 Evening all I only found out when I came here that this was being videoed So I had certain notes some of them I'll probably move to the Q&A afterwards, you know So Patti was saying look can you come along? Can you talk about how you get into politics? Can you give a good thorough overview of your zone economics and then talk about how an independent TV can influence policy in Ireland and across Europe? You got about 10 to 15 minutes so So thank you very much for inviting me It's fantastic to get out of the Goldfish Bowl that is Lentzter House, you know because politics of course is Obviously partly about policy and and hopefully getting some things right, but actually about people and it's one of the things that I Try to do and I'm sure most TVs trying to do as much as possible is talk to individuals meet up with groups and and meet up But you know a variety of different groups and most of the groups you meet are groups who are looking for help You know they're looking for representation and looking for bits and pieces So it's really nice to be meeting with a group is just like you know layer profound wisdom upon us that So I'm delighted absolutely delighted to be here and so how did I end up in politics? When I was 23, I actually lived on this street At a broken back. I was long-term unemployed because I had a broken back And I was an engineer so I'd come back from MIT I was looking for a job in design I was out sailing and in Dunleary Bay and I cracked my back off a winch handle on a yacht which really hurts and So it worked for about a year and a half So I just rang my wife from the other side of the street and said I'm staring in at the old house that I used to the old Apartment I used to live in so I would have lost a lot of money on anyone telling that unemployed 23-year-old bum that you know you were gonna be standing across Across the road as a as a politician addressing a bunch of bright young things a few doors down You know and so it was never really on the On the on the career path, you know, I'm sure as with most people in this room the career is kind of Quite random and then when you go into do an interview you try and create this narrative for exactly why you're Where you are for me? I was actually in the or yes Looking for a job, but it was a cruise for him And I was looking for a job as an engineer back in design and McKinsey were there and a guy I'd been in MIT would say you should check them out and so I kind of Settle out of them and got into the interview process and ended up in London Doing interviews. I was telling Marion Fnookin on the on the radio on Saturday And this is how little I knew you know as a young engineer in Dublin suddenly over in Corporate London and we were sitting in a in a in a boardroom. There are 16 of us And it was myself two other Irish people and then the rest of them were these very well-spoken very well dressed very well educated Oxbridge folk and the world was a JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley and and I said, um, sorry Who is this JP Morgan guy? He sounds loaded and One one one of the guys can look to cross and he said, you know, my dear fellow JP Morgan is one of the most prestigious investment banks in the world I Said oh, okay. I said just one more question. So what's an investment bank and he was kind of sitting across me and his glasses and he kind of Fold him out of the table and just went what are you doing here? Which is an excellent question So anyway, I took the job and stayed in London and did a bunch of did a bunch of consulting work They were McKinsey then left McKinsey worked for a different firm learned a lot worked very hard lost my hair and Then I kind of I was always very interested in public policy Very interesting working in the public sector and I had tried I'd kind of spoken of for us and spoken of the IDA and It unsuccessfully or entirely unsuccessfully every time But I in in London started doing work with public sector Organization so I was doing this work with transport for London fantastic study And I got talking to people who were ex Kennedy School So Harvard Kennedy School Kennedy School of Government now called the Harvard Kennedy School and I thought that's for me That sounds amazing. So I applied. I got on to McKinsey and said will you fund us and I said, yeah so I went in 2006 came back here first got married Partied for a while hung out with my mum and went to Kennedy School and spent two of the most incredible years of my life in This place I used there's a kind of the Kennedy School is kind of it's you know across the river is the Harvard Business School And the Harvard Business School is like something out of you know some sultan Arriving and just dropping gold on a place the Harvard Business School I don't know if anyone here has been to the Harvard Business School. It's a palace You know, they've got kind of chill out rooms the size of the Kennedy School of Government So, you know, so that public sector private sector dynamic is alive and well on the Charles River But the Kennedy School is an amazing place There's a little kind of courtyard in the middle and a little ramp down and they used to stop At the top of it every morning and say never ever take for granted the fact that you're here It was extraordinary stuff, you know, you go in and you're being taught by people like Jeff Frankl Who was one of Clinton's economic advisors? Danny Roderick who's one of the Best-regarded trade economists in the world. You're just being taught by these amazing People and your classmates are incredible and a lot smarter than you and they knew a whole lot more about economics And I did in fact one of them might my study group. There were four of us. There was myself And the other three guys two of them were had done a lot of economics and the other guy was this kind of fizzly brain guy out of MIT So they were not smarter than I was and But as an engineer, I kind of you say, well, how does it work and the Saroche the Pakistani guys sat back one day. He said, you know, see you know the lovely thing about studying with you He said no, he said you're never afraid to ask that really stupid questions and no one else last Um So anyway, I finished up in the Kennedy School did international development loved it Talk to Irish age about trying to get a job here. They told me they would never hire anybody like me and to go away So went back to McKinsey and Had it was intending kind of doing the two years you have to do because they fund your your grad school work But loved it and stayed in it and began to specialize in organizational design cultural change Was doing some kind of cool Charity work social sector work on the side some microfinance stuff some women's empowerment stuff some volunteering stuff So my last study in London was helping roll out this quite big new volunteering program made but disadvantaged youth in different parts of London So was really enjoying what I was doing and my wife rang in 2008 and Was signing in this kind of circular meeting room and looking out at all the signs and in Piccadilly Circus And she the government's just guaranteed the entire banking system So I couldn't have done that and kind of checked it and obviously they had and and then as with everyone else Just kind of watched it unfold on television And I remember the late Brian Lennon and who I've huge regard for or had huge regard for but I mean he's a senior council You know, he's not a finance guy. He was very new into the role Saying things like well We have to pour all this money into the banks or the markets will stop lending to us watching this in television going Yeah, no, no, no it not only is that not right the opposite is true It's because you're pouring all of our money into the into the banks that we're going to get locked out of the markets And when the IMF arrived, I was sitting at home watching six o'clock news I think it was a Monday remember the three guys walking down the street and the beggar And I thought are you got to do something Didn't know what how to get involved. I was gonna, you know ring one of the parties and say I don't know like I'll take two months off work and do whatever you need and I was at a rugby game and One of the guys is there what's it know you run do us you go in And that kind of grew in my in my brain My wife describes it as a as a pub rant that got completely out of control Because I wasn't going to the pub with two very young kids We like a you know a kid that was a few months old and a kid that was you know a year older than him So I was never going to the pub So she's pretty convinced that had we been like leading a normal life I would have gone to the pub on a Friday got it out of my system and then just gone back to work On the Monday and the most extraordinary thing happened. I sit right. I'm gonna run and a group of people said cool we'll do it with you and Where's Linda? Back there Linda's friend has just got married in in America and he's a guy didn't know Called Bart who phoned me. He we were putting we were put in touch through a mutual friend called Nile and We chatted and he said cool. I'll give up what I'm doing for a while and I'll be your campaign manager He had he had run him. He had run run a few bits and pieces and between him and my wife and my friends and family and Bart's friends and family and Everybody we knew and a lot of people we didn't know We pulled off this Campaign that kind of you know, it was against the odds anyone I had spoken to who knew about politics that I'm gonna run That's what you're out of your mind There was one friend of mine in McKinsey who put it very well He would he'd kind of come from a political background. He said look here's how it works First of all, there is no chance that you were going to get elected The entire system is set up to stop people like you getting in is the secondly even if you do get in You're gonna be an independent TD and you're gonna absolutely no impact Thirdly, even if one of the parties went mad and took you in you're gonna be a government backbencher And you're gonna have even less impact fourthly Even if there was a confluence of events in the lining of the planets and you somehow managed to get into a cabinet position You still wouldn't have any impact because civil servants were in the country anyway So when we had this extraordinary six weeks where We worked every hour under the Sun and I mean at one point. I think we had 150 volunteers out on the streets As a friend of mine called Jesse who I was in grad school with who'd run Toledo, Ohio for Obama So when we were trying to figure out how to do this I mean when I decided to run myself and two other McKinsey friends of mine sat down in a room with a load of whiteboards and went All right, what do you do? You need posters. You need money I mean we literally just kind of none of us at any political experience We kind of tried to invent a campaign from the from the ground up So we got a video conference with Jesse Jesse knew all about campaigning He'd run Toledo, Ohio for the Obama campaign and we snuck him into the World Bank in DC And we had this video conference and I told him I was going to run and he said okay look He said if you run a perfect campaign you will definitely lose Right because you're playing other people at their own game. He said you have no profile. You have no money You have no organization. You have no manifesto. You have no hair Like there is virtually no chance you're gonna get elected He said so what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to change the rules of the game So he came over and did it did a very surreal training with us in gravestones that Dave McWilliams actually came along to and They were doing all this American touchy-feely stuff that the Irish obviously were not terribly terribly comfortable with But we we We innovated we did things differently, you know part of our weaknesses We didn't we'd know of said any experience in this but actually it gave us huge freedom to say what I know What are we social media, you know video town halls coffee mornings all sorts of all sorts of stuff? And after a three-day count I get in my 112 votes, so that's how I get in that's kind of what I'm doing here I Was thinking about I'm gonna move on so Eurozone economics There's no such thing really in my opinion and There's very little economics. There's some smart finance going on in the background, but in terms of economics and My experience which is still very new I'm only in there two and a half years It's not like I've had time as an MEP or a load of time in the ECB or anything like so take it for what it is Which is I'm slightly more inside the system than you guys, but still very far from from the center of it My observation is that The so-called economic European response is not an economic response. It's a political response and The politics is governed by power So if you were to analyze the European level response to what has happened in Europe and It is a catastrophe it has done all manner of bad and stupid and damaging and long-term damaging things Which is why Nobel economists and the IMF and lots of people lots of very smart people understand economics are saying This is really bad. You're doing you're making a lot of mistakes You're laying the foundation for a lot of social problems Across Europe for a long time to come. So the question is will then will then why so what actually what's going on? What's driving these bad decisions and from what I can see what's driving them is power, right? This is this is old-fashioned geo politics Playing out in the slightly more polite world of finance and economics rather than the old-fashioned battlefield That's kind of what's what's going on if you think about what happened in Ireland and We made a huge mistake which was guaranteeing our banking system and the Europeans were very angry Particularly the British were very angry because obviously a load of money then shifted from their banks into our banks Which was you know, which is bad for them but very quickly afterwards when There was a chance for us to roll back on this extraordinary blanket guaranteed then the European political and financial power came to bear so For example, there were meetings where people were told if you don't pay us back in full We will destroy your country now not not politically. This is at a financial level fun at a fund manager level There was all sorts of Financial sector power and threats being brought to bear on the decision-makers at the time and as we know there was huge political pressure brought to bear in terms of Paying out to all of these people to whom the people of Ireland owed nothing And it's complicated and there were reasons for doing some of it and not doing not doing other bits But there was a piece of analysis. I saw the other day, which It's an oversimplification, but it really goes to the heart of it in 2008 German banks had in cash in Irish banks including the IFSC so some of it's kind of funny money and 83% of their GDP Right now I thought I brought along bear with me. I know I'm walking off camera here But if I have it here, I think I brought it along There we go Can you grab that for me? All right, check this out 2008 right here is here's a load of countries and here's the money as percentage of GDP that we have in each of These countries here's Ireland All reds, right? Germany 83% now by 2012 that had gone down to 41% so obviously the riskier money came out, but if you want to understand Why did why was there a European response that went against everything we know about economics everything? We know about the free market the rules of the game right the rules of the game are you want to buy bonds in a bank You want to buy shares and Google you win you win you lose you lose But in this case You lose you actually win and remember they didn't just get their money back So if you I was given a speech in the doll the other day where I was trying to compare some of the cuts that have come in In this budget around maternity leave. I'm one that I feel very strongly about which is the cuts to the under 26 Is because I believe it's discriminatory regardless of whether it's bad policy, which I believe it is as well I believe it's at a Philosophical level. I believe it's wrong and I believe we've crossed the line we shouldn't cross and I was trying to compare You know, the government was talking about well You have to make these hard decisions and this is about political leadership in these decisions after miss. Well, hang on a second Sure, we've got it. We've got it. We've got to bring the deficit down all sorts of horrible decisions have to get made But they're really tough decisions were not paying people. We didn't know any money to and on those you acquiesced Completely so there was a bond that came to you from Anglo. I think it was last February for about a billion euro 1.25 billion euro the bond was bought in 2007 Right, and we don't know who bought it. So the current government refuses to investigate who bought the bonds, right? so think about this a Professional investor went to Anglo-Irish Bank in 2007 when the OECD and all sorts of people were screaming that the Irish banking system was in trouble and gave them a billion euro and Said we'll take that back at whatever four percent a year And then we'll take the full billion back in in in five years time We the Irish people Paid out not just the billion, but they got their profits. They got their profits as well, which kind of most people don't know about so That goes against the entire free market. It goes against any concept of risk reward Why did that happen at a European level two decisions were made which? Fundamentally fractured the social contract which our entire society is built on One no European bank will be allowed to fail, right? That doesn't happen anywhere anywhere else and two no senior investor will incur any loss To the capital they invested nor will they get any reduction in the profits? Have this thing come through and in my opinion a lot of this is nothing to do with economics That is not an economic decision That chart largely explains why It to in in my opinion obviously it's more complicated than that But if you want to get down to raw Geopolitics and power which goes against what we understand about economics Those kind of numbers when a powerful country or a group of powerful countries, right? France had 31% of their GDP in our banks when that kind of money is at risk Bad things happen to weak countries and unfortunately. I think that's what I think that's what happened So that's I've been I've been going on but basically Eurozone economics is a proxy for very old school very standard very well understood Geopolitics, that's what was at play as far as I can see that's that's still what's at play so result for Ireland Bad pretty much universally bad Socialization of losses fracture of the social contract a complete tearing up of any understanding of how markets are meant to work And our risk and reward is meant to work and then we're all aware of the social problems We've got a hundred and twenty four percent debt to GDP And two years time our interest on the debt is going to be over nine billion euro That is unsustainable. It doesn't mean we're going to default on it But economists to find unsustainable debt not as cannot be paid But as it will act as a very serious break on the socio-economic development and future prosperity of your country Is over nine billion in interest a year in two years time going to do that? Of course it is so so that's happens and the result for Europe I would say is good and bad right if we kind of compare 2008 2009 to now So I just kind of when I was putting my notes together I thought three positives for Europe for all of us. I think in Europe coordination of budgets of member states I think it's a good thing. We've moved to this thing called the European semester and the government is going out of its Way to strip the benefits of that from the doll So the way it's meant to work is everyone submits a draft budget to their parliament in mid-October Parliament's all over Europe in functioning parliamentary democracies They get about two and a half months to debate those budgets and this caused a problem in Ireland because you know Things like the social welfare bill have to become through So what they did was they just moved the social welfare bill up to the old December deadlines They brought it through we got it on a Wednesday We had to have committee stage amendments in before we even made second-stage speeches It was guillotined in all stages. It went through and not a single letter was changed So they've managed to circumvent the entire point of moving to the European semester nonetheless I think coordination of European budgets is a very good thing The fiscal compact was was a Very fractious debate. I thought about it long and hard and ultimately advocated a yes vote And the more I think about it the more I think that having those rules in place like not being able to run Crazy deficits not being able to take in windfall money and turn it into structural cost Which is basically what we did with all the property money We took one off cash and turned it into wages and other things which obviously Is not sustainable and we got to bring our debt down over x number of years to 60% of GDP and ultimately it'll go down lower You know what I think that's probably healthy I can't really see too much downside to that and I think the new common bank resolution thing is good I think ECB regulation is probably a good thing So there's there's probably more but there's three things where I think Europe financially will be stronger and The negatives I just listed three as well the erosion of solidarity. I think cannot be overstated if you talk particularly to the youth right if you talk to young people in Ireland in In the UK and abroad This sense they get is they do not belong to the society So young people I talked to in Ireland maybe not in this room because please God you've all got great jobs And you're having a great time and doing good good good stuff But the young people I speak to who may not be as fortunate as some people in this room Feel that they have been Waterly stitched up and betrayed and now discriminated against for no other reason than they haven't reached the age of 26 yet and I Think the fracturing of solidarity across Europe cannot the damage of this that that is that is causing is Very very significant. I consider myself a proud European I spoke in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on my 16th birthday. I Have a far less healthy respect for the European project than I used to have Because I think it used to be based on ideals and what I have seen triumph over that I believe I hope I'm wrong but what in my opinion what has triumphed over that is raw naked bad national self-interest from a bunch of actors And I think that's from the other big problem, which is which is correlated to this is the inequality between the states So inequality is going to rise inequality is a bad thing in all its forms You may not need perfect equality, but there's all sorts of social theory and all sorts of economic theory That basically says equality is good Everybody gains from equality and and cross-border inequality is bad now the the Cash transfers that have occurred. So remember the Europeans are not giving us any money. They are lending us money We are paying all that money back, but we have given them money So there's a bunch of money for example that will have gone back into Deutsche from all of your pockets and that you will all and I will all pay the interest in that for decades to come so the the the The long-term inequality in Europe. I think interstate has increased. I think that's a very bad thing and then I think there has been at a philosophical level a victory of Capital over the citizen and that might sound a bit melodramatic But if you look back through history at kind of what causes bad things to happen A lot of it has to do with capital swishing around the world finding somewhere to go to and pulling out And leaving destruction this kind of tsunami of capital kind of washes washes around the world And I think we have seen I think if you know, I I love America. I've lived in America I've studied in America. I've lived in a few different places worked in the Middle East There are some incredible things about Europe that are nowhere else in the world around human rights We hands-down lead the world in terms of environmental policy and in a bunch of other cool social things and that Lost in Europe to Power to capital to wealth and I think Europe lost something I think it lost a bit of its soul and it's interesting when you hear some of the people who set up the European project That's what they talk about. They say this was set up around solidarity It was set up around the citizen it was set up as we set up around ideals and actually you've betrayed that in the interests of power So I I probably should have started with the bad ones because I've just brought everybody down including myself But unfortunately, yeah, I'm very disappointed with the European project I have to say I think I think it is a bad time And I know I'm probably way over time. So I'll just the last one was basically How do you have influence as? It does to be honest. It doesn't really matter if you're an independent or a backbench TD or whatever How do you have influence as a parliamentarian in a broken parliamentary system? With great difficulty Is the answer first thing you do is you try and put a fantastic team around you So down here used to work with me he interned with me I got another fantastic intern working me over the summer. We got a bunch of students in so we probably had a team of four five six Really smart young people working on all sorts of cool stuff policy development budget prep all sorts of things And I've got two full-time staff who are awesome and and work their backsides off So the first thing you do is you try and put the coolest team around you that you can obviously Because you can't possibly do it all on your own And at the macro level sorry at the micro level you can have really meaningful Change you can really help people at an individual level or sometimes at a community level sometimes a community group level You can find you know a mom with two kids who is literally homeless a house Because the system Isn't working properly right and because the right people in the system aren't talking to each other you can connect people you can kind of Find ways of making things happen at the margin where they really need to happen not clientele of stuff not vote-getting stuff none of that stuff and All of the TDs do an awful lot of work At the margin of society Where the system where people fall through the gaps people fall through the gaps all the time even the most carefully designed safety nets You'll find says well actually you know she didn't work in this year So she doesn't qualify for this and actually not this either or this or this you talk to the officials and they say yeah No, this is this is a mistake in the system So you can apply a little bit of common sense you can bring a bit of influence in a good way there Locally as well at a slightly bigger level you can you can do some cool things So like for example, I'm working on a new strategy job creation strategy for three of that Well one of the towns and some surrounding villages and great in in Wicklow and And I'm gonna be doing more so you can help kind of a strategic level at a convening level within your constituency very very important stuff Um Occasionally you can affect change through legislation. So I brought in something called the Family Home Protection Bill in 2011 Which basically said the following if someone is having their house repossessed the law at the moment says the judge cannot apply any Discretion whatsoever even if the bank has been acting atrociously And even if it is in everyone's interests that this family stay in the house The judge is no power other than to enforce the possession order now they do and it is a it is a very serious Substantive change that Edmund Holndon actually was talking about in the Irish Times either day saying this is this is big stuff and Minister Shatter asked me to withdraw it. He said it's your bill. We can't bring it in like this But let's talk and a few months ago something on the land conveyance and bill came in and did two things two parts part one Reverse the done judgment. So houses can be possessed. I got an awful lot of heat for voting for that But ultimately if a bank can't secure The asset against its loan there will be no housing market in Ireland and no one will be able to own their own houses The second part was the Family Home Protection Bill. So that was pretty cool You can influence legislation through committee Again at the margin, you know, and it depends on the minister some ministers are very open and some ministers are very closed What I find is the ones that the smartest ones the ones who are most who are best in command of their brief are the most open as In any walk of life, right? And in my opinion the people who are struggling are just not open to listening to anything kind of as a Defensive mechanism, but there are things you can do One of the nicest things you can do I don't know how much influence it has But actually it's one of the best things about being a member of your national parliament is being able to give people a voice Being able to give sort of people who don't have power and don't have representation and don't have money Giving them a voice is amazing. You know and then going back There's a there's a fantastic school in North Wicklow that works with special needs kids and adults And I had made a speech about them and about what they were struggling with I kind of thought nothing more of it And then was talking with the teachers a few months later She said yeah, no we brought all the kids and we brought the the clients of the place in and we had it live and They saw you Representing them in Parliament and it meant a huge amount to them That is an amazing thing as a human being it's an amazing thing to be able to give people a voice who don't have a voice themselves Who were kind of powerless? And I guess One of the other areas is is electorally right if there's a referendum you can actually help sway the referendum So there was a really dangerous referendum in my opinion, which was the Rockets inquiries bill Which to me was McCarthyism it was bad in an awful lot of ways all of the political parties supported it I brought it to the technical group said this is wrong This is McCarthyism we should come out against us a bunch of other people did like a load of the ex-attorney generals or attorneys general And and it got defeated by about two percentage points And I think it swung from about 70 percent. Yes to being defeated on the night So you can have a little bit of a little bit of influence there and then hopefully finally this is Kind of amorphous, but I Hope you can have a little bit of influence by trying to do politics in a slightly different way you know and living it a bit differently and Recognizing that the doll is contrary to what I believe before I went in a country where I think most the public believe And the doll is full of really good people. I mean really talented people really hard-working people Working in a system that's broken, but that they want to fix and I think through a bunch of people Just doing things differently. I think the Tanker that is our political system Hopefully will begin maybe it is a little bit already. I don't know begin to begin to change. So can you have influence? Yes, it's hard. You have to get lucky. You have to be quite clinical about what you do But is it worth it? Yes, it is so there you go. Thank you