UPDATED 23 Jul 09 with hyperlink to Fintan O'Toole's opinion column.
SITTING INSIDE AN educational establishment that has been targeted for closure by the Public Expenditure Review Committee (aka An Bord Snip Nua), I'm interested in the experts who formed the recommendation to close Tipperary Institute. Fintan O'Toole names five of the fine people who formed the committee charged with reducing Ireland's deficit. The committee members "exemplify the nexus of high-flying civil servants, corporate tax advisers, light-touch regulation and financial juggling that has helped" to expand the Irish economy to the teetering edge of bankruptcy. O'Toole unpacks the backgrounds of each of these key committee members to make the point that "they come from an extraordinary narrow range of backgrounds and embody a set of instincts and orthpdoxies that are, to put it midly, problematic." They would not have attended a classroom and done hands-on creative media work like the two students at left.
I know O'Toole's agenda for social order, so when he exposes An Bord Snip Nua's focus on "the pretence that public servants and public spending are the root of the economic crisis", I know where he is headed and I agree with how to manage the McCarthy Report. "We need to see the a la carte version that includes corporate welfare as well as social welfare, tax breaks as well as direct spending and sustainable economics as well as grim reaping."
Sent mail2blog using Nokia E90 O2-Typepad serivces from Alza Cordis Cashel.
Fintan O'Toole -- "Free-market Eden was a fool's paradise" in The Irish Times, 21 July 2009.
