On a fateful night in September 2008, the former government urgently needed some good advice. “Astonishingly,” wrote Richard Tol in The Irish Times, they “knocked on David McWilliams’s door.”Many people think they should have knocked on Morgan Kelly’s. Since his now-famous article on the property bubble in 2006, Kelly, Professor of Economics at UCD, has been predicting disaster for the Irish economy in a series of (strangely entertaining) articles in The Irish Times. So far, he has been proved all too right, and he hasn’t finished with us yet. In May the man described by the Irish Independent as ‘Dr Doom’ launched another coruscating attack. 

Describing Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan’s miscalculation of the scale of bank losses as “the costliest mistake ever made by an Irish person”, Professor Kelly declared that Ireland has become “an object of international ridicule” and predicted that, within a year or two, the country will be facing bankruptcy. But there is, he argues, still a way out.Introduced by journalist, writer and current affairs presenter Olivia O’Leary, Professor Kelly tells us where we are, reminds us how we got here, and suggests some ways in which we might begin to dig ourselves out. It’s a rare opportunity to hear, and question, one of our most forthright commentators. We confidently predict a lively evening.The Hubert Butler Annual Lecture was established in 2007 to honour the Kilkenny writer, historian and broadcaster whose remarkable consistency of vision and clarity of mind made him unique among essayists and whose work evinced an unsurpassed moral, political and literary integrity.

The above audio file is an audience recording using a Zoom H2 hand held recorder, located approx 20 ft. from the stage area. Introduction piece by Olivia O'Leary. Running time 67m. Comments moderated. Requests for use elsewhere please to info@kilkennyarts.ie.
Recorded and edited by event media for the Kilkenny Arts Festival blog.
Update: Read the blog entry here: http://www.kilkennyarts.ie/blog/article/professor-morgan-kelly-the-hubert-butler-annual-lecture/

Hubert Butler Lecture: Professor Morgan Kelly

The 1913 Lockout. Interview with Padraig Yeates.


The 1913 Lockout :: Interview with Padraig Yeates.

The financier and businessman Emmett O’Connell, formerly of Aminex and Eglinton Oil and still successfully engaged in the international mining business, has long held the view that abolishing the Irish pound and joining the eurozone was the biggest policy error ever made by the Irish State. The Greek crisis and its drastic implications for the euro-currency, interwoven as it is with the crisis of the Irish public deficit and banks, seems to be confirming this daily before our eyes.

http://nationalplatform.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/the_consequences_of_monetary_union_1972_emmett-o-connell.pdf ☚ facsimile of a pamphlet which Emmett O’Connell wrote in 1972. It sets out why joining a European currency union would not be in Ireland’s best interests.

This was one of a number of pamphlets published at the time by the Common Market Study Group, of which the undersigned, the late Raymond Crotty and Mr Micheal Ó Loingsigh of Tralee were key members. The Common Market Study Group was the principal centre of intellectual criticism of Irish membership of the EEC in the Accession Referendum of May 1972. Central to such criticism was the belief that what was then called the Common Market was intended to lead on to a European Monetary and Political Union under the political hegemony of what Dr Garret FitzGerald recently termed “The Big Three” EU Member States - Germany, France and Britain - as has broadly been happening since.

Emmett O’Connell repeated his criticisms of EMU at the time of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty which led to the establishment of the euro and he has written occasional press articles on this and related economic topics over the years. The core of his argument is the section of his pamphlet setting out “The case for Sovereign Money” on pages 12-14, as well as pages 22-26. The validity of what he wrote then, he believes, is confirmed by the current crisis of the eurozone and the fact that Ireland is unable to restore its lost economic competitiveness because of the abolition of the Irish pound and with it our ability to have any control over either the currency exchange rate or interest rates with a view to maximising Irish development and employment.

2010-05-10 NewsTalk106fm - George Hook, Emmett O'Connell: Consequences of Monetary Union

Oisin.FM

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