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Politics

Estates of Fear

by admin 23 March, 2021

Inept decision-makers ignore the wishes and interests of local authority tenants. By Mannix Flynn. Ireland’s Attitude to Social Housing Let’s be clear, though the middle classes could not care less, tenants in our local authority estates have rights. A few years ao it was reported that localauthorities had received 10,000 complaints about anti-social behaviour in just two years, 2015 and 2016. It’s an ongoing crisis. But only for those who live in the flats. You could easily miss this timebomb because the general view is that Council estates are the sinks of our society. This is partly because somuch of housing policy obsesses over how to facilitate private development and private reward. The unnecessary bifurcation between ownership classes for housing is deep-rooted and long-standing; and drives the self-image of far too many. It ownership classes for housing is deep-rooted and long-standing; and drives the self-image of far too many. It also affects construction. As long ago as the report ‘Housing Conditions of the Working Classes in the City of Dublin’ concluded 14,000 new homes needed to be built to rehouse slum dwellers. Crucially this building programme needed to be undertaken by the State because the private sector had not made itself available to “any appreciable degree sufficient to grapple with the present needs of the city”. Inadequate supply of social housing remains an indictment of our society. There are at least 70,000 on social housing lists. But there are other age-old problems. The same report said there needed to be better enforcement of the laws in relation to rented accommodation. That’s a hundred years ago! A 2010 report criticised “housing managementpolicies that make enabling tenant purchase the priority”, to the detriment of quality, amenities and relationships. We don’t get social housing inIreland. Never have. It’s very diff erent elsewhere. In Vienna 62%live in social housing, good-quality social housing. The Legacy Anyway on we go, building sinks, ever since, from the grand scale of Herbert Simms through the 1966 Housing Act and a burst of high-riseincluding the 3,000-unit Ballymun development with disastrously diverted physical and social infrastructure to sprawling 1970s houses in desolate new towns to the limited vision over the last few decades of Part V and 10% allocations of social housing in, or sometimes away from, private housing developments. The quality and conditions are grim for those in the Ghetto. In the Inner City many of the flats are slums. Ordinary people feel abandoned, unsafe, distant from a regime they see as Stalinist. Mostly they feel fear There is a correlation between growing up ghettoised in a slum and dysfunctional behaviour. Ordinary people feel abandoned, unsafe, distantfrom a regime they see as Stalinist. Mostly they feel fear. Fear every day. Dysfunctionality from crime and poor conditions overflows into the inner city generally. Families and elderly people don’t go into the city any more. The multi-agencies that are supposed to be looking after the welfare of the homeless and the addicted fill their own coffers like Christmas. The Council and all the political parties including FFG, People Before Profit and Sinn Féin but also NGOs and community activists have abandoned the flats. Eoin O’Broin writes about a Tiocfaidh ár Lá dee daw utopia of social housing everywhere but people in the ghetto want safety first. Where is Amnesty’s Colm O’Gorman on the breaches of civil liberties for those abandoned in fear in the flats? God knows there must be a judicial review in it for those who bed down amid the mould and vermin. There are certainly enough Acts that are suppose to cover it. Worthy report after report is forgotten by the middle-class worthies paid to churn them out. Nothing ever changes. Social Housing Figures As to social housing, only 9% of Ireland’s housing stock is social housing compared to the European average of 20%. In 2017, there were 24,000Dublin City Council tenants paying more than €78 million in rent. On average, tenants paid €272 per month. You wouldn’t know they pay anything, the way they are abandoned by civil servants and Garda who live miles away, to anti-social behaviour. Anti-Social Behaviour This is defined under the Criminal Justice Act 2016: “A person behaves in an antisocial manner if the person causes or, in the circumstances, islikely to cause, to one or more persons who are not of the same household as the person –Harassment,Significant or persistent alarm, distress, fear orintimidation, orSignificant or persistent impairment of their useor enjoyment of their property”. Anti-social behaviour fails to describe what people are facing day and night in local authority estates, the place they call home – and withoutany help in the event of abuse. When drug lords shoot a lad dead in Gloucester Place or Sheriff St who picks up the pieces? Who deals with theterror residents feel passing the spot every day? It’s not as if anyone provides counselling. The knotweed of this criminality euphemised as anti-social behaviour is tightening its deathly grasp all over the city. A 2019 University of Limerick report found that only a relatively small number of people in social housing (estimated at under 2% between theages of 12 and 40) are involved in criminal and anti-social behaviour, but that their actions were having a continuing corrosive and damagingimpact on a far greater number. Up to 1000 kids, mostly from “chaotic” family backgrounds are groomed into criminal activities Crime in Social Housing Figures A third of Irish people say crime and anti-social behaviour in their community has had an impact on their quality of life. In Dublin the figure rises to four in ten residents who feel their lives have been negatively affected. As of 2018 Dublin’s north inner city had the highest crime rate in the State at over five times the national average. The Dublin North Centraldivision had the highest rate for 11 of the 14 main crime categories, including homicide, sexual offences, assaults, drug crime and public orderoffences, and had the second highest rate in the remaining three. The North

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General

Dystopia here, now

by admin 16 March, 2021

Village magazine editorial – February-March In the 1970s boys comics imagined dystopian futures of out-of-control robots and rollerblade axe-fighting. They were a counterpoint to the humdrum reality for the warless Persil generation. 2021 has opened with dysfunctionality every bit as overwhelming as the most vivid imaginations of 50 years ago feared. We have brought a global plague upon ourselves by preying on recently-damaged ancient ecosystems in the reclaimed wilderness so that species that should never be in contact are forced upon each other, dead or alive, and eaten. It spread worldwide in weeks by air travel, the most unsustainable form of transportation ever invented because of our obsession with the fastest possible global mobilityl. It has been aided by pollution which weakens the lungs of potential victims of the disease. It has locked down the world so people cannot socialise, for a year. We have pillaged and plundered the gorgeous hills and valleys of our glorious abundant planet. In the last fifty years humans have damaged the earth so much that most life forms, notably including their own, are precarious. Humans have wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles and threatened a million species with extinction to the point where we are facing the sixth Great Extinction. Since 1906, the global average temperature has increased by more than 1.1 degrees. A further .4 of a degree rise may put 20-30% of species at risk of extinction. Climate change generates rising seas, hurricanes, floods, droughts and desertification. It is, then, extraordinary that we are we currently accelerating towards probably 3 to 4 degrees and perhaps, in places, 10 degrees centigrade of apocalypse by the end of the century. A quarter of a billion years ago, a rich and wonderful world was annihilated in the end-Permian extinction when the world warmed the same amount, 10 degrees. We’ve known about climate change since the 1860s. We’ve really known about it since around 1988. Yet since then global emissions have ratcheted by 50% and continue to rise, causing and threatening all this, to the point that over the last dozen years it has become a clear and overarching threat to all life. We’ve disgraced ourselves in our treatment of the planet. We’ve done a little better with ourselves materially, generating profligate, short-term riches for our 7.8 billion master race. Over the last 30 years, more than 1.3 billion people have surfaced from extreme poverty defined as subsisting on less than $1.90 a day (at 2011 prices), and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. In the 25 years from 1990 to 2020, the extreme poverty rate dropped an average of a percentage point per year – from nearly 36% to 8% (630m people), slowing latterly. Nevertheless inequality is ascendant. On a scale that is inhuman. The world’s ten richest men have seen their combined wealth increase by half a trillion dollars since the pandemic began. The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population. The world’s richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people. Almost half of humanity is living on less than $5.50 a day. And there are huge problems with the quality of life even for those with rising wealth. Community, family and social connections are all under threat. Many people, particularly children, are addicted to de-socialising information technology. A 2017 study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that 10% of the population worldwide suffer from a mental health disorder. Angst was pervasive in the rich world even before Covid-19. According to Cigna, in 2020 more than three in five Americans are lonely, with more and more people reporting feeling like they are left out, poorly understood and lacking companionship. Evil is never far from sight in our world. The last generation bas brought the Atomic Bomb, the Holocaust, genocides and quasi-religious videoed beheadings. We allowed democracy to disgrace itself. The most populous country in the world isn’t even a democracy. The richest country was run by a sociopathic narcissist who doesn’t believe in science, truth or facts. Our own country’s main political parties obsess over the national question rather than a clear, mature policy platform for the future. Despite Greens in government we can’t get a Climate Act with teeth. Nobody’s seriously even monitoring inequality. Nobody cares about the transparency agenda. Townhall voting, cross-sectoral roundtables, people’s conventions, consensus rather than binary votes, subsidiarity, local governance: all progressive democratic media, none used. Faced with this travesty the debate focuses on blaming the inept administration of petty politicians and bureaucrats in a pandemic. Few apply themselves to reducing the chances of another one. Few draw lessons from the pandemic for environmental crisis. It is clear our species is failing and that civilisation may be coming to an end. We must all ask ourselves how will our agendas in 2021 be judged in 100 years. When our house was on fire we retreated to our desktops, and tweeted vituperation about bureaucrats. We had no vision for the common good, no vision for the future. And for want of understanding of science we denied we were in crisis until after it was too late and we had made for ourselves that dystopia.

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General

The Tánaiste and I both signed the Official Secrets Act.

by admin 16 March, 2021

Leo Varadkar has somehow convinced media that he’s not bound by that Act but he is – and faces an even more serious case under the Corruption Act. By Conor Lenihan. The latest twist in the Leo Varadkar leak controversy evokes yet more confusion and doubt. The fact that the Garda have now confirmed that a formal investigation is underway will be severely discomfiting for the former Taoiseach and current Tánaiste. The Varadkar spin-doctors have consistently asserted both his innocence and his entitlement to leak in the ” public interest”. A cursory reading of the Official Secrets Act shows no such entitlement exists. Varadkar himself has anyway already undermined his own defence by his frank admission of having done wrong through a Dáil apology. Why apologise if you are entitled to do this kind of leaking of confidences? Strangely, in their desperation to steer their man out of danger, the Varadkar advisors even managed to convince some media outlets that as a Minister he wasn’t even covered by the Act. This gravity-defying contention is based on a misreading of the Act. All Ministers are not just bound by the Official Secrets Act but also required to sign a letter uncertainly agreeing to be bound by it within a short time of becoming a Minister. A senior official from my Department made an appointment with me and produced a rather formal letter which, with an impressive solemnity, he insisted I sign there and then. On the day of my appointment the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern also assiduously underlined my obligations under the Official Secrets Act. I remember vividly signing to be bound by it when appointed for the first time as a Minister. A senior official from my Department made an appointment with me and produced a rather formal letter which, with an impressive solemnity, he insisted I sign there and then. It was like a rite of passage in my transition from mere backbench TD to the exalted status of holder of office, and Minister. On the day of my appointment the then Taoseach Bertie Ahern also assiduously underlined my obligations under the Official Secrets Act, formally reminding me of that and other Acts that I should make myself familiar with – in particular those that covered corruption and ethical misconduct. The point is that a Minister cannot plead ignorance as to their duties with confidential documentation. If other Taoisigh have not been as scrupulous as Ahern on this matter then responsibility rests on the individual Minister to inform himself/herself of their duties. The Varadkar leak has raised eyebrows among both former and current Minister. Not least because the leak was so blatant. Normally Ministers like to remove their own fingerprints from a leaked document, often preferring to have the leak done via an advisor or a discreet civil servant. There has been some puzzlement too among insiders in Leinster House at the media’s obsession with the Official Secrets Act angle on the Varadkar story. Ministers from two separate parties, in the last week, have pointedly brought my attention to Section 7 of the Criminal Justice (Corruption Offences) Act of 2018 which casts a wide definition of corruption to include “obtaining a gift, consideration or advantage” [emphasis added]. Even if Leo Varadkar did not see his leak to a medical-doctor friend as being wrong, once an advantage is passed to one or both, above and beyond competitors, then the Corruption Act is triggered. Conor Lenihan is a former Minister for Science, Technology & Innovation. His biography of Albert Reynolds will be published later this year by the Merrion Press

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General

Carers under government bus

by admin 16 March, 2021

We can’t trust our health minister to prioritise vaccination for family carers By David Nolan As a family carer, I have implored the government to classify informal carers on the vaccine rollout list. Informal carers need vaccination for continuity of care. Why should unpaid family carers providing extraordinary levels of care in the home be treated any differently to paid care workers who are prioritised for the vaccine? The vaccine guidelines are drawn up with a view to preventing deaths and hospitalisations. In many cases, the hospital Emergency Department is the only place a cared for person can be brought to if their family carer is unable to continue caring because of Covid-19. And they will arrive at the hospital as a clear Covid-19-infection risk. I am exasperated but I am not alone. There have been over eighty parliamentary questions from every party and independents. The questions have neen batted away with a disregard and a ‘copy/paste’ dismissal. The first sign of light came from TD and junior minister Malcolm Noonan in January. He stated that the HSE chief operations office had responded stating we were “likely to be considered as part of the key workers group 6”. David Cullinane TD received the same answer. Family carers have been waiting eagerly since then. We expected something in last month’s revised vaccine schedule. But only silence. Three weeks ago at leaders questions, Taoiseach and Tánaiste both stated that NIAC had been requested to review the position of family carers and that a report was imminent that week. NIAC is an advisory committee but the responsibility of decision-making lies with cabinet alone The press handler for Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly reiterated the same. The following week hope arrived in the form of an email from Fianna Fáil TD Jennifer Murnane O’Connor immediately after the parliamentary party meeting. It said; “I just left a meeting with Minister Donnelly. I want to let you know that family carers (pending NIAC recommendation) will be considered for Cohort 6 of the vaccination queue with carers of children first. I hope this eases your worries somewhat”. This was verified by a tweet from Virgin political correspondent Gavan Reilly. Senator Malcolm Byrne also tweeded; “expecting an announcement this week but I am as frustrated as you are with delays. Family carers should be designated as key workers”. A lot of clear indications which were independently verified. Are we home and hosed? No. Last week, responding to a question from TD David Cullinane, Minister Donnelly stated in the Dáíl that he had heard Murnane O’Connor’s email reported and it did not match his recollection. Murnane O’Connor has ostensibly refuted that claim made by Donnelly on KCLR and to The Sun newspaper. She stands by her interpretation. It seems Donnelly threw her under a bus. The crux of the matter is that Donnelly was involved in a specific discussion where he told Murnane O’Connor and a party meeting that family carers were to be considered for elevation to category 6, or that he had discussed this within the HSE at an operational level. Then he misled the Dáíl by denying it. The level of detail, the fact a political correspondent live-tweeted the comments from the party meeting and the fact that a junior minster had a similar line from the HSE in January all nsubverted his deial. Either Donnelly lied to the Dáíl, chucking Murnane O’Connor under a bus, or he does not understand what is happening in his party and in the HSE. I do not know which is worse. Furthermore, if the Taoiseach and Tánaiste were aware of this, kept the public health advice from the public and told the Dáíl that no advice had issued, that would be a minister, Tánaiste and Taoiseach misleading the Dáíl. That is not what happened. Alternatively, ournalist Gavan Reilly, senator Malcolm Byrne, minister Malcolm Noonan and TD Jennifer Murnane O’Connor are lying – in unison. Impossible, given that Malcolm Noonan was emailed by the HSE, and given that Murnane O’Connor would not have been alone in discussing family carers. So…If no advice has issued, one year into the pandemic, why not? Family carers as defined in the National Carers strategy 2012 are ‘key care partners’ and all the public and civil service were instructed to recognise that fact. We keep getting told it is a matter of supply and to hold firm as they have only got to cohort 4, but NIAC advice 5.a of the covid vaccine strategy states they see entertainment in cohort 13. Government describes informal carers as “the backbone of care provision in Ireland” yet this government is content with informal carers not featuring in public health advice. This government has broken the social contract with the backbone of care provision.

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It’s A Crime

by admin 14 March, 2021

And there was a lie in the Dáil. By Michael Smith. Factual Background to Alleged Crimes WhatsApp correspondence headlined ‘Leo Always Delivers’ first published in the Village Magazine of November 2020 showed then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar transferred a confidential draft contract being negotiated between government and the Irish Medical Organisation to a friend of his, the President of a rival doctors’ representative organisation, the National Association of GPs (NAGP) in April 2019. That friend was Dr Maitiú (Matt) O Tuathail. This transfer constitutes a crime under the Official Secrets Act 1963 and perhaps under the Criminal Justice (Corruption Offences) Act 2018. This has been disputed by Leo Varadkar, currently Tánaiste, but this piece shows how. “The leak constitutes a crime under the Official Secrets Act 1963 and perhaps under the Criminal Justice (Corruption Offences) Act 2018. This has been disputed by Leo Varadkar, currently Tánaiste, but this piece shows how” IMO and NAGP Rivalry The IMO is an established representative organisation for all types of doctors. It underwent a scandal in 2013 and a more dynamic, younger, radical, harder-line but much smaller new organisation, the National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP), was established in 2013 to rival it. The insurgent but fragile NAGP needed to poach members from the bigger IMO so it could survive, to generate money to pay salaries and avoid collapse which it particularly needed to avoid because the NAGP was very badly, perhaps criminally badly, run; and collapse might – and did – precipitate wholesale enquiries including into governance that just might implicate some of its leaders, though not O Tuathail, in criminality. In March 2018 the association’s incoming president Dr Yvonne Williams had resigned along with five other council members. It was subsequently reported that Williams and others had had concerns about possible governance issues within the group, and members had become increasingly frustrated as questions went unanswered. Williams was replaced by O Tuathail who eventually called in Chay Bowes, a healthcare entrepreneur, to do a report on the NAGP which led to an ongoing criminal investigation and the liquidation of the NAGP in June 2019 with debts of almost €400,000 and no cash available to pay creditors. Village understands prosecution of some leading members of the NAGP, though not O Tuathail, may be announced shortly. When he took over as President of the NAGP, O Tuathail and everyone else in the NAGP was investing a lot of political capital in generating hostility to the IMO. It took a hard line with government to contradistinguish itself from its namby-pamby rivals. In particular the NAGP took advantage of the fact the IMO was negotiating the deal on GPs’ conditions that would affect both IMO and NAGP members, to foment fractiousness. By early 2019 the NAGP was undermining the IMO, calling press conferences to deprecate the terms the IMO was reportedly agreeing. That is the background to this story and the infamous leak. Transfer of Confidential Draft Contract Then-Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, provided a copy of the draft (it was subsequently amended 30 times) contract, stated to be confidential, to Matt O Tuathail. Varadkar did this, he considers, between 11 and 16 April 2019. The Tánaiste told the Dáil in November that he did this to sow harmony between the rival groups but there is absolutely no evidence of it. On the contrary there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. This takes two forms considered in detail below 1) that the motivation for the transfer was a favour to a friend and 2) that the transfer was seen as hoping to sow the opposite of harmony. The Law: 1. The Official Secrets Act The Official Secrets Act 1963 provides in Section 4: 1: a person shall not communicate any official information [defined as any…document or information which is secret or confidential or is expressed to be either and which is or has been in the possession, custody or control of a holder of a public office, or to which he has had access by virtue of his office] to any other person unless he is duly authorised to do so or does so in the course of and in accordance with his duties as the holder of a public office or when it is his duty in the interest of the state to communicate it. Let’s go through this methodically. It is clear from the pervasive watermark – that this document is “expressed” to be confidential – so definitively satisfying the Act; furthermore the document was treated as confidential by the beneficiaries of its leaking. It was clearly in Varadkar’s “control” as he has written on it and asked for O Tuathail’s address with a view to forwarding it. Recklessness on the Law? As to whether the leak was effected in ignorance of the law, that is no excuse (the legal maxim is ignorantia juris neminem excusat). But in any event Varadkar knows what the law is on handling confidential communications. This is shown by the following WhatsApp exchange on an entirely different matter involving him from 2017 which was forwarded to Village magazine: Varadkar told RTÉ’s Prime Time on 16 February that his legal advice was that he has not committed a crime. He continues to repeat the mantra at every turn. Suggesting recklessness and a willingness to break the law – albeit he claims he did not think it was the law – Varadkar has stated that the Official Secrets Act does not apply to him. An official statement by Fine Gael on his behalf after the Village story broke in November 2020 stated: “In circumstances where extraordinarily inaccurate claims have been made by Village Magazine, it is necessary to briefly summarise where they fall into significant legal error.A: Village Magazine is manifestly wrong insofar as it claims that the Tánaiste breached the Official Secrets Acts, 1963 for the following reasons: 1. The ambit of that Act is limited to persons holding a “public office” which is a term defined by Section 2

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News

The Irish Times Suppresses the Big Stories.

by admin 13 March, 2021

By Michael Smith. History The Irish Times title was revived in 1859 by a 22-year-old English army officer, Major Lawrence Knox, and run as a Protestant, Nationalist newspaper, reflecting Knox’s Home Rule politics. He stood unsuccessfully for Isaac Butt’s Home Government Association. By 1873 in the ownership of the department store Arnotts it was a proselytiser for Unionism in Ireland. It is no longer a Unionist paper but rather ‘liberal and progressive’. It operates under a not-for-profit trust, arranged by probably its best editor, Douglas Gageby, which commits it to progressive values but it is not a charity. The Irish Times has 630 employees, many sadly laid off currently because of Covid, and is edited by the low-profile Paul O’Neill, much of whose editorial thrust seems to be pro-business. Problems This article makes the case that it has become stale, complacent, closed, loose with facts, and that its political staff are defensive of the establishment, including for example of the current government. Itscollective instincts for promoting challenging investigations are tenuous – and always have been. It is suppressive. Suppressing the Stories Mother and Babies Homes In 1964 Michael Viney wrote in the Irish Times of a Mother and Baby Home, one of several he visited for a series on unmarried mothers. He recorded that it gave the impression of being “a fairly good class boardingschool for girls”. Recently he acknowledged: “I was perhaps totally misled by the appearance of the convent. None of this was tested by seeking out young mothers who had actually experienced the care of the homes”.He saw the mothers at work as “a benevolent conspiracy of unexpected thoroughness and ingenuity”. It was an egregious failure to see a scandal before his eyes. Suppression of the reality. I was born the following year. I cannot think of a single big investigation the Irish Times has itself spawned in my lifetime (perhaps there wasone about Brian Lenihan Sr in the 1990s?). Certainly its Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention any. I shall document a large number of storiesthat, on the contrary, it has suppressed. For the most part the Irish Times does not break stories; it fixes them. Haughey In 1970 the Irish Times was influential in spinning the false narrative that Charles Haughey had arranged the illicit importation of arms for the Provisional IRA without approval of the government or its head, Jack Lynch, and in liaison with the IRA. It then pursued decades of vilification of the man whose crime was in fact corruption not ultra-nationalism on which he was – for good or bad depending on your outlook – flexible. It was left to Magill magazine in 1980 and recent books, which the Irish Times has dismissed or ignored, to push the truth. Corruption On corruption the newspaper wasn’t as forceful. In his 2005 memoir ‘Up with the Times’, former editor, Conor Brady, acknowledges that “One ofthe questions most frequently asked of Irish journalists when they talk about their work is ‘Why did you not tell us about Haughey over allthose years?”. He says the truth lies somewhere between three propositions – “the libel laws… the culture of secrecy in Irish public life…theentire political-administrative-business establishment”. Brady is a reflective journalist and he at least constructively bemoaned that “there is little tradition of self-examination or self-inquiry inIrish journalism. I do not believe any media organisation has a formal audit system to measure its performance, other than readership and circulation figures”. Sixteen years on, his own former newspaper has certainly notinternalised this criticism. He was circumspect about the journalistic failures: “At the end of my editorship the Dublin Castle tribunals had uncovered much that revealed at least three distinct strands of corruption that had run through Irish public life for 20 years. The reality is that the Irish media had succeeded in learning very little of substance about any of these over this time”. Let’s take Brady’s outline of the three areas in which the Times essentially failed, as our starting point, and examine each: donations to Haughey, Ansbacher and planning corruption. Donations to Haughey Brady describes how when he was appointed editor in 1986 he set about compiling files and records on Haughey – to no avail. There mustbe a suspicion he wasn’t hungry enough for scandal. He says the only insight he got was in 1981 when, as editor of the Sunday Tribune,someone anonymously sent him copies of Haughey’s AIB Dame St bank statements showing an overdraft of around £200,000. He concluded that Haughey was “entitled to the privacy of his bank account unless there wasevidence of some wrongdoing. I held off publication”. He made some abortive enquiries of the bank itself. He says “it took three sworn tribunals, invested with the powers of the High Court, six judges, 20 senior counsel, approximately 40 other lawyers and any number of court-authorised officials, working over five years, to find out what we now know aboutHaughey”. It didn’t take a forensic cavalry to pursue the initial lead which might well have precipitated Haughey’s downfall. Brady plaintively tries to get himself and the media off the hook: “a few will probably argue that the Haughey story was, in effect told by the media, time and again, but that few people wanted to know the truth”. Brady is too wishfully kind to himself and the media generally. In effect the story just wasn’t told. Ansbacher When the report of the Moriarty tribunal into Ansbacher was released in July 2002 it showed around 200 of the country’s most respected public figures had availed of the opportunity created by Des Traynor, Charles Haughey’s financial adviser/bagman and the head of Guinness and Mahon Bank and CRH, to cheat on their taxes and to transfer wealth, generated inIreland, to supposedly secure and invisible accounts in the Cayman Islands. Some years earlier, in 1998, the Department of Trade under Mary Harney appointed an authorised officer, Gerard Ryan, to look into Ansbacher. His dossier established a wideranging establishment conspiracy to ensurewell-known holders of illegal bank accounts

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Opinion

Councillors need to orient away from representations that make no difference anyway.

by admin 6 March, 2021

Educate and empower Councillors to exercise effective governance and compliance over the €5bn administered by local authorities annually; and to be public not private representatives. By Fiona McLoughlin Healy. The Report on the Role and Remuneration of Local Authority Elected Members written by Senior Counsel Sara Moorhead issued to Minister John Paul Phelan last year and recommended an increase of €8,000 on the current salary for Councillors, bringing it to €25,000 annually and dilution of the increase by a reduction in expenses. Subsequent debate has focused on the remuneration element of the report, diverting attention away from a concerning finding of the report that: “It is apparent from the results of the survey that the representational role including representing constituents in areas where the Councillor could have no real effect on outcome, remains the greatest barrier to the development of a robust and independent Councillor’s role”. It further adumbrates “…While I appreciate that there needs to be some structural reform to assist Councillors in the carrying out of their duty and perhaps more devolution to Local Government, none of this can achieve anything if the Councillors themselves do not see their role in policy formulation, governance and representation on external bodies. This is illustrated by some stark statistics in the survey such as that only 5% of survey respondents felt that governance and compliance, including statutory functions, were a priority in their role as Councillors with Respondents indicating that it accounted for 12% of their overall work schedule”. As an independent elected member in my second term in Kildare County Council I share Moorhead’s concerns. During my first term as a Councillor I represented Kildare County Council on the board of an Education and Training Board (ETB) that was, and continues to be, the subject of a Garda investigation into issues that arose in relation to procurement and other matters. I therefore share Moorhead’s disquiet that a minuscule 5% of respondents to the survey that informed the report, stated that governance and compliance were a priority. Imagine if you conducted a review of the board of a PLC that had a budget of €5bn a year, and 95% of the board admitted that governance and compliance were not a priority for them? Local Authorities around the country County and City Councils – between them administer over €5bn of public funds, annually. Imagine if you conducted a review of the board of a PLC that had a budget of €5bn a year, and 95% of the board admitted that governance and compliance were not a priority for them? I don’t think many would invest in it. Because if governance is not a priority, you cannot safeguard against abuse, fraud, or waste. A quick search of the Standards in Public Office Commission website yields examples of local authorities around the country that have had investigations into allegations of malpractice: Cavan, Donegal, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Sligo, Wicklow. The Chief Executive of Kildare County Council has explained, on a number of occasions, that the substitution of the title County or City Manager in 2014 to that of Chief Executive reflected a new reality, a more accountable local authority, reporting and accountable to its board – its elected representatives. Yet, that is not the reality for many Councils and Councillors around the country. And here’s where I diverge with Moorhead. While acknowledging that “some structural reform is required to assist councillors perform their duties”, she lets the State off the hook by minimising the absolute necessity of that reform to facilitate and allow councillors to perform their governance function effectively, if at all. That I have had to resort to Freedom of Information requests from the local authority of which I am a democratically elected member should serve to demonstrate how extraordinarily difficult and sixty-consuming it can be to get the information a Councillor may need to exercise due diligence, for example in the disposal of state-owned land or the approval of grant allocations. The central reality is that most Councillors focus their attentions on reps for social housing, medical cards and other areas over which they ‘have no real effect on outcome’, according to Moorhead. This may in part explain why the central reality is that most Councillors focus their attentions on reps for social housing, medical cards and other areas over which they ‘have no real effect on outcome’, according to Moorhead. Representation on External Bodies Once elected to their Council, Councillors collectively appoint each other to a range of external bodies – from local companies like LEADER partnerships to public bodies like the ETBs. They are often appointed with insufficient training or understanding of their roles as board members. Take the Education and Training Boards as an example: Councillors across the country may be appointed as Chairs of ETBs – organisations with budgets similar to those of local authorities – irrespective of whether they have the appropriate qualifications, experience or training for the role. Chairing a board of an organisation managing €100m plus budget and providing reassurance to the Minister for Education about the governance and operation of such an organisation, is an onerous task. Yet, there is no requirement that the Chair be selected on the basis that they have the appropriate skills for the role. In 2018 having failed to get a satisfactory response from the Chair of the KWETB, I sent the then Minister for Education a list of the breaches and potential breaches by the KWETB of the Department’s own Code of Governance for Education and Training Boards. I provided evidence that secret meetings were being held by the board contrary to the Code; that both public and private meetings were relocated from the public chamber in the Council to more difficult and costly hotel venues, in the absence of the required agreement of the board. The Code required all ETB board meetings “to be held in public, except in exceptional circumstances” and only then when a rationale is provided for the public minutes. The KWETB regularly held meetings in private while I was on the board and the current board continues to hold whole or parts of its meetings in private. I understand that some of the other 16 ETBs around the country also hold their meetings in private,

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Meghan Markle and the ABC-Buckingham Palace sex-abuse scandal

by admin 5 March, 2021

By Joseph de Burca Buckingham Palace has been sitting on a time-bomb since 2015: the ABC sex-abuse cover-up scandal. The Palace is currently engaged in a most undignified war of words with the Duchess of Sussex (Meghan Markle). The ABC scandal could erupt merely if Markle decides to draw attention to it. The ABC scandal concerns the involvement of officials at Buckingham Palace in the cover-up of the Jeffrey Epstein child-abuse scandal. Details of it can be found here: Judge a (future) king by his courtiers: Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, pawns in the cover-up of a transatlantic paedophile network. Markle has already shown a streak of independence on this very issue. After the disastrous interview Prince Andrew gave to the BBC in 2019, she let it be known that she felt “uncomfortable” at his suggestion that he would have remembered having slept with the then-17-year-old Virginia Roberts because sex, for a man, was a “positive act”. Markle works with and supports charities which help sex-abuse victims. She is hardly sincere in her concern for abuse victims. If she were, she would surely have drawn attention to the ABC scandal by now. It is unlikely that Markle raised details of it during the interview she and her husband gave to Oprah Winfrey which is to be broadcast after the weekend. It was recorded a number of weeks ago. Things have become a lot more ugly since then. The Palace’s reprehensible ABC gambit exposes the ruthless, brutal and callous character of the people who manipulate the affairs of the Royal family. In light of the Palace’s attempts to blacken Markle’s name, she may now decide to plunge the ABC dagger. Meanwhile, the Palace is ahead in the war of words between Markle and the Monarchy. Markle is being vilified in the media for wearing expensive ‘bood money’ earrings given to her by Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the individual responsible for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. Having buried claims Markle bullied her staff in London, the Palace has now resuscitated them. To add to this picture of a self-serving hypocrite, the Palace is drawing attention to the misery Markle is heaping upon Elizabeth II while her 99-year old husband Philip fights for his life. Whether by accident or design, Harry is being portrayed as little more than Markle’s lap dog. The international media presently hangs on every word Markle utters. Their interest in her is such that the combined power and influence of the Palace and Foreign Office has no chance of sidelining her, let alone gaining control over the reporting of what she may choose to say in the future. Their only option is vilification. But if they push her too far, she may highlight the ABC scandal to demonstrate to the public the true nature of her detractors. Not even Rupert Murdoch could put that cat back in the bag. OTHER STORIES PUBLISHED BY VILLAGE MAGAZINE WHICH EXPOSE SEX-ABUSE SCANDALS, SOME OF WHICH INVOLVE MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL FAMILY: See also Judge a (future) king by his courtiers: Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, pawns in the cover-up of a transatlantic paedophile network. With regard to Prince Andrew: The Prince, the pauper and the paedophile peer: the dangerous questions the BBC failed to ask. With regard to Roy Cohn who was Donald Trump’s mentor: Trump’s mentor: another sociopathic paedophile child-trafficker in the mix; from Roy Cohn to Epstein and Maxwell. Village’s online book on the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring begins here: The Anglo-Irish Vice Ring. Chapters 1 – 3. The plot to discredit victims of VIP sex abuse: Carl Beech and the ‘Useful idiots’ at the BBC. The incompetence of the BBC has now made it a pawn in the cover-up of VIP sex abuse. The darkest forces in MI5 and MI6 are the true beneficiaries of its inepitude. With regard to the Profumo scandal including Prince Philip: Keeler Concealer: the British Establishment’s severe embarrassment at the depth of the Soviet Union’s penetration of MI5 and MI6. With regard to Enoch Powell: Suffer little children. With regard to former British prime minister Ted Heath: Not just Ted Heath: British Establishment paedophilia and its links to Ireland With regard to Margaret Thatcher, MI5 and the murder of the lawyer Patrick Finucane: Thatcher’s Murder Machine, the British State assassination of Patrick Finucane. By Joseph de Burca.