Why do we put up with the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), a state-funded think tank?
Why do we allow our tax money to be wasted on an organisation that is frequently wrong in its predictions and conclusions about obvious things, such as access to credit or banking services?
Last week, an ESRI report on financial exclusion and debt omitted two of the most important sources of credit and savings — credit unions and the post office.
Despite this oversight, it concluded that one in five of the population does not have access to “the basic building block” of financial services, a bank current account.
Without this precious current account, the “unbanked”, as the ESRI calls them, are disadvantaged when it comes to accessing “affordable credit, small savings facilities and insurance for home contents”.
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It goes on to say they are also denied services that the rest of us take for granted, such as receiving wages and welfare payments electronically, paying utility bills, short-term credit and 24-hour access to cash.
This is poppycock, yet the ESRI doesn’t stop there. There are pages and pages devoted to mortgage arrears and increasing poverty that have nothing to do with social inclusion and the lack of bank accounts. If anything, these problems have been caused by too much access to credit — not too little.
I have no idea how this report got past the peer review stage. For the record, though, one fifth of the population is not “excluded” from bank accounts or from related financial services.
Responsible adults who choose not to have current accounts do so because they are too expensive for their financial circumstances.
Almost 3m people are members of credit unions on this island. Many have low incomes, yet have collective savings of €11.9 billion. They also borrow billions every year at some of the lowest interest rates on the market.
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Like An Post, credit unions allow members — at no charge — to pay their bills and buy a range of insurance products, investments and foreign currency.
After Postbank closed last year, it helped customers, including my 17-year-old son, to swap Postbank cards for those of Allied Irish Banks and National Irish Bank, which provide customers with cash services through the post office.
Bank branches and competition might be disappearing, but credit unions and post offices remain in most communities. They have emerged from the financial destruction of this country with their reputations intact. For the most part, they are solvent.
The ESRI researchers need to get out more. Better still, maybe the institute needs to fund its next report out of its own pocket.
Get out of the car
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What a bunch of comedians those fellows at the Institute of Advanced Motorists are.
Last Monday morning, even my husband, who is usually mute before his second cup of tea, laughed out loud at a suggestion on RTE radio by the man from the institute that we could tackle soaring petrol bills by washing and polishing our cars more often to improve aerodynamics.
Emptying the boot of golf clubs, dismantling the roof rack, turning off the air-conditioning and closing the windows would help too.
I have a better suggestion: get rid of the car. If that’s not possible, car pool.
Once you become one of the “uncar-ed”, as the ESRI might put it, you can use public transport, taxis, bicycles or your two legs to get around and save thousands of euros.
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We need to get real. Oil is a precious, finite resource that the liberated people of the former kleptocracies of the Middle East and north Africa may not want to continue selling so cheaply. Chances are the oil price spike will recede as demand drops (because of the higher price) but it probably won’t return to $50 a barrel, the price it fell to after the 2008 spike.
Meanwhile, anybody with money to spare might want to consider investing in the black stuff. Two of the financial newsletters I subscribe to suggest keeping an eye on Canadian producers. They mentioned Canadian National Resources and the Canadian Oil Sands Trust, a pooled fund of six of the top Canadian oil companies.
Canada is the most stable and least hostile oil supplier to the world’s biggest consumer, America. It also has no axe to grind with anybody — no small achievement these days.