An Taoiseach Enda Kenny has just addressed the Irish Nation in a televised address, ahead of the announcement of promised austerity measures, which will be be unveiled in full, tomorrow and Tuesday in his governments Budget set out for 2012.
Mr Kenny clarified that the Irish State is spending €16 billion a year more than it is taking in revenue. He confirmed that in Budget 2012 public spending must be cut by €2.2 billion, and that extra taxes must raise €1.6 billion. He also confirmed Budget 2012 “will be tough“, and that “it has to be,” and would move Ireland towards a manageable deficit of 3% of our GDP by 2015.
Mr Kenny also confirmed that 50 quangos will be abolished, some through merging, the public sector will be downsized by 23,000 employees by 2015 and a referendum will be held next year to abolish Seanad Éireann.
Mr Kenny informed the nation that, while he believed recovery had begun, the mistakes which brought this country to its knees “must never be allowed to happen again.”
All in all, while his speech may have raised the cost of advertising fees for RTE 1 TV, for both before and after the event, the speech itself was badly written, totally lacking in any inspiration needed to “Rally the Troops,” in these difficult times.
There were no calls of “Your country needs you,” and those of us who expected a little of the rhetoric of either Churchill or Collins, were bitterly disappointed.
Then of course the speech writer’s salary, may have been protected by the Croke Park agreement. This would account fully for this ten minutes of total boredom, which confirmed that this country has now totally surrendered to troops, loyal to “Unternehmen Grün,” aided by members of Fianna Fail, latter found drunk or sleeping on their watch.
Why not share you thoughts with us on tonight’s “Happening,” and indeed we welcome your views on the austerity measures to be announced over the next two days. You can do same, by using the Comment tag underneath this post.
Photo courtesy G.Willoughby
The €2.2 billion in cuts. €1.6 billion of this will go to pay UNSECURED bond holders.
Give us the names and addresses of these bond holders.
In cases where big money changes hands an I.D is usually required.Some of my money is going to pay bond holders. I want to see an I.D.
That’s just it we don’t know who these bond holders are. If I went to Paddy Powers and lost €100 gambling I wouldn’t be entitled to my money back same if I bought a lottery ticket and didn’t win on it. The EU is forcing us to pay this. They don’t care if our living standards are greatly affected, they are just looking out for British/German/French banks which are responsible for this mess. If we hadn’t accepted the EU-IMF bailout and we defaulted the markets would have quickly focused attention on these banks which over-lent and recklessly lent. The Germans and French are just trying to put off the issue for as long as they can. Not to solve it.