Caroline Hurley

A Gender Equality Task Force has recommended mandatory gender quotas for the appointment of senior academics in NUI Galway to combat a legacy of discrimination against women. While concern has been expressed about the use of quotas, it is evident that a ‘silent gender quota’ has been in operation in NUIG for some time. Where an institution has systemised discrimination, then that system serves to operate to the benefit of men – in effect a quota. The first issue with the proposed quota system is actually its narrow focus. It only addresses senior academic appointments. There is over-representation of women in the most precarious academic roles within NUIG, and in the administration and technical sections. These staff groups are not to benefit from the proposed quota system. Secondly, quotas can only go some way towards addressing a specific problem. What NUIG needs is a long-term, multifaceted programme to effect a change in its institutional culture. Culture change requires the commitment and dedication of all, particularly those charged with management responsibilities. Indications to-date however would not inspire confidence that those people charged with running NUIG have the foresight and courage to deliver the culture change that would push NUIG up to the front of the class as a fair and equal campus. President Michael D Higgins recently stated that one of the core functions of a university is to foster a “capacity to dissent” and to “allow for the rejection of dominant ideologies”. The exposure of pervasive gender discrimination at NUIG brings such a vision into sharp focus. In particular, it lights up NUIG’s apparent unwillingness to bring key voices, dissenting and otherwise, to the table to address the dominant, and long-standing, ideology of discrimination that resulted in the eddying maelstrom of negative publicity. In May 2014 Mary Dempsey won her case for gender discrimination against NUIG (DECE2014- 039). The Equality Officer awarded the maximum compensation (€81,000) after finding, among other things, that “she was asked to work during pregnancy-related sick-leave and also during her maternity leave”. Micheline Sheehy Skeffington won her well-publicised case later that same year in which the equality officer described the promotion process as “ramshackle”. On foot of the Sheehy Skeffington case, five further women academics have instigated legal proceedings against NUIG claiming gender discrimination in promotion. The ongoing attempt to defend these cases appears to constitute a lose-lose approach for NUIG. It is incomprehensible and unacceptable to many staff that these women are not promoted on the merits of the Sheehy Skeffington case. It was also discovered that a pre-employment questionnaire required women to answer intrusive and invalid questions about their breasts and menstrual cycles. This was only withdrawn after press exposure. The statistics reveal a fuller picture of the institutional discrimination in NUIG. Women make up a mere 12% of Established Professors, 10% of Associate Professors, and 32% of Senior Lecturers. The percentages of women occupying the most precarious grades is of equal concern. Women make up 73% of University Teacher grade and 66% of fixed-term Lecturers. In administration, men occupy about 20% of roles, but women account for 95% of the lowest grades and men occupy 45% of senior grades. All of these are quantifiable public manifestations of the problems within NUIG. The stated experience of the University’s staff is perhaps most illuminating. NUIG was obliged to undertake a staff survey as part of an unsuccessful bid for external accreditation. This report, published in January 2016, noted that both male and female respondents described the University’s culture as, “male-dominated”. “misogynist”, “aggressive’”, “toxic”, “bullying”, representing “a culture of sexism”, “cronyism”, and an “old boys club”. In this highly charged context, SIPTU members attempted to voice dissent and challenge the dominant ideology by launching an equality campaign. This received a mandate from the membership calling for the appointment of an “external independent expert(s) to conduct an independent equality review of all aspect of the University’s activities, including its policies and practices and their implementation”. NUIG’s response was an outright refusal of constructive engagement with the union. This resulted in a referral of the matter to the Work Relations Commission (WRC). In response to the WRC’s subsequent call to conciliation, NUIG, a public body funded by the taxpayer, refused. Instead of an independent review NUIG management appointed its own Task Force. In response to an open consultation call the task force received a mere 38 submissions from a total of 2,310 staff and over 17,000 students. Its report acknowledges the evidence of gender inequality throughout NUIG, and proposes a series of valid actions. However, no one is held accountable for the culture of inequality. Responsibility for the majority of the actions falls to one person, the new Vice President for Equality and Diversity, who has yet to take up her post. Dr Deirdre Curran and Dr Shivaun Quinlivan are members of SIPTU equality sub-committee. By Deirdre Curran and Shivaun Quinlivan

It is extraordinary how uninterested we are in the problems caused by bad planning or indeed the possibilities for enhanced quality of life, that is to say happiness, that good planning would bring. It is egregious how decisions that may change the face of our capital city continue to be taken so casually and so wrongheadedly. Of course a directly elected mayor would be the agent of debate and public enfranchisement, and that is precisely why we will not be getting one. In 1905 James Joyce wrote, “When you remember that Dublin has been a capital for thousands of years, that it is the second city of the British Empire, that it is nearly three times as big as Venice it seems strange that no artist has given it to the world”. He of course changed that. It got some art. Now it needs some politics. Meantime it is assailed by bad policy. Though it was the second city of the Empire, Dublin is not a city of great public buildings and its Georgian houses offer modest exteriors, though often – even if few seem to appreciate it – extravagant interiors. Its Victorian and modern legacy is very mediocre in international terms. The professional classes fled in turn the North City and then the whole City Centre for the suburbs as soon as it became feasible. They remain there though their children may pass through the City proper, before they become self-sufficient. However, what we do have is a city centre that is largely intact, was built at a human scale and is punctuated by magnificently conceived setpieces, including the squares and quays. You can walk from Baggot St to Capel St and on to the Phoenix Park without feeling if you stop and talk you will be oppressed by anything on an industrial scale – whether a lump of built concrete or a motorway. It’s an intimate city with small shops and pubs a big part of the character. The legacy is in short, fragile. Now the construction economy is rebounding and there is a crippling housing shortage it’s essential we have a vision for the city. As a new development plan wends its way through Dublin’s City Council it’s clear there is no clear vision. In its stead is a deference to the market, to international homogenisation, to quantity over quality, to the vogue of density over longterm quality of life. No one is even talking about how we can facilitate a thriving, family-friendly mixed community well served by facilities and public transportation. All the talk is of the demands of the market and of international competitiveness: a tired embrace of the discredited ideology of yesteryear by out witless city fathers. In any event these tired agendas, would be served by emphasising quality, services and communities. The future of housing in the city centre is clearly apartments but what percentage of the apartments in Ireland provide sustainable accommodation? Apartments are mostly small and miserable yet nobody demurs. Much greater intelligence needs to be applied to what role apartments are to play in Irish life. That role never figures in the discourse and there almost seems to be an assumption that they are not of interest to anyone who matters. Perhaps this is because they have not been of appeal to middle class people with families – people with power and money. How they are designed and laid out and how they function is not a preoccupation for government, local or national. Head of Planning, Jim Keogan, told the City Council in June that it was expected half of the population growth in the City would be for oneand two-person units, not families. These people are perceived to be transients; their interests fleeting. Reflecting this long-term view of the demographic, most of Dublin’s apartment stock has been cheaply built, and the units tend to be small by European and US standards. I recall meeting the ‘architect’ of a large scheme about to be built on the Western quays in the early 1990s. He was happy to admit he was building “the tenements of the future”. Aspirations were low. Apartments were built for the builders, and investors, not for the long-term residents. Inevitably ten years later it was clear that the inmates had little loyalty to their areas and a majority expected to be gone within two years. You need at least 800sq ft to endure, for a family with two children. You need storage space to avoid going mad. For fifty years people have expected built-in wardrobes. You need light. You will need laundry facilities. You need proper management of common areas. Perhaps above all you need private, semi-private (ie semi-public) and public open space. These are rules of twentieth-century human existence. Middle-class families will not consider locating to apartments while there are no parks, playgrounds and sports facilities. The return to city-centre living over the last 30 years has not been accompanied by the opening of a single park of any size. On the contrary, much institutional open space has been built on, and several public parks concreted over. Too many Irish apartment units have no outdoor space at all – it is extraordinary how the model of double French doors leading to useless cast iron faux balconies, was ever allowed to evolve as a norm. Against this background we have two depressing knee-jerk initiatives: Alan Kelly’s reduction in the minimum standards for apartments, and Owen Keegan’s City Council’s insidious long-standing attempts to raise height levels in the city. Kelly Before he finally blew out, former Environment Minister Alan Kelly introduced a new minimum of 40 square metres for an apartment, reducing the previous minimum of 55 square metres, which was already lower than those of what our Multinational-fetishising city fathers regard as our ‘competitors’. It has been let pass as truth that Dublin has unrealistically high standards in apartments. Writing in Village last year, Daft.ie’s Ronan Lyons asked: “If 50-square-metres is good enough for the citizens

In 1849 Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in his journal ‘Les Guêpes’ coined one of the most famous aphorisms of all time: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Ever since signature of the Treaty of Maastricht on European Union in 1992, the EU has been an embodiment of this modus operandi. Swinging from one extreme to another: from active attempts at reforms to active, and indeed passive, pursuit of the status quo, Europe has been living from one crisis to the next. And every iteration of the existential threat leads to ever-deepening integration or harmonisation of European institutions. Despite failure after failure, this process is touted as necessary for creating a functional response to the crises of the past and preventing the crises in the future. The fact that Karr’s dictum subsisted despite every wave of apparent reform swayed nobody. Thus, applying advanced Brian Cowen, we are where we are, which is precisely where we were. Two recent events illustrate this perfectly: Greece and the current debate about future financial crises. Greece Redux This May, Europe marked the sixth anniversary of the Greek crisis and the start of the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area. Both were and remain stuck on the famous page from ‘Les Guêpes’. The real sovereign debt crisis in Europe traces back to the Italian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, and Irish economic development paths of the 1990s and 2000s – characteristically marked by rampant inflation of property bubbles, the explosion of banking credit and profligate public spending on permanent state programmes backed by temporary tax revenues. Public debt rose, as did private debt. Not only in Greece, but Europe-wide. At the start of the 1990s, there was only one country (from the group that today forms the euro area) with a public-debt-to-GDP ratio in excess of 100 percent, and only two countries with a public-debt-to-GDP ratio in excess of 90 percent. By 2011 the number of euro area members with debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding their annual output was five. Last year, there were six and eight with debt to GDP ratio in excess of 90 percent. History teaches us a simple, but painful, lesson: no country that ended 1990-1995 with a debt-to-GDP ratio above 90 percent was able to shake off that burden. Greek debt is spectacular, by all measures. It reached above 90 percent of GDP in 1993, dipped below that for only one year (1999) – thanks to Goldman Sachs’ financial engineering – and hit 109 percent of GDP in 2008. Since then it has risen to 178.4 percent of GDP (end of 2015), and the path from 2016 on is now looking more North than South. With numbers like these, one is tempted to repeat the EU’s mantra that Greece is unique and hence cannot be treated as a symptom of a general malaise. But take just one fact: between 1995 and 2005, total gross Government debt across the euro area grew by 21 percent every five years. In 2005- 2010 the rate of growth of debt accelerated to 37.7 percent – quite understandably, due to the crisis and the banks bailouts. Then came the Age of Austerity and 2010-2015 Government debt across the euro area rose 21 percent once again. “Plus ça change…”. You couldn’t make this up. In 1995, today’s euro area member states had combined gross government debt of €3.95 trillion; by the end of 2017, based on the IMF’s latest projections, it is likely to be just under €10 trillion. In the entire history of the common currency area, there has been not a single year in which total gross government debt declined in absolute terms. So back to Greece. May’s shenanigans in the Eurogroup and other European institutions tell us that we are nowhere near having learned the lessons of the recent crises, let alone the separate lessons of their causes. With the flaring of debate about the sustainability of the Greek debt only 9 months since the ‘final package’ or Bailout 3.0 was sealed on Greek debt funding in August 2015, one thing was clear: the EU has little concern for the actual situation in Greece. In the mind of European leaders the crisis has abated, if not completely gone away. The result of the Eurogroup ‘solution’ was predictable, reached without any drama: Greece got the loans it was promised so it can pay down loans that are maturing. The flicker of excitement about the prospect of an exit from the IMF programme and debt relief was fast extinguished: the EU promised yet again to examine Greek debt sustainability some time in the future and the IMF flip-flopped on its tail, before joining the gang of ‘helpers’. Everyone went promptly to sleep as the acute crisis was averted if only at a cost of shoving ever more risks under the European rug. “Plus ça change…”. Next crises But the problem is that the real lesson from the 2008-present crisis should be exactly the opposite of complacency. Sovereign-debt crises, like financial ones, are not being prevented by the EU’s ongoing ‘reforms’ and the deployment of old ‘solutions’ – integration and harmonisation. Worse, the disease might be getting stronger thanks to European ‘medicine’. In a recent working paper, a group of ECB researchers quantified the “significant spillover effects from sovereign to corporate credit risk in Europe” in the wake of the announcement of the first Greek bailout on April 11, 2010. Based on their estimates, every ten percent rise in sovereign credit risk lifted corporate credit risk by 1.1 percent on average after the bailout. In other words, contagion is a strong risk. Worse, “these effects are more pronounced in countries that belong to the Eurozone and that are more financially distressed. Bank dependence, public ownership and the sovereign ceiling are channels that enhance the sovereign- to-corporate risk-transfer”. So we should worry about the potential for a Greek-style crisis to reconflagrate in the future. Greece is just a canary in the euro-area mine, as I warned in these

A farmer’s son from Kildare whose late father had monies wrongly deducted from his account by Bank of Ireland officials has claimed that hundreds of farmers may have lost their livelihoods due to the fraudulent management of a government rescue scheme in the mid-1980s. Jim Behan owned a valuable farm of 240 acres at Dollardstown House, Athy, County Kildare but like many farmers in the early 1980s fell victim to rising interest rates and falling land values. Charles Haughey’s Fianna Fáil government introduced the Farm Rescue Package in 1982 in an effort to assist such farmers by filtering aid through AIB, Bank of Ireland, and the Agricultural Credit Corporation. Average payments were less than £5,000 per annum but an estimated 7000 farmers applied for relief under the scheme which ended in 1985. To fund the scheme the Revenue agreed to waive corporation-tax profits for the banks which administered. In return the banks contributed 25% of the scheme’s cost. Under this package farmers could obtain a reduced rate of interest of 10.5%. However, it did not work for Jim Behan, or perhaps for many other distressed farmers. Behan had borrowed €165,000 to transform his business into the potentially lucrative pea crop and had also developed a flour-making business. When difficulties arose, his manager at Bank of Ireland in Carlow advised him to apply for assistance under the Farm Rescue Package. He never received the £6000 a year available to him under the scheme. He sold 170 acres to clear the debt a year later but in 1990 took legal action against Bank of Ireland for negligence and breach of contract, though not for fraud. As the case before Judge Freddie Morris approached in the High Court, his lawyers discovered, from an anonymous source, that the bank had failed to pass on the benefits of the Farm Rescue Package to him and instead had used the money to reduce the debt he owed. In his ruling, Morris determined that the bank had not entered any agreement to continue providing him with financial support and that it was entitled to call in his loans and to bounce his cheques as it had done. He ruled, however, that the bank should compensate him for not passing on the monies he was due from the Farm Rescue Package. It emerged that the bank had, without informing him, opened an account in his name on the final day of the scheme in September 1985, drawn down the money and promptly closed it. In its accounts, the bank had claimed the benefit to which in fact Behan was entitled and had also reduced its corporation tax liabilities, as envisaged under the scheme. The judge assessed the benefit to the bank at £20,000 and awarded Behan this amount in compensation. In an appeal to the Supreme Court, Behan was represented by former Fianna Fáil TD and Minister for Agriculture, Michael O’Kennedy. In the course of the hearing, in July 1998, Judge Hugh O’Flaherty asked O’Kennedy whether he intended to submit a claim for damages on Behan’s behalf. Following a bizarre exchange, during which the former minister declined to confirm whether he was seeking damages, O’Flaherty took off his wig, threw it on the bench and left the court. The Supreme Court upheld the High Court decision and no damages were awarded. Within months, O’Flaherty became embroiled in the controversy over the release of Philip Sheedy and in April 1999 resigned from his Supreme Court position. Before the case resumed that Autumn, O’Flaherty had resigned his Supreme Court position in the wake of the controversy over Phillip Sheedy. Behan lost his case and failed in a subsequent fraud action against the bank in 2001 in which he represented himself. He took further court action in 2002 and 2005 but in 2008 High Court judge, Mary Irvine, ruled that his attempt to take proceedings against the bank, his former senior counsel Michael O’Kennedy, and two other lawyers, was inadmissible as the matters were ‘res judicata’ – already determined by the courts. Finally, in March 2011, Supreme Court judge, Niall Fennelly ruled that, to the “extent that the bank had taken a benefit itself in its tax returns…any losses that flowed from that or otherwise in respect of any alleged wrongdoing by the bank had been assessed and considered by Mr Justice Morris and would have been no different if fraud had been pleaded against the bank as it had been in the second action in 2001”. In effect the court dismissed his case against O’Kennedy for failing to plead fraud against the bank, on the grounds that it would have made no difference. It ruled the action frivolous and vexatious and an abuse of process. Since his death from a heart attack two months later, in May 2011, Jim Behan’s son, Andrew, has continued to attack the bank and has also focused on the role played by leading members of the Irish Farmers Association, politicians and other legal representatives who, he believes, obstructed his father’s attempts to save his business, albeit legally. In a letter last year to members of the Oireachtas Andrew Behan has described the abuse of the Farm Rescue Package as “almost a perfect crime” in which the banks were used as a “vehicle for a fraud by drawing down money from the State by means of corporate tax reductions and failed to pass on this benefit to its intended recipients”. By Frank Connolly

The arrest of two men in connection with the criminal investigation into the sale of Project Eagle, the single largest disposal of Irish state assets, has discharged a seismic shock through the establishment, north and south. So shocking indeed that the government and large sections of the media have been caught napping, unable to explain the real context of the unfolding controversy that threatens the credibility of the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) and a number of senior politicians, unable to see that the story threatens to enmire NAMA in Dublin and its defenders at the top of the Fine Gael party. Ronnie Hanna, a former head of asset management at NAMA in Dublin and Frank Cushnahan, a former member of the agency’s Northern Ireland Advisory Committee were arrested by police who also seized documents and computers during raids on a number of properties in Belfast. Village has learned that the arrests came just days before the BBC ‘Spotlight’ programme was due to reveal fresh information concerning the role of both men in the Project Eagle saga. The arrests of the two men by the NCA forced the cancellation of the programme, for legal reasons. On Thursday, 2nd June, the Irish News reported that Hanna and Cushnahan had been arrested two days earlier by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and were being released on bail “pending further enquiries”. It was the only news organisation to identify those arrested although, in its report, the Irish Times mentioned the pair as having been previously named in the Dáil by Mick Wallace in connection with the Project Eagle controversy. In June last year, Wallace sensationally alleged that a sum of £7m “reportedly earmarked for a politician” had been moved to an Isle of Man bank account during NAMA’s sale of its £1.24bn (€1.6bn) Northern Ireland property portfolio to US firm, Cerberus, in 2014. Under Dáil privilege, he later named Cushnahan and Hanna as having had discussions with bidders for the Project Eagle portfolio in advance of the sale. Hanna left NAMA in late 2014, six months after the controversial disposal, but his role in the sale of the massive portfolio of distressed property assets continues to haunt him and his former colleagues in the agency. The transaction has also been the subject of investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the US Department of Justice, the Stormont finance committee and the Law Society in Belfast. In February, the Spotlight programme broadcast secretly filmed footage of Cushnahan claiming that he was to be the beneficiary of monies held offshore in connection with the deal and poured lavish praise on Hanna for the support he gave to distressed property owners in the North. It now appears that further information about his and Hanna’s role has emerged through the BBC investigation led by journalist, Mandy McAuley. The Project Eagle affair has already damaged the reputation of a number of senior business and political figures in the North and contributed to the unexpected resignation of Peter Robinson as First Minister and leader of the DUP in late 2015. This followed a barely disguised warning from the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, to Robinson that if he did not get the suspended political institutions up and running at Stormont he would find himself embroiled in the ongoing international investigations into the disposal of Project Eagle to Cerberus. Adams notably travelled to meet the New York State Comptroller to brief him on the controversial deal. Cerberus executives were then invited to a meeting to face a series of embarrassing questions from the Comptroller about the claims that massive fees had been paid to third parties in relation to the huge property acquisition. The reverberations from the controversial deal were not as loudly felt in Dublin where the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, finance minister, Michael Noonan and NAMA chairman, Frank Daly, have continued to insist that there is nothing to see here and that the agency, or its officials, were not involved in any inappropriate behaviour in respect of Project Eagle. In May, NAMA threatened to sue TV3 over comments it hotly disputes, made during the Vincent Browne ‘Tonight’ programme which suggested that Cushnahan and Hanna were present at a meeting with Cerberus executives just before the agency set a reserve price of £1.24bn for the portfolio. Cerberus purchased it for £1.241bn. According to Mick Wallace, no other bidder enjoyed such access to NAMA and the main underbidder, the US fund Fortress, has complained about the manner in which the sales process was completed. Following the latest arrests, NAMA and the government have come under renewed pressure to reveal any further information about potential conflicts of interest arising from the transaction. The heat is also coming on Kenny and Noonan for their role in the affair and, in particular, the decision of the finance minister to allow NAMA to proceed with the disposal in early 2014, despite being informed of massive fee payments being sought by individuals involved in the transaction. On Tuesday 31st May, after news of the arrests emerged, Kenny refused a call by Gerry Adams for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into the sale and purchase of Project Eagle. Kenny said: “The Minister has made a full statement already and there has been quite a deal of discussion at the various Oireachtas committees on the question on NAMA. NAMA personnel at the highest level have responded and given much time on different occasions to discuss these matters. If two people have been arrested, they have been arrested on suspicion of particular charges and I expect that the court system in the jurisdiction in which they were arrested will follow through on arresting them in the first instance. Obviously, it is not for me to comment on the court system of a different jurisdiction. If they have been arrested, I assume that it is for good reason in respect of activities that would be outside the law. I trust that this will see itself through

The 2016 election has contorted the Irish political system. It has taken months for the two big parties to come to terms with the results and input into the formation of a government. Fine Gael did not expect to do so badly in the election and Fianna Fáil did not expect to do so well. The net result of the election is that neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael, between them, felt it would be in the national interest to form a standalone government that involves them both. A chorus of media commentators and left-wing activists wanted to persuade them to throw in their lot together and form a grand coalition. Backroom strategists in both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were privately anxious about a coalition of the two big parties both before the election and afterwards. Their main anxiety was the possibility of turning Sinn Féin into the main opposition party in Leinster House. The post-election deal has been about ensuring that Sinn Féin does not acquire the whip hand over the country. The solution to the Sinn Féin problem has been a mixture of leaving Fine Gael in power, pulling independents into government and allowing Fianna Fáil to stay in opposition, to bide its time, build itself up and again acquire increased Dáil representation. Fianna Fáil, in the meantime, will swing the sword of Damocles just over the government, tactically voting for it and against it when it seems best for it to do so. Enda Kenny now faces the prospect of being in office but not actually wielding power. Having lost the election, in a very personal way, he will now come under the relentless pressure of events that afflicts all leaders who indicate they are not going to lead their party into another election. How long he lasts and what he does to survive will make for an intriguing game. My own experience of government reshuffles is that there are always plenty of people waiting in the queue to replace a sitting minister. Enda Kenny may deliver a surprise to his incumbent cabinet and ministerial team by introducing fresh blood and people who are known for their loyalty to him. His current line-up contains many who joined in the attempt to remove him when he was in opposition. Some media reports even suggest that Kenny may punish the voluble Leo Varadkar for shooting his mouth off, and not include him in his lineup when he forms his government. The confusion, complexity and sheer instability of the current Dáil mean that Kenny may even succeed in sticking out as Taoiseach for a period of three years. The orthodox wisdom of political commentators is that he will not survive as Taoiseach or leader of Fine Gael beyond Christmas but this may be entirely wrong. Who, it might usefully be asked, is prepared to move against him? Fianna Fáil appears to view him as their best asset in the event of any unforeseen plunge towards an election. There is already evidence of a slow-burn leadership contest that is underway within Fine Gael to replace him. Enda Kenny will have a profound influence over who replaces him. Simon Coveney and Frances Fitzgerald would seem to have the edge over Leo Varadkar in terms of the leadership race. Leo Varadkar has appeared petulant and ill at ease in his role as a negotiator with the dreaded Fianna Fáil representatives at their discussions in Dublin’s Trinity College. He also managed to alienate the independents by playing with his phone during their discussions. To his fans he is either sending a message or positioning himself to take over Fine Gael. To see off any potential challenge to himself and guarantee a greater degree of stability for his government, Enda Kenny is bringing in some independents directly into positions within the government. He may enshrine independents into the heart of government in numbers that have not been seen before. At least twelve independents could easily be integrated into a minority Fine Gael-led government. Kenny could include six independents at cabinet level and a further six as ministers of state. This would lock in the loyalty of the independents and give him an element of additional security both in the Dáil and when it comes to seeing off potential threats within his own party.   There are so many independents in the current Dáil and their demands, both national and local, are so disparate that it is virtually impossible to appease or placate them. Nearly half of them are from backgrounds that veer towards the populist side of the fence as distinct from the purely ideological. By putting them into government they can be in a position to sort out their local issues and at the same time take up a national role. In the past independents have only succeeded when they exercise their leverage in a unique way and at times when their support is vital for the survival of a minority government that is on a knife-edge in the Dáil. In the 1960s Joe Sheridan of Westmeath (‘Vote for Joe the Man you know’) performed this task for Sean Lemass. Local delivery in the constituency seemed to be the main priority for Sheridan. It involved a very minor inconvenience for my father, the late Brian Lenihan, who would have to deploy his ministerial car to collect Joe on occasion so that he could be dispatched to the Dáil. Tony Gregory leveraged his own position with Charlie Haughey in the mid-1980s to achieve a major urban renewal initiative for Dublin’ s inner city. It gave Gregory and his ‘£100m Gregory deal’ legendary status and ensured he was re-elected every time until he passed away in 2009. It is still not clear how profound an influence the deal had in terms of Dublin’s north inner city. The late Jackie Healy-Rae gave strong support to Bertie Ahern’s government in both 1997 and 2007. In return Jackie got both the ear of the Taoiseach and a