The first time the Irish tricolour was ever flown was in 1848, long before the war of independence, long before the Irish constitution and not many people know that. Further more, even fewer know that the flag was conceived by Thomas Francis Meagher and first unveiled in Waterford on March 7th 1848, at 33 The Mall – his lasting vision for the true colours of the flag was peace (white) between the unionists (orange) and republicans (green) who all wanted to share the one land of Ireland. At some point in history the flag was reversed to position green as the primary colour but the symbolism and meaning remains the same.

Now, how many Irish people could tell you that? How often have you ever seen people express pride in the flag outside of a sporting event? This March (5th-6th) an event to commemorate the message, and first raising, of our nation’s greatest symbol, will take place in Waterford. An international event with guests from France and the United States will take place, to acknowledge the history of our flag and create a little bit of pride and goodwill in these difficult and gloomy times. For more information check out http://www.1848tricolour.com and join in the festivities.

Disclosure: I am a member of the organising committee for the 1848 Tricolour Celebration.

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1) You are what you tweet – the Gillian McKeith debacle. Yes midway through the year, we were treated to a rather scrumptious story from the twittersphere. A spat had developed between nutritionist Gillian McKeith and Bad Science guy Ben Goldacre. In what can only be referred to as an alleged sequence of misdemeanours, tweets were sent that accused Ben Goldacre of telling lies. Then suddenly the twittersphere went nuts, the topic was trending and retweets were rife. Once the story hit the big time, the tweets from the Gillian McKeith entitled account disappeared (i.e. were deleted) and the world’s worst cover up was attempted including the statement that the account was not Gillian’s despite several official tweets and logos, and prior printed publications suggesting otherwise. Ladies and gentlemen – how not to use Twitter!

2) Dublin Metro despite all needs. Yes, I’ve been banging on about this for years now but it’s still as valid an argument as ever in my opinion. I was delighted earlier in the year, to see that Kevin Myers has joined my band wagon of sense by slamming the metro in one of his columns. I have great time for Kevin’s articles, his lucid and direct arguments, even if sometimes I don’t agree fully – it was a relief to know that I was not alone in my thoughts on what I consider to be one of the biggest travesties in the state. This year, Ireland is swinging from the door frame of wreck and ruin. The country has been swept with budget cuts, banks have been all but nationalised, the IMF even turned up for a friendly chat, we were dealt an austerity budget, and in the end we were forced to take a bailout loan that the country will probably never have the capacity to pay back in full. Yes, Ireland will be in the back pocket of the IMF and more worryingly, the EU, for a very long time to come. It’s never a good idea to be the littlest member of the family whose causing trouble for your bigger brothers and I believe it won’t be long before we see hard evidence of that. Anyway, I digress. Despite all of these economically horrific events the one thing that has not been cut is the Dublin Metro project. Roads around the country have been slashed, hospitals will probably be increasingly centralised (i.e. further limit access to), and other nationwide capital expenditure for local councils is being slashed too. However, Dublin still wants its metro and a two finger salute to all those who speak sense to the contrary. The whole thing has become so absurd at this stage that despite there being no money to construct the metro, the project still isn’t being taken off the table. Sheer stubbornness, ignorance and callous disregard for their fellow man. One really does have to wonder whose legacy this metro is. No project as ridiculous as this, in these austere times, would ever survive if it wasn’t to serve as a tombstone epithet for some politician.

3) Student protests and Garda violence. This was the moment that really worried me this year – the moment that democracy all but died. What was largely a peaceful, in some parts sit down, protest by the students of Ireland, turned to a brutal and characterless assault of anyone that dared not be moved. Students moving through the streets, bleeding, Gardaí caught on camera kicking and beating students with truncheons. There could be no cover up for these events, in this time. Yet again Twitter and other social networks started to buzz with photos and videos of the events as they unfolded. We still await the outcome of what will no doubt be a suffocated inquiry.

4) Attack on Prince Charle’s car. Student protests in England surrounding education fees and such, boiled over into troubles and riots. During said troubles, Prince Charles and Camilla were being driven to the London Palladium for a night of unashamed entertainment. So, what would one do? I know Jeeves, let’s drive our most opulent vehicle through the riots. That will calm the students and show them that all is fair and equal. Boom, bang, crash! What more can one say…

5) Wikileaks. Well the year wouldn’t be worth mentioning if we didn’t mention Wikileaks and the debacle surrounding it. For anyone living under a rock for the past year, Wikileaks is essentially true freedom of information sped up and nothing more. However, when civil servants and petty government officials who feel they can be less than diplomatic in their words and actions have information tied to them, released to the public without the option of redacting it, then there’s a problem. Wikileaks isn’t making up anything, it’s simply setting free information that has been gathered by elected and employed public officials, on behalf of their countries. In other words, public information that citizens elected their governments to manage and gather in the best interest of the country. However, as we can see from some of the leaks, not all that information is in best interests, indeed it would appear that a right bunch of immature, undiplomatic and untrustworthy individuals are running this globe. Founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange is strangely finding himself at the centre of a scandal and arrest with subsequent trial at the same time the US are screaming for his head – hmm, me ponders. Amazon cancelled the hosting used by Wikileaks, PayPal froze access to the accounts used for donations to Wikileaks and apparently also froze the accounts of people who donated money to Wikileaks because the US State Department told them it was illegal. Just what kind of people do we have running this world; Where repressed news reports and public information is a reason to assassinate somebody’s character and act in an undemocratic way?

6) Horse Outside. Well, well, “Horse Outside”. The duo known as the Rubber Bandits, known for their antics on RTE’s Republic of Telly, released what can only be described as the track of the year. A controversial, possibly offensive to most societal groups, riotous composition and video to accompany it. I think it’s best to approach the new year with a smile on our faces and a happy state of mind. So, with that philosophy I salute 2010′s passing with one more play of “Horse Outside”.

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Some of the main focal points of the budget include a cap on public service salaries at €250,000 (as I noted yesterday), cuts to social welfare payments, cuts to capital spending, a notable increase in the PRSI contribution for the self-employed, removal of the stamp duty relief (now 1% on all sales under €1 million, and 2% on sales above €1 million), and a widening of the tax bands so that more people are “contributing” to the tax take of the state.

Let’s look at some of the things that weren’t done. To start the cap of €250K on public service salaries is ridiculous, this figure is way too high as I explained in yesterday’s opinion. It’s not that there are enough people earning this to make a significant contribution back to the coffers but rather it plays on the expected average wage and thus increases costs right across the board, untenably so. Ministers and An Taoiseach received a cut. Again a frankly ridiculous token gesture that still sees An Taoiseach earning more than the UK Prime Minister – take a hit, share the pain and then people will accept your proposals. Give them free cheese while you party hard with the leaders of the big countries and you’ll lose them forever – lead by example An Taoiseach. In capital spending we hear that many road projects will be stopped due to cutbacks but still the white elephant that is the Dublin Metro is allowed to proceed as if nothing was wrong. What exactly is the fascination with this project that it has to be kept on the table, even in the most austere times when the potential few who might use it will probably end up emigrating so that it can be built? Means testing social welfare, children’s allowance and pensions was not entertained. Such a simple idea that should gel well with a cabinet who seemingly believes that those who can afford to pay, must and I ask why not those who can afford to go without, be allowed to go without? Rather than cuts in children’s allowance, etc for everyone why not means test it for equitable treatment of the truly deserving? Same goes for pensions, I can’t imagine that ex-Ministers will really be requiring the level of pension payments of which they are in receipt of? Pensions are supposed to be about maintaining a good standard of life after the work is done, not about acquiring even more wealth and expanding savings.

Some basic things that I would have changed anyhow, for what it’s worth. The reality however is that amid all this talk of cuts and harsh measures, we really are just farting around in a huge cup of tea with no chance of achieving anything other than a comical enactment of a Brownian Motion demonstration. The wonderful bailout still hangs over our heads like a net of Damoclean rocks awaiting orders to fall. Senior bond holders (to you and me, this means people who took out a risky investment plan but paid enough in so that nobody would tell them they lost money in a downturn) still go untouched at our expense, even against the recommendations of the IMF. Yes, the IMF (the experts in sorting out financial disaster) were overruled by the boys in the EU who controlled the sweet box full of treehouse monies – thankfully our fate lies in their learned and experienced hands! Yes, the bailout we will not escape. It’s a mathematical certainty of which, only the most unscrupulous liars would have no trouble in denying.

How will the man in the street feel tomorrow morning? Probably a little more annoyed than he feels today, probably a few Euro worse off per week, probably not any different in terms of surviving than he was 12 months previous nor any worse off in those basic terms than he will be in 12 months to come. The country does need a heavy FDI injection to get some money circulating again while we endure the illusion that someday it will all be over and we can go back to 4*4′s in every driveway, bringing the 2.3 children to school and borrowing to acquire a holiday home which would be situated at most, 250 miles from your doorstep but ultimately people just need a reason to drive themselves forward again.

Apathy will attack the heart of the society for some time to come but we need to keep doing something, not for financial gain nor debt removal but for the continuance of the human race and to make life bearable. Very few will end up in 3rd world conditions, it’s attitude and spirit that keeps our heads above water while our meager finances more than cover the real cost of living. Only when man stares into the abyss and all that. I hold out hope that society will bond again, that neighbourly relations and community projects will thrive again and people will turn away from the “it’s my entitlement” attitude that has stifled so much in recent times. I have begun to see small pockets of this spirit grow in the last few months and I dearly hope it will foster the multitude into a new way of being – the old way of being. There’s no need to panic, unless of course you really want to. Maybe the threat to the Irish ladybird at the hands of the Asian ladybird is enough to push you over the edge?

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Much is being uttered regarding a cap on civil service salaries – most recent indications suggest €250,000 will be the limit applied. I do subscribe to the philosophy that there is no greater pain and suffering at any level is individual, beyond comparison. As such I always stay clear of making a logical argument into a battle of two sides where each defeats the other and the problem lives to fight another day – the kind of politics that has been played in this country for way too long. Without applying the classical “but”, I do still feel that as a corrective measure, this rumoured limit is still grossly excessive. Public service is just that, it is people who seek a career that aims to improve the standard of life for everyone and to partake in the running of the country – it’s a vocation of such. Sadly in the last 10 years the public service has been seen as a gravy train by many (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly). There are many lower paid public servants that rightly voice their concerns about cuts but there are equally as many, excessively high-paid public servants, with guaranteed pensions of 50% of their final paycheck who scurry for subterfuge when genuinely angry people come knocking. This is where the gravy train view of the public service gains most credence and it needs to stop. It needs to be tackled by sensible caps on top level scales, the kind of salary that will only attract somebody who wants to make a difference and serve their country not chancers looking for big money first and duty second. The guaranteed pension at 50% of final salary for a full service term also needs to be scrapped or alternatively made less exclusive and opened up to the public to choose as a viable pension offering compared to the leading institutions – either way a flat 50% is not a viable payout.

One of my biggest worries is the legacy of the Greens and the carbon tax inclusions in this budget. Carbon tax was pushed so much as an environmentally conscious mechanism to reduce emissions. However, last week, in the criticism of the 4-year plan by other political forces such as the EU, the truth became blindingly obvious (not as if we didn’t already know). One criticism of the plan by the EU (to save a crippled economy and bring more cash into the public finances) was that they would have liked to see greater carbon taxes. So, there it is folks, the bitter proof – there is no interest in using carbon tax at all, to dissuade pollution or emissions, it’s plain and simple, a tax generator to screw the common man in everything he does. Even in a crippled economy. I dread to see what else will appear under this guise in years to come.

News broke this morning regarding the honour bestowed upon Brian Lenihan, as worst finance minister in the EU. To be honest, I never had much time for Brian, always thought that his ideas and interactions with the public were the actions of a desperate man. However, I don’t think it fair that he has been branded as such in this poll. He inherited a poisoned chalice, a bird’s nest of public finance mismanagement, and a black hole of financial corruption (at least a black hole in terms of public knowledge, some government officials may well have been aware of what lied upon if not beyond the event horizon).

It’s still cold outside; about the only thing that hasn’t entered a state of flux in the last week. I’m working in a public service building whose temperature was well below the HSA guideline minimum (due to heating failure) but nobody left on such grounds. Not a bad result for a country that is supposed to be a militant, unionised farce who drops shovels at the first breach of conditions. Despite what some people want to believe (let’s call them secondary problem creators, primary problem failures) this is not “Carry On at Your Convenience” – if you don’t get the reference then try to watch that movie with its own brand of bawdy, British comedy at some stage that it will probably be aired this festive season. If only people invested the same effort into problem solving as they did into pitting groups against each other; We’d not be in this predicament now, that’s for sure – the eye would never have been off the ball.

So, we sit and wait for the published budget to be aired tomorrow afternoon. We await our financial fate with unprecedented, nervous anticipation. For many years budgets have come and gone. I certainly never paid much heed to the prophecies of doom in previous times. I don’t think we have ever really had a harsh budget in recent history. However, tomorrow’s tale has me a little concerned for the future of society. I foresee a long Winter of civil unrest, should certain things come into being. Yes, it will be cold for a long time to come.

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Left to right: Jonathan Brazil, Anne Brazil (Happy Hearts), Tracy Power (Irish Heart Foundation)

Here’s a copy of a letter from Tracy, thanking everyone for their contributions, on behalf of the Irish Heart Foundation.

Letter from Tracy on behalf of Irish Heart Foundation

And here’s a shot of me in pain for the last mile of the run itself.

Oh the pain of the last mile!

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The conversation went from acknowledging the catastrophic leadership of Fianna Fail to immediately seeking a scapegoat to blame more for the problems. Granted the Greens deserve a piece of any right thinking person’s mind, on any given day but to move to them as a worthy recipient for the blame deserving of Fianna Fail and their gross negligence in office at a time before the Greens even had a seat at the cabinet table! Is it any wonder that this country is in such a state? How do we ever expect to progress from the playground if we can’t allow ourselves to identify right and wrong when it comes to our favourite political team? When will we see politicians as employees to get a job done rather than somebody to support as a hobby? It sickens me to the core that we live this way.

Some years ago I was accused of attending the Robert Mugabe School of Economics by a die hard Fianna Fail supporter simply because I wanted to see more emphasis on regional development instead of centralised infrastructure and a focus on industrial and high end jobs to bolster the economy rather than building speculative retail centres and dubious ring roads whose real raison d’etre was always to open up land for rezoning to retail rather than traffic management. I think history will reflect well on my beliefs and hopefully his will be retained, embarrassingly at the back of his mind. Let us never forget that the self-centred, centralised policies of Fianna Fail caused this and those who subscribed to those policies because “they were alright Jack”, well you deserve special mention in the history books.

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Well, I’ve decided to do the same again this year, Dublin Marathon, with the proceeds going towards the Irish Heart Foundation (IHF). The IHF do a lot of good work with respect to supporting research, providing education and training in the area of heart problems and stroke. Heart disease is currently Ireland’s biggest killer and stroke is affecting over 10,000 people a year. I believe it to be a very worthy charity that is reliant on donations for 90% of its funding.

The race is on October 25th and I would be much obliged if you would consider sponsoring me for the event – no donation is too small or any less appreciated. You can visit my MyCharity.ie page and donate online at http://www.mycharity.ie/event/jbrazil2010/ (this is a highly reputable 3rd party service that collects money and sends it directly to the intended charity).

Thanks in advance!

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The charm of the vulnerable, less fortunate, minority?

“Question my attitude? I’ll show you f**kin’ attitude!”

I was very fortunate to grow up in Ireland’s oldest city, Waterford, while even at times of recession and underdeveloped localities, kids had the resource of culture, a sense of pride in what was theirs, and a healthy respect for right and wrong. Now I’m not saying that kids didn’t fall off the tracks, of course they did but it was isolated incidents not a daily routine that turned into a reign of terror.

Today is a very different story. In ever-increasing numbers, young kids, young adults, and alarmingly their parents, are laying siege to our fair country. Anti-social behaviour is now a way of life, for which it is almost protected in local by-laws as a human right to invade and terrorise public spaces. Anyone who has not experienced anti-social behaviour or those who have witnessed it but never tried to tackle it, will find the next statement rather shocking: If you live in a private (whatever that means) housing estate that is being terrorised by gangs of ill-behaving teenagers (and sometimes younger) you are powerless to do anything to stop it…

The Garda response time is such that it is a physical impossibility that they arrive on time to catch the offenders in the act. If they do catch them and they are under 16 then they are simply dropped back home to Mammy and Daddy only to return an hour later, seeking revenge. If they are over 16, they are cautioned and told to move on – again the same problem ensues. If you can identify, provide video footage (since it is now legally, morally and socially questionable to take a photograph of a minor committing a crime because you are deemed to want that photo for immoral purposes), give written statements, and eventually turn up in court, then the best you can hope to achieve is the issuing of a JLO (Juvenile Liaison Officer – basically a visiting nanny) for anyone that has not previously been convicted of a crime or perhaps the ultimate goal of a slap on the wrists because by hell or high water you will not secure any other punishment! The number of ASBOs handed out since their introduction is almost countable on one hand, apart from that kids pretty much have to kill somebody before they are locked up. Oh the poor kids, the vulnerable, they must be protected! Of course if you do go to court and give evidence against (read harass a child who is crying for help if you are part of an action group) the child of a “bad” family, oh boy, you truly are on your own after that; not to mention what their bite-size accomplices will do.

We have spent so long identifying groups of people that social guilt forces us to describe as “less fortunate” or “minority” and nailing down legislation to protect them that we have forgotten to balance the legislation to protect the majority also. We now have laws that effectively ensure that any terrorising delinquent who is from a “less fortunate” or “minority” background will get away Scott free, while Paddy up the road gets 2 penalty points and a fine for doing 2kmh over the limit on a dual carriageway with no traffic. Hey, it’s the morally right thing to do, isn’t it? The law is the law and we must punish those who break the speed limit perhaps even put them off the road for repeated offences, but if you’re a member of a “minority” group or a youth from a “less fortunate” background, oh no, you can’t be banned then, the Equal Status Act and many other ridiculous pieces of biased legislation are your get out of jail free card (literally). So, just like every school kid knows the name of the Taoiseach, so too does this knowledge trickle down into the socially depraved ranks of delinquents and criminal undergrounds. Whether it’s casual vandalism or organised usage of un-prosecutable 11-year-olds to run drugs, we have laws that protect each and every one of them so that they can return tomorrow to do the same.

Attitudes change with age; we become less tolerant of our childish ways and a greater part of social conscious reflects that “boys will be boys” and the older we get, the more we forget our wayward childhood that caused anguish for our neighbours. Indeed it is possibly true in terms of our past interaction with our neighbours but what so many of these action groups and rights movements carelessly fail to recall, is that after running across our neighbour’s front garden we didn’t give their car a kick on the way out; after deciding to knock on somebody’s door and run away, the knock was not delivered through the heavy kick of a foot; anytime we were caught short on nature’s call it was when we were in the country with our parents and the nearest tree was the only option, we never unzipped and watered the neighbour’s plants like some dog marking its territory; I could go on but these meaningful differences would seemingly have no place in the debate of protecting the vulnerable.

We didn’t do these things because even though we may have been little terrors, we acknowledged that some things just weren’t done and weren’t right. Not for the age-old fear of getting a physical retribution from patre and matre but moreso because it just never entered our heads that you could urinate into somebody’s letterbox nor did it seem appealing that you could damage somebody’s car for fun – why would it? Somewhere along the line, attitude shifted, coupled with legislation and social mindset that provided enough freedom for “less fortunate” children (and indeed sometimes fortunate children who are still young enough to be immune to punishment) to roam free and test the system just short of murder. They passed on the way to the next rank below them and it propagated from there. Young adults they became and then parents themselves, taking with them the knowledge that life was just one big event without consequence – isn’t that lovely!

Where did it all go wrong? Through times of development and pseudo-boom many pockets of society developed extreme social guilt that others didn’t get up off their arses and make something of themselves – give rise to the term “less fortunate”. At the same time we somehow allowed ourselves to see criminality, trespassing, rape, public disorder, and illegal dumping as an ethnic way of life that must be protected. We then spent decades shouting this from the tallest soap boxes and instilling it in the minds of the community in addition to making those whom we patronised for their inaction and potential wastage, believe the social guilt that we spewed, that they were the “less fortunate” and “minority” groups whose way of life should never change and should be protected, why should they conform to laws that apply to everyone else? Yes, we’re “less fortunate”, our kids will roam the streets shouting and screaming so that everyone will identify them as “less fortunate” and excuse them from crime. We’ll cause social disruption, block roads, spill violence onto the streets because we are a “minority” that doesn’t have enough acknowledgement and it is our right to draw attention to ourselves so that people will understand us. The local councils will wash their hands of corrective action against “housed” problem families if they cause trouble in the community because it is their job to help the “less fortunate” and not punish them. The Gardaí will do their best to obey the letter of the law until such time that they can get a promotion from community policing and into a real position that allows them to enforce law equally, across the board. While the attitude of those who cause so many problems for society, stinks ever so badly, it is the social guilt of certain lobby groups and action groups who will never find themselves dealing with the results of their lobbying, whom have gotten us into this dire situation. They gave birth to the attitude of wrong is okay and insult thy neighbour but it’s not okay and it’s time that things changed.

No doubt there will be many who take exception to this outwardly suggestive prose, implicating the “less fortunate” as the main trouble makers and that “rich kids” are even more problematic – greetings to you who obviously have never dealt with these children outside of your social work and lobbying! Having suffered at the hands of anti-social behaviour for years now, with thousands of Euro worth of damage done to my property and living in fear most evenings to the extent that I have had to install CCTV around my home; I can tell you that 100% of my problems have been caused by “less fortunate” children from nearby housing estates. On quick survey of one estate, while working with the Gardaí to report damage done and anti-social behaviour on one occasion I noted that in a small council estate (about 40 homes) there lived a gang of over 20 children from different families, all of whom either engage in underage drinking, stone throwing at cars and houses, prior history with the Gardaí, and on, and on. There is no bad apple spoiling the barrel: The barrel is rotten, accept it. We do not need to nurture, condone, nor defend this indefensible way of life. We need to correct it and change the attitude of these social terrors so that decent people can get on with their lives. We created this attitude as a society who cared not and saw it fitting to develop unwarranted social guilt; we must now change it and correct the laws that give rise to such problems. Three strikes and you’re out – kids in detention and families evicted from housed locations for not dealing with the prior behaviour leading up to it. It’s the only way ahead, the only way to social harmony, and the only way to reduce petty crime figures.

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Before the first Lisbon vote, many people had a great number of concerns about the Lisbon Treaty’s content. Unusually despite this, every single, major political party supported the YES vote. The public were subjected to the opinions of ministers who openly admitted never reading the treaty document yet were convinced that YES was the only way to vote. After the NO vote won out, the government played out on the back foot for a while; the occasional snipe at the public and various fallacious comments such as how they made the recession worse by voting NO.

In recent times we have heard about the legal agreements sought by the government of Ireland, that would protect the points of concern, as expressed by the public. Concerns that you will remember, did not exist before the last vote as they were supposedly non-issues. However, the government now seems to agree that these are actually issues and has spent a great deal of public monies on legal council and drafting these so-called guarantees. So, the NO vote was right all along, we actually had genuine concerns?

So, the parties’ line is now that these agreements are in place and protect the genuine concerns of the Irish people so we can all be good little EU subordinates and vote YES because they want us to. Every major broadcaster and printed media has conveyed this message to the people and many lobby groups have convinced pockets of voters that YES is now the only option because these guarantees are in place. Very clever PR and electioneering; I take my hat off to the powers that be for conceiving and executing such an incredibly intricate and conniving plan.

What we haven’t heard anything about in the Irish media is how not a single word of the Lisbon Treaty document has been changed. We have also not been told how these guarantees are standalone documents that do not form an appendix to the treaty and that these guarantees are effected now, prior to the impending second vote on the treaty. What we are not being told is that voting YES to this treaty will supercede these guarantees, give power to the EU commission on all future decisions (a commission on which Ireland is still not guaranteed a seat) and allow the EU commission to govern with a treaty that remains unchanged from the original NO vote, still carrying all the concerns of the Irish public (confirmed recently by the Irish government’s actions as being genuine concerns). So essentially, Lisbon II will see the Irish government persuade the Irish citizens to return to the polls and despite ratifying all original fears and concerns, ignore their better judgement and vote YES anyway. This request will be made despite not a single word of the original treaty being changed and our only guarantees of comfort being standalone documents that will be superceded by the treaty coming into effect, rendering them null and void.

While not being one for holding back on what I believe in nor what I think about things, I really am lost for words that the Irish government truly believes that the Irish people are that stupid. I’m further confounded that somehow, lobby groups are managing to persuade certain groups that these hard times are linked to the last NO vote. I’ve always said that the Irish state verged on being Orwellian but am I truly gobsmacked at the blatant, stone-faced, audacity with which this deception is being performed.

Last time I voted NO because of concerns that the Irish government now says are genuine. Nothing has changed and the Irish people are being hoodwinked by clever political manoeuvres and fallacious scaremongering – this time I will be voting NO again, regardless of what anyone says. We’re still at square one.

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