Funferal

Irish economy in crisis

It’s not wholly surprising, but it seems possible that the meteoric rise of the Celtic Tiger could very soon be eclipsed by the current free-fall of the Irish economy.

Following on from news that the economy fell into recession in the second quarter of 2008 (with two consecutive quarters of declining GDP), new figures out today (but not yet reported on RTÉ!) put the exchequer deficit for the year to date (the Irish government now operates on a calendar financial year) at €9.4bn, with full year predictions of €11.5bn. Some of that deficit is for capital spending, which is, of course, seen as an investment, and therefore worth borrowing for (on the basis that increased capacity in the future will more than counteract the cost of borrowing the money today). However, much of the - unforeseen - deficit is for current spending, and results both from cost overruns and decreased tax revenues.

There is, of course, a difference between government spending and the broader economy, but in this case the government figures reflect trends in the economy that are quite worrying, as well pointing to the contribution of government policy to our current difficulties. Tax revenue is already €3.6bn behind budget, reflecting declining economic activity (as VAT and stamp duty revenue declines), weaker markets (with falls in capital gains taxes), and substantial job losses. Current spending is €600m above target, despite well-publicized spending freezes, due at least in part to the increase of 80,000 in the live register (=unemployed). The Irish government will breach the EMU deficit limits this year, with, as Joan Burton of Labour notes, “a General Government Deficit of 5.5% of a falling GDP.” Figures would be worse were it not for significant increases in non-tax revenues (which includes dividends from semi-state companies among other things).

A large part of the problem for Ireland has been that Ireland is a small ‘open’ market economy, making us particularly responsive to changes in the global economy. When the dot com bubble burst, the spectacular economic growth of the mid-1990s disappeared. Now that the global economy has entered a period of serious crisis, the Irish economy risks catching pneumonia.

With a 50% rise in the numbers unemployed in the past year - to their highest rates in 10 years - the St Vincent de Paul Society (one of the larger charities providing aid to the poor in Ireland) has seen a 40% increase in calls for help to its offices in Dublin in the past year, and expects to spend €50m on aid this year. Next year, for the first time in a decade, Ireland is expected to have net outbound migration.

The government response so far has been to bring forward announcement of next year’s budget (widely expected to be an austerity budget) and to issue guarantees on savings in Irish-owned banks - itself not a bad way to calm nerves and improve confidence, but not a well-thought out plan, as it immediately fell foul of EU rules, which means the government is going to have to extend guarantees to banks with an Irish presence (though hopefully only on savings held by Irish residents), which will bring the potential exposure to well over the initial estimate of €440bn. By contrast, Irish GDP last year (and remember, it’s dropping) was €190bn.

Posted in Income and poverty, Labour issues | 1 Comment »

Opportunities for new community stations in Ireland

The BCI has just issued a call for expressions of interest in new community radio stations, with a deadline of October 23rd.

Expressions of Interest are an initial step in which groups encourage the BCI to issue a call for applications for specific stations (usually covering specific areas or audiences). Thus, at this stage groups are not competing against other applications (though there are practical limitations to how many stations the BCI is likely to look to contract with at any time). The Application stage, on the other hand, is competitive, and the BCI usually decides to contract with only one applicant in any area, or sometimes not to move forward with any applications.

I’m limited my my availability at the moment, but will try to provide advice to any interested groups who wish to make contact with me. (Specific questions are always more useful than ‘how do I go about this project’-style general queries.)

Posted in Alternative Media, Media regulation, Radio | No Comments »

This is integration

Amidst a BBC report on Roma migration in Europe is this note on education policy in Hungary, which :

In Hungary, an earlier policy to give money to schools for the mentally disabled, to which a disproportionate number of Roma were sent, was abandoned when it was realised that it encouraged segregation.Now funds are focused on mainstream schools which accept more Roma - though they impose limits of 25% Roma in a class.

There’s a lot to note in this excerpt, and the article more generally, but I’m particularly interested in how integration works. Segregation is seen as problematic (though we’re not told for which reasons in this case) and integration is now favoured. However, this is only in cases where the number of Roma in a class is kept low enough that it is the Roma children who must acclimatize to ‘mainstream’ society. The notion that a non-Roma child might be placed in a majority-Roma setting (or even a setting with more than 1/4 Roma children) is viewed as so appalling a prospect that it is prevented by government policy.

Later in the article mention is made of the problems for parents and Roma communities when schools in Roma-majority villages are closed, with children being bused out of their communities:

But in far-flung villages with a majority Roma population, Roma and non-Roma parents alike are upset when local schools close and children are bussed off each day to towns.

The links between the parents and the schools are broken.

An alternative policy, supported by opposition parties, would be to improve the facilities and standard of teaching in existing schools.

I should mention that my mother is engaged in research on parental involvement in education among the Irish Traveller community, and this article seems (to me) to provide some interesting parallels to some of her initial findings.

Posted in Citizenship, migration, race, and ethnicity, Education, Society and culture | No Comments »

Ireland should raise corporate tax rate…

At least that’s the message I take from the IBEC statement that “the current position whereby companies are not obliged to negotiate with unions was the only competitive advantage we have” (we being Ireland). For a long time we’ve been told that Ireland needs to have a low corporate tax rate, a very low one, in order to attract in-bound investment. Now we learn that the ability of employers to ignore the concerns of employees is in fact the ‘only’ competitive benefit Ireland has. If that’s the case, we should at least bring our corporate taxes up to the EU average, particularly in these times of falling tax returns.

In truth employers are using whatever arguments they can to shore up their opposition to union recognition. It should be noted that the employers who are opposing legislation to mandate recognition of unions are already engaged in the national partnership process, so sit down with unions already, but benefit from having few protections for union members in several ways:

• The strength of unions in the broader economy is minimized, reducing their leverage in individual areas, including Partnership
• The ability of unions to consider opting out of partnership, and resorting to local bargaining is reduced
• Some IBEC members are part of Partnership, others are not, and so gain directly
• Lower union protections outside Partnership lowers wages and working standards in those areas of the economy, which has an impact on the standards that can be pushed for within Partnership
• Union energy and resources are sapped by constant fights for recognition and protection for members who face belligerent employers

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Making NCA manageable

I’m not heading to the NCA meeting myself, but some friends have been asking about ways to make it easier to find sessions of interest. I therefore offer this entry as a way for people to note and track such sessions. I hope that many of my ICR/U Illinois colleagues will include (in the comments section, below) details of their sessions (time, track, venue) as well as any particularly noteworthy sessions they think might be of special interest to others.

Comment threads may not be the most elegant solution, but they beat working your way through an entire conference catalogue - and maybe someone could take the initiative of migrating responses to a prettier interface (PDF of a grid of sessions, anyone?) closer to the conference date.

Posted in Education, Meta | No Comments »

Ronnie Drew passes

If ever you go to Dublin town, a hundred years from now…

So that line’s from Patrick Kavanagh, but it came to mind on hearing of the passing of Ronnie Drew today. The music of Ronnie and the Dubliners has been a constant in my music-focused radio shows, so it’s poignant to hear of the passing of another artist. For those in the Chambana area, I expect to include a tribute in my next appearance on Celtic Music Go Braugh Go Braugh, on 31st August.

Posted in Radio, Society and culture | 1 Comment »

Community radio podcasting in Namibia

Many readers will know that my current research is focused on the ways that community radio stations are grappling with podcasting and similar technologies. I was excited, then, to see this story, about students from Utah Valley College, who travelled to Namibia to help the Katutura community radio station launch a podcast - bringing equipment and manuals with them. The project grew out of the Digital Namibian Archive Project.

Posted in Alternative Media, Digital Audio, Online communication, Radio | No Comments »

DTV coming to Ireland - public platform plans announced

As another follow-up - this time to my post on commercial DTV in Ireland - the plans for the publicly-operated multiplex have been announced. With transmissions expected from Autumn 2009 (and the analogue signals to be switched off by 2012), the roll-out will be phased in over time - 80% of the population will be covered at launch, with the final 20% taking close to 3 years to be covered.

Interesting to see the services to be available: the 4 current free-to-air services (RTÉ1 and 2, TV3, and TG4), Dáil TV, a new Irish film channel, RTÉ3 (a new service playing archival RTÉ material), and RTÉ1+1, which will play RTÉ1 on a one hour time delay.

Some comments:

• TV3 is a commercial operator, owned by a private equity firm (and previously by CanWest), so it is interesting to see it placed on a multiplex as the only commercial offering. However, this may reflect an expectation that the other multiplexes will not be free-to-air. Incidentally, TV3 is in the process of acquiring Channel 6, the only non-subscription domestic cable channel in Ireland, another sign of increased consolidation of media ownership.
• The RTÉ1+1 offering is a cheap way to offer a ‘new’ channel without any extra expenditure. I wonder about the implications for issues like insurance. In the past, I know that news services in Ireland have generally insisted that those carrying their services do so live - in order to ensure that any error or potentially libelous comments not be repeated after they should have been corrected or removed. Will RTÉ similarly edit problematic comments from live programming when it’s being rebroadcast later? The service is, after all, equivalent to a 1 hour tape delay, which would presumably heighten the responsibility of anyone who knowingly rebroadcast libelous or inaccurate information.
• Oireachtas video feeds are already available online (with separate feeds for committees, the Dáil, and Seanad). I wonder, though, if there will be sufficient material to fill the Dáil TV channel - particularly during recess. Any chance that this service will expand in similar fashion to CSPAN here in the US, where interviews with authors, coverage of significant conferences, etc., pad out the schedule…
• Good to see a dedicated channel highlighting Irish film - but, again, will there really be enough content to fill this? One wonders what other content might pad out this station. Also - where will funding for this come from? Will the channel compete for license fee funding with RTÉ and other broadcasters, or will funding come direct from government central funds, as suggested by the Irish Times article? If so, will it be at risk of cut-backs (as are most areas of discretionary public spending at present)?
• Those choosing digital platforms in Ireland are obviously particularly fond of multiplex solutions. Digital radio is still in flux, but DAB seems to continue as a preferred option, despite its myriad shortcomings. Multiplexes may be more suitable for television, which already involves significant capital outlays. Certainly a useful area for comparative policy studies, looking at both TV and radio, and solutions across various jurisdictions.

Posted in Corporate media, Digital Audio, Media regulation, Public Service Media, Radio | No Comments »

Blogging while eating…

I’m battling yet another software melt-down - just after fixing the wifi (by reinstalling everything), my MacBook has copied my Mini in refusing to open applications like Word, and showing a blank desktop (though the files are actually still on the system, the icons just aren’t showing on screen). Time for yet another reinstall on both machines, I suppose.

Anyhow, while simultaneously cursing my luck, trying to think of solutions, eating my lunch, and feeding my news junkie habit, I came across a BBC article on lunch-breaks. Specifically, the declining number of English workers who take them, and the proven benefits associated with taking them. Noteworthy:

In the 1970s the British were the laziest men of Europe. Now they are considered the workaholics of Europe, thanks to an adoption of the American work ethic in the mid-80s, says Professor Cooper. But tellingly, productivity per capita in the UK remains lower than many of its European neighbours.

Now, I’m already familiar with the fact that the US performs well on productivity per capita, but less well on productivity per hour worked, as does Ireland (which is something like 2nd on productivity per worker, but 5th on productivity per hour worked). Essentially, the US and Ireland do particularly well in productivity because of the large number of hours worked per person - linked to fewer holidays and longer work weeks - but not so well, relatively, on productivity per hour. There’s obviously a trade off made between extra hours worked per person (which leads to higher per capita productivity, allowing higher wages/pensions) and increased time away from work (which is, so to speak, good for the soul) - though the decision is often not made at an individual level, but by a mixture of employer dictates, public policy (mandatory paid leave, public holidays, etc.), and social mores.

What’s interesting to see here is the claim that despite erring towards more hours of work per person, the UK hasn’t necessarily reaped the reward of greater productivity. I’m having difficulty locating easily digestible statistics online today - the OECD and Eurostat sites, while comprehensive, aren’t always the easiest to navigate, and I don’t want to spend that much time right now - but I’d love to see some historical trends for several countries, including the UK. Maybe there’s something in the Baker book, which I’ve been relying on as a wonderful compendium and tool ever since we used it in teaching Media, Money, and Power…

Posted in Income and poverty, Labour issues | No Comments »

Unions seek €30/week for lower paid, cost-of-living increases for everyone else

A follow-up to my recent posting on the break-down of national pay talks in Ireland. The unions have now developed guidelines for local bargaining platforms:

Under the guidelines, unions are to seek flat-rate increases of €30 per week for low-paid workers and rises that match inflation - about 5 per cent - for those above this threshold. Unions will look for further rises in profitable companies.

The guidelines cover private sector negotiations - it’s unclear, as of yet, what the strategy will be for public sector employees. The urgency and importance of the issue was underlined by union leaders:

According to the chair of the Private Sector Committee, Jerry Shanahan (Unite) unions would lodge claims where pay deals have expired and consult with members as to conditions in each sector.

“Some pay deals expired as far back as April and, in the absence of a national deal, it is incumbent on us negotiate new deals. Prices have not stopped rising and inflation has not slowed down. We need to protect people’s standard of living.”

He also confirmed that unions will be guided in their claims for improved pay and conditions by the needs of members - “they will set the agenda,” he said.

Interesting to see the stress on a flat-rate increase for the lower-paid. The government had, incidentally, proposed a purely flat-rate increase close to the end of talks, without evident support from unions or employers. Given the intransigence of employers (”pay freezes all around”) it may not have been in ICTU’s interests to respond positively to the government proposal at that stage - more useful, probably, to be able to craft a platform (or “guidelines”) on their own terms, rather than making a concession in the dying hours of the talks without a productive response from employers.

One item to close: in my last post I noted that wages, as a share of GDP, have decreased from 50% in 1988 to 35% now. This is undoubtedly a major source of discontent among employees - who may feel that they have not benefited proportionately from the boom. Other critical issues, however, include the following:

• 42% of Irish workers today are female, with a participation rate (in the workforce) of 54.2%, against 72.9% for men. As recently as 1994 women were only 37% of workers - with a participation rate of 39% (as opposed to 68% for men). This represents increased gender equality, but has some unintended economic consequences. In particular, with most of the increase in female participation occurring in younger cohorts, many married couples with children now have both parties working (2/3 of married women between 25 and 54 are in the workforce), which has resulted in a boom in the childcare industry - and a similar increase in the cost to parents. In 2005, over 40% of families with pre-school aged children relied on paid childcare, at an average cost of €131 per week.
• The housing boom/bubble associated with the broader economic boom has resulted in significantly increased housing costs. From 1999 to 2005 alone, “the proportion [of household expenditure] spent on Housing was up from 9.6% to 12.0%” up from €55.41 to €94.51, an increase of 70%. In 2005, weekly rent in private dwellings averages €181.49 while the cost to mortgage holders averages around €110 per week.
• Despite huge rises in spending on healthcare (with non-capital public spending up 72% between 1997 and 2006), there is a sense that service has not improved to acceptable standards. Ireland’s spending still lags European averages, with total spending at 7.5% of GDP, below an EU-27 average of 8.8% (though as a percentage of GNI, Ireland matches that 8.8% level. Ireland’s 7.5% is lower than all other ‘EU-15′ members.

Posted in Labour issues, Society and culture | 1 Comment »