CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Ruairí Quinn
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"The Irish State is facing its biggest challenge since 1939"

So said Ruairí Quinn at an IIEA function marking the retirement of the Institute's current Director General, Tom Arnold.

Ruairí emphasised that the response to the earlier challenge had the advantage of a strong Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, and an equally strong Minister for Supplies, Seán Lemass. Today the political situation is more diffuse.

The starkness of his example struck me forcibly: Dev kept us neutral in the face of serious imperial pressure to join the war, and Lemass kept us fed and alive in the face of extremely adverse circumstances.

And in case anyone jumps down my throat and says that's not how it was, I should point out that Ruairí's comment came at the end of the speeches and not at the beginning. But they made a big impression on me and it is something I took away with me from the evening.

Tom Arnold

Tom Arnold held the key position of Director General in the Institute during the recent restructuring of the board and he was much praised for how he handled that whole process. What he brought to the Institute was a set of diplomatic skills, a wealth of revelant experience and a vast network of contacts which have been of huge benefit to the Institute.

He made a gracious speech in the course of which he thanked everyone who helped him during his period of office, not forgetting the office and hospitality staff.

He is handing over at a time when the Institute was never more needed. Its research staff, analysts and writers will be expected to make a significant input into the Brexit process, in terms of critical analysis, policy advice and informing the public through firmly evidence-based events and publications. This is the sort of thing it has been doing since its foundation but current developments are seriously upping the ante.

Barry Andrews

Barry Andrews, who is taking over from Tom, made a short "acceptance" speech indicating that he had already been sussing out the territory and was ready to hit the ground running. His own excellent qualifications apart, he comes from a family with a long tradition of public service to the State.

I didn't get a chance to talk to him, but if I had I would have mentioned a minor, but significant, action by his father in procuring for me from the then Justice Minister, Brian Lenihan Snr, a certificate to import four banned books. I have referred to this elsewhere online.

Brendan Halligan

Brendan Halligan was the founder of the Institute in 1991 and has been its Chairman ever since up to the beginning of 2017 when he handed over to Ruairí Quinn. So with the recent revamping of the Board and change in the positions of Chairman and Director General, a re-envigorated Institute is ready to face what may be its biggest challenge yet.

Brendan made one particular comment which stayed with me. He was musing on how people are chosen for a position like DG in the institute. He had been searching for a word to describe the process and had finally come up with "emerged".

I was very taken with this as it implies a wide consensus on a tried and trusted candidate who will be up to the job. You wouldn't get away with that sort of a process in many areas of the public service which are now stitched into competitive interviews as a safeguard against jobbery, but you can see the benefits of the "emergence" approach in a job like this.

To mark the occasion Tom Arnold was presented with a copy of Carla King's biography of Michael Davitt, a book I will have to read myself at some stage.

Davitt was an amazing individual, founder of the Land League, courageous investigative journalist, hero of Jews as well as nationalists, a Mayo man who lived for a while in Ballybrack, and I could go on.

Below are a few of those in attendance. You can play your own guessing game. I only know who half of them are myself.

If you want to follow up on the Institute and its publications, including a very concise mini-briefing note on Brexit, you can go to the official website and wander round it.

KEN CLARKE

Kenneth Clarke
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I tuned in to one of my favourite broadcasters this morning and there he was, chatting away to Kenneth Clarke, who has just published a memoir called Kind of Blue. The title is presumably aimed at telling us he is not "true blue", coming as he did from working class origins and leaning towards the left within the conservative party. No doubt he also wished to distance himself from Red Ken (Livingstone).

As Seán O'Rourke encouraged Ken in his very perceptive and amusing recollections, I was reminded of my own encounter with him in the latter half of 1996.

Ireland held the rotating EU Presidency at the time. Clarke was the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) and Ruairí Quinn held the corresponding position in the Irish Government.

Ruairí Quinn

It was on the day of an ECOFIN Council meeting and Ruairí, as President (chairman) of the Council, was hearing "confessions" in the run up to the meeting. That is a term used to describe the process whereby supplicant ministers have individual meetings with the chairman in an effort to bend his ear towards the views they will be advancing during the meeting itself.

I was in on the meeting as one of the items on the agenda was European Investment Bank projects in developing countries and I was on the EIB desk in Dublin.

This was a period when Margaret Thatcher's push for privatisation and entrepreneurship still suffused the UK administration, though she had gone by then and John Major was Prime Minister.

Normally, if the EIB was lending at effectively subsidised rates of interest or to high risk ventures where it was not appropriate for it to lean on its own capital, there would be an EU subsidy to cover the discretionary excess. In keeping the excessive risk off the EIB's own books, the Bank would be able to continue to borrow at competitive rates in international financial markets and pass the benefit on to its normal clients. It also reduced the risk of markets losing confidence in the Bank and possibly ultimately refusing to lend to it. Unlike the World Bank or the EBRD, the EIB could lend up to two and a half times its own capital and so was much more exposed to market perceptions than these other institutions, which were effectively 100% guaranteed by their member states.

Nigel Wicks

Clarke, no doubt under some political pressure, but also advised by the Treasury in the person of Nigel Wicks, was pushing for EIB to take far more risks in third countries than I considered prudent. I had been dealing with the EIB for a decade at that stage and was acutely aware of its potential financial vulnerability. This seemed to have escaped Clarke who, no doubt, was pushing an ideological line and also contemplating savings on the EU budget to which the UK was a net contributor.

I intervened and explained the EIB's leverage to Clarke and pointed out that one had to be very careful how far one pushed the risk-taking as it could ultimately backfire on the institution.

I think Ruairí Quinn was a wee bit taken aback at my intervention but he had seen it once before on a different occasion and he figured I knew what I was at. I got the impression that Clarke was also a bit surprised but seemed to be taking some of it in at least. I suspect that Nigel Wicks was not at all amused as I figure I was advising his minister along lines directly opposed to what he probably had.

As it was clear that there was going to be some pressure on EIB to up the ante anyway, I have no idea whether my intervention made the slightest bit of difference to the outcome. It did, however, mean that I didn't forget Ken Clarke in a hurry.

Don't think I got a mention in his book though.

Ministerectomy

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This month's cover on Phoenix reminded me of a previous occasion when a minister for health was cartooned as a patient at the mercy of the medical profession.

Today it is James Reilly. Then it was Barry Desmond and he was being lampooned by another minister, Ruairí Quinn, then Minister for Enterprise and Employment, or whatever it was being called at the time.

I have done a cartoon of Ruairí doing the cartoon of Barry and set it in the Place du Tertre in Paris, below.

The actual cartoon itself that Ruairí did in 1986 is below, and if you want to see some more cartoons of the current cabinet go here.

TRASHED

Dioxins cause deformaties in fetuses/babies.

There is a very lively, and sometimes acrimonious and bitter, debate going on in Ireland at the moment on the subject of abortion.

While the debate usually takes place between parties calling themselves by the non-exclusive categories "pro-life" and "pro-choice", there is a deafening silence on another "pro-life/pro-choice" issue which affects a much larger number of people.

This is the heedless and irresponsible disposal of trash which is destroying vital parts of the eco-system on which all human life depends.

The new landscape - a trash mountain.

The quantites of trash being disposed of have reached gargantuan proportions. Land, air and sea are wilting under the strain. The traditional disposal method has been landfills. These are now not only full but wildly toxic and are contaminating watertables, plants and the like. Next we had dumping at sea. This great sink is now rapidly filling up with materials which are not biodegradable, or only so to a limited extent. And that great space saver and energy producer, incineration, is now shown to be pumping toxic dioxins into the atmosphere at a rate of knots. The effects of dioxins on fetal development was most graphically illustrated in the effects of Agent Orange in Cambodia, which is where the above baby photos, featured in the film, come from.

Apocalypse Now.

So what do we do?

Viewing the film "Trashed", from which these stills are taken, would be a start.

The film has recently been brought to the attention of the Minister for Education and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, both of whom seemed interested.

The model of cooperation in the Arts between the Departments of Education and Arts, launched recently as a much hyped "Charter", might be applied in the case of the Departments of Education and Environment, to sensitise innocent children to the current destruction of the environment in which they will have to live their lives.

The Minister for Arts, himself, recently opened the inaugural World Actors Forum in Dublin, at which the film was shown. Hopefully he either watched it or took away a DVD and will alert his Cabinet colleagues to how little time we have left to take action.

And then we get rid of 90% of packaging, and such packaging as is needed should be 100% recyclable. Remember the recyclable milk bottle or the redeemable jam jar. Anyway, most packaging these days is just a marketing con.

And we go back to fixing things rather than throwing them out when a bit of them breaks. That used to be the old way. Remember the valve radio. Throw out the valve, keep the radio. We don't have to go back to AM mono, but the principle is still valid.

Dioxins cause deformaties in fetuses/babies.

Taxing Test

The sub who headlined this item in the Irish Times (15/3/2012) has either discovered a new Tax or is implying that taking assets into account in the award of student grants is equivalent to imposing a Tax.

The text of the report does not mention the word Tax. Rather it describes an Assets Test that the Minister proposes to introduce in order to correct a bias in the award of student grants to farmers and the self-employed.

I suppose we are unlikely to get any explanation from the paper of record

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