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Village Idiot May 2018
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Spooks spooked
The poisoning of a Russian espionage agent and the naming of a politically coercive company in March 2018 proved a rare set-back for two British apparatchiks. Normally regarded as masters of their craft – and tradecraft – Christopher Steele and Alexander Nix were hoist by their own petard in areas of proven expertise, Espionage and Influencing. Steele’s expertise worked for MI6 (SIS – Secret Intelligence Service) where his career followed a predictable trajectory after Cambridge University, where he studied Russian and was President of the Union – to the SIS section of the Foreign Office, thence to the intrigues of 1990s Moscow. Along the way he made a reputation for being reliable and not given to alarmism. His basic espionage training included military skills in fire-arms and physical endurance, disguise and counter-surveillance. As a professional intelligence officer, Steele’s success rate was high in negotiating with, and ‘exfiltrating’ to, European countries defectors from his host’s intelligence services. His own country’s spies thought so highly of him that at a discreet get together with CIA counter-parts he was described as ‘the real James Bond’. By his 40s he had been recalled to the London Russian desk of SIS, supervising a clutch of Russian defectors, among them Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by the Russian intelligence service, FSB, in tea-rooms off Grosvenor Square, in revenge for working with SIS. More recently another defector, Sergei Skripal, was also targeted and perhaps brain damaged in revenge as a warning to potential other defectors. Steele left SIS to, along with other ex-colleagues, found a business research firm, Orbis, which in turn was hired by US political interests and allegedly produced, via Steele’s former Russian network, a dossier on Trump which became known as the Dirty Dossier, as it included episodes of The Donald cavorting with Russian call-girls who, among other services, urinated on Trump in the hotel bed once occupied by his rival Hilary Clinton. Which seemed the point of the exercise. Though now being handsomely paid by corporate interests, Steele’s past as a skilled agent came back to haunt him when his authorship of the dossier was made public. One of his Russian sources was summarily dragged from a meeting by masked abductors; another source was found dead in his car with a cranial gunshot wound. Steele went to ground with his family, leaving requests with a neighbour to feed the cats … revealing the ‘ordinary life’ many spies inhabit. Weeks later he surfaced in the Orbis offices after, presumably, he had received some kind of assurance from – whoever. No such assurance was forthcoming for Alexander Nix, another achiever who was a co-founder of Cambridge Analytics, ostensibly another business ‘consultancy’ which also dealt in the black arts of power, deception and betrayal. Like Steele, Nix was a high academic achiever. MI6 specifically trained him in and ex-Etonian and Saatchi executive Nigel Oakes in ‘psycho ops’ – developed in the live laboratory of the Northern Ireland conflict, with the aim of inducing paranoia among paramilitaries. With input from security services personnel whose refining of paranoia among Irish paramilitaries had induced self-destruct, Oaks and Nix were plausible in being contracted to win elections by governments floundering in remnants of Empire. In Asia and Africa, Cambridge Analytica plausibly persuaded leaders to give the company vast sums of money and, in some cases, land – in return for mounting psychological campaigns against opponents. In Kenya particularly where politicians were prone to the post-colonial reflex of believing the White Man’s magic was superior to the native version, Cambridge Analytica by its own boasting “wrote speeches [and] honey- trapped – all on camera”. Unable to resist the lure of explaining to a potentially powerful Asian client (full marks to Central Casting) Nix was filmed by a camera left casually in a briefcase at a meeting. The resultant exposure on Channel 4 provoked investigations by the UK authorities, embarrassment for the Conservatives, and for the DUP and UKIP parties which had business relationships with it; and a deeply traumatised Nix being hustled away from reporters by heavies. Steele’s enforced purdah from Orbis and the departure of Nix from Cambridge Analytica seem to point to the enduring tactical importance of using long spoons when supping with devils. Steele can hardly have predicted his dossier on Trump would have generated such a personal backlash as to force his family into hiding to avoid revenge of the type that afflicted his one-time charge, Litvenko. Nix, boaster about the black arts of entrapment, fell foul of an ostensibly wealthy ‘client’ from a Sri Lankan political party seeking guidance. The client was a TV investigations unit, replete with convincing actors, a working camera and sound system. His own methods were used against him to devastating effect. The collateral ruin far exceeded his original success, with Facebook, Twitter and other giants of the digital universe suffering not only losing users and and revenue but attracting legislative penalties sufficient to deter them from making data available to sinister conspirators like Cambridge Analytica. Technology has a price, as Nix and Steele can vouch. Kevin O’Connor
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After completing his Ph.D in the University of Pennsylvania, the former Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, lectured in financial economics at the elite Ivy League Wharton School in the US. Among his students was a brash undergraduate named Donald Trump who did little study, flunked his exams and was expelled from the university. With the help of his very rich father, Trump was readmitted and, despite his poor academic credentials, went on to greater things. “He was not a good student. He dropped out and his academic standard did not come up to scratch. I was teaching advanced corporate finance and he flunked the courses. The idea of this man as President of the US to me shows the decline of American civilisation”. Some half a century later, Trump is leading the latest assault on the historic right of the Palestinian people to their own land, including international recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of their independent state. Last December, President Trump confirmed that he intended to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a move that deeply angered the Arab world while elating many Israelis who have long had their sights on ultimate control of the holy city, which has been traditionally shared by Muslim, Christian and Jewish religions. The decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem was authorised by the US Congress some years ago but was put on hold by President Barack Obama, who believed the decision could only hamper efforts to find a lasting peace in the region and, in particular, the achievement of a two-state solution with east Jerusalem as capital of Palestine. For the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and for Nabil Shaath who acts as foreign relations advisor to him, this divisive action by the Trump administration has confirmed a view they have long held privately: that the US cannot be considered as an honest broker in the search for a just solution to the Middle-East crisis, arguably one of the world’s most egregious human rights scandals. Over recent weeks, 35 Palestinian people have been killed and over 1500 injured by live rounds fired by Israeli army snipers from behind a fortified security fence erected in Gaza. Each Friday thousands of people from the besieged and almost destroyed Gaza Strip have protested for their “Right to Return” to the lands from which they and their families were expelled during the Nakba or catastrophe when the state of Israel was declared in 1948, and over the decades since. The policy of the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) is that the right-to-return protests must be resisted with maximum force, including by the killing of unarmed activists and the maiming of thousands. Already overstretched and under-resourced Gazan hospitals have been unable to cope with the recent slaughter, while their efforts to transfer shooting victims with serious injuries to hospitals in the West Bank have been obstructed by the IDF. Two young men who each had had a leg amputated after suffering severe bullet wounds lost their other leg after doctors were prevented by Israeli authorities from transferring them from Gaza to better-equipped hospitals for treatment. The reason they were refused access to urgent medical care in Ramallah was because their “medical condition is a function of their participation in the disturbances”, the Israeli authorities confirmed. One of the young men, Yousef Karnez, said that he was a trainee journalist and was holding a camera at the demonstration which he sought to document. “I got two bullets. One hit my left leg and crushed it and the other hit my right leg, where it gravely injured my shin. Doctors have already amputated my left leg and I am begging; I don’t want to lost my other leg,”, he pleaded in the days after he was shot in early April. A young journalist, Yaser Murtaja, who was wearing a white ‘Press’ sign on his chest during the same protest on 6t April, was shot dead by IDF snipers and wrongly accused by the Israeli defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, of being a member of Hamas who had been operating a ‘spy drone’ before he was killed. His claims were denied by the International Federation of Journalists who said that Murtaja had worked for both national and international media over recent years including for the BBC and Al Jazeera, and that his company Ain Media had been funded by the US Agency for International Development. His production company had used drones for aerial filming and he was due to start a new job with the Norwegian Refugee Council two days after he was shot. Nabil Shaath, a Gazan, believes the people of the strip are desperate and the large ‘Right to Return’ protests are a reflection of their appalling living conditions. The electricity in Gaza, where some 2.5 million Palestinians live, is turned off for sixteen hours each day, there is no clean water, and there are severe shortages of food and medical supplies. Efforts to establish a unity government across the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza which commenced last year have so far been unsuccessful due to the inability of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah (the political organisation led by President Mahmoud Abbas) and Hamas to reach agreement. At the core of their disagreement is the refusal of Hamas, which took political power in Gaza following elections in 2006, to cede control of security to a new government of Palestine. “We have a presidential system in Palestine and the President is in charge of security and foreign relations,” Shaath explains. “Hamas was elected in Gaza in 2006 by popular vote and we accepted that mandate. However, the PA remains responsible for ensuring that the people of Gaza have sufficient finance to cover the costs of education, health, water and electricity. We have now said to Hamas that we can only continue to pay the bills if they agree to complete discussions for a unity government that will include security”. This
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As sad as Assad
Unthinkable suffering The Syrian army’s apparent chemical attack on Douma on April 7 was the worst atrocity of an infernal six-week military campaign in Eastern Ghouta. This in turn was the latest horrific chapter in a war lasting seven years which has brought unthinkable suffering to millions of innocent civilians. The relentless bombardment of Eastern Ghouta, backed by Russia and Iran, follows a cruel siege of the area lasting almost five years. These events reflect the most destructive and tragic elements of human nature: when ruthless powers encircle and terrorise the vulnerable, unchecked by any higher authority. The scenes being broadcast from the region are glimpses into an abyss of inhumanity – children being dragged from underneath rubble, parents convulsed with grief, neighbourhoods reduced to debris. The repeated bombing of hospitals and obstruction of aid convoys entering Ghouta are the most depraved aspects of the Syrian army campaign. They are examples of what Holocaust survivor Primo Levi called “useless violence” – suffering inflicted for its own sake and for no other purpose. Putin’s geo-political game Russian President Vladimir Putin has been providing military and diplomatic support to Bashar al-Assad since 2015 when he was losing the Syrian civil war – partly to secure Russian economic interests and partly to assert Russia’s dominance over the US in the region. The civilians of Eastern Ghouta are pawns in Putin’s geo-political game, and it appears he faces little consequence for directing this inferno of mayhem and bloodshed from Moscow. The wholesale destruction of Eastern Ghouta resembles the fate suffered by Aleppo and Homs earlier in the Syrian war and by Grozny, capital of Chechnya, during Putin’s first venture in politicised mass killing, a year into his reign. In each of these war zones the wretched plight of civilians incited him to an extreme of merciless aggression. Putin and al-Assad appear to share a psychopathic relish for attacking the weak. Aerial footage of Aleppo after the worst bombardments in 2016 showed apocalyptic scenes of ruination. The Russian and Syrian forces may as well have dropped a nuclear bomb on this once thriving, exotic city. Night after night on our television screens we are witnessing similar destruction and misery visited upon another mass of civilians, and hearing the same lies from Russian and Syrian officials who deny appalling events that are plain for all the world to see. Footage now emerging of Eastern Ghouta reveals almost a carbon copy of the haunted, hollowed-out cityscape that remains of Aleppo. Syria abandoned Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations, set out at its inception in 1945, committed members to “tak[ing] effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace”. Humanitarian protections for civilians in war zones were enshrined in the UN’s Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Grave breaches of these conventions include “wilful killing”, “wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury” and “making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack”, all of which have without question been perpetrated on Eastern Ghouta. The UN as it currently stands is nothing more than a politically redundant talking shop for Syria. Hand-wringing about the awfulness of the latest atrocity is invariably followed by diplomatic paralysis. Where power is concentrated most – among China, the US and the EU – moral courage appears absent. The US government, supported by the UK and France, mounted a sharp military response to the chemical assault on Douma, as it did last April when 80 civilians were killed by nerve agents dropped by Syrian army planes in Idlib province. We could ask why the relentless killing of civilians by every other weapon imaginable does not warrant intervention. As before, it is likely that such a measure will not be followed by substantive protections for Syrian civilians who will remain at the mercy of al-Assad and Putin. It primarily served as a show of US military might and of Trump’s willingness to impose a supposed tougher line than Obama on chemical weapons. It also conveniently shifted public attention from the Mueller investigation into Trump’s alleged links with the Russian administration during his election campaign. An international peace-keeping force The Syrian conflict is a complex and deadly quagmire, involving armies and militias from several countries. Any attempt to resolve it is fraught with risk. And yet the choice to allow this slaughter of innocents to continue is a defilement of our collective humanity. If a large international peace-keeping ground force were based in Syria Putin would be far more cautious in the use of his military power there, and in his sanctioning of al-Assad’s violence. This would require courage from several of the world’s most powerful nations and would involve some risk to the domestic popularity of their leaders. It would be a show of collective strength to cold-blooded autocrats who answer to nothing else. A long-term political settlement is another challenge altogether, but in the interim this would give some protection to civilians caught up in the war. Putin and his allies have been emboldened for too long by having no limits placed on their behaviour and by the implied international attitude that the lives of Syrian civilians are not of much value to the rest of the world. Liam Quaide Liam Quaide is a clinical psychologist and the Green party election candidate for East Cork
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Drastic Plastic Profligacy
For years, it was widely ignored, even as the evidence grew more and more overwhelming. Reports had been flooding in from some of the remotest places on Earth, from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the North Pole. Researchers found its impact was hammering every ecosystem, disrupting natural processes and spreading havoc across the living world. Then, slowly at first, the message began to resonate well beyond the usual narrow circles of scientists and environmental NGOs. The public’s ears pricked up, the media began to look deeply into the story and politicians, ever eager to follow the crowd, jumped aboard and began to huff about taking action, stepping up to the plate, not standing idly by, etc. And so, slowly, after scandalous decades of neglect and indifference, the wheels of change began their inexorable shift. The task ahead remained Herculean but at least many societies could be said to be engaged, and from there, anything is possible. I would like at this point to claim the preceding paragraphs are a description of how humanity has finally – hopelessly late – begun to grapple with the existential ecological crunch of which emissions-fuelled climate change is the most obvious manifestation. Sadly, this is not the case. The belated public response is instead to the plague of plastic pollution that has reached such an epidemic point that even the usual defenders of the free market haven’t bothered to construct a phoney ‘alternative’ narrative to beguile the media and stymie political action. The extent to which a carelessly used and discarded by-product of global industrialisation has come to present such a potent threat to the web of life on Earth has been known in scientific circles for many years. Marine biologists in particular have been trying with little success to draw attention to the rising tide of plastic pollution and its deeply insidious effects. Perhaps it was only when it became obvious that the human food-chain is also compromised did the wider public really start to sit up and take note. Plastic marine debris is now described as: “one of the most pervasive pollution problems facing the world’s oceans and waterways”, by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Around a million tons of plastics, comprising tens of billions of individual pieces, is now produced globally every week. Perhaps a tenth is ever recycled. People come and people go, but plastics persist. Complex polymers, under the influence of UV radiation and sea water, break down into near-microscopic monomers that enter at the base of the food chain, being ingested in their trillions by the vast shoals of tiny organisms that support and underpin the entire marine web of life. As these creatures are eaten, ever increasing amounts of toxic plastic pollutants are concentrated in the next level of the chain, and so on, until creatures at the apex, from sharks, dolphins whales and sea birds, are carrying catastrophic levels of toxins. Consider that every square mile of the surface of every sea and ocean on Earth contains around 50,000 pieces of plastic debris and you begin to get a grasp of the scale of the crisis. And, with the equivalent of a full dump truck of new plastic waste entering the world’s waterways every minute, it is manifestly clear that nothing short of a radical, global response will suffice if we are to have any chance of stemming the toxic tide of plastic pollution before it is too late. Ireland’s response has been mixed. Back in 2002, the then government introduced a modest tax on the purchase of single-use plastic bags handed out in their millions at supermarket checkouts and elsewhere. Industry critics said it was unfair, too expensive to administer, would never work etc. etc. They were all proved wrong when, within 12-18 months of its introduction, the quantity of single-use plastic bags fell by some 90%. Even more unexpectedly, the public actually supported the tax, and this support was maintained when it was increased to ensure compliance. Ireland found itself, for a short time, in the unusual position of being a global leader on an environmental issue. Success would, however, be short-lived. In the intervening decade and more, ever more plastics have made their way into our lives. It’s not unusual to find apples being sold on a plastic mat, with cellophane wrapping and perhaps an outer layer of another plastic. Milk went, in the space of just a few decades, from being sold in reusable glass bottles to in recyclable paper tetrapaks to now being largely sold in heavy plastic jugs. Meanwhile, tiny plastic yogurt pots are sold with more wrapping than yogurt. The ubiquitous ‘take-away’ coffee cup is constructed with a plastic inner lining, making the entire cup (and its plastic lid) unrecoverable. Ireland is in fact the EU’s number one per capita producer of plastic waste. Irish people account for 61kg annually – this is nearly 50% above the EU average. Repak, the industry-funded recycling group, boasts of our high levels of recycling relative to other countries, but this begs the question: what exactly happens to all this material? The short answer is that, in 2016, 95% of all Irish plastic waste was shipped to China for ‘recycling’. Conveniently for us, far lower environmental standards apply in much of China, so quite what happens to our so-called recycled waste remains unclear (China has since shut its doors to western wastes, which will now have to be dealt with much closer to home). I was involved in a recent radio debate on the issue of plastics hosted by Newstalk. Repak CEO, Seamus Clancy explained in glowing terms some of the achievements of the industry. He instanced a decline of several grams in the average weight of a plastic drinks bottle as demonstrating the industry’s determination to reduce waste. What Clancy was less forthcoming was on the total number of plastic bottles in circulation. The weight of an individual bottle is almost immaterial when overall volumes continue to increase rapidly. An
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Along Ireland’s coastline, you’ll encounter long sandy stretches and wild seas crashing against craggy coastlines. Yet, if we care to look under the surface – literally – it’s clear our seas and coastal habitats are not quite as pristine as would appear. The global issue of plastic pollution has recently come to the fore, amplified by David Attenborough’s series Blue Planet II. According to a study by the US National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Working Group, roughly eight million tonnes of plastic enter the world’s oceans from land, annually; a 2016 report from the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation predicted that there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050. Ireland apparently became one of the best EU performers for plastic recycling, though most of it has been treated in China where it is difficult to track, and which has now stopped taking European waste. We’re also the EU’s top producer of plastic waste, producing 61 kg per person annually. When not disposed of responsibly, this plastic can cause significant environmental destruction. While difficult to form statistics on the quantity of plastics in Irish seas, the founder of Coastwatch Europe Karin Dubsky says we have an inkling on the extent of the problem. “Through coastal surveys, we can see improvements in certain areas, for example there’s less pollution from oil and sewage. However, other problems seem to be persistent. Plastic drinks bottles continue to be the most widely distributed item found on Irish coasts`’, explains Dubsky. “The amount of coastal cleaning has increased but the baseline number of plastic bottles we find remains greater than in countries that have a deposit return scheme. Without this, we rely on telling people not to throw bottles and on cleaning up after those who do”. Indeed, over 8,800 plastic drinks bottles were counted across 535 sections of Irish coastline in the thirtieth annual Coast- watch survey in 2017 – along with 4,867 cans, 988 plastic bags and over 1,100 tyres – some of which had formerly been used for peeler-crab traps. Inevitably, much of this waste will be swept in and out with the tides if not collected. Plastic pollution isn’t solely a result of littering. Coastal landfill sites are falling victim to erosion, resulting in leakages of hazardous waste into the sea. “At the old landfill site in Bray for example, the sea has been causing approximately 1.5 metres of erosion annually. We need these sites to be very secure to prevent this from happening”, says Dubsky. She adds that while a decision has now been made to appoint consultants to place rock armour at the Bray site, it would be more appropriate to remove the ‘band of waste’ altogether. “It’s mind-blowing how slow it is for action to be taken”. Waste also ends up in our oceans as individuals take coastal erosion management into their own hands. “We have no national erosion management policy so people decide to do their own thing. They put all kinds of litter in front of their homes but because the area is at risk from erosion, the sea takes it away”, says Dubsky. Lack of policy surrounding the environmental impacts of new materials and products is having a detrimental effect. “We need a proper screening process so clever ideas don’t go to the market without being screened to ensure they aren’t going to create another litter problem”, she suggests. “Pontoons are one example. The cheapest way to make pontoons is using polystyrene with a concrete surface. During Storm Emma, polystyrene was released from pontoons in Holyhead following a breakage. From April 14 onwards, it has been arriving on our shores”. Discarded fishing gear, known as ghost fishing gear, is also an environmental concern. According to a recent report from World Animal Protection, it kills over 136,000 seals, sea lions and whales every year, in addition to millions of birds, turtles and fish. An estimated 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear are left in oceans annually. In the coming months, the Ghostfishing foundation will collaborate with local divers and stakeholders to remove discarded fishing gear off Irish coasts. Nic Slocum from Whale Watch West Cork is involved with the project. “We decided it was important to first find out the extent of the problem”, explains Slocum. “We went to a number of dive companies and they told us that the extent of ghostfishing is not that great along the south coast here. Ghost-fishing is a greater problem further offshore on much deeper wrecks”. As diving to such depths is challenging and requires specialist skills, the project is currently slightly delayed as organisers assess how they can run it in the safest and most effective manner. For now, Slocum continues to take part in clean-ups and informs visitors about the environmental dangers of plastic. He has seen it first-hand, recalling incidents of seals getting caught up in nets and a recent occasion when he was alerted to a young whale trapped in fishing gear. “We do see evidence [of harm from marine waste]: I can’t say daily or weekly but, when we do see it, it’s significant. For example, that whale would have starved to death if we weren’t able to free it”. Internal harm is less obvious. As Ireland doesn’t have a facility to conduct post-mortems on large marine mammals, it’s impossible to know whether whales washing up on Irish shores have died as a result of plastic ingestion. However, worldwide studies suggest that this could be the case for some of our species, according to Slocum. “Sperm whales are very prone to plastic ingestion. They feed on squid and often mistake plastic bags for food. Post-mortems have been done on many sperm whales around the world and it has been shown they are full of plastic. There’s no reason why it would be different here”. While visible waste in our oceans is of great concern, an equally pressing but perhaps more difficult issue to tackle is that of microplastics. This refers
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A fiercely fought decision by Wicklow County Council officials to buy and demolish an Edwardian house in central Bray for 45 car spaces raises questions about the power of local authorities. The house, inhabited until now, was torn down on 12-13 April. Residents suspect that spending at least€1.3m to buy and replace it constitutes an indirect public subsidy to Paddy McKillen’s Oakmount/Navybrook. Oakmount is erecting the Florentine retail centre nearby, for which Wicklow council reduced the number of car spaces required compared to previous plans. Officials snubbed a last-minute appeal by local TD and Minister for Health Simon Harris who supported the residents’ call for independent legal advice before proceeding with, as Harris put it, “the irreversible action of demolishing this heritage house”. Minister Simon Harris TD and Sinn Féin’s John Brady TD, as well as the Green Party, An Taisce, Bray Cualann Historical Society and many local residents (including this writer) have objected to demolition. But a coalition of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors held firm and rejected calls by fourteen councillors for an independent legal opinion on the process followed. And the Office of the Information Commissioner has now informed residents that it has identified more than thirty records relating to St Paul’s Lodge that the council did not previously disclose to it on foot of a continuing Freedom of Information appeal by residents. Wrecking St Paul’s Lodge during a housing shortage is the latest in a series of controversies involving Wick- low County Council. Last year it was strongly criticised by a High Court judge. The Council was originally poised also to buy and demolish for more spaces at the same location a second house, occupied by Wicklow’s former county manager. Although the Council assured An Bord Pleanála that the planned Florentine centre included enough car spaces, it now claims that new spaces are needed elsewhere “urgently” and at public expense. Critics point out that at least double the number of spaces planned to replace St Paul’s Lodge are empty daily in the car park under the Council’s own civic offices on Bray’s Main Street, and objectors have also identified other alternatives. For some time critics have called on the minister for the environment to initiate an enquiry into how Wicklow Council does business. The management of Bray’s fire services and of related matters following the death of two firemen there, the presence of an illegal dump in West Wicklow that may cost the state tens of millions to clean up, the status of land near Greystones, and the sale of public properties on Bray seafront and elsewhere have given rise to concerns. It is remarkable (and not widely appreciated) that, when endorsed by a majority of councillors, plans to demolish or build on council-owned properties cannot be appealed even to An Bord Pleanála. The absence of any right to appeal may be unconstitutional. John Ryan, the Fine Gael councillor most prominently supporting demolition, recently filed a form declaring his interest in a contract to provide services to Wicklow County Council staff. But he did not inform or withdraw from meetings about St Paul’s at which councillors had to adjudicate between council staff and objectors. Nor did Fianna Fáil’s Pat Vance, who owns commercial properties facing the Florentine site. Eight of 32 Wicklow councillors represent Bray, with just one each from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (elected last and second-last respectively). Fianna Fáil’s Bray councillor is Pat Vance, currently deputy chair of Wicklow council. Fine Gael’s is John Ryan. Most independent councillors in Wicklow, especially retired garda Brendan Thornhill, along with Green Party and Sinn Féin councillors have strongly resisted the demolition of St Paul’s Lodge. Protesting councillors convened a special meeting of Wicklow County Council in March to question the way in which the decision to demolish St Paul’s Lodge has been taken. That meeting lasted over two hours but the large Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael bloc largely remained silent before voting against a proposal to take independent legal advice. It was backed by Bray District Chairman, Councillor Christopher Fox. Councillors from these two parties in Wicklow generally support one another, with implications for resources. Three trips abroad during the St Paul’s controversy cost the Council over €6,500 and saw Council chairman Edward Timmins in New York with the county CEO, while deputy chair Pat Vance and a Council official went to Dublin, California (twinned with Bray). With residents against the demolition of St Paul’s refused permission to address the full Council, and their requests to meet officials rebuffed since last June, such trips exacerbate a sense of exclusion. The Council told residents last June that it was examining all options for parking. In fact, as its appeal to the Office of the Information Commissioner has already revealed, the Council had earlier decided to try and purchase both St Paul’s Lodge and an adjacent house. No record has been discovered that reflects any consideration of options beyond Herbert Road. Nor have records been uncovered that record any authorising decision early last year to buy two houses, or that might reveal who inside or outside the Council first suggested this, or what budget was allocated for the transaction. The Council eventually spent well above its initial valuer’s estimate of €765,000 buying St Paul’s Lodge, and even covered the cost of the vendor’s auctioneer, solicitor and furniture removal to Spain. Residents would have campaigned earlier to stop demolition had they been frankly informed when they first enquired. They object especially to the fact that council officials closed the purchase of St Paul’s unconditionally before the necessary statutory ‘Part 8’ consultation was even commenced, and question the point of that consultation, in which 150 parties including An Taisce made submissions. The Council admits that it did not ask its own heritage officer for her opinion. Submissions opposing demolition were also not circulated to councillors but were instead dismissed in a report presented by the Council official who had directed the purchase of St Paul’s Lodge. Most of the undisclosed records now
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All of life is on Abbey Street, the street where I work. Stepping out of the school, humming a tune to myself, in spite of the rain, heart beating with a secret joy, I imagine my self as a smooth stone, skimming over the the grey current of the day, towards the green granite horizon of Easons. A Chinese man is smoking outside Ladbrokes, mauling betting slips, each one like a love letter from an old flame, stories that ended at the first hurdle. Five euro on Heartache each way. My heart is beating with a secret joy. I cross over to Connolly’s window and admire the sculpture of shoes, precarious heels, and wonder how it feels to walk half a foot taller than you are. I see the Collins bus in front of Wynn’s Hotel drawing its breath before heading for Carrickmacross. A Spanish man with a large blue umbrella is explaining to a group of giddy teenagers all about 1916 and where they can buy cheap clothes; Penneys. Leaning on a roadwork barricade, smoking in the morning, breathing out a thousand spirals of associations, I could dream on this street corner forever, my heart is beating with a secret joy. Recalling, how a year ago, the city was slowly having its stitches removed, its wounds healing, being filled with tar and cement. Ghost light rail vehicles crawling on new tracks, testing her unclogged arteries. Strange passenger-less carriages, new blood cells, flowing through the veins of O’Connell and Parnell. For over a year it had been open heart surgery on the streets of Dublin. Teams of hard-hat medics making incisions on her asphalt skin, extracting bales of cable and huge yellow tubes from her drill-blasted bowels. The city was a vast operating theatre. The patient stretched from Stephen’s Green to the Ambassador Theatre and there, Parnell reminded over-worked junior doctors who were tarmacking her torn flesh: “No Man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation…”. Dawson Street was like intensive care, reduced to one lane; just enough to let the blood of commerce flow to the gaping tills that gurgle profit like mouth wash. High mesh fences erected all around to protect the patient’s ruptured modesty. Deep scar tissue on Westmoreland Street, trainee doctors sweeping débris on O’ Connell Street, consultants and surgeons pummelling it with diggers and drills. Dublin was bleeding with dust, its arms stitched on Abbey Street by nurses in luminous overalls and a dressage team tending the city’s scars behind a plastic green mesh in front of the GPO. Then I see her laid on the ground, wearing a duffle coat, two sizes too large, half my age, skin, milk-pale and purple with the cold. Chicken-carcass cheekbones, crutches by her side. Behind her, a garish poster for a family-sized Supermac pizza; above her a man, weeping, pushing her chest, “I’m losin’ her, I’m fuckin losin’ her… will ye come back to me..?”. Traffic lights change and hundreds of shoes and shopping bags pass by. My heart had beaten with a secret joy and hers is stopping, ignored in a public place; overdose. A friend with a ploughed line of stitches on his cheek balances on a crutch calling an ambulance. The blue umbrella bobs now in the distance above a sea of scalps. Drizzle speckles her face and I can see the flash of ambulance scissoring the grey sky before I hear the siren, like lightning before thunder. Blue paramedic gloves draw a sheet over her face and the last she sees of this world is a fever dream of shoes passing at the level of her sunken eyes and a huge pizza slice being cut from a family meal deal, lassos of melted cheese the last thing she could cling to. A Red Line Luas tram passes, pressed tight with faces and brown-paper shopping bags, the bell rings to signal its crossing over O’ Connell St; the ambulance wails down Abbey St, all that is left is her rain-sodden cardboard death-bed outside Supermacs. Traffic lights change again and a thousand shoes hurry by; nothing to see here. Billy O’hAnluain
