By Aine

Following  Minister of Transport, Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar’s glib comment that we all could still afford a holiday as the Budget would not be that bad comes his Fine Gael colleague Finance Minister Michael Noonan remarking that our emigrants are leaving to see the world “as a lifestyle choice”. 

Well Minister Noonan, maybe where you come from in Limerick that is the case but I know hundreds of emigrants who have left these shores and it had nothing to do with “lifestyle choices” and everything to do with trying to keep body and soul together, finding a job and making a life for themselves.

They made the choice to try and get a job rather than stay on the dole in Ireland and face a very bleak future with little or no job opportunities, and the banks and lending institutions either snapping at their heels for payback of negative equity mortgages or with no prospect of getting one in the first place . Oh yeah and then Social Protection Minister Joan Burton adds insult to injury by also remarking that, for some, being on the dole is a “lifestyle choice”.  Not for anyone I know, it isn’t.

As I prepare to go to Australia to visit my youngest daughter who has been there for the past three years, I am incensed by tactless throw-away remarks coming from our present Government.

My daughter would dearly love to come home, misses home greatly, but there is no future for her here and therefore she must remain on the other side of the world where at least she has a job with a steady income and a promise of better things.

I know several young people who are currently in Australia picking fruit, hardly a “lifestyle choice”, these are young, well-educated, bright kids who found they had no future at home after leaving college.

It’s easy for you Michael to make such disparaging remarks from your lofty perch in Leinster House.

       I suggest that you take a trip out to Dublin airport and do a quick survey of the people leaving where I think you will find that many of them feel they have no alternative but to take a plane out of here.

Current emigration is splitting up young families, with many young men working in England, leaving behind partners and young children, to try to gain employment to keep a roof over their families’ heads back home. You should be commending them, not insulting them.

When you mention Australia of course it brings to mind images of sandy beaches, warm sunshine etc. but a recent survey by the Irish Independent revealed that of the 70,000 people who emigrated last year, the destinations they chose to call home were the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA and Germany.

Another 40,000 are expected to emigrate this year.

Can I suggest that in future all Government Ministers engage their brains before insulting the very people who are willing to get up of their arses and take charge of their lives, in whatever part of the world they think offers them the best opportunity.

by Grainne

With third level fees on the way back and grown children returning to live with their parents because they can’t afford the rent, the squeeze is on middle-aged middle income earners who once looked forward to this time when financial burdens were supposed to ease.

Instead we find ourselves subsidizing adult offspring that have lost their jobs or just can’t get one, from paypackets that have shrunk to below what we were earning two or three years ago. 

Helping struggling sons and daughters who’ve lost their jobs or are on reduced incomes and are grappling with sky high mortgages and other debt and the cost of childcare and everyday necessities means that a sector which traditionally had a few bob spare to spread around no longer has or can.

Any college student will tell you how hard it was to find a job this year, many unable to do so can only turn to their parents to pay student fees and accommodation this year.

Anyone who lost their job in the past two years and was lucky enough to secure a new one will tell you that they took their new position with a hefty reduction in pay from what they’d been previously earning.

It all adds up to a lot of pressure on a group of people who had an expectation that, if they worked assiduously and didn’t spent recklessly, could enjoy a relatively comfortable lifestyle now.  The reality is far more stark.  On top of more cuts on the way our pensions have been plundered.

It doesn’t help that we’re the most passive sector of society.  Witness how the OAPS reacted when the Government had the temerity to cut their pensions.  They were reinstated within a day.  On the other end of the spectrum our young people are quick to publicly demonstrate their ire when something happens to annoy them.  We, on the other hand, now seem beyond even the usual resort of the well behaved middle class – a campaign of civil disobedience.

Little has been heard of late about the “green shoots of regrowth” in the Irish economy.  Perhaps they were drowned in the deluge of summer rain.  Or more likely it was just that the perpetrators of such laughably asinine portents – Fianna Fail and their spin doctors, are too busy away spending their golden handshakes to give a damn.

The only ones ‘talking up’ the country now are the motley crew of Presidential hopefuls and no-ones giving them a hearing.  Tired old platitudes aren’t going to cut the mustard with people who, instead of some sort of financial security, are facing the prospect of further hard times ahead.

At least Finance Minister Michael Noonan won’t be foolish enough to urge us anytime soon again to get out into the shops and spend our way out of the recession .  We’d love to Michael, if only we had it to spare.

by Grainne

We don’t actually need a President.  There, I’ve said it.  We don’t have to have a Presidential election.  We are a small island nation.  A little country in crisis.  In the jaws of a recession, dogged by depression, up to our necks in hock.

Truth be told no-one has any appetite for a Presidential election.  Even the motley crew of candidates seem to have a couldn’t-care-less attitude about it.   Anything I’ve heard so far from them has been stupefyingly turgid, boring, platitudinous and patronising.

Quite apart from the cost, and the better things the money the Presidential campaign could be spent on, the contenders read like a who’s who of the unremarkable, the unimaginative and the unimpressive.  Hard-necked chancers who fancy a stint in the big house and a generous salary for doing little.  And don’t let’s have any of that ‘Ambassador role’ guff.  With most countries thinking we’re right eejits to have partied like there was no tomorrow on borrowed money while passing ourselves out as models of fiscal management, it’d fit us better to hide our shame at home.

The Taoiseach could do a spot of double-jobbing by taking on the role, it’s hardly that onerous, turning up at Croker for the big games and taking the odd trip out to inspect the troops or welcome whatever dignitaries still want to fetch up in this forlorn rain-lashed island.

I’m serious here, by the way.  Let’s not have a Presidential campaign.  Let’s not have a President.  They are not democratically elected.  They are supposed to be above politics but are only afforded the opportunity to run by virtue of political patronage and support, fuelled either by brinkmanship or cronyism.

                             Who’d miss him or her if there wasn’t one?  Would it be a talking point down on the dole queues?  A topic of conversation, an ice-breaker perhaps, between bank manager and unemployed home owner before they settle down to discuss the possibility of the person’s home being repossessed?  Would the bar stool philosophers (the few that’s left) even be bothered debating the subject?

In short, who’d give a shit?

By Grainne

Something strange has happened to me of late.  A self-confessed news junkie for many years, more, someone who worked in the news business, I’ve disengaged completely.

Before I couldn’t do without my daily fix of Morning Ireland, followed by Pat Kenny, lunch was shared in the company of Sean O’ Rourke and his News at One crew, the drive home from work each evening saw me switch between Matt Cooper and Mary Wilson.  Post dinner it was the RTE news, most times I dipped in again to the nine o’ clock just in case anything momentous had happened in the meantime and Prime Time and The Week in Politics were de rigueur.  In between there’d be regular dips into Sam Smyth’s Sunday show on Today FM, Rachel English’s midweek political show and the Saturday lunchtime political show too.

No single event caused me to suddenly withdraw cold turkey from the news milieu.  Rather it was a cumulative feeling of déjà vu.  I became jaded by the litany of bad news that washed out over the airwaves daily.  Reports on clerical sex abuse?  Heard them all before and nothing’s changed.  Hospital closures, hospitals in crisis, decline in medical services?  All depressingly familiar.  Stories of politicians with self interest their overriding priority?  Nothing new there.  Gangland crime?  An everyday occurrence.

The rest of what passes for news these days is anything but.  Celebrity (and I use that term loosely) gossip isn’t news.  Giving it credence by presenting it as news erodes our moral fibre, something that seems perilously close to depletion anyway.

And you know what?  I don’t miss it all one bit!  Amazingly, my life hasn’t been hampered in any way by not being up to date on a daily basis with what’s happening in the world.

I heard in passing today that some international rating agency has demoted us to ‘junk’ status.  Normally that’d have me eagerly tuning into every subsequent news show for the dissemination, analysis and general chin-wagging that’d follow.  Not to mention the outraged protestations and bellicose umbrage.   Spare me the verbiage. I see for myself the empty stores, the people trying to save petrol, buy less groceries, take less outings, skimp where they can.    We’re broke and we’re hurting and all the talking in the world isn’t going to help.  The leadership we need, and which for a brief period after the general election put in an appearance has fizzled out as vested interests and parish pump politics, as usual, win out.

I’ve restocked my car with CDs, some old favourites, some new and who knows?  Maybe I’ll arrive at my destination in the days and weeks to come a whole lot more mellow.  And I’ll renew my library card to better fill my evening hours.

Anything other than listening to the news.