Poor ould sod
he latest excuse for the Irish economy, 1 so Richard West tells us (The Irish example', 11 August), is that they do not have North Sea oil. They may or may not have Celtic Sea oil, which produces the occasional wildcat share in the Dublin market, but has yet to prove commercial in other ways. One school of analysts believes that what the exploration companies have found are traces of Guinness, deposited over many years from the Holyhead fer- ries. What the Irish certainly do have is the Common Agricultural Policy. The (Brit- ish) Treasury has reckoned that the CAP is worth more to the Republic, in proportion to the size of the population, than the North Sea is to the United Kingdom. The morals are, no doubt, that neither blessing is unmixed, and that it is possible to make a bigger botch of a blessing than we have.
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