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People who criticised Fianna Fail for being neo-lib were being inaccurate.  Fianna Fail actually has a strong tradition of state led enterprise and national self-sufficiently and built up much of the economic infrastructure of the country(1933-73).  It was actually partly this interventionist streak which led them to over-enthusiastically engage to "save" the banks.  A true neoliberal would have let them go bust/default/restructure.  

Although in later years (1979-2003), the neo-lib wing of Fianna Fail came to greater prominence, Bertie Ahern actually exiled McCreevy to Europe for being too enthusiastically neo-lib and the neo-lib Progressive Democrat party never got more than a single figure percentage of the vote, and has now disappeared altogether.

Fine Gael, the party now in power, on the other hand, has always been more conservative and wedded to a class system in which the professional classes are outrageously over-paid.  It is Fine Gael who are enthusiastically embracing the shock doctrine as an opportunity to dismantle the "bloated" public sector largely built up under Fianna Fail governance.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Jun 17th, 2011 at 12:54:55 PM EST

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