The real problem with ‘Foreign Aid’

That interweb thingy is alive with the sound of indignation after lasts night’s Prime Time and Frontline programs. Prime Time dealt with the ever decreasing standards and supports for Carers and those they care for, while Pat Kenny turned ‘tabloid’ as he pitted Irelands poor against Africa’s poor in an emotional death match to prove who is most deserving of German pension fund monies.
Members of the audience made their arguments for ‘charity starts at home’, and ‘we need to help the poorest people on the planet’ and both have a certain level of validity. However both also fall short.
Let’s start by taking the foreign argument, yes Ireland has a responsibility to continue to provide support for developing nations. Yes the likes of Goal and Concern et al have been doing much needed work in the darkest parts of the globe for a generation and more. But is it time to question the structure and focus of our foreign aid both NGO and state.
At what point is it ok for a charity to fundraise to fund internal administrative costs to the same, or in some cases more than their in country spending? When did it become ok for charities to grow so big that their very survival has become the motivation? There are some who would say many African countries in particular have gone backwards because of the dependency culture this aid has engendered. All this while branded jeeps pass each other on their dusty roads fighting to be the main ‘soul’ saver in the region.
It seems that once we abolished slavery and decided that black and white were equal we began to feel a guilt for our past that led us down this road. So lets look at what may work as an alternative, a young girl in the audience of the Front Line last night made the poit, Africa needs to be allowed to ‘Trade’ its way to growth and strength as India and China have done. The issue with this theory though is our unwillingness to allow Africa to do this!
Now when I say ‘we’ I do not just mean those nasty economic super powers who pilage natural resources and ensure that democracy does not rear its ugly head in useful nations. No I mean us, ‘ordinary’ consumers who want cheap food and goods and lots of them. If we were to stop our subsidies to our agricultural sector for example and let Africa compete on a fair playing pitch we would soon see the tables turn economically. African farms could produce food far cheaper and more of it too and we would be able to buy it in our supermarkets just as we can now. But it would mean sacrificing our European sector, and we won’t do that, it may have an impact on our standard of living, and we won’t allow that!
The path to growth and democracy is through economic freedom and as long as we ensure that Africa remains an economic slave to the ‘developed’ world it will continue to need and take aid. Its leaders will continue to be corrupt because they are allowed to be, and encouraged to be so because it suits us.
So I ask us all this question “Are we ‘developed’ enough and mature enough to allow African peoples and their nations to take an equal place on the world’s trading markets. Are we willing to risk discomfort in our lives to ensure more comfort for the world’s poorest?”
Sadly I predict the answer is no!
As the old saying goes ‘Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him to fish and feed him for life.’ This is the lesson we and our NGO’s need to learn, dependency culture at every level of society is not healthy and we have now engendered a generation into a life of dependency in Africa. While the intentions of those working there is true they may be doing more harm than good and maybe the economic crisis at home may just be the perfect time to re-asses the focus ad delivery from our NGO’s. I don’t have the answers but I feel it is a valid question and one we need to discuss!

Mary Davis – The race for the Aras is heating up and is this a clever Fianna Fail ploy?

So it seems running for the Irish Presidency is the new black! We now know of four Independents candidates; Senator David Norris, Séan Gallagher, Richard Mc Sweeney and now Mary Davis. Now I use the term candidate loosely as we know that each of these individuals has yet to obtain the necessary permission from the political elite to officially stand for the office.
Add to these names those of Michael D Higgins and Fergus Finlay from the Labour Party, Séan Kelly and Mairead Mc Guinness MEP’s and most likely John Bruton of Fine Gael to Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein and maybe Brian Crowley MEP of Fianna Fail and you have your likely full list of those offering themselves.
So the process for an Independent is a difficult one, you need 20 Oireachtas members support or that of four councils. We have already heard strong evidence the Fine Gael are actively blocking the nomination of early front runner Senator David Norris so this avenue looks, as always, to be a very difficult route. This point deserves further discussion.
The recent general election had as a core theme ‘Reform’ we all got on the band wagon, I even ran under that banner, and we all focussed our angst at the Seanad because it is felt that it is not as representative as it should be of our Republic and its citizens. But let’s look at the highest office in the land; let’s agree on that while ignoring its limitations, the President is our first citizen and head of state and so in a Republic that person should be elected through the acclamation of the citizens through the exercise of their franchise.
Now we are given the right to vote for President but only when the political elite decide there will be a contest, as in the case of Mary Robison and Mary Mc Aleese in recent times they were unopposed for their second term and so there was no popular vote. The lack of opposition was as much down to the control of the nomination process as it was to their success in the role. If Fine Gael and Fianna Fail do not want you to run they can STOP you and that needs to be addressed.
It looks like this next campaign is set to have the widest field of hopefuls and with the arrival of Mary Davis on the scene it could have just opened up! Mary Davis is a clever operator, she should her ability with the massive success of our hosting of the Special Olympics, she has strong and vocal community support and she would not have entered this race if she did not feel that a nomination was close to 100% secure. So where will it come from? Senator Norris is touring the country calling on Councils for their support, a lifelong Independent he has no immediate political base and so is faced with a difficult task but Mary Davis has a well known connection to the Fianna Fail party and so may have the comfort of knowing that they will ensure her the necessary four council endorsements.
Why would they I hear you ask, well why not! They just had their arse handed to them by the electorate, Fine Gael look like they have persuaded John Bruton to stand, who will take a lot of beating, and they have no money, energy or enthusiasm for another potential loss. Look at their most likely candidate Brian Crowley MEP; has anyone heard him say he wants to run no matter what? Has anyone even heard him deny it, the ultimate sign in Irish politics of clear intent!! A clandestine support through the councils would offer Fianna Fail to support a potentially successful campaign without the need to suffer another embarrassing loss at the hands of the electorate if it does not work out.
Now I hear you say ‘But what about Séan Gallagher is he not FF too?’ well yes he is and here is where it becomes interesting! If Fianna Fail facilitate Mary Davis and Séan Gallagher it will become very difficult for Fine Gael to block the candidacy of Senator Norris and thereby ensuring a crowded field and making it more difficult for FG to secure the Aras, an office I feel they are increasingly seeing as the icing on the GE11 cake.
All I can say is that whatever the Machiavellian reasons behind it all I want to see Mary Davis, Séan Gallagher, Richard Mc Sweeney, FG, FF, Lab, SF, ULA and whoever else wants to stand up for the people of this Republic get their chance to do so and I want us her citizens to be the final arbiter on their ability or not to do so! Aras 11 should be a race of ideas and ideals so if we do anything else as a citizenry this year’s lets force the political elite to stop playing politics with our President (remember it is an a-political role is it not???)

Evolution not abolition should be the way forward for the Seanad

I write this piece having just witnessed the 23rd Seanad’s final act, which saw the passage of Senator Dan Boyle’s ‘Mental Health (Involuntary Procedures) Amendment Bill’. It was historic in a number of ways, it was the first time private members time had been used to introduce such a Bill back in 2009 and it was also the first time the Seanad has sat to pass a Bill in the interim period between a Dail and Seanad election.
I work with a lobby group called the Delete59b Campaign who were seeking the deletion of the entirity of section 59b of the Mental Health Act 2001, which deals with forced Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) and we worked with Senator Boyle since 2009 to bring this about. What we achieved today is not only a compromise amendment but also an ensurance that the Bill stays alive as it will now move on to the Dail for further debate.
The compromise that was reached between Senator Dan Boyle and his Labour colleagues with the agreement of Minister Kathleen Lynch to delete the word ‘unwilling’ from the Act and to insert the need for ‘written informed consent’ from the patient is a great step forward in the fight for greater rights for patients in mental health care in Ireland. While the word ‘unable’ remains in the Act some strong safeguards have been added, and as I said the debate will continue as the Bill moves onto the Dail.
But outside of this one issue what we witnessed over the past two days is the need to retain the Seanad in some form to ensure that this type of groudbreaking debate can continue to take place in our national parliament.
New Junior Minister Kathleen Lynch said as much in her contribution today when she not only praised the quality of the debate she had heard on this issue but also the style which allowed for a more interactive and informed debate.
This I think is the reason we need to retain our Seanad and I hope she takes some of those lessons back to her government colleagues!

Truth, lies and poker!

I know people hate when we all start to talk about how bad things might get if we continue down the road set by the ECB/IMF deal but unfortunately ignoring or avoiding this issue will do nothing but compound it. We now have a new government with a new mandate so let’s hope we get some new leadership.
The FF/Green government before their untimely demise had developed an art for hiding (or so they thought) the truth from the people, the reality of course is the dogs on the streets Knew what was really happening. While they told us we had turned a corner we all knew it had been into a cul-de-sac. Then we were told the IMF would not be coming to town; who could forget the image of Dermot Ahern and Noel Dempsey on the news denying the rumours that the IMF had in fact checked into their hotel (the budget Merrion Hotel) directly opposite their boss’s office! We woke then to see AJ Chopra and co strolling determinedly across Dublin to the Central Bank to discuss how the deal they would impose on us all!
These and many other issues led to the fall of the government and the granting of an overwhelming mandate to an FG/Lab government upon which we pinned our hopes and our futures. After the first meeting with the Department of Finance we heard from Michael Noonan that things were far worse than expected. So it appeared we were to get the honesty promised by new Taoiseach Enda Kenny, he had promised that good, bad or otherwise his government would tell its people the truth.
But then we see the first chink, Alan Dukes spoke publicly that he believed re-capitalisation of the banks was going to need a lot more funds then had been mooted and we would have to tap into the €25billion provisional fund made available to us. At first this claim was denounced, we were told it would not be needed, but then woe and behold Michael Noonan announces that we will have to tap into the provisional fund to re-capitalise the banks. So are we back to where we were with the FF/Green boyo’s?
I spoke with a financial advisor over the weekend at a christening who told me he had spent the past week shifting €1.2million out of the country. Now this money was not belonging to big business or even the dreaded property types, it was life savings and earning of ordinary people in quantities varying from €50K to multiples of 100’s. People are scared we are heading to the scenario faced by Argentina in the 90’s, banks going broke, ATM’s shut down and panic in the streets and they are buying Swiss Franc’s and Canadian Dollars but the bucket load.
I am not one for scaremongering but I am one who listens and I remember the likes of David Mc Williams et al talking about the need to address the ever expanding property bubble pre the burst. Now as then prominent economists and commentators from here and abroad are telling us things we do not want to hear and our politicians are not telling the full story. I for one hope we do listen and I also hope we hold our new government to account and ensure they live up to their promise of honest politics because I for one want a promising future for my son to look forward to.
Ireland needs to hold firm on its corporation tax rate, we cannot and should not allow France and Germany bully us into a change, the recent decision by the Puerto Rican government to increase its own corporate tax rate should be warning enough, they are already seeing multi nationals like Pepsi carrying out feasibility studies on moving their operations there to Cork. If we are to capitulate on this issue we too will see a flight of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) abroad, and let’s not forget FDI has been a foundation for our economy since the 1950’s.
Ireland also needs to address the deal we made, it is punitive we know and they know it. The tax payer cannot be expected to take on the debts of speculators who lost out on a risk, a risk remember that they had insured. We need to let those speculators realise the risk and claim the insurance, we need to do a better deal and we need to be tough doing it. We cannot allow others to form our destiny; we are now playing a hand of high stakes poker and we need to be the player at the table who does not flinch.
I wait in hopeful desperation…

Last Chance For Real Change – Voters need to vote for real alternatives the 25th

I am calling on voters to vote for the changes they are asking for at the doors by voting for real alternatives on Friday next February 25th.
I have been knocking on doors for the past six weeks and the clear indication I am getting from those we met is that they want real changes in the 31st Dáil. The power is now firmly in the hands of the voters, if they really want to change our politics they need to vote for candidates that are offering that change. If Cork South Central returns three Fine Gael; one Labour and one Fianna Fail deputies I have to ask where the change is there. Friday is a very important moment in our history and I expect that the parties are in for a few shocks and I predict one of those could well be here in Cork South Central.
If people come to the polls and do not stay at home on Friday I think we will have the change people are calling for, we cannot allow the political parties have a free run by staying at home so I am calling on the general public in the final days of the campaign to make a big effort to go to the polls on Friday. The power is in their hands I hope they use it.
For more information, log on to www.votedavidmccarthy.com or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

“Green Party attacking Independents is less sting of the dying wasp and more lick from the cuddly puppy” – David Mc Carthy Independent

Friday February 15th: David Mc Carthy who is running as an Independent in Cork South Central called on the Green Party to sell its own message and not partake in attack politics in an effort to save the party from electoral annihilation.
Speaking ahead of a planned statement from the Green Party outlining how Independents are bad for government Mc Carthy said, “It is sad to see the Greens resorting to this tactic and it is clear they are looking to save as many votes as possible and obviously see Independents as a threat to those. As Fine Gael get closer to +70 seats and with little prospect of there being enough Greens returned to offer coalition support Independents are looking more and more likely to be a major player in the formation of the next government. Unlike other elections this time we have a different style of Independent running, there are a majority of nationally focussed and reform driven Independents running for the 31st Dáil.”
Concluding he said, “Polling consistently at between 13-15% in the polls it is likely that over 12 Independents will win seats this time, and with groups like New Vision offering a singular voice and a cohesive movement of Independents to the electorate I think there will be a few interesting wins. One week out I think one of those could yet be Cork South Central, I think as we get closer people will start to see that electing three Fine Gael, one Labour and one Fianna Fail TD will offer little real change to the people of Cork and therefore will vote accordingly and will elect an Indeoendent.”
For more information, log on to www.votedavidmccarthy.com or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
ENDS:
Contacts for David Mc Carthy 086 662 0448 david@votedavidmccarthy.com or davidmccarthyconsulting@gmail.com

“Change the politics not just the faces” – David Mc Carthy Independent calls on voters to be strategic on the 25th

Tuesday February 8th: David Mc Carthy who is running as an Independent in Cork South Central called on voters to be strategic with their vote ad use it to change how politics works in Ireland and not just re-arrange the seating chart in Leinster House.
Speaking as he prepared to lodge his nomination papers Mc Carthy said, “There is a very important choice facing voters in this election, do we want real changes or do we want more of the same. Fianna Fail announced a plan for reform after nearly 20 years of inaction in the area, the other parties are offering populist and cosmetic changes that in no way address the fundamental problem which is our electoral system. Abolishing the Seanad ad reducing TD numbers while continuing with a system of parish pump led politics will not help Ireland grow and develop as a modern democracy.”
He continued, “We need to be mature enough to say, our system is broken and it needs to be fixed. We need to be mature enough to vote for people who will make those real changes happen, people who’s motivation is not the growth or survival of their party but the growth and survival of Ireland as a society and as an economy. There is a growing momentum behind my campaign in the last week, I have polled close to the top consistently on the Boards.ie constituency poll ad the website has seen a spike in visitors. I am confident that I will be in the shake up for the last seat here and I am confident a lot of my Independent colleagues will also in others areas because we are the only ones free of party interest who can deliver change.”
For more information, log on to www.votedavidmccarthy.com or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
ENDS:
Contacts for David Mc Carthy 086 662 0448 david@votedavidmccarthy.com or davidmccarthyconsulting@gmail.com