We’ve been engaging in very bad company – now we pay
WE ALL know now what they meant by telling us not to be lying down with dogs for fear of getting up with fleas. Ireland and the rest of Europe have been engaging with very bad company of late, allowing Herr Putin to keep our toes warm during the winter by supplying us with oceans of oil and as many cubic metres of gas as we could wish for. In exchange the EU has been forking out well over €900m each and every day to the murderous and insatiable Russian bear.
That’s about €33.5bn a year, straight into Putin’s pocket and the pockets of all his oligarch buddies who have, without masks or balaclavas, carried out the greatest grand larceny in the history of the world, against the interests of the downtrodden people of Russia.
This vast amount of EU money has been used to finance Putin’s war machine, according to the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell.
And you have to wonder when the former Spanish foreign minister managed to stumble on that particular gem of pure genius. Was it after Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine or the other few bits and bobs that occurred well before the Russian hardman launched his latest blooddrenched production throughout all of Ukraine?
With eyes wide open we walked straight into Putin’s clutches, importing 155 billion cubic metres of his natural gas, almost half of all EU gas imports. Mr Borrell said that after the annexation of Crimea eight years ago the EU was fully aware of its dependence on Russian energy imports – and instead of cutting back the EU actually increased them.
Ireland also has been getting in on the act by exporting goods worth €370m annually to Russia and importing about €300m of their goods in return, including about 20% of all the fertilisers required by our farmers to keep their land fertile.
Meanwhile, Ireland’s trade with that other global menace – the Chinese Communist Party and that open workcamp they operate with ruthlessness and impunity – has hit phenomenal figures, €10.6bn in 2020. That makes president-for-life Xi Jinping our fifth-largest trading partner, with whom we enjoy a trade surplus of over €4bn.
In fairness, we’re not the only fly that has accepted an invitation to come into the spider’s parlour. China currently owns a staggering amount of United States foreign debt, now at about $1.1trillion. That’s well over half of the total amount Uncle Sam spent during its 20-year misadventure in Afghanistan.
The entire world, us included, have supped with the world’s two big devils, fooled by the twin ambitions to make money and tame them. But devils, like scorpions, always revert to the nature of the beast.
IRELAND needs to have a real, grown-up conversation about both energy and food security. We don’t have the capacity in this country anymore to even produce a spoon of sugar. And we also need to ensure we have sufficient transition fossil fuels and infrastructure – such as the proposed LNG plant on the Shannon Estuary – to guarantee the lights stay on, that operating theatres don’t go on the blink and that children can be kept warm in our schools.
This week Sinn Féin again went on populist parade with its kindergarten economics by arguing for a €1.75 limit on the cost of a litre of diesel.
With about 50% of the cost of fuel going to the Exchequer it means that at €2 a litre the actual cost of delivering to the pumps is about €1.
Given that the price of oil has increased by about 70% in the past year, and that the Ukraine crisis is likely to continue, perhaps for years, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that oil prices will jump by another 70%, or even more, in the next year.
And if that happens, the cost of production and delivery alone will be at Mary Lou’s €1.75 limit – in which event the Exchequer gets diddly-squat if she has her way.
Unless she’s not serious. Unless she’s just playing to the gallery. Unless she’s playing for votes?