Meet the Media: Marc Coleman
Presenter of Newstalk’s Coleman at Large, economist and Sunday Independent columnist Marc Coleman talks to eolas about radically reducing government and why preparing his show is like cooking a meal.
What education and career path led to your current positions?
I came to broadcasting having spent two exciting years as economics editor of The Irish Times. This followed a scholarship MBA in the Smurfit Business School after seven years at the European Central Bank. Before that I was an economist in the Department of Finance and before that I worked in Carr Communications with Terry Prone.
My interest in current affairs and the media started in my teens though. I was always frustrated at what I felt was a very left-wing bias in the Irish media and wanted to do something to correct it. But I felt I needed to gain professional experience and qualifications first; too many people in the media are commenting without having done anything else. After 12 years as an economist at national and international level, I felt I’d proven myself there and was ready to get into media.
I was lucky that former Irish Times editor Conor Brady was lecturing on the Smurfit MBA and that John McManus let me write a few articles for the paper during my MBA.
What are the most crucial actions the Government must take to ensure economic recovery?
It must simply and radically reduce the size, power and influence of government on all our lives. We do need government but government has become vastly oversized, overpaid and over-powerful. An ideal government is no smaller than one quarter but no larger than one third of the overall size of the economy.
Since Bertie Ahern announced that he was a socialist in 2004, state spending grew by 30 per cent in just three years and is now over half of GNP. The present Government is well meaning but I worry that they just don’t grasp the enormity of the changes that need to happen if full employment is to be restored. It can be done and done within five years, but only if we reverse crucial mistakes.
The State forced tax-payers to bail out banks (socialism for bondholders) and the most expensive system of public pay and pensions in the euro zone. At the same time, the State restricts competition and capitalism, driving up prices and the cost of living as a result.
Sure, banks made idiotic mistakes. But politicians forced taxpayers to foot the bill. We need the State to stop invading our lives and get back to what it does best, restricting it to core essential services like primary and secondary education, law and order, defence and basic healthcare.
We do need to protect low to modest income front-line public servants from further cuts but also to apply a fair benchmark to all middle to higher earners against what they would earn in other EU countries. Instead of a property tax, we should cut €1 billion off the €6 billion cost of local government by reducing the number of local authorities drastically.
Finally, we need to means-test welfare benefits and privatise anything in which the State doesn’t need to be involved.
Describe a typical working week.
I work a six-day week, Sundays being sacrosanct for religious and sanity reasons.
On Thursday, I’ll start thinking about the themes for the radio show and together with producer Donal O’Donovan we start contacting guests. That means reading the papers and judging the public mood over Thursday and Friday. Preparing each show is like cooking a meal: the ingredients are not just guests and topics, but also music and ideas that tie everything together in a cohesive whole.
During Thursday and Friday, I’m also reading national and international business news and researching and writing my article for the Sunday Independent. Saturday is usually administrative work, plus a book I’m writing. On Monday, I review the weekend news development and check that the ideas for the show that I came up with earlier are still valid and relevant. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.
On Monday, the guests and music for the show (the music is a crucial ingredient) are finalised and on Tuesday the topic for the Tuesday night show is finalised too.
What is the future for EMU and European integration?
Without exempting Ireland from blame, the EU and ECB need to realise the extent to which EU level mistakes (both France and Germany abandoning the Growth and Stability Pact in 2002 and the ECB weakening its monetary pillar of strategy, leading to lower than advisable interest rates) contributed to Europe’s problems. The lower interest rates made fiscal balances look better than they were by over-stimulating property investment and tax revenues. Countries were complacent about this due to abandonment of the pact.
If the ECB makes good its promise to issue bonds to help Spain as a once-off measure and if it supports a substantive cut for Irish bank debt, European integration can survive.
Whether Greece remains a part of that depends on the will of the Greek Government. I hope they succeed. Ultimately, if Europe falls it won’t be due to the ECB but due to the oversized nature of government in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and Ireland. The countries that are doing well in the euro (the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Austria) are the ones that are able to keep state spending pressures under control.
What has working in the world of economics taught you for working in journalism?
The need to base opinion on fact. There is far too much rubbish floating around as ‘received wisdom’, for instance the idea that the banks constitute the larger part of the fiscal crisis, or that the private sector caused the crisis.
A bugbear of mine and the late Garrett FitzGerald’s is journalists who refer to the live register as the unemployment count. It is not, as it includes part-time and temporary workers. Although lower, the unemployment total is bad enough and doesn’t need overstating.
How do you like to relax?
These days by spending as much time with our new daughter and first child Meabh. She’s the light of our lives and just one moment with her wipes away the stress of an entire week.
