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ON SUNDAY MARCH 6 2011, the weekend after the General Election, 18 of us took the first steps in this protest, in Ballyhea.
Enda Kenny hadn’t even begun to form his coalition government with the Labour Party but already he was reneging on one of Fine Gael’s most fundamental election promises, that there would be burden-sharing with the bank bondholders (apparently we hadn’t read the small print). It was time for direct action.
A few months later we were joined by Charleville and every Sunday since then, at 11.30am, alternating between Ballyhea and Charleville, we march. (Details of the next march are on Facebook here.)
It’s single issue – end the bank bondholder bailout. The ECB are the ones who dictated that all of Ireland’s banks – through us, the Irish people – should pay all their bonds in full, coupon and all; the ECB should now pick up that tab. Those were private interbank deals between consenting adults who trade on the risk/reward principle that underpins capitalism. In insisting that those failed bonds in failed banks be paid, the ECB undermined capitalism. (Or perhaps, as with us and the Fine Gael election promises, the mandarins in the ECB simply didn’t read the small print that accompanies such bonds: ‘Warning, your investment can fall as well as rise’.)
In September 2008, acting under misinformation, the true bank debts grossly understated, Brian Lenihan gave a blanket bank guarantee. The value to the banks of that guarantee?
Up to April 2012, again according to Mr Noonan, the bank recapitalisation – what we’ve put into the banks, mainly to enable them keep paying these bonds – is €62.8bn (Anglo/INBS €34.7bn; AIB/EBS €20.7bn; BoI €4.7bn; IL&P €2.7bn). That figure has since increased to €69.7bn, with an additional €5.6bn contributed from NAMA to the banks, and an extra €1.3bn pumped into IL&P.
Given that according to Mr Noonan himself those banks still have over €40bn to pay (we reckon the figure is closer to €55bn), there is a good possibility we will have to recapitalise again. Also, the above figure does NOT include interest lost on the money taken from the National Pension Reserve Fund, nor the interest we’ll have to pay on the borrowings needed to fund all that recapitalisation.
We were told all this was done for our benefit, that we had to ‘rescue’ our banks or our world would implode. Check the second table below – four years on from 2008 our debt has quadrupled, our unemployment has doubled, emigration is back with a bang, services cut back, our deficit is STILL there. The real cost though, in human misery and suffering – who has a measure for that?
Our banks are still there, all six of them (there have been amalgamations but no winding up), still functioning – but only if you’re a bondholder. They’re not lending to business but they are paying their bonds, with our money, sucking the lifeblood from our economy, the ECB-mandated transfusion to foreign banks.
As outlined above we have so far paid €69.7bn, there are (or will be) billions more in lost interest (NPRF), billions more again in accruing interest (loans from ECB to pay those billions), and yet more billions (probably) in further recapitalising if we stay on the current track. (You really think the six remaining banks can pay €55bn in bonds in four years? Oh, they’ll be back for more!)
Put all that money together, then ask yourself – what kind of lunacy is this? The moral issue aside (and believe me, when it comes to money the ECB has no problem brushing moral issues aside), what kind of government accepts a deal that imposes that entire debt burden on its people just to enable it borrow cheap money, much of which goes to paying that additional debt anyway?
TABLE 1: The bonds
(Michael Noonan says €40.6billion yet to pay; we say €55billion)
TABLE 2: The damage to our economy to date
I say the damage to our economy ‘to date’ very deliberately, because with that bank debt now accumulating interest at an alarming rate, this is set to get a lot worse.
A couple of weeks ago Enda Kenny came back from a summit of the eurozone leaders trumpeting a seismic breakthrough (Mount Enda erupts) – he had negotiated on behalf of Ireland. Typical Enda; first, claiming credit where he was due none (he and Michael Noonan made similar claims in the aftermath of the interest rate reduction granted to Ireland as a direct result only of the Greek bailout negotiations); second, exaggerating what had in fact been agreed.
In the first place the breakthrough was due only to the fact that the Prime Ministers of Italy and Spain stood up to Angela Merkel and flatly stated, ‘No!’. Unlike what had been agreed to by Ireland’s negotiators in the past, they would not tolerate the bank bailouts in their countries being put through the sovereign books.
In the second place, what was agreed by the eurozone leaders was all notional. “We affirm that it is imperative to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereign” they said. “The Eurogroup will examine the situation of the Irish financial sector with the view of further improving the sustainability of the well-performing adjustment programme,” they added. Then, significantly: “Similar cases will be treated equally.”
Let no-one be under any illusion – we still have a major battle on our hands. The eurozone leaders have acknowledged that the policy forced on Ireland by the ECB was wrong. We must now fight to have returned to us, by the same ECB, the money they have forced us to pay out in pursuance of their failed policy.
Until such time as that has happened, in Ballyhea and in Charleville we will continue to march, every Sunday.
Diarmuid O’Flynn is a spokesperson for the Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest. You can follow the protest on Twitter at @ballyhea14; on Facebook; or through the blogs The Chattering Magpie and Bondwatch Ireland.
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I’m an Irish programmer, living abroad, and would like to work remotely for an Irish company. (It’s always a good excuse for visiting home every now and then.) Even with the skills shortage, it seems that no employer is interested.
I’m also in a similar position (living/working in the UK), I like to check in every now and then with job opportunities in Ireland and it’s always 3-5 years industry experience. It seems to be case (to me at least) that you have to move abroad to get your experience before you can come back and apply for these jobs.
I think everyone can agree (having myself being in a similar position) that there is NO SKILLS SHORTAGE.
It is a shortage of desired experience.
Every company requires 3-5 years it seems. None are interested in investing in staff to train/mentor them.
My advice would be similar to other posters for those with no experience: learn how to build a phone app, or try to improve a piece of software from the likes of Sourceforge.net Then put that at the top of your CV.
Exactly – nobody cares if you got 86% in second year in Software Systems – they just want to know what you can do.
I don’t blame companies for wanting experience though – why take on a 22 year old when you can take on a 32 year old? Not like in 30 years time you’ll regret that the older guy is retiring sooner than the younger guy, in the software industry :-P
In my own case I have six years of industry experience with Java, but no one is taking the bait.
Spot on. If you don’t have a github.com account with some interesting projects or contributions, don’t bother.
Software engineering is one of the few jobs that you can MAKE your own experience. As someone who hires developers, I’d sooner hire someone with an interesting github portfolio than someone with more qualifications than you can shake a stick at.
It’s pretty easy to spot people interested in building cool things.
You’re a dying breed Dave. Outside of google very few companies are looking for software developers who are in any way creative. However, they are increasingly looking for staff who are multidisciplinary. Agile is pushing things that way… especially devops.
Software companies want experienced engineers so there is the catch how can you have a constant flow of graduates when they can’t get jobs becuase companies want experienced people.
The other flip side the money is crap starting off.
Money isn’t crap starting off – it’s in line with most other jobs of similar expertise. Companies wanting experienced people is a nuisance though, but I’m not sure how to resolve that.
Software is one of those fields though where you can gain expertise without experience. If your CV has a link to your website, your GitHub profile or some mobile app you’ve worked on they shouldn’t care how long you’ve been working at it.
If you’re passionate about software and have the skills to match, you have the ability to convey this to an employer :-)
Sofware developers are the highest paid graduates of any field. They are even paid more than intern doctors and graduate engineers. Of course those fields catch up fairly quickly.
Is there a list of these vacancies/job specifications?
There is no skills shortage. There is however a bias towards 25-35 year olds, with 5 years experience in a very specific and narrow skill set.
The employers (HR departments) have absolutely no comprehension that a programmer is a programmer, that’s the “skill”, the programming language is usually pretty irrelevant.
If you are over 45 years old, then the employers pretty much ignore you and your wealth of experience.
Irish companies have become very Americanised in the practice of promoting (very) young people to managerial positions, who are then biased towards hiring people their own age.
So what skills are we short of? If it’s technical that’s something to work towards for our universities and students, if it’s language of course it’s going to be easier for people of other nationalities.
So half are picked by Irish residents !
Very poor CV screening, interviewing and technical tests result in a lot of false negatives. I was recently made redundant, and have just been through the process. I picked up a job pretty quickly, but I am genuinely surprised by the lack of opportunities for some of the more junior guys, given that I would be happy to work with all of them again and they have access to great references from everyone at the company.
I constantly see companies that are doing web-development asking about program complexity and solving scalability problems that they more than likely don’t have. If they do have these problems, they are self inflicted by people reinventing the wheel rather than using something off the shelf. Another thing I noticed is the asking of questions assuming knowledge of specific tools. Web summit insisted on degrees from Universities only, with a clear bias towards Trinity college.
I personally would prefer to hire someone with less experience of these kind of things, and the simple ability to do simple things correctly and take direction. I don’t think I would have a problem hiring in the current environment.
Given that we are in the middle of a tech bubble, we should not spend too much time trying to correct these problems at the expense of the exchequer and let the companies who have the problem deal with these self inflicted problems themselves.
I’m an Irish IT graduate with over 10 yrs experience. I’ve taken time out to raise my child. I’ve been trying to get back to work for the last couple of years & companies are unwilling to even respond to my CV. I understand the concepts, am easily retrained & willing to work. It’s not a shortage of skills, I think it’s that companies want an exact set of skills & aren’t willing to re-train people. I know I’m not the only one in this position.
You’re right. as an employer, it’s not efficient to hire someone that will take weeks or months to retrain. The onus is on you to skill up. Not your employer. Ad I’ve stated before, in IT, it’s very VERY easy to upskill and create your own experience in the form of personal projects.
I’m still shocked at those who don’t understand this. Nobody owes you a job and being out of work for 10 years means you’re practically starting from scratch anyway. But that doesn’t matter, it’s very easy to start and build something yourself to modernise your skill set.
I’d sooner hire a 17 year old who just finished their leaving with a decent github profile then someone with 3 masters and no effort put into keeping themselves relevant.
Too few jobseekers actualky put themselves in the shoes of a potential employer.
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