They don't want you to wake up!

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In my country, they don’t want you to wake up right now.

They don’t want you to ask why a single mother can be sent to jail for not paying her €160 TV licence while one of the biggest corporations in the world, Apple Inc, can get away with not paying over €13 billion in unpaid taxes.

Not only that, our Government is fighting for Apple's right not to pay tax which is owed to the very same Government – and is prepared to take on the European Commission to do so.

They don’t want you to ask why the hard-pressed Irish taxpayer was forced to take on 42% of Europe’s banking debt.                                                                

Burying Irish Water at a protest in Galway

When pressed about this gross injustice, our Government told us that we had to do it because the European authorities said so.

These are the same European authorities we are now fighting tooth and nail to make sure we don’t get the €13 billion-plus windfall.

They don’t want you to ask why we kept getting so many threatening letters, informing us that we had to pay for a new private company called Irish Water.

Most of us were very happy with the way in which our local authorities looked after our water needs.

And we hated the thought that a tiny elite of select individuals could make a "killing" from this precious resource in one of the wettest countries on the planet.

These letters, thankfully discontinued or suspended, kept piling up while the head of Irish Water was getting a nice €300,000 “golden handshake”.

And this at a time when there were such serious questions about the awarding of contracts to those who installed meters in housing estates across the country.

They don’t want you to question how up to a dozen Gardai could miraculously appear to “protect” the water meter installers in our estates.

This, at a time when we are told that Garda resources are stretched to the limit and there is “open warfare” among criminal gangs in Dublin.

They don’t want you to ask why so many greedy speculators were rescued, why bankers on massive bonuses never had to pay for their misdeeds, or why the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) was allowed to lose €223.5m of taxpayers’ money from the sale of its loans portfolio in Northern Ireland.

A water protester who tries to prevent a meter from being installed outside his home can be threatened with jail, but a NAMA executive who grossly undervalues property which was bought with the State’s money is only doing his job.

They don’t want you to ask why people who are scraping a living in unsecure jobs are forced to pay the deeply unpopular Universal Social Charge, while senior executives working on “our” behalf can seemingly make corrupt or secret payments to businessmen and politicians.

Nobody marched when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank came to Dublin to “bail us out” in 2010, or when the property tax was invented in order to pay off the debts incurred by the toxic banks.

They waited until the formation of Irish Water to take to the streets, not because it was the biggest issue the country faced but because they viewed a sickening quango as the final straw.

And then they were demonised.

They don’t want you to ask why there is a homelessness crisis and a surge in rental prices at a time when there are so many empty properties all across the State.

Or why a single mum living in a hotel for a year can be demonised by sections of the media, because she refuses to take up an offer of a rental home which has no long-term security for her and her daughter.

In my city this week, homelessness charity COPE reported a 23 per cent increase in the number of families who became homeless in Galway last year.

That’s 56 families, including 133 children, who had no place to call their own and had to rely on emergency accommodation in 2015.

Yet if people on the housing list are offered accommodation from a private landlord they can lose their place on the lengthy waiting list and find themselves homeless again in a year or two.

They don’t want you to ask why the corridors in A&E departments have been divided into lettered “zones” because it is now so normal for people to spend entire nights lying on trolleys in our public hospitals.

It’s easier to find your elderly relative if you have been told their trolley is in zone Z of the corridor.

And it’s pretty hard to kick up a fuss about the conditions in the Emergency Department if you are waiting for hours or even days for a bed in a ward.

They don’t want you to ask why millions of euros were spent on security in order to bring gas ashore in North Mayo, in a part of the world where oil and gas companies were shocked by the low tax rates imposed by the Irish Government.

Or to ask why “supertrawlers” trawl Irish coastal waters, while small fishermen on our off-shore islands find fishing limits so restrictive that they are better off leaving their boats at home in the harbours.

NAMA: the subject of a new Irish scandal

They don’t want you to ask why there are such “sweeteners” for multi-nationals while small local businesses can struggle to get off the ground.

Or why asylum seekers have to spend years living under the inhumane Direct Provision system in the country where the pain of forced exile should be more familiar than virtually anywhere else on earth.

Or why US military men can pass with impunity through a civilian airport, perhaps even renditioning prisoners illegally or carrying weapons of mass destruction, in a country which has been “neutral” for decades.

For 15 years now, Shannon Airport has played a key role in the global “War on Terror”, while the security firm which patrols my local University campus has had a presence in Israeli prisons for years.

G4S are due to pull out of Israel within the coming year, but their presence in so many countries across the world shows how “interconnected” we all are these days.

A lot of people I know are fed up with zero hours contracts, an inequitable tax system, the privatization of water, and the preferential treatment which bankers and businessmen seemed to receive in the wake of the economic crash.

Yet when people speak up about austerity, and attend a march, they are labelled as the “Sinister Fringe”.

Even though they realize that our entire society is built on injustice and inequality; and the system is rotten to the core.

Sometimes it seems as though the Government is running scared. And, yes, they don’t want us to wake up!

For journalism work, social media strategies, content writing, 'ghost' blogging, or public relations, contact Ciaran at ciaran@ciarantierney.com

Find me on twitter, @ciarantierney

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An awful shower!

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They are an awful shower, those Europeans.

Imagine, the cheek of them! Telling us Irish that poor oul’ Apple owe us €13 billion plus interest in taxes, at a time when we’re doing our best to lure in the multinationals and bring our young people home from the four corners of the earth.

Over €13 billion in unwelcome taxes? No wonder the country is up in arms. People must be enraged.

They must be ringing their TDs all the way from Cork to Donegal to tell them to fight it all the way to the top Court in Europe.

Have those pesky Europeans no idea how we do things in the land of the stroke, the hand-shake, the wink, and the banana?

Have they no idea how important it is for us to provide "sweeteners" to keep the big boys on board in the greatest little country in the world to do business in?

Taoiseach Enda Kenny: doing his best to fight the unwelcome

€13 billion-plus windfall from the European Commissionn

Some eejits are wondering what €13 billion might do to help us tackle our homelessness crisis or our hospital waiting lists, or at least abolish the deeply unpopular water charges, but this time the European Commission have just gone too far.

They can’t just force us to take tax off one of the biggest corporations in the world.

So the Government is up in arms and rightly so. This is a new Emergency, in the only country on earth which had its own name for World War Two.

Our leaders are off to Brussels, or Strasbourg, or wherever these big decisions are made, to fight tooth and nail for Irish sovereignty.

Funny, there were no Government delegations heading off to Brussels to fight for Irish sovereignty in those far off days following the 'bailout', when the toxic banks were taking almost €9,000 from every man, woman, and child in the country.

There weren’t too many calls, from official circles at any rate, for the Europeans to stop meddling in Irish affairs when the State spent €60 billion to stabilise those toxic bankers.

Figures released three years ago showed that the financial crisis cost Ireland 25% of GDP, but there was no talk of forcing the Europeans to change their minds.

Come to us with a €13 billion windfall, however, after Apple set up a global HQ in Cork, and the Europeans are threatening Irish democracy.

There was no talk of bullying within the EU – and not much solidarity from the Irish – when the Greeks were tied into a bailout which seems set to cripple their economy for decades.

It cost us €60 billion to “bail out” the banks and yet I’ve never met a single person who felt that Anglo Irish Bank should have been saved. The net cost has been estimated at about €43 billion, as the Government is set to recoup some of this sum.

But, in all those dark years of austerity since 2008, we never heard the Government challenging the Europeans or telling them that they had to re-think their financial policies.

There was no point in complaining when the offshore Irish were forced to pay for 42% of Europe's banking debt.

Now they are offering us €13 billion, plus interest, and the nation is up in arms.

Apple: their decision to set up a HQ in Cork could

yet have huge implications for the Irish economy

So … impose water charges, force the low-paid to pay the ‘Universal Social Charge’, or bailout the banks to the tune of €60 billion, and our European masters are only doing their jobs.

Sorry, lads, there's nothing we can do, because the lads out in Brussels said so. And we can't change their opinions on anything.

Vote the wrong way in two European referenda and, instead of accepting the result, the little Irish “pixie-heads” have to vote again until they come up with the “right” result.

Demand a return of some of our fisheries rights, or an explanation as to why we gave away our natural resources in the Atlantic at a knock-down price, and you'll be told these decisions were irreversible.

But tell us we are due €13 billion plus interest in unpaid taxes, and those European bullies are suddenly threatening the very fabric of our democracy.

After years of inertia by our leaders in the face of European bullying, it's great to see Enda Kenny out battling on behalf of the Banana Republic ... standing up for the rights of the poor little Irish in the face of this unwelcome windfall.

An awful shower, indeed, those pesky Europeans!


(find me on twitter, @ciarantierney)

Different strokes

In Irish politics, a "stroker" is a person who is able to carry out secretive, illicit or underhand deals. And this week it felt as though our whole economy was based on "strokes".

It’s not every Government that threatens to take legal action because it does not want to take up a €13 billion windfall.

Especially one that was in the midst of a grave recession just a few short years ago.

But, then again, the Irish Government does not seem to be the same as any other Government on the planet.

To judge by this week’s events, they don’t really believe in the long-term viability of their economy. A small island, on the edge of Europe, clearly needs to offer generous incentives if it is to attract big business.                                                                                        

So when the European Commission declares that Apple owes Ireland €13 billion in back taxes, the first reaction of the Irish Government is to express dismay. The second is to threaten legal action against the European authorities.

In the year in which we have celebrated the centenary of the Easter Rising, which ultimately led to Irish freedom, there is an awful lot of soul-searching going on.

Perhaps it’s time to take stock and to re-evaluate our rightful place in the world.

Saying 'no' to a €13 billion windfall:
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan.

What would the men and women who gave up their lives for Irish freedom make of it all if they could see the Republic right now?

It’s been one hell of a summer. Baffling and bizarre, as the nation of ‘Saints and Scholars’ suffered two major embarrassments on the international stage.

It took the Brazilians, the people who have just impeached a president, to teach us a thing or two about how to deal with corruption.

They arrested two Irish men for the type of “ticket-touting” which seems to be taken for granted at the top of some Irish sporting organisations.

Indeed, despite some heroics on the water, the Irish made more headlines for alleged corruption by officials than the quality of the athletes who represented the country at the Olympic Games.

Barely had the country recovered from the shock of seeing two Irishmen being taken to Brazilian jails when the European Commission exposed Ireland as a ‘dodgy’ tax haven which provided “illegal” State aid to Apple for the past 25 years.

It seems that Apple, with the full blessing of the Irish Government, set up a "ghost" company to avoid paying tax in a country which is already famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for its low corporation tax rate.

Ireland is now known throughout the globe as the country where Apple should have paid €13 billion in back taxes, but where the Government does not want this sudden windfall which could pay for the Republic’s health service for a year.

The country is now known as the place where a global multinational corporation was able to take advantage of “incentives” or “tax breaks” which were not available to others.

The company paid just €50 in tax for every €1 million in profit it made after setting up a HQ in Cork.
According to the European Commission, Apple owes the Irish €13 billion because it has evaded paying tax under two agreements which date back to 1991.

That’s a lot of money for a country in the midst of a homelessness crisis, a hospital waiting list crisis, and where refugees are living in inhumane conditions for months or even years on end.

€13 billion would go a long way towards building social housing, taking patients off trolleys in overcrowded A&E departments, or tackling the mental health crisis which has seen so many of our young men take their own lives.

The Government should be ecstatic, you’d imagine. And yet they have spent more than €670,000 in legal fees to try to stop the EC from awarding it this €13 billion windfall.

Apple employs 5,000 people in Cork and has plans for a massive new data centre in Athenry, Co Galway.

It’s no wonder our Government wants to keep the company happy, in a country which has relied so much on FDI (foreign direct investment) to get over the recession.

There are 200,000 people employed in FDI companies across Ireland and Government Ministers are clearly spooked by the prospect of multi-nationals moving out of the country if they were faced with demands for back tax or a stricter tax regime.

Apple, hit with an unwelcome €13 billion tax bill

The EC ruling has caused some uproar, particularly among those who believe that there is one set of laws for the rich, or for global corporations, and another for the poor in the Emerald Isle.

In February of last year, for example, a young single mother from Co Donegal was awoken from her bed at 7am on a Monday morning and transferred to Mountjoy Prison for the terrible crime of not paying her TV licence.

She had not paid the €160 fee which state broadcaster RTE collects from every householder who owns a TV across the country.

The payment is compulsory, to fund a TV station which lost €2.8 million last year, despite a funding model which includes advertising revenue and the annual licence fee.

In contrast to the single mum, RTE employs a chat show host who earns €495,000 per year and a radio presenter who rakes in €416,000 to moan on behalf of the “little people” on national radio every weekday.

The single mum had managed to repay just under half of the €450 fine which had been imposed on her at Letterkenny District Court, but she found herself being hauled off to jail – by taxi.

She ended up spending just three hours in jail.

Countless people like her around the country must be baffled this week, that a corporation can get away with paying 0.0005% in tax while people who are struggling to pay the bills can be whisked off to jail for owing the State just over €200.

The message is simple, really . . . If you don’t pay your taxes you will go to jail, unless you’re a multinational corporation!

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