Politics – Mike Hynes

Let the People Sing! What’s Behind the Resurgence of the Music of the Wolf Tones?

The Wolf Tones were drifting towards retirement. As a three-piece band whose members are closing in on eighty years of age, they had a good career playing Irish rebel songs on the Folk scene in Ireland and to the Irish diaspora abroad. Some of these songs are controversial and deal with aspects of the troubles in Northern Ireland from a particular republican slant. But, by and large, the band had been successful, were well known on the Irish music scene, and had played some larger venues in Ireland and abroad over the decades.

An unlikely Irish sporting achievement was to change their retirement plans and catapult them back into the limelight and a new era of fame and notoriety. In a game played in Glasgow, the Irish women’s football team secured a famous 1-nil victory over Scotland to secure a place at the 2023 World Cup. A truly marvellous achievement, the team celebrated in style and players were filmed singing Celtic Symphony, a song by The Wolfe Tones written to celebrate the centenary of Celtic Football Club. The song featured the words ooh, ah, up the RA, a reference to support for the Provisional IRA. Brian Warfield of the Wolf Tones explained that those who were offended by the song were misguided about its intentions and that it was a direct quote from graffiti he’d seen on a wall in Glasgow, but from many politicians and those in the media, it was roundly condemned. UEFA began an investigation, and the FAI were eventually fined a total of €20,000, and some of the gloss was taken off the significant achievement of the women’s football team.

But while some politicians and commentators doubled down on the controversy, many others in Ireland simply couldn’t understand nor comprehend the fuss around singing a song that is widely known across Irish society and regularly sung and played from jukeboxes across the country. In supporting the team in the best way they thought possible, some began to normalise the chant thus inadvertently boosting the popularity of the Wolf Tones, their music, and their concert attendance.

Why this all came about is an interesting question but the answer, as always in the case of Ireland, is multifaceted and complicated.

One of the first explanations is that many of these songs and lyrics are ideal to sing along to. An Irish singsong is closely associated with spontaneity, passion, drink, community and diaspora, and the lyrics and songs of the Wolf Tones lend themselves to such activity. Music of this nature plays an important role in collective identity and confirming group solidity.

Another explanation is the normal time-honoured rebellion of youth. Once it was revealed that singing along to such songs will cause offence then some will be drawn to the subversive nature of singing and supporting the group that popularised the song, The Wolf Tones. Rebellion (pardon the pun) is part and parcel of the normal rite and passage of youth.

But other reasons led to the resurgence in popularity of these songs and, thus, the Wolf Tones.

There is an interesting scene in Martin Scorsese’s award-winning The Departed In which Matt Damon’s character, in conversation with his soon-to-be psychologist girlfriend, claims that ‘the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis’. It is an interesting statement, totally devoid of any evidence, but intriguing all the same.

Irish people don’t handle or deal with collective trauma very well: we tend to bury it and bury it deep. Our recent attempts to fully understand the immense trauma of the Civil War is a case in point. Apart from an excellent historical documentary by Throne Productions, little by way of attempting to deal with the deep family and community trauma the war has had and that is carried through generations through our genes was evident. Another case in point is The Great Hunger. Ireland suffered a calmative famine in the mid-nineteenth century and to this day we have never had a national reckoning with the events around and after such trauma. The official day of remembrance in May is not widely observed or known and there is no truly national event or activity fixed on the immense suffering and death of that period.

To this catalogue of collective suffering, we now add the troubles in Northern Ireland. We appear to be a long way from facing the terrible and deep hurt on all sides and the loss of so many lives in the later decades of the twentieth century. So, it should come as no surprise that a new generation, born after the Good Friday Agreement, would be unaware of the recent past and that the singing of some songs closely associated with the Provisional IRA would be so hurtful to large swathes of the Unionist community and others across the Island and further afield. In the absence of an understanding and public debate and discussion on the hurt from the troubles, the negative reaction to the singing of ooh, ah, up the RA might appear to be an overreaction to some innocuous remembrance and fun.

A new digital and Ryanair generation, unaware of the recent past and confident in a new sense of what it means to be Irish in the modern world, views the past through a rosy, green lens. Attending a Wolf Tone concert and singing along to the songs, as huge numbers did at Electric Picnic and the recent Point Depot concerts, is not a new surge towards militant republicanism but rather an expression of what it means to be Irish in a new multicultural Ireland that is trying to remember the past in a void of understanding and discussion.

And it is at this point I see a small comfort in the resurgence of the songs and music of the Wolf Tones. The same people who sing the songs with passion also widely cheer Rhasidat Adeleke and her marvellous achievements in athletics and chant the names of Festy Ebosele, Andrew Omobamidele, and Chiedozie Ogbene from the terraces at Landsdowne Road at Irish games. There is no evidence to suggest that renewed support for the Wolf Tones and their music has led to any significant upsurge in support for Far-Right politics. So, maybe such songs and collective singing may be an important counterweight to the anger and hate of the extreme right. While accusations of sectarianism in their songs have been levelled against the band, their supporters are in the vanguard of change in terms of social injustice and inequalities.

Submission to An Coimisiún Toghcháin on its Research Programme and Research Priorities

As a Lecturer and Researcher at the School of Political Science & Sociology, the University of Galway, I am strongly supportive of the need for new and significant research on electoral policy and procedures to help bolster and support democracy in Ireland and add to our overall body understanding in these domains. While the Irish public is evidently optimistic about our democracy and the democratic process, this should not be taken for granted, and, as evident from across Europe and elsewhere, conditions can change swiftly and markedly to impearl our democratic system and undermine our institutions. We must seek to collect as much data and information as possible on the electoral trends in attitudes in Ireland, which will provide deeper insight into how social and political processes have changed over the recent past and whether these have been positive or negative in terms of our democracy. Such research and analysis will help policymakers and civil society better understand what conditions lead to positive political and societal changes and perceptions of fairness, political efficacy, and trust in such political and societal systems.

I am strongly supportive of the guiding principles for such research: independence and impartiality; inclusivity and fairness; the advancement of scholarship and debate; and peer review and scrutiny. Of particular interest is the advancement of scholarship and debate as Ireland lags behind other nations in our understanding of the distinctive attitudes, motivations, and practices underpinning electoral policy and procedures in the country. There is a need for much more research, public debate, and scrutiny on what makes our democracy thrive and the potential challenges and pressures that undermine our democratic processes. The five proposed thematic research strands will require substantive data and research to be realised and such research will need to be appropriately funded and resourced. Longitudinal studies will allow for a more accurate analysis of attitudes, motivations, and electoral practices over time, and these are to be welcomed as empirical evidence will be needed to underpin any electoral reform that may be deemed necessary over the coming years.

While strongly supportive of the Commission and the need for such research, I do wish to add the following supportive recommendations and remarks:

All commissioned research should have a clear and transparent application process in which all organisations, groups, and individuals across society have a reasonable chance of applying for and successfully competing for
All commissioned research must be properly and sufficiently funded and resourced, and the Commission must fully support the dissemination of results through its communication channels and mechanisms
Of particular concern at this moment in time is the rise in online dis/misinformation amplifying bad actors and allowing manipulative individuals and groups, both internal and external, to have oversized influence and sway over our democracy. Therefore, the Commission should strive to understand how such dis/misinformation emerges, the actors involved in creating and disseminating such dis/misinformation, and its impact on democracy in Ireland through a series of robust research calls
All collected data from all research projects funded by the Commission should be freely available to academics, organisations, groups, and interested individuals to allow for the production of new analyses and understandings through secondary data analysis
The Commission should provide a central online repository to house the updated Electoral Register, past electoral and referendum results from all constituencies, and all conducted research, results, and associated data
The Commission should facilitate communicative processes on the state of democracy in Ireland through a series of public events, conferences, and community engagements throughout the country
The Commission should strive to promote its work and associated research through bespoke and audience-specific communicative processes to all sections of society in Ireland: school children, teenagers, young adults, mid-life adults, and elderly citizens.

Friday 12th January 2024

GDP: An unsophisticated measure of a nation’s well-being

Ireland’s economy is now growing at its fastest rate in seven years, according to the latest Quarterly National Accounts [1]. The figures, published by the Central Statistics Office, show the economy expanded by 7.7 per cent in GDP terms in the year to the end of June. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates are frequently used to measure the economic performance of a country or region. The more familiar use of GDP estimates is to calculate the growth of the economy from year to year and, indeed, more recently from quarter to quarter. The pattern of GDP growth is held to indicate the success or failure of economic policy and to determine whether an economy is ‘in recession’. But where does the concept, and the related Gross National Product (GNP), come from and what is actually measured?

GDP is an estimate of market throughput, adding together the value of all final goods and services that are produced and traded for money within a given period of time. It is typically measured by adding together a nation’s personal consumption expenditures (payments by households for goods and services), government expenditures (public spending on the provision of goods and services, infrastructure, debt payments, etc.), net exports (the value of a country’s exports minus the value of imports), and net capital formation (the increase in value of a nation’s total stock of monetized capital goods) [2].

President Roosevelt’s government used the statistics to justify policies and budgets aimed at bringing the US out of the depression. As it became more likely that the US would become involved in World War II, there was a concern about whether this would jeopardise the standard of living of US citizens who were just beginning to recover from the depression. GDP estimates were used to show that the economy could provide sufficient supplies for fighting World War II while maintaining adequate production of consumer goods and services [2]. It thus can be thought of as a measure of the potential fighting capacity of a nation at a given time.

The concept of GDP was developed by Simon Kuznets for a US Congress report in 1934, but even in this report, Kuznets warned against its use as a measure of welfare. At the time it was conceived, GDP was a useful measure but the emphasis on growing GDP and economic activity is now leading the world back toward the brink of collapse. It is time for new goals with a broader view of interconnectedness among long-term, sustainable economic, social, and ecological well-being [2]. To this end, I wish to reproduce a portion of a speech given by Robert Kennedy at the University of Kansas, on March 18, 1968. As governments struggle to measure well-being in other ways, it’s useful to look back at what then US Presidential candidate said about how this key dataset falls short:

“Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all.

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world.”

NB. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP) are closely related measures. GDP measures the total output of the economy in a period i.e. the value of work done by employees, companies and self-employed persons. This work generates income but not all of the income earned in the economy remains the property of residents (and residents may earn some income abroad). The total income remaining with Irish residents is the GNP and it differs from GDP by the net amount of income sent to or received from abroad. In Ireland’s case, for many years past, the amount belonging to persons abroad has exceeded the amount received from abroad, due mainly to the profits of foreign-owned companies, and our GNP is, therefore, less than our GDP. (Central Statistics Office, Cork)

[1] Burke-Kennedy, E. and Minihan, M. (2014). Irish economy growing at fastest rate in seven years. The Irish Times, Thursday 18th September 2014.
[2] Costanza, R., Hart, M., Posner, S. and Talberth, J. (2009). Beyond GDP: The need for new measures of progress. The Pardee Papers/No. 4/January 2009. Boston University, Boston, MA.
[3] Marcuss, R.D. and R.E. Kane. (2007). US National Income and Product Statistics: Born of the Great Depression and World War II. Bureau of Economic Analysis: Survey of Current Business 87(2): 32-46.

Have we fashioned another unique Irish bubble?

As a country, Ireland has suffered more than many from the international financial crash of 2008 chiefly due to an over-reliance on the construction sector. But I fear that another unsustainable economic bubble has now been shaped. (Re)building an economy focused on one industry and model is a high-risk strategy, a case of all eggs in one basket. For Ireland, over the past number of years, our government has promoted the country as the main European headquarters and destination for largely US-based ICT corporations and industries. But alas, these firms may not be here for the indigenous educated flexible workforce and ideal working environment but rather the very generous corporate tax rate on offer.

My concern is that many of these companies are in Ireland because we facilitate tax avoidance. At present, Ireland has a corporate tax rate of just 12½% but it has been reported that some major organisations pay much less than this [1], although the Department of Finance disputes these figures. Nevertheless, even the government’s own recently commissioned report maintains that Ireland’s corporation tax averages out “at just under 11%” [2] (corporate tax rates across the EU ranged from 10% to 35% [3]). These powerful corporations have found our leaders readily available to meet and listen to their needs [4] resulting in the country being at the centre of a controversial storm over multinational tax avoidance due to aggressive tax strategies deployed here by the likes of Apple and Google. Last year US senators John McCain and Carl Levin publicly stated Ireland was a tax haven after it emerged Apple paid taxes of just 2% on its foreign earnings in 2012 [5]. The ‘double Irish’ is a tax avoidance strategy that multinational corporations use to lower their corporate tax liability. The strategy uses payments between related entities in a corporate structure to shift income from a higher-tax country to a lower-tax country [6].

Moreover, Google continues to be our biggest exporter [7] but I pose the question: What does Google make and how can it be appropriately quantified? While I acknowledge they build/create software such entities are very difficult to define in terms of where they are built or assembled. Code can be downloaded and uploaded from any destination in a matter of seconds/minutes so who can really tell what components have emanated from where? And exporting these products takes place virtually not in trucks and ships leaving Dublin port. Furthermore, in which jurisdiction are profits created and is it right that such profits that do not emanate from here are washed through Ireland? Seamus Coffey, a lecturer in economics at UCC, maintains; “Google does not generate its massive profits from 2,000 or so sales staff based in Dublin. These are replaceable and moveable without any significant cost or loss to Google” [8]. This suggests a very flexible and highly mobile workforce with limited ties to Ireland. Should conditions change or opportunities to move to another European city be provided how many of these workers will dig in their heels to stay?

But surely we have a well-educated workforce to sustain this sector if others leave? On closer inspection, this may not be the case. Our universities have begun to fall behind our European neighbours in terms of OS rankings [9]. In its ICT Skills Audit, the non-profit training promotion agency Fastrack to IT (FIT) estimates that there are 4,500 vacancies in Ireland’s ICT sector [10]. These are not being filled, because of “the severely limited supply of suitably skilled applicants”. Furthermore, Irish students fall far below their EU counterparts when it comes to learning and speaking other languages. The end result is that multinational ICT companies, attracted here by our corporation tax rate, are forced to recruit staff from overseas to fill their Irish offices [11] and many of the multinational ICT companies have expressed concern at this skills shortage even as they establish new operations here [12].

That said, the importance of the digital economy to Ireland at present is significant. The ICT sector in Ireland attracts global investment with nine of the top ten US ICT companies operating here. There are over 200 IDA-supported ICT companies, directly employing approximately 36,000 people, which represents 22% of total exports, estimated at €35 billion [13]. At present, these employees live and pay tax in this country but broad questions must be asked about this sector and how sustainable it is in the long-term. The continued success, or otherwise, of this sector, moreover, may not lie in our hands. Pressure for tax reform is now coming from our European partners [14] the OECD [15] and the US [16]. Many of these proposals aim to ensure that corporate profits are taxed where economic activities generating the profits are performed and where value is created.

As a country, we have form and panache when it comes to creating unsustainable economic bubbles. Those who lived through the recession of the 1980s remember the closure of the massive FDI factories (largely built with the aid of huge tax concessions) across the country leaving many communities decimated. Our most recent bubble, fuelled by the construction sector and cheap credit, is still vivid and the hurt continues right across our society. Once again, as with previous ‘miracles’, we have no champions that question a strategy that places our recovery in the hands of large globalised corporations. I suggest that relying on the goodwill of such organisations to stay on the periphery of Europe once fairness has been restored to the European tax system is foolhardy. I hope I’m wrong, but my gut feeling says otherwise.

References
[1] RTÉ. (2012). Effective corporation tax rate may be only 6.5%. Wednesday 24th October 2012. [Available from www.rte.ie/news/2012/1024/343020-corporation-tax-rate/]
[2] The Department of Finance. (2014). Effective Rates of Corporation Tax in Ireland. Technical Paper, April 2014. [Available from www.finance.gov.ie/sites/default/files/140407%20FINAL%20Technical%20Paper%20on%20Effective%20Rates%20of%20Corporation%20Tax%20in%20Ireland.pdf].
[3] European Movement Ireland. (2014). Just the Facts – Irish Corporate Tax. [Available from www.europeanmovement.ie/just-the-facts-irish-corporate-tax/].
[4] Ross, S. & Webb, N. (2012). The Untouchables: The people who helped wreck Ireland, and are still running the show. Dublin: Penguin Ireland.
[5] Carswell, S. & Keena, C. (2013). Questions remain for US senators over tax law. The Irish Times, 17th October 2013. [Available from www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland/questions-remain-for-us-senators-over-tax-law-1.1563332].
[6] Darby, J.B. (2007). International “Tax Planning: Double Irish More than Doubles the Tax Saving”, Practical US/International Tax Strategies 11(9), 15 May 2007.
[7] Irish Exporter Association. (2014). Information and Communications Technology (ICT) continues to dominate Ireland’s exports. [Available from www.irishexporters.ie/section/IEATop250ExportersPublicationNamesGoogleIrelandasLargestExporterinIreland].
[8] Coffey, S. (2014). The great corporation tax debate. The Irish Independent, 22nd April 2014. [Available from www.independent.ie/business/irish/the-great-corporation-tax-debate-30205317.html#sthash.mazzfuS8.dpuf].
[9] The Guardian. (2014). QS world university rankings 2014: top 200. [Available from www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/ng-interactive/2014/sep/16/-sp-qs-world-university-rankings-2014].
[10] Fastrack to IT. (2013). FIT ICT Skills audit launched, highlighting shortage of suitable job applicants in key tech fields. [Available from www.fit.ie/index.php?page=ict-skills-audit].
[11] McCabe, S. (2013). Lack of language skills hurts our employment chances. The Irish Independent, 15th October 2013. [Available from www.independent.ie/business/irish/lack-of-language-skills-hurts-our-employment-chances-29659509.html].
[12] Whelan, G. (2013). Open minds, open hearts, open Ireland. Forfás White Paper. [Available from www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/media/committees/jobsenterpriseandinnovation/OPEN-IRELAND—WHITE-PAPER.pdf].
[13] IDA Ireland. (2014). Information & Communications Technologies. [Available from www.idaireland.com/business-in-ireland/information-communication/].
[14] Bettendorf, Leon, Michael P Devereux, Albert van der Horst, Simon Loretz, and Ruud A de Mooij (2010). Corporate tax harmonization in the EU. Economic Policy, 63:537-590.
[15] OECD. (2014). Centre for Tax Policy and Administration: BEPS – Frequently Asked Questions. [Available from www.oecd.org/ctp/beps-frequentlyaskedquestions.htm].
[16] McCabe, S. (2104). Obama plans to axe tax advantages for US firms investing here. The Irish Independent. 8th May 2014. [Available from www.independent.ie/business/irish/obama-plans-to-axe-tax-advantages-for-us-firms-investing-here-30253939.html]

The Queen’s Speech, Dublin | 18th May 2011

Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh made their first state visit to the Republic of Ireland from 17th May to 20th May 2011, at the invitation of the President of Ireland Mary McAleese. It was the first visit by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland since 1911 and the visit was seen as a symbolic normalisation of British-Irish relations following the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. She also delivered a widely praised speech on the 18th of May on the history of relations between the two countries and she offered her sympathy and regret to all those who had suffered from centuries of conflict between Britain and Ireland in a powerful and personal address to the Irish nation. This Wordle of her speech proves an interesting visual of the actual speech content, the emphasis she placed on certain words, and the message she attempted to get across to her audience.