Irish Times
After a century and a half of struggle, we’ve landed ourselves back in the same position of feudal servitude, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
A QUESTION haunts me because I can think of no good answer: why should anyone who has a choice continue to live in Ireland? This is not an abstract thought experiment. I have two sons in their early 20s. I am trying to find one compelling reason for them to stay here.
In the 1980s, the mark of the degradation of Ireland under Charles Haughey was that Irish passports were for sale to non-citizens. Now we have come up with something worse: citizens have to pay too. To belong to this State, we have to pay what is in effect a Seanie and Fingers Tax (SFT). Our ancestors had their rents raised when their absentee landlords lost fortunes at the gambling tables of London or Paris. After a century and a half of struggle, we’ve landed ourselves back in precisely the same position of feudal servitude.
Let’s take some admittedly very crude figures sketched by Nat O’Connor on the progressive-economy.ie blog. There are 1.9 million people at work in the Irish economy. Their average earnings last year were €36,300. After tax, that’s €29,500 each. From this, each one will stump up an average of €4,600 just to pay the interest on the money the State is borrowing to fund the bank bailout.
Or, to put it another way, everyone lucky enough to have a job in Ireland over the next 10 years will be working most of one day a week to pay for Seanie, Fingers and the lads. It is no exaggeration to call this feudal. Medieval lords exacted food and money from their vassals. They called it “coign and livery”. We call it “Nama and recapitalisation”. Why would anyone who can do otherwise choose to donate about five or six hours of free labour every week for 10 years to the banks? In all of this, the humiliation is actually worse than the money. The financial cost is, admittedly, hideous. Let’s just consider the €2 billion a year we’ll be stumping up for the zombie institutions, Anglo Irish and Nationwide.
