How much of the bailout pays for the running of the country David…or to put it simply – how much have we received in faux charity and how much of it gets paid into banks and bondholders?

emmm…. you dont need Mr Higgins to answer that one …

We got a bailout of 64 billion euro … which has now been converted to sovereign debt. Our Bank Bailout is 67 billion euro. So, Mr Higgins can support the bailout mechanism as much as he wants. Its a truee FFG/Labour/FF trait. Big business ahead of the average tax payer in ireland at all costs. Lets see what the next budget does to address this … no wait as econd, we dont need to…. FFG have already rejected the idea of imposing a Financial services tax on any transactions between the big invest companies/banks in the IFSC.
Yep, FFG have it all sorted out, for themselves.

Beggars can’t be choosers but countries shouldn’t go pimping themselves out either and pretend that it is going to resolve the situation when every economic and historical example shows that this approach (severe austerity) does not work and actually increases economic decline and collapse.

David, we did not get a bailout, we got a loan with crippling conditions attached at a high interest rate from the people whose banks we saved, so we could cover their losses.

Greece got a bailout when they had a big chunk of debt written off.

Cal your numbers are misleading there. Yes we’ve recieved bailout money almost equal to what we’ve put into the banks, but most of the money went into the banks BEFORE we got the bailout. At the point of the bailout, even defaulting on all our bank debts wouldn’t have been enough to not need a bailout. It’s also misleading to suggest that not paying the money into the banks would have prevented a bailout because the possible collapse of those banks would have had massive knock on effects on the economy, promting a bailout anyway.

incorrect David. The main cause of our woes, Anglo, was not a systemic bank and could have been let go to the wall without “massive knock on effects on the economy, promting a bailout anyway.”

Bail-Out, bail-out, bail-out. Not the topic of this article. Although I’m sure someone will claim soon enough that the “underlying” theme of every article is the bail-out. Expand your hobby-base.

Given that they won’t, the fact that pretty much all “the bail out is evil” commenters ignore is that, while a bail-out was “mainly” necessary to cover the massive cost of saving the Irish banking system, if the banking system had not been propped up it would have collapsed, leaving us without a banking system. Businesses wouldn’t have been able to trade and people would not have been paid. Des positives would have lost their savings. I very much doubt the perpetually outraged would have been any less outraged in this alternative scenario. A rock and a hard place. The moral of the story is not that propping up the banks was good., but that we lacked then and need for the future is a viable contingency plan to have in reserve in case of another banking system collapse.

@we’rejammin if that’s your real name…..

I agree Anglo was not a systemic bank from the point of view of ordinary deposit holders/savers etc, but don’t think it didn’t have links with the banks that do!

A collapse of Anglo may well have brought down the rest of the Irish banking system overnight, something we saw happen in Iceland. Their economy is a tiny fraction of the size of Ireland’s, yet their collapse created a massive hold in British banks. The knock on effect of a collapse of Anglo would not only have been felt in the Irish banks but subsequently in the rest of the European banking system, at a time when everything was all so fragile.

You’re probably going to respond with how good things are in Iceland now. You’re right they’ve recovered quite quickly, but only because their collapse was small enough to be contained. Comparing Iceland to a hypothetical Irish default is apples and organes. We’re in the Eurozone, they’re not.

I don’t want history books to write that a collapse of an Irish bank brought down the entire world economy or at least seriously damaged the European economy for a generation. Do you?

Max Keiser “They cud have given this prize to Bill Clinton’s left testicle & it wud have been more legitimate” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ty1OQBjJmeY

The Propaganda machine is oiled and in 5th gear..

@ David , in situations like these, the “if that’s your real name” line is a bit silly. It makes you look pompous and damages you far more than your opponent.

Yes David, werejammin is my real name. Bob marley was my daddy my mammy had a great sense of humour.

You can go with your ‘m,ay well have’ but I’ll stick with the experts who have stated that an anglo collapse would not have took down our systemic banks and would have affected the larger european banks the most.

Which makes sense.

unlike your post.

Sorry David Higgins, but what you have written is not true.

@Aonghus Collins Fermi didn’t split the atom. Walton and Cockcroft split the atom. Walton was Irish by the way.

Andrew – thats like asking the names of the people who’s lives were saved by road safety initiatives.
There have been no wars between member nations (to my limited historical knowledge).

It was originally created as a trade organisation.

It’s subsequently morphed into a tool for federalisation.

The absence of war in Europe during this period can be ascribed to a reaction to the horror of WWII and fear of nuclear holocaust.

Damocles, I see Kevin Myers got in trouble for presenting opinions as fact.

The horror of WWII happened not too long after the horror of WW1.
Who among us in recent decades is really concerned about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust due to war in Europe?

I would personally ascribe the absence of hostilities to closer integration, free trade, economic co-operation and, yes a ceding of sovereignty through federalisation. A war is less likely between two nations who are trading profitably with each other.

I’d rather restrict my nationalism to football, language and culture.

You’d ascribe, I’d ascribe, we’d all ascribe all sorts of things to all sorts of other things.

But correlation does not imply causation.

During a period of ever encroaching European Federalisation there has been no war in Europe, that doesn’t mean that ever encroaching European Federalisation has prevented war in Europe.

How many European countries have been involved and par-took in the Iraq war …. yeah, you are right, other than the Yugoslav conflict, the war in Northern Ireland we havent had any wars on the continent in the last 30 years.

But lets count all the countries that jumped at the chance of going to slaughter 300,000 iraqi civilians duering Iraq II.

UK,
Poland
Czech Republic
Italy
Germany
to name but a few…..
How many have been supplying guns and arnaments across the conflict zones in the world?? UK and France defo spring to mind…..

Yep, the EU and its member states are all bloody brilliant and should be sooo proud of their peace record.

Now, how many wars has the likes of the Republic of Ireland been involved in, in the last 20 years. We and Switzerland together should have got the award, and the prize money could have been used to pay off the German/French/British banks who need our money so badly, to maintain the stranglehold they have on the rest of Europe

The point is that there’s peace between all member nations. It’s not world peace but its a good template for Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries to follow. Since we were once as war torn as they are.

Most wars in Europe over the last 250 years were between France and Germanic imperial ambitions to control Europe. The EU was a way of working together and controlling Europe together. Sharing the continent together is what has maintained the peace. War kept ending in stalemate and destruction for both sides.

Eu decision are decided by Germany and France and others follow or are told to follow.

I have no doubt that social disorder and conflict will break out again in parts of Europe, due to this crisis and the EU’s massive role in it. This awar

Correlation often does imply causation – it doesn’t prove causation and often causes poeple to incorrectly conclude causation. But, at the risk of disappearing up my own arse, I would suggest that there is a correlation between correlation and causation.

But if your point is that we can’t definitively prove that the EU has prevented war then that is true, we can only opine.

@ Cal1 – “We” and the Swiss should have got the award? Because we’re a far more peaceful nation then the others you’ve mentioned? A bit of historical revisionism going on there, my friend…

“we can’t definitively prove that the EU has prevented war … that is true”

Thank you.

To be fair the comments section of this site is far from an accurate representation of “The Irish”

@ Patrick – funny you say that, I’ve my suspicions that my ex- was secretly hiding her Vogon heritage before we tied the knot. It seems more common than people think. Their reliance on property development should’ve been a red flag. And the poetry was bloody awful too. Not like us.. Wait a minute…

yes Z? their poetry is a dead giveaway – it is said to be the third worst in the universe, if I remember correctly.

Enda and Gilmore for all their faults are democratically elected. The EU will make sure that it will be a nominated person rather than anyone subjected to a popular vote to get where they are.

Can anyone point out a historical precedent for such a pro longed period of peace in North America, before McDonalds came to Canada.

Nations that repeatedly fought each other.

Thank you, you glorious Clown of Peace.

Before the EU. Well there was Pax Romana, the Roman Peace for around 200 years…

The reason for the prolonged peace were having 2 vastly destructive wars within 25 years put people off war,
and the atom bomb. It wasn’t the EU or Europe that kept the Russian tanks from Western Europe…

SaintRuth, you cite another pan-European economic and political union (a 2000 year old precedent!); perhaps there is something to be said for pooling sovereignty of nation states for the purpose of peace.
You’re right that the two world wars put people off war- their response was to create the EU as a vehicle to avoid further wars among its members- which is has completely succeeded in doing. The peace prize celebrates the EU’s achievement in avoiding wars among its members; it wasn’t designed to deal with external threats like Russia.

No-one said that it was 100% perfect, but in the history of Europe, Britian and France not taking potshots at each other was the exception, not normality. War is essentially driven by greed. Give a people an alternative path to obtain what they covet, and they’ll probably won’t blow each other up. There has not been a war within the EU of the scale of the wars that occurred within the EU territories before the establishing of the EEC / EU. It’s a good thing to know that it’s extremely unlikely that you will be drafted into the military, but that was common practise in times gone by. Short memories lead to complacency.

The Cyprus conflict is with Turkey, no? Turkey is not in the EU and furthermore the conflict over Northern Cyprus would seem to be at least one of the roadblocks to them joining.
Yugoslavia was not in the EU.
The prize wasn’t awarded to the continent of Europe, it was to the EU.

The Northern Ireland conflict was not a war between nations.

I don’t think that anyone is suggesting that the EU is the panacea for all conflicts around the world.

We won’t know if my bag works until I dispose of it, where or when has the EU stepped in to peacefully conclude a dispute between member states?
By praising the EU for preventing wars that never appeared apparent is equally trite

Not equally trite.

There is no reasonable or plausible link between your bag and the absence of an alien invasion.

There is at least a plausible link between the formation of the EU and the absence of war between members of the EU.

So you’re much triter than I am!

Dermot, here’s another analogy then, if you stop smoking say at 30 and live to be 90 and don’t get lung cancer, it’s a reasonable conjecture to make that giving up the fags helped you live to be 90.

It’s not near plausible, it’s spin but I’m secretly betting that you EU loyalists have access to time travel, how else would you be so convinced by your arguments and of course the assertion Ireland would be some backwater state on the north west Atlantic trapped in some hellish 1940 groundhogs day, forelock tugging peasants devoid of morality and a lack of infrastructure and economy, socially bankrupt and wholly dependent on charity to survive if it wasn’t for the EU…….(pick the irony out of that one :P)

Yes William, intensive medical research has concluded that giving up cigarettes greatly improves your chances of a long and healthy life.

The independent of Ireland was the legitimisation of Irish nationality. Before independence “Irish” was not a legitimate national identity. Making it so was one mains reasons behind the struggle for independence. Otherwise, what was the point? The same applies today to the Kurds and the Catalan and Basque peoples. Every cultural group has a right to a national identity, but until those people form a nation, they do not yet have a national identity, only a cultural identity.

Here’s something you never see on d’internet: Okay, I see your point.