On the day of the local elections Anton McCabe looks at the prospects for revival of the Assembly.
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Why Greens are blue: the facts show the Greens’ record in Government is deplorable.
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As he prepares to address Seanad Éireann, Frank Connolly looks at the record of the former Taoiseach
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MacSharry is very adamant that he is “his own man” and, in a strange way, given his strong footprint pedigree in Fianna Fail, he may in fact be better off being outside of the party. He has surfaced a very real issue in policy terms for the party he once belonged to — the precise nature of the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
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IsWasRael
Israel’s uneven democracy is now breaking
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Government Forum directs philanthropy up dead-ends
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By Michael Smith.
This article appears in Village Magazine, May-June 2023. It was written by Michael Smith and not Rory O’Sullivan. Apologies for the editorial error.
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Biden seemed to acknowledge the American future no longer looks as good as when my grandparents left Galway. By Victoria Costello. Towards the end of my forthcoming novel, Orchid Child, which explores intergenerational legacies and debts in an Irish-American family, an American teenager is walking in a wooded East Galway with an older Irish relative he’s just met, when a gust of wind rises seemingly from nowhere, creating a mini tornado of leaves and twigs, complete with sparks of light and a whirring sound. “We call that a faerie eddie”, the old man tells his visitor, noting that the Good Folk must be pleased at this meeting of far-flung kin on property still in the family. I view this bit of folklore as an apt metaphor for the swirl of mixed emotions generated by Joe Biden’s nostalgia-filled visit to Ireland this past week. Like everything else about the relationship between Ireland and its 32 million, far-flung, American kin, it’s complicated. From both sides of the Atlantic, we shared a laugh about the British display of pique over POTUS relishing his Irish roots for four whole days while skipping the coronation. To which I say, spare us, and Harry and Meghan, too, while you’re at it. Many can also relate to Fintan O’Toole’s discomfort about Biden’s outdated conflation of Irishness with Catholicism. As is true in both countries, “The Church” is simply no longer THE church. A fair number of us have even gone pagan. I get that the Republic of our Irish American imagination can be cringeworthy to today’s politically progressive, Euro-Centric Irish public. And yet, Joe Biden makes a good point when he says, “you can be nostalgic about the future”. Where it gets trickier is when we take in the embarrassed reactions of Irish commentators at Biden’s unabashed displays of sentiment about his Irish roots. I get that the Republic of our Irish American imagination can be cringeworthy to today’s politically progressive, Euro-Centric Irish public. And yet, Joe Biden makes a good point when he says, “you can be nostalgic about the future”. Whether he intended it or not, I took this line of his to refer to an American future that no longer looks as good as it did when our grandparents left West Ireland for the US Eastern seaboard. The fact is, America today is a holy mess. With an ever-blurring line between church and state and a democracy corroded by Trumpian fascist fantasies, it’s like we’re on a runaway train, watching ourselves return to the bad old days. In comparison, Ireland appears as a bastion of liberal democracy. The ironies abide. Another Biden oratorical touch on this trip was his repetition of the phrase, “Ireland remembers”, as an invocation of Irish grit and survival against the Great Hunger and centuries of colonial oppression. To the Irish parliament, he used it as a predicate for his assertion that we will, together, address the global food insecurity that is a direct result of climate change. I can’t imagine Biden making that statement at any campaign stop in the US outside of Vermont or California. So what’s going on here? Allow me to digress. When I first started digging into my Irish roots—my original motivation for doing so was a mental health crisis in one of my sons, which evolved to my researching and writing of a novel based loosely on the family history I’d discovered—I knew nothing more than my Irish grandparents’ names—Michael and Ellen Costello. Not even which county they’d left behind—Galway, as it turns out. This wholesale ignorance, I’ve discovered, is entirely typical. I submit it’s also unhealthy, both for each of us as individuals and for the collective. Much of the story I pieced together of their real lives after emigrating was as tragic as I imagine their lives would have been had they stayed in Galway, given all hell was about to break loose with the rebellion and a civil war. In America, my grandparents’ chief enemy was the poverty they faced alone, without the safety net of nearby family. Indeed their fates were tragic: Michael’s drowning death at 28; Ellen gone in the 1918 flu epidemic, leaving my five-year-old father Jack to be raised by Ellen’s Mitchell and Lynch sisters. For my grandparents’ generation, assimilation was a matter of survival, not for themselves, but for those who came after. For my parents, it was more of a choice. I remember my mother expressing no interest in keeping in touch with any relatives with an address outside the Tri-state area. For me and my siblings, assimilation was a done deal. Ireland a fading story dragged out on St. Patrick’s Day or should the subject of JFK arise. But at what cost? This is the question I grappled with as I wrote what became Orchid Child. The protagonist of my novel, Kate, is a neuroscientist, her family’s third generation success story, who brings her neurodiverse nephew (the teenager at the faerie eddie) to West Ireland, unaware that she’s set foot on the same ground her grandparents fled eighty years earlier. The choice of this scientific specialty for my main character, who is, after all, my alter ego, reflects my fascination with the epigenetics of generational trauma. How the effects of famine, war, poverty, genocide, forced immigration extend across generations and shape our mental and physical health. One of the first Ireland-specific research papers I came across that invoked this still emerging scientific principle was done by Dermot Donaldson, who applied it to a new paradigm for psychotherapeutic treatment of Troubles-related, PTSD in Northern Ireland. His paper contained a poetic phrasing that you’ll see invoked frequently by researchers working in this field. “The generations are boxes within boxes: inside my mother’s violence you find another box, which contains my grandmother’s violence, and inside that box you would find another box with some such black, secret energy – stories within stories, receding in time”. To borrow from Joan Didion, who famously pointed out that we tell
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The Information Commissioner’s Office has just upheld a complaint about the infamous bombing of McGurk’s bar in Belfast. The complaint was made against Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI). It concerned the discovery of the covert British Army “ambush observation post” in the vicinity of McGurk’s Bar on the night of the Massacre. The overwhelming odds are that the post was manned by a unit of the notorious MRF on the night. The MRF was a covert unit set up to confront the IRA by Brigadier (later General, Sir) Frank Kitson. It engaged in surveillance and assassination. The British state has been – and continues to be – severely embarrassed by the actions of the MRF. It has denied for decades that it had an assassination role. Whenever the MRF has been attacked in the press, the defence raised by the British state is that it was little more than an organisation that engaged in the surveillance of suspected terrorists. When an organisation lies for decades, one can – I hope – be forgiven for becoming cynical and suspicious. I am deeply suspicious about the lies the British State has been spewing about the observation post which was located near McGurks bar and another licensed premises allegedly frequented by members of the Official IRA. My concerns are heightened by the fact the British state has been lying about every facet of the McGurk atrocity for decades. A detailed account of some of this deception can be found by clicking this link The McGurk’s Bar cover-up. Heath’s Faustian pact. How a British prime minister covered up a UVF massacre in the hope of acquiring Unionist votes to enable the UK join the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU. In summary, a UVF gang planned to attack a pub which they believed was frequented by Official IRA volunteers. The plan was thwarted by the presence of guards who were posted outside the pub. The bombers opted instead to attack McGurk’s bar which was nearby. Eleven people were killed. Kitson and the RUC went into cover-up mode immediately. For reasons which appear perplexing – at least on the surface – they pretended that the bomb was one made by the IRA which had exploded prematurely inside the building; moreover, that the bomb was in transit, the intention to attack another venue entirely. The cover-up was expansive. It employed numerous individuals on both sides of the Irish Sea. Propagandists (probably Hugh Mooney of the infamous IRD) prepared scripts containing questions and answers for a recital of lies to be performed in the House of Commons. It is impossible to think of a more blatant attempt to mislead Parliament than this. Boris Johnson’s deceit pales in comparison. The organisation, Paper Trail, has shown that not only was this deception executed, but that additional scripts were prepared. The extra lines were not spoken as the public had swallowed the deception that the attack was an IRA ‘own goal’. The Tory Party and Official Unionist party, then led by Brian Faulkner, had a motive for disseminating the fiction about the IRA ‘own goal”: they did not want public pressure brought to bear on the Tory government to intern Loyalist paramilitaries. At the time, the British government was interning Republicans but not Loyalists. (Internment was arrest and detention without trial.) For decades, the families of the victims have called upon the British government to release all of the files they have about the atrocity. Nothing less than a full judicial inquiry is merited. Britain will not do so voluntarily. If the proposed legacy legislation is defeated, US Congressional pressure should be sought to bring about an inquiry into McGurks. In the absence of an inquiry, it is inevitable that speculation will fill the void. If the British state feels that this speculation is unfair, it has no one to blame but itself. One possible scenario which explains all the lies is that the MRF was the mastermind behind the attempt to bomb the pub which they believed was frequented by the Official IRA. They may have prepared the bomb, or at least helped in its preparation. At least one member of the UVF gang could have been working with them. In this scenario, the MRF agent inside the gang was not able to stop his colleagues from attacking McGurks after they became frustrated waiting outside the perceived Official IRA pub. In this scenario, it is easy to understand why figures such as Brigadier Kitson, the RUC and an array of ‘useful idiots’ in the House of Commons, became embroiled in a sordid cover-up and smear campaign that continues to this day. The possibility that Kitson was behind the bombing, does not undermine or contradict the theory that the cover-up was designed to avoid the internment of Loyalists. Sadly, both theories dovetail perfectly. There are even more sinister possibilities: the plan might have been to bomb the alleged Official IRA-frequented pub and either {i} portray it as an Official IRA own goal, or {ii} pretend the bomb was placed by the Provisional IRA in order to stimulate a feud between the Officials and the Provisionals. This is not as far-fetched as it seems. I have spoken directly to a Special Military Intelligence Unit officer who was active in Belfast in the 1970s. He told me how he once lifted guns from an Official IRA arms dump planted them with a Provisional IRA cache. Next, British intelligence leaked the whereabouts of the stolen weapons to spark a feud between the two wings of the IRA. This sort of divide and conquer tactic was straight out of Kitson’s play book. The Official and Provisional wings did engage in a murderous feud in the 1970s. If a judicial inquiry into McGurks is ever established, the terms of reference should be wide enough to explore all of the foregoing possibilities by references to the archives of the British Army at HQNI Lisburn, the MoD, MRF, MI5 at the Home Office, MI6 and
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1. France came to terms with its most shameful military scandal, the framing of Capt. Dreyfus. Britain still clings to the wreckage of its attempt to destroy Capt. Wallace after 50 years of lies and deception. L’Affaire Dreyfus convulsed France for over a decade, 1894-1906. The scandal has come to symbolise an injustice perpetrated by a state against an individual, characteristically a whistle-blower who has exposed state malfeasance. L’Affaire Dreyfus began in December 1894. Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer, spent five years imprisoned on Devil’s Island in French Guiana for allegedly spilling State secrets to the Germans. The real culprit was Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, a treacherous French Army major. When evidence emerged against Esterhazy, the military was obliged to convene a trial against Esterhazt, but acquitted him after two days. The Army then laid additional charges against Dreyfus, based on forged documents. Subsequently, Emile Zola produced his celebrated denunciation of the scandal, J’Accuse! It ignited public fury. A new trial of Dreyfus resulted in another conviction for the innocent captain and a 10-year sentence. This, however, did not wash with the public and eventually Dreyfus was pardoned and released. Finally, in 1906, he was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He died in 1935. Colin Wallace was also a captain in the military. False evidence was concocted to blame him, inter alia, of leaking military secrets which had been spilt by others. He was unfairly dismissed from his Army post in 1975. He was later accused of murder. As in L’Affaire Dreyfus, the prosecution relied upon perjury to secure the conviction. Dr Ian West, a Home Office pathologist, used his time in the witness box to disgorge one lie after another. Wallace spent six years in prison, a year longer than Dreyfus. Like Dreyfus, his conviction was eventually overturned. One of Wallace’s supporters in the British media was the late Paul Foot. He wrote of Wallace in April 1987 that the ‘most fantastic thing about Colin Wallace’s fantastic story is that every time you check it against the facts, it fits them’. The same cannot be said about the outpourings of Her Majesty’s Government (HMG). Despite repeated humiliations, the British Establishment is still swearing that black is white. 2. Wallace exposed PSYOP dirty tricks. HMG said he was lying. When proof of dirty tricks emerged, HMG had to rewrite its lies. HMG lied about the work Wallace carried out while at HQNI at Lisburn. One of Wallace’s tasks was to plan psychological operations (PSYOPs). In 1987 and 1988 when Wallace’s case became a cause célèbre in Britain, HMG assured the Commons that Wallace had never had a PSYOPS role. HMG also denied the existence of a particularly sinister programme run under the rubric of ‘Operations Clockwork Orange’. Clockwork Orange fed lies to the media about British parliamentarians such as Harold Wilson, Denis Healey, Tony Benn and others. Then, in 1989, files emerged which proved that Wallace had indeed served as a PSYOPs officer; moreover, that Clockwork Orange files existed. Defence Secretary Tom King conspired with Margaret Thatcher to push this particularly embarrassing genie back into the bottle. Rather than hold a wide ranging inquiry, as certain civil servants had expected, King curtailed the terms of what became the Calcutt Inquiry. David Calcutt QC turned out to be an honest man. He confirmed that Wallace had been dismissed unfairly, but little else. This was not Calcutt’s fault. His terms of reference were narrow and restrictive. Wallace was paid £30,000 compensation. 3. Wallace raised the spectre of collusion and was accused of being a Walter Mitty. Now HMG is doling out millions to victims of collusion. What had Wallace discovered during his time as a PSYOPs officer? Wallace came to suspect the existence of collusion long before this became an accepted fact for which HMG has compensated many victims such as the families and survivors of the Miami Show band atrocity. Yet, when Wallace raised the spectre of collusion between the British state and Loyalist paramilitaries, he was denounced as a liar. In addition to the payment of compensation to victims of State-Loyalist collusion, a string of enquiries including that of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, the Historical Enquiries Team, along with the publication of various books, have confirmed that British agents were working inside Loyalist paramilitary organisations. The most infamous of these killers was Robin ‘The Jackal’ Jackson. He was one of the gang which bombed Dublin and Monaghan in 1974 murdering thirty-three people. Wallace has maintained for decades that there were reasons to believe the State had colluded with the UVF gang that bombed Dublin and Monaghan in 1974. Various British government have refused to release their files on the twin atrocity. 4. Wallace said the State knew about the child abuse at Kincora. He was vilified for decades. In 2022 the Police Ombudsman criticised the RUC for having failed to act on knowledge it had of the scandal. What else did Wallace reveal only to be traduced as a Walter Mitty type fantasist? Wallace has told the truth about the infamous Kincora Boys’ Home child sex abuse scandal. All of the inquiries set up by HMG have ordained that the only abuse suffered by the residents of Kincora was that perpetrated by the staff members at the home. This is entirely wrong. In recent decades countless former victims have come forward with detailed accounts describing how they were abused by people from outside of the home. HMG still libels the victims as liars and fantasists. One of the victims, Richard Kerr, is trying ti get his case heard in Belfast. He has become frustrated at one delay after another in the case. Wallace has produced contemporaneous records which prove that he and others in the Army knew about the abuse at the time. RUC records prove that the police knew about it too in the 1970s. In 2022 a report by the Police Ombudsman for NI acknowledged this and criticized the RUC
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Dodgy Damien English, as Junior Minister (2017-21), and Dave Walsh, now ‘retired’ former head of the planning department, were among the range of officials and Ministers in the Housing Department who served to keep Gerard Convie’s allegations about corruption in Donegal planning out of the public domain.
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And O’Brien is benefiting from favourable coverage in the paper for his precipitate U-turning Planning Bill which embraces Bord Pleanála, social housing, judicial review and the foreshore The Minister of Housing, Darragh O’Brien has been scrambling of late to hustle through the passage of the still fast-evolving unfinished but critical Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Bill, 2022 (the ”Bill”) through the Houses of the Oireachtas before the Christmas recess. In previous articles, Village has been critical of the deficiencies in the legislative process that has resulted from this unseemly haste. In recent weeks, the Irish Times has been helpful in relieving the harried Minister of the distraction of releasing the usual press statements with their tedious official status. And more helpful still in laundering the scrambling and hustling as if it were pre-planned, even where the detail of the legislation contradicts previous releases and stated statutory intent. This will be no end of relief to the U-turning Minister. Articles were published in that paper on 29 November and 7 December which reported that the Minister had received government approval to amend the Bill to allow for the appointment of an interim Chairperson of An Bord Pleanála (ABP) and to provide for exemptions to existing planning regulations, in certain circumstances, for local authority social and affording housing developments. Original plans to replace the “Chairperson” with an “interim Chairperson” were fast changed after a Village article drew attention to the facts that that the “interim Chairperson” would not be empowered a) to investigate misconduct of ABP members and b) to allocate business to divisions of ABP — a streamlining efficiency that would become central to operations if ABP were expanded as the Bill proposes, to 14 members. The report involved a contribution to the Cabinet discussion by O’Brien. The report was highly favourable to O’Brien. The report was the third in ten days outlining proposals to Government from O’Brien. The investigation into the source of the leak would do well to start with O’Brien and those close to him. The failure to recognise and analyse U-turns that characterised the articles suggests the article has been derived from informal briefing rather than with the meticulous care typical of carefully crafted official statements published by Departmental press offices. Village has requested a copy of any official statement on which these articles were based from the Department as neither of these “announcements” were published as government press releases. The Department confirmed to Village that the article of 7 December was accurate and, at the time of writing, was verifying the facts of the 29 November article. On the face of it, so far, there is every reason to believe that the articles are factually correct. Moreover, even with all this on his plate, O’Brien found time to make an intervention in the drafting of another Department’s proposed bill. On 8 December, yet another article helpful to O’Brien and based on “sources” rather than official statements reported details of the changes to Catherine Martin’s Registration of Short-Term Tourist Letting Bill that O’Brien had suggested to the Cabinet. The headline of the article tells the tale: ‘Minister wanted new laws to force short term lettings into private market introduced immediately Cabinet papers show that Darragh O’Brien clashed with Minister Catherine Martin over the proposals and wanted them to be introduced without six month grace period’. The article asserts that “observations on the new law submitted to Cabinet [were] seen by the Irish Times”. The headline talks of a “Cabinet clash” and the meat of the article says, “Cabinet papers show that Ministers clashed over a proposal to allow short-term lettings to continue operating for up to six months”. If there is a clash in Cabinet it clearly must arise from “discussions”. The nature and detail of those discussions have obviously been leaked. Clearly someone at the very least showed, and possibly gave, the reporter the Cabinet papers in question – papers that are confidential. In any event, the point is that disclosing, and worse still publishing, Cabinet discussions was illegal. The law is embarrassingly clear on this matter. The Seventeenth amendment to the Constitution, passed in a referendum in 1997, provides that: “The confidentiality of discussions at meetings of the Government [In this context Government means Cabinet] shall be respected in all circumstances save only where the High Court determines that disclosure should be made in respect of a particular matter…”. So, in essence Cabinet confidentially “shall be respected in all circumstances”. As recently as last year, the High Court confirmed that “[Cabinet meetings] and their records are required to be private and confidential”. The purpose of Cabinet confidentiality is to encourage Ministers to speak freely without risk of their stance leaking or undermining decisions deemed collective. The Cabinet Handbook, a guide for Ministers which always recognises collective responsibility, requires that: “(M)inisters must at all times support Government decisions in public debate as a responsibility of office”. In this instance the article prejudices O’Brien’s Green Cabinet colleague, Catherine Martin, who is revealed as having favoured a less direct, more namby pamby approach on Airbnb. If Darragh O’Brien wanted to express his dissatisfaction with this government policy in the press he should have done so outside of government (ultimately, if he felt strongly, by resigning). O’Brien has won for himself recognition of this robust approach, but it has been done through nefarious means. Someone well-placed has not respected Cabinet confidentiality to the advantage of O’Brien; and nor, notably, has the Irish Times. The illegality of the disclosures is clear cut. The case is egregious as it isolates another Minister: one from another party, in this case Catherine Martin. O’Brien seems to owe Martin an apology for standing beside her in support of her at the launch of her legislation the day before his opposition to her legislation was splashed across the newspaper pages. Leaking from Cabinet is serious enough that the Cabinet
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Friday, November 18th, 2022.
Friday, November 18th, 2022 Peace came in the door and sat down beside me and said how glad it was to see me, genuinely, and to finally meet my wife, I knew I must take its hand though I did not know who I would be in the absence of all I had built its belligerent opposite into. Peace came in the door. I did not know its face my high wall against it had served longer than anyone in Long Kesh – twenty seven years – and bore much graffiti but I knew the name it told me was true and I had to take its hand. A much smaller man than I remember and so, I realised, now was I the day Peace sat down among us and said it went by my Father’s name.
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By J Vivian Cooke. The Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Bill 2022 is currently — precipitously — accelerating through the Houses of the Oireachtas. In part, it will facilitate the appointment of Oonagh Buckley as interim head of An Bord Pleanála (ABP). Village has expressed grave and detailed concerns about this process. From July until the end of November, the Government took quite a relaxed attitude to the operation of ABP as its Chair and Deputy Chairperson resigned in turn. It is only in recent weeks that a sense of urgency has been injected into the Department’s legislative efforts. Indeed, that urgency has translated into an indecent haste and worrying vacillation. Perhaps Attorney General, Paul Gallagher, is conscious that he is about to be replaced and is zealous in his determination to get this Bill passed before then. The Department has changed its mind, changed its explanations and changed its plans with a bewildering frequency. And still, at this stage, there are more changes expected and announced. It is helpful to put the key events in sequence. Second half of 2021 – (following much chat of how the AG is determined to effect necessary changes) – Work begins on a comprehensive Bill to reform the Irish planning system 8 July 2022 Paul Hyde resigns as Deputy Chairperson of ABP following a debacle. Casual vacancies in the position of Deputy Chairperson can be filled by the Minister where he directs that an ordinary member of the board should be Deputy Chairperson. 3 October 2022 Office of the Planning Regulator publishes its report on phase 1 of its review of ABP. 4 October 2022 Department of Housing publishes Action Plan in response which lists: individual actions to reform ABP. Cabinet approves Action Plan. The Cabinet does not approve any legislative changes but, rather, allows the Department to begin drafting the PDF Bill to translate the Action Plan into a new statute. 3 November 2022 David (Dave) Walsh announces his intention to retire as Chairperson of ABP. This adds a vacancy in the position of Chairperson to the vacancy in the position of Deputy Chairperson which, if unaddressed, would lead to the ordinary business of ABP grinding to a halt. In response to Walsh’s resignation, the Department announces: “Minister O’Brien will now move swiftly to initiate the process of appointing a new Chairperson and will also appoint a Deputy Chairperson as provided for under the Planning and Development Act, 2000”. Clearly the intention at that time was to make two appointments. Under the current legislation, a casual vacancy in the position of Deputy Chairperson can be filled temporarily by a Ministerial appointment. However, the law does not provide for the appointment of a temporary or interim Chairperson and the vacancy created by Walsh’s retirement can only be filled by an appointment made through the process laid out in Section 105 of the Act. 9 November 2022 General Scheme of the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Bill 2022 is published. This document contains only four Heads of Bills to reform ABP that amends: Section 104 (1 – 3) in order to increase the number of board members to 15 and allow the Minister to make further additions if required in future; Section 106 to change the method of appointing ordinary board members to replace panel composed of civic society bodies with an interest and expertise in planning with a committee appointed by the Minister to assist him in making appointments; Section 108 (1) (A – D) by increasing the quorum of the board acting by division from 2 two 3 members; and Section 110 (2) to change the grounds on which the Chairperson can investigate ordinary board members for misconduct and allow the Minister to seek a report from the Chairperson into suspected misconduct. The General Scheme makes no new provision for either an interim Chairperson or accelerated building of social and affordable housing. 10 November 2022 Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage hears submissions as part of the Pre-Legislative Scrutiny of the Bill. In its submission, the Department notably does not mention its intention to legislate for an interim Chairperson or for the accelerated provision of social and affordable housing. No indication is given that the government will unleash emergency procedures to secure the passage of the Bill before the Christmas recess. 22 November 2022 the Minister announces that Oonagh Buckley will be appointed interim Chairperson of ABP. He issues a statement that: “(T)he appointment of Ms. Buckley as an interim Chairperson will be effected through the use of Ministerial powers to appoint a Deputy Chairperson under existing provisions of the Planning and Development Act, 2000 as amended and further forthcoming amendments through the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment Bill) 2022.” This is a clear departure from the intention on 3 November to make two appointments – a Chairperson and a Deputy Chairperson. In addition, it is clear that the Minister intends to fill the post of Chairperson, at least on a temporary basis, without using the appointment mechanisms required by Section 105. Moreover, the statement prompts a number of queries as no timeframe for Buckley’s appointment is given and so it is not clear when, how and in particular under what legal authority Buckley will be appointed interim Chairperson. Current legislation only allows for the appointment of a Deputy Chairperson for a period of 12 months and the details of the Bill as outlined by the Department to this point makes no mention of an interim Chairperson. 28 November 2022 The Department of Housing confirms that: “Oonagh Buckley will be seconded to the Dept. of Housing to become an officer of the Minister for Housing. Following that the planned appointment sequence is: The Minister appoints Ms Buckley as a temporary ordinary board member [Section 108(4)] The Minister appoints
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BORD PLEANÁLA: O’BRIEN REVERTS TO RAY BURKE ERA LEGISLATIVE ETHOS Media ignore Department of Housing’s disarray over how to appoint a new Chairperson to guide discredited planning appeals body By J Vivian Cooke and Michael Smith Ireland’s crisis-raddled planning appeals board, An Bord Pleanála (ABP), is an independent, statutory, quasi-judicial body that deals with appeals from local authorities and, at first instance, with some large planning applications. Its board members were directly appointed by the relevant Minister until 1983 when the system was reformed following unease with appointments of acolytes, including his own constituency advisor, by corrupt Minister Ray Burke in the golden era of Fianna Fáil-led planning corruption. The reforms established a new ‘arms’ length’ approach where candidates for the position of Chairperson of the board are interviewed by a committee chaired by the President of the High Court and selected by various worthies and NGO bosses whose organisations also have a role in nominating ordinary members. On 22 November, the government announced that it intended to appoint Oonagh Buckley as interim Chairperson of ABP. The appointment is necessitated by the degringolade of ABP’s credibility in the wake of multiple revelations of delinquency that led to the resignation of both its Chairman, David (Dave) Walsh, and its Deputy Chairman, Paul Hyde, who has been linked to multiple conflicts of interests, failures to declare interests and compromising loan write-offs; and is facing criminal prosecution and three unpublished inquiry reports. the government announced that it intended to appoint Oonagh Buckley as interim Chairperson of ABP after the resignation of both its Chairman, David (Dave) Walsh, and its Deputy Chairman, Paul Hyde Buckley is a qualified barrister and adjunct professor of law as well as a well-regarded and experienced civil servant who, during her time in the Department worked on planning policy and legislation. Therefore, she may have been surprised to learn that her elevation to the position of interim Chairperson “will be effected through the use of Ministerial powers to appoint a Deputy Chairperson under existing provisions of the Planning and Development Act, 2000 and further forthcoming amendments through the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Bill 2022”. This new Bill is a Department of Housing, (the Department). initiative which was published on 9 November. The sleight of hand in appointing a new Chairperson, bypassing specific legislation, is a reversion to the gombeenism of a different era and will surely not go unchallenged in the courts APPOINTING A NEW CHAIRPERSON There may well be a need to regularise a new Chairperson quickly as the standard way the board operates — in divisions — depends on it. Perhaps reflecting this, the Department emailed Village: “Oonagh Buckley will be seconded to the Dept. of Housing to become an officer of the Minister for Housing. Following that the planned appointment sequence is: “The Minister appoints Ms Buckley as a temporary ordinary board member [Section 108(4)] The Minister appoints her from amongst the ordinary board members as ABP Deputy Chair (Section 107) As the post of ABP Chairperson is vacant, Ms Buckley will under Section 110(1A) [sic] perform the Chairperson’s functions [sic] Section 110(1) functions as Deputy Chair [sic] i.e. (a) ensuring the efficient discharge of the business of the Board, and (b) arranging the distribution of the business of the Board among its members”. An even more dramatic illustration of the position from which the Minister has now resiled was the following exchange on 30 November over a question from Paul Murphy TD: “Question [From Murphy]: To ask the Minister for Housing; Local Government and Heritage if he followed the procedure set out in s.105 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 in appointing a new ‘interim chair’ of An Bord Pleanála; if not, the reason that he felt able to ignore that requirement. Reply [From Darragh O’Brien]: The appointment of the interim Chairperson will be effected through the use of Ministerial powers to appoint a Deputy Chairperson under existing provisions of the Planning and Development Act, 2000 as amended – specifically Sections 107 & 108(4) – and through further forthcoming amendments through the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment Bill) 2022”. The problem is that, while a Chairperson is required, the Planning and Development Act, 2000 (the Act) does not provide for an “interim Chairperson”. In short, all the provisions that allow for direct ministerial appointment under the Act only apply to ordinary members not to the Chairperson. In order to appoint a new Chairperson, the Minister is obliged to follow the complex procedures detailed under Section 105 which require convening a panel chaired by the President of the High Court and including the likes of the Chairperson of An Taisce, and the Presidents of the Construction Industry Federation and Irish Congress of Trades Unions. The theory is sound and gratifyingly has been retained under the proposed reforms of ABP in the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Bill 2022. Unfortunately, the Act prescribes that the names of fully three recommended candidates go to government and it is almost impossible, bearing in mind the composition of the panel, that one of those will not be the one favoured by the Department of Housing – often, like David (Dave) Walsh, a Departmental insider. This is in part because the Department convenes the interview panel and hosts its meetings: making it unlikely that ‘planning-uninitiated’ panel members would strike a jarring note, as one of the authors of this piece found when he served on the panel. This should be reformed since institutional renewal will not come at the hands of the ubiquitous Departmental insiders who oversee national planning policy. Certainly, there is scope under Section 105 (6) of the Planning Act for the Minister to amend the composition of the selection panel (theoretically allowing the Minister to appoint himself as the sole member of the selection panel), but there is no power then to circumvent the legal requirements to publish notices of this in Iris Oifigiúil, to make orders, lay such orders before the Oireachtas, etc.
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Dylan. By Kevin Barrington.
There was that nervous anticipation as we sat down in the Point. It’s Bob Dylan after all. And at 81 he is still challenging. There’s none of that reverence that bordered on the mawkish that greeted Leonard Cohen. But Leonard had almost become a legacy act. While Bob was still pushing boundaries leaving an audience always unsure of what to expect. The only one criticism one could have about Dylan over the past 20 years is that he is no longer creating soundscapes. He is not creating wild mercurial sounds like he did in his Blonde on Blonde heyday. No, these days Dylan curates more than creates. He takes the sounds of the American songbook over the past century and makes them his own with his unique voice. Dictation is Dylan’s genius these days. He may not create with the same brio he did in the 60s but he can rival any poet for impact with his intonation. And so to the show. He’s almost hidden on stage, lurking behind a battered piano, pulling off a lifelong ambition to separate the dancer from the dance. There’s no cliche here. In fact, if anything, it is very anti rock n roll. We were way past that. First impressions: the minimalist stage setting. The 30s art-deco-ish lighting. The jazz-like layout of the musicians. Yeah sure Bob is centre stage but hidden behind the beat-up upright piano. No spotlights. No iconography. None of that jazz. We’re taken through decades of sound with Dylan, magpie-like, stealing all the best shiny sonic stuff. He takes us hovering over a century’s entertainment. Popping down to pluck all that’s precious. The master of the American songbook. And at 81, he seems finally free. He didn’t feel the need to deface his own work. Or subvert audience expectations. Tonight at 3Arena he was going to embrace his work. And that’s what he did. It was less anarchic than normal. But it was magical. From the very first notes. And Dylan’s voice at 81 was startling. vital and always bleeding meaning. And we had so many Bobs it was disconcerting. We had balladeer, burnt out Bob, crooner, poetic Dylan, love song maestro. Ah stop it, stop it stop it Bob. This is too much. Way too many yous. Bob Dylan, do you know something? You contain multitudes. And more. As did the band. The usual suspects. With Tony Garnier hitting what must be 30 years. This band is effortlessly stunning. You gotta be if you’re with Dylan. If you are going to raid a musical century’s lost ark, then you gotta know those Indiana Jones’ moves. And these dudes, they literally know the score and the scores. They just don’t make a big deal about it. No grimacing guitar. No cliche. it’s just all in a day’s work; just presenting genius. Yes you heard me right. Genius. This gig deconstructed the whole rock n roll show. While joyously putting rock n roll in its place in the musical cannon. Alongside jazz and blues. And chanson. And performance poetry. And whatever you are having yourself. Dylan at the end of his game, at the height of his game, showed us all the pieces. Stop looking at me and listen, he so divinely sang. We won’t play that silly encore game. We’ll just the end the show like adults. Bob, I get it. I get it. I really do. But bad news for you. It just makes you so much more fascinating. Keep it going you angel headed hipster. We need more lights in the night
