Yikes.

From top: Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty; Derek Mooney

“Standing right now, if nobody does anything, I don’t think this referendum will pass”

This was Minister Regina Doherty on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics last Sunday. Her comments were, as we have come to expect from the outspoken Social Protection Minister, forthright and clear cut.

Ms Doherty was responding to the results of the two latest opinion polls, showing both a narrowing of the winning margin for the Repeal the Eighth side and a growing concern about the proposed 12-week threshold.

Her observation that there was still a ‘job of work to do’ to win support for the abortion proposals led the radio and TV news for the rest of the afternoon.

By the time the RTÉ Six one TV news came around the Government sources who were reportedly concerned by her comments appeared to have gotten their way.

RTÉ’s Justin McCarthy was not only able to report on the Minister’s original comments, he was also able to tell us all about a clarification that the Minister had just issued which made it clear that the Minister did not in fact think that the referendum would fail, but rather that she was sure it could and would pass.

It was almost painful to watch, especially as the misspeak that the clarification was intended to clean up was not that much of a misspeak.

Yes, Ministers should all look and sound like they are on the same page and should try to always exude a positive air of confidence in their own invincibility, but they should also look and sound credible and give the impression that they can hear what people are saying.

In my view this is precisely what Minister Doherty was doing pre-6pm on Sunday. She was telling the public that the government is taking nothing for granted in this referendum and that it is aware that many voters – and let’s be crude about it, many of them are Fine Gael leaning – are unsure about the 12-week part.

It seems that this was Senator Catherine Noone’s view too. Senator Noone, who expertly chaired the Oireachtas Committee that considered the referendum proposals, told Breakingnews.ie that she thought Minister Doherty was just being realistic about the possible outcome and that: “Every day, those of us who understand and believe that the position should be changed legally in this country have a job of work to be done to communicate that”.

Ms Noone added:

“Any referendum even the Children’s Rights referendum, where it was a really positive thing, it wasn’t won by any major majority, so it’s a fair comment that the Minister made.”

Unlike many of those who may have been behind the “clarification”, Minister Doherty has practical and painful experience of what it is like to fight a referendum that looked set to pass, only to fail at the last minute, having served as the Deputy Director for Fine Gael’s ill-fated 2013 Seanad abolition campaign.

To her credit Minister Doherty gave her all to that campaign from the very start and fought it with a lot more zeal and tenacity than many of her party colleagues. She learned the hard way that opinion polls in referenda can be deceptive.

An Irish Times Ipsos MRBI poll taken at the end of September, just one week before polling had those voting yes to Seanad Abolition at 44% those voting No at 27%, undecideds at 21% and won’t vote at 8%. On the day the No side won 51.7% to 48.3%.

Clearly the issue this time around is far more difficult, far more personal and a lot more emotive. Many more people go into this campaign, on both sides, with deeply and sincerely held views than was the case in 2013, but Minister Doherty is right at this point to signal clearly to the undecided and the soft retain the 8th voters alike that she and other ministers recognise that they need to explain to people how the proposal to allow for terminations up to 12 weeks was arrived at. I know, as I am one of them.

There is also another important factor. Since 2013 we have seen nature of campaigning move on a pace.

We saw the results in the Trump and the Brexit campaigns where voters were convinced to doubt and reject the counsel of the established experts and to go with their newly informed, or should that be inflamed, guts.

The deployment of data analytics played a big role in both those campaigns, a lesson not lost on the Keep the 8th side who reportedly have retained the services of Kanto a UK data analytics company associated with the UK Leave campaign.

I am not saying that data analytics alone will swing the campaign one way or the other or even that only one side with be using them. Undoubtedly, both sides will use all the campaign tools available to them from traditional, to online to social media.

I am merely making the point that in today’s ever more volatile and perhaps even disruptive political environment, it is vital not to be complacent and to think that everything and everyone with play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

It is why I welcome the Transparent Referendum Initiative, a project run by volunteers with an expertise in social media and online marketing, that aims to enable an open and honest referendum debate by making the use of targeted, paid political ads on social media more transparent. It should not to up to volunteers to do this, this is something that should be done by the platforms and the State.

Indeed, if the government had acted last year, well ahead of the referendum, and accepted the Private Members Bill prepared by Fianna Fáil’s Science and Technology spokesman, James Lawless TD, (and let me declare that James is a friend of mine) that provided for transparency in the disclosure of information in online political advertising, then we wouldn’t need TFI to take up the slack.

But, alas, it didn’t.

Which is another reason why I think Minister Doherty was right to send up a warning flare now and call the situation as she sees it and why those unnamed sources in the shadows – the ones who tried to fix her supposed misspeak – are the ones who really misspoke.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010.  Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Rollingnews

From top: AIB and Permanent tsb remain in state hands;; Michael Taft

It is curious how little debate there has been regarding Ireland’s banking system (apart from being scandalised by continuous scandals).

The bank guarantee was brought in practically overnight while the Dáil debate over the nationalisation of Anglo-Irish took only six hours.

On the other side of the crisis there has been little debate over the privatisation of AIB and Permanent TSB. It seems that, when it comes to banking, we proceed by reflex.

Well, it’s not too late to start that debate. And it’s not too late to champion the cause of public banking. What are the advantages of public banking?

First, while operating in a competitive commercially environment, it is not bound by short-term shareholder value. This frees the bank to engage in longer-term lending with patient capital.

Second, it can be rooted more locally with a mandate to lend into the productive economy – businesses and households; steering away from property and financial products.

Third, through decentralisation it can engage in relationship-based lending based on knowledge of local markets and individual borrowers (advantaging SMEs), compared to transactional-based lending with its centralised and near-algorithmic approach.

Fourth, public banks can be more amenable to political scrutiny and public accountability. A case in point is the current debate over the sale of mortgages to vulture funds.

Fifth and most importantly, would be its governance. The New Economics Foundation has proposed a trustee-based model to transform RBS into a local public bank. It would look like this…

The Board of Trustees – made up of employee, public appointees, and business and consumer representatives -would be responsible for overall policy while the Management Board would be charged with day-to-day implementation of that policy.

There are other potential positives:

A public bank could be regionally based focussing on activities in the province they serve (e.g. Munster, Connaught). However, even within the province the banks could be branded in a way to show their commitment to the local areas (e.g. Bank of Kerry, Bank of Offaly, etc.).

The Central Bank has acknowledged continuing problems with ‘banking culture’ and if this 18th century pamphlet – Observations on, and a Short History of Irish Banks and Bankers – highlighted by Diarmaid Ferriter is anything to go by this is a long-term, probably endemic issue.

‘ . . . the abuse of the public confidence by bankers . . . the fatal calamities which have befallen this kingdom by the abuses of private banking . . . is there an evil, which can arise from the monopoly of money, which they have not produced? And how partial the little good which the community has reaped from them . . . the public can never rely upon the fidelity of bankers under the present regulations’.

Regulation can go far, but only so far. A public bank can provide competition with private banks on many grounds; in particular, ‘culture’, emphasising customer relations and service.

A re-investment in regions and communities could be undertaken by opening up branches – but doing so in imaginative ways. These branches could be one-stop shops housing post-offices, credit unions, MABS advisory centres, etc. This could be combined with community out-reach programmes such as local financial-education initiatives.

To provide for democratic input, customers could elect their consumer representatives on the Board of Trustees through postal ballots. With public banking there is any number of initiatives and practices that could be considered to democratise this space.

Some would point out that we have had two banks under public ownership for years and nothing on this scale has emerged. That is true but the state, while ‘owning’ the banks, never acted like an owner.

The state acted more like a concierge, opening the door and tipping their cap to any investor who happened to wander in. T

he day after these banks were brought into public ownership, the state plotted to get rid of them. We had public ownership but not public banking.

As to whether AIB or Permanent tsb should be the public bank of choice needs to be discussed. AIB might be a better fit given its size and reach throughout the country.

Or it may be decided that a smaller option – with the ability to grow – would be preferable; thus Permanent tsb. There are pluses and minuses with both; for instance, both banks have high levels of non-performing loans, but Permanent tsb’s profile is higher.

In both cases, consideration would have to be given to buying back the shares sold to private investors. This would be an upfront cost but one that could be paid for by removing the banks’ ability to carry forward losses and write them off their tax bills. This is another dubious cash subsidy to banks which are directly responsible for their own losses.

There is one more objection: if either bank remains in public hands, how would we recoup the bank bail-out subsidies which, in the case of AIB, is considerable (approximately €10 billion is still outstanding)? There are two responses:

First, one may recoup the full-cost of the bail-out but there may be a bigger long-term price; namely, that selling the bank back to the same class of investors imbued with a short-termist perspective, the wider economic benefits would be lower than a public bank. That we cannot immediately monetise that difference doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have a real, negative impact.

Second, the public bank would still be required to pay back the bail-out subsidies but over a longer-term, with the repayment constituting a type of ‘bail-out dividend’.

None of this is straight-forward nor open to easy answers. That is why we need a full and detailed debate. Let’s have the Oireachtas hearings, let’s examine models that work in Europe and the US. If there is an argument that privatising the two banks can still meet the goals of a public bank, let’s give it consideration.

The Left should not be silent on this or let the issue pass by default. If we’re talking about an economics of recovery, public banking could be a crucial element in that.

But most of all, let’s have the debate. For once the two public-owned banks are privatised, it will be even more difficult to argue the case for, never mind introduce, public banking.

Michael Taft is an economic analyst and author of the political economy blog, Notes on the Front.

Rollingnews

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