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News from ireland
By Frank Shouldice
Gov’t Takes Pay Hike
With widespread evidence of the economy slowing down, the Irish government
aroused an angry public reaction by awarding itself a double-figure pay
hike. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will take a 14 percent pay rise which, at
38,000 euros, is itself worth 5,000 euros more than the average industrial
wage.
The substantial pay increase will apply to cabinet ministers as well as
senior officers in the civil service, garda (Irish police force) and academia.
Its generous terms were recommended by a civil service review committee,
and the Taoiseach dismissed criticism by saying the pay award was calculated
by an independent body.
“I don’t tend to worry about these things,” he said
blithely when it was pointed out he will now earn 310,000 euros per year.
“The Government will implement the pay scales . . . that’s
it.”
For many, however, it is strange that the elected leader of a country
of about four million people should be paid a salary greater than that
of other international leaders, including George W. Bush, Gordon Brown
and the premiers of economic powerhouses like Germany and France.
In comparison with his EU colleagues, Bertie Ahern will earn well over
double the salary of the Dutch prime minister and six times the pay of
Polish counterpart Donald Tusk. The Taoiseach insisted he would not trouble
himself with such comparisons.
However, as state revenue begins to tail off from taxing a slowing economy,
the immediate prospect for state finances is not so encouraging. Wage
negotiations between unions and state bodies are expected to be more difficult
than usual, and the government’s readiness to handsomely reward
itself in a time of retrenchment will surely raise the temperature. Following
the pay award controversy, Fianna Fáil’s approval rating
crashed by nine percent (to 33 percent) in a TMS/mrbi opinion poll. Bertie
Ahern’s personal rating fell by an even more significant 15 percent
(to 43 percent).
O’Loan Reopens Nelson Case
 Northern Ireland
police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan has found that the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(now named the Police Service of Northern Ireland) failed to deal properly
with threats that preceded the murder of human rights lawyer Rosemary
Nelson.
The 40-year-old solicitor was killed when a bomb was planted beneath her
car in Lurgan, Co. Armagh in 1999. A loyalist group calling itself the
Red Hand Defenders claimed responsibility for the killing.
Rosemary Nelson represented a number of high-profile cases and also acted
on behalf of the Garvaghy Road Residents, a nationalist community opposed
to the Orange Lodge parade walking through the Garvaghy neighborhood in
Portadown, Co. Armagh. Her work attracted open hostility and even death
threats from loyalist elements, but the ombudsman’s investigation
into her death found that the police “did not properly consider
the particular nature of Mrs. Nelson’s public profile or the level
of concern about her safety.”
Nelson’s murder was reviewed by Canadian judge Peter Cory who recommended
that an independent tribunal of inquiry be set up to examine the case.
That inquiry is now scheduled to start, but the police ombudsman’s
report supports the suspicion that the RUC failed to provide protection
for the lawyer.
Nuala O’Loan’s report referred to some 20 incidents, including
seven death threats, which preceded Mrs. Nelson’s murder. The report
also found “ill-disguised hostility” towards the lawyer by
several senior RUC officers.
Responding to the ombudsman’s report, Maggie Beirne, director of
the Committee of the Administration of Justice (CAJ), welcomed a fuller
examination when the tribunal of inquiry begins. “The ombudsman
has confirmed that those threats were not treated with the gravity and
urgency required,” said Beirne.
Less Competitive Ireland Losing Jobs
 Manufacturing in
Ireland took another heavy blow with the announcement that Seagate is
to close its high-tech plant at Limavady, Co. Derry. The closure will
eliminate 900 jobs in the northwest with the company moving operations
to a cheaper alternative in Indonesia. Meanwhile Waterford Glass said
it would cut its thousand-strong workforce in half, adding to a worrying
month on the employment front.
Exports from the famous glassware factory have been steadily hit by
a weakened US dollar and strong competition from Eastern Europe. When
the cuts are implemented it will leave about 500 employees at a company
that employed 3,200 people just twenty years ago.
These cuts may not even be the end of drastic measures required to turn
the company around. Facing a net debt of 412 million euros chief executive
John Foley attributed some of the company’s difficulties on high
operating costs in Ireland. “While you could be tempted to slash
your wrists in this environment, what the situation does is ensure that
you ruthlessly focus on the cost base of the company to ensure that, even
though there are outside pressures, you control what you can control,”
said Foley.
The announcements in Derry and Waterford follow a spate of redundancies
at a range of multinationals including Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Motorola,
O2 and Vodafone. Intel, the largest employer in the private sector in
Ireland, also announced it would cut 200 jobs from the payroll at Leixlip,
Co. Kildare. Intel manufactures high-tech microprocessors and has been
a leading light during the so-called Celtic Tiger years.
The company’s importance to Ireland’s manufacturing base
is underlined by the fact that with 5,150 employees at Leixlip, Intel
has invested about 7 billion euros in its Irish operation and received
considerable support from the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) Ireland.
“Intel Ireland needs to remain competitive and agile in a dynamic
marketplace,” said company general manager Jim O’Hara. “While
this action is very difficult, it is essential that we face up to and
respond to the competitive challenges. We continue to be a critical asset
for the Intel Corporation and we are all committed to ensuring our success
in the long haul. The most effective way to do this is to benchmark ourselves
aggressively against our global competition and ensure we deliver a unique
advantage from Ireland.”
O’Hara insisted that the cuts did not signify a more serious threat
to Intel’s future in Leixlip. An IDA spokeswoman told The Irish
Times there were no grounds for alarm. “We don’t see it as
a cause of concern,” she said. “It is very much an internal
restructuring.”
However, Ireland’s manufacturing base has eroded steadily in recent
years in the face of intense competition from Eastern Europe, China and
India. An estimated 30,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the state
over the past five years.
Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar said the decline needed to
be arrested as a matter of urgency. “High-tech exporters are no
longer contributing to Irish economic growth, which was so crucial in
the 1990’s. Ireland’s share of international trade has fallen
by over a third since 2002,” he said, adding that Intel’s
announcement was “a grim indicator” of Ireland losing ground
in such a critical sector.
EU Warns Gov’t Over Irish Language
 The EU has
blamed the Irish government for failing to produce an up-to-date version
of grammar for the Irish language. Commissioner for Multilingualism Leonard
Orban pointed out that since Irish was adopted as the 23rd official language
within the EU, there are no current reference books for translators and
the last edition of Irish Grammar is now out of print.
The commissioner also pointed out that there is a shortage of translators
and interpreters fluent in Irish and other languages applicable to the
EU. “We are determined to defend the right of languages at community
level,” he said, asking that the Irish government make a bigger
effort in recruiting and training interpretive staff.
“The lack of suitable translators entails a risk for the Irish translation
unit,” he warned. As if to underline the situation, he indicated
that the print body of EU law – which runs to 100,000 pages –
has yet to be translated into Irish. With an “acute shortage”
in qualified staff, EU recognition of Irish as a living language may yet
prove just a symbolic success.
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