Fianna Fáil’s tourism tax has done yet more damage to the economy as Ryanair announced a 20% cut in services from Dublin this winter, according Fine Gael Seanad Transport Spokesman Senator Paschal Donohoe.”This is a serious blow to Dublin Airport and to the wider economy, especially the tourism industry. It shows that Fianna Fáil’s decision to impose the €10 travel tax was sheer madness. Read More…

The protests at Croke Park have been called off but issues still remain that must be tackled. As I blogged last week the meeting organised in relation to Croke Park was one of the biggest and angriest that I have yet attended. It appears to me that two things need to be done to make start in dealing with these issues.

Firstly, the licensing legislation must be changed to allow these issues to be resolved before the license is granted for the event.

Secondly, we need to put in place a collective and inclusive process for discussing key issues raised by residents, for the agreement of action steps and for accountability to make sure that these steps are implemented.

More News from our respresentative in Washington.

Click HERE to read Ambassador John Bruton’s Weekly Message

Fascinating editorial in today’s Financial Times about a visit that the Queen paid to the London School of Economics recently, the editorial is available HERE and the letter at the bottom of this entry. In her visit she asked all of the economists why nobody in the economics profession had seen the current crisis coming. Not everybody is at fault here it has to be said. A few international economists such as Robert Shiller predicted the collapse of the housing bubble, Gillian Tett of the FT was one of the few journalists who spotted that this could have aweful consequences on the entire banking system.

However I imagine that when such a question is put by the monarch of your country it does provoke some soul searching. There isn’t half enough of this happening in Ireland at the moment.

The economics profession is now beginning to respond back to the Queen. This Sunday the British Academy send a wonderfully elegant response back to Buckingham Palace. It’s attached here.

It makes for great reading. It makes the point that the economic consensus has been to deal with the collapse of economic bubbles rather than stop them happening in the first place. It summarises with ‘So in summary, Your Majesty, the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.’

Maybe the President will ask similar questions of our own lot?

Oh dear. When I was a member of Young Fine Gael I always vowed that any comment that I would ever make about them in public would be respectful and supportive. Particularly given the help that they have given me in the past. I’m therefore particularly struck by how they’ll react to my description of one of their policy proposal as ‘mad’ in today’s Irish Times. Read More…