, typically casting the newspapers, who pay their staff, as establishment squares who need to get with the times. Since the bank bailout and throughout the period of plummeting public and private investment that has followed, we have seen a constellation of putative alternative voices amplified by social media that have echoed new economy state ideology and given an unwitting countercultural sheen to an ascendant mode of investment-averse, post-industrial western capitalism. If the primary myth at the heart of the ideology of the new economy is that an economy can be built on information and knowledge alone, that ideology is as strong today as it was in the mid-1990s when Wired ran their belligerent ‘You got a problem with that?’ cover. The anti-industry digital pastoral aesthetic that the new economy brings together appeals to those wishing to remove themselves from the fallen productive realm altogether, but the left’s role should be

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to do precisely the opposite. Just as an economy can’t be sustained on finance, speculation and tech start-ups, an alternative can’t be built from pop-up spaces, urban gardens and tweets. Notes   1 Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy (London: Penguin, 1999).   2 Doug Henwood, After the New Economy: The Binge … And The Hangover That Won’t Go Away (New York: The New Press, 2003), p. 3.   3 Brad Wieners and Jennifer Hillner, ‘Silicon Envy’, Wired, September 1998. Available at: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/6.09/silicon.html. Con­­­ sulted 4 March 2011.   4 Editorial, ‘Ireland shines’, The Economist, 15 May 15 1997. Available at: www.economist.com/node/149333. Consulted 13 March 2013.  5 Michael Taft, ‘Towards a new economic narrative’, Irish Left Review, 26 November 2009. Available at: www.irishleftreview.org/2008/11/26/ economic-narrative/. Consulted 13 March 2013.   6 Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’, Science as Culture, 6 (1) (1996), pp. 44–72.  7 Michael Hennigan, ‘Ireland as “global technology hub” or a fantasy?’, Finfacts, 2 December 2013. Available at: www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/ article_1026918.shtml. Consulted 19 June 2014.   8 Barry Wellman, ‘Little boxes, glocalization, and networked individualism’, in Makato Tanabe, Peter van den Besselaar and Toru Ishida (eds), Digital Cities II: Computational and Sociological Approaches (Berlin: SpringerVerlag, 2002), pp. 10–25.   9 Chris Anderson, ‘Q&A with Clay Shirky on Twitter and Iran’,TED blog, 16 June 2009. Available at: http://blog.ted.com/2009/06/16/qa_with_clay_sh/. Consulted 24 June 2013. 10 Manuel Castells, ‘The disgust becomes a network’, Adbusters, 2 August 2011. Available at: www.adbusters.org/magazine/97/manuel-castells.html. Consulted 14 July 2012. 11 Heather Brooke, The Revolution will be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War (New York: Random House, 2012). 12 Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). p. 421. 13 Bernard E. Harcourt, ‘Occupy Wall Street’s political disobedience’, New York Times, 13 October 2011. Available at: http://opinionator.blogs. nytimes.com/2011/10/13/occupy-wall-streets-political-disobedience/?_ php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0. Consulted 23 August 2013. 14 Paul Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions (London: Verso, 2012), p. 134. 15 Helena Sheehan, ‘Occupying Dublin: considerations at the crossroads’, Irish Left Review, 19 January 2012. Available at: www.irishleftreview. org/2012/01/19/occupying-dublin-considerations-crossroads/. Consulted

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14 July 2013. 16 Michael Hennigan, ‘Irish innovation: Ireland’s faith-based goal to create world-class knowledge economy by 2013 – success or failure?’, Finfacts, 15 October 2012. Available at: www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/ article_1025039.shtml. Consulted 12 September 2013. 17 Michael Hennigan, ‘Irish innovation: startup fever and Ireland’s dumb enterprise policy – Part 1’, Finfacts, 13 March 2014. Available at: www. finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1027422.shtml. Consulted 13 September 2014. 18 Press Association, ‘Ireland “capital of digital world”’, Irish Times, 30 October 2013. Available at: www.independent.ie/irish-news/ireland-capitalof-digital-world-29709926.html. Consulted 14 January 2014. 19 ICT Ireland, ‘The global technology hub: how Ireland enables success for international and indigenous technology companies’, October 2013. Available at: www.ictireland.ie/Sectors/ICT/ICT.nsf/vPages/Papers_and_Sector_ Data~the-global-technology-hub/$file/The+Global+Technology+Hub+ICT +Ireland+ISA.pdf. Consulted 3 March 2014. 20 Fintan O’Toole, Ship of Fools: How Corruption and Stupidity Sank the Celtic Tiger (London: Faber & Faber, 2009). 21 Hennigan, ‘Irish innovation: Ireland’s faith-based goal’. 22 Hennigan, ‘Irish innovation: startup fever and Ireland’s dumb enterprise policy – Part 1’. 23 Michael Hennigan, ‘Knowledge workers in Ireland; low-paid manufacturing grafters in China? – Part 2’, Finfacts, 12 June 2014. Available at: www. finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1027801.shtml. Consulted 8 August 2014. 24 Michael Hennigan, ‘Up to 90% of US high tech startups fail; system of failure by design? – Part 2’, Finfacts, 13 May 2014. Available at: www.finfacts.ie/ irishfinancenews/article_1027663.shtml. Consulted 8 August 2014. 25 Michael Hennigan, ‘Irish economy: innovation, a failed enterprise policy and inconvenient facts for 2013’, Finfacts, 20 December 2012. Available at: www. finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1025364.shtml. Consulted 8 August 2014. 26 Stewart Brand, ‘We owe it all to the hippies’, Time, 1 March 1995. Available at: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,982602,00. html. Consulted 14 March 2012. 27 Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 28 Barbrook and Cameron, ‘The Californian ideology’. 29 Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 2001). 30 Gabriella Coleman, ‘Hacker politics and publics’, Public Culture, 23 (3 65) (2011), pp. 511–16. 31 Richard Barbrook, Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global village (London: Pluto Press, 2007). 32 Daniel Bell, ‘The coming of the post-industrial society’, The Educational Forum, Vol. 40, No. 4 (May 1976), pp. 574–9.

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33 Jason Walsh, ‘The untold Story of Irish austerity’, Economia, 22 June 2014. Available at: http://economia.ie/ec/2014/the-untold-story-of-irish-austerity/0622/. Consulted 12 July 2014. 34 Michael Burke, ‘Pressing on both sides of the see-saw’, Notes on the Front, 2 April 2014. Available at: http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/political economy/2014/04/pressing-on-both-sides-of-the-see-saw.html. Consulted 17 May 2014. 35 Engineers Ireland, ‘State of Ireland, 2014 Report’, Engineers Ireland, 21 October 2013. Available at: www.engineersireland.ie/EngineersIreland/ media/SiteMedia/communications/publications/EI_Report_TheStateOfIreland_2014_Web.pdf. Consulted 1 September 2014. 36 Forfás, ‘Ireland’s broadband performance and policy actions’, Forfás, October 2010. Available at: www.forfas.ie/media/forfas100122-Broadband-Benchmarking-Ireland.pdf. Consulted 4 July 2014. 37 Richard Brautigan, ‘All watched over by machines of loving grace’, Brautigan.net. Available at: www.brautigan.net/machines.html. Consulted 10 April 2010. 38 Kevin Kelly, ‘Hive mind’, Whole Earth Review, 82 (1994), p. 82. 39 Peter Miller, Smart Swarm (London: Collins, 2014). 40 Dani Rodrik, ‘Has globalization gone too far?’, Challenge (1998). 41 UNESCO, ‘Deputy UN chief calls for urgent action to tackle global sanitation crisis’, UN News Centre, 21 March 2013. Available at: www.un.org/apps/ news/story.asp?NewsID=44452&Cr=sanitation&Cr1=#.U7D656Us1g3. Consulted 23 March 2014. 42 John Perry Barlow (2006), A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996. Available at: https://homes. eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final. Html. Consulted 15 January 2008. 43 Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death (London: Sage, 1993). 44 Ronald Reagan, ‘Moscow State University Speech’, 31 May 1988. Available at: www.speeches-usa.com/Transcripts/016_reagan.html. Consulted 15 January 2009. 45 Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (New York: Random House, 2009), p. 83. 46 Henwood, After the New Economy. 47 Kevin Kelly, ‘The new socialism’, Wired, 23 June 2009. Available at: www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2009/07/features/the-new-socialism. Consulted 10 February 2010. 48 Anderson, Free. 49 Ibid., p. 153. 50 Laurie Penny, Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 51 Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), p. 2. 52 Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, p. 130. 53 James Heartfield, Need and Desire in the Post-Material Economy (Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University Press, 1998).

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54 Niall Harbison, ‘Dublin’s most hipster friendly eatery – The Fumbally’, Lovin’ Dublin. Available at: http://lovindublin.com/reviews/cafe/dublinsmost-hipster-friendly-eatery-the-fumbally/. Consulted 12 September 2014. 55 Igor Schwarzmann, ‘What can Germany teach us about sustainable startups?’, World Economic Forum. 17 January 2014. Available at: http:// forumblog.org/2014/01/wwhy-need-european-tech-start-ups/. Consulted 20 August 2014. 56 Richard Conway, ‘Dublin’s independent arts scene is a silver lining in the recession-hit city’, Guardian. 22 November 2010. Available at: www. theguardian.com/travel/2010/nov/22/dublin-arts-scene-recession. Consulted 25 January 2014. 57 Patrick Freyne, ‘No longer a waste of space as group aims to create parks and recreation around city’, Irish Times, 13 July 2013. Available at: www. irishtimes.com/news/environment/no-longer-a-waste-of-space-as-groupaims-to-create-parks-and-recreation-around-city-1.1462080. Consulted 14 March 2014. 58 Provisional University, ‘Thoughts on Granby Park’, Provisional University. Available at: http://provisionaluniversity.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/ thoughts-on-granby-park/. Consulted 26 September 2013.

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Part II

Casualties of the crisis in Ireland

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Ireland’s disappeared: suicide, violence and austerity Michael Cronin

Introduction The billboard says it all. Or does it? In an advertising campaign mounted by an Irish newspaper over the slogan ‘We are defined by the choices we make’, there are two contrasting pictures. On the left-hand side, there is the photograph of a rioting crowd in Athens with a member of the Greek riot police prominent in the foreground. On the right, there is a photograph of O’Connell Street in Dublin, with the General Post Office and the Spire but, significantly, no people. The diptych is a slick expression of the truism of external commentary. The streets of Madrid and Athens are filled with angry, frequently violent demonstrations against the cuts to income and living standards but Ireland’s Poster Boys and Girls of Austerity shun the publicity of the Crossroads for the penitent stoicism of keeping calm and carrying on. As Brendan Walsh, one of the apostles of the macroeconomic consensus in Ireland, put it in the conclusion to a Working Paper on ‘Well-Being and Economic ­Conditions in Ireland’, ‘The population appears to be resilient in the face of economic hardship.’1 This chapter will argue that the years since the onset of the recession in Ireland in 2008 have been characterised not by passivity and quietism but by extreme violence. This violence is endemic and routinely misrepresented. More importantly, the nature of the violence itself illustrates the changing nature of political opposition and the role of suicide and self-harm in restructuring the conflict between the victims of recession and between the haves and the have-nots in situations of worsening inequality. Suicide and disadvantage In a study of mortality rates in 26 European (EU) countries between 1970 and 2007, David Stuckler, Sanjay Basu, Marc Suhrcke, Adam Coutts and Martin McKee noted that for every 1 per cent increase

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in ­unemployment, there was a 0.79 per cent rise in suicides at ages younger than 65 years.2 Using multivariate regression, correcting for population ageing, past mortality and employment trends and countryspecific differences in health-care infrastructure, the authors of the study singled out suicide as significantly associated with the effects of economic crises as ‘[r]ising unemployment had no effect on other causes of death assessed’. In a follow up article, the authors looked at the effects of the 2008 recession on public health. Official unemployment in both preand post-2004 EU member states did not increase until 2009, after the banking crisis, and then job losses increased dramatically, rising to 37 per cent above the 2007 level in both parts of Europe. The downward trend in suicides seen in both groups of countries was reversed almost at once. The 2008 increase was less than 1 per cent in the new member states but it had increased by almost 7 per cent in the old and in 2009 it increased in both.3 As Stuckler et al. noted,4 ‘the countries facing the most severe financial reversals of fortune, such as Greece and Ireland, had greater rises in suicides (17% and 13%, respectively) than did the other countries, and in Latvia suicides increased by more than 17 per cent between 2007 and 2008’. In a further study on recession and suicide in 50 US states for the period 1999–2010, it was found that a one percentage point rise in unemployment was associated with a rise of 0.99 per cent in the suicide rate.5 In an article published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2014, Aaron Reeves, Martin McKee and David Stuckler concluded that suicide rates either increased (for most countries in Europe, where suicide rates had been falling, and Canada, where rates had been stable) or accelerated (for the United States and Poland, where suicide rates had already been rising) after the onset of the latest economic crisis. Their conclusion was that ‘there have been at least 10,000 more economic suicides than would have been expected in the European Union, Canada and the USA since the Great Recession began in 2007’.6 Brendan Walsh and Dermot Walsh in a study that took in the initial period of the recession in Ireland claimed: ‘The Irish time series data for the period 1968–2009 support the hypotheses that rising unemployment and higher levels of alcohol consumption have led to increased suicide mortality among younger males’.7 As the Report on the All-Ireland Young Men and Suicide Project pointed out, suicide has been a major cause of death among younger males (aged 15–24 years) on the island of Ireland in recent years. In the period 2002–2012, the rate of male deaths among 15–24-year-olds was five times higher than that of the female rate. The suicide rate among young Irish men was among the highest in the EU.8

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The tendency to focus on age and stress aggregate gross domestic product data can, however, obscure an even more alarming relationship between suicide and socio-economic disadvantage that was highlighted in a 2012 Samaritans report entitled Men, Suicide and Society. The authors argue that ‘there is a gradient in suicide risk by occupational social class (and other markers of socio-economic position): those in lowest socio-economic groups and living in the most deprived areas are ten times more at risk of suicide than those in the most affluent group living in the most affluent areas’.9 In a summation of a comprehensive survey of the economic literature on suicide, Brendan Kennelly and Sheelah Connolly state that ‘[w]hile exceptions can be found, the balance of evidence suggests that, controlling for other risk factors, including the presence of psychiatric illnesses, being unemployed, having a low income or living in a socio-economically deprived area increase one’s risk of dying by suicide’.10 If the empirical findings of these various studies repeatedly bear out the link between economic crisis and disadvantage and the incidence of suicide and extreme forms of self-harm, the question that might be asked is why the response to recession and disadvantage should take this form. In other words, why across the world from Foxconn employees in China to Greek pensioners in Athens, should suicide be the preferred choice to the intolerable conditions of lives lived in the shadow of dispossession and exploitation? A way to answer this question is to consider briefly two significant changes in the nature of economic organisation in recent decades, the first relating to the nature of devolved or transferred cost and the second to new regimes of entrepreneurialism. Devolved cost The historian and cultural commentator Tony Judt, in a work published shortly before his death, claimed that there was something profoundly wrong about the way people lived their lives in the contemporary world: For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material selfinterest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but we have no idea what they are worth.11

Even if the ‘we’ in Judt’s claim needs to be qualified and refers to particular parts of the planet where material self-interest can be distinguished from physical survival, he diagnoses a recurrent and habitual concern with cost as the ultimate arbiter of what is of value in many contemporary societies subject to the dictates and constraints of the market economy.

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To take one contemporary example, it is often the costs associated with the provision of translation and interpreting services for migrants which becomes a core argument in attempts to remove translation altogether from societies and impose a lingua franca. One commentator, for example, on the translation situation in the United Kingdom had the following to say: It’s a shocking figure: more than £100m was spent in the past year on translating and interpreting for British residents who don’t speak English. In the name of multiculturalism, one Home Office-funded centre alone provides these services in 76 languages […] The financial cost is bad enough, but there is a wider problem about the confused signals we are sending to immigrant communities. We are telling them they don’t have to learn English, let alone integrate.12

What is noteworthy is the way the idea of cost itself is constructed. Costs are always a cost to someone and it is that someone who goes on to define what a cost is but strictly, of course, in their own terms. Implicit in Rahman’s argument is the contention that if everyone learned English the unnecessary costs associated with translation would disappear. It is a variation on an argument that is articulated in critiques of the foundational multilingualism of supra-national bodies such as the EU. Large sums of money, it is argued, currently being spent on translation and interpreting services would be saved if the sole working language of the EU was a vehicular language like English.13 What these arguments that are centred around cost fail to make apparent is the equally onerous costs of having to resort to a lingua franca. If one takes the example of English, vast sums of money are spent by governments around the globe to teach the language to its citizens.14 This is a cost that is not borne by English speakers themselves but is incurred by those who do not speak the language and feel the necessity to learn it. In addition, the circulation of cultural goods, such as music, cinema and literature, in English does not automatically have to bear the translation costs that are almost axiomatic for non-Anglophone cultures which seek global circulation of their own cultural goods. In a sense, what is at play here is a practice of what might be termed transferred or devolved cost, which is characteristic of the redefinition of consumption in digital contexts. In a practice that originated with low-cost airline operators, intending passengers are invited or, in the case of some airlines, obliged to print out their boarding passes in advance.15 This entails the passenger having access to the equipment (computer and printer) and internet connection which allows him or her to enter the necessary details and print out the pass. Both the equipment and the connection are a cost to the passenger or to the entity that has made these available to the passenger.

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There is the further opportunity cost of the time spent accessing the site, filling in the details and printing out the pass. This is the time that the passenger could have been doing something else. In short, what were formerly production costs for the airline, paying someone to prepare and print out your boarding pass, now become consumption costs for the passenger. Digital technology allows the transfer of the cost from the producer to the consumer. The labour is done by the passenger not the airline operator so that the surplus value accrues not to the passenger but to the airline. When the argument is advanced that the use of a lingua franca eliminates translation costs what one has, in effect, is another form of transferred cost. Whether as consumers of the lingua franca or potential producers of the language, those who do not speak it must bear the often considerable costs of acquisition. These costs include not only the monies actually spent on formal education but also the opportunity costs of learning the language, that is, the time that could have been spent pursuing another potentially lucrative activity. Thus, while much has been said in the context of translation about how digital technology can reduce translation costs, little thought has been given to the notion of cost itself and how it is constructed and by whom. Translation is always a ‘cost’ to the dominant language but the dominant language is supposedly cost free. The costs disappear from view, discreetly transferred to the speakers of the non-dominant idioms. In effect, what is happening in these instances of devolved cost is that the role of producer and consumer becomes increasingly blurred. Tasks that were formerly undertaken by the producers are now transferred to the consumers as an extra cost to the consumer. George Ritzer and Nathan Jurgensen used a term, ‘prosumption’, first coined by Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave16 to show how, for example, in the world of interactive, bi-directional Web 2.0. technologies, consumers act as producers (prosumers) to create value for companies without receiving wages.17 Erick Schonfeld in an article for the new technology site, TechCrunch claimed that: Facebook has long relied on its own users to help translate the site into more than 65 different languages. Now, Facebook wants to unleash its army of volunteer translators on other sites and apps across the web. Any site or app that use Facebook Connect can now tap into the Facebook Community to get help in translating their site into any language that Facebook translations supports […] The Internet is a global platform, which makes translation a must for sites both large and small. But the effort it takes to translate a site into many languages is expensive and time-consuming. Getting the users to do the heavy lifting is appealing.

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Even if the translations aren’t top notch off the bat, they will improve over time if enough people who speak a particular language care enough about a site to fix it.18

What we have here is an instance of the devolved costs which we mentioned earlier, where the costs of providing information, this time in translation, are devolved or transferred to the users of the information rather than to the service providers. The users become not only a free source of commercial information but they further evolve into a free source of commercially valuable translation services. What is rarely transparent in the communitarian or utopian rhetoric around social networks is how transparency itself becomes a prime site of commercial opportunity for private interests. The more data the networks contain about personal tastes, preferences, opinions, the more valuable the data to everyone from supermarket chains to state security agencies. The prevalence of the paradigm of prosumption and the constant drive to transfer or devolve costs from the producer to the consumer so as to enhance profit margins has arguably worked its way into the social body itself. In 2013, when events were held to commemorate the centenary of the Dublin Lockout – the major industrial dispute between the employers and workers in Ireland in the early part of the twentieth century – the role of police brutality was all to apparent. Whether it was the deaths and hundred of injuries that resulted from the baton charge by the Dublin Metropolitan Police on Sackville Street (O’Connell Street) on 30 August 1913 or the death of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union official Michael Byrne after torture in a police cell, the choreography of violence was all too familiar.19 On one side, there were assembled the state, employers, police and an assortment of hired heavies (Alice Begley, a worker, was shot dead by one of these on her way back from a union office carrying a food parcel) and on the other, there were the workers who eventually resorted to forming their own militia, the Irish Citizens’ Army, to protect demonstrations. Here, in a sense, the private sector and its state allies ‘produced’ the violence against the workers who ‘consumed’ the brutality directed against them. In other words, the private sector and state devoted substantial resources to producing violence directed against workers. The workers did not pay for nor produce the violence to which they were subject. The notion of the costs involved in the production of state coercion has a more contemporary resonance in the continual references to the monies involved in the policing of the Corrib Gas protest where 75 per cent of the complaints about police misconduct made to the Garda Ombudsman’s Commission were deemed to be admissible for investigation. In an article on the retirement of Chief Superintendent Tony McNamara

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who was responsible for policing the protest from the outset, Lorna Siggins reminded readers that the ‘Department of Justice’s latest figure for the Garda overtime cost for Corrib since 2006 is €12.6 million to the middle of December 2009’.20 What is explicit here is the cost to the producer (in this case, the state) of the force directed against protesters. The protestors, in other words, do not bear the direct costs of the baton charges and other forms of physical violence directed against them. In the case of suicide during times of economic crisis, however, a radically different pattern emerges. What we observe is the conflation of protest and prosumption. The cost of dealing with opposition to economic hardship and the decimation of public goods and services is transferred from the state and private security contractors to the victims of recession. It is the victims who become both the producers and the consumers of violence that will lead to their certain demise. In this way, the cost of repressing dissent is transferred from the state and private sector to those who are impoverished by job losses and drastic benefits cuts. In a study undertaken by the National Suicide Research Foundation which looked at 190 cases of suicide in Cork City and county between September 2008 and March 2011, almost 42 per cent of those who took their own lives were unemployed and 32 per cent worked or had worked in construction.21 In the macabre accountancy of the market economy, self-inflicted harm becomes the ultimate expression of transferred cost as the dispossessed and the disadvantaged become their own judge, jury and executioner. Entrepreneurialism Management science literature has made much in recent years of the notion of entrepreneurialism to describe behaviour whereby workers incorporate functions that were previously the sole reserve of management under Fordist regimes of the mass production of goods and mass provision of services.22 In the words of Scott Kushner, ‘the responsibilities of strategy development, accounting, invoicing, benefits administration, space management, procurement, and accounts management are assumed by enterprising freelancers, or workers who have been labelled “precarious”’.23 The dual logic of entrepreneurialism involves both the outsourcing of functions that were formerly carried out by head office, mentioned by Kushner, but also the devolution of a multiplicity of functions to workers themselves who, through the mediation of new technology, multi-task. They become, among other things, their own timekeepers (automated flexi-time systems), secretaries (word processing tools), accountants (automated payroll systems, online banking, revenue

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online services) and travel agents (online ticketing). Central to the notion of entrepreneurialism as transferred function is the notion of the individual taking on responsibility for, and becoming a curator of, their own lives. The multi-functionality of IT software – Microsoft Office performing a multiplicity of functions from indexer to accountant – provides an objective correlative for the relentless focus on the individual as the potential agent or administrator of any number of functions. It is in this context that Michel Foucault’s distinction between the prisoner and the debtor as symbols of their respective ages takes on a troubling resonance. Foucault argued that the prisoner was the emblematic figure of nascent modernity in that the mass organisation and regimentation of schools, hospitals and factories for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was inspired by rational utopias of discipline and control that were best exemplified in model prisons throughout the western world. In this regimen, the emphasis was on specified agents watching others. The lives of others were only interesting insofar as they could be observed and controlled. In late modernity, however, the figure of the prisoner has ceded to that of the debtor. What was already implicit in modernity, namely, the internalisation and the incorporation of external disciplines (the model pupil, the model prisoner, the model patient), is now pushed to its logical extreme where prisoners become their own jailers.24 The logic of debt which involves mortgaging the present to some future good means that the individual under the regimen of the entrepreneurial is subject to a form of ­relentless self-harrying where as putatively sovereign subject they become the wardens of their own financial conscience. The flattered subject of individual omnipotence becomes the bounded captive of economic reversal. The tragic aporia of the debtor turned jailer was highlighted at a coroner’s inquest in Clonmel, County Tipperary in May 2013. The coroner Paul Morris, commenting on the role of financial institutions in the suicide of a man in his 60s, claimed: ‘They treat you as a celebrity while you’re building up money and then, when things go wrong, they’re so aggressive that they can push a person over the edge’.25 Being pushed over the edge is the flipside of entrepreneurial ‘celebrity’ but the deadly irony is that it is the indebted not the creditors who administer the final blow. As the authors of the study published in The Lancet on the public health effect of economic crises note, ‘although the financial sector of an economy may be principally responsible for risk-taking related to the present economic crisis, the true costs of this risk-taking behaviour are to society as a whole’.26 A signal consequence, therefore, of a regime of transferred cost and the transferred functionality of entrepreneurialism is that the risks are indeed assumed by society as

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a whole as citizens increasingly assume the costs and policing of their own financial subjection. Taboo subjects Despite the considerable evidence of systematic inequalities in suicide risk associated with different indicators of social position,27 Stephen Platt has noted that there has been a ‘near universal failure to consider equality issues in both academic reviews of approaches to suicide prevention and the formulation of national suicide prevention strategies’.28 David Adams, an Irish Times columnist, claimed that ‘while suicide remains a taboo subject we will continue avoiding a much-needed open and honest public discussion on the subject’.29 What is even more striking, however, is the taboo around particular causes from those whose alleged brief is to prevent or contain suicide. The Young Men and Suicide Project was an initiative undertaken by the Men’s Health Forum in Ireland, and supported by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland. The aim of the initiative was to investigate and identify effective mental health promotion and suicide prevention work and recommend and pilot appropriate policy initiatives for the island of Ireland. In their Ministerial Foreword to the report on the project, Dr James Reilly, the Minister of Health in the Republic of Ireland and Mr Edwin Poots, Minster for Health, Social Services and Public Safety in the Northern Ireland Executive pledged their fulsome support: ‘We will make use of this work in our continued efforts to make a difference and save lives’.30 In the Executive Summary to the Report the authors acknowledge that ‘the recent spike in suicide rates among young males in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland coincides with the economic downturn and increasing levels of unemployment’.31 Leaving aside the coyness of the verb ‘coincides’, it is clear that there is an initial awareness of a socio-economic context to the incidence of suicide among young men in both jurisdictions. ‘Income inequality’ features as one of the risk factors for suicide in young men as well as the ‘socio-economic impact of the recession’ and ‘living and working conditions, unemployment and socio-economic status’. Referring implicitly to the research of Brendan Walsh and Dermot Walsh cited earlier, the authors concede ‘a causal link between rising unemployment and higher levels of alcohol consumption and increased suicide mortality among younger males’.32 However, when it comes to listing the two key factors that are ‘known to be effective in reducing suicide rates’, the reader is told that they are, ‘physician education in depression recognition and treatment’ and ‘restricting access to lethal means of suicide’.33

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The socio-economic context is wholly absent despite the fact that one of the articles listed in the bibliography of the Young Men and Suicide Project is the study by David Stuckler et al. which demonstrated that ‘for every US$10 higher investment in active labour market programmes there was 0.038% lower effect of a 1% rise in unemployment on suicide rates in people younger than 65 years’.34 In other words, more money spent on social protection and job creation projects means a noticeable reduction in the number of suicides. The authors of the Young Men and Suicide report are in no doubt about the gravity of the situation, ‘There can be no room for inertia or ambivalence – there is both a public health and a moral requirement to act’.35 However, not one single recommendation in the twelve key recommendations for action references the socio-economic context to suicide. The striking failure to engage with political economy is not shown by the subjects of the study itself, young men. The first issue that emerges from the Focus Group discussions is the ‘fears and struggles’ of young men, particularly ‘in relation to the economy, unemployment, ­ recession’.36 Their anger is directed specifically at ‘what they saw as the betrayal on the part of government in relation to key decisions about the country’s future, and about not having any input into decisionmaking at any level’.37 Thus the subjects of the report show a lucidity that is absent from the recommendations by the report’s authors. In Northern Ireland, the target area for the pilot intervention was the geographical catchment known as ‘Colin’ situated between Lisburn and West Belfast. Colin is made up of the housing developments of Poleglass, Twinbrook, Lagmore and Kilwee and has a population of approximately 30,000 people. The principal reasons for selecting the target area was due to the ‘high levels of male suicide within it, the level of health inequalities, and its disadvantaged status’.38 However, no element of the pilot intervention, a programme encouraging young men to seek help in times of difficulty, addressed the question of socioeconomic disadvantage. The relentless individualisation and psychologisation of responses to the suicide crisis in Ireland offers a disturbing parallel to the entrepreneurialist ideology that we mentioned earlier. For example, the pilot intervention proposed for the Republic of Ireland, the development of an online mental fitness programme for young men called ‘Work Out’, is explicitly based on the principles of ‘Cognitive B ­ ehavioural Therapy’,39 the preferred psychological paradigm for corporate management training.40 The very identification of the areas for the Work Out programme reflects the psycho-social imprint of the new managerialism:

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•  Being Practical •  Building Confidence •  Taking Control •  Being a Team Player41 The individualised mode of delivery through an online site further exacerbates the dilemmas of those caught on the cusp of a new individualism where all the means to determine the macro-economic futures of their lives have been removed by abstract and remote forms of technoeconomic governance. The flattered subject of the therapy talk of new media42 becomes the helpless object of high finance and low subvention. Thus, the specific ideology of entrepreneurialism which underpins the recourse to suicide and self-harm in straitened circumstances becomes the animating principle of policies that allegedly seek to alleviate the problem. Whatever the taboos about reporting or discussing suicide, the taboos around its political and economic causes are the most powerful of all. One telling example was provided in the article authored by Brendan Walsh and Dermot Walsh which described unemployment as an important contributory factor to suicide in Ireland alongside alcohol. The conclusion, however, completely ignored the socio-economic dimension to their findings and dwelled exclusively on the problem of the availability of alcohol.43 The focus on alcohol, of course, neatly sidesteps the connection between economic distress and alcohol abuse. In September 2013, the Minister with responsibility for Mental Health, Kathleen Lynch, spoke of the ‘enormous bearing’ of alcohol on suicide and self-harm rates in the Republic of Ireland but predictably failed to signal either the ‘enormous bearing’ of austerity on self-harm or of alcohol abuse as a self-destructive survival strategy.44 The fear environment As social protection diminishes in Ireland, Britain and elsewhere, and as collective structures of belonging, such as the Church, trade unions and political parties, experience their own crises of identity and adherence, a sense of individual vulnerability increases apace. In these circumstances, the only form of protection left to the individual is a version of civil protection afforded by what David Garland has called the ‘garrison state’.45 More CCTV, more police, more micro-managerialism, more mandatory prison sentences, more audits – in the garrison state the only antidote to fear is the endless extension of control. The retreat from social protection and larger collective structures of belonging is arguably part of a fundamental shift in contemporary ­societies from fear as an event to fear as an environment.46 Whereas

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previously, fear was localised in a specific time and place – a war that broke out, a famine that occurred, a natural catastrophe that was unleashed – fear now becomes generalised into a permanent condition. It is continuous rather than discrete. An illustration of the calamitous continuum of fear was provided in Ireland in 2010 where the anguish around the banking crisis gave way to the apocalyptic scenarios of the EU/IMF (International Monetary Fund) bailout and which in turn were naturalised as the catastrophic effects of snow, ice and flooding. What are the consequences of the emergence of a fear-environment, of the cultivation of anxiety and dread as the principal forms of communication and governance? In answering this question, we will examine different areas of contemporary Irish experience and explore the fallout from the instrumentalisation of fear. A conclusion reached by the Nyberg Commission of Investigation into the Irish banking crisis was the prevalence of ‘group think’ and a ‘herd instinct’ in the Irish banking system.47 The result was the unquestioning tendency to follow the example set by Anglo-Irish Bank in pursuit of grossly inflated speculative profits. Of course, one of the most powerful causes of ‘group think’ is fear of what the group or particular members of the group might think. In Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments on student subjects, they were prepared to inflict great pain on their victims once they felt that they had the approval of key authority figures.48 The worry of displeasing those in power overcame any residual scruples they had as to the morality of what they were doing. Christopher R. Browning in Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland details the appalling crimes committed by ordinary young German men against Jewish men, women and children.49 What emerges from the study is that the most powerful motive accounting for the men committing acts of unspeakable cruelty was a fear of censure, of being judged weak or cowardly by their peers. A striking feature in the run up to the banking collapse and bailout in Ireland was the pervasiveness of a rhetoric of intimidation. In the 2007 election the Irish electorate was told that if they did not vote for the governing party the party would indeed come to an end. Voting against the ruling doxa would be throwing away the benefits of unprecedented growth. The Opposition for its part was too afraid to challenge the economic and fiscal orthodoxy so that regime change was never likely.50 When the Irish state guarantee of deposits held in Irish banks was announced and subsequently passed by the Irish parliament in 2008 the recurrent tenor of the arguments was that in the absence of such a guarantee the ATMs would cease to function, social services would collapse and there would be food riots in the streets. As the scale of the

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banking crisis became evident and it was necessary to have recourse to an EU/IMF bailout, criticism of the bailout was deemed unpatriotic, a sure way to endanger Ireland’s position on the international money markets and the rejection of which would invite unmentionable economic and social disaster. A typical headline was provided by the Irish Times on the 10 June 2011, ‘Government warned not to backslide on bailout reforms’. Citing unnamed officials, Arthur Beesley, the European correspondent for the paper, claimed they ‘said anything which raised a doubt about the Government’s determination to proceed with the rescue plan was very unhelpful’. When the head of the European Central Bank JeanClaude Trichet was asked whether Irish ministers were wise to speculate publicly about a second bailout or longer loan maturities, Mr Trichet’s response was to call for ‘verbal discipline’.51 The fact that the ‘flexibility’ and ‘structural reforms’ that Mr Trichet and the unnamed officials so enthusiastically supported would involve dramatic pay cuts for the lowest paid workers in the society was a move that should not give rise to any public expression of doubt as to its political or ethical wisdom. All that mattered was that ‘verbal discipline’ was observed. Putting up and shutting up are, to paraphrase the title of one of Graham Greene’s wartime novels, part of the new Ministration of Fear in Ireland. A repeated feature, therefore, of recent Irish history is the recurrent instrumentalisation of fear. The paralysis of critical faculties through fear of dissent which brought about an unprecedented economic and fiscal crisis is further strengthened by the politics of anxiety mobilised to mute criticism of the highly questionable means used to the resolve the crisis. Rather than fearing fear, every means is used to make its presence more insidious and more threatening in political debate. What might be a typical feature of a society which is hostage to a culture of fear, anxiety and dread? One answer can be found in remarks made by an ex-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, in a speech he made to the New York Yacht Club on the 15 March 2011. He claimed, ‘The thing that has troubled me most, believe it or not, about this whole economic crisis in Ireland has been the rise in the suicide rate, not just among the young, where it was already too high, but among those in their prime working years who feel somehow that their whole lives have been robbed’.52 Each suicide is, of course, an individual tragedy, occasioned by a particular set of circumstances but complexity of causes does not mean absence of causes. Nor do all causes, as we saw at the outset of this chapter, have the same weighting. As social theorists from Émile Durkheim to Kieran Keohane and Carmen Kuhling have been swift to point out, there is a real sense in which suicide cannot be consid-

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ered in isolation from the society and economy in which it emerges, especially when the sheer number of cases of suicide and self-harm is so great that even a former US President is forced to sit up and take notice.53 The omnipresence of a culture of fear coupled with persistent economic disadvantage and an unrelenting assault on all forms of social protection provides an especially toxic framework for a society where Josephine Rigney, a suicide prevention officer for the Health Service Executive speaking to an Irish Rural Link event noted that ‘It’s two [suicides] a day in Ireland.’54 In 2011, the Republic of Ireland recorded the number of suicides was the highest on record at 554 – 59 more than in 2010.55 When dread and anxiety become the permanent horizon of media commentary and an instrument of public policy, it is hardly surprising that the socialisation of fear results in the extreme forms of self-harm and suicide. The only way out is down. So where are the missing figures from the Irish newspaper advertisement showing an empty O’Connell Street? One answer is that they are buried in Ireland’s suicide statistics. Los Desaparecidos, the Irish Disappeared, are not the victims of predatory military juntas or paramilitary nutting squads but the inevitable victims of the relentless violence of a culture of fear centred around debt and dispossession. One of the more telling moves by the Irish Central Bank in June 2013 was to reduce the protection to homeowners from excessive contact from banks: ‘While existing rules stipulate lenders can only contact borrowers three times a month, this has been dropped in favour of “proportionate” contact and lenders will be allowed to pay an unsolicited visit to a borrower’s home for the first time.’56 The corporate, individualising, ‘mental health’ strategies proposed as part of the means to combat suicide too often partake of the same structural violence that puts an end to so many lives on the island of Ireland with its unyielding emphasis on the entrepreneurial management of self. The highly publicised link between personal depression and suicide in the case of Robin Williams conceals an infinitely more insidious link between debt and self-destruction in contemporary societies.57 The haves in Irish society are engaged in a prolonged Dirty War against the most vulnerable, and the truth is not the only thing to disappear. We are, indeed, defined by the lethal choices that many are forced to make.

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Notes 1 Brendan Walsh, Well-Being and Economic Conditions in Ireland (Dublin: UCD Centre for Economic Research, 2011), p. 15. 2 David Stuckler, Sanjay Basu, Marc Suhrcke, Adam Coutts and Martin McKee, ‘The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe: an empirical analysis’, The Lancet, 374, 25 July (2009), pp. 315–23, p. 320. 3 David Stuckler, Sanja Basu, Marc Suhrcke, Adam Coutts and Martin McKee, ‘Effects of the 2008 recession on health: a first look at European data’, The Lancet, 378, 9 July (2011), pp. 124–5, p. 124. 4 Ibid., p. 125. 5 Aaron Reeves, David Stuckler, Martin McKee, David Gunnell, Shu-Sen Chang and Sanjay Basu, ‘Increase in state suicide rates in the USA during the economic recession’, The Lancet, 380, 24 November (2012), pp. 1813–14. 6 Aaron Reeves, Martin McKee and David Stuckler, ‘Economic suicides in the Great Recession in Europe and North America’, British Journal of Psychiatry 205 (2014), pp. 246–7. Available at: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/ early/2014/05/23/bjp.bp.114.144766.full.pdf+html. Consulted 13 July 2014. 7 Brendan Walsh and Dermot Walsh, ‘Suicide in Ireland: the influence of alcohol and unemployment’, The Economic and Social Review, 42, 1 (2011), pp. 27–47, p. 44. 8 Noel Richardson, Nicholas Clarke and Colin Fowler, Young Men and Suicide Project (Dublin: Men’s Health Forum in Ireland, 2013), p. 25. 9 Clare Wylie, Stephen Platt, Julie Brownlie, Amy Chandler, Sheelah Connolly, Rhiannon Evans, Brendan Kennelly, Olivia Kirtley, Graham Moore, Rory O’Connor and Jonathan Scourfield, Men, Suicide and Society (Ewell (Surrey): Samaritans, 2012), p. 4. 10 Brendan Kennelly and Sheelah Connolly, ‘Men, suicide and society: an economic perspective’, in Wylie et al., Men, Suicide and Society, p. 73. 11 Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land (London: Penguin, 2010), p. 1. 12 Zia Haider Rahman, ‘Hope of escape lost in translation’, The Sunday Times, 17 December 2006, p. 22. 13 Philippe van Parijs, ‘L’anglais lingua franca de l’union européenne: imperative de solidarité, source d’injustice, facteur de déclin?’, Économie Politique, 15, pp. 13–32. 14 François Grin, ‘On the costs of cultural diversity’, in Philippe van Parijs (ed.), Cultural Diversity Versus Economic Solidarity (Bruxelles: De Boeck Université, 2004), pp. 189–202. 15 See Michael Cronin, ‘The meaning of Ryanair’, Dublin Review of Books, 37, 17 June (2013). Available at: www.drb.ie/essays/the-meaning-of-ryanair. Consulted 24 June 2013. 16 Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Bantam, 1980). 17 George Ritzer and Nathan Jurgenson, ‘Production, consumption, prosumption: the nature of capitalism in the age of the digital “prosumer”’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 10, 1 (2010), pp. 13–36.

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18 Erick Schonfeld, ‘Facebook spreads its crowdsourced translations across the web, and the world’. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/29/ facebook-spreads-its-crowdsourced-translations-across-the-web-and-theworld. Consulted 3 July 2011. 19 Padraig Yeates, Lockout: Dublin 1913 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2001). 20 Lorna Siggins, ‘Retired garda defends force’s handling of Corrib protests’, Irish Times, 5 January 2010, p. 2. 21 Dan Buckley, ‘Suicide rise is linked to economy, says study’, The Irish Examiner, 2 June (2012), p. 5. 22 Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter, ‘Precarity as a political concept, or, Fordism as exception’, Theory, Culture and Society, 25, 7–8 (2008), pp. 51–72. 23 Scott Kushner, ‘The freelance translation machine: algorithmic culture and the invisible industry’, New Media and Society, 15, 8 (2013), 1241–58, p. 12. 24 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). See also Maurizio Lazzarato, La Fabrique de l’homme endetté: Essai sur la condition néolibérale (Paris: Éditions Amsterdam, 2011). 25 Conor Kane, ‘Coroner critcises banks after man dies’, Irish Times, 25 May 2013, p. 5. 26 Stuckler et al., ‘The public health effect of economic crises’, p. 322. 27 These include labour market status, occupational social class, education, income, housing tenure and labour market position at the level of the individual and socio-economic deprivation at aggregate level. 28 Stephen Platt, ‘Inequalities and suicidal behaviour’, in Roy O’Connor, Stephen Platt and Jacki Gordon (eds), International Handbook of Suicide Prevention: Research, Policy and Practice (Oxford: Wiley: Blackwell, 2011), p. 211. 29 David Adams, ‘Flawed policy of ignoring suicide must be reversed’, Irish Times, 20 June 2013, p. 16. 30 Richardson, Clarke and Fowler, Young Men and Suicide Project. 31 Ibid., p. 8. 32 Ibid., p. 9. 33 Ibid., p. 10. 34 Stuckler et al., ‘The public health effect of economic crises’, p. 321. The figure is $10 per capita. 35 Richardson, Clarke and Fowler, Young Men and Suicide, p. 13. 36 Ibid., p. 87. 37 Ibid., p. 87. 38 Ibid., p. 92. 39 Ibid., p. 102. 40 See Jason Harvey, Achieve Anything In Just One Year: Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals (Halifax: Amazing Life Press, 2010). 41 Richardson, Clarke and Fowler, Young Men and Suicide, p. 102. 42 See Thomas de Zengotita, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Our World and the Way We Live In It (London: Bloomsbury, 2007).

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43 Walsh and Walsh, ‘Suicide in Ireland’, pp. 44–5. Brendan Walsh, Emeritus Professor of Economics at University College Dublin, was quick to recant on even this highly qualified admission between unemployment and suicide and went on to argue that there was no link between suicide and unemployment in Ireland (see Walsh, Well-Being and Economic Conditions in Ireland). In a use of statistics that was highly tendentious, to say the least, Walsh was keen to focus on a fall in suicide deaths in 2010. He conveniently ignored the rise in deaths of ‘undetermined intent’ that same year which are a classic alibi for disguising cases of suicide. One wonders how many single occupants of cars have to drive into walls in the early hours of the morning for their deaths to be finally included under the rubric of the suicidal. 44 Eoin Burke-Kennedy, ‘Alcohol has an enormous bearing on suicide and selfharm, says Lynch’, Irish Times, 6 September 2013, p. 2. 45 David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 110. 46 Paul Virilio, L’administration de la peur (Paris: Textuel, 2010). 47 Nyberg Commission, Misjudging Risk: Causes of the Systemic Banking Crisis in Ireland: Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Banking Sector in Ireland (Dublin: Department of Finance, 2011). 48 Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil (London: Rider, 2007), pp. 260–75. 49 Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). See also Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012). 50 Pat Leahy, Showtime: The Inside Story of Fianna Fáil in Power (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2009). 51 Arthur Beesley, ‘Government warned not to backslide on bailout reforms’, Irish Times, 10 June 2011, p. 19. 52 Michael O’Regan, ‘Clinton concerned about rise in level of suicide in Ireland’, Irish Times, 18 March 2011, p. 4. 53 Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, translated by J. A. Spaulding and G. Simpson (London: Routledge, 2006); K. Keohane Kieran and C. Kuhling, Collision Culture: Transformations in Everyday Life in Ireland (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2004). 54 ‘Provisional figures show 20% increase in suicide’, Irish Times, 18 June 2013, p. 7. 55 Paul Cullen, ‘Number of suicides in 2011 highest on record, at 554’, Irish Times, 20 September 2014, p. 10. 56 Fiona Garland, ‘Households in mortgage arrears face earlier court date’, Irish Times, 21June 2013, p. 1. The relentless nature of the bullying involved in the pursuit of debt was cruelly exposed by the suicide at the age of 37 of Fiachra Daly: a father of two young children, he had taken out a mortgage on a gerry-built property in Priory Hall in Dublin. Contacted up to three times a day by the mortgage provider KBC before his tragic death,

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his bereaved partner and mortgage adviser received threatening letters even after they had been informed of Fiachra Daly’s death by suicide claiming that the bank was still owed €16,803.78 after Fiachra Daly’s life insurance had been paid out. See Maeve Sheehan, ‘You still owe us €17,000 – bank letter to suicide widow’, The Sunday Independent, 8 September 2013, p. 1. 57 For an illuminating account of the instrumentalisation of debt in toxic forms of governance see M. Lazzarato, Gouverner par la dette (Paris: Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2014).

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The impact of the crisis on Irish women Alison Spillane

Introduction The crisis in Ireland has affected men and women in different ways. In its initial phase, job losses were concentrated in traditionally maledominated sectors such as construction. By the fourth year of the crisis, however, sectors with a high concentration of women workers, such as retail and hospitality, were shedding jobs at a rapid pace and female unemployment was increasing at a much faster pace than male unemployment. At the end of 2011, for example, women’s employment in the wholesale and retail sector had fallen by nearly 20 per cent, equating to a loss of 30,300 jobs. Both the Fianna Fáil/Green government and the Fine Gael/Labour coalition which followed placed a heavy emphasis on public expenditure cutbacks as a means of reducing Ireland’s deficit. Public spending cuts have a disproportionately negative impact upon women, who depend more on public services and social welfare payments. In particular, social welfare payments fought for by the women’s movement – such as Child Benefit and the One Parent Family Payment – have been targeted for cuts. As a result, the implementation of austerity has had a noticeably gendered effect, with poorer women bearing the brunt of the burden. The most recent data from the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions showed that income inequality grew between 2009 and 2010 before a slight (though not statistically significant) decrease in 2011. The deprivation rate increased considerably between 2007 and 2012 and, after an initial decrease, the at-risk-of-poverty rate began to climb from 2009 onwards. Non-governmental organisation (NGO) analysis of subsequent Budgets indicates that this trend is continuing.1 At the same time, much of the institutional progress made by the women’s movement has been stalled or reversed, as equality infrastructure was systematically dismantled or restructured, resulting in significant funding cuts to bodies such as the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) and the closure of the Women’s Health Council, and the

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Gender Equality units in both the Department of Justice and the Department of Education. In 2009, the Equality Authority had its funding cut by nearly 50 per cent, and in 2014 was merged with the Irish Human Rights Commission. The Crisis Pregnancy Agency has been closed and merged with the Health Service Executive (HSE). In addition, debates around female bodily autonomy reignited as a 2010 European Court of Human Rights ruling forced the government to legislate for the existing constitutional right to abortion, and an NGO-led campaign lobbied for legislative change on sex work. This chapter will focus on the effects of the Irish crisis on women in terms of public expenditure cutbacks, and on women’s position in both the formal labour market and in relation to unrecognised care work. It will also look at the issues of domestic and sexual violence against women, the female body as a site of struggle during the crisis, and the ways in which women have organised to resist austerity. Precarious work As regards the labour market, there are contradictions in the way in which women are being treated during the current crisis. While some women, such as lone parents, find themselves being forced out of the home to seek waged work without vital supports such as affordable childcare, others, such as those in the retail and services sector, are facing a return to the home due to job losses. For those in paid employment, increasingly precarious working conditions have seriously undermined their ability to provide for their families. Precarious work can be defined as ‘uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker’.2 A report by Mandate trade union, entitled Decent Work? The Impact of the Recession on Low Paid Workers, summed up the position of precarious workers thus: Labour market security for these workers – a permanent employment contract, decent rates of pay, guaranteed working hours, and social protection in the form of welfare entitlements – is increasingly eroded by demands for greater flexibility to hire and fire, growing use of temporary and parttime contracts, very flexible working hours, downward pressure on pay, limited investment in training and upskilling, and an erosion of social security rights such as access to unemployment payments and pensions.3

Women, young people and migrant workers remain over-represented in the precariat, a sector of the workforce that is expanding as employers, with the assistance of government, take advantage of the crisis to rollback on hard fought-for gains won by workers over decades. The pay and conditions of these workers were some of the first areas to come

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under attack in the recession as the minimum wage was cut,4 the Joint Labour Committees (followed by the Registered Employment Agreements) were judged unconstitutional,5 and the Universal Social Charge was imposed on those earning just over €4,000 per annum.6 For all the political posturing about job creation, there has been little discussion about the need for decent work – that is, jobs which give workers a reasonable level of economic security. Those in the precariat, twice as likely to be women as men, are part of an increasing number of workers on lower incomes, and employer demands for flexibility have very real consequences which inhibit workers from attaining an adequate income. The report by Mandate trade union found many workers are unable to secure enough hours and have to supplement their incomes through other means, such as an additional job or claiming a social welfare payment. However, precarious workers are subjected to frequent changes in working hours and may work very few hours spread out over several days. This means that for a significant proportion of workers it is extremely difficult to secure a second job or to qualify for social welfare payments like the Family Income Supplement or a partial Jobseeker payment. As a result, some must resort to borrowing money from family, friends, or credit unions – almost a third of workers surveyed as part of the Mandate report borrowed money from these sources. The report also finds that this predominantly female sector of the workforce is under significant psychological strain. In addition, it draws attention to the ‘stealth cuts’ to the social welfare system, such as the erosion of workers’ social protection entitlements.7 These types of cuts gain less traction with the media and general public but impact greatly on low-paid workers. ‘7 is too young’ The way in which austerity has been meted out highlights the deep class divisions in Irish society, with those in lower income groups being disproportionately hit by expenditure cuts and taxation measures. Women have suffered a disproportionate impact because they are concentrated in these lower income groups.8 A gender impact assessment of the 2011 Budget by the independent Think Tank for Action on Social Change found that lone parents were the group most negatively affected by the budgetary measures, losing 5 per cent of their annual income as a result of that year’s budget. Again, women are over-represented in this group. Budget 2012, the first budget of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition, intensified this policy of attacking low income groups by introducing another deeply unequal budget. Working-class women continued to bear the

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brunt of the fiscal adjustment. Subsequent analysis by Social Justice Ireland assessed the cumulative impact of tax and benefit changes over the period 2008–2014 and found that welfare-dependent lone parents experienced the largest decrease in household income (11.3 per cent) of any group.9 The targeting of lone parents for successive cutbacks is striking. The One Parent Family Payment (OPFP) has undergone significant restructuring and by 2015 lone parents will lose their OPFP once a child reaches the age of seven. This forced ‘activation’ takes place in a context where there is no comprehensive state-funded childcare to support parents, despite assertions by Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton that she would get a ‘credible, bankable commitment’ to develop a Scandinavian-style childcare system before these measures are implemented. As the lone parent representative group OPEN has pointed out, lone parents will now have to make the difficult choice between full-time work or full-time welfare. In response to these attacks, lone parents formed the campaign group Single Parents Acting for the Rights of our Kids (more commonly known as S.P.A.R.K), which carried out a series of creative protests, such as the delivery of a Valentine’s Day card to the Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton and staging a ‘School of Hard Knocks’ outside Leinster House, where children pretended to teach each other how to cook, clean and iron to highlight the reality of a policy which would see the seven-year-old children of lone parents left at home to fend for themselves. In addition, OPEN, Barnardos and the NWCI launched a joint campaign, entitled ‘7 is too young’, in opposition to Section 4 of the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2012 which introduced these major changes to the OPFP. As well as this, programmes such as the Community Employment (CE) schemes, which provided vital sources of employment for lone parents, have seen their training budgets slashed. Prior to Budget 2012, it was estimated that 70 per cent of CE workers in community childcare facilities were lone parents – CE schemes were particularly attractive to lone parents because it allowed them to retain their OPFP while also receiving the CE scheme payment of €208 per week. In 2012, the government announced that CE participants would have to give up other social welfare payments and as a result, working lone parents – already at high risk of unemployment – find themselves out of jobs; and CE schemes, particularly community childcare facilities, are facing a staffing crisis. In addition to these targeted cuts, lone parents have also been hit by other anti-family measures. Initial cutbacks to Child Benefit were targeted at larger families (those with three or more children); this changed from Budget 2013 when cuts were extended to include payments for the first

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and second child. The age threshold for the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance (BSCFA) was raised in order to render children aged two and three ineligible. In a climate of rising school costs, the BSCFA for children aged 4–11 was cut by 50 per cent between 2011 and 2013, while the payment for children aged 12 and over was reduced by 35 per cent. Due to increased pressure on household budgets, the number of families applying for the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance has grown each year since 2007. Among the other budgetary measures that have adversely affected women and their families are the changes to Pay Related Social ­Insurance (PRSI) which will make it more difficult for workers with interrupted PRSI records to satisfy the number of yearly average contributions required for new claimants of the state pension. This will leave older women who were forced to quit their jobs due to the marriage bar10 and have since returned to the paid workforce at a serious disadvantage. According to Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU): These changes will result in a loss in State Pension of up to €1,550 per worker per annum. The majority of workers retiring now and in the coming years did the bulk of their caring in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. However, the Homemaker’s Scheme, which gives pension credits to people who work in the home, only covers caring since 1994.11

As part of Budget 2013, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan announced that mothers in paid employment, already hit by cuts to Child Benefit and the BSCFA among other measures, would face further penalisation through the taxation of maternity benefit. This decision means new mothers will lose up to €2,700 per child, depending on tax rates. This taxation of childbirth will affect nearly 50,000 women per annum and is indicative of the way in which the actual physical labour of reproduction is not deemed valuable by the state. As part of the resistance against these attacks on women, feminist campaigners have attempted to intervene in the austerity debate on a very technical level by lobbying for increased transparency in policymaking and the introduction of impact assessments with the aim of moving the emphasis away from public expenditure cuts and towards tax increases on those who can afford it. The Equality Budgeting Campaign, led by Dr Clara Fischer of the Irish Feminist Network, aims to reduce inequalities in Irish society and increase transparency in the national budgetary process through the introduction of mandatory equality audits and impact assessments. Campaign members include the NWCI, SIPTU, the 50:50 Group, S.P.A.R.K, and the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI). Due to the technical nature of the campaign, it has been

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challenging to make it resonate with members of the public but, significantly, the Sinn Féin parliamentary party, as well as Independent and some Labour politicians have endorsed the campaign and are lobbying both the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform to carry out equality audits of national budgets. Although a young campaign, it quickly made progress and by early 2013 Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, had committed to direct one of his senior advisors to assess the equality budgeting proposals. This is in marked contrast to responses given by the Minister to parliamentary questions during the preceding two years where he paid lip service to ‘spreading the burden’ in a fair and equitable manner and essentially dismissed the need for equality audits or gender impact assessments as unnecessary in the face of the government’s primary objectives of ‘reducing the deficit and returning sustainability to the public finances’.12 Only months later, however, the government rejected Sinn Féin’s Equal Status (Amendment) Bill 2013, which would have added new anti-discriminatory categories to existing equality legislation and placed a duty on government departments and public bodies to carry out equality impact assessments of new policies. Women and the public sector In early 2013, plans for a new Public Service Agreement to replace the Croke Park Agreement were comprehensively rejected by public sector workers. The proposals, known as Croke Park 2, were both antiwomen and anti-family, with changes to working conditions having a particularly adverse impact on women and men with caring responsibilities. According to an actuarial assessment commissioned by the 24/7 Frontline Alliance, the cumulative effect of the reductions in overtime, premium payments, increment freezes, and increased working hours would have seen a staff nurse on a gross salary of less than €50,000 lose 11.4 per cent of their income. By comparison, a Senator stood to lose only 0.9 per cent of income under Croke Park 2.13 The changes in working conditions included provision for additional hours for no extra pay, as well as a reduction in work-sharing and flexible working arrangements (flexitime). An equality audit of the potential impact of these proposals found they would have a ‘disproportionate and negative impact on women employed in the public sector’ because women continue to shoulder the bulk of caring responsibilities in the home.14 In the days after the rejection of Croke Park 2, it was reported that the fightback against these attacks on women and family life were led by women in the trade union movement with female-dominated unions

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such as the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and the Association of Secondary Teachers rejecting the proposals by 95 per cent and 85 per cent respectively. The victory was short-lived, however, as the government threatened to bring forward legislation imposing pay cuts without consent if a negotiated deal was not reached. Union leaders eventually capitulated, albeit with some concessions in the areas of increment freezes and Sunday premia. The proposal to force public sector employees to work additional hours for no extra pay went ahead, and the Haddington Road Agreement came into force on 1 July 2013. Months earlier, the INMO led a successful boycott campaign of the government’s graduate nurse/midwife recruitment initiative which attempted to recruit 1,000 newly qualified nurses and midwives on 80 per cent of the agreed pay scale. Despite initial government attempts to spin this move as a recruitment drive, the reality is that the graduates would replace existing agency staff. According to the INMO, the HSE would save up to €23 million if existing agency staff were converted into direct employment. In 2009, the starting salary for a newly qualified nurse/midwife was €33,470. This was reduced to €28,539 in 2011 when the government imposed a 10 per cent pay cut for all new entrants to the public sector. Following this, a departmental circular issued in early 2012 announced that newly qualified nurses and midwives would now start on the first point, rather than the second, of the reduced salary scale.15 This brought the starting salary down to just over €27,000 before the government’s recruitment initiative was announced in December of that year. Nurses and midwives taking up the scheme would be paid a salary of €21,768. This attempt by government to further devalue the work of nurses and midwives (who have already undertaken unpaid work placements and internships during their training) was met with co-ordinated and effective resistance by young graduates, and when the first recruitment phase closed at the beginning of February 2013, the HSE had received only 84 applications for 1,000 positions. By August that year, however, media reports suggested that the HSE was trying to force newly qualified midwives and nurses into the graduate scheme by making it their only route to employment in the health service.16 Nearly 500 graduates had joined the scheme by May 2014. An earlier campaign mounted by the union in opposition to plans to phase out the pay of final year nursing and midwifery students was not entirely successful but won significant concessions on the initial proposals put forward by government which would have seen students receive no pay whatsoever in their final year from 2015 onwards. Instead, they will now receive 50 per cent of the salary on the first point of the

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relevant staff nurse/midwife scale. At a time when many unions have sacrificed the pay and conditions of young workers in a short-sighted move to protect the interests of their existing membership, these INMO campaigns against the exploitation of young nurses and midwives are particularly important. Care as work This devaluing of caring labour such as nursing and midwifery is part of a larger debate around care work. The failure to recognise care as work is not unique to Ireland, but it has allowed Irish governments to further undervalue care work by slashing vital supports to carers, such as the Respite Care Grant, home help hours, the Household Benefits package and Child Benefit, as well as taxing Maternity Benefit, and phasing out the OPFP. Women carry out the vast majority of care work, often in addition to paid employment, and there is still a societal expectation on women to be the default carers. The physical, emotional and psychological toll of care work rarely features in public discussion. And although government has withdrawn the supports for this work, the labour itself must be carried out regardless. Moreover, due to the nature of their work, it is extremely challenging for carers to mobilise effectively to resist these assaults. The invisible nature of care work and the lack of recognition it is afforded has also facilitated the exploitation of those working privately in the domestic sphere. It is estimated that there are more than 10,000 domestic workers in Ireland; a 2010 survey conducted by the MRCI found that 40 per cent of migrant domestic workers are working more than 48 hours a week and 38 per cent are paid less than the minimum wage. In addition, 42 per cent do not receive pay slips from their employers and 40 per cent do not have a written contract. The highly organised and migrant-led Domestic Workers Action Group has been instrumental in educating the public about this exploitation of migrant women in private homes in Ireland. In June 2011, they successfully lobbied the Irish government to vote in favour of the ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. Three years later, in July 2014, they succeeded in getting the government to ratify the Convention. As a result, domestic work is recognised as work and workers in private homes are therefore entitled to the same rights as other workers, such as overtime pay and paid annual leave. The Convention also states that domestic workers must be able to freely leave their place of work and to keep possession of their own travel and identity documents.

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Violence against women As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, while official Ireland would have us believe there is no agenda that is actively working to protect wealth and increase inequality in Ireland, there has been a systematic dismantling and restructuring of equality infrastructure throughout the crisis. The withdrawal or slashing of funding to state-supported equality, poverty and women’s organisations has not only undermined but attempted to reverse some of the progress made in recent decades and illustrates the extent of structural violence against women in Ireland. The assault on the equality infrastructure of the state has been either willingly ignored by the mainstream media or hailed as the abolition of quangos. This structural violence also leaves women and children more vulnerable to physical and emotional/psychological violence from their partners and illustrates that combatting violence against women is not a priority for government. Even before the current crisis, services to protect women and children from domestic violence were consistently under-funded. Ireland has just one third of the refuge capacity recommended by the Council of Europe; budget cutbacks have prevented essential new refuges from opening, while existing refuges have seen their funding reduced as they struggle to maintain their services and cope with increasing demand. Research by domestic violence services indicates that there has been an increase in domestic violence against women during the recession. Economic difficulties in particular have made it harder for women to escape violence. According to Women’s Aid, many women who contacted the organisation stated that they were experiencing domestic violence before the recession, but that the economic downturn was leading to more frequent and more dangerous abuse. In particular, women disclosed that abusive men were using the recession to excuse their behaviour.17 Publishing its Annual Statistics for 2011, SAFE Ireland, the national organisation representing frontline domestic violence services, found a 56 per cent increase in the number of women seeking safety since comprehensive records were first compiled in 2007, and a 15 per cent increase in numbers since 2010 alone. The organisation also found that on over 2,500 occasions in 2011 services were unable to accommodate women and their children because the refuge was full or there was no refuge in their area. In the same year, work was completed on accommodation in Kildare for families affected by domestic violence, but the refuge was unable to open due to a lack of funding from the HSE. When the refuge finally opened its doors three years later, it only had enough funding to make two of the four apartments available – as a result, staff

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were forced to turn away 60 women and 90 children during the shelter’s first 100 days of operation. In April 2013, Traveller advocacy organisation Pavee Point published a report documenting the effecting of austerity on the Travelling community. The report highlighted that the Traveller Violence Against Women project, funded by the Department of Justice and Equality, has experienced a 20 per cent reduction in funding since 2008 and currently employs only two part-time staff. According to the report, these cuts have been imposed ‘at a time of a substantial increase in demand (+56 per cent) as a result of the economic and social crisis, with many reports of women unable to obtain places’.18 In 2009, the Women’s Health Council (established in 1997 to advise the Minister for Health on all aspects of women’s health) published a study of gender-based violence and minority ethnic women in Ireland which found that discrimination was the main cause of isolation and exclusion from relevant services for Traveller women.19 The Women’s Health Council was dissolved the same year and recommendations for government, such as the need to add a domestic violence concession to the Habitual Residence Condition, remain unimplemented. As a further demonstration of the government’s lack of commitment to eradicating violence against women, when the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence entered into force on 1 August 2014, Ireland had neither signed nor ratified it. Like other countries, it is estimated that the number of rapes and sexual assault reported to An Garda Síochána is only a fraction of the real figures, and the number of prosecutions of these crimes is smaller still. In its 2012 Annual Report, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) stated: ‘Of the 322 cases where the reporting status was known, 115 cases were reported to the Gardaí, which is a reporting rate of 35.71%. Of these 115 cases, 3 were tried, resulting in 3 convictions or guilty pleas.’20 Speaking at the launch of this report, CEO Ellen O’Malley Dunlop said that since the recession there has been a ‘disturbing’ yearon-year increase in calls to the National 24 Hour Helpline from victims of adult sexual violence, and that there has been a 23 per cent increase in first time callers to the DRCC between 2009 and 2012. She stated: ‘This reflects what we know from international research, that sexual violence and violence against women in particular, increases in times of economic recession.’21 As with domestic violence services, rape crisis centres have seen severe funding cutbacks since the onset of the recession, with some centres losing up to 31 per cent of their funding between 2009 and 2012. It is clear from the DRCC statistics that women are reluctant to report sexual violence, and a number of high profile court cases in

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which judges gave extremely lenient sentences to sex offenders and rapists has reinforced public perception that survivors are justified in their lack of confidence in the justice system. While a significant number of offenders in rape cases do in fact receive appropriate sentences when prosecuted (according to a study by the Judicial Researchers’ Office, 42 per cent are sentenced to 9–14 years imprisonment), the perceived lack of consistency in sentencing and the resulting effect on public opinion is disquieting. Organisations working with survivors of sexual violence have made repeated calls for the introduction of sentencing guidelines to assist judges in this area. The concerns that sexual violence is not taken seriously and the impact this has on survivors are not confined to the judiciary, and research on societal attitudes towards sexual violence shows the practice of victim-blaming is widespread. A 2008 survey on attitudes to rape and rape victims conducted by the Irish Examiner found that more than 30 per cent of people think a victim is in some way responsible if she flirts with a man or fails to say ‘no’ clearly. One in ten said that a victim is entirely at fault if she has had a series of sexual partners. A number of necessary campaigns aimed at challenging this culture of victim-blaming have appeared throughout the recession, focussing attention on potential perpetrators rather than their victims. These include SAFE Ireland’s ‘Man Up’ campaign and the ‘Don’t Be That Guy’ student awareness initiative running in a number of Irish universities. The decision to shift focus and responsibility away from women and women’s behaviour and onto men and men’s attitudes to sex and sexual consent is an important departure from previous initiatives, which have tended to target potential victims encouraging them not to dress a certain way or to adopt a ‘buddy system’ on nights out. We have also seen more and more survivors of sex abuse speaking publicly and, in early 2013, a survivor-led campaign to raise public awareness about sex abuse and advocate for change in the justice system was launched. It is hoped that the cumulative effect of these initiatives will be not only to reduce instances of sexual violence against women and change public attitudes, but also to restore faith in the justice system and reassure survivors that they will be taken seriously if they choose to come forward. ‘No country for pregnant women’22 While women’s perspectives and the effects of austerity on women have been largely excluded from public debate about the crisis (as documented by the NWCI23), women’s bodies have been centre-stage on many occasions: the role of the state in controlling the female body

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through direct and indirect involvement in the Magdalene Laundries; allowing the practice of symphysiotomy;24 the ongoing criminalisation of abortion; and the possibility of legislative change which would negatively impact upon sex workers – all these became prominent issues during the tenure of the Fine Gael/Labour government. As with debate on the economic crisis, the voices and experiences of the women affected by these issues were almost entirely absent from discussion in the Houses of the Oireachtas, the media, and government/ Oireachtas reports. The McAleese report on the role of the state in the Magdalene Laundries omitted over 800 pages of survivor testimony submitted to it by the advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes. The draft report looking at the practice of symphysiotomy did not engage with the Survivors of Symphysiotomy campaign which represents around 200 women who were subjected to this barbaric and mutilating procedure. Following the death of Savita Halappanavar after she was denied an abortion in University College Hospital Galway, no women who had gone through life-threatening pregnancies or who had travelled abroad for a termination due to a potentially life-threatening condition appeared on current affairs programmes to talk about their experience. Participants in television and radio debates typically consisted of politicians, independent obstetrical/gynaecological experts and anti-choice campaigners. In addition, when the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children held three days of hearings on the government decision to introduce a combination of legislation and regulations to implement the existing constitutional right to an abortion in Ireland, it did not invite any women who had had abortions to share their views – in particular, the decision to exclude the women from the Termination for Medical Reasons group, all of whom had travelled abroad to terminate pregnancies due to fatal foetal abnormalities, was striking as abortion in these cases could arguably be permissible in Ireland under Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution (also known as the 8th Amendment), as there is no equal right to life to protect. Similarly, when the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality held hearings on the effectiveness of the ‘Swedish Model’ in tackling prostitution (which aims to eliminate prostitution by criminalising the buyer), they heard no testimony from sex workers actually operating under these Swedish laws. With the exception of sex work, ground has been won by largely female campaigners in all of these areas during the crisis. Regrettably, the widespread support for the Turn Off the Red Light (TORL) campaign (advocating for the introduction of the ‘Swedish Model’), which counts trade unions and women’s organisations among its members, has led to a blinkered approach to the reform of Ireland’s prostitution laws where

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anyone who dissents from the majority opinion risks being dismissed as an advocate of human trafficking and violence against women. This is despite the fact that the effectiveness of the Swedish Model is questionable, something which has been acknowledged by the Swedish authorities in their own evaluation of the laws. The model has also been criticised by both the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Anand Grover, and by the UN HIV/AIDS Advisory Group. In addition to excluding Swedish sex workers from the Oireachtas hearings, it was reported that the only Irish women who spoke to the committee were TORL-sponsored former sex workers. Ruhama, one of the leading organisations behind the TORL campaign, was founded by two of the religious orders which ran the Magdalene Laundries. Furthermore, it should be noted that while the TORL campaign has sought to frame this as an issue solely effecting women, sex workers are a diverse population and workers may be female, male or transgender. The conservative Catholic ideology about women and female sexuality which dominated public life in Ireland since the foundation of the state has had very real consequences. The butchery of women’s bodies through symphysiotomy, the incarceration of women in the Magdalene Laundries, and the prioritisation of foetuses over women’s lives and health are the damning legacy of a state which, since its inception, has viewed women as second-class citizens. Although the influence of the Catholic Church has diminished significantly, the patriarchal structure of the state still exercises significant control over the female body, as enshrined in Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution which equates a pregnant woman’s life with that of an embryo from the point of implantation.25 And the attitudes which allowed the Magdalene Laundries to thrive and the practice of symphysiotomy do not seem far removed from those which drafted the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013. Abortion At a time when women were losing ground in a range of areas, the fight for the most basic level of female bodily autonomy restarted. There are several reasons why the campaign for reproductive rights in Ireland reignited during the crisis. A 2010 European Court of Human Rights judgment found Ireland’s failure to implement the existing constitutional right to a lawful abortion constituted a violation of Applicant C’s rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The new government pledged to set up an ‘expert group’ to present a series of options on how to implement this judgment. In early 2012, a number of pro-choice groups and individuals came together under the

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banner Action on X to mark the twentieth anniversary of the X case and call on the government to legislate immediately for the right to abortion when a woman’s life is at risk, including the risk of suicide. Though it built a solid media presence, and forged alliances with trade unions, women’s groups and civil society organisations, Action on X initially found it difficult to gain widespread public support and when three opposition TDs (Clare Daly, Mick Wallace and Joan Collins) tabled the Medical Treatment (Termination of Pregnancy in Case of Risk to Life of Pregnant Woman) Bill in April 2012, barely 200 people turned out at the gates of Leinster House to support it. Only months later, however, in the summer of 2012, a new generation of reproductive rights activists galvanised in opposition to a grossly offensive ad campaign of misinformation launched by Youth Defence, one of the most prominent anti-choice organisations in Ireland. The initial outlet for pro-choice outrage was social media – a protest outside Dáil Éireann followed soon after and activists quickly identified the need to put structures in place to enable pro-choice groups to communicate effectively and co-ordinate their activities. This led to the establishment of the Irish Choice Network (ICN; later the Abortion Rights Campaign), followed by the first ‘March for Choice’ in September 2012. Around 2,500 people marched through Dublin city centre in support of a woman’s right to choose and in solidarity with the more than 150,000 women who have left Ireland since 1980 to seek terminations abroad. Work to develop the ICN into a nationwide pro-choice campaign was underway when news began to filter through in early November that a pregnant woman had died in University College Hospital Galway after she was refused a termination. The tragic and wholly avoidable death of 31–year old Savita Halappanavar ignited a level of anger amongst the general public not seen since the X case. That it took a woman’s death to illustrate the draconian nature of Irish abortion laws speaks volumes about the political establishment’s attitude to women and female bodily autonomy. Savita Halappanavar was not the first woman to die as a result of Ireland’s abortion laws, but her death came at a time when women, particularly young women, were speaking openly about their abortions, fighting back against the stigma perpetuated by the antichoice movement and demanding that elected representatives confront this issue. While many expressed shock that a healthy young woman could die in these circumstances in an Irish hospital in 2012, pro-choice campaigners had long warned that this would be the awful consequence of the 8th amendment to the Irish Constitution. Since 2007, the Association for Improvement in Maternity Services (AIMS Ireland) had been a critical

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voice speaking out against a system which fails to listen to women and can, fatally, deprioritise their lives in favour of a foetus. An important but rarely discussed issue in maternal care in Ireland is ethnicity. Although journalists reported that Praveen Halappanavar and his wife Savita were told ‘this is a Catholic country’ when one of her requests for an abortion was refused, few questioned whether the fact that Savita was an Indian woman might have played a role in the care she received. Less widely reported cases, such as the death of Nigerian woman Bimbo Onanuga in 2010, also raise questions about the treatment of non-Irish pregnant women in the maternity system. In March 2013, it was reported that Waterford Regional Hospital had sought a court order to force a woman, who wanted to give birth naturally, to undergo a caesarean section. Responding to a parliamentary question about the Waterford case, Minister James Reilly refused to release the nationality of the woman in question stating that releasing this information could potentially lead to the identification of the patient. This led many to believe the woman was not Irish. A particularly horrific case also came to light in August 2014 when a suicidal migrant woman – pregnant as a result of rape – was refused an abortion and forced to give birth by caesarean section. While these events could be dismissed as singular cases, the Confidential Maternal Death Enquiry in Ireland report for the triennium 2009–2011 (which, incidentally concluded that the rate of maternal mortality in Ireland is double the official CSO figure of four per 100,000 live and still births) found that although only 24.6 per cent of maternities in Ireland in 2010 were women of non-Irish nationality, ‘40% of all maternal deaths identified in the triennium 2009–2011 occurred in women who were not born in Ireland’.26 In the weeks that followed Savita Halappanavar’s death there was an extraordinary outpouring of public grief, as thousands attended candlelit vigils across the country culminating in the ‘Never Again’ march on 17 November 2012 which saw up to 15,000 protestors take to the streets of the capital calling for legislative change. In a strange coincidence, Minister for Health James Reilly was said to have received the expert group’s report the night before news broke of Savita’s death, and the government quickly announced that it would make a decision on what action to take before the end of the year. The announcement that they would take action in 2013 to legislate for the X case was welcome but the anti-choice lobby was already well-mobilised to ensure any legislation would be as restrictive as possible. Following lengthy debate across the media and the Houses of the Oireachtas, the government’s Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 was signed into law on 30 July 2013. It can be considered a victory

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for the pro-choice movement in so much as it represents an important defeat for the Catholic right. The Bill itself could have been significantly more progressive, while still operating within the parameters of the Constitution. For example, as mentioned earlier, it has been argued by many that abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality would be constitutionally permissible and could therefore have been included in the legislation. Instead, the government chose to make the Bill as restrictive as possible, introducing an inquisition-like process for a suicidal pregnant woman which could potentially force her to deal with seven medical practitioners before she is granted a termination. It is likely that women in this vulnerable position, provided they have the means, will continue to travel for abortion rather than put themselves through this extremely onerous system. Beyond the X case An under-resourced, volunteer-run pro-choice campaign faces a significant challenge against the professional, well-funded and full-time antichoice lobby made up primarily of Youth Defence and the Life Institute. Although societal attitudes to abortion have liberalised greatly in the last twenty years and there is substantial support for access to abortion beyond the extremely limited terms of the X case, opinion polls indicate that around one third, at best, of people in Ireland support a woman’s right to choose, and pro-choice activists need to undertake a comprehensive information campaign nationwide if the 8th amendment is to be overturned by constitutional referendum. The Abortion Rights Campaign, in conjunction with regional groups, seems willing and able to take up this challenge, and is set to become a leading voice in the campaign for abortion law reform. The political establishment remains significantly more conservative than the electorate it purports to represent and a referendum to remove Article 40.3.3 from the Constitution will not happen in the lifetime of the current Fine Gael/Labour coalition unless there is major public mobilisation. This is a serious challenge for activists given that the most significant pro-choice marches have been in reaction to tragic events such as the X case, although the decision to make the March for Choice an annual event could potentially become a focal point for harnessing sustained support for safe and legal abortion in Ireland. In addition, the proliferation of feminist groups, many campaigning solely on reproductive rights, provides a valuable source of dedicated activists. The crisis fostered a resurgence in feminism which saw the emergence of groups such the Irish Feminist Network and Cork Feminista, the establishment of feminist and pro-choice student socie-

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ties in universities, and numerous regional pro-choice groups. Alternatively, given that the extremely conservative political climate makes a referendum unlikely, campaigners may have to focus their efforts on actions which directly challenge Ireland’s abortion laws. While direct action involves serious legal, personal and professional risks for activists, it may be the most effective means of highlighting the hypocrisy and absurdity of Ireland’s legal position on abortion and forcing the Establishment to confront the issue. Backlash The implementation of austerity has been a calculated and systematic assault on the least well-off in Irish society. This has taken place in tandem with a dismantling of the equality infrastructure that has gone almost entirely unnoticed. It is not accidental that many of the most severe cutbacks have been targeted at groups that face significant challenges in mobilising resistance. These sectors of society, such as lone parents and carers, are often female-dominated and carry responsibilities which cannot easily be passed on to someone else. For women organising during the crisis, the female body became a significant site of struggle as an inherently misogynist state began to acknowledge past abuses of women, in the Magdalene Laundries and the practice of symphysiotomy, while perpetuating abuses of a very similar nature in the withholding of reproductive rights and, arguably, the imposition of savage public expenditure cuts on women and their families and on domestic and sexual violence services. Taken in isolation, many of the issues covered in this chapter were presented absurdly by the political establishment and the media as ‘hard decisions’ taken by courageous politicians (cuts to Child Benefit and the OPFP), proactive moves designed to ‘streamline’ the public sector (staff cuts and deterioration in working conditions), and positive steps aimed at making Ireland ‘the best small country to do business’ (increases in precarious working conditions).27 Looked at as a whole, however, they constitute a backlash against women and illustrate how austerity economics has been used as an excuse to implement policies which exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities. It is clear that there is a strong resistance on the part of Official Ireland to any attempts to discuss or analyse the crisis in gender and class terms. The closing down of this debate and its replacement with orchestrated discussions aimed at driving a wedge between public and private sector workers inhibits mobilisation by dividing citizens. The pro-austerity consensus on the part of the media deprives people of a public space

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to think critically about why particular sectors are being targeted by public expenditure cuts and increases in taxation. We must remember that these policy decisions are political choices made by government ministers for very specific reasons. Taxing Maternity Benefit is a political choice. Cutting funding to domestic violence services and rape crisis centres is a political choice. Reducing the pay of graduate nurses is a political choice. The ‘divide and conquer’ tactic employed by the coalition government has been largely successful at keeping public unrest at bay, although the Labour Party will pay the price at the next election. Notes   1 Central Statistics Office, Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2012 (Cork: CSO, 2014), p. 1.   2 Arne Kalleberg, ‘Precarious work, insecure workers: employment relations in transition’, American Sociological Review, 2009, Vol. 74, p. 2.   3 Camille Loftus, Decent Work? The Impact of the Recession on Low Paid Workers (Dublin: Mandate Trade Union, 2012), p. 3.  4 The €1 cut to the minimum wage, introduced by the Fianna Fáil/Green government in Budget 2011, was later reversed by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition which came into power following the 2011 general election. The reversal came as a result of a concerted campaign, Save the Minimum Wage, led by NGOs and anti-poverty organisations, which lobbied political parties in the run-up to the election.   5 Joint Labour Committees (JLCs) were established to set minimum rates of pay and regulate working conditions in certain sectors, such as contract cleaning, catering and hairdressing. A Registered Employment Agreement (REA) is an agreement between an employer and a trade union that has been lodged with the Labour Court. Both JLCs and REAs were judged unconstitutional by a 2011 High Court ruling and a 2013 Supreme Court ruling respectively, which led to fears that the pay and conditions of workers would deteriorate. Although the government later introduced reforms to JLCs (rather than abolishing them altogether), the emphasis of these reforms appeared to be on competitiveness and wage flexibility, rather than protection for vulnerable workers. Under the reforms, the number of JLCs was also reduced. At the time of writing, legislation to address the 2013 Supreme Court judgment in McGowan & others v The Labour Court, concerning Registered Employment Agreements, had not yet been introduced by government.   6 The Universal Social Charge (USC) is a tax on gross income, introduced by the Fianna Fáil/Green government in January 2011. Initially, it was imposed on those with gross annual incomes above €4,004, although this threshold was later raised to €10,036. The full USC rate of 7 per cent kicks in at just €16,016. For further information see www.revenue.ie/en/tax/usc.  7 Loftus, Decent Work?, p. 16.

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 8 Think Tank for Action on Social Change, Winners and Losers? Equality Lessons for Budget 2012 (Dublin: TASC, 2011), p. 4.   9 Social Justice Ireland, Budget 2014: Analysis and Critique (Dublin: Social Justice Ireland, 2013), p. 10. 10 The marriage bar operated in Ireland until 1973. It forced women to leave jobs in the public and civil service if they married. 11 Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union, ‘SIPTU holds pension rally outside Leinster House’, 6 November 2012 Available at: www.siptu. ie/media/pressreleases2012/fullstory_16698_en.html. Consulted 15 March 2013. 12 Michael Noonan, in response to Parliamentary Question 60 of 30 November 2011. 13 Joseph G. Byrne, Report on the Impact of Proposed Pay Cuts (Dublin: 24/7 Frontline Alliance, 2013), pp. 5–34. 14 Niall Crowley, Equality Audit: Labour Relations Commission Proposals – Draft Public Service Agreement (Dublin: INMO, 2013), p. 26. 15 Department of Health Circular, February 2012. 16 Deborah Condon, ‘Nurses “forced” onto low pay scheme’, 1 August 2013. Available at: www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=22440. Consulted 15 September 2013. 17 Women’s Aid press release, ‘Recession traps women in abusive relationships’, 16 September 2009. Available at: www.womensaid.ie/newsevents/ 2009/09/16/recession-traps-women-in-abusive-relationships/. Consulted 15 April 2013. 18 Brian Harvey, Travelling with Austerity: Impact of Cuts on Travellers, Traveller Projects and Services (Dublin: Pavee Point, 2013), p. 34. 19 Liz Costello, Translating Pain Into Action: A Study of Gender-Based Violence and Minority Ethnic Women in Ireland (Dublin: Women’s Health Council, 2009), p. 38. 20 The DRCC 2012 Annual Report states that outcome information was known for 45 of the 115 cases reported to An Garda Síochána: in 15 cases the charges were dropped (either by the client or the Director of Public Prose­­­ cutions); there were charges pending in 27 cases; and 3 cases went to trial. 21 DRCC press release, ‘Launch of DRCC’s Annual Report 2012’, 24 July 2013. Available at: www.drcc.ie/2013/07/press-release-launch-of-drccsannual-report-2012/. Consulted 12 October 2013. 22 This title is taken from a blog run by the campaign group AIMS Ireland (The Association for Improvements in Maternity Services). 23 A 2012 survey by Lucy Keaveney and Dolores Gibbons, on behalf of the NWCI, assessed the participation and representation of women’s voices in the broadcast media, using radio current affairs programming as a case study. It found that fewer than one in four voices on-air are women. 24 According to the Survivors of Symphysiotomy advocacy group: ‘Symphysiotomy is a cruel and dangerous childbirth operation that unhinges the pelvis, severing the symphysis joint or sundering the pubic bones. Ireland was the only developed country in the world to practice these childbirth

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procedures in the mid- to late twentieth century. At least 1,500 of these eighteenth-century operations were performed here from 1942 onwards, mostly in Catholic private hospitals. Around 200 women survive today, many of them permanently disabled, incontinent and in pain. Some babies died or were brain damaged, or otherwise injured during the process.’ See http://symphysiotomyireland.com/the-story/. Consulted 23 March 2014. 25 The term ‘unborn’ used in Article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution is defined in the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 as follows: ‘“unborn”, in relation to a human life, is a reference to such a life during the period of time commencing after implantation in the womb of a woman and ending on the complete emergence of the life from the body of the woman’. 26 Confidential Maternal Death Enquiry in Ireland: Report for Triennium 2009–2011, p. 7. 27 An Taoiseach Enda Kenny has frequently stated that it is his government’s intention to make Ireland ‘the best small country in the world to do business by 2016’.

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Defiance and hope: austerity and the community sector in the Republic of Ireland John Bissett This is Ireland Dermot Bolger’s poem, Neilstown Matadors1 tells the story of a mother whose daughter has succumbed to the risks of serious drug use and who is left to act as guardian and matriarch to her daughter’s daughter. The poem is rife with grief and is a succinct depiction of both the internal implosion of an extended family and the external degradation of ­addiction, poverty and inequality. The grandmother/mother describes a struggle that has tortured many parents and grandparents in Ireland over recent decades. In answer to the reflexive question about her granddaughter, ‘What did I do before I took on her welfare?’, she responds I fought to raise a daughter on these streets, I stood in queues and worked on checkouts, I searched for my child on dangerous estates, I stood up to debt collectors calling to my door, When she shivered in detox I tried to nurse her, I sold my possessions or saw all of them robbed, I cried until one night there were no tears left,… I stood up in the ring every time I was gored, I watched the bulls run and raised my cloak Repeatedly to provide what shelter I could, I picked myself up and wiped off the blood, I waited at the school gate to take her hand, So that, walking home, no evil could touch her.

The poem is ostensibly about addiction and loss, but the backstory is the intense daily struggle for survival. The poem evokes and describes three generations of female, class-bound existences, and more pointedly, the suffering which permeates through this class/gender axis. The grandmother draws deeply on her own tenacity and inner strength and even though she is depicted as a formidable matriarch ‘matador’, who will fight to the death to protect her grandchild, we know that, ultimately,

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the odds are stacked against her. The primeval instinct to protect the child obscures the deeper issues of a community, and, on a larger scale, a society riven with material and symbolic inequalities. The landscape of Bolger’s poem, Neilstown, is a suburb in west Dublin and is part of the larger area of North Clondalkin. North Clondalkin also contains the sprawling public housing estates of Ronanstown, Rowlagh and Quarryvale. The building of estates such as these was the Irish government’s best thinking in response to the housing crises of the 1970s in Dublin. The reality was the construction of enormous, segregated working-class estates experiencing multiple inequalities and hardship and very much cut off from the metropolitan city. These estates, just like so many in the inner city and in other cities nationally, are the graphic visible manifestation of the inequalities which are a by-product of capitalist societies. Places such as North Clondalkin raise critical questions about the concept of ‘community’, especially as a romantic ideological construct which freefloats as a signifier without any reference to the material realities of daily life. And while there is undoubtedly much in the local culture that animates solidarity and communality, the ideological distortion can conceal the underlying structural causes of poverty and inequality. In 1989, a Community Development Project (CDP) was established in North Clondalkin as part of a spatially targeted strategy toward ‘addressing poverty and social exclusion’. Twenty years later, in December 2009 as part of the first wave of austerity, the CDP was informed that the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs proposed not to continue funding the project beyond the end of 2009. In effect this meant that North Clondalkin CDP ceased to function from 31 December 2009. The project was one of the first CDPs to be closed in Ireland in what was very much a harbinger of things to come. The project was a casualty of the view that there was ‘little evidence of positive outcomes’ for work being done in the community development sector in Ireland.2 Paying for the crisis The CDP in North Clondalkin was part of what has become known in Ireland in recent years as the ‘community sector’. An Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) report3 presents the broad contours of this sector in Ireland and describes ‘the impact of the financial crisis on community and voluntary organisations: their services and clients, employment and role’.4 The report gives the following overview of the size and scale of the community and voluntary sector in 20085 at the beginning of the financial crisis:

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• The estimated level of employment in the sector was 53,098 fulltime equivalents; • The value of the voluntary and community sector to the economy was €6.5bn, or between 3.52% of GDP and 3.97% of GNP; • The annual level of state funding for the sector was in the order of €1.89bn; • There were about 6,100 voluntary and community ‘charitable’ organisations; • About 26% of citizens regularly took part in some form of voluntary activity; • Three out of four citizens donated to voluntary and community organisations. The document focuses on the growth and scale of the sector and its levels of productivity and contribution to the Irish economy overall. The bulk of the sector is primarily involved in what can be described as immaterial or affective labour in that by and large it doesn’t produce or make ‘things’ for sale or exchange but deals pre-eminently with human relationships and the wellbeing of individuals, families and communities. The major conclusion of the report is that the cuts to the sector are vastly disproportionate to the cuts to the mainstream public sector in Irish society. In contrast to general public expenditure which was cut by just under 3 per cent between 2009 and 2012, the report estimates that cuts to the community and voluntary sector were, on average, 35 per cent. And while the report contends that it will be for historians of the future to work out why such inequality was visited on civil society organisations, it is estimated in the report that employment levels in the sector will fall from 53,098 to 36,638 by 2015 with the subsequent loss of projects and services and the tax revenues that such employment generated. The report states that across a range of fields and areas, cuts are being arbitrarily imposed, from social housing to disability, Traveller education to childcare, addiction services to community development projects, community employment schemes to youth projects, the cuts are systematic and significant. As well as direct cuts, a significant number of government agencies such as The Combat Poverty Agency have been closed while others such as The Equality Authority and The Human Rights Commission, have had their funding substantially reduced (The Equality Authority by 48 per cent) and/or are being amalgamated with others. The report argues that the cuts are anti-democratic as the community sector is an essential feature of any modern, democratic, pluralist state, working together with public services for the welfare and well-being of all citizens

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especially those who are most disadvantaged. … Civil society comprising voluntary and community organisations, offers opportunities for people to volunteer to assist others. Taken together they build social capital, active citizenship, social inclusion and participation in a democratic society.6

The ICTU document focuses very much on the economic onslaught on the community sector as a productive utilitarian entity. A recent publication, Are We Paying For That?7 explores the more overtly political question as to whether the Irish state has been ‘actively suppressing the independent, critical voice of social justice advocates’. With the exception of the early days of Social Partnership where the role of the state is viewed positively, the report draws the conclusion that There is a compelling body of evidence of the manner in which the state had suppressed or actively prohibited advocacy, crossing the border from inhibition to an element of deliberation. The prime example was the Community Development Programme, where detailed documentation and case studies pointed to dissent as the most convincing explanation for its closure.8

In contrast to the view that attacks on the sector can be singularly attributed to the current economic crisis, the report highlights what it considers to have been a ‘strategic turn’9 which took place back in 2002 and which signalled a sharp authoritarian turn in the state’s position vis-a-vis the community sector. The report describes a relentless narrowing and circumscribing of the scope of the community sector’s advocacy and political role since that time and of the ‘erratic nature, volatility and unpredictability of state reactions’.10 The state has gradually introduced a number of measures most notably the use of the ‘services only’ paradigm and the ‘No Advocacy’ clause in section 2.8 in Health Service Executive Service Level Agreements. Under the ‘services only’ paradigm, community projects and organisations become extensions of the state as service providers and are legally denied any capacity to challenge and oppose. The rationale behind such measures was to render the sector politically impotent through the threat of sanction and ultimately closure. The report highlights example after example where organisations and groups were challenged, corrected or had funding withdrawn in relation to statements or actions they had made. Undoubtedly the state saw the sector as a potential threat. Are We Paying For That? raises important questions about state actions which predate the current economic crisis and which are primarily about stopping the growth and development of alternative or competing power centres and discourses outside of conventional political parties and the state itself by way of cutting off the oxygen of funding. Taken together, the

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economic policies of austerity and the censorial politics of the state are ways of maintaining the power and privilege of some while extending and deepening the suffering of others. As we can see, in tandem with larger economic forces the Irish state has been playing a key role in recent years in the intensification of such suffering. Suffering inequality (the abdication of the state) There are many axes or dimensions by which our lives are determined. The resources we have access to, the sort of education we get and work we do, how we are treated in personal and social relationships, the care we get and/or give and our power and influence within society are all critical factors in our lives.11 The positive or negative distribution within and across such categories determines whether we suffer or whether we flourish.12 In The Weight of the World,13 Bourdieu et al. interviewed people in various locations throughout France and the US about the conditions of their lives. In contrast to the mythical France that is generally purveyed in the media, the stories portray another France, very much concealed from the tourist gaze where social suffering is part and parcel of daily life. The stories vary from that of a family living on ‘Jonquil Street’, a community rapidly deteriorating in a post-industrial French landscape, to the experiences of housing supervisors and the problems they encounter with young people in a public housing project in a large French city. The individual stories are replete with a sense of desperation and the angst of individual, family and community struggle, whereas taken together the stories give a broader sense of struggle and social suffering in French society in general. The stories cross reference multiple layers of inequality, those of class, race, gender, age and youth. Bourdieu et al. draw a distinction between ‘la grande misère’ or absolute poverty, and ‘la petite misère’, which refers to the everyday suffering that the interviewees confront in contemporary western capitalist s­ ocieties. using material poverty as the sole measure of all suffering keeps us from seeing and understanding a whole side of the suffering characteristic of a social order which, although it has undoubtedly reduced poverty overall (though less than often claimed) has also multiplied the social spaces (specialised fields and subfields) and set up the conditions for an unpre­­­ cedented development of all kinds of ordinary suffering (la petite misère).14

Bourdieu described himself as an ‘enlightened moralist’ and was diffident about making public political statements but the stories speak for themselves about the suffering that ordinary people endure.15 One of the overt themes in the interviews is the abdication of the state from its duties and responsibilities in the (forlorn) hope that ‘the market’ will

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somehow fill the gap that is left. The gradual abdication of the state resonates with Irish communities in which much community work takes place. The use of Public Private Partnership (PPP) as a mechanism to regenerate working-class communities such as O’Devaney Gardens in Dublin’s north-west inner city is a case in point. In the early 2000s, the Irish Government decided to adopt and to use PPP as a mechanism for regenerating city council housing estates primarily in the cities of Dublin and Limerick. This approach was very much tied into the commodification of housing and its transformation into ‘property’.16 In Dublin there were a whole string of city council estates that were lined up for this process. One of these was O’Devaney Gardens, a working-class Dublin City Council flat complex located within walking distance of Dublin city centre and the Phoenix Park. Today there are only four of the original thirteen blocks of flats remaining, and these are to be demolished as soon as the remaining residents can be housed off site. When residents were first canvassed about regeneration in 1998, over 90 per cent of the 276 flats on the estate were occupied. Residents were to be rehoused in new housing on the site as part of a masterplan including community and retail facilities, affordable and private housing. Fifteen years on and there are now just a handful of the original tenants living in graphically deteriorating conditions while waiting to be housed off the estate. In May 2008, the PPP project collapsed along with a number of others after the housing bubble burst in Ireland. In 2012, all plans for building new public housing on the site were abandoned as the city council officially informed the remaining residents that nothing would be built there. This signalled the end of a fifteen-year regeneration journey that went nowhere and delivered nothing. The slow and gradual de-tenanting, disintegration and deterioration of an estate where most people wanted to remain represents to residents the final stage of an absurd process which is still to this day being replicated on other similar council estates. What Castells17 described happening to the ‘Grand Ensembles’ in France in the 1970s is being replicated in Ireland. Slowly but surely, old working-class communities have already disappeared, or are in the process of completely disappearing and with them all traces of their cultural and physical existence.18 The residents of O’Devaney Gardens, just like those in other city council estates, are objectively positioned at the lower end of the Irish class structure. They are property-less public housing tenants, in the main on low incomes and are often exposed to significant structural unemployment. There is a significant struggle to find access to meaningful work and to therefore generate a modest financial resource base, as there is to progress through the education system and accrue

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any sort of significant cultural capital. Class is something of a taboo subject in Irish society, and even within much of the community-work field it has all but disappeared from the lexicon and the practice. The language of disadvantage, inclusion and exclusion has replaced it as have the ‘keywords’ of process, participation and empowerment.19 And yet class is at the heart of what is happening in O’Devaney Gardens and is the common thread that links it with all of the other public housing estates. It is also at the core of the larger austerity programmes as it conditions and determines how people live.20 Writing about workingclass understandings of the Respect Agenda orchestrated by the New Labour government in Britain, Skeggs and Loveday make the following point on the importance of class: it is only when the affects produced through injustice are connected to an idea, to a cause, source or object, that the suffering is made understandable as a social problem. The concept of class is one of the ways to make sense of these sufferings: the ‘accident of birth’ becomes spoken of as an unjust structural problem not of one’s own making in opposition to attempts to make it appear so in government rhetoric and policy. Speaking class connects the affects of injustice to their creation.21

The lives of people in O’Devaney Gardens and other public housing estates failed by the state is imbricated with the consequences of their class position. In a work on the less explored ‘moral significance of class’ Andrew Sayer tells us that ‘class matters because it creates unequal possibilities for flourishing and suffering’.22 O’Devaney Gardens is a microcosm of suffering and inequality and the effects of austerity. Compounding the collapse of the PPP housing project, a whole swathe of local community projects and services were closed in recent years. The Community Development Project, the Community Regeneration Project, the Community Youth Project, the After-schools Project, the Women’s Project and the local I.T. Project have all closed in recent years due to state-imposed austerity cuts. In a community where educational inequality is extreme, the removal of such infrastructure has significant consequences for children, young people and adults. The desire for a better life, for a transition from one of suffering to one of flourishing is diminishing rapidly. Art is not just about making things, art is about making things  happen23 How do we respond to the injustice of the socialisation of private debt in Ireland and the subsequent stripping out of a society in order to make such egregious financial reparations? The idea that ‘there is no

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alternative’ can become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy and perpetuates a grossly unequal status quo. In recent years in Ireland, the expectation that large-scale resistance would suddenly materialise gave way to an understanding that there had been a significant process of de-politicisation24 over many years and that the only way to approach the crisis was to start from the ground up. Even while it is difficult to swallow for people who have invested their lives in trying to bring about radical social change, the Greek provocation We are not Ireland holds more than a grain of truth. And yet, at another level, there is significant activist experimentation going on. There have perhaps been more real conversations and actions in the past five years than at any time since the 1980s. To name but a few: Occupy Dame Street, Claiming our Future, Citizens First, Unlock Nama, Anglo Not Our Debt and Ballyhea Says No.25 There have also been significant mobilisations of smaller more militant left parties and coalitions within the Anti-Household Charges Campaign which became the Anti-Property Tax and Water Charges Campaigns. The Spectacle of Defiance and Hope is perhaps one of the smaller and lesser known of such initiatives and is a specifically community based attempt to resist austerity. It is a broad alliance of community and youth organisations which has its roots in working-class and Traveller communities in the city of Dublin. It originated firstly in 2009/2010 through a series of conversations between people living and working in communities around the city trying to find ways to respond to issues such as the bank bailout and the ensuing austerity programmes. There was a general frustration at the didactic, preordained, ineffective and unimaginative form that much mainstream protest was taking. After the initial conversations an invitation went out to a large number of groups and organisations seeking expressions of interest in developing new and/ or different forms of protest. At a large meeting in Dublin’s city centre participants argued that ‘defiance’ and ‘hope’ expressed two themes that were, for them, at the heart of the struggle against the forceful imposition of austerity and its potential transcendence. The alliance adopted the working title of ‘The Spectacle of Defiance and Hope’ and began the process of working out what a ‘Spectacle’ might be and do, and how it could be effective. The first action that the Spectacle engaged in was to organise a street-based pre-budget demonstration in Dublin in December 2010. A good deal of thought went into designing and creating street-based symbolic representations of the injustice of what was happening and the struggle against austerity. The themes of greed, exploitation and injustice were given form as a giant banker’s skull and supersized scales of

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justice. The phrase Stop ripping the heart out of communities became a campaign slogan and the image of the heart was used as an emblematic motif. Red was chosen as a base colour representing the anger and the defiance that people felt. Workshops were held in many communities to develop materials such as clothing, placards, signs and banners which were carrying messages relevant to those making them. (One image that remains potent is that of a young girl with a heart shaped placard which read you get millions, we get cheese, a reference to the distribution of large blocks of EU cheese to communities and families in Ireland at sporadic points throughout the crisis.) Drumming workshops were also held to give the event a sound and a sense of voice. Music and song became a central component of the event with the Irish hand-held drum, the bodhran, at the heart of it. Groups from Dublin and beyond participated, with a large proportion of the participants being young people from communities enduring gross inequalities. The event would be considered small relative to other demonstrations called by large established entities such as trade unions but the structure and the form of the event were notably different. Instead of the usual leadership lectures, ‘testimonies’ were given from the platform by migrants, Travellers, women working in domestic violence projects, by young people and by people from projects that had been closed completely. The testimonies were given by people who were directly suffering the effects of austerity. The rationale for such a structure was explicitly egalitarian, and an attempt to break with the (usually male) power hierarchies that tend to dominate platforms at much street-based protest. The Spectacle’s Books of Grievances and Hopes project was an attempt to extend and to deepen the street-based demonstrations into other modes of expression. The Books project was based upon the Cahiers de Doleances, or lists of grievances which were requested by the King prior to the revolution in France in 1789. Contrary to the King’s intentions however, the ‘cahiers’ became a subversive source of resistance to the monarchy and provided an encyclopaedic list of the oppressions of the regime.26 The Spectacle adapted the idea for use in neo-liberal Ireland and proposed that communities collate not just their grievances about what was happening, but their hopes for change as well. For the making of the books, workshops took place around the city where people were asked to write down their grievances and their hopes. The project was an attempt to develop a physical record of people’s emotional responses to the oppression of austerity. In many cases, the making of the books as objects paralleled the simple recording of statements. The books contain mixtures of written/typed statements, drawings, quotes, newspaper

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cut-outs and photos (many of them of the perceived architects of the crisis) and crafts. A lot of the grievances in the books are brief and relate to the causes and consequences of the crisis with rhetorical statements such as the following: The markets are more important than people, We did not borrow so why should we have to pay the debt back?, Why do only poor people go to prison? There are also longer and more detailed articulations and lists of grievances such as this one: I hate that the poor are the ones most affected by the cuts I hate the way the rich don’t have to pay taxes Community Projects shouldn’t be cut All children should have the option to go to college when they are older The bankers should have to pay for what they did. The government shouldn’t be getting paid so much. There should be more jobs for ordinary people. I want my children to have a future in this country I want my children to have a good quality of life in this country I should be able to afford the basic necessities for my children e.g. Food, heat, housing, clothes, shoes and school. I want to have a voice and be heard and for what I say and feel to matter and be heard.

The grievances reflect an acute sense of many sorts of inequalities, whether they are economic, cultural, social or political. In a short piece with a heading ‘The celtic tiger never came to me’ a woman describes a ‘before’ and ‘after’ situation: Before: Apparently there was a boom in this country. It never happened in my life or that of my children. Apparently the country was awash with money – it never washed into my life or that of my children. Apparently there was full employment – it never happened in my life. After: Apparently there is a recession, this has affected my life and that of my children. Apparently there is no money in the country – there is certainly a scarcity in my life. Apparently there is huge unemployment. I am still looking for a job.

And another asks critical questions about what happened with housing in Ireland in recent years: Why is our community left with run down houses with no one living in them? Why are people left looking for somewhere to live or why is there so many fucking homeless when we have houses that could be done up and have someone living in them. And new apartments with no one in them. Why? We have fuck all for the children in our community. Nothing. The only thing we have a lot of is fucking drugs. Again why? We need to give our children a chance. Get your shit together.

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The hopes are a mixture of short aphorisms and longer lists. The struggle for equality recurs time and again in almost all of the books: My hope is that people stick together and fight back, My hope for the future is for an equal society, Travellers should be equal in society, we are all equal, but we are not treated equal. As a family we hope to live in a more equal world. We want our schools and hospitals funded not our banks, we want to tax the rich and give to the less well off. Our hope is that these cuts will stop and our project will be able to deliver the programmes to the Traveller community. Healthy people need a healthy planet. The earth is not a commodity- it is a living, vibrating part of our universe.

The grievances and hopes recorded in books became a focal point for a second pre-budget demonstration in 2011 with a large book-shaped prop providing a platform for carrying the books that had been made through the streets of Dublin. Remaining with the principle of strong grassroots participation, those who had made the books read excerpts like those above at various locations en route through the city centre. Since then the books have acted as the basis for a project called The Songs of Grievance and Hope that transformed the written word into a musical form and brings it into a theatre space. This piece of work is very much an experiment in the creation and use of music and song as part of an anti-austerity ‘song cycle’. The song ‘Dark Horse on the Wind’, written by the late Liam Weldon, was adapted by those working on the Spectacle for one of the early demonstrations and has since become something of a collective anthem at these events. Theory and action The Spectacle is an experiment in the arena of social change which tries to fuse the imagination of the arts with the praxis of community work. After the initial enthusiasm of the forming of the Spectacle, those involved have come to recognise the obdurate nature of power in Ireland and beyond, and the challenges of trying to radically change things. The Spectacle has provided a continuous space for critical reflection on the nature of the crisis, but also a creative space for the design of (in)appropriate public responses. And while the Spectacle’s strength and energy comes from its origins and rootedness in specific geographical communities, those involved have come to see the Spectacle not as an end in itself or a silo, but as one of the spokes in the wheel of a larger movement that is gradually building against austerity. The idea

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of ‘joining the dots’ with other entities of a similar nature has been strongly endorsed by those involved. The Spectacle has worked closely with Occupy Dame Street, sections of the Trade Union Movement, Anglo Not Our Debt, and with organised political campaigns against austerity and debt. Such experimentation inevitably brings into contact a variety of political philosophies and worldviews. The question as to what it is we want to change, how we plan to do it and what our alternatives are is pressing. Thinking out the relationship between theory, ideas and practice is a crucial one for community work at this time. Margaret Ledwith’s call for an amalgamation of theory and practice is a timely reminder that ‘actionless thought’ is just as useless as ‘thoughtless action’.27 She argues that a ‘critical approach to community development begins in people’s lives in community, but reaches beyond the symptoms of injustice to the root causes by making critical connections between personal experiences and the oppressive political structures that perpetuate discrimination’.28 Devlin29 also makes the case for developing strong theoretical foundations that can be applied to the youth and community-work field, citing Kurt Lewin who stated: ‘There is nothing more practical than a good theory.’ However, according to Powell and Geoghegan30 the theoretical foundations of community work in Ireland are very much ‘rooted in liberal, humanistic values, with an emphasis on the value, capacity and worth of individuals, rather than in explicitly radical collective ones’. Collins argues that thoughts of radicalism within community development are misplaced, and that much of what happened during the era of Social Partnership had, in fact, much more to do with the state subtly gaining control over recalcitrant and resistant communities than it had to do with empowered communities taking control over their own destinies. He argues that ‘much of the “bottom-up” mobilisation which underpinned the Partnership project was essentially a sophisticated process of State building’.31 The insidious de-politicisation of community work in the 1990s and 2000s has been well documented. Meade32 makes the case that ‘since the 1990s a consensus-driven conception of community development has become hegemonic in both Ireland and Britain’. She argues that community development needs to rethink its project anew and to develop new frames of reference in relation to the spheres of injustice, agency and identity. This process of changing direction may not be easy: There are choices, however, albeit uncomfortable and potentially painful ones. The consequences of alternative choices may be a community development that is less well funded, that has less status in policy discourses or a community development that embarrasses and alienates powerful

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interest groups. Protest is a gamble. It brings no guarantee of success and every likelihood of reprisal, but it does at least force our attention to the impoverished scope, form and processes of Irish political debate.33

There is no reason why those who work and are active in the community-development field cannot begin to develop or reinvigorate radical frames of reference. The powerful have been adept at utilising political and economic crises and even natural disasters34 as opportunities for ruthlessly implementing their ideas and theories. Neo-liberalism is perhaps the most cogent recent example of this. The current crisis affords the same opportunity to the field of community work and to the left in general. The pace and the scale of change in recent years provide fertile conditions for reinvigorating the mission of community work and for a re-radicalisation to take place. How will, or can, this happen? The position taken here is that community work should explore and develop emancipatory egalitarian modes of thought and use them as foundations for directing actions. Baker et al.35 have developed a holistic, multilayered theoretical framework for understanding inequality which can act as a roadmap between theory and action. The framework allows us to understand the interlocking nature of inequalities across a variety of fields including those of class, gender, race and disability, all of which are at the heart of community work. The authors also draw our attention to the fact that there are different versions of ‘equality’ and the concept is used in a number of different ways. They draw clear distinctions between models of ‘basic’ and ‘liberal’ equality and the more radical idea of ‘equality of condition’. Promoting equality of condition means arguing for a radical change in the conditions of people’s lives across the registers of resources, respect and recognition, working and learning, love and care, and power. Changing the conditions of people’s lives is a radically transformative act. The first step in this process will be to develop a clear understanding about what needs to change, the second being to develop strategies to bring it about. The debt issue in Ireland provides a current example of the making and entrenching of economic inequality. The transfer of private bank debt to citizens of the Irish state has brought to the fore the real nature of capitalist social relations for many people. Whether it was through the commodification and financialisation of housing in Ireland or the selling on of huge bundles of sub-prime mortgages around the world, the inexorable search for profit has resulted in huge costs being imposed on ordinary people. We have seen inequality and deprivation increase significantly as a result. There are those who argue that inequality is functional for a society and that we need it to motivate people. The effects of inequality tell

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us otherwise however. In their book The Spirit Level,36 Wilkinson and Pickett analyse the effects of health inequalities both in the US and around the world, their conclusion being that inequality has pernicious effects on a whole host of areas of people’s lives and that the more equal a society is, the healthier and happier the population is. The clearest example of this is the US, which, on almost every register is the most unequal society of all the so called ‘market democracies’. This conclusion is substantiated by Robert Reich in the film Inequality for All, where he describes the situation which has developed in America where a group of around 400 individuals control almost 50 per cent of the wealth in the country. Such wealth and income resource inequalities have been at the heart of the recent Occupy movements and are by nature class inequalities. Social class inequalities are at the heart of contemporary capitalist societies just as they were in the example above of O’Devaney Gardens. Slavoj Žižek37 poses the question as to whether it is naïve to attempt to regulate such a global capitalist economic system which inherently generates such class-based inequalities: Today we are bombarded with a multitude of attempts to humanise capi­­ talism, from eco-capitalism, to Basic Income capitalism. The reasoning behind these attempts goes as follows: Historical experience has demonstrated that capitalism is by far the best way to generate wealth; at the same time, it must be admitted that left to itself the process of capitalist reproduction entails exploitation, the destruction of natural resources, mass suffering, injustice, wars, etcetera. Our aim should thus be to maintain the basic capitalist matrix of profit-oriented reproduction, but to steer and regulate it so that it serves the larger goals of global welfare and justice. Consequently we should leave the capitalist beast to its own proper functioning, accepting that markets have their own demands that should be respected, that any direct disturbance of market mechanisms will lead to catastrophe – all we can hope to do is tame the beast … However, all these attempts, well intended as they often are in their endeavour to unite pragmatic realism and principled commitment to justice, sooner or later encounter the Real of the antagonism between the two dimensions: the capitalist beast again and again escapes the benevolent social regulation. At some point, we will thus be compelled to ask the fateful question: is playing with the capitalist beast really the only imaginable game in town? What if, productive as capitalism is, the price for its continuous functioning simply has become too high? If we avoid this question and continue to humanize capitalism we will only contribute to a process we are trying to reverse.

Žižek’s question is relevant and challenging, and applies particularly well to many of the ‘constituencies’ of community development, who have experienced the harsh realities and the negative effects of global

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capitalism, not just in relation to the current crisis but over prolonged periods of recent history. For Žižek, the idea that there are ‘varieties of capitalism’,38 some of which are more human than others is a myth, for ultimately the bottom line is the relentless search for profit and the attendant social and environmental exploitation. The question is also relevant insofar as much of the consciousness of those working in the community-development field rarely looks beyond the figure of the state. Community workers can quite often appear like the character in Kafka’s short story Before the Law who waits at the gate for a lifetime knowing that there is something beyond, but accepts the reasoning of the doorkeeper that she or he cannot progress. While undoubtedly important the figure of the state operates as a de facto doorkeeper for much analysis and theorising in community work in Ireland. A key challenge is to get beyond the mythic figure of the state and to analyse the relationship between economic and political power. For, even if the housing issues were resolved in estates like O’Devaney Gardens, underlying economic and cultural inequalities remain intact. So it is important that these larger economic questions and processes are engaged with, for they are determining the very fabric of people’s lives and capacities. Conclusion: Gulag egalitarians Varlam Shalamov was a Moscow law student who was arrested and spent much of his adult life in Russian labour camps, the most wellknown of which was Kolyma, and after which his series of short stories Kolyma Tales39 was named. One of the stories in Kolyma Tales is entitled Committees for the Poor and describes the micro-economic system developed by prisoners awaiting trial within the huge communal cells in Butyr prison in Moscow. Due to the general air of paranoia or ‘vigilance’ as Shalamov describes it, prison authorities had decreed that no food or clothing parcels could be admitted to the prison on the grounds of fears of smuggling and subterfuge being committed by prisoners. But the authorities did allow relatives to deposit money for prisoners with prison authorities in the form of notes which could then be used to purchase items in the prison shop. Some prisoners received money from relatives or friends, while others, some who had been transported from other cities or areas thousands of miles away and separated from family, received nothing. Utilising a structure that had been part of the early revolutionary programme but had subsequently disappeared, prisoners re-initiated the concept of the Committees for the Poor. Each cell had a cell leader who maintained ‘contact with prison authorities and comradely discipline’ in the cell. Those who received money would

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contribute 10 per cent of it to a general fund for those who received nothing. For those who felt that the contribution was optional and refused to contribute they were informed by the cell leader that they would be the last to receive food as it was given out in the cell: ‘serve the one who doesn’t care about the committee last’. If they were belligerent and continued to refuse, the cell leader would exercise his privilege and ask the guards to transfer the prisoner to another cell where it was likely their new cellmates would be more suspicious and hostile than the previous one: ‘Committees for the Poor’ came into being spontaneously, as a comradely form of mutual aid. Someone happened to remember the original Committees for the Poor. Who can say, perhaps the author who injected new meaning into the old term had himself once participated in real committees for the poor in the Russian countryside just after the revolution?   These committees were set up in a very simple way so that any prisoner could give aid to his fellows. When sending his order to the ‘shop’, each prisoner donated ten percent to the committee. The total sum received in this fashion was divided among all those in the cell who were ‘moneyless’. Each of them had the right independently to order food from the ‘shop’.40

Despite the attempts by the prison authorities to eradicate them overtly and covertly, the committees continued to exist. The e­ xtraordinary thing about the system developed in the cells was the imagination and ingenuity shown by prisoners in their attempt to develop a form of economic equality by way of a (re)distribution of the financial resources available. In contrast to prisoners’ treatment at the hands of the regime, the social basis of the cell was constructed around an ethic of resource sharing and solidarity. The supreme irony of the actions of the ‘committees’ was that it was very much an attempt by those imprisoned under a ‘communist’ regime to practice a real form of communism. The decision, developed within the cells to structure the economy of the prison in an egalitarian fashion amidst the harshest of conditions shows the prisoners’ determination to utilise the total collective financial resources for the benefit of everyone. There was an unwillingness to let inequalities develop and grow to the benefit of some and the absolute detriment of others. There was also a refusal to allow the resource issue to be determined by recourse to charity or philanthropy, where those who had money could arbitrarily decide whether to contribute or not to the fund, leaving those without resources waiting for handouts. The ‘cahiers’ and the ‘committees’ provide examples of how organisation, imagination and articulation can make a difference. They show that there are ways of challenging and subverting oppressive regimes. The committees had a more limited impact in that they were inscribed

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within physically confined spaces within a larger totalitarian regime, but for that they are perhaps all the more remarkable. The cahiers on the other hand were a national articulation of discontent that changed the world as we know it. If we are to make a difference in changing the status quo in Ireland and elsewhere we will need to develop similar forms of creativity alongside a radical egalitarian politics. Notes  1 The full version of the poem is contained in the collaborative collection Night and Day alongside many other poems which describe life in Dublin on a single day from a number of different perspectives. Some of the poems were placed on large billboards in the middle of communities such as Neilstown in Clondalkin as part of the project.   2 In Volume 2 (p. 41) of the Report of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditures (also known euphemistically as the McCarthy Report or An Bord Snip Nua) the following statement is made in relation to Local & Community Development Programmes: ‘These programmes include the Local Development Social Inclusion Programme and the Community Development Programme. Both of these programmes aim to counter disadvantage. Projects funded include adult education courses, support for local enterprise initiatives and information provision for target groups. There is little evidence of positive outcomes for these initiatives. Furthermore the current delivery structure for these programmes is not optimal … Overall the Group targets total savings of 44m attributable to a re-structuring of delivery mechanisms and a reduction in the number of funded projects.’ (My italics.)   3 Brian Harvey, Downsizing the Community Sector (Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 2012).   4 Ibid., p. 11.   5 For a more detailed discussion of the Community and Voluntary Sector in Ireland, both North and South, see the publication by the Institute of Public Administration, Two Paths, One Purpose: Voluntary Action in Ireland North and South and in the context of the present chapter see especially Chapter Seven entitled ‘Towards a profile of the voluntary and community sector in the Republic of Ireland’.  6 Harvey, Downsizing the Community Sector, p. 9.   7 Brian Harvey, Are We Paying For That? Government Funding and Social Justice Advocacy (Dublin: The Advocacy Initiative, 2014).   8 Ibid., p. 4.  9 The report gives the following description of the ‘strategic turn’: ‘2002 became a year of seminal events for advocacy in the community and voluntary sector: the sudden and unheralded establishment of a new department responsible for its development; the consolidation of funding lines hitherto supervised by independent agencies; the delay in funding for voluntary and

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community organisations and the subsequent halving of that funding; the warnings issued soon thereafter to community organisations; the cessation of plans to establish voluntary activity units; and the sudden deterioration of relationships between the state and the voluntary and community sector. It set in train a line of development, which led, over time, to the closure of the Community Development Programme and, in the present time, to the integration of the local area partnerships with the local authorities under the alignment process. Without the community development projects, a substantial advocacy-focussed part of the community sector was taken out. “There was a high level of collateral damage”, as one expert commented’ (p. 50). 10 Ibid., p. 67. 11 John Baker, Kathleen Lynch, Sara Cantillon and Judy Walsh, Equality: From Theory to Action (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 12 Andrew Sayer, The Moral Significance of Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 13 Pierre Bourdieu et al. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: The Polity Press). 14 Ibid., p. 4. 15 Bourdieu makes this statement in the film Sociology is a Combat Sport, made and directed by Pierre Carles and which can be viewed online with subtitles. This film is particularly interesting for the challenges and defences to the idea of sociological impartiality. Bourdieu’s interview on French radio and his visit to Val Fourre are particularly enlightening in this respect. 16 John Bissett, Regeneration: Public Good or Private Profit? (Dublin: New Island Books, 2008); Rory Hearne, Public Private Partnership in Ireland: Failed Experiment or Way Forward? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); Conor McCabe, Sins of the Father: Tracing the Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy (Dublin: The History Press Ireland, 2010); Michael Punch, The Irish Housing System: Vision, Values, Reality (Dublin: The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice and Messenger Publications, 2009). 17 Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (London: Arnold Publishers, 1983). 18 There has been considerable resistance to this process of displacement of people from city council estates over recent years. The organisation Tenants First was established in 2004 and has worked for many years with tenants and community organisations to try and halt such processes and to deliver democratic and egalitarian models of regeneration. See the Tenants First publications entitled The Real Guide to Regeneration (Dublin, 2005) and Housing for Need not for Greed (Dublin, 2007). 19 Rosie Meade, ‘Community development: a critical analysis of its “keywords” and values’, in Catherine Forde, Elizabeth Kiely and Rosie Meade (eds), Youth and Community Work in Ireland Critical Perspectives (Dublin: Blackhall Publishing, 2009). 20 For recent critical engagements on the importance of class in Irish society see Colin Coulter, ‘The end of Irish history’, in C. Coulter and S. Coleman (eds),

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The End of Irish History? Critical Reflections on the Celtic Tiger (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003); Goretti Horgan, ‘The changing working class in Northern Ireland’, in S. O’Sullivan (ed.), Contemporary Ireland: A Sociological Map (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2007); Ronaldo Munck, ‘Social class and inequality’, in S. O’Sullivan (ed.), Contemporary Ireland: A Sociological Map (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2007). 21 Beverley Skeggs and Vik Loveday, ‘Struggles for value, value practices, injustice, judgement, affect and the idea of class’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 63, No. 12 (2012). Emphasis in original. 22 Sayer, The Moral Significance of Class, p. 218. 23 The original quote ‘I went from being an artist who makes things to an artist who makes things happen’, is from the British artist Jeremy Dellar, perhaps best known for his work in which he restaged the Battle of Orgreave which retells the story of the confrontation between English police and striking coal miners in the fields outside the town of Orgreave in the north of England in 1984 at the height of the miner’s strike. The restaging of the event by Dellar included some of the original miners and original police, except that for the work many of them swapped roles. The quote is in the introduction to Nato Thompson (ed.), Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991–2011 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). 24 See J. Marsden, ‘Covert contention in Ireland during the time of austerity: configuration of factors influencing the limited protest against the bank bailout and austerity’ (2008–-2012). Unpublished thesis for the degree of masters of Science in International Relations UCD 2012. 25 Occupy Dame Street was part of the global Occupy Movement and was established on the forecourt of the Irish Central Bank in October 2012 until it was forcibly dismantled by Gardaí (Irish Police Officers) in March 2013. See Helena Sheehan, ‘Occupying Dublin: considerations at the crossroads’, Irish Left Review (2012).   Claiming our Future describes itself as a progressive social movement and says on its website: ‘We are a national non-party-political civil society network that comprises individuals and organisations from a broad range of civil society sectors. Established in 2010, we aim to make real the values of equality, environmental sustainability, participation, accountability and solidarity.’ Available at www.claimingourfuture.ie. Consulted 20 April 2014. See also S. O Donohoe, ‘The means are the ends in the making: a ­community work perspective on mobilisation and social movements with a case study of claiming our future’. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, NUI Maynooth 2012.   Unlock NAMA was a campaign established in early 2012 focused on public access to vacant buildings held by the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA). The campaign was launched with a one-day occupation of a large NAMA property located on Great Strand St. in central Dublin. The empty property was converted into a space of discussion and debate around property speculation, debt and their impact on the city.

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  Anglo Not our Debt was established in 2012 to campaign for the cancellation of the debt of Anglo Irish Bank which the Irish state undertook to guarantee and to pay in full through a mechanism known as the ‘Promissory Notes’, which was later transformed into fully fledged sovereign debt in 2013. See www.notourdebt.ie. Consulted 21 January 2014.   Ballyhea Says No is a group of local people from the village of Ballyhea in southern Ireland who have run a continuous campaign against the payment of bank debt that was taken on by the Irish state after the bank guarantee of September 2008. The core of the campaign is a weekly Sunday morning demonstration that began in February 2011 that makes the short journey from the local church through the village and back. The demonstrations continue to this day. The campaign is documented at length in the film Peripheral Vision by Donnacha O Briain.   We the Citizen was an experiment in ‘deliberative democracy’ that took place at both a regional and a national level in Ireland in 2011 through the form of ‘citizen assemblies’. See Elaine Byrne, ‘The democracy of a Republic’, in Fintan O’Toole (ed.), Up The Republic: Towards a New Ireland (London: Faber and Faber, 2012). See also Laurence Cox, ‘News from nowhere: the movement of movements’, in L. Connolly and N. Hourigan (eds), Social Movements and Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). 26 In the following passage from their book Multitude (London: Penguin, 2004) Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt give a synopsis of the development of the Cahiers and how they relate to current predicaments: ‘In 1788, faced with a growing financial crisis, King Louis called an assembly for the following year of the Estates General, which had not met since 1614. Custom was that at an assembly of the Estates General the monarch could impose new taxes to raise funds and in exchange consider grievances from the participants. The King however, did not expect so many grievances. By the time of the meeting of the Estates General in Versailles in 1789, more than forty thousand cahiers de doleances had been compiled from all over the country. These lists consisted of denunciations and demands that ranged from the most local problems to issues that touched the highest levels of government. The revolutionary forces growing in France absorbed these demands as part of their foundation and read in the concrete grievances the embryo of a new social power. Abbe Sieyes and his comrades, in other words, constructed on the basis of the cahiers the figure of the Third Estate as a political subject with the power to topple the ancient regime and carry the bourgeoisie to power. Perhaps we can see the protests against the present form of globalization in the same light today and read in them the potential figure of a new global society’ (p. 269). 27 Margaret Ledwith, Community Development: A Critical Approach (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2005). 28 Ibid., p. 7. 29 Maurice Devlin, ‘Theorising youth’, in Catherine Forde, Elizabeth Kiely and Rosie Meade (eds), Youth and Community Work in Ireland Critical

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Perspectives (Dublin: Blackhall Publishing, 2009). 30 Fred Powell and Martin Geoghegan, The Politics of Community Development (Dublin: A&A Farmar, 2004), p. 157. 31 Tom Collins, ‘Community development and state building: a shared project’, Community Development Journal, Vol. 37, No. 1, January 2002, p. 9. 32 Meade, ‘Community development’, pp. 59–60. 33 Ibid., p. 78. 34 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (London: Penguin, 2007). 35 Baker et al., Equality: From Theory to Action. 36 Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better For Everyone (London: Penguin Books, 2009). 37 Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (London: Verso, 2012). 38 Mary Murphy and Peadar Kirby, Towards A Second Republic: Irish Politics after the Celtic Tiger (London: Pluto Press, 2011). 39 Varlam Shalamov, ‘Committees for the poor’, in Kolyma Tales (London: Penguin Books, 1994). 40 Ibid., p. 209.

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All aboard the migration nation Gavan Titley

Introduction Across the eras of boom and bust, public culture in Ireland has consistently had something of the airport bookshop about it. If it’s not quite true that there is no I in Ireland, highly publicised, motivational books and media events unflaggingly invited us Irish to recognise ourselves in the fairground mirror of popular typologies, and, once snugly interpellated, to be resilient, forward-looking and flourishing. In 2013, New Thinking = New Ireland1 set out to top up the national reserves of confidence and creativity by harnessing the passionate thinking of ‘tomorrow’s leaders’ on a range of social, economic, political and environmental issues. Unusually for this genre, it explicitly focused on both inward and outward migration, with the established focus on ‘diaspora’ accompanied by one on ‘multiculturalism’. Implicitly aware of the shadow cast by the term itself, the argument is styled as the ‘Optimist’s Guide to Multiculturalism’.2 ‘National identifiers are etched in your very bones’, the author notes, but on such forms of mutual recognition an Ireland that embraces diversity can be forged – one where cities and towns across Ireland give immigrant communities the chance to share their cuisine with the nation; where schools celebrate the national holidays of the rainbow of children gathered under their roofs; and where an emphasis on cultural literacy could ‘foster a cosmopolitan workforce’ and, more generally, ‘have the potential to market the land of a hundred thousand welcomes as a cultural hub’.3 It is a given in this genre, as Thomas Frank remarks in his essay on the creativity industry, ‘Getting to Eureka’,4 that those who urge us to think differently almost never do so themselves. Nevertheless, the faithful reproduction of a celebratory ‘saris, samosas and steel drums’ multiculturalism – several decades after it was deployed in Britain to smother anti-racist movements while concomitantly being ridiculed by the conservative right – requires some further explanation. During the 2000s, state and semi-state agencies in Ireland only referred to ­multiculturalism the better

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to mark their distance from it. Newer rubrics of ‘diversity’, ‘interculturalism’, and ‘integration’ were presented as being future-proofed through attentiveness to the failed multicultural pasts of others, elsewhere. These histories of state multiculturalism are frequently thin, contradictory and sometimes fully fictitious, but this does not prevent them from being politically productive, for in its capacious sense, multiculturalism also provides ‘a way of thinking and talking about identity and belonging in relation to a conception of social order’.5 In a putatively post-racial era, these narratives of multicultural failure have provided ways of reshaping what Les Back and Shamser Sinha term ‘new hierarchies of belonging’.6 The selective, instrumental filtering of human mobility by capitalist states and the intensified securitarian imperatives of the post-9/11 period have consolidated and extended the role of the immigrant as a social enemy, where the ‘immigrant’, as Balibar noted in the early 1990s, stands as a racialised category including ‘not all foreigners and not only foreigners’. Consequently, for the populist and neo-nationalist right, but also for a resurgent identitarian liberalism in Europe, narratives of overly generous and naïve multiculturalist failure have provided an important post-racial alibi: how can merely addressing the excesses of the past be racist?7 In this context, the re-branding of a toxic artifact from other nations’ pasts as ‘new thinking for a new Ireland’ appears even more regressive. Yet, what appears as a failure of innovation can also be read as a triumph of consistency. While multiculturalism is now configured as divisive for the nation, it has also been consistently critiqued as a nationbuilding project. The point is forcefully made in Ghassan Hage’s White Nation, where what he terms the ‘bad multiculturalism’ of nationalist denial and exclusion, and the ‘good multiculturalism’ of celebration and selective inclusion, are unified by a desire for continued mastery of national space: White multiculturalism cannot admit to itself that migrants and Aboriginal people are actually eroding the centrality of White people in Australia. This is because the very viability of White multiculturalism as a governmental ideology resides precisely in its capacity to suppress such a reality.8

Translated to contemporary Ireland, Hage’s point provides a structural rather than sociological insight. The multiculturalism proposed in New Thinking = New Ireland is not really about a highly slippery and contentious idea, but about the desire to project a governmental ideology that makes a society of migration coherent and manageable. What is important is the form, not the content; such frameworks for the governance of difference always pre-suppose the need to manage and discipline the

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‘migration problem’, and the problem of migrants. Regardless of the modular ratios of tolerance and intolerance in versions of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘interculturalism’ and ‘integration’, every framework for the governance of difference proceeds, in Nicholas De Genova’s formulation, from the question ‘what then, do we do with them?’9 When seen as answers to this question, the differences between frameworks for the governance of difference are less important than their foundational affinities. The florid celebration of national and ethnic differences proposed in the Multiculturalism ‘think piece’ also quietly celebrates its fidelity to a ‘transcendental homogeneity’, its vociferous recognition of socio-cultural change works to ‘suppress a reality’ wherein people who have migrated to Ireland have forged lives, relationships and networks, and have desires, plans and futures that are not described and cannot be contained by these prescriptions. The ‘multiculturalism’ slated for a New Ireland merely exaggerates the tendencies found in the profusion of institutional discourses that were proposed, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as ways of recognising and managing the ‘New Irish’. As the chapter explores, the official visions of Ireland as a ‘migration nation’ that circulated during the Celtic Tiger period were not ultimately that different from the image of frozen cultures endlessly celebrating themselves presented in New Thinking = New Ireland. As Ronaldo Munck has argued, the ‘Celtic Tiger’ period involved ‘Ireland’s complete integration and identification with the globalization master narrative’.10 Migration at once consolidated and vanished from this narrative, for while an understanding of the complex flows and patterns of contemporary migration is impossible without attention to the political economy of globalisation, migration is dominantly discussed from the imagined standpoint of the state and ‘host country’, in terms of its impact on an assumed isomorphism of nation-state/territory/society. In Ireland, a key trope of the boom was the story of an emigrant nursery becoming an attractive destination for immigration, which in turn was framed as an important indicator of national arrival. Migration was marked as a threshold of recognisable economic development and success, and also marked as a sign of – in that dread postcolonial idiom – national maturity and openness to the world. Defined by their labour power and reified through implacable relations of cultural recognition, migrants to Ireland were implicated, to varying degrees, in a form of that reflexive narcissism most acutely focused on British royalty and US multinationals – ‘what does their presence say about us?’ The ‘return’ of emigration during the period of troika-enforced recession extended the story into a bitter triptych of bust, boom and bust, but of course, the reality is far more complex. Noting both the problem

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with acquiring accurate statistical information on migration to and from Ireland, and the consistency of flows and counter-flows of people during these supposedly demarcated eras, White and Gilmartin suggest that both public debate and much academic research has displayed a ‘binary understanding of the process: either to or from Ireland, but never both at the same time’.11 This understanding has proven to be as politically enabling as it has been analytically restrictive. If, as Colin Coulter argues in the introduction, the political class reached for the ‘dangerous pronoun’ as austerity was implemented, the we in ‘we all partied’ was marked by the presumption that the party ‘guests’ would now go home. If the TED-talk template of multiculturalism framed people as perpetually frozen in happy clappy forms of mutual celebration, the Irish government suppressed the reality of social transformation simply be denying it – migrants were ‘going home’, the political priority of ‘integration’ was materially and discursively stood down, and the painful return of emigration began to dominate the headlines.12 Despite the transnational networks, local transformations and everyday diversity shaped by migrant lives, ‘immigration’ has now been periodised in, and narrated out, of the national story. As the designated ‘migration chapter’ of this book, this essay runs the risk of replicating this kind of stricture. However it aims, instead, to draw out the affinities between the ‘management’ of migration and the wider critique of neoliberal formations in Ireland developed in this volume, and between the dominant narratives formed to explain and contain migrant presence, and those that mediate understandings of what happened in, and to, ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland. For this reason, it does not attempt an overview of ‘migration issues’, nor even a partial summary of what is by now a substantial academic literature.13 Rather, it discusses three processes predicated on the desire to suppress the multicultural real that have inevitably failed to do so. The hegemonic representation of ‘migrants’, as Elena Moreo has argued, vacillates between forms of invisibilisation – physically corralled and hidden away, discursively written out of the public sphere – and hyper-visibility, the subject of celebration or aversion, threat and occasionally promise.14 The next three sections examine how this dynamic of visibility/invisibility is threaded through three episodes of state intervention in the problem of migration. The next section examines how the Irish state, in common with other European states in this period, placed significant emphasis on the need for ‘integration’, while imposing an increasingly stratified system of entry and residence that serves, in fact, to dis-integrate the population. Following that, the chapter discusses the racist spectacle of the 2004 Citizenship referendum, and in examining

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its political calculus and impacts, argues that its wider political significance requires re-consideration in the light of ‘austerity’ politics. From this form of hyper-visibility it moves in conclusion to a discussion of enforced invisibilisation in the direct provision and deportation system, which, at the time of writing, is subject to unprecedented challenge from the autonomous organisation of residents themselves. Integrate where now? Containers and networks While the dominant story of emigrant nursery to immigrant host promotes a familiar form of Irish exceptionalism, the exceptional dimensions of the migratory flows during the period from the mid-1990s to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century should be underlined. If, as many studies note, the 1996 census is taken as marking the beginning of a period of net immigration, the 2006 census, detailing that 10 per cent of those resident in Ireland at this point were non-Irish nationals, bookends a period of intensive mobility. As Steve Loyal notes, between 1999 and 2008, the population of Ireland grew by 18 per cent, ‘the highest rate in the 27 countries comprising the European Union’.15 While there was no shortage of commentary that sought to parlay these headline statistics into tales of ‘uncontrolled mass immigration’, it is worth noting that they say nothing about dominant patterns of mobility, nor the national and international infrastructure which facilitates and restricts different forms of (labour) migration during this period. While there was a sustained growth in labour-based immigration from the 1990s, and the 2006 census calculates that, by this point, 188 different nationalities were living in Ireland, by far the largest ‘non-national’ group resident is from the UK, and from the late 1990s until mid-2000s, approximately 40 per cent of immigration was comprised of ‘returning Irish’. As Piaras Mac Éinrí summarised: What is not in dispute is the scale of the overall inward migratory flows. In the period 1995–2000, approximately a quarter of a million persons migrated to Ireland, of whom about half were returning Irish … the aggregate figure for immigrants (including Irish returnees) in this five-year period is an astonishing 7 per cent approximately of the 1996 population (3.6 million). There are no parallels to these figures in other EU countries.16

Prior to 2004, the available routes of entry to Ireland involved claiming asylum, studying on a student visa, or coming to work on a work permit/work visa (depending on skills levels and sectoral requirements). Following the expansion of the European Union in 2004, a highly significant movement of Poles and others from the new accession states

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took place, with the Central Statistics Office’s Principal Demographic Results in 2006 estimating that of 612,600 people – or 14.7 per cent of the population – born outside of Ireland, 63,000 were Polish. In reality the figure is probably significantly larger, but once again, the vagaries of statistical data and the prevalence of forms of migration that unsettle a default reliance of push/pull home/host migration models make definitive figures unreliable. As Adrian Favell points out: the paradigm of immigration and integration … becomes redundant in the face of the emergent, regional-scale, European territorial space … where European citizens can move freely against a wider transnational horizon that encourages temporary and circular migration trends, and demands no long-term settlement or naturalization in the country of work.17

Migratory flows and their categorisation, organisation and policing by the state will be discussed further subsequently but, in advance of that, Favell’s point about the paradigmatic redundancy of ‘immigration and integration’ is worth discussing. For whom are they redundant, and how? The paradigms of immigration and integration only make sense in relation to a focus on the territorial state – immigration to, and integration into. As such, these paradigms, combined with the prevalent emphasis in Migration Studies on quantification, categorisation and policy relevance, predominantly involve, as Nicholas De Genova argues, ‘presuppositions through which research is effectively formulated and conducted from the standpoint of the state, with all of its ideological conceits more or less conspicuously smuggled in tow’.18 Arguably, the full implications of this smuggling have not been engaged within migration studies in Ireland, but it is certainly the case that academic research has moved away in the last years from reproducing a ‘container model of the nation-state (that) is ill-equipped to deal with the ambiguous, fluid and liminal nature of migrant identities and forms of citizenship’.19 In a recent assessment of the field, Migge and Gilmartin argue that the study of migration to Ireland remained bounded by an early and influential focus on ‘national communities’ of migrants and their experience of migration and society in Ireland.20 In a related critique in the same volume, Deirdre Conlon writes: There can be little doubt that focusing on discrete categories has been crucial to understanding the intricacies of migration as well as being important for the politics of recognition of minority communities in Irish society. Yet, one possible effect of focusing on particular groups in this manner is that exclusive migrant categories become solidified, apparent differences between groups naturalized, and intersections across migrants’ experiences are overlooked.21

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This reliance on ‘national communities’ does not necessarily reproduce container models of community and identity, and given the ways in which such groupings are ascribed relative meaning within the popular economy of ‘good and bad’ migrants an attention to lived and projected community remains important. However, this move beyond given categories not only underlines the heterogeneity of people who migrate and unsettles the naturalisation of state categorisations and legal statuses, it also demands an understanding of how people make their lives within specific localities and contexts in ways that do not map onto the paradigmatic imperatives of ‘immigration and integration’. Consequently, recent research has begun to focus on processes of ‘integration from below’ in, for example, migrant organisation and activism,22 in churches and emergent forms of community,23 through media habitats and transnational networks of social exchange and cultural production,24 and through an attention to how places and localities in Ireland are continually reshaped by migratory movements and transnational connection.25 In so doing, fine-grained migration related research has much to say about the transformation of society in Ireland over the last decades. Yet, while such work may further the redundancy of ‘immigration and integration’ as analytical imperatives, they are far from redundant politically. They remain categorical imperatives of states that filter, order and trammel the lives, aspirations and futures of people who migrate. While the mesh of transnational flows remakes place and locale in societies of migration, at the scale of political territory, the redundancy of the ‘container’ has been greeted, Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh point out, with a desire for the ‘gated community’: states continue to define spatial rights: rights of citizenship; the right or otherwise to be in a particular place; and freedom and unfreedom of movement. As we characterize it, states have become the gated communities of the globalised world. They define and enforce inclusion and exclusion within national territories. They construct and enforce the conditions in which the Majority World enters the privileged space of the First World. They remain the crucial mechanism for dealing with the conundrum of how you allow the labour power of the Majority World to enter your country without allowing the inhabitants themselves to enter.26

As Lentin and McVeigh argue, the apparent ‘weakening’ of the state implied by, inter alia, the critical diminution of ideas of ‘immigration and integration’ can only be understood in terms of a concomitant strengthening of the state’s capacities and technologies for ordering, segregating and controlling human mobility. Before examining this in terms of immigration and integration policy in Ireland, it is worth situating these questions in an international and specifically western European context.

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Integration and stratification This concentration of the coercive capacity of the state on human mobility is most spectacularly illustrated in what Vittorio Longhi has recently termed the ‘immigrant war’, a war fought to preserve the political fiction that migration is a manageable and temporary phenomenon while ensuring sufficient supplies of cheap labour to increasingly de-unionised, flexibilised and deregulated ‘labour markets’.27 While the horrific death toll of north and west African migrants in the Mediterranean – most acutely illustrated when 387 people drowned off Lampedusa in October 2013 – is widely reported as a ‘tragedy’ and a betrayal of ‘European values’, a reading of migration politics in a longer history of European colonialism and racism suggests that these deaths are far less exceptional than the talk of values can ever admit. As a recent investigative report in Der Spiegel into the well-financed militarisation and policing of the European Union’s southern borders noted: There is virtually no legal path to Europe for refugees – not for most Syrians, of which only very few are brought to Germany as so-called contingent refugees, not for Iraqis and not for people from troubled West African countries. Those wishing to apply for asylum in the EU must arrive illegally first – on smugglers’ boats, hidden in minibuses or traveling with forged passports on commercial flights. The EU is sealing itself off, fearing that if it fails to do so, even more people will come, particularly from poorer countries. But it is also true that the transformation of the EU into a fortress has created the conditions that have led to deaths along its borders. Many refugees choose the extremely dangerous route across the Mediterranean because Frontex is sealing off land routes.28

Longhi’s exploration of migration routes into Europe, the US and the Persian Gulf makes clear that the ‘immigrant war’ is not only fought at the territorial border. Rather, the border extends and contracts beyond and within the political territory, it shadows the ‘needed but unwelcome’, constructs and produces forms of illegality, enacting modes of surveillance and enforcing precariousness. The European need to secure specific flows of labour and to address demographic trends, while being seen politically to manage the ‘problem of migration’ and minimise the cost of human settlement to the competitively aligned state, has resulted over the last fifteen years in extraordinary investment in militarisation, forms of deterrence and criminalisation, and the increased stratification of immigration statuses.29 This involves delineating layers of distinction and entitlement as to mobility, length and stability of residence, socioeconomic rights and access to citizenship and permanent residency, which are organised according to portfolios of skills, perceived labour market demand, assumed cultural capacities for autonomy and non-dependence

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on the (welfare) state, and, increasingly, questions of integratibility. Integration has emerged, and markedly so after 9/11, as the rubric charged with projecting and guaranteeing the future cohesion of globalised nation-states. If the migration regime seeks to maximise the economic utility of migrants, the integration regime extends its supposed rationalities to residence, citizenship and acceptable ways of belonging. The prevalent racialisation of Muslim populations in Europe, the obsession with deterring asylum seekers and ‘irregular’ migration and the tendency for ‘migration’ to act as a conductor for ‘all the unresolved issues of membership in present-day societies’30 has resulted, as Eleonore Kofman argues, in the state re-asserting ‘its role as protector of national identity and social cohesion’.31 Understanding the relationship between the need for flows of skilled and disposable labour, and the assertiveness derived from the political need to sustain plausible visions of the bounded and cohesive national society, allows us to understand how contemporary integration projects are structured around a deliberate gap between the discursive and the material. Integration regimes seek to filter and organise those whose labour is of value to the economy and to organise their presence through stratified systems of status, residence and legitimacy. As Guild et al. have argued, integration is now less a process that progresses towards citizenship than a matrix of border practices that results in very different end points for divergently categorised migrant subjects: In the context of immigration law, integration becomes a tool to control the non-national ‘inside’ the nation-state and even ‘abroad’ … Integration functions as another regulatory technique for the state to manage access by the non-national – not to the status of citizen – but to the act of entry, the security of residence, family reunification and protection against expulsion … Integration determines the ‘legality’ of human mobility, and constitutes another frontier to be considered as a ‘legal immigrant’.32

However, alongside this, integration politics extend extensive demands for loyalty, autonomy and compatibility with the national community, including those whose stratified and frequently precarious status renders them deliberately dis-integrated. The contemporary emphasis on compulsory modes of cultural and civic integrationism is predicated on the apparent contradiction between expansive demands for affective and symbolic integration, and remorselessly structured stratification. Taken together, they produce the ‘new hierarchies of belonging’ theorised by Back and Sinha, where the ranking and ordering of desirable and undesirable immigration statuses is accompanied by constant public adjudication on the integratibility of different ‘migrant communities’. It is this that in significant part accounts for the rash of manufactured, symbolic

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controversies in western Europe, which broadly divide between spectacles of cultural prohibition (burka debates, headscarf bans, minaret and mosque construction controversies, halal moral panics) and of cultural precondition (integration tests, pre-migration tests, citizenship tests and ceremonies, the prescription of ‘extreme’ opinion, demands for performances of national loyalty). If the integration regime asks, ‘what are we to do with them?’, integration politics supplements this with ‘what do we need to be seen to do with them?’ The best little country in which to be integrated ‘Immigrants’, as Les Back and Shamser Sinha write, are ‘created and racially scripted forms of personhood that come to life at a particular conjuncture’.33 In Ireland over the last twenty years, it is clear that the state has primarily scripted migrants as economic units, to be managed in the national interest, and categorised and organised in ways that render them ‘legible for capital’.34 The gradual development of an immigration regime, as Bryan Fanning35 has shown in detail, begins to feature an attention to ‘integration’ only after 2004, when the vast majority of those moving to Ireland were exercising their right to the free movement of labour within the European Union (a ‘right’ suspended, at the time, by every member state other than Ireland, the UK and Sweden). Fanning outlines three stages of development in the lead up to 2004. In the first, and in common with every other western European state in this period, the emphasis was on the overt politicisation of asylum seeking, and consisted of ‘efforts to defend Irish sovereignty against asylum seekers through the ramping up of border controls by means of carrier liability legislation and the use of welfare restrictions to deter applications for asylum’.36 The punitive ‘direct provision’ regime instigated in the early 2000s is discussed subsequently, but it is worth noting that the work permit and work visa scheme in operation in this period also had punishing characteristics. Given significant labour market expansion, the issuing of work permits increased from 1,103 in 1993 to 36,431 in 2001. The work permit system involved annually renewable permits that were issued for particular jobs and tied to particular employers, carried no access to socio-economic rights, and family reunification was not permitted for the first year. Jane Pillinger’s research has shown how this system had particularly gendered impacts, as, for partners of permit-holders general precariousness involved even more specific forms of insecurity, including limited rights to childcare and maternity benefits, restrictive rights to family reunification, and the disruption of mobile networks of care and support through visa regimes.37 While this overtly ‘guest worker’ system

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provided expansive opportunities for exploitation and abuse and configured permit-holders and cheap, flexible and precarious labour, Steve Loyal has detected a proto-integrationist logic present in their operation: In 2001 the majority of the 36,431 permits issues were given to i­ ndividuals from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Philippines, South Africa and Romania. Most of the countries of origin of the holders of work permits contained white populations, in contrast to the countries of asylum-seekers. The Department of Employment and Industry seems implicitly to have targeted specific countries for the recruitment of employees, through work fairs, advertising and so on. As a result of this recruitment drive, the majority of permits went to non-African, non-Asian countries (with the exceptions of South Africa and India). These nation states are generally populated by white Christians, who are, from the state’s point of view, more easily ‘assimilatable’ into Irish society. This systematic racialisation of work permits by the state can be seen in terms of a straightforward attempt to regulate internal ethnic and religious diversity.38

The second stage in Fanning’s orienting periodisation was dominated by a discourse of security and national interest, reflecting the influence of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform over asylum policy, ‘reception and integration’ and ‘immigration and naturalisation’.39 This period culminated in the Citizenship referendum of 2004 – which is discussed in the next section – the migratory flows of the post-accession period, and the introduction of a two-year residency requirement for new EU citizens to access welfare benefits (which was rescinded in 2006). The third period features the emergence of ‘integration’ in 2005–2006 as a governmental discourse involving more dimensions than a sole focus on labour market integration. A discourse of integration substantively emerged through policy statements from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform (DJELR) in 2006–2007, and culminated in the establishment of the Office of a Minister of State for Integration in 2007 and the launch of a policy framework in 2008. At least rhetorically, integration policy was presented as a mode of ‘future-proofing’ the nation, and as a key priority for government. As Michael McDowell, then DJELR Minister, stated: ‘Standing at the integration crossroads … we need to carefully examine those choices because if we journey down the wrong road, it may not be easy to find our way back. Neither may we have the time for the return journey’.40 Standing at this integration crossroads, the jive with multiculturalism was not that of the New Ireland thinktankery, but an insistence on having learnt from the multicultural failures of elsewhere. As the only lengthy statement on integration produced in this period, Migration

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Nation: Statement on Integration Strategy and Diversity Management, notes, judicious policy-making will enable ‘(us) to position ourselves on a more advanced cycle rather than go through earlier cycles’.41 Yet, for all this overt calibration, it is now accepted in the literature on integration policy that it was primarily a symbolic exercise in, to return to the foundational question, demonstrating ‘what we are going to do about them’. Bracketing the normative and political question of what integration policy should do, it is now evident, as Gerry Boucher summarised, that ‘official integration policy … is more of a collection of policy statements and piece-meal, reactive policy responses to immediate, experiential policy problems’.42 The rapid and concerted disposal of integration as a governance narrative; the dismantling of funded agencies such as the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism and the National Action Plan against Racism; and the removal of integration supports in schools as the recession unfolded in 2008–2009 – all lend credence to the critique of integration as a reactive, strategic and ultimately symbolic exercise. However, it is also possible to read it in terms of the analytical division between an integration regime and integration politics discussed previously. As Bryan Fanning has argued, integration policies that seek justification in ideas of social cohesion can only be viable if they seek to close gaps between ‘nationals’ and ‘non-nationals’.43 Yet integration policy in Ireland has been structured around the persistence of gaps; it only came into being in relation to the free movement of labour within the European Union, and consistently framed the ‘deportable’ subjects of the asylum regime as beyond the scope of integrationism. Integration politics in western Europe has been characterised by an overt and often hysterical delineation of hierarchies of belonging in relation to resurgent articulations of national community, or a calcified and dehistoricised European liberal identity politics. While the Irish integration regime mirrors the systemic priorities elsewhere, integration politics has – with the exception of sporadic entrepreneurial populism by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs and councillors – little in common with the full-throated rhetoric often found in western Europe. In policy discourse, integration politics has involved a commitment to notions of interculturalism and diversity that, in effect, efface hierarchies of belonging by framing the problem of integration as one of intersubjective exchange and cultural process, irrespective of the structural constraints and material conditions of those regarded as subjects of interculturalism. This contrast between soft-focus rhetoric and hard-edged material restriction was echoed by one activist in asylum seeker and migrant rights – during a public discussion we hosted at the National

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University of Ireland Maynooth and published in The Irish Journal of Anthropology – who noted that different agencies of the state operate according to different logics, whereby ‘there is a soft wing talking about multiculturalism on the one hand, and on the other there is a very hard wing of the state that has the legal basis to actually do something to make it very difficult for people to get documentation, very difficult for people to gain status and which is trying to influence public opinion in a security conscious way’. Thus, in keeping with the wider strategies designed to mediate the best little country on the world stage, the cultivation of an image of an open, progressive, multicultural island has suffused the integration politics that distracts from the implacable calculus of the integration regime. This was illustrated, for example, in a 2010 Migrant Rights Centre study that welcomed government concern about the possible scapegoating of migrant workers during the recession, while also underlining the continued inaction on the employer-held permit system and the ‘persistent misunderstanding of migrant workers and their families as temporary residents whose position is entirely dependent on economic circumstances. Migrant workers and their families are thus actively encouraged to leave Ireland, or not to come here in the first place’.44 Research on the impact of the financial crisis on migrants suggests that employment rates for ‘non-nationals’ fell at twice the rate than for Irish citizens, and that it is likely that as many as 20 per cent of migrants of working age left between 2008 and 2010.45 While, as David Landy discusses, there is clear evidence that a significant proportion of people have stayed, the impacts of stratification endure and remain invisibilised, as the political narrative that ‘they have gone home’: has policy implications, as can be seen in Ireland’s policies on family reunification, which have been ranked the worst in the EU, as well as its poor long-term residence policies and provisions on education (MIPEX 2013). Ranked by the Migrant Policy Index as 28th out of 31 European countries in terms of labour market mobility for migrants, it is clear that migrants are still treated as disposable transient low-skilled workers. As a result Ireland has neither a coherent policy on integration, nor one on immigration.46

In this context, Mark Maguire and Fiona Murphy’s conclusion in Integration in Ireland: The Everyday Lives of African Migrants that ‘integration was never seen as a priority in Ireland, except by immigrants and those most closely associated with immigrants’ lives’47 is brutally exact. But it could be taken further. The politics of integration rarely admit of a basic question – what is, or where is, the integrated society that migrants are being asked to integrate into? Given that integration politics is racially

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scripted, the critical intent of this question must recognise the ways in which it is simply not designed to be answered by nationals of the nation. However, when posed in a society with high youth unemployment and emigration, high levels of class and regional inequality, and a representative democratic system more answerable to transnational capital and supra-national institutions than its electorate, the symbolic politics of integration may have a wider valence. In an essay on governmentality and integration policy in Ireland, Breda Gray explores the ways in which the drive of integration governmentality was clearly to prefer and shape ‘self-sufficient and autonomous immigrants, who must work on themselves in order to be independent, and committed to contributing to the Irish economy and society, in order that they may be integrated’.48 In an era of austerity that has been predicated on the stratification of the wider population into deserving and undeserving, public and private, flourishing and begrudging, those able to pay and contribute and those not stepping up to the plate, what appears as a template for migrant management also describes the selfwork and enforced ‘autonomy’ expected of citizens in a period of social dis-integration. Domopolitics and disposable populations We’re post-racial now, Minister In November 2011 the Fine Gael Mayor of Naas Darren Scully resigned following intensive publicity over his decision not to ‘take representations from Black Africans’ because of their ‘aggressiveness and bad manners’ and tendency to ‘play the race card’. Improvising without the flash card that normally reminds such heroes of plain-speaking to ‘talk about culture, not race!’ Scully’s ‘Black Africans’ formulation left him very little room to mitigate what is always termed the ‘accusation’ of racism. In the same month, RTÉ broadcast a series Now It’s Personal, which in its short life essentially conspired to allow professional media ‘contrarians’ to demand that their pet societal scapegoats account for their right to exist. In the second episode, the Irish Independent columnist Ian O’Doherty subjected the ‘Muslim community’ to a very conventional brand of ‘courageous’ interrogation. The very first frame of the programme shows planes slamming into the twin towers on 9/11, with a voiceover sample from (presumably) a preacher exhorting that ‘Islam is coming to Europe!’, followed immediately by a shot of O’Doherty at his desk, watching an ‘Islamic’ protest somewhere in the ‘Islamic world’, and providing the voiceover: ‘Islam, the religion of peace. And if you disagree, we’ll kill you’. It then further

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cuts to preview snippets of O’Doherty’s interactions with Muslims in Ireland, where he asks one man if he condemns Osama Bin Laden, and tells another that he finds halal meat disgusting. By asking his ­‘community hosts’ to account and make amends for every transnational ill that can be associated with Islam, RTÉ and O’Doherty’s collaboration reproduces a racialising process that has been consolidated and legitimated by integration politics and events in western Europe. Scully’s phenotypical descriptions and O’Doherty’s culturalist presumptions share the same indexical, racialising logic – the few become the many, and all must be subject to relentless interrogation, surveillance and hierarchalisation as a result. That Scully faced public opprobrium while the RTÉ/O’Doherty ven­­­ture barely attracted comment illustrates how profoundly public culture in Ireland has assimilated ‘post-racial’ articles of faith. It is this post-racialism that allowed Michael McDowell, in framing a referendum designed to replace birthright citizenship with bloodline citizenship – and sold by drawing on racial mythologies of fecund black female bodies compromising the integrity of the nation – to occupy a position of simple commonsense: ‘I simply won’t allow the proposal to be hijacked by those who wish to further a racist agenda; but equally I will be harsh in my criticism of those on the other end of the political spectrum who claim to detect racism in any action, however rational, fair-minded or soundly based, that affects immigration or citizenship policy’.49 This third-way posturing was pivotal in mobilising an unsettling exercise in racist e­ xclusion. While framed, in fact, as an ‘anti-racist’ measure that would quell prejudice by demonstrating governmental resolve, the 2004 Citizenship referendum emerged from the shift – in Ireland as elsewhere in Europe – towards a concerted regime of punitive deterrence of asylum seekers, accompanied by a profoundly racialising focus on asylum seekers and migrants in the public sphere. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, asylum was progressively recast as a form of ‘economic migration’ that took advantage of European humanitarianism, increasing the socially corrosive pool of unwanted migrants, posing unsustainable costs to states reining in public spending, and ultimately posing a cultural threat through family reunification and the formation of a ‘ghettoised underclass’. As Crowley and Hickman discuss: even though refugees and asylum-seekers form only part of contemporary trans-world movements, the idea that migration movements are dominated by asylum-seekers has persisted … the construction of the asylum-seeker effaced the identity and heterogeneity of asylum-seekers themselves, and the process of asylum further erased their specificity by the generic status of illegality it secured. Asylum seekers were people potentially to be expelled.50

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Even small numbers of migrants provoke fear, Arjun Appadurai has argued, as they scratch at the national ‘anxiety of incompleteness’ and, in the case of asylum seekers, pose a threat to the sovereign right to determine the numbers of people entering the territory.51 Asylum applications in Ireland rose steadily during the 1990s, peaking in 2002 with 11,634 applications, but falling steadily from this point to, for example, 1,250 in 2011 and 946 in 2013. The systemic response to asylum seeking is discussed in the next sub-section, but for now, it is critical to underline the roots of responses such as the Citizenship referendum in the re-framing of asylum seekers as an unwanted, economically unproductive migration flow, and the asylum process as primarily a regulatory and disciplinary mechanism for preventing unwanted immigration. As Eithne Luibhéid argues in Pregnant on Arrival, in the struggle between migrants and asylum seekers, and the state, over ‘whether they would acquire more durable legal status than they currently held, or alternatively become redesignated as illegal and deportable’, pregnancy and child-bearing became a pivotal issue. This was because of the constitutional provision that all children born in the Republic of Ireland – extended through the amendment of Article 2 to the ‘island of Ireland’ after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – were Irish citizens.52 The ‘Fajujonu’ Supreme Court case in the early 1990s had provided for leave to remain for the ‘non-national’ parents of their Irish-born citizen children, and as Lentin and McVeigh document in detail, overturning this right became a governmental priority from the late 1990s onwards. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in the Lobe and Osayande appeal that two families facing deportation orders, one Czech Roma and the other Nigerian, had no right to remain resident ‘in the child’s best interest’. Underlining the primacy of the ‘integrity of the asylum-process’, it is worth quoting from Justice Susan Denham’s ruling that ‘[t]he Minister has the right to terminate the residence in Ireland of non-national parents of Irish citizens, leading to either the break up of the family or the constructive deportation of the child citizens’.53 This ruling resulted in the possibilities for migrant parents to apply for leave to remain being shut off, resulting, in 2003, in 11,500 migrant parents being rendered ‘deportable’.54 As with the referendum itself, rapid developments of this kind illustrate how immigration and asylum regimes produce illegality and convert people into ‘illegal’ subjects, or, as Luibhéid puts it, the ‘“illegal immigrant” is not an inherently undesirable “type” of person but rather a position of social and political vulnerability that is constructed through multiple relations of power’.55 The Citizenship referendum was framed as a ‘common sense’ response to the presumed need to bring citizenship laws in Ireland into line with

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European norms by removing the citizenship birthright from Irishborn children of ‘non-nationals’. In making a case for it, government ministers consistently suggested that pregnant women were d ­ eliberately converging on Ireland to give birth and thus avail of entitlements that they had no right to. While the focus of the campaign broadened to target ‘citizenship tourists’ from Russia and elsewhere, the hypervisibility accorded to black African women represented a gleeful opportunity for racist fantasies, licensed by general post-racial sureties and legitimated by reference to sovereignty and the duties of good nationbuilding. As Anwen Tormey writes, ‘Dramas of the abuse of Irish hospitality, phantasms of excessive/instrumental fertility, and the spectre of a proliferation of immoral and unworthy character were phenomenologically animated by the bodies of black immigrant mothers’.56 In June 2004, 79.14 per cent of the voting electorate backed the amendment to remove automatic citizenship rights from the freshly produced category of ‘Irish-born children’ (though in 2005 17,500 residence applications from ‘non-national’ parents were approved). Attempts to understand the racist nature of the exercise have often been waylaid by this statistic into impossible discussions as to what it says about the ‘racism of the electorate’. Arguably, it is also one of the reasons why, writing ten years on, the significance of this event has been under-appreciated. For this reason, and notwithstanding the useful debates that this position has generated on theorisations of Ireland and the (racial) state,57 it is important, as Ronit Lentin has consistently argued, to recognise the ways in which ‘the leading actor in creating anti-immigrant sentiment in Ireland has been the state’.58 In terms of the integration regime, the referendum recast citizenship as a technology of stratification. For a ‘fantasy of sovereign omnipotence’, Luibhéid argues, its achievements were limited but catastrophic for many: In reality the referendum could not prevent migration, whether authorized or not, since it did not address the dynamics that drive migration. The referendum could also not prevent women from having sex under varied conditions that ranged from consent to force, including sex that resulted in pregnancy and childbearing. Instead what the referendum accomplished was to disenfranchise significant numbers of children who were born to migrant parents by severing the link between their birth and their automatic political inscription into the community as citizens.59

However, performing this fantasy of sovereign omnipotence was central to the referendum as integration politics, where, prior to the EU accession and the assumed flow of free moving labour, confidence in the state’s ability to control immigration could be secured on the bodies and futures of the unproductive and unwanted. Regarded in this way,

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the referendum appears far closer in form and intent to the spectacles of cultural prohibition and precondition that intensified in western Europe during this period. It represents an exercise in what William Walters has termed domopolitics, whereby the neoliberal state seeks to tap into and direct productive flows and mobilities while protecting the domus, ‘... home as our place, where we belong, naturally, and where others, by definition, do not’60 from mobile risks, threats and costs. In the national home, invited guests must learn the house rules – a common metaphor in integration debates – and home must be protected because its ‘contents (our property) are valuable and envied by others’. Guests cannot expect nor take what they are not entitled to, particularly those undesirable and ‘illegal’ guests that envy the contents of citizenship. Domopolitics works to guard and be seen to guard against resource threats in a transnational field of risky mobilities – ‘hence domopolitics embodies a tactic which juxtaposes the “warm words” of community, trust and citizenship with the danger words of a chaotic outside – illegals, traffickers, terrorists’.61 Disposable populations As a corrosive result of Ireland’s integration regime, approximately 4,000 lives – one third of whom are children and minors – remain suspended in the ‘direct provision’ system initiated in 2000. Modelled on the punitive characteristics of other European systems of asylum deterrence, the direct provision system enforces layers of invisibilisation; asylum seekers are denied the right to work, and provided with a token monetary allowance that has not changed since its introduction. The system is based on a logic of ‘dispersal’, preventing the risky concentration of racialised populations in any one urban centre, so consequently asylum seekers are warehoused in a network of privately run accommodation centres around the country. Socially excluded, spatially and physically distanced, asylum seekers are also regarded as lying beyond the scope of integration and integratibility in the absence of refugee status or some form of subsidiary protection. This system has been subject to repeated international criticism. In 2011 Thomas Hammerberg, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, noted that the recommendations he made in a 2008 country report on Ireland had not been implemented. In this original report, the Council of Europe expressed concern at the poor quality and limited facilities of many accommodation centres, the lack of private space for families, and the damaging ‘lack of personal autonomy’ for people prohibited from work or study, from cooking their own food or enjoying basic forms of privacy, and held in a suspended existence

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during lengthy determination processes. The direct provision system, as Anne Mulhall notes, is a process ‘that converts humans into human waste, and yet it is simultaneously the space-time where the person being “processed” must wait in diminishing hope, for most, of admittance to humanity’.62 The dead time of determination processes that are spun out of over years is converted into a form of life by asylum seekers in their localities over time, yet everyday life is subject to transfer at short notice – a practice allegedly used on a regular basis to ‘isolate trouble-makers’ – or to the state violence of deportation. During 2014 the appalling living conditions in direct provision centres were subject to increasingly critical media coverage, prompted in part by Irish Times and RTÉ investigations, by non-governmental organisation (NGO) campaigning, and by high-profile interventions from, for example, Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan. Consequently, when Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Aodhan O’Riordáin, was appointed in July 2014 he made ‘reform’ of the system his public priority, both in terms of living conditions and the need to introduce a faster and more ‘streamlined’ determination process.63 It is difficult to account for the concerted shift in public focus, though it may in part be accounted for by the ways in which the direct provision system represents an uncomfortable continuity – while, of course, not precisely mirroring – the ‘Magdalene laundries’ and other state run and endorsed institutions for invisibilising and managing unwanted populations. However, this welcome public scrutiny of dehumanising living conditions and determination processes rarely includes a focus on deportation, and the full, domopolitical logic of direct provision cannot be grasped unless it is understood as a form of containment that maintains a state of ‘deportability’. Detention, dispersal and deportation are inseparable systemic characteristics of what Liz Fekete has termed the European ‘deportation machine’, which ‘necessitates the maintenance of a vast carceral system (comprised of) zones d’attente at international airports, detention centres at maritime borders, removal centres on the outskirts of European cities, and even further afield, as member states extend the detention estate into Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal’.64 Research by Elena Moreo for the campaign group Anti-Deportation Ireland has documented the extent of the Irish state’s integration into the ‘deportation machine’ – ‘failed’ asylum seekers and ‘illegal’ migrants are judged deportable to protect the ‘integrity’ of the immigration and integration regime. Yet, as Moreo writes, the claim to integrity is problematic because of ‘the gap between deportation orders issued and deportation orders effected … meaning that an increasing number

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of people are living in precarious conditions of “deportability” experiencing its attendant consequences in terms of lack of rights, anxiety, stress and inability to carry on with one’s life’.65 In terms of deportations conducted, one in five deported between 2010–2012 were children, suggesting a high probability that many children born in Ireland were being deported to ‘home’ countries they had never been to. While major migrant-supporting NGOs have consistently opposed ‘summary deportation’, the right of the state to effect deportations and to manage migrant lives is not challenged within this field.66 Yet deportations, as Moreo’s research details, forcible removals conducted with little oversight, at minimum may involve levels of intimidation, and are undoubtedly traumatic for the deportee and the family and networks from which they are dislocated. At the time of writing, a remarkable chain of protests in direct provision centres have begun to demand not reform of the system, but the dismantling of the direct provision/deportation system; the right to work, to cook for themselves, to belong here because they live here. While unrest and sporadic protest has been present in the centres over many years, the risks of protest and the differential vulnerabilities and survival strategies of ‘residents’ has mitigated against concerted, autonomous organising. Yet in late September 2014, asylum seekers in Kinsale Road in County Cork were staging a lock-out; in Ashbourne house in Glouthane a hunger strike; and in Lissywollen in Athlone people were refusing food supplies after collectively drafted requests were not engaged,67 and in Mount Trenchard in Limerick and Montague House in Laois residents were maintaining protests. There has been a tendency, in recent critical writing on austerity Ireland, for small, nascent or ephemeral protest movements to be held up – without analysis in the concluding paragraphs – as evidence of the fight-back to come. Given that a distinguishing feature of these protests is their refusal to be spoken for, and for their abolitionist demands to be mediated by reformist moderation, the intention here is simply to mark these emerging protests as evidence that invisibilisation and stratification have not succeeded. The demand is to live and belong, and it does not require the smothering permission of any inclusive form of Irishness to exist.

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  1 Louise Hodgson (ed.) New Thinking = New Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 2013), p. 134.   2 Sasha de Marigny, ‘Multiculturalism’, in Louise Hodgson (ed.) New Thinking = New Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2013).   3 Ibid., pp. 130–4.   4 Thomas Frank, ‘Getting to Eureka’, Harper’s Magazine, June 2013.   5 Ben Pitcher, The Politics of Multiculturalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 23.  6 Les Back and Shamser Sinha, ‘New hierarchies of belonging’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 15 (2), (2012), pp. 139–54.   7 Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley, The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (London: Zed Books, 2011), pp. 12–48.   8 Ghassan Hage, White Nation (London: Pluto Books, 1998), p. 22.  9 Nicholas De Genova, ‘Migration and race in Europe: the trans-Atlantic metastases of a post-colonial cancer’, European Journal of Social Theory, 13 (3) (2010), pp. 405–19, p. 416. 10 Ronaldo Munck ‘Ireland in the world, the world in Ireland’, in Bryan Fanning and Ronaldo Munck (eds), Globalization, Migration and Social Transformation: Ireland in Europe and the World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), p. 3. 11 Allen White and Mary Gilmartin, ‘Introduction: Ireland and its relationship with migration’, in Mary Gilmartin and Allen White (eds), Migrations: Ireland in a Global World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 2. 12 Ronit Lentin ‘Introduction: immigration in Ireland and migrant-led a­ ctivism’, in Ronit Lentin and Elena Moreo (eds), Migrant Activism and Integration from Below in Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 7–8. 13 See Piaras MacÉinrí and Allen White, ‘Immigration into the Republic of Ireland: a bibliography of recent research’, Irish Geography, 41 (2) (2008), pp. 151–79, and Bettina Migge and Mary Gilmartin, ‘Unbounding migration studies: the intersections of language, space and time’, in Gilmartin and White (eds) Migrations for survey commentaries on ‘migration studies’ in Ireland. 14 Elena Moreo, ‘On visibility and invisibility: migrant practices between regimes of representation and self-determination’, in Lentin and Moreo (eds), Migrant Activism and Integration from Below in Ireland, pp. 79–85. 15 Steve Loyal, ‘Migrants and migration in Ireland: adjusting to a new reality?’, in Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Madeleine Sumption and Aaron Terrazas with Carola Burkert, Steven Loyal, and Ruth Ferrero-Turrión, Migration and Immigrants Two Years after the Financial Collapse: Where Do We Stand? (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2010), p. 81. 16 Quoted in Ronit Lentin, ‘Introduction’, p. 11. 17 Adrian Favell, ‘The new face of East-West migration in Europe’, Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies, 34 (5) (2008), pp. 701–16 p. 706. 18 Nicholas P. De Genova, ‘Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life’, Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002), pp. 419–47, p. 421.

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19 Munck, ‘Ireland in the world, the world in Ireland’, p. 8. 20 Migge and Gilmartin, ‘Unbounding migration studies’, p. 199. 21 Deirdre Conlon, ‘A countertopography of migrant experience in Ireland and beyond’, in Gilmartin and White (eds), Migrations, p. 185. 22 Lentin and Moreo (eds), Migrant Activism. 23 Mark Maguire and Fiona Murphy, Integration in Ireland: The Everyday Lives of African Migrants (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 24 Gavan Titley, Aphra Kerr and Rebecca King Ó Riain, Broadcasting in the New Ireland (Dublin: Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, 2010). 25 Gilmartin and White, Migrations. 26 Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh, After Optimism? Ireland, Racism and Globalisation (Dublin: Metro Éireann, 2006) p. 22. 27 Vittorio Longhi The Immigrant War (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2013), pp. viii–x. 28 Maximilian Popp, ‘Europe’s deadly borders: an inside look at EU’s shameful immigration policy’. Der Spiegel International, 11 September 2014. Available at: www.spiegel.de/international/europe/europe-tightens-borders-andfails-to-protect-people-a-989502.html. Consulted 12 September 2014. 29 Liz Fekete, A Suitable Enemy: Racism, Migration and Islamophobia in Europe (London: Pluto, 2009), pp. 22–42. 30 Bill Jordan and Franck Düvell, Migration: The Boundaries of Equality and Justice (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), p. 42. 31 Eleanore Kofman, ‘Citizenship, migration and the reaasertion of national identity’, Citizenship Studies 9 (5) (2005), pp. 453–67. 32 Elspeth Guild, Kees Groenendijk and Sergio Carrera, ‘Understanding the contest of community: illiberal practices in the EU?’, in Elspeth Guild, Kees Groenendijk and Sergio Carrera (eds), Illiberal States: Immigration, Citizenship and Integration in the EU (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 42. 33 Back and Sinha, ‘New hierarchies of belonging’. 34 Steve Loyal and Kieran Allen, ‘Rethinking immigration and the state in Ireland’, in Ronit Lentin and Alana Lentin (eds) Race and State (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006), p. 227. 35 Bryan Fanning, ‘Integration convergence and the Irish case’, in Bryan Fanning and Ronaldo Munck (eds), Globalization, Migration and Social Transformation: Ireland in Europe and the World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). 36 Ibid., p. 117. 37 Jane Pillinger, The Feminisation of Migration: Experiences and Opportunities in Ireland (Dublin: Immigrant Council of Ireland, 2007), pp. 35–50. 38 Steve Loyal, ‘Welcome to the Celtic Tiger: racism, immigration and the state’, in Colin Coulter and Steve Coleman (eds), The End of Irish History? Critical Reflections on the Celtic Tiger (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). 39 Fanning, ‘Integration convergence and the Irish case’, p. 118. 40 Michael McDowell, speech delivered to the Conference on Integration Policy. Available at: www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/SP07000410. Consulted 10 February 2014.

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41 Office of the Minister for Integration Migration Nation (Dublin: Government of Ireland Publications, 2008), pp. 35–6 42 Gerry Boucher, ‘Ireland’s lack of a coherent integration policy’, Translocations: Migration and Social Change, 3 (1) (2008), p. 6. 43 Bryan Fanning New Guests of the Irish Nation (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), p. 3. 44 Niall Crowley, Hidden Messages Overt Agendas (Dublin: Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, 2010), p. 5. 45 Steve Loyal, ‘Welcome to the Celtic Tiger’, pp. 87–8. For an analysis of the cycle of ‘immigrant jobs’ during the boom, see Jamie Goodwin-White, ‘Context, scale and generation: the construction of belonging’, in Gilmartin and White, Migrations, pp. 220–2. 46 David Landy, ‘Challengers in the migrant field: pro-migrant NGO responses to the Immigration Residence and Protection Bill’, Ethnic & Racial Studies (17 September 2014), pp. 1–16. 47 Murphy and Maguire, Integration in Ireland, p. 139. 48 Breda Gray, ‘Migrant integration policy: a nationalist fantasy of m ­ anagement and control?’ Translocations: Migration and Social Change 1 (1) (2006) p. 22. 49 Michael McDowell, ‘Referendum on citizenship of new babies not racist’, Irish Independent, 14 March 2004. Available at: www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/referendum-on-citizenship-of-new-babies-notracist-26218609.html 2004. Consulted 12 February 2013. 50 Helen Crowley and Mary Hickman, ‘Migration, postindustrialism and the globalized nation-state: social capital and social cohesion re-examined’, Ethnic & Racial Studies 31 (7) (2008), p. 1224. 51 Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). 52 Eithne Luibhéid, Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), p. 230. 53 Quoted in Lentin and McVeigh, After Optimism, p. 53. 54 A narrative of milestones leading up to the referendum can be accessed here: http://citizenshipref2014.com/2014/06/05/what-happened/. Consulted 12 February 2013. 55 Luibhéid Pregnant on Arrival, p. 287. 56 Anwen Tormey, ‘Anyone with eyes can see the problem: moral citizens and the space of Irish nationhood’, International Migration 45 (3) (2007), p. 87. 57 Lentin and McVeigh (2006), following Goldberg’s work on the ‘racial state’, theorised Ireland following the referendum as shifting towards ‘racist state’ status. See Mark Maguire and Tanya Cassidy, ‘Management, truth and life’, Irish Journal of Anthropology 12 (2009), and Fanning, New Guests of the Irish Nation for critical engagements with this argument. 58 Ronit Lentin, ‘Ireland: racial state and crisis racism’, Ethnic & Racial Studies, 30 (4) (2007), pp. 610–72. 59 Luibhéid, Pregnant on Arrival. 60 William Walters, ‘Secure borders, safe haven, domopolitics’, Citizenship Studies 8 (3) (2004), p. 244.

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61 Ibid., p. 241. For further discussion see Gavan Titley, ‘Getting integration right? Media transnationalism and domopolitics in Ireland’, Ethnic & Racial Studies 35 (3) (2012), pp. 817–33. Much as integration politics desired a form of migrant subjectivity that can be read as having wider significance in post-boom Ireland, the referendum could also be understood less as an exceptional event than as a significant iteration of a domopolitics that has been extended to other groups as part of the implementation of ‘austerity’. As a campaign to mark ten years since the referendum argued, while the specific, racialising violence of the referendum must be recalled, it could also be understood as the start of a decade of calculated exclusion, whereby more and more ‘unproductive’ and expendable groups are denied social resources and held up for public derision, in the name of the integrity of the ‘post-sovereign’ state. Information about the campaign, in which this author was involved, can be found here: http://citizenshipref2014. com/2014/06/05/what-happened/. Consulted 12 August 2014. 62 Anne Mulhall, ‘Dead time: queer temporalities and the deportation regime’, Social Text, July 2014. Available at: http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_ article/dead-time-queer-temporalities-and-the-deportation-regime/. Consulted 12 August 2014. 63 Kitty Holland, ‘Reform of direct provision a “priority”, says new Minister’, Irish Times, 23 July 2014. Available at: www.irishtimes.com/news/socialaffairs/reform-of-direct-provision-a-priority-says-new-minister-1.1874984. Consulted 23 July 2014. 64 Fekete, A Suitable Enemy, p. 136. 65 Elena Moreo, Preliminary Report on Deportation in Ireland: The Human and Economic Costs of Deportation (Dublin: Anti-Deportation Ireland, 2012). 66 See Landy, ‘Challengers in the migrant field’. 67 An ‘archive of resistance’ can be accessed here: www.asylumarchive.com/ resistance.html. Consulted 12 August 2014.

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Part III

Lessons of the crisis for the Irish left

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10

Lessons from the era of Social ­Partnership for the Irish labour movement Francisco Arqueros-Fernández

Introduction A recent briefing paper by Oxfam warns that if Europe does not turn away from austerity measures an additional 15 to 25 million Europeans will be living in poverty by 2025. The paper compares current austerity measures to the structural adjustment policies imposed on Africa and Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s: ‘These policies were a failure’ and ‘have dismantled the mechanisms that reduce inequality and enable equitable growth’.1 Several questions arise. What is the alternative, how can it be implemented and what role can trade unions play as the direct representatives of labour? The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), the largest trade union in Ireland, do not oppose austerity measures per se; they differ from the government simply in terms of how these measures should be applied and how far they should go. What Irish trade unions currently offer as an alternative to ‘austerity’ – in order to promote economic growth, reduce unemployment and social inequality, and end the current economic crisis – is their own version of Keynesianism. This alternative, however, merely constitutes a frame of reference for negotiation. This is reflected in the absence of active opposition to austerity measures in Ireland. This situation has turned Irish trade unions, in their present form, into an obstacle for the advancement of the political economy of wage labour. Trade unions, particularly SIPTU, gave in to the neoliberal version of capitalism in order to achieve the first Social Partnership in 1987. The bottom line of Social Partnership in Ireland consisted of linking wage increases and the creation of jobs to the implementation of more flexible work practices, productivity and competitiveness. All this led to a devaluation of labour. The ICTU and SIPTU have never questioned that framework. On the contrary, they embrace it, expecting that it will

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bring employment growth, increased union membership and greater union influence in policy making. The labour movement, incorporated into the state and the broader economic and political system of governance, turned into a ‘responsible citizen’. More than twenty years of partnership agreements, however, resulted in the weakening of the labour movement and the increase of social inequality; in particular, Social Partnership ideologically undermined the labour movement. It is debatable, on the other hand, to what extent it contributed to the economic boom (1994–2007), and therefore to employment growth. When the economic crisis broke in earnest in 2008, Social Partnership became a fetter from which government and employers acted to free themselves so as to implement radical austerity measures. This chapter examines the ideology behind the partnership between labour and capital in Ireland in order to throw light onto the role that Irish trade unions have played in the unopposed implementation of the austerity agenda in Ireland. Recent attempts by trade unions to turn to a so-called ‘organising model’, which does not question the previous framework, and therefore cannot be successful, will also be considered. The alternative strategy that will be proposed consists of a return to the best traditions of the labour movement. Patterns in industrial relations Patterns of industrial relations develop over time, out of particular contexts and actions. Like traditions, they weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living. The practices of the era of Social Partnership (1987– 2006) still apply even after the Partnership is over and buried. Irish trade unions still hope to resurrect the erstwhile corporatist structures. These patterns must be understood internationally within the context of industrial relations created after World War II and the abandonment of Keynesian policies by governments from the 1980s onwards. From the end of the 1940s to the 1970s, the labour movement enjoyed its (for some) ‘golden era’. This was a period of rapid economic growth due to the huge destruction of capital during the war (Europe and the US were heading for recession again at the end of the 1930s) rather than the implementation of any Keynesian recipes.2 The ‘golden era’ gave workers the welfare state; and trade unions and social democratic parties gained influence within the state. The most important concession from the capitalist class, however, was the reduction of the gap in the share of the national income between capital and labour, which did not disturb capital due to a high rate of profits after World War II.3

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On a global scale, the partnership between labour and capital – the ‘configuration’, Fordism, that bound big labour, capital and big government – began to break down in the 1970s with the first important capitalist crisis since the 1930s.4 The period of capitalist ‘relative stagnation’5 that started in the 1970s consisted of a tendency towards the devaluation of labour through subcontracting, temporary work and an attack on organised labour that made it possible to import sweatshop practices into developed countries.6 Unemployment increased, industries were relocated, foreign capital gained entry into nation states and public companies were privatised. This shift was motivated by the failure of Keynesian policies in the face of the economic crisis of the mid-1970s and the absence of an alternative to capitalism: ‘the Keynesianism that dominated the left helped to demobilise working people by encouraging them to trust Keynesian politicians, policies, and doctrines as well the leaders of their unions, instead of trusting their own ability to run their lives themselves and re-establish society on new, human foundations’.7 We will see this very same pattern repeating itself again. Partnership between labour and capital in Ireland In Ireland, and in the EU-15, an increasing gap between wages and profits (labour and capital) developed between the 1960s and the 2000s. This took place, interestingly, during the time in which Social P ­ artnerships were agreed and implemented, between 1987 and 2006. It constituted an inversion of the tendency predominant during the ‘golden era’. Table 10.1  Share of wages in the total economy

1960–1970 1971–1980 1981–1990 1991–2000 2001–2007

EU 15

Ireland

– 74.5 71.8 68.7 67.3

77.9 75.9 71.2 62.3 54.0

Source: K. Allen, Ireland’s Economic Crash: A Radical Agenda for Change (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2009), p. 26.

Social Partnerships in Ireland were preceded by economic crisis, intense industrial action and a rise in unemployment. The T ­ hatcherite (­ neoliberal) approach in Britain in the 1980s, according to Peter McLoone, IMPACT general secretary, made main union leaders consider Social Partnership

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as the best alternative to stop a similar move in Ireland. Top union leaders were, on the other hand, ‘more attuned to the dynamics of an increasingly competitive economy and also to the impact of global competition’ and thought that decentralised bargaining was not yielding results.8 The ICTU was ready then to abandon its ‘adversarial’ style in favour of a ‘cooperative’ one.9 To this end, it employed a discourse of cooperation and mutual gains in which trade unions would have to sacrifice wage increases (‘immediate gains’) in exchange for – or rather in the hope of – economic growth and recovery in the context of the crisis and increasing unemployment of the 1980s in Ireland. Wages and jobs were linked to economic growth, work reorganisation, productivity and competitiveness. Once the first Social Partnership deal was agreed in 1987, the ICTU went a few steps further by changing its position on privatisation in 1990. It was deemed inevitable that ‘some’ privatisation would have to take place.10 Once the Trojan horse was accepted, a process of wholesale privatisations began in 1991. Employers eagerly agreed to Social Partnership agreements because they placed few constraints on capital accumulation and, due to the voluntaristic nature of Irish industrial relations, were not compulsory for them.11 All in all, trade unions fully gave in to the political economy of capital in its neoliberal rather than Keynesian version. Cooperation between unions and employers brought down the number of strikes, which in turn undermined members’ activism. There was some opposition to partnership among the ‘old left’, which was of the belief that with partnership union, members turned into passive consumers of trade unionism rather than producers of it. Without class conflict on the shop floor, members would forget about the importance of trade unions and their mobilisation against the capitalist system. These views, according to Partnership advocates, had no chance in a country with ‘weak ideological underpinnings, and belonged to a bygone era that had passed in mainstream Europe’. The strike weapon, they argued, had become outmoded.12 The social pact between unions and employers, however, started to break down in the middle of the 2000s before the ‘great recession’ of 2008–2009.13 Some Irish companies such as Irish Ferries, Ryanair, Independent Newspapers and Aer Lingus began to break free from the Irish industrial relations system by refusing to implement recommendations from dispute resolution agencies and the National Implementation Body.14 The first phase of the Celtic Tiger had been rooted in the productive sector of the economy (including domestic industry) chiefly thanks to US direct investment. This period finished in 2001 after the US economy

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went into recession. During the second phase (2002–2008), economic growth was prolonged six more years on the basis of a property bubble and the increasing transformation of Ireland into a centre for financial activity.15 Therefore, increasing competition in the productive sector during the second phase of the Celtic Tiger brought about lower profit rates, a drive towards company ‘austerity’ plans and what became known as the ‘race to the bottom’ (in wages and working conditions). Unfortunately, SIPTU linked this ‘race to the bottom’ to the use of migrant labour in Ireland rather than to the stagnation of the economy. In 2005 SIPTU started a media campaign against what it characterised as the lowering of working conditions and incomes brought about by employers taking advantage of labour migrations into Ireland and the use of workers on work permits. That was the case of GAMA construction Ireland, in theory a unionised company (including SIPTU) where the exploitation of Turkish workers, paid for years well below the Irish national minimum wage, went unnoticed until the TD Joe Higgins disclosed it in the Dáil.16 One of the most significant cases of the ‘race to the bottom’ was Irish Ferries. It highlights the limits of SIPTU’s current agenda against ‘austerity’ at national level, which is basically the same at company level and at industry levels. Irish ferries Irish Ferries’ sea-going staff consisted of 777 in 2004, of which 177 officers and 120 ratings were SIPTU members; 480 ratings were members of the Seamen’s Union of Ireland (SUI). According to management, the company had been outdone by competitors, and operating profits had gone down to €24.1m in 2003 from €33.1m in 2002. In February 2004, the company demanded a cost-cutting plan of €3.4m a year. In November 2004, they added to their demands the outsourcing of one of their four routes, which would make 150 workers redundant. They assured that if this plan was accepted the company would not demand any more restructuring. In September 2005, however, the company came out with a new plan to replace all its 543 remaining crew members with Eastern European workers on half the Irish minimum wage. From the beginning SIPTU argued that outsourcing was motivated by profits alone and that the real plan was to outsource all services. Paul Smith, SIPTU Martine Ports Division, was of the opinion that if this outsourcing was not stopped, more and more companies would follow the trend and replace well-paid unionised, pensioned staff with ‘yellow pack labour’.17 In less than a year SIPTU’s prediction proved to be true, and the company’s assurances nothing but lies. However,

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SIPTU’s a­ ssurances that they would not play the game of outsourcing did not come true either. It was accepted as a fait accompli. It did not help that the SUI was encouraging its members to accept redundancy packages and never supported strike action.18 SIPTU, however, kept shooting its own foot with inconsistent strategies. In September 2005 SIPTU served two weeks’ strike notice and held talks with the British Rail, Marine and Transport union to make sure that Irish Ferries vessels could not get a berth in any UK port, as well as in Ireland. The strike, however, was called off after Irish Ferries, under pressure from the government and Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC), accepted the mediation of the Labour Court.19 Patricia King, SIPTU chief regional officer, still hoped for a resolution of the conflict by appealing to the Labour Court, ‘We now look forward to raising all the issues with them through the Labour Court process’.20 The number of workers ready to fight back had also gone down to around 60, while an estimated 480 had taken redundancy packages by December. But the Irish Ferries dispute was starting to concern Irish workers in general and European labour unions because of the feeling that ‘displacement’ could affect any worker in Ireland and other EU countries. On 8 December, workers finally went on an official strike at the same time that around 100,000 people marched in Dublin on 9 December and others protested against the ‘race to the bottom’ in other towns in Ireland. SIPTU, however, immediately agreed to enter negotiations once again and take whatever was offered. The unions, SIPTU and SUI had agreed to cuts in excess of €3.4m in 2004 to secure the future of all routes,21 although SIPTU had opposed outsourcing up front. Later SIPTU accepted the outsourcing on one of the boats as a minor evil. In the end, the union accepted outsourcing on all the services. SIPTU, however, considered it had been a victory for the union.22 The company agreed to reduce its target cost-cutting figure from €15m to €11.5m (up from an initial target of €3.4m a year earlier) and to maintain the terms and conditions of employment of the 48 workers that wished to stay. Also, the company agreed to pay the Irish minimum wage to the outsourced workers. Irish Ferries, in turn, would be allowed to reflag the ships and SIPTU could not engage in any industrial action for a period of three years.23 It turned out later that outsourced workers would not be able to receive the Irish minimum wage unless they were SIPTU members, something that the company succeeded in preventing.24 Jack O’Connor, SIPTU President, had warned: ‘People must mobilise. Irish Ferries is a harbinger of the workplace of the future. The same blind market forces that are driving down pay and conditions there are coming closer to everyone’s workplace.’25 But what was SIPTU willing

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to sacrifice to put an end to that trend? Why was the union unwilling to escalate the dispute in order to stop outsourcing, particularly when it had achieved a high level of public support in December 2005, rather than accepting a deal that went against what the union had been defending all along? Perhaps the only way to avoid outsourcing would have been to struggle for the nationalisation of the company, which would have elevated the dispute to a different level, to a confrontation that the union had decided to avoid. SIPTU’s ‘realism’ consisted of cooperating with cuts in order to maintain the competitiveness of the company. They were willing to accept 75 per cent of the cuts proposed, as the Labour Court recommended, to stop the outsourcing of the three remaining crews.26 That strategy of concessions did not stop ‘the trend’. By December 2005 most workers had accepted redundancy packages, the ‘inevitable’. Jack O’Connor described the dispute as a test to the viability of Social Partnership. He said that Partnership was ‘incapable of protecting workers against displacement ... There is no point in the trade union movement participating in national agreements if they allow this type of situation to arise’.27 A Labour Court recommendation to Irish Ferries to ‘honour’ the Regulation Employment Agreement between SIPTU and Irish Ferries did not have any effect on the company.28 In the end, SIPTU used the support received in December 2005 to put pressure on Partnership negotiations to pass more favourable labour legislation, and to implement existing labour standards and partnership agreements. SIPTU’s delegates voted, ‘by an overwhelming majority’, to start talks with employers and government in order to negotiate a new Social Partnership agreement. They had the confidence, according to Jack O’Connor, that they could ‘call on the combined strength of over 600,000 workers if the talks process failed to deliver’.29 The negotiation and renegotiation of the Public Service Agreement 2010–2014 (also known as Croke Park Agreement) illustrates again that no combined strength of workers would be called on come what may. Croke Park The world ‘great recession’ of 2008–2009 had a direct impact on the small, globalised Irish economy, but the Irish recession had its peculiarities. Excessive borrowing by Irish banks in order to grant property loans led to a collapse of the Irish banking system when the housing bubble burst in 2008. Subsequent government bank bailouts led to a huge state deficit.30 This added up to soaring unemployment and falling tax revenues.

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In February 2009, the government imposed a pension levy on public sector workers, opting out from the pay deal negotiated in September 2008 (a part of the last national Social Partnership deal ‘Towards 2016’).31 A long-term struggle against public service workers to devalue labour had begun in earnest. The government intended to save €13bn (over three years) in public finances in order to restore public borrowing to a level of 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). The ICTU accepted that the adjustment proposed by the government had to be implemented but suggested this happened over a longer period, until 2017.32 In January 2009, in a framework document agreed between the social partners, trade unions had accepted budget cuts of up to €2bn. The government was planning cuts of up to €6bn for the second budget for 2009 to be discussed in April 2009.33 The question for trade union leaders was not how to oppose austerity, which they accepted, but rather how much austerity would be acceptable. On 18 February 2009, around 13,000 civil servants voted for industrial action, which was followed by an industrial action day on 26 February 2010 and a 10,000-strong civil servants protest on 19 March. On 21 February around 120,000 people demonstrated in Dublin in a protest organised by ICTU ‘in support of a fairer way to achieve economic recovery’. David Begg called the government to discuss with trade unions ICTU’s 10-point plan for economic recovery.34 It consisted of a Social Solidarity Pact in order to avoid ‘a major campaign to achieve a change in policy’.35 National strike action in parts of the public and private sectors was planned for 30 March. Labour party leader and future Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, said in a radio interview that he ‘did not believe a national strike would be good for the country’ and that strike action should be called off.36 The Labour party commitment to austerity measures was clear. An editorial in the Irish Times on 24 March 2009, arguing in favour of the threeyear adjustment plan, called the union’s planned one-day national strike an act of ‘national sabotage’, blaming previous agreed pay increases for destroying industrial competitiveness and crippling the prospect of recovery. The editorial also argued that ‘harsh fiscal measures’ were about ‘protecting the weakest in society’ as they would promote economic recovery. Union leaders called off the threat of ‘a wave of strikes’ when they accepted the Taoiseach’s invitation to take part in talks on a new national agreement on economic recovery.37 All that the union leaders received in return was negotiation for negotiation’s sake. No union proposals were accepted, although Taoiseach Brian Cowen saw ‘considerable merits’ in the ICTU 10-point plan. However, strike action was discontinued.

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As union leaders had actually declared, they had no other aim than ‘encouraging the Government to re-engage in talks’.38 That goal was certainly fulfilled. The next ‘crisis’ between government and trade unions in the public sector took place at the end of 2009. The government was planning to reduce wages by up to 15 per cent in the public sector and introduce reforms in order to save €1 billion in the budget for 2010. On 24 November there was a Public Service one-day strike. Another one planned for 3 December was called off because the government agreed to start negotiations with the representatives of the workers. However, in December 2009, after a period of discussion with trade union leaders, the government decided to unilaterally implement its cost-saving plan due to lack of agreement. The trade unions’ plan of action thereafter consisted, again, of mobilising in order to force the government into negotiation. As Jack O’Connor argued: We must lay out a determined programme of action running right into the summer, carefully and incrementally escalating and ramping it up in such a way as to minimise the implications for ordinary citizens of the country, to the degree we can, and maximising the prospect of a negotiated outcome.39

New discussions between government and unions took place. The result of these new negotiations was the Public Service Agreement 2010–2014, which took place in the national GAA stadium in Dublin and hence came to be widely known as ‘Croke Park’. Trade union leaders aimed at restoring the money cut to public servants, both in December 2009 and through the pension levy of February 2009. In exchange they were willing to accept major changes in work practices. They also threatened that in the absence of a deal there would be further disruption to public services.40 The only concession that unions achieved from the government was the commitment to no further cuts until 2014 at least (which in the end the government breached). Unions agreed to implement major changes in work practices and conditions of employment and to stop industrial action under way. Unions’ commitment to industrial peace was put in writing: ‘no cost-increasing claims [could] be made for improvements in pay or conditions for the duration of the agreement, while strikes or other forms of industrial action in respect of matters covered by the deal [would] be banned.’41 Of 19 unions in the public sector, 9 voted against it. Sarah Carey, writing in the Irish Times ‘truly [did not] understand why [union leaders] still [had] jobs’. She wondered how they could

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explain the gap between what they wanted and what they ended up delivering. She considered two possible explanations: ‘One is that, privately, they fully accept that pay cuts are inevitable, and everything else is anger management. The other is that they are addicted to the power conferred by dramatic late night negotiations.’42 Either way, we do not know about union leaders’ intentions and inner thoughts but we do know about their deeds. The same pattern was going to be repeated in the run up to Croke Park II in 2013. Since 2011 there had been a media campaign in favour of further pay cuts to public workers and deeper work reforms in order to save more money, with national and international economic institutions playing the role of bad cop and the government the role of good cop. The European Central Bank was asking for more pay cuts and a quicker austerity drive,43 a view echoed by representatives from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.44 Central Bank Governor Professor Patrick Honohan joined the chorus by demanding public sector pay cuts rather than encouraging early retirement.45 Meanwhile, Pat Rabbitte, Labour Party Minister for Communications, argued for the need to change the Croke Park Agreement because of low economic growth projections. The response of trade union leaders was, predictably, that members would not accept further pay cuts.46 Recently appointed Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore of the Labour Party, immediately assured that any proposed changes to the Croke Park Agreement would have to be negotiated.47 In spite of the €1.5bn savings achieved thanks to the Croke Park agreement during its first two years, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin (Labour Party) still complained that workers were resisting the agreement, not embracing it enthusiastically enough. He particularly referred to lower and middle management.48 The troika, the bad cops (European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank), on the other hand, did not consider those savings enough to meet the terms of the bailout.49 Clause 1.28 of the Croke Park Agreement actually stated: ‘the implementation of this agreement is subject to no currently unforeseen budgetary d ­ eterioration’. Therefore, the fruit was ripe when Minister of State for Public Sector Reform, Brian Hayes, came forward asking for a second Croke Park deal seconded by others such as Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar, Minister for Health James Reilly and Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn, Labour Party.50 ‘Obviously a second Croke Park agreement would have to be sketched out in terms of the country’s requirements on pay, increments and everything else’, Mr Quinn argued. At the same time, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore were still denying

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any renegotiation until the agreement expired in 2014. They merely demanded that the agreement had to be implemented in full, meaning that there was room for more savings with the current a­ greement.51 In the end, the government announced in November 2012 that they would be looking for an extra €1bn cut in expenditure over the next three years through a new deal with the public service unions.52 They made clear that the cuts would be unilaterally imposed if no agreement with unions was reached.53 The government proposals included productivity and efficiency measures, workforce reform and further pay and pension ‘initiatives’.54 David Begg, Congress General Secretary, was quoted around that time saying that ‘tolerance has a limit and we are at the outer reaches now’.55 Jack O’Connor, played an ambiguous game. On the one hand, he wondered whether unions should participate in any negotiations and threatened ‘a war’ if unions were pushed, that ‘will not be conducted over the airwaves or in sports arenas’. On the other hand, he admitted that the scale of the economic crisis threatened the very solvency of the state. Then he reasoned that the majority of citizens had voted in the last elections for parties that were opposed to a wealth tax or a higher tax rate on high earners. He further argued that the latest opinion polls would have given majority to those parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, if elections had been held at that time. ‘Therefore, it [was] wise for all sides to explore the possibility of a negotiated settlement … to achieve an outcome that would be better … than a legislated pay cut or what we could reasonably expect from a protracted industrial action.’ The SIPTU monthly newspaper, Liberty, did not offer space for any debate for or against the new agreement negotiated between the government and unions. It merely recommended accepting it because it was ‘the best that could be obtained through negotiation’.56 Jack O’Connor admitted that the budget for 2013 included additional savings above those envisaged in the Croke Park agreement in excess of €300m, and that the additional contribution from public service pay and pensions would have to be €1bn by 2015. He added: ‘The schedule outlined in that Agreement requires us to cut the gap between taxes and spending to 3% of GDP by 2015. Failure to meet it has very serious implications for everyone in Ireland.’ He finished by saying that it was better to accept the terms of the new agreement in order to have a guarantee against compulsory and indiscriminate redundancies, outsourcing and redeployment. Since the government could not fail to bridge the gap between taxation and spending by 2015, industrial action was not an option, ‘the odds against us would be considerable’. He did not even discuss that possibility.57

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In the same issue of Liberty, David Begg was quoted addressing the crowd (‘tens of thousands’) on 9 February during the march against bank debt and austerity: The ‘architects of austerity’ would be informed that Ireland will no longer be the ‘Mr Nice Guy’ … of Europe … He said that protests would also continue at home until the Government changed course on its one sided austerity policies and adopted measures to stimulate growth and e­ mployment.58

When the Croke Park II deal between unions and government was put for a vote to union members 65.6 per cent voted against it. The percentage of members that voted against it was a bit lower among SIPTU members (53.7 per cent), but it was rejected in spite of having the full support of SIPTU’s national executive council. In total, out of 20 trade unions in the public service, 14 rejected the deal.59 However, soon after Croke Park II was rejected, government and public service unions went back to the negotiating table again. A new deal, this time called the ‘Haddington Road Agreement’, was soon drafted and unions put it again for a vote to their members. This time, it was accepted. The last union in accepting it, after a previous rejection, was The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) on 19 December 2013, though the Central Executive Council of the union recommended a ‘no’ vote. In the end, the fear of being exposed to unilateral changes in the terms and conditions of employment, if they rejected the new deal, and the fact that the rest of trade unions had voted ‘yes’, made ASTI members give in. Only unions that accepted the agreement were protected from further pay cuts and compulsory redundancies.60 Means and ends Most union leaders, as we have seen, do not believe in a ‘realistic’ alternative to austerity. This has a practical effect on union strategies and goals. In order to counteract decreasing union density and union power in the workplace and national politics during the Celtic Tiger but also after the great recession, Irish trade unions have attempted an ‘organising turn’ with the aim of recruiting new members, turning away from the service model of trade unionism. This is supposed to lead to a more participative, members-led model of trade unionism. The problem is that a coherent organising turn implies an ideological turn. In the rest of this chapter, I argue that it is not possible to fight back against austerity and turn trade unions into democratic organisations concerned with ­organising workers unless the labour movement challenges the ­hegemonic political economy of capital within their own organisations. Even successful ‘organising’ presents structural constraints that are

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very difficult to deal with within the current environment and the ideological milieu in which unions operate. An organising campaign in Aircoach, Ireland, constituted an example of a successful campaign in the private sector to organise a union branch in a company where there was no union previously. A report of the organising campaign61 claims that it followed seven of the ten tactics that have worked in the US.62 This company runs services from Dublin city, Belfast and Cork to Dublin city and Dublin airport, as well as car-park shuttles at Dublin airport and Belfast international airport. It employed around 150 drivers in 2006. There had been a previous attempt to organise a union branch, which according to the report ended in a ‘disastrous unofficial strike’. One of the contacts from the previous attempts became the link between the union and the workers. Among the obstacles to organising, notwithstanding management pressure, was the feeling among drivers that the union had let them down in the past. That is, workers’ previous experiences with unions and the expectations they had about them were obstacles to organising that the union had to face. The report informs us that progress was achieved by direct contact, one to one, between the organiser and the workers, the work of the ‘insider’ and the issues addressed in the newsletter that struck the right chord. The ten tactics, the report concluded, ‘are not simply shiny new bolt-ons to the same old union – to reproduce the important, but hardly earthshattering, success at Aircoach on a large scale requires f­undamental change in the union, not the mere application of a “laundry list” of tactics’. The Aircoach branch was meant to operate within a union based on partnership unionism’s long-term habits. In that context, the branch once constituted would have to rely on collective bargaining from the top. The organiser who participated in the campaign moved on to other campaigns, leaving the branch under the supervision of another official. The ‘organising’ model that SIPTU was trying to adopt was inspired by the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) organising turn. In the context of a dramatic decline of union membership in the US, the SEIU has been the fastest-growing union in that country: from 500,000 members in the 1970s to 1.8m in 2006. Part of that success is due to the fact that SEIU is organising workers in sectors not threatened by relocation, such as healthcare and public service. Other factors are that its growth has been based on absorptions and affiliations and the hiring of leftists, veterans of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s,63 and union activists hardened in poor workers’ unions.64 This union, however, also drew from other sources. According to Michael Piore:

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The ideas that underlie it were drawn from the business management literature. The staff read widely in the business press and the more ­scholarly literature as well. Their single most important source was probably the Harvard Business Review. As noted, the union hired the American Management Association to do staff training.65

Steve Early, from Labor Notes, said after the 2003 AFL-CIO organising summit: Some unions – SEIU, UNITE, HERE, and AFSME – still fervently believe in ‘staffing up’ … By hiring, training, and rapidly deploying large crews of full-time organizers and researchers – often recruited from outside their own ranks – they approach the ‘challenge of growth’ like a corporation retooling its sales force.66

The SEIU presents, therefore, contradictory tendencies, which have been reflected in successes such as the Justice for Janitors Campaign (particularly the one launched in Los Angeles in 1988) but also in internal problems in relation to union democracy that have become prevalent in the 2000s. Centralisation and corporate organisational norms, according to Kim Moody, became predominant at the turn of the twenty-first century. SEIU locals that resisted a reorganisation from above to give way to larger locals were put under trusteeship; some locals voted to disaffiliate from the SEIU or left. 67 The argument is that we must go beyond the ‘technical’ contradiction between top down (bureaucratic) and bottom up (democratic) approaches to union organising. To put it plainly, it is not possible to have member-led trade unions and to oppose in a consistent way austerity measures if trade union leaders accept capitalism and are not able to defeat the hegemonic political economy of capital within their own organisations. Or, in other words, the trade union movement needs to turn to socialism and to the political economy of wage-labour. As Janice Fine puts it, a significant difference between new and old ways of workers’ organising is that the new ways are not inspired by socialism.68 The reality is that some means lead to some ends and not to others. Popular power69 and union democracy are means to socialism, but both premises can only be met when the dominant ideology within the labour movement is the political economy of wage-labour. It is utopian, therefore, to believe that unions can truly be member-led or oppose current austerity if the dominant ideology within them is the political economy of capital. That ideology reproduces bureaucratic, top-down approaches in which decision-making is considered a technical matter to be handed to experts.70 It leads to the ‘realism’ that, as we have seen, union leaders show when they reach agreements with government and recommend them to their members.

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As Hyman argues, popular power is not generally considered as one of the functions of trade unions, nor to challenge the domination of capital over labour.71 In other words, unionism tends to be considered exclusively as a way to guarantee job security, protection and reasonable wages and conditions. Jack O’Connor made it clear during the renegotiation of the Croke Park Agreement: ‘The purpose of Trade Unions is to advance the interests of Workers in times of prosperity and to defend them during downturns.’72 The problem is that in the current period of stagnation it is not possible to deliver any of those goals. It goes beyond the aim of this chapter to discuss how the trade labour movement could adopt the political economy of labour. That is likely to happen during periods in which the hegemony of capital is seriously questioned in society, as in the 1920s–1940s or in the 1970s. It is in those moments when labour upsurges take place, when job control, popular power and union democracy became salient. Austerity and political economy Jack O’Connor recently made very interesting remarks against current austerity policies: [Austerity] is never actually societally neutral. It is a violence perpetrated against working people and those who depend most on public services. Until now at least, it has been administered through a deadly concoction of fiscal retrenchment accompanied by ‘Labour Market Reform’ – a euphemism for the most sustained attack on the gains made by organised workers since the Second World War ... This amounts to nothing short of the dismantlement of the Post War settlement especially in the area of the employer/worker relationship, dramatically shifting wealth from labour to capital and rigorously asserting the unfettered law of the market in the workplace.73

His alternative, however, amounts to a timid attempt to going back to the ‘Post War settlement’ by creating a Strategic Investment Bank, raising the effective tax rate on the top 10 per cent of households by 2.3 per cent and the mutualisation of debt at EU level. There should be, in his opinion, a better balance between ‘fiscal effort’ and measures to improve growth. The latter would take place if the private sector were encouraged to spend more. However, when it comes to opposing ‘austerity’ in deeds he, as we have seen, blames citizens for voting for parties that are opposed to a wealth tax or a higher tax rate on high earners. He argues that in any case the government must apply needed austerity measures and it is better to accept cuts through negotiated settlement rather than risk large scale industrial action. The National Executive Council of SIPTU in fact argued that

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active opposition to Croke Park cuts would create ‘a gigantic trade union dispute which would challenge both the Government and Public Service Union Membership generally’.74 Jack O’Connor, drawing a parallel with the 1913 lockout, added that the outcome of such a struggle would be enormously destructive on all sides. In that statement, O’Connor showed how terrified he was of challenging austerity measures; it would mean a challenge to the status quo, which in the current circumstances of economic stagnation would constitute a challenge to capitalism. The problem goes far back. After 1945, and even further after the ‘neoliberal’ turn in the 1980s, trade unions fully embraced, without a trace of shame, the principles of the political economy of capital, which imply that increases in competition and productivity contribute to an economic development that is meant to benefit workers too. The labour movement assumed the ‘configuration’ that bound big labour, capital and big government, and Keynesian policies. Jack O’Connor made that clear when he argued in favour of a turn towards the ‘Post War settlement’. He has, however, proved consistently unwilling to fight for a return to that era, widely considered a golden age among trade union leaderships worldwide. Due to lack of space, I am not going to argue against current Keynesian (and neo-Keynesian) policies of economic growth and recipes for economy recovery adopted by trade unions. I believe that Keynesian recipes were exhausted long ago, as has been argued by others.75 The only path towards progress entails articulating an anti-capitalist alternative to austerity. However, it would constitute a gigantic step forward if union leadership could summon the coherence and determination required for the struggle to defend the immediate interests of their members, of the whole working class, even on Keynesian terms. What has taken place in Ireland is very telling of what is happening in the wider economy. Subcontracting, temporary and part-time work, etc., tend to be adopted because they give a competitive edge to companies in the epoch of capitalist stagnation. The effects on workers’ pay and conditions, however, are devastating. The loss can be gradual, through negotiation and litigation at the Labour Commissioner, but independently of its speed there has been a ‘race to the bottom’, which apart from devaluing labour leads to the loss of union power. Companies, however, keep at every turn promising that the final goal is not to undermine workers’ incomes but to keep jobs and incomes by improving their competitive position, by linking the interests of workers and the companies. All this was achieved at first without breaking with Social Partnership and respecting the ‘rules of engagement’ until the onset of the great recession.

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One question that can be asked is whether trade unions have capitulated to the political economy of capital, and whether there is consent to its hegemony on the part of unions and workers. Some scholars argue that there has been a ‘turn to the right’ within the working class and a rise in the widespread ‘culture of individualism, upward mobility, and competitive consumption’.76 Working-class experience would, in this reading, appear to validate the tenets of middle-class meritocratic individualism. However, most workers surveyed by anthropologists Doukas and Durrenberger in a workplace in the US did not agree that capital was a natural force and did not agree that the rewards of labour should be naturally distributed to those who control capital rather than to those who work.77 We cannot simply argue in a generalising way that union leaders have internalised the political economy of capital and are in fact agents of the bourgeoisie within the labour movement. What we know is the consequences of ‘partnership unionism’ for workers and the labour movement, locally, nationally, and internationally. As unions operate in a capitalist context, we can expect different tendencies operating and competing within trade unions, and articulated by different leaders. The hegemony of the political economy of capital, on the other hand, is clear within the labour movement. Workers historically entered production divided, fragmented, competing amongst each other in the labour market. Their combination takes place in a capitalist context. Bureaucratic and rank-and-file tendencies exist at the same time. One expresses sectional tendencies, servicing, consensus building, representation, reliance on individual settlements and casework; the other, solidarity, direct democracy, activism, and collective action. We have on the one hand the union as an institution; on the other, as Sheila Cohen argues,78 the union as a movement. Both tendencies, and the different grades in between, reflect the contradiction between the two political economies. If we consider hegemony as a dynamic process and consciousness as forged in the course of struggles, what matters is to understand the context in which struggles take place, the balance of forces, and the direction of the movement. Broad mass unions of the social movement type tend to arise in the context of labour upsurges. It is then when we can find mass, spontaneous participation from the bottom and when bureaucratic tendencies are pushed back. This is the experience of localised conflicts such as strikes, particularly wildcat and unofficial, and adversarial unionbuilding campaigns, which cannot be sustained without active and democratic participation and rank-and-file committees.79 The question whether trade unions are compatible with rank-and-file democratic

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structures (popular power) cannot be solved while capitalism and the political economy of capital remain hegemonic. A basic contradiction between labour and capital develops from the very same logic of collective bargaining. Capital manifests its inner-logic in the production and realisation of surplus value through the competition of many capitals. In this way, capital reproduces and produces a fragmented working class.80 The labour movement, on the other hand, in order to successfully carry out its bargaining goals, needs the combination of as many segments of the working class as possible. By trying to establish a monopoly over the commodity labour in order to strengthen its bargaining power, trade unions tend to push wages out of competition, which also means a rejection of the capitalist economic principle of productivity and competitiveness. Collective bargaining, therefore, challenges the labour market institution. And there cannot be capitalism without a labour market.81 The political economy of labour followed to its conclusion implies the end of wage labour, to go beyond it, and in that way to end capitalism. That logic is implicit in the practice of unionism. But methods are not neutral. Top-down organising, bureaucratic control from the top, consensus building between capital and labour, and casework instead of collective action do not lead to a challenge of the political economy of capital, which is rather strengthened by those practices. On the other hand, rank-and-file militancy, collective action, members’ ownership of their own organisation, and adversarial relations between capital and labour arise spontaneously out of the unequal relations between capital and labour and because, individually, workers cannot advance their interests. In the struggle against capital, workers also find that they have to wage an inner struggle against the influence of the hegemonic ideology of capital within their own organisations. Notes  1 Oxfam, A Cautionary Tale: The True Cost of Austerity and Inequality in Europe (Oxford: Oxfam Briefing Paper 174, 2013).   2 John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, ‘The endless crisis’, Monthly Review, May 2012, p. 12; Andrew Kliman, The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlining the Causes of the Great Recession (London: Pluto Press, 2011); Michael Roberts, The Great Recession: Profit Cycles, Economic Crisis (A Marxist view) (Raleigh, North Carolina: Lulu Enterprises, 2009); Michael Roberts, ‘Marx versus Keynes in the summer’ (2013), available at https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/marx-versus-keynesin-the-summer/. Consulted 20 February 2014.   3 The share of the national income for the top 0.1 per cent of the population

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in the UK went from over 11 per cent in 1913 to just under 7 per cent in 1938, but it went further down to 3 per cent in 1953, and 1 per cent in 1978. By 1998, however, it had risen above 3 per cent. See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 10–15.   4 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), p. 142.  5 Kliman, The Failure of Capitalist Production.  6 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, pp. 150–1.  7 Kliman, The Failure of Capitalist Production, p. 201.   8 Tim Hastings, Brian Sheehan and Padraig Yeates, Saving the Future: How Social Partnership Shaped Ireland’s Economic Success (Dublin: Blackhall Publishing, 2007), pp. viii, 17–19.   9 Brendan McPartlin, ‘The organising union’, in Tim Hastings, Brian Sheehan and Padraig Yeates, Saving the Future: How Social Partnership Shaped Ireland’s Economic Success (Dublin: Blackhall Publishing, 2007), p. 99. 10 Hastings et al., Saving the Future, p. 50. 11 Terence McDonough and Tony Dundon, ‘Thatcherism delayed? The Irish crisis and the paradox of Social Partnership’, Industrial Relations Journal 41:6 (2010), pp. 544–62. 12 Hastings et al., Saving the Future, pp. 186, 196. 13 Roberts, The Great Recession. 14 Brian Sheehan, ‘Employers and the traditional industrial relations system: how the bonds have been loosened’, in T. Hastings (ed.), The State of the Unions: Challenges Facing Organised Labour in Ireland (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2008). 15 Kieran Allen, Ireland’s Economic Crash: A Radical Agenda for Change (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2009), pp. 34–56. 16 Francisco Arqueros, ‘Workers against institutions’ (National University of Ireland, Phd thesis, 2011) pp. 25–7. 17 Daniel McConnell, ‘“Low cost crews” plan could lead to strike at Irish Ferries’, Irish Times, 3 November 2004, p. 5; Chris Dooley, ‘Ferry from Cherbourg cancelled due to row’, Irish Times, 26 November 2004, p. 10; Chris Dooley, ‘Irish Ferries service may be halted by SIPTU strike action’, Irish Times, 30 November 2004, p. 6; Chris Dooley, ‘Stoppage at Irish Ferries will hit exports to Britain’, Irish Times, 3 December 2004, p. 12. 18 Gerald Flynn ‘Strike call as ferry chiefs cut 543 crew’, Irish Independent, 20 September 2005, p. 11; Gerald Flynn, ‘Irish Ferries “will abandon routes” unless staff go quietly’, Irish Independent, 21 September 2005. 19 Gerald Flynn, ‘Union secures interim court ban against job cuts on ferries’, Irish Independent, 1 October 2005, p. 8; Gerald Flynn and Gene McKenna, ‘Ferries strike averted by 11th-hour concession’, Irish Independent, 4 October 2005, p. 1. 20 Gerald Flynn, ‘5,000 stage march in fury over cheap labour plan on ferries’, Irish Independent, 4 November 2005, p. 11. 21 SIPTU, Press Release, 24 November 2004, Dublin: SIPTU.

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22 SIPTU, Press Release, 14 December 2005, Dublin: SIPTU. 23 Helen Bruce, ‘Sailings resume as no-strike clause seals hard-fought pact’, Irish Independent, 15 December 2005, p. 1. 24 Fieldwork. 25 SIPTU, Press Release, 1 November 2005, Dublin: SIPTU. 26 SIPTU, Press Release, 29 September 2005, Dublin: SIPTU. 27 SIPTU, Press Release, 28 September 2005, Dublin: SIPTU. 28 SIPTU, Press Release, 14 November 2005, Dublin: SIPTU. 29 SIPTU, Press Release, 31 January 2006, Dublin: SIPTU. 30 The national debt was €50bn in 2008 and was expected to rise to €94bn in 2009. Ireland’s deficit at 14.3 per cent of GDP was the highest of the EU in 2009. Public debt stood at 64 per cent of GDP. Available at: www.rte.ie/ news/2010/0422/130167-economy/. Consulted 12 July 2011. 31 ICTU, There is a Better, Fairer Way: Congress Plan for National Recovery (Dublin: ICTU, February 2009). 32 ICTU, Congress 10 Points Plan for a Better, Fairer Way (November 2009). Available at: www.betterfairerway.org/keyissues/publications/congress10-point-plan-for-national-recovery/. Consulted 12 July 2011. 33 ‘The last roll of the dice for Government, Ibec and unions’, Irish Times, 26 March 2009, p. 16. 34 Martin Wall, ‘120,000 march in Dublin over handling of economy’, Irish Times, 23 February 2009, p. 9. 35 ICTU, Press Release, February 2009, Dublin: ICTU. 36 www.rte.ie/news/2009/0322/115410-gilmoree/. Consulted 12 July 2011. 37 Martin Wall, ‘Unions set to take part in new talks on national agreement’, Irish Times, 25 March 2009, p. 1. 38 Ibid. 39 Stephen Rogers, ‘Unions ready to hike action over public sector cuts’, Irish Examiner, 24 February 2010, p. 5. 40 Martin Wall, ‘Public sector unions seek cuts reversal in talks with government’, Irish Times, 27 March 2010, p. 1. 41 Steven Carroll and Luke Cassidy, ‘Agreement “an alternative to industrial conflict”’, Irish Times, 31 March 2010, p. 7. 42 Sarah Carey, ‘Public service reform needed now as we’ve paid for it’, Irish Times, 31 March 2010, p. 19. 43 Michael O’Regan, ‘Howlin speaks of “industrial peace” and rules out further pay cuts’, Irish Times, 13 September 2011, p. 8. 44 Dan O’Brien, ‘Public sector wage cuts should be considered, OECD official says’, Irish Times, 26 November 2011, p. 16. 45 Paul Cullen, ‘Cut public sector pay not jobs, suggests Central Bank chief’, Irish Times, 1 February 2012, p. 1. 46 Martin Wall, ‘Rabbitte says Croke Park deal may be revisited’, Irish Times, 12 December 2011, p. 8. 47 Mary Minihan, ‘Tánaiste says no changes to Croke Park deal’, Irish Times, 13 December 2011, p. 7. 48 Mary Minihan, ‘Howlin says Croke Park agreement still being resisted’,

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Irish Times, 14 June 2012, p. 1. 49 Stephen Collins, ‘Troika is dissatisfied with scale of Croke Park savings’, Irish Times, 15 October 2012, p. 1. 50 Martin Wall and Mary Minihan, ‘Croke Park successor may target pay and conditions’, Irish Times, 10 September 2012, p. 1. 51 Martin Wall, ‘Confusion ends as Taoiseach rules out renegotiation of Croke Park deal’, Irish Times, 11 September 2012, p. 4; Mary Minihan and Martin Wall, ‘Taoiseach wants more Croke Park savings’, Irish Times, 13 September 2012, p. 1. 52 Stephen Collins and Martin Wall, ‘Coalition seeks €1bn savings in new public sector deal’, Irish Times, 21 November 2012, p. 1. 53 Martin Wall, ‘State to seek cuts if no deal struck, say unions’, Irish Times, 10 January 2013, p. 7. 54 Martin Wall, ‘Shocked unions will find many proposals very hard to swallow’, Irish Times, 15 January 2012, p. 3. 55 SIPTU, Press Release, 15 February 2013, Dublin: SIPTU. 56 Liberty, March 2013, p. 1. 57 Ibid., p. 18. 58 Ibid., p. 6. 59 Irish Left Review, 18 April 2013. Available at: www.irishleftreview.org/ 2013/04/18/workers-spoken/. Consulted 1 August 2013. 60 See: www.rte.ie/news/2013/1219/493743-asti-haddington-road/. Consulted 2 April 2014. 61 SIPTU, Press Release, 2006, Dublin: SIPTU. 62 According to Kate Bronfenbrenner, ‘The US experience of organising in the context of the global economy’, in Tim Hastings (ed.), The State of the Unions: Challenges Facing Organised Labour in Ireland (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2008). 63 Kim Moody, US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, the Promise of Revival from Below (New York: Verso, 2007), p. 186. 64 Vanessa Tait, Poor Workers’ Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below (Cambridge MA: South End Press, 2005), pp. 85, 121. 65 Moody, US Labor in Trouble and Transition, p. 186. 66 Tait, Poor Workers’ Unions, p. 207. 67 Moody, US Labor in Trouble and Transition, pp. 188–91. 68 Janice Fine, Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2006), pp. 38–40. 69 See Richard Hyman, Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction (London: Macmillan 1975), pp. 85–6. 70 In some of the literature on labour and social movements there is a tendency to associate the issue of leadership and bureaucratic tendencies with a Leninist conception of leadership in which decision-making is handed to specialists or professionals. However, this handling of decision-making to specialists has more to do with business management practices, the pursuit of technical efficiency, and the political economy of capital.

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71 Hyman, Industrial Relations, pp. 85–6. 72 Liberty, March 2013. 73 Available at: www.siptu.ie/media/speeches/#d.e. Consulted 1 September 2013. 74 Liberty, March 2013, p. 15. 75 Roberts, ‘Marx versus Keynes in the summer’; Bellamy Foster and McChesney, ‘The endless crisis’. 76 Dimitra Doukas, Worked Over: The Sabotage of an American Community (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 7; Dimitra Doukas and Paul Durrenberger, ‘Gospel of wealth, gospel of work: counterhegemony in the U.S. Working Class’, American Anthropologist, 110:2 (2008), pp. 214–24. 77 Doukas and Durrenberger, ‘Gospel of wealth’. 78 Sheila Cohen, Ramparts of Resistance: Why Workers Lost Their Power, and How to Get it Back (London: Pluto Press, 2006). 79 Tait, Poor Workers’ Unions; Dan Clawson, The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Moody, US Labor in Trouble and Transition; Tony Lane and Ken Roberts, Strike at Pilkingtons (London: Collings/Fontana, 1971); Rick Fantasia, Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1988). 80 Michael Lebowitz, Beyond Capital, 2nd edn (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), pp. 81–7. 81 John Weeks, Capital and Exploitation (London: Edward Arnold, 1981).

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Ireland, the left and the European Union Daniel Finn

Introduction One of the most striking consequences of Ireland’s economic meltdown has been the transformation of its relationship with the European Union. After two years of ham-fisted attempts to manage the implosion of the Irish economy, Brian Cowen’s government bowed to overwhelming pressure in November 2010 and accepted emergency loans from a ‘troika’ composed of the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The arrival of troika officials in Dublin to conduct an audit of the public finances was widely perceived as a moment of abject national humiliation, symbolising the loss of ‘economic sovereignty’ nine decades after the Irish state was founded, and delivered a terminal blow to Cowen’s administration, which limped to its electoral doom three months later. In the period that followed, Irish citizens grew accustomed to a newly intrusive role for the Union in domestic affairs. Troika delegations paid regular visits to the country, commenting on every aspect of economic policy, and cabinet ministers developed the habit of justifying their actions by reference to the mood in Brussels and Frankfurt. When Ireland became the only country to hold a referendum on the EU’s Fiscal Compact in 2012, voters were warned that a triumph for the ‘No’ side would have catastrophic results, leading to expulsion from the Eurozone and the immediate cancellation of financial aid; the merits and demerits of the proposal itself barely featured in the debate. Against this backdrop, many on the Irish left have begun to question their view of the European project.1 Having previously thought of the Union as a potential ally in the quest to strengthen workers’ rights and raise levels of social provision, left-wing Europhiles have been confronted with the spectacle of European institutions promoting an especially strident form of neo-liberalism and imposing it on the Eurozone’s peripheral states – even outflanking the IMF from the right in the process, as Costas Lapavitsas has observed:

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The Fund has been fully aware of the difficulty of imposing tough adjustment programmes on countries that cannot have a simultaneous devaluation of the domestic currency. The EU and the ECB have been much larger lenders than the IMF, insisting on punitive interest rates, the imposition of harsh austerity, and the adoption of further liberalization, in the name of protecting the Euro. The true defenders of neo-liberal orthodoxy in the Eurozone crisis have been the EU and the ECB, not the IMF.2

Radical critiques of the EU as a tool of corporate power now appear to have a much better purchase on reality than the benign perspective long cherished by the Irish Labour Party and much of the trade union movement. Coming to terms with the EU’s present direction – and formulating an adequate response – has become a matter of great urgency for the Irish and European left. In what follows, I will be placing current debates about the EU in a longer historical context and examining the referendums which have thus far provided the main opportunity for critics of the Union to present their arguments and mobilise support. Contours of the Irish left Before considering the response of the Irish left to European integration, we should remind ourselves of the factors that set it apart from its counterparts in other long-standing EU member-states, both in terms of size and composition. To begin with, the vote achieved by left-wing parties has always been much lower in Ireland than in the majority of its neighbours. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, their combined vote share averaged 14 per cent, against a total usually exceeding 40 per cent in other west European countries. The centre-right parties won almost 80 per cent of the vote during the same period.3 Ireland’s social democrats have never won an absolute majority, never come first in an election and never headed a government. Secondly, the make-up of the left forces does not correspond to the usual west European pattern. Labour, traditionally the largest leftwing group, is a social-democratic party in the conventional European mould; it differs from its siblings chiefly in its lack of electoral success. A Green Party also joined the fray from the late 1980s, following the example of similar formations in Germany, France and Scandinavia. But the space to the left of Labour has mostly been occupied by parties that derive from the republican movement: first, Official Sinn Féin, which became the Workers’ Party in the 1980s, then Provisional Sinn Féin from the mid-1990s to the present day.4 At the time of writing, the latter group – hereafter referred to simply as Sinn Féin – looks certain to overtake Labour at the next general election, having already done so

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in the European poll of 2014, and will pose a strong challenge to the main conservative parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. This background has strongly influenced the left-wing debate on Europe. Labour’s comparative weakness has prompted many of its supporters to hope for external salvation: in the words of the historian Dermot Keogh, ‘the engine of European social democracy has a much better chance of helping to pull the weak carriage of Irish Labour’.5 There are two strands to this line of argument, which are not mutually exclusive. One is that European social policy will bear a stronger leftwing imprint than anything likely to be generated on the home front, allowing Irish social democrats to achieve through the back door what they have been unable to manage at the ballot box. The other is that EU membership will stimulate the modernisation of Irish society, relieving the weight of economic backwardness and social conservatism that is said to have constrained left-wing advance and allowing a ‘normal’ left– right alignment to take shape in the Irish political system.6 Meanwhile, the republican heritage of some on the Euro-critical left has led them to emphasise the threat posed to national sovereignty by European integration, mixing left-wing and nationalist arguments (sometimes at the price of incoherence). Barriers to understanding Although these peculiarities should be borne in mind, left-wing opinion in Ireland has broken down along much the same lines as in other European states. On the one hand, the EU is seen as a bulwark of social democracy, protecting the ‘European social model’ against the ravages of Anglo-Saxon free-market capitalism; deeper integration offers the best prospect of safeguarding that model in the age of globalisation. On the other, the Union itself is depicted as an agent of neo-liberalism, chipping away at the foundations of European welfare states and pushing the continent towards emulation of the US economy with its low taxes, weak social protection and vertiginous inequality. Beneath the rhetorical fog, a clear picture of the EU’s predominant characteristics can be discerned – one that should offer little comfort to the left. In the first place, much of the confusion arises from an optical illusion. It is perfectly true that European social programmes tend to be more advanced than those found in the US, and the same can be said of labour and environmental legislation. In that sense, it is legitimate to speak of a ‘European social model’, while remembering that Europe itself is far from being homogenous, with some EU members much closer to the American end of the spectrum than to any of the Nordic states. But it

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does not follow that the EU is responsible for bringing about this state of affairs, or doing anything to uphold it today. If there is a European social model, much of its content remains firmly rooted at the level of the nation-state, which is where the reforms achieved by the workers’ movement in the last century were implemented. While it is common for politicians and journalists to use ‘Europe’ as a synonym for the EU, we must never lose sight of the distinction between region and Union if we want to keep our bearings. This tendency to blur the line between the two is compounded in the Irish case by the influence of British political culture. For obvious historical and linguistic reasons, Britain receives more attention in the Irish media than any other European state. The extreme Europhobia of its tabloid press thus leaves a powerful impression on views of the European Union: hostility to Brussels is often associated with right-wing nationalism. Britain is unique for the traction which anti-EU arguments have within the political mainstream. Of the last three Conservative prime ministers, one was brought down by divisions over European integration, another found his government hobbled by the issue, while the third has been obliged to promise a referendum on EU membership if he wins a second term in office. Accounting for this phenomenon lies beyond the scope of this chapter. But one of its side-effects, in the Irish context, has been to encourage the idea that there must be something liberal or progressive about the EU, if so many people who are plainly neither find it objectionable. Debating Europe A debate between Andy Storey and Laurent Pech in the pages of the Irish Review offers a useful window onto serious discussion about the character of the EU. The two academics were writing in the period between rejection of the EU Constitution by French and Dutch electorates in 2005 and the defeat of the Lisbon Treaty at the hands of Irish citizens three years later. Storey, chair of the campaigning group Action from Ireland, presented a concise summary of the leftist critique, arguing that the main tendency has been for the Union to enshrine neo-liberal ideology in its basic structures, constraining the ability of national governments to pursue alternative policies.7 He listed three main areas in which this tendency could be observed: (1) Competition law: the European Commission has intervened to break up state monopolies and to prevent governments from assisting private companies; in some areas, including telecommunications and high-speed rail, the EU has ‘actively and directly

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promoted processes of liberalization, especially through the issuing of legal directives to national authorities’.8 (2) The single currency: monetary policy for the Eurozone is administered by an ‘independent’, and therefore unaccountable, central bank, committed to maintaining price stability against the menace of inflation but with no comparable requirement to stimulate growth or employment. National governments have also found themselves hemmed in by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which limits the capacity of Eurozone members to run fiscal deficits. (3) International trade: when negotiating trade agreements with countries in the Global South, EU representatives have sought to impose privatization and liberalization of national economies, allowing European companies to gain a foothold in sectors such as water provision. Storey concluded by acknowledging that the EU was by no means the only political agent that could be held responsible for the erosion of European social democracy: ‘National governments and other international actors also play their parts, and significant national differences persist in certain policy areas. But the EU is one neoliberalizing agent, and a significant one in many respects.’9 This contribution elicited a response from Laurent Pech, the Jean Monnet chair of EU Public Law at the National University of Ireland Galway, insisting that the European project was ‘neither neo-liberal, nor socialist’.10 Pech mounted a strong defence of the Union against its left-wing critics, which merits careful scrutiny as it contains far more substance than the arguments usually presented in favour of European integration by Irish opinion-formers. For Pech, the critics were guilty of ‘manifest exaggeration’ and ‘distressing ignorance’; their arguments were ‘devious’ and ‘Manichean’, making the Union’s economic dimension appear as if it was ‘the fruit of some mysterious neo-liberal conspiracy’.11 He accused Storey and others of selective quotation from EU documents: they had ignored the fact that the Constitutional Treaty contained ‘an original and impressive list of social objectives, which would hardly be found in the constitutional wish-list of a neo-liberal’.12 If the Union still had a much greater role in competition policy than in welfare provision, this merely reflected the desire of national g­ overnments (and electorates) to keep the latter field under their own jurisdiction. The question remained: how were these laudable objectives to be translated into reality? Might they be undermined by other aspects of European integration? Pech had nothing to say about the ECB or the SGP, presumably because it would be difficult to present the ­architecture of

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the single currency as anything other than the entrenchment of economic liberalism at the heart of the European project. But he defended the Union’s competition policy against the charge of neo-liberal bias: ‘There are economic benefits associated with a market economy organized on a competitive basis: competition favours innovation, reduces production costs and assures the consumer desired goods at the lowest price and the best quality possible.’13 Although Pech appeared not to believe in the existence of neo-liberalism, dismissing the term as ‘eminently vague’, his own arguments relied upon a classic neo-liberal gambit: discussions of economic policy are placed beyond the realm of democratic politics by defining one particular approach as the only road to prosperity. Falling back on the authority of ‘most economic textbooks’ to present the EU’s four freedoms – of goods, services, labour and capital – as the best foundation for social progress, Pech made no attempt to engage with those who question the value of unrestrained competition in all fields. Beneath seemingly technical assertions about economic efficiency, large assumptions are being smuggled into the debate. Steve McGiffen has noted one of the most striking consequences of EU competition law: Market distortion is generally the whole point of social ownership. For example, buses may be municipally-owned in order to ‘distort’ a market which, were it allowed to function ‘freely’, would force people to walk everywhere; health care is usually publicly-funded in order to ‘distort’ the natural consequences of the market, which in this case would be to allow large numbers of people to suffer and die for want of funds. The Treaty of Rome does not forbid public ownership; it is simply that, strictly interpreted, it outlaws the practices which make it advantageous.14

With potential implications as far reaching as that, competition policy must be seen as an inherently political field, where divisions between left and right play themselves out – or are prevented from doing so by the structures of the EU. For his part, Pech argued that competition laws could be waived in certain circumstances, but the main arbiter of such questions will be the European Commission, a body no more subject to democratic accountability than the ECB. The ‘Brussels Consensus’ There is ultimately little value in an assessment of the EU that concentrates exclusively on its treaties; platitudes about ‘social exclusion’ and the like can always be found in such documents. We need to look at the institutions tasked with bridging the gap between rhetoric and reality. As noted above, the job of steering monetary policy for the Eurozone has

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been assigned to a central bank that is neither accountable to citizens nor obliged to show any concern for employment and social well-being. The Commission, meanwhile, has extensive powers in the field of economic policy: it can propose new legislation and negotiate trade agreements, and bears responsibility for ensuring that treaties are implemented. In theory, the European Parliament should offer a counter-balance to these unelected bodies and provide some direct input from voters into policy formation. In practice, however, it rarely does anything of the sort. In part, this is because the parliament is very much the poor relation of the other European institutions, lacking real decision-making power. But it also reflects the distance between national electorates and their MEPs. The absence of a European party system ensures that meaningful competition between different platforms is lacking; most people vote – insofar as they vote at all – on the basis of domestic issues and alignments, with little sense of what the various national parties will do when they reach Brussels or Strasbourg.15 This lack of a genuine demos makes the Euro-parliament an ideal hunting-ground for business lobbyists, organised in bodies like the European Round Table of Industrialists. Steve McGiffen remarks, with well-merited cynicism, that some MEPs ‘would get marks for honesty if, like footballers, they wore the names of their corporate sponsors on their shirts’.16 The point is not to argue that European bodies enjoy untrammelled power to impose neo-liberal policies on the member-states. The extent to which they can apply pressure will vary across periods of time and from one field to the next. Nor is it to claim that the EU has never had a positive impact on social or environmental policy in any instance; there are undoubtedly examples that can be cited in its favour. But the predominant tendency is one that promotes a neo-liberal economic model at the expense of workers’ rights and social provision. This tendency does not simply reflect the balance of forces among national governments, as some might argue: the Union contains independent power-centres, most notably the Commission and the ECB, which will take every opportunity to advance the ‘Brussels Consensus’. The Euro-crisis has granted the stewards of that consensus unprecedented room for manoeuvre. The strait-jacket imposed by the Maastricht Treaty on economic policy-making has been tightened sharply for all Eurozone members, while ‘peripheral’ EU states – Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus – have been prescribed the same medicine that was formerly doled out to countries like Mexico, Argentina and South Korea when they experienced their own debt crises. Radical deflation, wage cuts and redundancies, the sale of public assets: such familiar tenets of ‘structural adjustment’ for the economies of the Global South

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have now been returned to sender, with dire consequences for Europe’s working classes. Politics without democracy In an essay published at the start of the new century, Peter Mair argued that there was something very peculiar about the way politics tended to function in EU member-states. Voters had two potential channels for exercising influence over decision-making that flowed through national and European elections respectively. National governments chosen by their own citizens could participate in the EU’s inter-governmental structures and nominate members of the Commission. MEPs could take part in the work of the European Parliament, whose main powers of decision lay in the field of quotidian policy-making. For Mair, this suggested a logical division of labour between the two: While questions regarding the day-to-day functioning of the EU might be usefully contested in both arenas [national and European], questions regarding the make-up of the European polity itself are best contested within the national arena alone, since it is there that the principal ­competence lies.17

Yet in practice, the opposite was the case: general questions about the structure of the EU were more likely to be posed in European than in national elections, where conflicts over domestic policy alternatives tended to monopolise debate – even though the Union itself had severely restricted the choices available to governments. Mair offered a cynical hypothesis to account for this inversion: By debating Europe within an arena (the European arena) where competence in the area is negligible, and by debating policy questions in another arena (the national arena) where choices are increasingly circumscribed, voters are being offered a voice that is likely to have little or no effect on the practice of decision-making ... the result is that the party leaderships which emerge victorious from the contests in each arena have the capacity to remain relatively insulated from electoral constraints.18

He suggested that referendums had the potential to undermine this pact of convenience, noting a coincidence between the countries in which Euro-critical parties had won a significant electoral following – Austria, Denmark, France, Sweden – and those in which votes on European integration had recently been held: ‘It is at least partly through the arena of direct democracy that the issue of European integration may gain access to national politics.’19

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The Irish exception Unsurprisingly, European elites have tended to avoid referendums whenever possible, having suffered embarrassing defeats on this terrain in France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands since the early 1990s. But Ireland presents a special case: because of a ruling by the Supreme Court in 1987, all EU treaties must be submitted for popular endorsement. Politicians have grumbled incessantly about this requirement, but no government has managed to overturn it. Irish citizens can thus boast the distinction of having voted down a major EU treaty not once but twice: Nice in 2001, Lisbon in 2008 (both of which were passed at the second attempt). When the Fiscal Compact was adopted by Eurozone members in 2012, EU officials made no attempt to conceal their irritation at the fact that Ireland would once again be holding a referendum on the issue. Two subsequent court rulings have shaped the terrain on which these battles are fought. The state broadcaster RTÉ must give equal coverage to ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ sides, while the government cannot use public money to secure a ‘Yes’ vote; all campaigning work must be financed by parties and civic associations themselves. This does not mean that there has been a level playing field in the Irish referendums – still less that the ground has been tilted in favour of the ‘No’ side, as some pundits have claimed. But the contests have been much closer to parity than supporters of European integration would like. Why, then, did people vote down treaties that were supported by the main political parties, the business lobby, most trade unions and the great bulk of the print media? Previous referendums had been passed without difficulty: the vote on accession to the European Economic Community in 1972 saw an overwhelming majority vote in favour – 83 per cent, on a 71 per cent turn-out – while the Single European Act (SEA) and the Maastricht Treaty were both approved with almost 70 per cent of votes cast for the ‘Yes’ side. Support had begun to flag a little by the time of the Amsterdam Treaty poll in 1998, but the ‘Yes’ vote was still emphatic – 61.7 per cent. The outcome of the first Nice referendum in 2001 could be, and was, dismissed as a freak event on the grounds of low participation. Fewer than 35 per cent of those eligible bothered to vote, and the ‘No’ bloc was actually smaller as a proportion of the total electorate than it had been for Amsterdam. But it was harder to write off the Lisbon Treaty referendum in 2008, as it brought a sharp increase in the size of the ‘No’ camp: 28 per cent of eligible voters, 53 per cent of votes cast.20 Analysis of the Lisbon result demonstrated the existence of a sharp class polarisation between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ voters: 64 per cent of ‘AB’ (professional/managerial) voters supported the treaty, while 63 per cent

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of ‘C2’ (skilled working class) and 65 per cent of ‘DE’ (unskilled working class) voters opposed it.21 The researchers noted that this finding was ‘all the more striking in a society in which electoral politics is not strongly class-related’.22 The unambiguous class profile of the ‘No’ electorate does not prove that it was a left-wing vote: left–right divisions in other European countries may break down along class lines, but we will have to look more carefully to determine what contribution the Euro-critical left made to the outcome. ‘No’s to the left – and to the right? The only time that the Irish left was united on the subject of European integration came during the first referendum in 1972, when the Labour Party called for a ‘No’ vote alongside both wings of Sinn Féin. One civil servant remarked privately during the campaign that this broad opposition front was ‘clearly a well-organized one’ and suggested a red-baiting counter-attack: ‘There is much to be said for having its real motivation and its extreme left-wing backing brought right into the open.’23 The outcome on polling day banished such concerns, and within a year Labour had taken its place in a coalition with the conservative Fine Gael party that would steer the Irish state through its first phase of European Economic Community (EEC) membership. The year 1972 was the first and last instance of Labour spearheading the ‘No’ campaign: the party took no formal position on the SEA because of internal divisions, but went on to support the Maastricht Treaty and has become arguably the most Europhile of Irish parties.24 The hard-left Workers’ Party campaigned against both the SEA and Maastricht. By the time of the latter referendum, however, the party had seen most of its parliamentary group defect to form Democratic Left, which in turn was absorbed by Labour in 1999, having endorsed the Amsterdam Treaty with its final gasp of political breath. The resulting vacuum was filled from the late 1990s by a growing republican, socialist and environmental left that would form the backbone of the left-wing ‘No’ campaigns over the following decade. Sinn Féin has been the most significant player in this political space, and has reaped the greatest rewards at the ballot box. Ill-informed commentators have frequently compared the Republican Party to formations of the ultra-nationalist right in continental Europe. While there are many grounds on which Sinn Féin can be faulted from a left-wing perspective, this complacent slander has no basis in fact; the issues on which the party has campaigned bear no resemblance to the xenophobic posturing of Geert Wilders, Umberto Bossi or Marine Le Pen.25 Republican critics

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of the EU have been flanked on the one hand by the Irish Green Party and on the other by the Marxist left, with some trade unions also campaigning against the treaties.26 In addition to the left-wing ‘No’ campaigners, elements from the right of the spectrum have taken a stand against Lisbon and Nice. One such current stems from the extreme anti-abortion group Youth Defence – latterly repackaged as Cóir – which has sought to mobilise Catholic traditionalist opinion against the EU. Another emerged at the time of the Lisbon referendum, when a wealthy, ultra-conservative businessman, Declan Ganley, established the campaigning front Libertas. Ganley followed the Catholic right in posing general arguments about ‘national sovereignty’ and the like, referring in particular to the loss of Ireland’s guaranteed place on the European Commission.27 Youth Defence and its successors have put the emphasis on moral issues, claiming that the EU will force the Irish state to legalise abortion; Libertas has tended to focus on more secular concerns, such as the alleged threat to Ireland’s low rate of corporation tax. The Irish media has given extensive coverage to both strands of rightwing Euroscepticism, placing their spokesmen on a level or even superior footing to those of the left-wing ‘No’ bloc. At the time of the second Nice referendum in 2002, the Youth Defence leader Justin Barrett was often presented as the figurehead of the ‘No’ campaign, in spite of the fact that his group had no parliamentary representation, while the Alliance Against Nice – embracing Sinn Féin, the Greens, the Socialist Party and left-independents – had more than a dozen TDs among its supporters. Declan Ganley received similar attention, despite his lack of an electoral base.28 At first sight this appears baffling: electoral success is normally the main criterion applied by media outlets to determine whether a group should be taken seriously. Parochialism may offer one explanation. Long accustomed to looking at European politics through a British filter, journalists have latched onto the nearest approximation to Tory/ UKIP right-wing Euroscepticism that can be found (the fact that Ganley spoke with a posh English accent must have been especially reassuring). Polling data With so many different issues and arguments in play, from abortion and corporation tax to neutrality and workers’ rights, the most straightforward way of determining why people voted ‘No’ is to ask them. Polling after the first Lisbon referendum showed that ‘No’ voters cited lack of information and dislike or distrust of the government in advance of any specific policy concerns.29 A similar trend could be observed

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among those who voted against the Fiscal Compact in 2012.30 This lends support to the idea that people voted ‘No’ because they wanted to spite the establishment. Before dismissing this attitude as a mundane fact of life, as many pundits do, it is worth dwelling on the factors that have inspired such widespread suspicion of the political class. While this ‘anti-politics’ feeling defies easy categorisation as left- or right-wing, its causes are unmistakably political, as Paolo Flores d’Arcais observes: A democracy founded on the monopoly of career politicians has in fact transformed the public sphere into a private sphere, and political representation into a self-enclosed trade, in which the only measure of success is the personal profit that can be made from it. In this situation the relationship between representative and represented is reversed: the latter do not feel they are represented at all, but that they can choose only between more or less complete alienations of their will. It is not by chance that voter participation has fallen; even when it remains high, the next day’s polls indicate the citizens’ total lack of confidence in the people they have just elected: ‘they’re all the same’, ‘one is as good (or bad) as the other’ – and ‘they all steal anyhow’.31

This aspect of the Irish ‘No’ votes should thus be seen as symptomatic of a deeper malaise that affects most western democracies. Flores d’Arcais is surely right to argue that in the coming period, ‘the victor will be the one who is capable of occupying the strategic emplacement of so-called anti-politics’.32 When it came to particular issues, Lisbon ‘No’ voters were most likely to cite worries about loss of sovereignty. This strand of opinion is difficult to place in ideological terms, as critics of the EU from left and right alike have posed similar arguments (Enoch Powell and Tony Benn in the British context, for example). Next in the list was neutrality – by far the most widely cited concern of those that lend themselves to left–right definition.33 Left-wing ‘No’ campaigners had argued that the Lisbon Treaty would hasten Ireland’s absorption into an EU military bloc. Politicians have repeatedly claimed that Irish public opinion is ‘confused’ on the subject of neutrality; in reality, the problem so far as they are concerned is that it is all too clear. Surveys have revealed strong popular support for a concept of ‘positive neutrality’ that is far more expansive than the narrow definition favoured by the Irish political establishment, whereby Ireland remains neutral as long as it stays outside NATO.34 The use of Shannon airport as a US war-base and the complicity of Irish governments in ‘extraordinary rendition’ have sharpened public unease at the militarisation of Irish foreign policy; this sentiment played its part in the Nice and Lisbon referendums, much to the chagrin of those who would like to see Ireland take its place in the western alliance without further ado.

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Another set of findings from the post-Lisbon survey deserves attention. Those who took part were asked to rank a number of issues for Ireland’s EU membership in light of the outcome. The protection of workers’ rights was deemed ‘most important’ or ‘second most important’ by 43 per cent, followed by retention of Irish control over public services at 36 per cent and neutrality at 33 per cent. Protecting Ireland’s corporation tax regime was ranked first or second by 29 per cent; keeping abortion off the statute books trailed far behind at 16 per cent.35 The priority of workers’ rights and public services over corporation tax is striking, as the latter issue has been exhaustively – some would say interminably – discussed in the context of European integration, receiving far more attention than either of those traditional left-wing concerns. A more perfect Union? The referendum on the Fiscal Compact in 2012 was the ‘purest’ left– right divide that has been seen in any poll since Ireland joined the EEC. In place of the sprawling documents put before the electorate in the past, Irish citizens were asked to give their verdict on a well-defined measure that would strengthen the grip of conservative orthodoxy on policy-making in the Eurozone. Issues like abortion or corporation tax played no part in the campaign, with leadership of the ‘No’ side coming from Sinn Féin and the radical left.36 Just over half of those eligible to vote took part in the referendum, and the so-called ‘stability treaty’ was passed with a comfortable 60–40 majority. Against a backdrop of relentless scaremongering and open threats from European elites, with the Irish state dependent on funding from the ECB to keep it afloat after losing access to the international money markets, the real surprise was that so many should have held firm and voted ‘No’. Richard Sinnott of University College Dublin drew attention to the social divide which had manifested itself in the vote: 66 per cent of ABs voted ‘Yes’, while the strongest opposition to the Compact – 50 per cent – could be found among DEs. ‘Ireland is generally known for not having a class cleavage in its political system ... these figures are a straw in the wind, creating a possible emerging linkage between attitudes to European integration and social class.’37 Future battles over the question of Europe will take place on unfamiliar terrain. From the time Ireland joined the EEC to the early years of the Celtic Tiger, Brussels was generally seen as a benefactor, the source of vital structural funding and of farm subsidies channelled through the Common Agricultural Policy. The actions of the European Commission and the ECB since 2008 have cast a very different light on Ireland’s

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membership of the Union, leading many to wonder whose interests are really served by European integration. Similar questions are being raised in the other peripheral states: the chauvinism of the German tabloid press towards ‘lazy’ southern Europeans has been repaid with interest by its victims. A good deal of mystification surrounds the role of Brussels and Frankfurt in the management of the Euro-crisis, not least in Ireland. It has become commonplace for Irish pundits to hold the ECB responsible for the unlimited guarantee of private bank debt that was extended in September 2008, now widely recognised as a catastrophic error. In fact, the bank guarantee was a solo run by the Fianna Fáil–Green administration that was greeted with some annoyance by European elites. The ECB’s statement from October 2008 gives a sense of their mood: The Irish authorities have opted for an individual response to the current financial situation and not sought to consult their EU partners. In view of the similarities of the causes and consequences of the current financial distress across EU member states and the potential interdependence of policy responses, it would have been advisable to properly consult other EU authorities on the envisaged legislative plans.38

Since the troika’s ‘bail-out’ programme began, government ministers have tended to hold European officials responsible for every unpopular policy decision, whether or not they were actually involved. Too much focus on EU–ECB influence can divert attention from the culpability of domestic elites whose imbrication with Irish property and financial interests greatly contributed to the present debacle. But while the Commission and the ECB may not have devised the bank guarantee in 2008, they have certainly resisted any attempt to revise its crippling terms. Fine Gael and (especially) Labour made ‘burning the bondholders’ a key plank of their election campaigns in February 2011, with Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar leaving no room for ambiguity on the subject: ‘Any bank coming to us looking for more money is going to have to show how they are going to impose losses on their junior bondholders, on their senior bondholders, and on other creditors.’39 When the two parties formed a new government with a commanding majority after the election, troika representatives blocked any attempt to put those ideas into effect, and the gargantuan pay-outs to cover private bank debt continued. ‘Exiting the bail-out’ became enshrined as a national priority in its own right after December 2010. Yet the EU’s current trajectory renders that question moot: Irish governments will merely exchange temporary supervision of national budgets by troika officials for permanent supervision by the Commission and the ECB as the fiscal treaty comes into

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effect. The expedients of crisis management are being transformed into a lasting mode of economic governance. As Michel Aglietta has observed, the new regime is based on an illusory formula for European prosperity: The Berlin leadership has developed a moralistic interpretation of the crisis. They concede that the Eurozone is important, but insist that it cannot be maintained at any price. The countries whose ‘irresponsibility’ has led the Eurozone to its present state must be made to pay. Hence the exhortations to governments in deficit countries to undertake ‘reforms’ and follow the German path, never mind how unfeasible this is. If the whole Eurozone were to become one big Germany, as Berlin’s discourse suggests, its trade surplus would have to be gigantic in order to sustain its growth, and it would take an enormous expansion of global demand to soak up European merchandise. Alternatively, a euro confined to Germany’s zone of influence – Austria, the Netherlands, Finland – would appreciate by at least 30 per cent, wiping out the German surplus.40

This agenda can only exacerbate popular suspicion of the European project, which has already soared since 2008. In Ireland and elsewhere, political interventions from left- and right-wing forces will determine whether that sentiment finds a constructive outlet that can avert a regression towards xenophobic nationalism. Notes   1 Among them the Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole, one of the leading advocates for the liberal left in the print media. Having long taken a positive view of European integration and called for a ‘Yes’ vote in successive referendums, O’Toole aligned himself with the ‘No’ camp when Ireland voted again on the Fiscal Compact, describing opposition to the Compact as ‘a responsible act of European citizenship, encouraging the change of direction without which the EU will destroy itself’. See Fintan O’Toole, ‘Treaty a mere clause in contract yet unseen’, Irish Times, 22 May 2012.   2 Costas Lapavitsas, ‘Default and exit from the Eurozone: a radical left strategy’, in Leo Panitch, Greg Albo and Vivek Chibber (eds), The Crisis and the Left: Socialist Register 2012 (Pontypool: Merlin, 2011), p. 290.  3 Peter Mair, ‘Party competition and the changing party system’, in John Coakley and Michael Gallagher (eds), Politics in the Republic of Ireland (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 114–15.   4 The republican tradition in Irish politics has endured in some fashion since the 1920s, when the majority of those involved in the struggle for national independence broke away from Sinn Féin and its military wing, the Irish Republican Army, to form new parties. The movement split at the end of the 1960s: the avowedly Marxist Official republicans were mainly active in the southern Irish state, posing a serious electoral challenge to the Labour Party for a time before fragmenting after the collapse of the USSR and fading from

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the scene; the Provisional republicans fought against British rule in Northern Ireland between 1970 and 1997, eventually calling a ceasefire to enter constitutional politics on both sides of the Irish border. Categorising the Provisionals as left-wing is problematic, as they have won support in Northern Ireland primarily as a nationalist movement. In the South, however, Sinn Féin has positioned itself as a left-wing alternative to Labour and solicited votes on that basis; its MEPs have joined the leftist GUE–NGL group in the Euro-parliament. An optimistic case for Sinn Féin’s leftism can be found in Eoin Ó Broin, Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (London: Pluto, 2009); for a more sceptical appraisal, see Tommy McKearney, The Provisional IRA from Insurrection to Parliament (London: Pluto, 2011).  5 Michael Holmes, ‘The Irish Labour Party: the advantages, disadvantages and irrelevance of Europeanization?’, Irish Political Studies, 24:4 (2009), p. 528.  6 This ‘delayed modernisation’ thesis has lost much of its force in recent decades, now that the Irish Republic has experienced a long period of economic growth and reformed its social legislation to allow divorce, contraception and homosexuality (though not abortion); church attendance, once the highest in western Europe, has declined sharply since the 1980s. These transformations have occurred without any automatic shift towards left–right polarisation in Irish politics; insofar as left parties have made gains in recent years, it has not been a reflex of social modernisation, but a consequence of the economic crisis.   7 Andy Storey, ‘The European project: dismantling the social model, globalizing neoliberalism’, Irish Review, 34 (2006).  8 Ibid., p. 23.  9 Ibid., p. 28 (emphasis in original). 10 Laurent Pech, ‘The European project: neither neo-liberal, nor socialist: a reply to Andy Storey’, Irish Review, 36–7 (2007). 11 Ibid., pp. 96, 101, 97, 95, 108. 12 These included ‘the promotion of a high level of employment, the guarantee of adequate social protection, the fight against social exclusion, and a high level of education, training and promotion of human health’: Ibid., p. 98. 13 Ibid., p. 105. 14 Steven P. McGiffen, The European Union: A Critical Guide (London: Pluto, 2006), p. 84. 15 Peter Mair, ‘The Limited impact of Europe on national party systems’, in Klaus H. Goetz and Simon Hix (eds), Europeanised Politics? European Integration and National Political Systems (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2001). 16 McGiffen, The European Union, p. 29. 17 Mair, ‘The limited impact of Europe’, p. 45. 18 Ibid., p. 47. This accords with the highly critical view of the Union set out by Mair in his final work, Ruling The Void, in which he described the EU as ‘a protected sphere in which policy-making can evade the constraints imposed by representative democracy’. See Mair, Ruling The Void: The

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Hollowing of Western Democracy (London: Verso, 2013), p. 99. Soon after Mair’s untimely death in 2011, a session was held in his memory at the MacGill Summer School, a yearly gathering of Irish politicians, journalists and academics that receives generous media coverage. Guest speakers included the Labour social protection minister Joan Burton, who had recently described unemployment as a ‘lifestyle choice’ for young workingclass people, and Michael McDowell, former leader of the right-wing Progressive Democrats. It is safe to assume that anyone presenting Mair’s radical-democratic critique of European politics in that environment would have been greeted with horror and bewilderment by those in attendance. 19 Mair, ‘The limited impact of Europe’, p. 48. 20 21 per cent of eligible voters rejected Amsterdam, 18 per cent rejected Nice – the same proportion as had voted against Maastricht. See Jane O’Mahony, ‘Ireland’s EU referendum experience’, Irish Political Studies, 24:4 (2009), p. 430. 21 Richard Sinnott et al., Attitudes and Behaviour in the Referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon: Report Prepared for the Department of Foreign Affairs (Dublin: UCD, 2009), p. 15. Categories ‘F’ (farmers) and ‘C1’ (lower middle class) were split down the middle: 52 per cent ‘Yes’ to 48 per cent ‘No’ in both cases. 22 Ibid., p. 16. 23 Gary Murphy and Niamh Puirséil, ‘“Is it a new allowance?” Irish entry to the EEC and popular opinion’, Irish Political Studies, 23:4 (2008), p. 538. The Irish ambassador to West Germany argued that the left-wing ‘No’ campaign might be an elaborate plot to ensure that the southern state would stay out of the EEC while Northern Ireland joined with the rest of the UK, thus precipitating a communist revolution: ‘Instead of the border coming slowly down accompanied by a steady rise in living standards on both sides of the frontier (as EEC membership by Britain and Ireland would imply) we would have to face a dangerous situation in which the border would rise and our living standards would dangerously fall. It is by no means certain that any democratic Irish government could survive in such a revolutionary situation and it may well be that some of the new elements in the Labour Party who oppose membership see the situation in this realistic light.’ See Gary Murphy, ‘“A measurement of the extent of our sovereignty at the moment”: sovereignty and the question of Irish entry to the EEC, new evidence from the archives’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 12 (2001), p. 198. 24 In the period immediately following the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, the Labour leader Eamon Gilmore publicly insisted that the treaty was ‘dead’ and opposed a second referendum. But a Wikileaks cable from the US embassy in Dublin revealed that Gilmore had privately assured the ambassador there would be a second vote, explaining that his public stance was ‘politically necessary’. See Fionnan Sheahan, ‘Gilmore “took opposing views in public and private”’, Irish Independent, 1 June 2011, p. 33. 25 As one academic who has studied the party’s recent evolution observes:

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‘The themes that formed the consistent basis to Sinn Féin’s opposition to European integration can be categorized as: defence of “positive” neutrality and sovereignty, more transparency and accountability in EU institutions (that is, combating the so-called democratic deficit) and a more “social Europe”.’ See Agnès Maillot, ‘Sinn Féin’s approach to the EU: still more “critical” than “engaged”?’, Irish Political Studies, 24:4 (2009), p. 567. 26 The Greens retreated from their earlier positions on the EU after joining a Fianna Fáil-led government in 2007 and did not oppose the Lisbon Treaty. The party’s former Dublin MEP Patricia McKenna has remained a vocal critic of European integration, and outpolled the official Green candidate in the 2009 European elections running as an independent. Further to the left, Ireland’s small Trotskyist organisations have sometimes been able to win representation in both national and European parliaments: Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party was elected as one of Dublin’s three MEPs in 2009, while five candidates won Dáil seats under the United Left Alliance banner in the 2011 general election. 27 This is one area in which Sinn Féin’s nationalism has cast an unhealthy shadow. While the party has never traded in xenophobia, its arguments for the defence of ‘national sovereignty’ against Brussels could just as easily be posed by right-wing Eurosceptics like Ganley. It would be far better to speak of democratic or popular sovereignty: the fact that the Commission and the ECB exercise power without any electoral mandate is more important than the nationality of the officials at their head. 28 Ganley attempted to capitalise on the first Lisbon referendum by running a slate of Libertas candidates in the 2009 European election: Ganley himself came close to winning a seat in the North West constituency, but the wellfunded Libertas flag-bearer in Dublin received barely 3 per cent of the vote, against 28.5 per cent for three candidates of the Euro-critical left (Joe Higgins, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald and Patricia McKenna). 29 Sinnott et al., Attitudes and Behaviour, p. 14, appendix 2. Reference by voters to ‘lack of information’ also implies a distrustful view of the major parties, whose spokesmen had assured them that the treaties would have benign consequences. 30 Eurobarometer Fiscal Compact Post-Referendum Survey, Ireland, 31 May 2012, p. 8. 31 Paolo Flores d’Arcais, ‘Anatomy of Berlusconismo’, New Left Review 68, May–June 2011, p. 136. 32 Ibid., p. 137. 33 8 per cent of ‘No’ voters cited concerns about neutrality and militarisation, 3 per cent cited Ireland’s rate of corporation tax, and 2 per cent cited abortion: Sinnott et al., Attitudes and Behaviour, p. 14. 34 Karen Devine, ‘Irish political parties’ attitudes towards neutrality and the evolution of the EU’s foreign, security and defence policies’, Irish Political Studies, 24:4 (2009). 35 Sinnott et al., Attitudes and Behaviour, appendix 9. 36 In the final stages of the campaign, Declan Ganley rose from the political

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grave, Bela Lugosi-style, so that he could jump on the ‘No’ bandwagon. Predictably, RTÉ gave a slot on its televised debate to Ganley, whose Libertas organisation had effectively disappeared, in preference to the United Left Alliance, whose affiliates had five TDs, one MEP and eighteen councillors. 37 Jessie Magee, ‘Jobless and low-paid voted no to fiscal treaty’, Irish Examiner, 14 July 2012. Sinnott’s claim that opinion towards the EU had ‘never been polarized along class lines’ overlooked the findings of his own report on the Lisbon referendum four years earlier. 38 Donagh Brennan, ‘Guaranteeing recidivism’, Irish Left Review, 1:2 (2013), p. 23. 39 Conor McCabe, Sins of the Father: the Decisions That Shaped the Irish Economy (Dublin: Irish History Press, 2013), p. 225. 40 Michel Aglietta, ‘The European Vortex’, New Left Review 75, May–June 2012.

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Business in Ireland is too important to  be  left to Irish business Michael Taft

Introduction Nobody nowadays regards the operation of an important industrial undertaking as being the exclusive private concern of its owners. Rather, each such undertaking is looked upon as a national asset contributing to the country’s economic and social advancement, and is entitled to bring its problems when they arise to the government and expect help in coping with them. The social consequences of fluctuations in the level of business activity are matters of public debate. The contributions which a progressive and efficient industrial concern can make to national welfare ... are widely understood. The industrial manager has unavoidable responsibilities, wider than those placed on him by his employer. He should be regarded and regard himself as a public servant in the finest meaning of that term.1

Somewhere along the line, the left lost its way. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that, to date, the left has lost the economic debate. Five years into the crisis with high unemployment, high levels of deprivation, household debt, emigration, workers and trade unions under attack – and still a near consensus that austerity was and is the only course available to Ireland. Parties that promulgate fiscal contractionary policies – either through ideological commitment (Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael) or through resignation (Labour) – still maintain majority support. Political and economic commentary, while describing the events, fail to relate cause and effect and, so, rarely pose a critique that challenges the orthodoxy. Alternative perspectives, no matter how mainstream they may be in other economies, are ignored, ridiculed as naïve or attacked as economically dangerous. We, in effect, have many political parties and forces, a multitude of civil society organisations as one would expect in a modern democratic society; but we are living in what is effectively a one-policy state. So to claim that the left has lost the debate is not exaggerated. However, it is worse than that. For the left has not even been at the debate. It has ceded critical ground to the austerity orthodoxy; has compromised with

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the dubious macro-economic premises of that orthodoxy; has failed to provide an authentic critique that goes beyond the distribution of the burden, or fairness, or equity. In many senses, the fight was over before it began. All we are left with is diffuse and powerless protest. And a core problem is that the left has stopped talking about the productive economy. Once upon a time Over the last two to three decades the left stopped debating the productive economy. Whether this was due to the impact of the fall of actually existing socialism or the collapse of the French Left Unity programme (where even social democracy in one country proved impossible in the face of capital mobility) is not material here. Previously, the failure of native capital was central to the left’s analysis of the Irish economy, and on that basis programmes were constructed to address this. A sense of this comes from Brendan Corish’s historic ‘New Republic’ speech to the 1967 Labour Party conference2 which has come down to us as ‘the 70s will be socialist’. This formulation has brought not a little bit of ridicule, especially as only a couple of years later Labour did an about-face and entered into a Fine Gael-led coalition. But the speech, which the historian Niamh Purséil3 described, with some justification, as a ‘sermon’, contained an analysis which is as valid today as it was in the 1960s: Ordinary people have suffered while the gombeen man has flourished. Speculative office blocks have risen almost overnight while the housing lists have swollen. There is money to be made if you know the right people and if you can hit on the right gimmick ... Meanwhile, the economy has floundered and social welfare has been run on shillings and pence ... We have the amazing situation in which a chronically under-developed country has freely allowed its capital to be exported to the biggest money market in the world. This is a policy entirely unfavourable to home industries struggling to establish themselves. But the interest of the private investor was safeguarded even if it means that six hundred million pounds4 would be invested abroad and even if it meant that a million emigrants would be discarded as surplus labour in a land starved of employment.

When Corish asked in the context of building a national economy: We have never had this spirit of tackling our economy problems. Instead, we have suffered so much from the opposite that we have invited every nationality but our own to come in and do the job for us. Are we not doing just that today?

We can only answer yes; we construct tax-haven policies to induce foreign direct investment in order to create jobs in a market where we

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suborn labour rights in order to make us even more attractive – all this while ignoring the shortcomings of our indigenous capacity. This is called ‘the cornerstone’ of Irish enterprise strategy. It wasn’t only Labour’s social democratic critique that focused on the failure to build a strong Irish economy. Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party’s Irish Industrial Revolution5 came to similar conclusions albeit through an idiosyncratic historical lens. Nonetheless, while developing a more thorough-going statist model in keeping with the party’s turn to Marxism, the effect was similar to Corish’s programme; namely, prioritising the development of a strong indigenous enterprise sector. Even after the collapse of the 1980s coalition, Labour returned to this theme, if in a more muted form, in Labour’s Agenda6 where public enterprise, partial-socialisation of investment and industrial democracy were put forward as pathways for indigenous development. During this period, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, too, launched policy initiatives that sought to prioritise market production through the public economy in its Public Enterprise, Everybody’s Business.7 Neither of these were necessarily revolutionary programmes, but they unashamedly posited the role of the public realm in market production. But then came the multi-nationals. Foreign investment was actively sought by Irish government since the 1950s, primarily through tax incentives. This drive gathered momentum with the Programme for Economic Expansion, the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement and, ultimately, the entry into the European Economic Community in 1974. However, these initiatives, assisted by a more active Industrial Development Authority, stalled in the 1970s with the first oil crisis and the inability to embed fluid foreign capital into the economic base. The second wave of foreign direct investment (FDI) came on foot of a number of events: the single market, two currency devaluations, labour quietude and relatively low labour costs, a young labour market along with a more forensic Industrial Development Authority (IDA) strategy that targeted cyclical-resistant sectors (e.g. chemicals/pharmaceuticals). This resulted in economic growth unprecedented in modern Irish history. Gross domestic product (GDP), employment and wages rose at levels above European norms while poverty indices fell (but not by much).8 It appeared that history had, indeed, ended: low growth, emigration and sub-optimal wage levels were to be replaced by an export-based strategy that seemingly overcame historical obstacles. The tide was irresistible. The economic trick, as it were, was to maintain and deepen the low-tax regime, maintain a flexible labour market, keep regulation minimal, and maintain industrial peace. This required a new framework and, so, the social partnership architecture was constructed,

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first co-opting employers and employees but branching out to include civil society and environmental groups. The skill of politics, therefore, lay in managing this process and ensuring that all social constituencies could claim some ownership. But the lesson was well-learned: the key to economic prosperity was to clear the market-driven path for private, predominately, foreign capital. In all this, the left retreated from programmes that sought to intervene in the productive process – either through public enterprise, moulding private enterprise, direction of pension funds or an active use of state banking. What was the point? The perennial problem of capital provision/direction into the productive sector had been resolved by FDI; employment and wages were increasing in and through the private economy; and the need for state banking seemed redundant in an age of cheap and easily accessible credit in a more international market. Therefore, and unsurprisingly, alongside the influx of foreign direct investment came a tide of privatisation. Accompanying this retreat, the left refocused their attention on what could be described as ‘welfarist’ or redistributionist issues. Now that the issue of production had been solved, the new project was to ensure that the wealth of that production was distributed more equitably. Issues such as social transfers and public consumption became prominent. There were attempts to strengthen labour rights in the workplace, though this disappointed – after 20 years of social partnership Ireland still remains one of the few industrial countries without a statutory right to collective bargaining. Crucially, the logic of a low-tax regime was never challenged. Indeed, Labour was part of the coalition government that cut the c­orporate tax rate for domestic companies from 40 per cent to 12.5 per cent (it didn’t affect multi-nationals as they benefitted from an already low-tax rate). Social partnership itself was premised on keeping pay rises below what could be achieved through free collective bargaining in return for income tax reductions which increased aftertax income. The rise of the property boom only reinforced the parameters the left found itself locked in. With the economy in near full-employment conditions, median incomes rising, even the volume of social transfers and public consumption growing, the Fianna Fáil government had succeeded in balancing the various social and class interests. Left critiques were raised but they only emerged from the margins. The surrender of a key space – the productive space – to private capital and, in particular, international and, latterly, property-based capital; the regrouping around redistributionist issues; these would contribute to an enfeebled response by the left to the crisis.

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As the crisis unfolded, much of the left was understandably occupied with short-term issues in the fight against austerity: investment as a means to reduce the extent and duration of the recession; smart fiscal consolidation which would put the burden of fiscal consolidation on high-income groups and unproductive activity; opposition to spending cuts – in particular, public services and social protection; and the subsidisation of banking creditors at the public expense. Unfortunately, most if not all the policy prescriptions put forward by the left were ignored as the austerity orthodoxy became and remains entrenched. However, too little consideration has been given to the structural flaws within Ireland’s economic base – structural flaws which were identified decades ago; namely, the failure to build a strong, indigenous enterprise base. Short-term measures are necessary but the absence of a long-term strategy has meant that certain issues have been ‘over-looked’. For instance, the demand for increased investment to increase employment in the short-term and productivity in the medium-term is a correct strategy. However, can we be sure that domestic enterprise will be able to fully utilise a fibre-optic next generation broadband, or a reskilled labour force, or a green technology base? In other words, we can build it, but will they come? Even in sectors that are seemingly detached from direct benefit of infrastructural modernisation (e.g. retail, hospitality) – can we assume that on the other side of the recession, when increased domestic demand will boost economic activity, employers won’t continue to engage in ‘labour-squeezing’ to maximise their profits?9 A large part of the success of the austerity orthodoxy has come about by winning the debate over fiscal contraction. However, underlying this has been the ability of capital to shape the debate to its own agenda and interests. ‘We must restore our competitiveness’, ‘we must not tax our wealth creators’, ‘we must price ourselves back into the market’ (code: cuts in wages and working conditions): these and similar mantras dominate the debate. The left is marginalised because its redistributionist vocabulary seems, at best, incidental to the economy’s primary concerns. At worst, it is incapable of addressing capital’s almost ­irresistible strategy: anything that impedes the freedom of capital is an impediment to wealth creation and employment opportunities. Therefore, wage promotion and collective bargaining; taxation; financial regulation; environmental protection – all must give way to the priority of capital. Social equity can only be considered in the context of, and subordinated to, maximum freedom for capital.

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The left must challenge this, and must do so by challenging the ground of enterprise development – in particular, indigenous enterprise development. In short, business in Ireland is too important to be left to Irish business. The left must become the promoters and champions of native enterprise. The historical failure of indigenous Irish enterprise (abridged) It is curious to hear spokespersons for domestic employer organisations claim that if only the government establish the ‘right’ environment (low-tax, low-wages, flexible labour practices) then Irish business can create the growth society needs. That fact is that Ireland has one of the weakest indigenous enterprise bases in Europe. This weakness forms a central narrative in economic history. In the 1930s, Fianna Fáil pursued a ‘protectionist’ strategy to build an industrial base. However, this strategy failed for a number of reasons: a limited domestic base and the need to import industrial materials, the descent into European war. As well, domestic businesses created cartels that allowed them to extract high profits behind a tariff wall which was not used to expand investment into export-oriented activity. After the war, this policy was maintained despite its manifest failure, grinding the economy into long-term stagnation, poverty, unemployment and mass emigration by the 1950s.10 In the 1960s, the state opened up the economy to foreign direct investment. It was not intended that multi-nationals should displace indigenous enterprise. Rather, it was hoped Irish business would benefit from the expertise that multi-nationals and the global marketplace could bring: marketing, R&D, product development, traded wealth, export earnings, etc. Instead, domestic businesses collapsed (with many Irish businesses complaining about the ‘high’ wages that ­multi-nationals paid). One of the biggest native industries to emerge from this period was property development and speculation. The IDA took a more highprofile role in attracting FDI but the strategy met with only partial success as it was undermined by a generalised, rather than targeted approach which was influenced by parochial pressures (local TDs demanding that firms be sited in their constituencies regardless of physical infrastructural support or linkages). It was put under further pressure during the 1970s oil crisis. In the late 1970s, Fianna Fáil made one more attempt to develop an indigenous enterprise base through what has been termed ‘vulgar Keynesianism’. They pump-primed the economy through substantial increases in government consumption (public sector employment and

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wages, contracts to the private sector) in the hope that indigenous enterprise would meet the additional demand. This did not happen. Inflation, imports and interest rates soared. Ireland collapsed into long-term stagnation in the 1980s with high unemployment and emigration. The failure of this strategy was rooted in a profound misreading of native capital, assuming that its under-development was a demand, rather than a structural, problem. At each stage, strategies to build an indigenous enterprise base ended in failure, resulting in stagnation and high unemployment. The role of the public sector in the Celtic Tiger economy As stated previously, the increase in FDI created the most prosperous economic conditions the state had enjoyed since independence. This would, at first glance, seem to have been driven by the market forces of a globalising economy in which the state need only ensure that it fit in with, and support, the requirements of FDI. Whereas manufacturing employment in the EU-15 shrank during the period of 1993–2000, Irish employment in this sector rose by 30 per cent.11 Manufacturing exports more than trebled during this period while the trade balance more than quadrupled. The multiplier effect spread throughout the economy. However, the argument that the FDI-fuelled growth during this period was a vindication of right-wing policies of low-tax and minimal state interference is problematic. The picture is much more nuanced and shows that the state played a leading role. The role of public agencies It was the strategy devised by the IDA – a public sector agency – that was the significant contributor to siting FDI in Ireland. They targeted multinational corporations (MNCs) in very specific, high value-added areas (electronics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, software, etc.) which were perceived at the time as being cyclically-resistant. This wasn’t a self-selection process – it was a deliberate targeting of sectors and companies. It was not the low-taxation rate that brought FDI here – for decades Ireland was an ultra-low tax regime for exporting MNCs (though the low-tax rate was certainly sold hard). Public expenditure-led A substantial increase in public expenditure helped usher in this period of growth and employment. Much of it came courtesy of the EU through structural and cohesion funds. In the run-up to the Celtic Tiger boom – in the period between 1990 and 1995 – EU funding more than doubled;

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in today’s money it would amount to nearly €3 billion in a single year, or nearly 2 per cent of GDP (a substantial public investment stimulus in roads, airports, telecommunications, human capital, etc.). It was rightly referred to as a ‘mini-Marshall Plan’ for Ireland.12 This was in addition to a substantial boost in the Government’s own capital investment budget – increasing by over 10 per cent annually.13 Public supported indigenous enterprise The state was the initial driving agent for investment in high-tech indigenous enterprises in the 1990s – not private sector investment (they only came after firms were established).14 This was coupled with other state aids – marketing, management development, R&D, etc. In addition, the IDA worked on actively linking indigenous firms with foreign multinational companies’ supply chains in the manufacturing and service areas. The engine of start-up and development growth in key indigenous sectors was public sector led. This story of public sector intervention has been side-lined – a story that should have shored up the left’s approach to a public sector-led economy. The structural flaw in Ireland’s market economy While commentary champions Ireland as an exporting economy, the fact is that the domestic economy is not engaged in exporting. Rather, Ireland has created a platform from which multi-nationals can export, with the domestic economy acting as a service economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has labelled the exporting multi-national sector as ‘an enclave’.15 The government’s last industrial paper, Ahead of the Curve,16 put it more dramatically: the foreign-owned sector, which accounts for most of our exports and which, for the most part, produces goods that were designed elsewhere, to satisfy market requirements that were specified elsewhere, and sold by other people to customers with whom the Irish operation has little contact and over whom it has little influence.

Another way to view this phenomenon is that the multi-national sector has been grafted on to the domestic economy, with inadequate linkages. They now dominate the main business indicators in the crucial internationally traded sector (which includes both manufacturing and services).17

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Figure 12.1  Foreign multinationals as a proportion of total for  ­internationally  traded sectors, 2011

Source: Forfás Annual Business Survey of Economic Impact 2011: www.forfas. ie/publication/search.jsp?ft=/publications/2013/Title,10938,en.php

As seen, foreign multinationals account for over 90 exports and over 80 per cent of value-added in the internationally traded sector. However, they are, as described by the IMF, detached from the Irish economy. Foreign MNCs source only 11 per cent of their inputs (goods and services used in production) from the Irish economy; nearly 90 per cent are imported while only 7 per cent of the labour force is employed in these enterprises. What has been described as the cornerstone of Irish industrial policy (low taxation, labour flexibility, etc.) constitutes a structural flaw in Ireland’s market economy. Table 12.1  Foreign-owned enterprises: profits, tax and investment, 2011 Profits per employee (€) Ireland Average of other EU-15 Countries

Effective corporate Investment as a % tax rate (%)a of profits

146,761b

8.5

16.1

37,014

22.1

35.0

Source: Eurostat Notes: a This refers to all companies. However, the Comptroller and Auditor General states: ‘in 2011, while some 36,000 taxpayers paid Corporation Tax, just 129 taxpayers accounted for almost two thirds of total tax receipts’. These 129 taxpayers would be made up almost exclusively of foreign multi-nationals. Report on the Accounts of the Public Services, 2011, Comptroller and Auditor General, Dublin. b A considerable proportion of this amount would be due to the accounting activities of multi-national companies which exploit Ireland’s tax haven-type corporate taxation regime and would not represent profits generated in Ireland. However, the extent is not known.

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The structural flaw is made up of three components: • first, profitability greatly exceeds the average of other EU-15 countries; by nearly four-fold; • second, the effective tax rate on corporate profits is far lower than other EU countries; • third, the investment rate is less than 50 per cent of the average in other EU countries. The social value of profits can be described as employee compensation, the value-added contribution, the appropriate return to the economies from which profits are extracted (in the form of taxation), and adequate levels of investment. In this regard, the social value of profits is lower in Ireland than anywhere else. Government policy has emphasised other quantifiable benefits: valueadded activity in capital-intensive sectors which the domestic economy would not have created; spill-over effects (where skills learned in foreign companies can be transferred to domestic companies) and the resulting demand impact. In addition, while the investment rate is low, total MNC investment is higher than in other EU countries as a result of a higher volume of MNC activity. However, this merely fuels the political arguments to maintain a high-profit, low-taxed regime and mires Ireland further into an effective tax-haven status. Further, employment in foreign-owned companies in the traded sector has flat-lined between 2000 and 2007 while direct expenditure (the combined impact of payroll and domestic inputs) actually fell over that same period. The question of whether we are getting value-for-money is rarely addressed in the debate over enterprise policy. The weakness of Irish business Whatever about value for money from current strategies to induce foreign investment, the ability of Irish business to generate the employment, value-added and external earnings necessary to build a modern enterprise economy is in serious question. As we saw above, Irish business plays only a minor role in exports. Within this is the reliance upon the food and drink sector which makes up nearly 50 per cent of indigenous exports. In the period between 2000 and 2007, employment in Irish companies in the internationally traded sectors fell by over 20,000, or 15 per cent, while level of direct expenditure in the economy also fell. This was a period where Irish traded business shed jobs and barely kept its contribution to the economy at pace with inflation, even from its low base.

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Doubts over Irish business’s ability to generate the necessary employment and value-added may seem at odds with the experience of extraordinary employment growth during the boom period. This can be explained by reliance on the construction sector which was fuelled by speculative financial/building activity and irrational pro-cyclical tax policies. Table 12.2  Construction employment growth as a % of total e­ mployment growth in the market economy

Ireland EU-15 Average

1993–2000

2000–2007

24.1 7.9

40.2 20.9

Source: EU Klems database

Construction employment growth in Ireland greatly exceeded the EU-15 average in both periods. Between 2000 and 2007 four out of every ten net new jobs created in the market economy were in the construction sector. However, this doesn’t show the full extent to which employment growth was based on the asset bubble. Alongside increased construction employment was the growth in related sectors and occupations – architects, surveyors, landscape activity; real estate activity, mortgage brokerage, banking employment. In addition, there was the employment that flowed from the increased demand. The reliance on propertybased employment, direct and indirect, was little short of phenomenal. Alongside this was the growth in non-market services: public administration, education and health. This was facilitated by the tax revenue that flowed from the property based activities. Employment in the non-market services made up 40 per cent of total employment growth in the total economy. Pointing this out should not lead us to the simplistic analysis put forward by many commentators – that the public sector, which dominates non-market services, grew unsustainably. Irish public sector employment is average by European standards. What was unsustainable was the asset bubble itself fuelled by a pro-cyclical fiscal policy which reduced taxation to one of the lowest levels in the EU.18 In many respects, the property asset boom was as much an admission of failure at is was a playing out of a corrupting set of interlocking relationships within a framework that privileged finance and speculative capital. What would the political economy have looked like without the substantial employment growth related to property and property-based revenues? With employment growth in the modern industrial sector stalling, the Fianna Fáil Government turned to unsustainable channels

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and mechanisms to boost output. They convinced themselves, and a nation, that buying and selling land and houses was a viable growth strategy. To put Ireland’s productive domestic economy in perspective we can compare manufacturing employment in the indigenous sectors. We use other small open economies as the best comparator – these economies have a GDP below €500 billion wherein exports make up over 50 per cent.19 Figure 12.2  Indigenous manufacturing employment as a %  of  total  ­employment, 2008

Source: Eurostat: Foreign control of enterprises (fats_g1a_08) and annual enterprise statistics (sbs_na_sca_r2)

Irish indigenous manufacturing employment is less than half the level in other small open economies (it is useful to look at 2008 since Ireland’s low level cannot be explained by the impact of recession). In 2008 there would have been 130,000 more people employed in Ireland’s indigenous manufacturing sector had it reached the average of the other countries. This level of increased employment would have considerable economic benefit in terms of value-added creation, higher wages, downstream activity (indigenous companies source more of their inputs domestically) and increased demand. Another perspective is the amount of gross value added created by domestic companies in the market economy, excluding the financial sector.20 Again, we see Ireland falling well below the levels of other small open economies. Irish business would have to increase its economic activity (value-added) by over 40 per cent to reach the average of the other countries measured here.

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Figure 12.3  Indigenous enterprise value-added per capita (working  age  population), 2009 (€)

Source: Eurostat: Foreign control of enterprises (fats_g1a_08); Annual ­enterprise statistics (sbs_na_sca_r2) and Population on 1 January by five years age groups (demo_pjangroup)

There is one area, however, where Irish domestic activity excels and naturally enough it is located in the sector that provides professional services – legal and accounting – to foreign capital (there is considerable work involved in creating tax-efficient structures). Irish domestic legal and accounting firms make up 3.2 per cent of all value-added in the market economy. The average throughout the EU-15 is 1.5 per cent while the average of other small open economies is even smaller. So the issue is not just about quantitative levels, but the type of business activity as well. Domestic investment and native management skills In addition to the under-performance of Irish business has been the distorted level of domestic investment. Davy Stockbrokers21 neatly summed up this issue in an analysis of the growth of capital stock prior to the crisis. Over 70 per cent of the increase in the net capital stock came from residential buildings. There was only a limited growth in our productive capital stock: ‘investment by private sector in ‘core’ productive stock pitiful ... the increase in our ‘core’ productive capital stock was related to the state or semi-state sectors. It was not driven by private enterprise.’ This should not be surprising given the frenzy surrounding the property boom. To put our levels of corporate domestic investment in perspective we once more turn to a comparison with other small open economies.

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Table 12.3  Domestic corporate investment as a % of GDP, 2009 Austria

Finland

Denmark

Sweden

Ireland

12.3

9.5

9.5

9.2

4.6

Source: Eurostat: Annual enterprise statistics for special aggregates of activities

Domestic corporate investment in Ireland lags well behind that of other small open economies. Unfortunately, we do not have an insight into what class of assets represents this investment. As Davy pointed out, prior to the crisis, investment not only went into residential buildings, it also focused on import-intensive sectors such as retail, transportation and storage (most of this accounted for by structures). The spare capacity that emerged when the crisis hit was mainly foreign-owned and not technologically advanced. Ireland is currently under-going a profound investment crisis – a crisis that is projected to continue into the latter part of the decade and beyond. The IMF projects that total Irish investment will be a little more than half that of the Eurozone average even by 2018.22 With substantial cutbacks in the government’s own investment budget, household deleveraging and sluggish domestic demand which will depress domestic investment the Irish economy will continue to stagnate even if headline national accounts show growth. But even were investment levels to increase – whether through the Government’s capital programme or foreign investment – we still have to contend with another feature of indigenous enterprise which is rarely highlighted: namely, the considerable managerial deficits. A number of surveys of the managerial skill base have been conducted in Irish domestic enterprises and have found serious flaws. One notable survey, conducted by a consortium of consultants (McIver Consulting and Tansey, Webster, Stewart) on behalf of Enterprise Ireland and the now dissolved state training agency Foras Áiseanna Saothair, revealed major managerial deficits: ‘The survey of informed opinion revealed that management skills in Irish SMEs are perceived as poor, both at strategic and functional management levels ... Overall, general management skills in Irish SMEs were assessed as poor.’23 These findings have been confirmed by subsequent surveys conducted by Forfás’s Management Development Council.24 What we are left with is an under-performing indigenous sector, historically grounded in property-related activities, with poor management skills. This is not a sector at present capable of creating a modern market-economy in Ireland.

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Why indigenous enterprise should be important to the left The development of a modern economic base is based on two p ­ articularly important features: a strong infrastructural foundation (energy, transport, telecommunications) and a thriving indigenous enterprise sector; for small open economies, this means an export-oriented enterprise sector. In Ireland, indigenous enterprise is more rooted in the domestic economy than foreign-owned operations. There is a higher employment-to-exports ratio and a higher domestic expenditure-to-sales ratio in the indigenous sector as compared to multi-nationals. Some of this is compositional; many FDI-dominated sectors such as chemicals/pharmaceutical are capital intensive and, therefore, less labour-dense. However, comparisons in the food sector show that positive ratios are maintained: Table 12.4  Employment and direct expenditure by national ownership in  the  food and drink sector, 2011 Employment per €1 billion in sales

Direct expenditurea as a % of sales

Irish-owned

Foreign-owned

Irish-owned

Foreign-owned

2,873

1,361

76.9

34.3

Source: Forfás Annual Business Survey, 2011 Notes: a Direct Expenditure is the total expenditure of firms in the domestic economy: payroll and purchase of goods and services.

In the food and drink sector, Ireland’s strongest indigenous sector, native firms employ nearly 2,900 people directly for every €1 billion in sales, compared to less than 1,400 in foreign-owned companies. The direct expenditure of indigenous companies is 77 per cent of sales compared to 34 per cent in foreign-owned sectors; while much smaller, indigenous firms have a qualitatively more positive impact. In addition, the indigenous sector grows local skills in innovation, R&D, marketing and design. They are, essentially, bottom-up c­ lassrooms for the business skills needed to sustain economic growth. To grow and maintain these vital skill bases within the domestic sphere allows a strong multiplier to be achieved in terms of enterprise development and expansion. While having to operate within market rules, the decisions that are taken by indigenous companies are, by definition, taken in Ireland, subject to debate in Ireland, and potentially influenced by the domestic political economy of Ireland – something that cannot be said for multi-national operations whether headquartered here or part of a supply-chain. The ability to influence signals a higher capacity to socialise aspects of production. It is difficult to influence an operation within an interna-

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tional chain. We get the benefit (in terms of employment and whatever domestic multipliers we can achieve) but have little say over what happens, or when, or even when it ends. The recent strategy to site international service company headquarters in Ireland – a legitimate attempt to site more headquarter-based activity here – nonetheless suffers from a related detachment. Company X may be headquartered here, but its decisions are based on global concerns, made in boardrooms in which domestic interests have little representation. Domestic companies, however, are rooted in political society. This does not trump the logic of the market; domestic companies can be, and are, just as hostile to labour and indifferent to community and environmental concerns. However, given that all the decisions are taken in the context of the wider balance of domestic social forces, they are susceptible to those pressures and prompts. Take, for instance, an economy that has a strong collective bargaining culture, backed up by statutory enforcement (something Ireland lacks). Domestic companies emerge within this culture; foreign companies may decide not to locate here because of that culture. A strong domestic enterprise base can make up for those missed foreign opportunities. However, without a strong indigenous sector – such as Ireland – a country may find itself locked into anti-labour strategies because it is so reliant on foreign capital.25 In both an economic and social context, an economy characterised by strong indigenous firms is more likely to make qualitatively higher returns to that economy. This does not negate the political struggle; we are still faced with a conflict between labour and capital. But it provides a different platform for labour to advance. It is, however, the ideological implications that should ensure that the programmatic development of an indigenous sector rates more highly on the left agenda. To put flesh on the drive to ‘socialise’ the economy is an urgent task; otherwise, the left is forced into resigned postures, pursuing rearguard action to protect labour. Or the left retreats into largely aspirational blueprints that have little relationship with the current and concrete needs of a small open economy in a globalised environment. To pursue an aggressive indigenous enterprise strategy provides the left with the opportunity to mould the business agenda towards more rational and social ends while giving scope to contest the grounds of ‘competitiveness’ and ‘efficiency’ now occupied by capital. At the end of the day it may not be socialism; but a progressive enterprise base is not intended to be so. It is a staging post towards a more advanced economic development in which socialism can become a viable option.

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Creating a new progressives narrative for enterprise strategy In the space remaining we can only highlight key areas for debate and even this list is partial. The challenge for progressives is to promote a successful programme for indigenous enterprise development within a framework that accelerates the socialisation of productive assets. The starting point is to increase social density within the enterprise base. Corporate activity is a collective activity and the history of such activity is the history of socialisation itself. From labour rights, product safety regulation, taxation, consumer rights, transparency of accounts, environmental protection and workplace participation – all represent a limitation of capital’s freedom and an acknowledgement that there are more stakeholders involved than owners. There are varying degrees of social density within a single economy reflecting the range of public and private entities, size of enterprise, and sectors within which they operate – from utilities to restaurants; these degrees are constantly shifting owing to changes in the productive base but, more importantly, due to the balance of social forces. Any narrative based on socialising assets can only succeed if it is based on the balance of those forces operating today. This is not about, in the first instance, the question of ownership (though it is a key issue); rather, it is about (a) promoting dense layers of rights, participation and accountability, and (b) compelling ownership to cohere to social norms and economic activity that are determined politically – whether that is through the state, the organised labour force or consumers. This socialisation can emerge through a number of channels which can help us reconceptualise the very notion of entrepreneurship. The state as entrepreneur The first sentence of the Irish government’s Action Plan for Jobs,26 launched when unemployment was nearing 15 per cent, reads ‘Governments don’t create jobs, successful businesses and entrepreneurs do.’ This ideologically inspired statement intentionally ignores the reality of modern market economies. First, governments utilise a number of macroeconomic and policy tools to stimulate businesses, including business start-ups which, in the absence of such tools, would result in lower business activity. From public investment portfolios to demand management and public procurement, governments have the capacity, and political imperative to stimulate business activity. Second, governments are the largest employer in the modern state; this creates jobs in the public sector and, from the demand created (purchasing power) creates and stimulates private sector businesses as well. Thirdly, the state

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acts as the custodian and promoter of the key input into the economy; namely, human capital. Educating, promoting health, providing security and shelter – these are all the essentials of promoting a more efficient production process by enhancing the quality of human capital. However, there is another, more provocative perspective – which is the state as the entrepreneur itself, a thesis expounded by Mariana Mazzucato.27 Mazzucato argues that: the state has provided the main source of dynamism and innovation in advanced industrial economies ... the public sector has been the lead player in what is often referred to as the ‘knowledge economy’ – an economy driven by technological change and knowledge production and diffusion. Indeed, from the development of aviation, nuclear energy, computers, the internet, the biotechnology revolution, nanotechnology and even now in green technology, it is, and has been, the state not the private sector that has kick-started and developed the engine of growth, because of its willingness to take risk in areas where the private sector has been too risk-averse.   Not only has government funded the riskiest research, whether applied or basic, but it has indeed often been the source of the most radical, pathbreaking types of innovation. To this extent it has actively created markets not just fixed them.

From biotechnology and nano-technology, pharmaceutical drugs, information technology, green technologies – these are areas where the state has not only been the prime mover by investing in the earliest-stage research and development; it has also provided the practical support through institutional interventions from agencies dedicated to health research and business innovation. Essentially, where the private sector has failed to develop products and, so, markets because of uncertainty, the state has stepped in. Public agencies have made significant contributions to private commercial breakthroughs: how many people know that the algorithm that led to Google’s success was funded by a public sector National Science Foundation grant? Or that molecular antibodies, which provided the foundation for biotechnology before venture capital moved into the sector, were discovered in public Medical Research Council (MRC) labs in the UK? Or that many of the most innovative young companies in the USA were funded not by private venture capital but by public venture capital such as through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programme?28

This perspective holds for Ireland. Seán Ó Riain argues: a significant transformation and upgrading occurred in Irish industry over the 1990s ... this upgrading was promoted primarily by a state-society alliance which developed new institutions of a system of innovation where the national level integrates local, national and global elements; and

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that this alliance should be seen as existing in a tense and contradictory relationship to the institutions of the market, not as simply subservient to market competitiveness.29

Not only did indigenous Irish industry, in particular the high-tech sector, benefit from a public innovation system, similar to those identified by Mazzucato in the US and UK; Ó Riain goes on to show that over a third of initial investment in such areas as computer related sectors, electronics, ‘other manufacturing’ and communications in the indigenous sector came from the state, with a substantial proportion of the remaining investment being stimulated by the state (e.g. matching funds arrangements). Eventually, private sector investment, both domestic and foreign, raised its share – but the key point is that it followed public investment. In short, the state took the early risk when failure is high; only after a successful track record has been established does private investment flow in. While representatives of capital argue that the state is a burden on the productive sectors, that it disrupts and distorts efficient market relationships, the fact is that capital is reliant on the public realm to a much larger degree that it will admit. This is understandable: There is indeed lots of talk of partnership between the government and private sector, yet while the efforts are collective, the returns remain private. Is it right that the National Science Foundation did not reap any financial return from funding the grant that produced the algorithm that led to Google’s search engine?30 Understanding that market actions and outcomes are deeply embedded in institutions of state and society provides not only an account of institutions which can shape growth, development and equality but also the starting point for a moral politics of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ which can provide a basis for legitimate claims upon the social responsibilities of those social groups that have benefited most from the Celtic Tiger.31

If the ‘collective’ nature of the partnership between the public and private sector were at the centre of the popular debate over political economy, this could potentially lead to greater demands for the returns to be collective, for greater claims to be made on the beneficiaries of private returns. Therefore, from the perspective of capital, it is best to keep this quiet. And so it becomes necessary for progressives to challenge this quietude, to reveal the true relationship between the public and private realm – not only to create optimal policy outcomes, but to create the political demands for greater collective benefit of what are essentially social processes.

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Enterprise: a new plurality It suits capital to pose a zero-sum option within the economy: private vs. public. It has been highly successful in this by using the efficient market hypothesis – that private markets optimise output and public markets – or public intervention in private markets – reduce efficiency. That this hypothesis retains its hegemonic hold on the discourse despite the fact that it was a crisis within the private sector that caused the Great Recession is testament to capital’s ideological strength. There has been a tendency for the left to fight back against this zero-sum formulation by emphasising the strengths of the ‘public’ as opposed to the ‘private’. This has been an important argument in areas of traditional public markets (e.g. health, education). However, it is not a satisfactory response when debating the market economy mainly because it cedes too much ground to capital, fighting the argument on the zero-sum terms it has laid down. In a modern capitalist economy, the demarcation between public and private is blurred because the interpenetration is so significant. In challenging this zero-sum consensus, progressives should not only point out the obvious inter-penetrations and the extent to which, as we saw above, the state acts an actual creator of markets; it should argue for a plurality of enterprise models that can be tailored to suit not only economic needs but the needs of workers and communities. Enterprise models should not just suit private capital. Clearly, public enterprise – an enterprise model under the ownership of the state – can play a leading role in this new plurality. It is often forgotten the extent to which the modernisation of the economy occurred through public enterprise. In electricity generation and transmission, the private sector was incapable of ‘lighting’ up Ireland. By the late 1920s there were over 100 members of the private electricity body but only 15 per cent of buildings were electrified. This led the government of the day to establish the Electricity Supply Board to carry out the essential task of bringing energy to every household and business in the country.32 A number of other public enterprises were established over the next few decades to take over where private capital could not or would not participate: banking (the Industrial Credit Corporation and the Agricultural Credit Corporation), natural resources (Bord na Móna), transport (CIE, B&I shipping), telecommunications (Telecom Éireann), insurance (Irish Life) – these represent only a partial list. The rationale remains the same. The creation of new, and the expansion of current, public enterprises – capable of competing in both domestic and international markets – should be an urgent task that

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transcends ideological considerations. For instance, the epochal shift to renewable energy generation is more likely to take place at a faster and more efficient pace if under the direction of public enterprise within a coherent planning framework. This does not imply a statist strategy. A number of cooperative and shared enterprise activities would take place between private and public enterprise companies. However, the driving force in long-term investment and R&D activities is likely to occur in companies that are not driven by short-term shareholder value. And this is a crucial benefit of public enterprise. Freed from shortterm shareholder-value considerations, it is enabled to become ‘investment-driven’, increasing the technological and productive base in the economy. In comparative context, the overall corporate sector increased investment by €5 billion between 2002 and 2007; public enterprise companies matched that with a similar level of investment. More crucially, between 2007 and 2009, overall corporate sector investment fell by €8 billion; public enterprise investment actually increased by €3.8 billion.33 In addition to being investment driven, public enterprises proved to be effective counter-cyclical vehicles as well. This is not to suggest that public enterprise is unproblematic. There are issues of corporate governance, though this provides an opportunity for progressives to argue for a more democratic framework, with greater employee participation and more democratic oversight by publicly accountable bodies (e.g. a dedicated Oireachtas Committee). As well, there is a need to provide greater funding for public enterprise as, currently, investment can only be carried out through retained earnings and debt-financing. Nor does public enterprise have to be confined to the traditional Minister-as-shareholder model. There are a range of public sector-led enterprise strategies34 that could be pursued: municipal enterprises (in effect, public enterprises owned by local/regional governments); community enterprises (owned by local communities through traditional share-holdings or community development programmes; and worker-managed/owned enterprises. While these models would operate within market parameters, they would do so without private profit imperatives. This would help profits to optimise their social value. In addition, they have the capacity to establish more ‘flat’ management structures with a premium on participation among the stakeholders – in contrast to traditional hierarchical structures. In this respect, they can become democratic laboratories operating within a capitalist economy. In the example of worker-managed firms, there is the potential to increase business efficiency. In one of the few empirical studies comparing

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worker-managed and conventional firms across industries, Fakhfakh and Pérotin found: worker cooperatives to be as productive or possibly more productive overall than conventional firms in most industries. However, the two types of firms use different technologies. These differences are consistent with the existence of incentive and information effects associated with full employee ownership that are embodied in the inputs and result in different output elasticities ... These findings suggest that in several industries French worker cooperatives produce in such a way that they use their current inputs better than conventional firms ...’35

None of the above is to argue some ideal market economy permeated by alternative enterprises but to point out that enterprises based other than on hierarchical private capital can be just as productive if not more. Pluralism in enterprise models with the potential for greater stakeholder engagement opens up new possibilities for socialising strategies. History does not stop with the contemporary PLC. To complement this plurality, strategies that directly impact on private enterprise itself are required. One example of this would be to ensure that companies that participate in public agency support do so on the basis of a new democratic compact. This compact would not only outline the entitlements companies would receive from public agencies but also their responsibilities. The Unite trade union has put forward the concept of Companies of Excellence as an example of this.36 It stipulates that participation in advanced support (market intelligence, overseas support, third level interactions, supply chain development, procurement assistance, grants and equity funding) must be accompanied by specific employer commitments: investment targets, training and R&D development, recognition of workers’ bargaining rights, deeper participatory structures, optimal compensation and profit sharing. A key commitment would be to maintain the business within Ireland. This is a tentative step towards the Telesis goal of creating indigenous leaders37 – native companies that can grow to scale capable of competing in the international markets. This is not intended to replace multinational enterprises but to build a healthier balance in enterprise policy – one that is not overly-reliant on foreign capital. Labour rights and socialisation To expand the rights of workers against the prerogative of capital within the workplace is a vital point of struggle. But this terrain is one of the most seriously contested areas, not only because international institutions such as the EU Commission and the Organisation for Economic

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Co-operation and Development are aggressively campaigning for ‘labour market structural reforms’ (read: flexibility for capital to dismiss workers, change their work contracts more easily, ignore collective representation, etc.), but because the recession has severely weakened the organised working class. In this terrain, trade unions and the left will need to argue the benefits of labour rights in terms of its economic impact, rather than relying on an ideological narrative counter-posing capital and labour. For example, Ireland is one of the few industrialised countries with­­­out a statutory vindication of collective bargaining rights. This is argued by many as a ‘positive’ insofar as it removes the constraint of having to bargain with employees’ representatives and, so, promotes flexibility. However, it can also be argued that it undermines domestic ­enterprise reliant on domestic demand as it depresses wages.38 Further, it undermines employees’ ability to help police compliance with labour protection legislation within the firm, which advantages non-compliant employers (‘bad’ or ‘low-road’ employers). To promote optimal wage bargaining and help police illegal activities is an economic good that benefits business and the economy, never mind the workers directly involved. Similarly, with the treatment of part-time workers: the EU Directive39 provides for the right of part-time workers to access more working hours within the firm when they become available. This is particularly important as Ireland has one of the highest levels of precarious work, or underemployment, in the EU – a phenomenon fuelled by the recession and employers’ union-avoidance tactics which seek to control workers. The failure to transpose this right into domestic law has a negative impact not only on the economy but on Exchequer finances. In the former, uncertainty over future income inhibits private consumption while in the latter, employers are able to externalise costs on to the Exchequer through lower tax and social insurance revenue and higher social protection payments, as part-time workers seek supplementary payments. These two examples identify important rights which, if vindicated, would strengthen labour at the expense of capital’s freedom. But they can also be argued on the grounds of economic efficiency, wider benefits to domestic enterprise which have suffered a dramatic decline in private consumption, and benefits to the Exchequer – particularly important given the on-going need to repair public finances. The two grounds – the struggle against capital and for economic efficiency – can be reconstructed to ensure complementarity, even in a market economy. Another area of socialisation can come through a radical extension of the social wage. The social wage is that component of employees’

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compensation that is paid by the employer into a social insurance, or related, fund. It is through this social wage that workers are able to collectively consume services (e.g. health) and access income supports (e.g. unemployment benefit, maternity benefit, pay-related old age pensions). Ireland has one of the lowest levels of social wage in the EU-15.40 This low level means that Irish workers receive lower services and income supports than workers in other EU countries. In Ireland there is no pay-related unemployment benefit, pay-related state pensions, sub-optimal maternity benefits, and no paid paternity benefits. This forces workers to purchase ‘public goods’ on the private markets: for instance, GP care and prescription medicine, private pensions, etc. When there is a loss of income, such as unemployment, sickness, or maternity leave, the low payment workers must rely on their own savings or suffer a severe deterioration in living standards. Figure 12.4  Social wage (employers’ social insurance payments) as  a  %  of  gross wages, 2011

Source: Taxation trends in the European Union, 2013; and EU Ameco Database Gross Wages and Salaries

In other EU countries, the social wage is a major contributor to financing workers’ collective consumption (even if they are coming under considerable attack as part of the larger contraction of social and public services throughout Europe). In Ireland, the social wage is rarely referred to – except as a business cost that acts as a barrier to employment and growth.

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The social wage provides important economic functions apart from the equity of ensuring social certainty in key periods of people’s lives (e.g. in sickness, joblessness, retirement). Linking universal public services to ability to pay, rather than purchasing those services in private markets, creates higher spending in the market economy. For instance, free GP care and heavily subsidised prescription means that low-income earners realise savings which can be spent in the private sector while the higher taxation to pay for those services impact on groups which have a higher propensity to save. In addition, the increased economic activity associated with expanding government consumption, creates additionality in the private sector (e.g. public procurement contracts, higher demand from increased employment). To argue for higher social wages is to argue for the expansion of public markets in which collective consumption can take place. Public markets are, of course, not immune to penetration by capital as the case of outsourcing in health and education services show. However, it is one thing to have a public market – free health, pay-related social insurance pensions – and protect them from predatory private profit; it is another thing not to have those markets at all. Conclusion Our starting point is that employment and enterprise creation is a social and collective activity requiring substantial public intervention, expansionary economic policies, rising wages and living standards and a profound extension of stakeholder participation – in particular, worker participation.41

Promoting an entrepreneurial state and expansionary macro-economic policies, public and public sector-led enterprises, labour rights and the social wage; constructing a new enterprise narrative based on plurality of models and interpenetration of the public and private sector, embedded in growing stakeholder participation (namely, labour): does this constitute a socialist strategy? Not immediately. This programme operates within a market framework. It does not yet confront the fundamental capitalist contradiction – the primacy of private profit as opposed to the satisfaction of human need. Nor is it intended to. But what it does do is put the left back into the game – and to do so with arguments, tools and strategies which can begin to challenge capital. It does this within the workplace, through labour rights; in society, through enhancing the social wage and extending public markets; and within the enterprise base, through a pluralist and democratic approach. It seeks to build a strong productive economy, a necessary pre-condition for a more comprehensive socialisation.

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In the current conjuncture labour and its progressive allies are on the defensive – economically and politically. Capital has used the crisis to widen its freedom and position itself to even greater advantage. Cuts in the social wage, restrictions on collective sectoral bargaining (the downgrading of the Joint Labour Committees), profit maximisation and an investment strike, and its dominant position in the public debate – capital was in a strong position prior to the crash; it is even stronger today. To engage in blueprint socialism, or ‘cookshop recipes’ as Marx put it,42 is a retreat from the daily grind of progressive politics. We must devise our strategies in the current context. This doesn’t mean falling into the insipid, third-way formulation that there is no such thing as a socialist or capitalist economy, only a good one or a bad one. But it does mean that socialisation strategies must be good. This would also allow the left to contest concepts which have been monopolised by capital: competitiveness, flexibility, etc. A progressive formulation of entrepreneurship would reveal its collective and social nature, how it can be part of shared activities whether in the firm, a public agency or in the community. To challenge Irish capital on the basis of its efficiency and social relevance may seem audacious but we should remember that, as weak as labour is, Irish capital, too, has structural defects that can, if problematised, undermine its political creditability. To highlight this, to challenge Irish business on its own record and, then, put forward in concrete terms a route to an improved enterprise performance – as a building block to full employment and optimal living standards – is one of the ways for the left to provide leadership and to have that leadership acknowledged. And with that earned trust, we can move to the next stage. Notes   1 Sean Lemass, Irish Management, September/October 1957.   2 Brendan Corish, ‘The new republic’, Address to the Labour Party Conference, 1967. Available at: http://cedarlounge.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/ new-republic.pdf. Consulted 12 July 2012.  3 Niamh Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party 1922–73 (Dublin: UCD Press, 2007).   4 That would be the equivalent of nearly €9 billion today.   5 Sinn Féin The Workers Party Department of Economic Affairs, The Irish Industrial Revolution (Dublin: Sinn Féin The Workers Party, 1977). Available at: http://cedarlounge.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/iir.pdf. Consulted 12 July 2012.   6 Irish Labour Party, Labour’s Agenda (Dublin: Irish Labour Party, 1991).   7 Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Public Enterprise – Everybody’s Business: The Case for State Industry (Dublin: ICTU, 1986).

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  8 Between 1995 and 1997, the percentage of the population at risk of poverty was 19 per cent. This rose to 21 per cent in 2001 and fell to 17.7 per cent in 2007. In that year, after more than a decade of sustained growth, Ireland still had the fifth highest level of poverty in the EU-15. Data available at: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=ilc_li02&lang=en. Consulted 14 February 2014.   9 Eurostat shows that Ireland has the second highest level of under-employ­­ ment in the EU: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/ index. php?title=File:Quarterly_supplementary_indicators_by_Member_State2013 Q2.png&filetimestamp=20131004134700. Consulted 14 February 2014. 10 Henry Patterson, Ireland Since 1939: The Peristence of Conflict (London: Penguin, 2007). 11 EU KLEMS database, EU Commission. Available at: www.euklems.net. Consulted 14 February 2014. 12 Paul Sweeney, The Celtic Tiger – Ireland’s Economic Miracle Explained (Dublin: Oak Tree Press, 1998). 13 Department of Finance, Budgetary and Economic Statistics, Ireland (Dublin: Department of Finance, September 2008). 14 Seán Ó Riain, ‘State, competition and industrial change in Ireland 1991– 1999’, The Economic and Social Review, Spring (2004). 15 International Monetary Fund, Ireland Country Report No. 10/366 (December 2010). 16 Enterprise Strategy Group, Ahead of the Curve: Ireland’s Place in the Global Economy (Dublin: Forfás, 2004). Available at: www.forfas.ie/media/ esg040707_enterprise_strategy_group.pdf. Consulted 12 July 2013. 17 Forfás, Annual Business Survey 2011 (Dublin: Forfás, 2013). Available at: www.forfas.ie/publication/search.jsp?ft=/publications/2013/Title,10938,en. php. Consulted 12 July 2013. 18 The Left need not defend Fianna Fáil’s policies which facilitated the growth in non-market services. Fianna Fáil’s policy was not grounded in a commitment to building a strong social infrastructure but, rather, was part of a larger corporatist project to politically co-opt particular constituencies in their broad-class coalition. 19 Eurostat: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=fats_g1a_ 08&lang=en and http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset= sbs_na_2a_dade&lang=en. Consulted 12 July 2013. 20 Eurostat: Annual enterprise statistics for special aggregates of activities (NACE Rev. 2). Available at: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show. do?dataset=sbs_na_sca_r2. Consulted 14 August 2014. 21 Davy Stockbrokers, Years of High Income Largely Wasted (Dublin: Davy Stockbrokers, February 2010). 22 International Monetary Fund, World Economic Database (Washington: IMF, October 2013). Available at: www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/02/ weodata/index.aspx. Consulted 4 January 2014. 23 Expert Group on Future Skill Needs, SME Management Development in Ireland (Dublin: Forfás, 2004). Available at: www.skillsireland.ie/media/

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egfsn060512_sme_development.pdf. Consulted 12 July 2013. 24 Management Development Council, Management Matters in Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland (Dublin: Forfás, 2009). Available at: www. forfas.ie/media/090608mdc-management-matters-in-northern-ireland-andrepublic-of-ireland.pdf. Consulted 12 July 2013. 25 Foreign MNCs mostly operate in economies with stronger labour laws and higher taxation than Ireland. The decisions of where to site, therefore, are not necessarily reducible to these factors alone. Labour skill base, infrastructure, domestic costs such as housing, lack of corruption and political instability are strong determinants. 26 Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Action Plan for Jobs (Dublin: Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, 2012). 27 Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State (London: Demos, 2011). 28 Ibid., p. 19. 29 Ó Riain ‘State, competition and industrial change in Ireland 1991–1999’. 30 Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State, p. 109. 31 Ó Riain ‘State, competition and industrial change in Ireland 1991–1999’, p. 50. 32 Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Public Enterprise, Everybody’s Business (Dublin: ICTU, 1986). 33 Department of Finance, Report of the Review Group on State Assets and Liabilities (Dublin: Department of Finance, 2011). Available at: http://per. gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/Report-of-the-Review-Group-on-State-Assetsand-Liabilities.pdf. Consulted 12 July 2013. 34 David L. Imbroscio and Thad Williamson, ‘Local policy responses to globalization: place-based ownership models of economic enterprise’, Policy Studies Journal, 31:1 (2003). While this posits alternative enterprise models in an anti-globalist framework, the constituent parts can also be placed in a socialised framework. 35 Fathi Fakhfakh and Virginie Pérotin, Productivity, Capital and Labor in Labor-Managed and Conventional Firms (Mérida, Venezuela: Universidad de Los Andes, 2009). 36 UNITE the Union, Growing the Economy (Dublin: UNITE the Union, 2009). 37 National Economic and Social Council, A Review of Industrial Policy (Dublin National Economic and Social Council, 1983). 38 Frank Walsh, ‘Union membership and the union wage Premium in Ireland’ (Dublin: Nevin Economic Research Institute Conference), May 2013. Available at: www.nerinstitute.net/download/pdf/frankwalsh.pdf. Consulted 12 July 2013. 39 Council of the European Union, Council Directive 97/81/EC (Brussels: Council of the European Union, December 1997). Available at: http:// eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:1998:014:0009:001 4:EN:PDF. Consulted 12 July 2013. 40 Eurostat, Taxation Trends in the European Union – Data for the EU Member States, Iceland and Norway – 2013. Available at: http://epp.eurostat.ec. europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-DU-13-001/EN/KS-DU-13-001-ENPDF.

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Consulted 12 August 2014. See also Eurostat, National Accounts by 10 Branches – Aggregates at Current Prices. Available at: http://appsso.eurostat. ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=nama_nace10_c&lang=en. Consulted 12 August 2014. 41 Jimmy Kelly, Secretary, UNITE the Union, Growing the Economy and Living Standards (Belfast: UNITE the Union, 2013). Available at: http:// unitetheunionireland.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/growing-the-economyfinal-251113.pdf. Consulted 12 August 2014. 42 Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1, 1873, Afterword to the Second German Edition.

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abortion 152, 162–7, 251 academic community in Ireland 18–19 see also intellectual community Action on X 164 Adams, David 141 Adorno, Theodor 99 Aglietta, Michel 255 Ahern, Bertie 49–50 Aircoach (company) 231 airline boarding passes 136–7 Alesina, Alberto 74 Allen, Kieran 14, 22, 31 Amsterdam Treaty 249–50 Anderson, Chris 122–3 Anglo Irish Bank 6–8, 15, 37, 51, 57–9, 61, 90, 144 Anonymous (hacker collective) 117 Appadurai, Arjun 207 Apple (corporation) 3, 16 ‘appropriate technologies’ movement 120–1 Ardagna, Silvia 74 Ash, Michael 74 Association for Improvement in Maternity Services (AIMS) 164–5 Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) 230 asylum seekers 201, 206–11 austerity, limits to 79 austerity programme 9–10, 13–16, 36, 61, 72, 80, 88, 91–2, 95–6, 100, 151, 167, 174–9, 205, 219–20, 226, 230, 260, 264 and political economy 233–6

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Australia 193 Aynsley, Mick 58 Back, Les 193, 200–1 Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance (BSCFA) 155 bailout measures 9, 15–16, 33–4, 58, 60, 87–90, 144–5, 254 Baker, Dean 51 Baker, John 183 Barbrook, Richard 111, 116–17 Barlow, John Perry 121–2 Barrett, Justin 251 Barthes, Roland 98 Baudrillard, Jean 122 Bear Sterns (bank) 51–2 Beck, Ulrich 93 Beesley, Arthur 145 Begg, David 226, 229–30 ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ policies 54 Begley, Alice 138 Bell, Daniel 22, 118 Benn, Tony 252 Berlant, Lauren 97 Berlusconi, Silvio 96–7 Best of Times? (2007) 20–1 Bey, Hakim 125–6 Blair, Tony 24, 27–8 Blanchard, Oliver 74 Blyth, Mark 88 Bolger, Dermot 171–2 Bolton, John 77 Bono 25

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Bookchin, Murray 125–6 Books of Grievances and Hopes 179 Boucher, Gerry 203 Bourdieu, Pierre 175 Boyd Barrett, Richard 60 Brand, Stewart 116, 123 Brautigan, Richard 120 Brennan, Kieron 61 Brooke, Heather 112 Brown, Michael 51 Browning, Christopher R. 144 ‘Brussels Consensus’ 246–8 Bruton, Richard 111, 114 burden-sharing 59 Burnham, James 22 Burton, Joan 154 Bush, George W. 28 business cycle 35 Byrne, Michael 138 Callinicos, Alex 88, 98 Camdessus, Michel 76 Cameron, Andy 111, 116 Cameron, David 244 Canada 134 capital, political economy of 234–6 capital investment 118–19 capitalism 4–5, 24, 76–82, 86–7, 98–101, 219, 221 fundamental contradiction of 283 care work 158 Carey, Sarah 227–8 Carswell, Simon 53, 89 Casey, Michael 56 Castells, Manuel 110–12, 115, 123, 176 Catholic Church 163 ‘Celtic Tiger’ era 3–11, 18–22, 25–6, 29–32, 35–6, 54, 66–7, 71–5, 89, 110, 119, 194–5, 222–3 role of public sector in 266–9 Citizenship referendum (2004) 202, 206–8 Claiming our Future alliance 78–9 class divisions 97, 153, 177, 184, 253 clientelism 26–8

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Clinton, Bill 24, 27, 145 cognitive behavioural therapy 142 Cohen, Sheila 235 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel 93 Cóir 251 Coleman, Gabrielle 117 collective bargaining rights 282 collective consumption 283–4 Collins, Tom 182 Committees for the Poor 185–7 ‘communicative capitalism’ 123 Communist Party 118 Community Development Programme 174 Community Employment (CE) schemes 154 community sector 172–4 competition law 244–6 comprador class 48–9 Conlon, Deirdre 197 Connolly, Sheelah 135 construction employment 270 ‘contagion’ in the financial system 90 Corcoran, Mary 18 Corish, Brendan 261–2 Corrib Gas protest 138–9 Coulter, Colin ix, 114, 195 co-editor and author of Chapter 1 Council of Europe 160, 209 Cowen, Brian 52, 111, 114, 226, 241 credit unions 61 Croke Park agreements 156, 225–30, 233–4 Cronin, Michael 31 crony capitalism 75–8 Crouch, Colin 17 Crowley, Helen 206 cultural traditions 32 ‘cultural turn’ in Irish scholarship 31–2 Cyprus 92, 94 Davy Stockbrokers 272–3 Dean, Jodi 32, 123 decent work 153 De Genova, Nicholas 194, 197

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Index democratic deficit 49 Denham, Susan 207 deportation 207, 210 Desmond, Dermot 47 Devlin, Maurice 182 devolved cost 135–9 domestic violence 159–60 domestic workers 158 domopolitics (Walton) 209 Donovan, Donal 18 Dornbusch, Rudi 110 dotcom bubble (2000) 111 Doukas, Dimitra 235 Douzinas, Costas 99 Draghi, Mario 60–1 Dublin 125 Lockout (1913) 138, 234 Dunne, Sean 6 Durkheim, Émile 145–6 Durrenberger, Paul 235 Eagleton, Terry 30 Early, Steve 232 Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) 19–21, 91–2 The Economist 15, 50–1, 110 ‘efficient market’ hypothesis 279 Electricity Supply Board 279 Emanuel, Rahm 96 Engineers Ireland 119 enterprise base, indigenous 265–76, 281 enterprise models, pluralism in 281 Enterprise Strategy Group 113 entrepreneurialism 139–43, 146 Equality Budgeting Campaign 155 Erikson, Robert 21 Euro currency and the Eurozone 245–6 European Central Bank (ECB) 8, 50–1, 54, 60–1, 82, 89–90, 94, 228, 242, 245, 247, 253–4 European Commission 247, 253–4, 281–2 European Court of Human Rights 152, 163

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European Investment Bank 79 European Parliament 247–8 European social model 243–4 European Union 8, 58, 68, 79, 89– 95, 201, 203, 241–55 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) 71–2, 93–4 Fiscal Compact (2012) 95, 241, 251–3 funding for Ireland from 266–7 Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) 71, 94, 245 Survey on Income and Living Conditions 151 Euroscepticism 251 exceptional liquidity assistance (ELA) 58 Facebook 137 Fakhfakh, Fathi 281 Fanning, Bryan 201–3 Favell, Adrian 197 Fekete, Liz 210 feminism, resurgence of 166–7 Fianna Fáil 242–3 Field Day project 29–30 Financial Services Modernization Act (US) 24 Financial Times 51, 54, 89 Fine, Janice 232 Fine Gael 242–3, 250 Fischer, Clara 155 Fisher, Mark 99 Fitch (credit rating agency) 53 Fitzgerald, John 70, 72–4 Fitzpatrick, Seán 57 Flores d’Arcais, Paolo 252 Fordism 221 foreign direct investment (FDI) 5, 70, 73, 75, 80, 110, 262–6 Foucault, Michel 15, 140 Frank, Thomas 192 Frankfurt School of social philosophers 70 Friedman, Milton 96 Fukuyama, Francis 4, 23–4

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292 Gamble, Andrew 94 Ganley, Declan 251 Gannon, Gerry 37 Garland, David 143 Geldof, Bob 25 Gibbons, Luke 31 Giddens, Anthony 24 Gilmartin, Mary 195, 197 Gilmore, Eamon 34, 226, 228–9 globalisation 4, 194 Goldman Sachs 77 Good Friday Agreement (1998) 25, 207 Gramsci, Antonio 100–2 Gray, Breda 205 Greece 58, 88, 92, 94, 101–2, 134 Greenspan, Alan 110 Grover, Anand 163 growth scepticism 119 guaranteeing of bank deposits 48, 52–5, 59, 89, 254 The Guardian 125 Guild, Elspeth 200 Gurdgiev, Constantin 75–6 Habermas, Jürgen 93 hacking 116–17 Haddington Road agreement 80, 157, 230 Hage, Ghassan 193 Halappanavar, Praveen 165 Halappanavar, Savita 162, 164–5 Hammerberg, Thomas 209 Harvey, David 98, 102 Hatherley, Owen 125 Haughey, Charles J. 47 Hayek, Friedrich 94–5 Hayes, Brian 228 Heartfield, James 124 Hennigan, Michael 114–15 Henwood, Doug 122–3 Herndon, Thomas 74 Hickman, Mary 206 Higgins, Michael D. 18, 34, 60 high-tech companies 114–15, 278 hippy counterculture 116

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Index ‘hollowing out’ of democratic politics 100 of the public realm 9 Honohan, Patrick 8, 71–2, 228 housing boom 5–8, 15, 20, 67 Howlin, Brendan 13, 228 Hughes, Austin 49 human capital 276–7 Humphrys, Elizabeth 100 Hunt, Marie 49 Hyman, Richard 233 income inequality 151 Independent News and Media (INM) group 77 Industrial Development Authority (IDA) 262, 265–7 industrial policy 268 industrial relations, patterns of 220–1 inequality, theory of 183–4 information society 112–13, 118, 121 Innovation Taskforce 114 integration policy and integration regimes 200–8 intellectual community 21–9; see also academic community; public intellectuals International Monetary Fund (IMF) 8, 33, 58, 71, 74, 76, 79, 88, 90, 241–2, 267–8, 273 internet provision 2, 119 ‘internships’ 122 Iraq War 30 Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) 58, 60–1 Irish Central Bank 146 Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) 79–80, 172, 174, 219, 222, 226, 262 Irish Ferries 222–5 Irish Independent 8, 49, 86, 102, 114 Irish Nationwide Building Society 51, 57–9 Irish Times 8, 27, 35, 37, 49, 56, 58–62, 125, 145, 210, 226 Italy 92, 94

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Index James, Harold 94 Jameson, Fredric 19 Job Bridge scheme 122–3 Jobs, Steve 116–17 J.P. Morgan Chase 52 Judt, Tony 135 Jurgensen, Nathan 137 Kafka, Franz 185 Kelly, Kevin 110, 120–2 Kelly, Morgan 49, 55, 57 Kennelly, Brendan 135 Kenny, Enda 1–2, 10–11, 33–5, 58, 111, 114, 126, 228–9 Keogh, Dermot 243 Keohane, Kieran 145–6 Kerrigan, Gene 11 Keynesianism 74, 78–83, 87, 98, 102, 219–21, 234 ‘vulgar’ 265 King, Patricia 224 Kirby, Peadar 22, 31, 90 Klein, Naomi 97 ‘knowledge economy’ 277 Kofman, Eleonore 200 Kouvelakis, Stathis 93 Krushchev, Nikita 118 Kuhling, Carmen 145–6 Kunkel, Benjamin 101 Kushner, Scott 139 Labour Party, Irish 34, 242–3 labour rights 281–2 Landy, David 204 Lane, Philip 71–2 Lapavitsas, Costas 94, 241–2 Latvia 134 Ledwith, Margaret 182 left-wing opinion 243, 250, 260–5, 275, 284–5 Lehman Brothers 7, 53, 89 Leigh, Daniel 74 Lenihan, Brian 7, 12, 53–9, 89 Lentin, Ronit 198, 207–8 Levy, Steven 116–17 Lewin, Kurt 182

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liberal democracy 70 liberalism 24–6 Libertas 251 lingua franca 136–7 Lisbon Treaty 249–50, 252 Little, Mark 3 lone parents 153–4 Longhi, Vittorio 199 Loveday, Vik 177 Loyal, Steve 196, 202 Lucas, Robert 4 Lucy, Brian 90 Luibhéid, Eithne 207–8 Lynch, Kathleen 143 Maastricht Treaty 247, 250 McAleese Report 162 Mac an Bhaird, Liam 119 McCabe, Conor 27 McDowell, Michael 202, 206 Mac Éinrí, Piaras 196 McGiffen, Steve 247 McKee, Martin 134 McLelland, David 22 McLoone, Peter 221 McLuhan, Marshall 116 McNally, David 87–8 McNamara, Tony 138–9 MacSharry, Ray 77 McVeigh, Robbie 198, 207 McWilliams, David 25, 75–8 Magdalene Laundries 161–3, 167, 210 Maguire, Mark 204 mainstream economic view 70–5 Mair, Peter 100, 248 Major, John 244 managerial skills 273–4 Mandate (trade union) 152–3 Marcuse, Herbert 70 Martin, Michael 115 Marx, Karl 81, 285 Mason, Paul 112, 124 Mazzucato, Mariana 277–8 Meade, Rosie 182 Medical Research Council (MRC) 277

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Index

Merkel, Angela 48, 95 Merrill Lynch 52, 92 Migge, Bettina 197 Migrant Rights Centre 204 migration 194–201, 204, 207 Milgram, Stanley 144 Miller, Peter 121 Mirowski, Philip 99 Mittal, Lakshmi 28 Mittelstand enterprises 124–5 modernisation theory 22–5, 28 Monti, Mario 96–7 Moody, Kim 232 Moreo, Elena 195, 210–11 Morris, Paul 140 mortgage payments 12, 67 Mulhall, Anne 210 multiculturalism 192–5, 202, 204 multinational corporations (MNCs) 3–5, 16–17, 29, 73, 262–9, 274 Munck, Ronaldo 194 Murphy, Antoin 18, 90 Murphy, Fiona 204 Musk, Elon 1–2 National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) 15, 59, 61–2, 125 National Pension Reserve Fund 55–6, 58, 79 National Science Foundation, US 277–8 negative equity 12, 67 neoliberalism 4–5, 16–17, 23–6, 31–2, 36–7, 68–9, 76, 78, 82, 86, 90–9, 103, 123, 183, 209, 222, 241–7 neutrality, Irish 252–3 Nevin Institute 80 New Labour regime (UK) 27–8 New York Times 35, 112 Noonan, Michael 58–9, 61, 91, 155–6 normalisation process 67 North Clondalkin 172 Northern Rock 51 nurses and midwives 157–8

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Nyberg Commission (2011) 144 O’Boyle, Brian 14 O’Brien, Denis 77 Occupy movement 112–13, 117–20, 125–6, 184 O’Connor, Jack 224–9, 233–4 O’Devaney Gardens 176–7, 184–5 O’Doherty, Ian 205–6 O’Flynn, Michael 62 O’Hearn, Denis 30–1 oligopoly 76 Oliver Wyman (consultants) 8 O’Malley Dunlop, Ellen 160 Onanuga, Bimbo 165 One Parent Family Payment 154 O’Reilly, Tony 76–7 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 228, 281–2 Ó Riain, Seán 277–8 O’Riordáin, Aodhan 210 O’Rourke, Kevin 73 O’Toole, Fintan 25–7, 91 The Outsiders (play) 75 outsourcing 223–5 Oxfam 219 Pankhurst, Silvia 121 Papademos, Lucas 96 Papandreou, George 96 part-time workers 282 partnership between labour and capital 220–3 see also Social Partnership agreements Paulson, Henry 77 Pavee Point organisation 160 Pay Related Social Insurance 155 Pech, Laurent 244–6 Penny, Laurie 123 pension funds 79 Pérotin, Virginie 281 Pickett, Kate 184 Pillinger, Jane 201 Piore, Michael 231–2

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Index Poland 134 political culture 26–8 Pollin, Robert 74 Poots, Edwin 141 Portugal 88, 92, 94, 97 post-industrial society 118 postmodernism 19 poststructuralism 23 poverty 219 Powell, Enoch 252 ‘precarious work’ 152–3, 282 definition of 152 privatisation 17, 27–8, 78, 222, 263 profits, social value of 269 property market 5–7, 12, 36–7, 49– 50, 67, 72, 263, 270, 272 prostitution 162–3 ‘prosumption’ 137–8 public agencies, role of 276–80 public intellectuals 18, 28, 34 public–private partnership (PPP) 176–7 public spending cuts 57, 73–4, 78, 88–9, 91, 118, 151–2, 155, 173, 229, 264 Purséil, Niamh 261 quantitative easing 74 Quinn, Ruairi 13, 228 Quinn, Sean 6, 15–16 Rabbitte, Pat 228 ‘race to the bottom’ in wages and working conditions 223–4, 234 Rahman, Zia Haider 136 Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) 249 rape 160–1 Reagan, Ronald 122 recapitalisation of financial institutions 55–7, 59, 72 Reeves, Aaron 134 referendums 208–9, 248–9 see also Citizenship referendum regulation 72 ‘light touch’ 78 Reich, Robert 184

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Reilly, James 141, 165, 228 Reinhart, Carmen 13, 74, 87 renewable energy 280 research and development (R&D) 115 Research on Money and Finance group 102 ‘revolving door’ phenomenon 76 Rice-Davies, Mandy 34 rich lists 16, 92 Rigney, Josephine 146 Ritzer, George 137 Robinson, Mary 25 Rodrick, Dani 121 Rogoff, Kenneth 13, 74, 87 Ronan, Johnny 6, 37 Ross, Shane 25–6, 56 Rostow, Walt Whitman 22–3, 118, 123 Ruane, Francis 19 Rubin, Robin 77 SAFE Ireland 159, 161 Sayer, Andrew 177 Schonfeld, Erick 137 Scully, Darren 205–6 Seamen’s Union of Ireland (SUI) 223–4 Sennett, Richard 10 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 231–2 Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) 155, 219, 223–5, 229–30, 233–4 ‘services only’ paradigm 174 Shalamov, Varlam 185 Shaxson, Nicholas 47 Shirky, Clay 111 Siggins, Lorna 139 Silicon Valley 117, 126 Single European Act (SEA) 249–50 Single Parents Acting for the Rights of our Kids (SPARK) 154 Sinha, Shamser 193, 200–1 Sinn Féin 242–3, 250 Sinnott, Richard 253 ‘six pack’ surveillance 68

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Index

Skeggs, Beverley 177 Smith, Adam 76–7 Smith, Paul 223 social democracy 23–4, 98, 242–5, 261 social density 276 Social Justice Ireland 91, 154 social media 111–13, 116, 124, 126 Social Partnership agreements 75–8, 182, 219–22, 225–6, 234, 262–3 ‘social wage’ concept 282–5 socialism 232, 275, 284–5 Spain 92, 94 Spectacle of Defiance and Hope 178, 181 Spring, Dick 77 stamp duty 49 Storey, Andy 244–5 Streeck, Wolfgang 98 structural adjustment 9 structural deficit 71, 95 Stuckler, David 133–4, 142 suffering, social 175 suicide 133–5, 139–46 Sunday Independent Rich List 16 Sunday Times Rich List 92 Supreme Court, Irish 207, 249 Sutherland, Peter 76–7 symphysiotomy 162–3, 167 Tabb, William K. 47–8 Taft, Michael 79, 111–12 tautologies 98–9 taxation and tax avoidance 2–5, 16, 29, 34, 36, 48–9, 70–5, 82, 91, 253, 261–4, 269–72 technical rationality 70 Tesla Motors 1–2 Thatcher, Margaret 24–5, 244 Think Tank for Action on Social Change 153 ‘third way’ policies 24, 27 Tietze, Tad 100 Time magazine 35, 116 Toffler, Alvin 137

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Tormey, Anwen 208 trade agreements 245 trade unions 9–10, 17, 36, 79, 112, 219–22, 226–36, 282 transferred cost 140 translation costs 136–8 travelling community 160 Trichet, Jean-Claude 50–1, 54, 145 troika intervention 8–9, 33, 90–1, 228, 241, 254 Turn Off the Red Light (TORL) campaign 162 Turner, Fred 116 unemployment 66–7 Unite (trade union) 79, 281 United Left Alliance 83, 101 V for Vendetta (film) 117 Varadkar, Leo 228, 254 Village magazine 119 violence against women 159–61 Volcker, Paul 6 Wall Street crash (1929) 82 Walsh, Brendan 133–4, 141, 143 Walsh, Dermot 134, 141, 143 Walters, William 209 Watkins, Susan 94 Web Summit (Dublin, 2013) 1–4 Weldon, Liam 181 Wellman, Barry 111, 124 Whelan, Karl 59 White, Allen 195 Whole Earth Catalog 120 Wilkinson, Richard 184 Williams, Robin 146 Wilson, Harold 121 Wired (journal) 4, 110, 126 women, impact of the economic crisis on 151–68 ‘Work Out’ programme 142 worker-managed firms 280–1 working-class experience 235 Wozniak, Steve 116 Wright Commission (2011) 68

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Index Youth Defence 164, 166, 251 zero-sum formulation of the public and private sectors 279

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297

Zimbabwe 15 Žižek, Slavoj 99, 184–5 Zuckerberg, Mark 115

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