Like many people, I have mixed feelings on Bertie Ahern’s return to Fianna Fáil. I recognise his crucial role in the peace process, and his lifetime of involvement in and commitment to public life in Ireland. However, the issues that caused him to resign from Fianna Fáil a decade ago are a stain on that legacy. Does that mean he should be a pariah in his own party for the rest of his life? Probably not, although his narrative around his personal finances never stacked up and remains unresolved. For that reason, I can’t see him become a candidate for the presidency. Too many questions remain unanswered and would be posed again.
I actually met him once. It was after a Wexford/Kilkenny match in 1990, a League semi-final. A couple of us blagged our way into the Árd Comhairle section for a drink. I was standing at the bar waiting for an order, looking in awe at the size of Ger Henderson’s hands, when Bertie stood alongside me. At the time, he was the Minister for Labour, a man who had a singular ability to bring calm to the regular public sector industrial actions of the 1980’s. I always thought that was where he honed the skills that served him so well in the Northern Ireland peace talks.
Anyway, Bertie ordered a pint of Bass and two Guinness. The barman pulled his Bass, then put a head on two of three Guinness at the tap and handed Bertie his order. Bertie and I had been making small talk about the match. He looked at me, waiting, then looked at the Guinness, and said, “I think these might be your drinks”. He told the barman he was in no hurry, and handed me the pints. The barman looked at me resentfully, pulled Bertie’s two pints, then topped up my third Guinness and handed it to me. I went back to my friends wondering at the decency of a government minister who would wait for his round.
One thing that really did rankle with me is Bertie’s statement that ordinary people "Joe Soap and Mary Soap were responsible for crashing the economy. "everybody started living on credit and credit was whatever you wanted yourself".
It's a narrative that some who were at the heart of the Celtic Tiger would like to become the official history of the naughties.“Everyone was at it”.
That was and is disingenuous. The vast majority of Irish people weren’t “at it” at any stage. They built houses that were a little bigger, but were within their compass as wages had risen sharply. They went on foreign holidays for the first time, but that was bringing Ireland up to a standard of living the rest of the EU (pre-enlargement) had enjoyed for decades.
It was a small minority who were utterly reckless in their borrowing ,and a handful of senior bankers who were equally reckless in their lending policy, that brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. And the rest of us are still paying the price, and will for the rest of our lives. Whenever I buy insurance, some of that goes to fill the hole Sean Quinn left with his billion euro bid to buy a large chunk of Anglo Irish bank, a levy that will be in place for another decade.
As the economy crashed, manageable mortgages and car loans became unsustainable. Jobs evaporated, tens of thousands of young people left, and no-one could blame them. The rest stayed behind, bailing out German bondholders, paying their way as best they could, sucking it up. Wages were cut in the private and the public sector, pensions lost all value. And we were told we were lucky to have a job at all.
It perhaps explains why people are so triggered by the DJ Carey story. The sense that some of those who were “at it” got near total debt writedowns has really angered those who had to pay back every penny. The news that the Kilkenny man was one of only 1900 AIB customers to get a near total write down is seeing the pent-up frustrations of the last fifteen years re-emerge.
Why banks love farmers
Farmers as a rule tend to repay their debts. They have one of the lowest defaulter rates of any sector. And there is a reason. It’s not because we are better people than other professions, farmers come in all shapes and sizes. It’s because farm debt is fully secured, and often over-secured. If a farmer defaults on a loan, the asset held as security- usually farmland- is worth more than the loan. The bank wins and the farmer loses if the farmer doesn’t pay his debt.
This is one of the reasons banks love farmers. Not only is the land an excellent security against its own loan, it also improves the banks ratio of security overall. Impaired farm loans were the jewel in the crown of thorns that were the bundles of loans sold to vulture funds by our crippled banks. The asset value was a high percentage of the loan against it.
And this in turn makes it harder to do a deal for those farmers in dire financial difficulty. There’s no 99% writedown. The vulture fund needs to make a tidy profit on the farmland on it’s books, as a lot of the assets they come bundled with are essentially worthless.
It will be a long time before we know if it was necessary or wise to bring the vulture funds into Ireland when our economy crashed. The banks needed somewhere to offload their toxic debt. But for many farmers who have found themselves dealing with a vulture fund, communication has been difficult, negotiations have been one-sided, and results have been, to say the least of it, mixed.
When Eamon Ryan mentioned bringing wolves onto the mountains, farmers revolted. I fear the apex predator who has had the greatest impact in Ireland may well be the vulture.
Hills still burning
Last Saturday night, as my previous long read went live, I was watching the Blackstairs burning from outside my house.
Not the entire mountain (hill) range, I know, but a huge chunk of the east (Wexford) side of Mount Leinster was ablaze.
I have no idea if an approval for a controlled burn had been granted, but the fire was certainly out of control. It took six fire brigades and a helicopter to bring the blaze under control.
It was only one of dozens of fires around the country, with commentary in some quarters of wanton environmental destruction.
It’s an issue I know little about, being a lowlander, so I contacted someone I know and trust who lives on higher ground and has commonage on a mountain.
Rotational control
He told me that he believes it’s necessary to have rotational control of mountain vegetation and not just in his own interest.
Heather grows stemmy over the years, he told me, and matures into the type of vegetation that will burn easily, particularly in late summer and autumn.
By burning a selected patch each year, there is a mix of fresh, green growth and more mature drier vegetation on the hills. This creates a potential firebreak if a wildfire starts for any reason.
It is now very difficult to get permission for a controlled burn
He told me that in recent years, fearful of being blamed for illegal fires and losing their direct payments, farmers have been policing the hills in March to make sure no fires occur.
“We’re doing the National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) work for them” he told me.
He also said that it is now very difficult to get permission for a controlled burn. The NPWS is just one of four separate agencies that has to sanction a permit, alongside the relevant local authority, the fire service and the gardaí.
All the planets have to align for a permit to be granted and that’s not always able to happen, for whatever reason, he told me. The permit has to be for a specific date and the wind must be blowing in the right direction on the given day for the burn to go ahead as planned.
A crop of winter barley emerging in Co Carlow earlier this week against the backdrop of the Blackstairs Mountains. Heavy rain this week has halted drilling of winter cereals in many areas as land gets wetter. Tillage farmers across the country are always working in tight windows to get crops sown in a timely fashion before ground conditions deteriorate.
When a burn is for a small planned section, with a firebreak, there is a corridor for animals to escape safely, he said.
Like many farmers who have commonage on the hills, he feels privileged to see nature in all its glory on the hills when he’s herding and tending to his flock. It’s far from the barren sheep-infested wasteland some would paint it as, he said.
Joys of farming
I know how this feels. On our own farm, walking the fields in the morning is one of the joys of farming. Our land is teeming with wildlife. It’s a bird sanctuary, so pheasants are prevalent and every pheasant in the parish seems to come to see us on 1 November.
The local hunt comes through our land twice a year -it was actually here on Friday morning on a last gallop.
It has never caught a fox on our land in my 40 years observing them, although there are lots of foxes to be seen. We have rabbits and hares; if I ever saw someone hunting a hare, I’d be calling the gardaí.
It seems to me that rewilding of the uplands needs to be done in a planned way. Just letting heather run riot could be creating a literal tinderbox down the line.
A pilot project on the Blackstairs has farmers leaving some land aside and managing that land in a planned way, depending on local circumstance.
That surely is the way forward. I’m not sure if I’d be in favour of reintroducing wolves. Much like vultures, they could be hard to control if they take hold.
Like many people, I have mixed feelings on Bertie Ahern’s return to Fianna Fáil. I recognise his crucial role in the peace process, and his lifetime of involvement in and commitment to public life in Ireland. However, the issues that caused him to resign from Fianna Fáil a decade ago are a stain on that legacy. Does that mean he should be a pariah in his own party for the rest of his life? Probably not, although his narrative around his personal finances never stacked up and remains unresolved. For that reason, I can’t see him become a candidate for the presidency. Too many questions remain unanswered and would be posed again.
I actually met him once. It was after a Wexford/Kilkenny match in 1990, a League semi-final. A couple of us blagged our way into the Árd Comhairle section for a drink. I was standing at the bar waiting for an order, looking in awe at the size of Ger Henderson’s hands, when Bertie stood alongside me. At the time, he was the Minister for Labour, a man who had a singular ability to bring calm to the regular public sector industrial actions of the 1980’s. I always thought that was where he honed the skills that served him so well in the Northern Ireland peace talks.
Anyway, Bertie ordered a pint of Bass and two Guinness. The barman pulled his Bass, then put a head on two of three Guinness at the tap and handed Bertie his order. Bertie and I had been making small talk about the match. He looked at me, waiting, then looked at the Guinness, and said, “I think these might be your drinks”. He told the barman he was in no hurry, and handed me the pints. The barman looked at me resentfully, pulled Bertie’s two pints, then topped up my third Guinness and handed it to me. I went back to my friends wondering at the decency of a government minister who would wait for his round.
One thing that really did rankle with me is Bertie’s statement that ordinary people "Joe Soap and Mary Soap were responsible for crashing the economy. "everybody started living on credit and credit was whatever you wanted yourself".
It's a narrative that some who were at the heart of the Celtic Tiger would like to become the official history of the naughties.“Everyone was at it”.
That was and is disingenuous. The vast majority of Irish people weren’t “at it” at any stage. They built houses that were a little bigger, but were within their compass as wages had risen sharply. They went on foreign holidays for the first time, but that was bringing Ireland up to a standard of living the rest of the EU (pre-enlargement) had enjoyed for decades.
It was a small minority who were utterly reckless in their borrowing ,and a handful of senior bankers who were equally reckless in their lending policy, that brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. And the rest of us are still paying the price, and will for the rest of our lives. Whenever I buy insurance, some of that goes to fill the hole Sean Quinn left with his billion euro bid to buy a large chunk of Anglo Irish bank, a levy that will be in place for another decade.
As the economy crashed, manageable mortgages and car loans became unsustainable. Jobs evaporated, tens of thousands of young people left, and no-one could blame them. The rest stayed behind, bailing out German bondholders, paying their way as best they could, sucking it up. Wages were cut in the private and the public sector, pensions lost all value. And we were told we were lucky to have a job at all.
It perhaps explains why people are so triggered by the DJ Carey story. The sense that some of those who were “at it” got near total debt writedowns has really angered those who had to pay back every penny. The news that the Kilkenny man was one of only 1900 AIB customers to get a near total write down is seeing the pent-up frustrations of the last fifteen years re-emerge.
Why banks love farmers
Farmers as a rule tend to repay their debts. They have one of the lowest defaulter rates of any sector. And there is a reason. It’s not because we are better people than other professions, farmers come in all shapes and sizes. It’s because farm debt is fully secured, and often over-secured. If a farmer defaults on a loan, the asset held as security- usually farmland- is worth more than the loan. The bank wins and the farmer loses if the farmer doesn’t pay his debt.
This is one of the reasons banks love farmers. Not only is the land an excellent security against its own loan, it also improves the banks ratio of security overall. Impaired farm loans were the jewel in the crown of thorns that were the bundles of loans sold to vulture funds by our crippled banks. The asset value was a high percentage of the loan against it.
And this in turn makes it harder to do a deal for those farmers in dire financial difficulty. There’s no 99% writedown. The vulture fund needs to make a tidy profit on the farmland on it’s books, as a lot of the assets they come bundled with are essentially worthless.
It will be a long time before we know if it was necessary or wise to bring the vulture funds into Ireland when our economy crashed. The banks needed somewhere to offload their toxic debt. But for many farmers who have found themselves dealing with a vulture fund, communication has been difficult, negotiations have been one-sided, and results have been, to say the least of it, mixed.
When Eamon Ryan mentioned bringing wolves onto the mountains, farmers revolted. I fear the apex predator who has had the greatest impact in Ireland may well be the vulture.
Hills still burning
Last Saturday night, as my previous long read went live, I was watching the Blackstairs burning from outside my house.
Not the entire mountain (hill) range, I know, but a huge chunk of the east (Wexford) side of Mount Leinster was ablaze.
I have no idea if an approval for a controlled burn had been granted, but the fire was certainly out of control. It took six fire brigades and a helicopter to bring the blaze under control.
It was only one of dozens of fires around the country, with commentary in some quarters of wanton environmental destruction.
It’s an issue I know little about, being a lowlander, so I contacted someone I know and trust who lives on higher ground and has commonage on a mountain.
Rotational control
He told me that he believes it’s necessary to have rotational control of mountain vegetation and not just in his own interest.
Heather grows stemmy over the years, he told me, and matures into the type of vegetation that will burn easily, particularly in late summer and autumn.
By burning a selected patch each year, there is a mix of fresh, green growth and more mature drier vegetation on the hills. This creates a potential firebreak if a wildfire starts for any reason.
It is now very difficult to get permission for a controlled burn
He told me that in recent years, fearful of being blamed for illegal fires and losing their direct payments, farmers have been policing the hills in March to make sure no fires occur.
“We’re doing the National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) work for them” he told me.
He also said that it is now very difficult to get permission for a controlled burn. The NPWS is just one of four separate agencies that has to sanction a permit, alongside the relevant local authority, the fire service and the gardaí.
All the planets have to align for a permit to be granted and that’s not always able to happen, for whatever reason, he told me. The permit has to be for a specific date and the wind must be blowing in the right direction on the given day for the burn to go ahead as planned.
A crop of winter barley emerging in Co Carlow earlier this week against the backdrop of the Blackstairs Mountains. Heavy rain this week has halted drilling of winter cereals in many areas as land gets wetter. Tillage farmers across the country are always working in tight windows to get crops sown in a timely fashion before ground conditions deteriorate.
When a burn is for a small planned section, with a firebreak, there is a corridor for animals to escape safely, he said.
Like many farmers who have commonage on the hills, he feels privileged to see nature in all its glory on the hills when he’s herding and tending to his flock. It’s far from the barren sheep-infested wasteland some would paint it as, he said.
Joys of farming
I know how this feels. On our own farm, walking the fields in the morning is one of the joys of farming. Our land is teeming with wildlife. It’s a bird sanctuary, so pheasants are prevalent and every pheasant in the parish seems to come to see us on 1 November.
The local hunt comes through our land twice a year -it was actually here on Friday morning on a last gallop.
It has never caught a fox on our land in my 40 years observing them, although there are lots of foxes to be seen. We have rabbits and hares; if I ever saw someone hunting a hare, I’d be calling the gardaí.
It seems to me that rewilding of the uplands needs to be done in a planned way. Just letting heather run riot could be creating a literal tinderbox down the line.
A pilot project on the Blackstairs has farmers leaving some land aside and managing that land in a planned way, depending on local circumstance.
That surely is the way forward. I’m not sure if I’d be in favour of reintroducing wolves. Much like vultures, they could be hard to control if they take hold.
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