POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
GERRY Adams is not a stupid man, whatever his Twitter account may show. He knows he is an electoral liability to Sinn Fein in the Republic. So, something else must be going on for him to remain leader into the next election and beyond (as predicted here that he would some time ago).
The answer is the potential for a Sinn Fein ubiquitous split North and South were Adams to go now. There is always talk of republican splits, of course. But Adams remains the only figure with a cult-like status who can maintain an ironfist authority over the party, North and South.
What does all of this mean for Mary Lou McDonald, who has served her time defending the indefensible — kangaroo courts-related torture, murder, rape and the like, which at a human level must surely make her womanly skin crawl? In my view, Adams’s decision to remain increases the likelihood that she will not be the next, and therefore never be, president of Sinn Fein.
The West Belfast Provo brigade still calls the shots, as it were. Quelle surprise. If the Provos were content to allow McDonald at it, surely they would do so now, to maximise Sinn Fein’s potential ahead of an election here. Clearly they are not so content, and there is no reason to believe that will change now or into the future. The next leader will be from the North, and will be a man who can be relied upon. You read it here first.
In that event, what will McDonald do — eventually quit the party, or settle into being the grande old dame of Sinn Fein?
I also made a (somewhat mischievous) prediction on that in these pages in the recent past. She remains a figure capable of leading a realigned party or movement of the left in the South. Watch this space.
IT was a relief to see the Taoiseach back in a work suit and at Government Buildings last week. Meanwhile, his new Strategic Communications Unit will soon get into its stride, having performed a dry run at back-to-school time. Its head, the super-duper John Concannon, was scheduled to speak at the British-Irish Association conference at Downing College, Cambridge, this weekend on the theme ‘What unites us is far greater than what divides us’, but is understood to have withdrawn.
Meanwhile, what has passed unremarked upon in the current brouhaha is a Leo Varadkar Dail reply to Micheal Martin at the end of July, related to the new communications unit: “The unit is being established on a permanent basis within the department,” the Taoiseach said. The question therefore arises: will the Fianna Fail leader scrap the unit should he be elected Taoiseach? Will he what? Doubtful. A benefit of the new unit is that it will rebalance the political commentary of Sinn Fein. At Cambridge, meanwhile, Micheal Martin had this to say in relation to Charlie Flanagan’s period in Iveagh House: “His removal from that post after such a brief and positive period remains unexplained and unjustified.”
WITH predictable fanfare, Fine Gael and just about everybody else rounded on Barry Cowen’s (allegedly) new proposal to cut the VAT rate to, eh, incentivise property developers to build in the teeth of this housing crisis. There was talk of the Galway Tent and the rest of it. In fact, the proposal to temporarily reduce VAT was contained in Fianna Fail’s submission to the review of the Rebuilding Ireland report submitted some time ago, although in relation to kick-starting the building of “social” and “affordable” housing, which will hardly have Johnny Ronan breaking out the champagne.
In a statement last week, Cowen said: “In bringing forward this proposal we sought specific costs, but were told by the Department of Finance that such information was not available at this time. The absence of such information begs the question of Paschal Donohoe and Eoghan Murphy, what information are they using in immediately dismissing the idea? In the absence of research on the cost and benefit of this policy, on what basis are they refusing to even consider it?” We shall await the Budget to assess Donohoe’s proposals. Meanwhile, that handsome young Machiavellian prince, Eoghan Murphy, stares blindly into the headlights.
THE late Henry George is a historical figure of which you may not have heard. Like Mary Lou McDonald, he was a high-profile person in his time, back in 1879, when he published Progress and Poverty, before he slipped away into oblivion. In this study, he argued that land-value levies should replace all other taxation, leaving labour and capital to flourish freely, and thus ending unemployment, poverty, inflation and inequality. He is coming somewhat back into fashion at the moment. Vanity Fair publishes an extensive article on him this month.
As it happens, one of George’s fans invented the game now known as Monopoly, to exemplify the evils of untaxed rent. Basically, George’s revolutionary (at the time) idea works on the premise that landowners enjoy unearned income from the benefits bestowed by good transport links, and proximity to customers, suppliers and other businesses. Once they have bought their land, they keep this money. So why not tax it? George was also an associate of Michael Davitt back in the day, and spent a year or more in Ireland with the Land League founder. But that’s a story for another day.
An advocate of a sort of version of his land or site tax is the property economist, our own Ronan Lyons. In my view, a great opportunity was lost when Ireland did not carry through the introduction of site value tax which was contained in the 2011 programme for government. At the time agreement could not be reached on a way of assessing land values. Instead the Government introduced a property tax, which discourages the maximum development of land and property because it taxes improvements.
Perhaps the bookish Paschal Donohoe might have a read of Progress and Poverty in advance of what is shaping up to be a mustbe silver-bullet Budget to finally get to grips with the housing crisis.