Politics

One in two voters favours Eamon Gilmore as Taoiseach; Tainiste Mary Coughlan has 10% approval rating among Donegal voters. By Malachy Browne

The majority of Irish people say they don't want to pay more tax. But what if those taxes guaranteed quality public services? By Sara Burke.

It's a no brainer. If we pay American amounts of taxes, we will have American-style public services. If we pay European amounts of taxes, we will have European-style public services. We can't and won't have good quality public services unless we pay for them.

Deference to financial moguls and indifference to the people have caused our financial problems, writes Vincent Browne.

If all we had to worry about was this deficit thing, we would be okay, if we were prepared to take the obvious and fair strategy that is beckoning. But the crowd who ravished our fiscal arrangements went one better with the bank guarantee and from that there may be no salvation.

It hardly matters whether we have to be rescued by the EU or the International Monetary Fund in a few months, writes Vincent Browne.

The outcome will be more or less the same - aside from the humiliation of having to acknowledge that we are not capable of running our own country.

The bank bailout will cost us very much more than the €50 billion figure we were told a few weeks ago. The budgetary deficit will get worse, not better; unemployment will increase; there will be more mortgage defaults; the scale of inequality here will widen; Fianna Fáil will survive.

Plans to double the student registration fee are now "off the agenda". Instead, a smaller increase in fees of between €500 and €800 will be introduced, bringing total charges to just under €2,000. Fianna Fáil and Green Party ministers are negotiating the precise charge that will be introduced in the forthcoming budget.

Contentious decisions by John O'Donoghue and Michael McDowell have cost taxpayers many millions of euro, writes Vincent Browne.

The kindness of strangers on which we will rely very soon for the solvency of our State, according to Morgan Kelly writing in the Irish Times on Monday, might extend to running the country – the whole lot of it.

Michel Barnier, the EU Commissioner for Internal Markets and a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur (pictured), sees light at the end of the tunnel for Ireland.

Chevaliers of the Légion d'Honneur must have special vision.

The people who matter, the bond traders, can't see any light. Not even after the beseeching effort of last Thursday to impress the bond traders by more promises to get the state's finances right with a €6 billion down-payment.

With the success of Pearse Doherty's high court action forcing a by-election on 25 November, and with the resignation on Tuesday of Dr

Irish people need to dispense with any vestige of hope they have in the governing culture, Prof Diarmaid Ferriter of UCD said at a lecture yesterday evening, quoting from Fintan O'Toole's new book.

Speaking at the launch of O'Toole's book, Enough is Enough: How to Build a New Republic, Ferriter said that the title's approach was necessary in order to tackle the social and economic problems facing the country. Ferriter said that if some of the ideas in the book appear radical it is because they are being considered in an Irish context.

Apologies are due to the Taoiseach for there is someone more to blame than him – the worst tánaiste ever, writes Vincent Browne.

First an apology to Brian Cowen. Here and elsewhere I have written and said that of all the people still holding public office, he was most to blame for the wanton damage that has been done to this society and this economy. On reflection I now believe this is mistaken.