Christine Lagarde, the Irish bailout, and corporation tax

Pictured on the left, you see a Renault 4 van. It is by no means the only such specimen spotted here on holiday in southern France.

I have not seen a car like this in Ireland since the 70s – or at the very latest a straggler from the 80s, but here cars of such vintage are relatively common.

Contrast that with Ireland. Not that long ago, people were getting mortgage top-ups to acquire expensive, prestige motors to decorate their semi-D driveways.

I remember going to a certain dealership in 2006 whose salesman scoffed at the idea of taking a car over three years old as part exchange. Another one told me that people were changing their cars every two or three years... some even annually. Last year’s registration plate was a badge of shame, it seemed..

Now of course, things have changed. The people who borrowed all round them to buy cars, boats, apartments and houses they could not afford are blaming everyone else for their predicament. “They should not have lent us money” they say, “the banks were irresponsible, we shouldn’t have to pay it back”.

Sure, the banks were irresponsible. But so were the borrowers. Now the place is banjaxed, but many Irish people are still in denial and will blame everybody and everything but themselves for the mess they made.

Last week’s bizarre events surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged attempted  rape of a hotel chambermaid in New York will have put paid to his ambitions of becoming the Socialist candidate in France’s presidential elections (not very socialist behaviour, if the allegations are proven true). It also briefly gave hope to the denialists in Ireland, that someone unconnected to the EU might take over the helm at the IMF. An American say, with a fond twinkle in the smiling Irish eyes for the auld country.

Sadly for them, it seems the opposite is likely to occur. France’s current Finance Minister, economic right-winger Christine Lagarde, looks set to take over the task of supervising the IMF portion of Ireland’s bailout.

It is unlikely that Madame Lagarde will take a kindly view of Ireland’s continuing belligerence on the subject of corporation tax. It is also unlikely that she will be amused by reports in the Sindo which talked of proposals to drop it further to 10%.

While she is looking into the viability of a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base, she might also like to ponder the inordinately high pay rates of our politicians,  judges, dentists, doctors, lawyers, consultants and those in the upper echelons of our Civil Service?

Here cometh the axewoman – la femme de hache – and maybe this time, for once, she is just what's needed?




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