IRELAND NOT FOR SALE

Stan Gebler Davies on the

desperate remedies canvassed for the Irish economy

Dublin ONE often sees depressives among the passengers in executive class on flights to and from the Republic. Some are govern- ment ministers looking forward to gloomy and imminent retirement. Others are pun- ters like myself who have been forced to part with £220 for the privilege of going about our business on less than three weeks' notice. Having done so, one tries to drink as much of possible of Aer Lingus's allegedly free booze in the 50 minutes to Heathrow.

Another class of depressive is the mour- ner from abroad who has come home to bury some dearly beloved and has been stuck with executive class because he was unable to predict the death of his mother or father with that precision which is required for the issue of Apex tickets. Aer Lingus must make a lot of money out of these people.

One such very morose gentleman sat beside me on the flight from Cork two weeks ago. I avoided conversation until we were about the neighbourhood of Bristol. 'I flew in with the father this morning,' he said then. 'We buried him this afternoon.'

`God rest him,' I said, thinking he had at least escaped the clutches of Aer Lingus, except for the one last trip.

'I will not be long in it myself,' said the traveller.

`You look very well,' I said.

`That,' said the traveller, 'is because I am in remission. The cancer started in my testicles, then it spread to my colon. Do you know anyone who would like to buy a big house in Hampshire with attached swimming-pool?'

I regretted that I did not, advising him to place an advertisement in the Spectator.

I had a more cheerful flight a week later, from Luton to Dublin, via Ryanair, a new and independent company which has cut the fare by more than half, forcing Aer Lingus to follow suit in the manner of all state corporations wishing to strangle free enterprise at birth. (Their own traffic, to their immense surprise, has gone up by 40 per cent as a consequence.) The minister for transport, Mr Mitchell, congratulated Ryanair, which his depart- ment had been trying to suppress for two years, for its contribution to the tourist industry. Mr Noonan, the minister for industry, shortly thereafter made the most extraordinary speech, in which he advo- cated selling shares in state corporations to help pay off the prodigious and crippling national debt. This is heresy of a high order in the Republic, where the pretence is that there has never been a socialist govern- ment and even if there was they never nationalised anything.

There have in fact been several, even though the Republic's electorate grants about 85 per cent of its votes to non- socialist parties. This is because of the proportional representation system, which grants disproportionate power to the Labour Party and to independent deputies whose support can be bought in return for expensive favours to their constituents, and because of the mutual hatred which obtains between the two principal parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, both of which would rather ally with the Politburo of the CPSU than with each other.

Fianna Fail is the only party capable of getting an overall majority but under Mr Haughey has three times failed to do so. Mr Haughey's fourth, and last, chance is about to occur, the coalition between Labour and Fine Gael having disintegrated just in time for Christmas. Mr Bruton, the minister for finance, who so far believes in fiscal rectitude that he brought down his own government with a previous budget in which he sought to impose a tax on children's shoes, is busy constructing another along the same lines in the confi- dent expectation of its being rejected by Labour, and by the Dail.

In the subsequent general election, ex- pected in February, it is thought that Fine Gael, cast loose from Labour, could pre- sent itself as fiscally conservative. This may be a hard act to pull off as the same Fine Gael has driven the national debt up to £22 billion and is proposing to borrow another f2Y2 billion to tide us over by next year. If sufficient punters could be persuaded to accept the proposition that Fine Gael has quit rifling the till then it is possible that they could enter into coalition with Des- mond O'Malley's brand-new Progressive Democrats, supposing that any of them are elected.

The PeeDees, as they are known, are mostly defectors from Fianna Fail, whose political philosophy is intellectually based on fear and loathing of Charles J. Haughey, but they also are, somewhat feebly, banging the rectitude drum. So all-encompassing is the terror inspired by the national debt and impending bankrupt- cy that whispers of the Laffer Curve have reached even the dim recesses of Fianna Fail and Michael O'Kennedy, Mr Haughey's finance spokesman, mutters ab- out cutting the top rates of tax in order to increase yield. This is a truly astonishing development in a party whose favourite dirty word is 'monetarism'.

Still, there's not much chance of de- nationalisation, which is a pity. Aer Lingus could make a healthy profit as a private company and it would be wonderful entire- ly if someone, anyone, took over the telephones. The turf bogs could be leased back to peasant entrepreneurs for the production of peat and the B & I cattle boats which transport wretched passengers across the Irish Sea flogged off to Bulga- rians. I would not want to buy shares in any of these enterprises but if Bord na gCopal, which runs the National Stud, were de- nationalised I dare say the issue would be a thousand times oversubscribed.

Alas, Ireland is not for sale. Socialist chic still prevails among the intelligentsia, God rot them. There is a picket line at the Shelbourne Hotel and the best and finest in Dublin mumble their apologies to the strikers if and when urgent business re- quires them to cross it. This picket line is operated by the Transport Workers, whose president, Mr Joe Carroll, is a gifted musician who was taught how to play the clarinet by my grandfather, Adolphe Geb- ler. Adolphe thought he ought to become a professional musician and leave off poli- tics, and so do I, but Mr Carroll threatens mayhem if anyone tries to sell off Irish assets.

In Dublin I had intended, for one of Mr Murdoch's newspapers, interviewing Ivan Beshoff, 104-year-old last survivor of the Potemkin mutiny and possibly of the entire 1905 Revolution. He was an acquaintance of Lenin.

I could not get a professional photo- grapher to accompany me on the job. The Dublin branch of the NUJ has 'blacked' Mr Murdoch's newspapers. I point out that 3,000 NUJ members are happily working for Mr Murdoch in London but it makes no odds. The Potemkin is blacked. Lenin is blacked.

How Bolshevik can you get?