The monologues of Ray D’Arcy (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) can be many things – witty or inane, earthily observant or faux-folksy – but with the best will in world, astute political analysis isn’t something usually associated with his introductory spiels. But as he kicks off Tuesday’s show, D’Arcy neatly skewers the Government’s attitude to the European Court of Justice’s ruling that Apple must pay more than €13 billion in taxes.
“I know it’s complicated, but we finally got the money we didn’t want,” he says, referring to the State’s legal efforts to prevent such an outcome. But now that this unwelcome scenario has come to pass, the host asks listeners how the money should be spent. “That’s a half-joking and wholly serious question for you.”
D’Arcy has a few ideas of his own. He calculates that the funds could pay for 39,000 houses or seven hospitals, or increase Ireland’s mental-health expenditure to average European levels. Along the way he suggests the fine won’t hurt Apple’s bottom line too much, given that the digital behemoth is worth about €3 trillion. “That’s 12 noughts,” he says, awestruck. The host also notes that the offending tax laws have now been changed, “so it’s not going to influence our relationship with Apple”. Clearly, the issue is giving him the pip.
All this is delivered in the exaggerated ah-sure-look-it persona that D’Arcy habitually inhabits at the top of his programme. (Sample conversational gambit: “Did I tell you that about AI?”) Moreover, his riff on the judgment is only one element in the stream-of-consciousness flow that constitutes his monologues: on Monday he rejoices in the sound of plastic bottles being recycled, ponders the campfire delicacy of s’mores and praises the daily doodle on Google’s home page, all within five minutes.
So rapid and random is this deluge of trivia that it can make the average teenager’s social-media feed look like War and Peace, at least until the presenter moves on to his interviews, where he displays a greater thematic and emotional span.
Even so, D’Arcy surely captures the public mood of irritated bewilderment that the Apple windfall should be anything other than good news. More damningly, his snap take on the matter is less tin-eared than the sombre tenor adopted by Ministers who, when quizzed on the verdict, sound like stunned lottery winners insisting that the money won’t change their lives, only in this case they seem to mean it.
Talking to the presenter Cormac Ó hEadhra on Tuesday’s Drivetime (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), the junior minister Niall Collins insists that the State was right to fight the case. “If we weren’t to stand up and defend our policy we would be giving out a message of uncertainty and instability,” he says. But Ó hEadhra isn’t convinced. “You were right to challenge a situation where you gave Apple a deal that reduced its tax burden to as low as 0.005 per cent in 2014?” he archly asks.
Collins sticks to his guns, brushing aside his host’s question about whether the Apple money might have solved the housing crisis had the original European Commission ruling been accepted.
If anything, Ó hEadhra’s characterisation of the Government “reluctantly taking the €14 billion” is overly generous, given the grudging manner with which the court decision is greeted. True, there’s a less surly air when Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien appears on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), but his reaction to the unexpected tax injection is hardly celebratory. “Of course Government respect and accept that decision,” he dutifully tells the presenter Gavin Jennings while avoiding any commitment to using the money for building homes.
Taken together, these downcast ministerial performances don’t just seem out of step with popular opinion; they speak of a worryingly disconnected mindset at a time when increasing numbers are alienated by mainstream politics. It’s one thing to protect the State’s long-time economic policy of foreign direct investment but another to effectively prioritise the goodwill of multinationals over that of the voting public by “spending eight years and several million euro fighting to not take the money”, as Jennings puts it.
All in all, the accusation by the Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty, appearing on Today with Claire Byrne (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), that the Government “continued to defend the indefensible” by fighting the Apple case seems a pretty fair assessment rather than the usual flourish of partisan rhetoric.
While Byrne hears differing arguments about how best to spend the money, with Dr Eddie Casey of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council wary of a splurge, the housing crisis keeps making its presence felt. Byrne speaks to the reporter Brian O’Connell about the chronic shortage of student accommodation, which has resulted in many third-level candidates deferring courses, with others forced into long commutes. Meanwhile, renters contend with high rates, cramped quarters, shared beds and digs with restrictive hours.
Unsurprisingly, all this has an impact on campus life. O’Connell notes that college societies have seen numbers fall as commuting students depart campus in the evenings. “They’re not getting that full college experience,” he says. “The atmosphere on campus is changing a lot.”
The knock-on effect goes beyond a decrease in extracurricular options, as D’Arcy learns during his weekly slot with the child psychotherapist Colman Noctor. According to Noctor, the number of lonely young men in college is a huge problem. Whereas, before, D’Arcy’s guest assured quiet or withdrawn teens that they would find their tribe in college, he is now less hopeful. The diminished social skills of youthful digital natives are cited as one possible reason, but Noctor also points to the falling visibility of campus clubs, reducing the opportunities to meet others. “Colleges are different places,” he says. “There have to be some societies for them to join.”
It’s another small but revealing segment from D’Arcy, highlighting a growing problem at the core of Irish life.
Apple tax windfall: How Ireland was forced to take it - and how we should spend it
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