A heightened state of political confusion

RADIO REVIEW:AT THE next general election, it's possible the Irish public will be so exhausted from the slings and arrows flying between our political parties that they may be unable to think straight in the polling booths.

That, and trying to follow the logic of Government Ministers who bury interviewers with vague statements about how we the public – rather than they the Government – need to own up to our role in the financial crisis can be a mind-boggling task.

Sam Smyth on Sunday(Today FM, Sundays) landed an in-depth interview with Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan. Listening to it was like trying to eat candyfloss: just when you think you have a morsel of something tasty . . . it disappears. Smyth wondered why the Central Bank, Financial Regulator and Department of Finance didn't predict the crisis, citing the Government's grave errors of judgment. "What period are you referring to, Sam?" Lenihan asked.

This kind of tactical fudgery by politicians in radio interviews is increasingly difficult to bear. Answering a question with a question is purposely evasive, buys the interviewee time and creates a strange sense of normality . . . and, yes, that is a contradiction in terms.

After all, Smyth was not talking about some hazy minor event in the distant past. He was talking about the years leading up to the biggest financial crisis in this country’s history.

“I’m referring to the period to September 2008 when the banks were clearly in freefall,” Smyth replied, showing far more patience than was required. Lenihan said, “It’s only when the water went out of the lake, if you will, that various islands became exposed as not having a proper foundation.” Such flowery imagery can be used to pretty-up an ugly picture. Still, let’s assume those “various islands” could represent our banks and Leinster House too.

In the absence of the Government’s banking deposit guarantee, Lenihan said, “The alternative [would have been] economic dislocation and economic disaster, and the roots of that had been laid some time before that.” He spoke more freely about public, rather than political, responsibility, quoting Alan Greenspan’s notion of “irrational exuberance . . . where people over-valued assets and had unrealistic expectations about the value and the potential return from these assets.”

The Minister also appeared to pour cold water on a property tax. "It is very difficult if you are talking about capital taxes in the present climate to talk about property taxes, because that is just another capital tax," he said. However, on Monday's Lunchtime(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) Fianna Fáil's Chris Andrews told Damien Kiberd: "In the long term, some form of property tax will be introduced but it has to be equitable and fair." (Those who like to call up Livelinein a tizzy needn't fret yet.) Lenihan said Fianna Fáil would be led by Taoiseach Brian Cowen in the next election. He then took aim at the competition: "What I have seen from the Opposition benches is a great deal of contradictory posturing and populist rhetoric, and a refusal to stake out definite political positions, especially on the part of the Labour party." He also said there was an "abject failure" by Fine Gael to offer a viable alternative in the last election.

However, he needn't have bothered hitting out at Fine Gael. During this silly season, there has been enough damage inflicted on that party from within. On Tuesday's The Right Hook(Newstalk 106-108) George Hook said: "It's politicians who create that very season."

He then played a speech by Fine Gael’s Lucinda Creighton at the MacGill Summer School: “There can be no room in Fine Gael for the cute-hoor politics.

“We cannot, on the one hand, condemn Fianna Fáil for entertaining developers in the Galway tent, while on the other hand extend the biscuit tin for contributions from high profile developers who are beholden to Nama,” she added. Creighton’s words almost had enough political idealism to mask the self-promotion that lay within. In fact, the importance of loyalty to one’s leader would be a good topic for her to tackle next.

Friends First economist Jim Power claimed he, too, has been under attack. His comments at that summer school made headlines on most radio news bulletins. “I dared criticise the Department of Finance 18 months ago and they made a formal complaint to my employer and tried to get me sacked,” he alleged. (The Department of Finance rejects his allegations.)

But this was all a sideshow to the news that Moody’s credit rating agency downgraded Ireland’s sovereign bond rating to Aa2 from Aa1. Brian Cowen lamented the “pervasive negativity” in the media. Moody’s actually cited “the Irish government’s gradual but significant loss of financial strength as reflected by its deteriorating debt affordability”. It goes to show nobody likes a critic. Those years before the property market crash, when the Government ignored economists’ warnings, is a perfect example.