Ireland's Right-Wing Rut

...It appears that Fianna Fail will initially boost spending for capital formation and increase temporary job creation schemes...

...One might expect so uninspiring an economic performance to spark a debate about the best mix of private and public initiatives to meet national goals, but the ideological issue of whether and how far a government may "infringe" upon corporate prerogatives is apparently deemed too touchy...

...The final results were: Fianna Fáil, 81 seats...

...Anyway, the widespread attitude in the Irish Republic is that "we" have enough troubles of "our own" without further stirring up the hornets' nest in the six counties...

...As was the case during his MarchNovember 1982 minority Administration, Haughey now governs at the sufferance of several independents, and oddsmakers here predict another general election within 18 months...

...Today, in fact, these operations comprise 46 per cent of the top 500 Irish companies, and they control over 60 per cent of all manufacturing assets...

...Fitzgerald's Fine Gael-Labor coalition, it may be recalled, collapsed when his Labor Party allies, unable any longer to mitigate the government's reactionary thrust, walked out...

...But they have rather less to say about theone pound in every 10 of GNP being whisked out of the country by multinationals as profit repatriation...

...Though subsequent pre-election polls indicated nearly 80 per cent of the electorate was dissatisfied with the coalition and 53 per cent supported Haughey, his Fianna Fail Party garnered only 44 per cent of the ballots and fell three seats short of a majority...

...Moreover, the Labor Party's voice has been muffled by its participation in the 1982-87 coalition, and the tiny Workers' Party and handful of Left-oriented independents are easily ignored...

...Fine Gael remains the most stubbornly Tory of Irish parties...

...the only bright spot was the reduction of inflation from 17 per cent in 1982 to about 4 per cent at present...

...Department of Commerce reports that American multinationals—mostly electronics and pharmaceutical firms—reaped an average real profit of nearly 30 per cent in the years 1977-83...

...The Progressive Democrats are cast in the same conservative mold as the two major parties, and benefited primarily from voters turning against Fine Gael (which lost 17 seats...

...Neither Fine Gael nor Fianna Fail acknowledge that the debt crunch might have something to do with an industrialization strategy they share emphasizing export-led, foreign investment-fed development—with tax holidays and a plethora of other incentives as bait...

...Yet while 141,000 new job seekers entered the market over 1975-85, net job creation was zero...

...More than 30,000 left Ireland in 1986, and the total population actually dropped...

...The story is very different for wage earners, who must cope with steep and discouraging taxes: A single person earning the equivalent of $20,000 faces marginal rates as high as 58 per cent...

...For this nation, which has never known full employment, job creation was the major motivation behind the decision to attract multinationals...

...In addition, Fitzgerald's stewardship did little to improve the dismal economic picture...

...Throughout the 1980s, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail fetishized deficit reduction as the key electoral issue—this in the face of plunging living standards, 19 per cent joblessness (officially speaking), a third of the population at or below the poverty line, plus an inequitable and punitive tax system...

...Charles Haughey took office with nebulous words about "developmental economics" substituting for an explicit program...

...The relatively new Progressive Democratic Party, by contrast, has promoted personal tax cuts as its major policy innovation...

...Itnever became the social democratic organization Garret Fitzgerald envisioned it would be under his tutelage when he first assumed the party leadership in 1977...

...Kurt Jacobsen, a previous NL contributor, is a research associate in the Program of Interdependent Political Economy at the University of Chicago...

...Although private investment has fallen off by nearly a third since 1979, that is mainly due to low demand levels in a fiscally restrained environment and capital flight...

...They simply can't keep on talking about the balance of payments and the budget deficit—that's just so much manure," a Labor canvasser said...

...Dubbed "Garret the Good"—with a typically Irish blend of derision and affection— Fitzgerald resigned the top party position after the election, having failed at virtually all the ambitious tasks he had set for himself...

...Progressive Democrats, 14...

...On the matter of Northern Ireland, Haughey—who stood trial in 1970 for allegedly plotting to smuggle arms in to Ulster—has at least temporarily put aside his criticisms of the 1985 AngloIrish Agreement and consented to observe it...

...The "consultative role" bequeathed to the Irish Republic, largely in exchange for greater security cooperation with British forces, is a far cry from the executive role Fianna Fail has sought...

...More important, for the fourth consecutive election since 1981 they have denied eager budget-cutters a mandate to slash the average worker's living standards...

...Haughey will have a markedly less cordial relationship with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher than did Fitzgerald, but cordiality never counted for much in Anglo-Irish diplomatic affairs...

...Still, for all the urgings of the Scroogelike Fine Gael leaders, who insisted that instead extravagances such as social welfare should be done away with, their Labor partners were able to block the deepest cuts proposed...

...Advertisements placed in American business periodicals by the Irish Industrial Development Authority proclaim that Ireland has the "youngest and fastest growing population in Europe...

...The young tended to go straight into the dole queues or else to emigrate...

...Labor, 12...

...But a study commissioned by the government has found that only three of every 10 jobs foreign firms projected ever materialized (the record of Irish-owned firms is worse), and that even fewer jobs will be generated in the future at increasingly greater cost to the State...

...Quite the contrary, Fianna Fail campaigned under the slogan "To a Profitable Ireland," pledging to "remove the legislative, bureaucratic and ideological obstacles to working for reward...

...Workers' Party, 4; and independents, 4...

...There is no denying that the burgeoning public debt is a problem...

...Combined with Fine Gael's reluctance to impose any part of the burden of " fiscal rectitude" on the wealthy, the result was a doubling of the national debt during the coalition's rule...

...The U.S...

...Irish foreign obligations per capita exceed those of Mexico, Brazil or Argentina, and debt service payments absorb more than a third of all tax revenues...

...His " pluralist crusade, " an effort to make the legal structures of the Catholic South more attractive to Protestant Ulstermen, began auspiciously in 1985 when a bill liberalizing access to contraceptives squeaked through Parliament...

...Tax reform risks driving away more capital, and jobs programs cost money, so the notion that they could benefit Ireland is considered a bizarre one any sensible politician should confess to his parish priest or party whip and then forget...

...ECONOMIC MALAISE Ireland's Right-Wing Rut BY KURT JACOBSEN Dublin The Irish Republic's predominantly Right-wing yet fickle voters last February gave Garret Fitzgerald's four-year-old coalition government the heave-ho, then greeted the March confirmation of new Prime Minister Charles J. Haughey with muted hosannas...

...The agreement promised much but thus far has delivered little, infuriating Northern loyalists while doing nothing substantial to alleviate the lot of Ulster Catholics...

...Fine Gael, 51...

...Led by ex-Fianna Failer Desmond O'Malley, it emerged from the February 17 election with the third highest number of seats in Parliament, having achieved a gain of nine...

...If past history is any guide, these steps will be followed by a retrenchment, precipitating a new election when crucial independents bolt...

...They thus once again displayed a penchant for casting conservative ballots with one hand while holding their noses with the other...

...It is a promise easily kept where potential capital investors are concerned: For them there are essentially no such obstacles now...

...But fierce religious opposition later defeated a divorce initiative, and also resulted in an anti-abortion amendment being added to the Constitution...

...Finger-wagging politicians point to these statistics in admonishing the lucky ones who have jobs that they are "living beyond their means," however meanly life is being lived...

...Hence no significant policy shifts are in store...

...Fianna Fail has offered scant relief here...

...Despite tax protests that since 1979 have brought as many as a quarter million people into the streets, both major parties have declined to tamper with a tax structure that virtually exempts corporations, large farmers and the selfemployed at the expense of workers whose tax is deducted "at the source...

...And international bankers were only too pleased to continue lending to the triple ?-rated, reliably docile Irish Republic...

...Since 1958, Irish subsidiaries of foreign firms have indeed contributed to economic growth (although two-thirds of the start-up capital has come out of the State purse...