General Election and Repayments

So, enough is enough and an election will happen...soon.

Fianna Fail, well Brian Cowen, is using the budget and its full passage as a reason to delay the inevitable until “early” next year. This could be as early as late January and as late as April.

It is a certainty that Fianna Fail will win fewer seats than at any time in recent history. Indeed, it seems as though some feel that their existence as a political force is damaged beyond repair for a generation. A recent poll put Fianna Fail fourth behind Sinn Fein. One forecast has Fianna Fail winning as few as 23 seats in the General Election when it finally does happen.

For what it's worth, the Green Party also seem destined for comparatively heavy losses after a term in government that can be described as turbulent at best. They too may end up going the way of party leader John Gormley's former constituency adversary and his party, although with 3% reputed support it is perhaps too early to know.

So, how about Fine Gael and the Labour Party? It would seem that the two parties are the government-in-waiting with a race between Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore to win more seats and take the throne being vacated by Brian Cowen.

With national support at 32%, Fine Gael would appear to be the favourites, but Eamon Gilmore is the most popular, or least unpopular, choice as next Taoiseach. Gilmore is 41% of people's preferred choice with Enda Kenny polling in the mid 20s. Brian Cowen polled a miserable 8%.

Both parties unveiled their own Budget 2011 plans on the same day and both are against Fianna Fail's plans to reduce the minimum wage by €1 per hour to €7.65. Where they do diverge is on taxation, namely in relation to a third tax rate for the highest earners. Under Labour's plans, anyone earning over €100,000 per year would be subject to a rate of 48% for earnings over that amount.

Fine Gael's former finance tsar Richard Bruton ruled out the possibility of Fine Gael going along with that rate in government with Labour. He cited that people on the highest tax rate would face 62% of their earnings over €100,000 going to the taxman when other deductions are taken into account, which Fine Gael feel would be too prohibitive.

As well as that, Fine Gael have committed to the €6 billion in adjustments that Brian Lenihan will publish in this Tuesday's budget, while Labour's plans would be for a €5 billion adjustment with €500 million being put into a jobs fund, for a net figure of €4.5 billion.

However, what the main opposition parties say at the moment won't have any real resonance until this time next year when Michael Noonan, Joan Burton or whoever else it may be gets the chance to ratify their first budget in government. This is presuming that Lenihan's budget goes through this week and FG-Lab don't decide on an Emergency Budget at some point in 2011.

Publishing plans that sound more promising than the seemingly impending doom we currently face with Fianna Fail and the Greens is fine, but FG-Lab will have the EU and the IMF to answer to. This means that Angela Merkel and Barack Obama are the ones calling the shots in this country; not Enda Kenny, Eamon Gilmore or, by some sort of political aberration, Brian Cowen.

This promised €15 billion adjustment in cuts and tax hikes is going to cause unbelievable pain and anger in this country over the next four years. We haven't even seen a budget yet and we have had 50,000 people taking to the streets to voice their discontent.

What everybody in Ireland must realise is that the €15 billion is what were are going to be suffering to recover or rein in over the next four years. All of those cuts, tax increases and public sector job losses are being made to secure the €85 billion EU/IMF bailout - which will have to be repaid over a much longer period than four years.

Every year we have to pay 5.8% of that €85 billion back, which is just over €4.9 billion in interest repayments, still leaving the €85 billion itself unpaid.

That is the equation that must be engrained in the mind. Yes, the €15 billion in cuts is going to be tough on us all, but the Irish people are going to be paying the bill on restoring the public finances and keeping the banks afloat for a long, long time to come. This is where the deepest anger must lie.

Ten years from now, where will Ireland be? What will have changed? The fact that we will still be paying off our massive national debt might be the only certainty at the moment.

We have no idea if the hundreds of thousands of job losses over the last few years will be recovered. We don't know how many people will emigrate due to the lack of prospects and the cuts in social welfare. In fact, we don't even know if there will be a Euro any more.

The most foreboding sign of this mess is that the finish line will not arrive for decades. So, if you're an angry protester, don't waste all of your anger in the coming weeks, because you're going to be protesting indefinitely.

It is a marathon, not a sprint, and that is what the people are going to have to come to terms with.