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    Rolling back the Eighth Amendment: the Church’s power grab for the new national maternity hospital­­ — backed by government.

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    The big day The sun shone, marquees fluttered, caterers bustled. Everybody who was anybody was there, ‘old boys’, former nurses, family friends. The No 1 Army band heralded the arrival of the Archbishop of Dublin; His Grace was followed five minutes later by the Tánaiste and Mrs Childers. The Archbishop said Mass for some 1200 people after leading a procession to bless ‘the new Vincent’s’, also known as the Mary Aikenhead School of Nursing. After the speeches came a two-tier lunch, turkey in the cafeteria for staff, cold meats, salads, wines and coffee for distinguished guests. Acquisitions The following year, the Religious Sisters of Charity acquired St Michael’s Hospital, Dun Laoghaire, from the Sisters of Mercy. Thirty years later, in 2001, they established St Vincent’s Healthcare Group to own and manage their hospitals. In 2010, the RSC expanded their portfolio again, mortgaging a publicly-funded asset, St Vincent’s University Hospital, to fund the building of their new private hospital at Elm Park. A decade later, the congregation is poised to acquire a new multi-million maternity facility — set to be one of the biggest in Europe — built and maintained from the public purse. Succession The key RSC objective today is to guarantee that their ethos will continue to determine care in their facilities. The congregation is dying out, so succession problems arise, as they do for religious worldwide, the dwindling owners of hospitals, schools and other non-profit enterprises. The order, which comprises some 250 members in all, mainly in their 70s and 80s, is headquartered in Dublin. Controversially, the congregation refused to pay its agreed €3 million share for victims of institutional child abuse in 2012, following the publication of the Ryan Report into industrial and reform schools. The order subsequently declined to compensate the Magdalene women, having netted €45 million in 2001 from the sale of its land at Donnybrook, Dublin, site of a laundry it ran for over 150 years. The flouting of public-pay policy by the Vincent’s Group was also widely censured.  Vincent’s and Holles Street Vincent’s has always had a special relationship with the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, a privately owned-corporation under the aegis of the Catholic Archdioceses. For decades, the NMH led the way in symphysiotomy, an operation that unhinged a woman’s pelvis, performed in lieu of Caesarean section by doctors who disapproved of birth control.  Today a much more liberal regime prevails. As Tony Farmar’s centenary history of Holles Street shows, medical consultants practised privately in both hospitals from the 1890s. Archbishop John Charles McQuaid was the National Maternity Hospital’s (NMH) all powerful chairman when he performed the opening ceremony at Elm Park in 1970. Today, around 40 per cent of NMH consultants work in the RSC’s hospitals despite the religious restrictions imposed on their practices. A power grab In 2013, Minister for Health James Reilly announced the building of ‘the new NMH’ — then set to cost €150 million — at Elm Park. KPMG had recommended that Dublin’s three private maternity hospitals be co-located with acute general hospitals in 2008. Co-located single-speciality hospitals offer ready access to wider specialist care: hospitals retain their independence while sharing ancillary services. Initial agreement between Vincent’s and the NMH on co-location broke down. In or around September 2014, under a new chairman, James Menton, a former KPMG partner, the nun’s company made a takeover bid for the NMH, reportedly delaying the planning process until Holles Street caved in. The Mulvey report Incoming Minister for Health Simon Harris appointed Kieran Mulvey to broker an agreement between the two warring private entities in May 2016. Four months later, the then deputy chair of the NMH, Nicholas Kearns, and the hospital’s then Master, Dr Rhona Mahony, now a director of the Group, reportedly informed Mulvey that they were willing to dissolve the NMH charter to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the nuns’ company. This offer was made without consulting either the NMH board or the governors, according to former master and former board member Peter Boylan, a strong opponent of the takeover by the nuns’ company. St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, the company founded by the order in 2001, was now set to own and control the new maternity hospital company, which is to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Group. Mulvey had no public-interest mandate. The report set out detailed proposals for the takeover: it did not question it, nor did it consider who should own the land underneath the new hospital. Simon Harris welcomed the publication of the Mulvey report in April 2017, in a U-turn from the government’s previous support for NMH independence from Vincent’s, expressed by his predecessor Leo Varadkar in May 2016. It was a watershed for the congregation’s plans. Pushback Public opposition grew. A mass demonstration took place at Leinster House, one of many, and over 100,000 signed a petition against the government’s proposal to gift the new facility to the RSC. Peter Boylan publicly expressed his concern that certain procedures would not be available in the new hospital because of its Catholic ethos. Responding on 25 April 2017, the chair of the Group, James Menton asserted that “in line with current policies and procedures at SVHG [the nuns’ company], any medical procedure which is in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Ireland will be carried out at the new hospital”. This is a remarkable claim— later repeated — that gives the impression that abortion and other procedures banned by the Catholic Church were, and would continue to be, provided at Vincent’s hospitals. The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference healthcare code The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued its ‘Code of Ethical Standards in Healthcare’ in 2018. Abortion is permitted only as a lifesaving  procedure.  Under all other circumstances, such as rape, the threat of suicide or the diagnosis of a fatal foetal abnormality, abortion is prohibited. Referral for abortion is also banned, because it  constitutes “formal co-operation with wrongdoing”, which is “never morally permissible”. Other prohibited practices include artificial contraception, IVF, surrogacy and

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    In which Denis gets himself sued

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    Perhaps the strangest event on the Irish media landscape last month was prompted by Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan’s publication of a report into media ownership in Ireland, commissioned by the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) grouping in the European Parliament. The report itself – by Belfast solicitors Gavin Booth and Darragh Mackin of KRW Law, and barristers Caoilfhionn Gallagher and Jonathan Price of London’s Doughty Street Chambers – contained little that was new, castigating once again the dominant position held by RTÉ and by “individual businessman Denis O’Brien, through his ownership of Communicorp and significant shareholding in Independent News & Media”. Released on 24 October, the report had little impact at first. In his Irish Times column, Fintan O’Toole noted the coverage. Some of this was extensive – the Sunday Business Post carried both a news report by business editor Tom Lyons and an opinion column by Boylan; the Sunday Times carried the story on the front page; Pat Leahy had a report with quotes from Boylan in the Irish Times. Some was minimal – the Sunday Independent carried only a comment from Liam Collins, not about the report directly, but about Guardian media writer Roy Greenslade’s “tiresome blog”. In fabled Sindo style three of the five paragraphs Collins devoted to the story were salvos at Sinn Féin. There were some other straight news reports, from thejournal.ie and the Examiner. But apart from communications minister Denis Naughten being forced to admit he hadn’t read the report hours after he had dismissed its findings, effectively killing it as a news story, the report seemed destined to decline into obscurity, gathering dust and never to be mentioned again outside of an occasional retrospective the next time someone looked at the Irish media scene. And then, for some reason, Denis O’Brien decided to breathe life into the story, issuing an oddly rambling and misspelled statement: a series of barely connected paragraphs, jumping randomly from topic to topic. Aficionados will recognise the work of his earthly representative, James Morrissey. O’Brien’s piece is familiar to copy-editors and sub-editors as the “celebrity column”, a series of disjointed observations and wisecracks hacked into a workable column by a cynical and overworked staff writer, and headed with the name of an often minor sporting or entertainment ‘name’. The statement, written in the first person, and therefore presumably the work in the first instance by O’Brien, gets off to a predictable enough start, challenging the independence of the report, and indeed the very notion that anything commissioned by a Sinn Féin representative could ever be independent. (“Hardly”). It does land one pertinent early blow, pointing out that while the report identified RTÉ as also holding a dominant media position in Ireland, it devotes “no focus” to the broadcaster. This might give the impression that the entire report is devoted to O’Brien. This is not the case.  For example the authors devote twelve pages to a general consideration of the importance of media plurality (and how plurality differs from economic competition). In addition, the authors highlight not only O’Brien’s ownership of media outlets, but his propensity to go to law to protect his reputation, and its chilling effect. The Report notes that since 2010, he has gone to court 21 times, 12 times against media outlets, once against a PR firm, twice against the Moriarty tribunal, once against Dáil Éireann, and once against an individual TD, Colm Keaveney. In addition, there were threats of legal action which were not followed up, such as that reported against satirical website Waterford Whispers, which removed the offending piece. However, O’Brien soon tires of the RTÉ whataboutery, and returns to getting it off his chest about Sinn Féin “pushing its agendas, overtly and covertly”. To this end, he embarks on a divagating walk, stopping first to point out that An Phoblacht has criticised RTÉ, and then to defend Apple’s tax accounting practices, calling Sinn Féin’s criticism of their tax practices “anti-enterprise and anti-Irish”. O’Brien then regains his focus once more, fact-checking, again, that he is not the chairperson of Communicorp, he just owns the company. But then his concentration seems to wander again, and he inadvertently makes the authors’ point for them. “Is the media objective when it is talking and writing about itself?”, asks Denis (or perhaps his human avatar). Pausing to note, controversially – perhaps provokingly, that INM was “days from forced closure” in 2011,O’Brien then complains that RTÉ never contacted him for comment when Boylan’s report was published. Kevin Bakhurst, RTÉ’s Deputy Director-General and Managing Director of News and Current Affairs, was prompted in response to post on Twitter that the broadcaster “did ask for a response on the report and Denis O’Brien’s advisers chose not to give one yesterday”, going so far as to post a screenshot of email correspondence. But we live in post-truth times and no correction ensued. O’Brien then continues with his reflections on the parlous state of Irish media finances, noting “a very challenging environment” and – enigmatically – that the Irish Times is “considering various funding options”, before predicting that “some media companies will not survive this decade without radical restructuring”. He closes on a return to the theme of “Sinn Féin/IRA” funding, offering the hope that perhaps the political party will at some point get into the business of becoming a “fully-fledged broadcaster and publisher and create some jobs for a change”. Sunday Times writer Mark Tighe was the first to point out that the Irish Independent report on the statement amended this to simply “Sinn Féin”. On the Sunday following O’Brien’s midweek broadside, Sunday Independent writers did not mention the affair, except for Shane Coleman, who wrote an unlikely column pooh-poohing the idea that Denis O’Brien has an overweening influence, because everybody is reading blogs and watching Youtube as part of their varied media diet. Meanwhile, the Sunday Business Post reported that KRW Law “reject completely the suggestion that the authors were paid by the IRA and the allegation that we were anything

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    Take the spat out of spatial

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    Strategic spatial planning determines where development should take place in Ireland. It can improve the quality of life, improve society and the environment and underpin the delivery of effective public services and the capacity for economic growth at national, regional and subregional levels. In other words it decides where we live, work and play – and so crystallises much about our way of life. Because of demographics and development -pressure spatial planning, or the lack of it, is setting in concrete our living conditions for several generations. A new National Planning Framework (NPF) is being prepared for Ireland to succeed the National Spatial Strategy 2002 (NSS). The NSS failed abysmally and was officially scrapped in February 2013. The new framework is due to be published in the first quarter of 2017 depending on its adoption by the Oireachtas and relevant statutory requirements. The Department for Housing, Planning and Local Government published a roadmap for its preparation last December. Before we get stuck in to this, the first question must be: why did the NSS fail and what are the lessons? What was the National Spatial Strategy? The NSS was Ireland’s first national strategic spatial and territorial planning framework and was held up as, theoretically, the best in Europe at the time. The strategy was a twenty-year planning framework designed to deliver more balanced social, economic and physical development between regions. The NSS was to provide a response to the growing imbalances in socio-economic development that occurred during the Celtic Tiger period in the late 1990s. In the foreword, An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, states that to achieve “balanced regional development” a greater share of economic activity must take place outside the Greater Dublin Area. It requires that the full potential of each region to contribute to the overall performance of the State be developed in a sustainable economic, social and environmental basis. To achieve this the National Spatial Strategy set out a framework for gateways, hubs and other urban and rural areas to act together. In 1969 the Buchanan Report was published advocating the concentration of industrial development within ‘growth centres’ comprising, in addition to Dublin, two national growth centres in Cork and Limerick-Shannon; six regional growth centres in Athlone, Drogheda, Dundalk, Galway, Sligo and Waterford; and a further four local-growth centres in Castlebar, Cavan, Letterkenny and Tralee. This proposal proved highly controversial and wasn’t implemented, dying a death by inertia. Zones, Hubs and Gateways The NSS emerged more than 30 years later, proposing the classification of 18 cities and towns, and their associated hinterlands as ‘gateways’ and ‘hubs’. While this is similar to the approach advocated in the Buchanan Report, the NSS differs as it encompassed a greater number of places and conceptualised spatial development within a hierarchical framework of networked places, including the gateways and hubs, as well as ‘other towns’, ‘other places’ and ‘rural areas’ . The plan divided the country into five zones; Consolidating the Greater Dublin Area Strengthening the South, South East, West and North West to complement Dublin Revitalising the West and South West Reinforcing central parts of Ireland and the South East Co-operating in an all-island context The Gateways were: Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick/Shannon, Waterford, Dundalk, Sligo, and two linked Gateways Letterkenny/Derry, Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar. The Gateways were to have populations of more than 100,000 providing “critical mass necessary to sustain strong levels of job growth in the regions”. There were nine strategically located, medium sized Hubs supported by the Gateways: Cavan, Ennis, Kilkenny, Mallow, Monaghan, Tuam and Wexford. Ballina/Castlebar and Tralee/Killarney would act as “linked hubs”. Hubs were to have population of 20-40,000 and provide localised critical mass and ‘link the capabilities of the Gateways to other areas”. Unfortunately key policy and political stakeholders rejected the concept of gateways and hubs as urban-centric and detrimental to the development of rural areas. It would turn out that the concept of rural development was largely limited to enabling residential housing construction in rural areas rather than a broader conceptualisation encompassing social or economic dimensions. The debate which followed the NSS reflected in many ways the one that had followed the Buchanan Report. Crucially the National Spatial Strategy after 2002 imported its own inertia, that of non-implementation. The Strategy had no teeth. So-called implementing guidelines such as the “Strategic Policy Guidelines” were deliberately made non-mandatory by governments viscerally antagonistic to central planning, and were duly flouted in local authority development plans, and more particularly the planning permissions that were to derive from them. It lacked teeth but it also crucially lacked a timetable and dedicated funding. Despite its feebleness it generated such a backlash that alternative measures were introduced, most notably Charlie McCreevy’s ‘surprise’ policy of “decentralisation”, actively discouraging concentrations and emphasising dispersal of industrial investment. This Department of Finance sponsored initiative ignored over half of the NSS-nominated Gateway and Hub settlements in favour of a broad, ostensibly populist ‘pepper-spread’. At the time An Taisce identified obvious flaws in the NSS and proposed comprehensively that: “Good planning policy must be guided by principles of sustainability and the minimisation of resource use. In general these factors conduce to consolidation and sensitive development of existing villages, towns and cities which tend to have economic, social and cultural infrastructure; and be well served by public transportation. It is not possible or wise to suppress housing demand but the model of predict and provide that is currently being implemented on the ground in the Greater Dublin Area and to too great an extent was enshrined more generally in the last spatial strategy, has not served the common good. There are significant social disbenefits from continuing growth of Dublin. These include congestion in Dublin and the opportunity cost of failing to staunch rural depopulation. For these inert projections of a rise in the proportion of the country’s population that lives in Dublin are dangerous. Nor is any significant increase in the mid-east (Kildare, Wicklow and Meath) since development of this area more than any in the country conduces to car-dependent sprawl. More

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    Logic dictates

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    Our Equality legislation covers nine grounds of discrimination. This reflects the worthy ambition to be comprehensive in attacking discrimination. However, Central Statistics Office (CSO) data suggest we are far from realising any such ambition. They show that 41% of people who feel they have been discriminated against perceive this discrimination to be on grounds other than the nine grounds covered. There appears to be a big hole in the protection afforded to those experiencing discrimination. These CSO data come from an equality module they introduce periodically as part of their Quarterly National Household Survey. It’s from 2014, but it was not news as the figure stood at 42% in the previous 2010 equality module. The CSO data does not identify what grounds now need to be included in the legislation, they merely allowed respondents to tick a box titled ‘other ground’. However, the indications are that a substantial element of this ‘other ground’ is the ground of socio-economic status. First to recommend the introduction of a socio-economic status ground was the Equality Authority back in 2002. In 2008 it commissioned the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) to examine the CSO data on discrimination from the 2004 module. The ESRI did not reach definitive conclusions on the composition of this ‘other ground’ but noted an association between choosing this ‘other ground’ and trade-union membership, low education status, and unemployment. This supports the argument for a new socio-economic status ground to be introduced in our equality legislation. The Equality and Rights Alliance has just launched a report, by Tamas Kadar, that finds Ireland lagging behind many European countries by not introducing such a ground. The European Network of Legal Experts in Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination found that legislation in 20 of the 35 European countries surveyed provides protection against discrimination on a ground related to socio-economic status in 2016. There is, according to the Network, a significant move across the EU towards extending the mandate of equality bodies to cover socio-economic-status related grounds. The case flows first from the high levels of inequality and discrimination evident on the ground of socio-economic status. This has been exacerbated over the years of economic crisis and austerity in Ireland and across the EU. Why would we protect some groups from discrimination and not others? The Equality and Rights Alliance report found that discrimination on a socioeconomic-status ground has grown in importance in both human-rights and equality law, with a growing case-law from courts and tribunals on this ground. Experience from abroad is showing that there are important gains to be made by Ireland from introducing this ground. Casework on the socio-economic status ground, identified in the report, shows that this discrimination is predominantly reported in employment, social services, public and private housing, healthcare, and social protection systems. The significant focus on the public sector might be one reason we have been so slow to introduce this ground. Casework on this ground can be as high as 25% of the case load of equality bodies, but in most instances it is around 5%. Perhaps another reason is that most of the other grounds are identity based whereas socio-economic is status based. But research shows that to the greatest extent socio-economic status is driven by birth also. Ideologues may deny the relevance of this but research dictates its own imperatives. This elevates the socio-economic ground beyond pure status. It is time to expand the grounds covered in Irish legislation. We have waited more than the apparently required decade from the case for this change first being made. We have made the required token gesture with the introduction in 2015 of “housing assistance” as a new ground into the Equal Status Act to protect against discrimination in accommodation. People in receipt of housing-assistance social-welfare payments, such as HAP and Rent Supplement, cannot be discriminated against in the provision of accommodation or related services. Why not go the whole way and introduce a socio-economic status groundThis would best be done, according to the Equality and Rights Alliance report, in an asymmetric way designed to protect those experiencing disadvantage from discrimination. The ground could then be defined in terms of discrimination against someone on the basis of where they live, their employment status, their education status or their housing status. The introduction of this ground is a logical extension of the merger of equality and human rights issues under the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and of the focus on economic and social rights in the Programme for Government which includes commitments to equality-and-human-rights budgeting and policy-proofing. Adding the ground of socio-economic status is the lynchpin for integrating a concern for equality and human rights. It is the logical next step. Niall Crowley

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    North parties agree Brexit practicalities not strategy

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    On Sunday 28th August Dublin’s Croke Park hosted the all-Ireland football semi-final between Dublin and Kerry, with Dublin emerging victorious. As celebrations were taking place around Dublin that evening another significant event was taking place in the city. Prominent representatives from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Republican Sinn Féin and Sinn Féin assumed their places on the platform in the Royal College of Surgeons for a debate titled ‘Brexit-what does this mean for the North?’. The debate which was organised by the 1916 Clubs took place in a fitting venue in this the centenary year, having been one of the garrisons of Easter week in 1916 which was held by the Irish Citizen Army under Michael Mallin and Constance Markievicz. All the speakers were given ten minutes to outline their argument before the debate was opened to the floor for questions and answers. The original participants included representatives from the SDLP and Traditional Unionist Voice who failed to materialise on the night, and a representative from the UUP who withdrew hours beforehand mysteriously citing “irreconcilable differences”. The DUP had previously refused to send a speaker, leading RSF President Des Dalton to open his remarks with: “I had looked forward to engaging with them on ideas about the future direction of the Irish people as a whole… It is sad that Unionist representatives could not take their rightful place here tonight to debate issues vital to the future of all Irish people”. However, minus the SDLP and unionist parties, the debate got underway as organiser (and founder member of the 1916 Clubs) Oisín Mac Giolla Mheana outlined the governing rules of the debate stating that it would take place on the basis of ‘mutual respect’. Return of a hard border? On 23 June this year 55.8 % of voters in Northern Ireland opted for ‘Remain’ in the Brexit referendum; despite this result, come late March 2017 it is due to be led out of the European Union as Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is triggered by British Prime Minister Theresa May. The DUP advocated a ‘Leave’ position as did Irish Republican parties such as Republican Sinn Féin and Éirígí. A quick survey of the Falls road in Belfast will reveal worn and wind-battered ‘Vote Leave’ posters belonging to Éirígí, stating “Vote Leave for independence, for democracy, for freedom, for Europe, for Peace”. The constitutional position of the North has led to widespread speculation on the return of a ‘hard border’ with the South of Ireland. Although Sinn Féin campaigned for a Remain vote, upon the announcement of a Leave victory Sinn Féin described the result as an opportunity and immediately called for a border poll on Irish unity. During the Dublin debate Sinn Féin speaker Matt Carthy MEP argued that “constitutional change is now in the hands of the people of the North and South”. Carthy’s arguments echo those of the Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness who has asked that the views of the majority of people in the North, who voted for Remain, be respected and has argued that the North should be exempt from Brexit. The democratic will of Northern Ireland Throughout the debate speakers’ arguments were collectively couched in language of ‘democracy’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘mandate’. Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy argued: “I’ve spent my life hearing you must respect the democratic wishes of the people of the North. I say that right back. We must now uphold that”. Carthy proceeded to cite the Good Friday Agreement stating that it was endorsed by 71% of people in the North of Ireland. Interestingly, Carthy’s arguments appeared to suggest that Brexit is not compatible with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The words ‘constructive ambiguity’ are often used, particularly in academic narratives regarding the Good Friday Agreement, suggesting that it contained necessary ambiguity; however, the Agreement does not contain ambiguity. The consent principle established clearly that the North of Ireland will remain within the UK until the majority of people within Northern Ireland decide otherwise. Any ambiguity that was present existed regarding the way in which the nationalist and unionist blocs sold the agreement to their respective bases. It is therefore unsurprising that while Matt Carthy and Martin McGuinness are calling for a border poll, the DUP’s Nigel Dodds has rejected any stalling over the triggering of article 50 and has stated “on 23 June, the British people as a whole gave a clear mandate for the UK government to leave the EU”. Who holds the power? But Remain campaigners are not taking defeat quietly and recently a cross-party group (Sinn Féin, SDLP, Alliance and the Green Party) initiated a legal challenge against Brexit stating that the North of Ireland has a veto over any constitutional change; a veto which they argue emanates from the Good Friday Agreement. Brexit has arguably opened a debate on the constitutional position of the North but has simultaneously re-emphasised the supreme authority of the British government’s legislative powers in the North of Ireland, leaving political figures such as McGuinness powerless to intervene, thus resurrecting old antagonisms regarding where power really resides in relation to the North. Republican Sinn Féin President Des Dalton argued that ultimately: “the vote that counted is the one in England. Brexit demonstrates the fundamental highly undemocratic nature of the UK”. The RSF President framed Brexit around issues of sovereignty and independence and rejected Provisional Sinn Féin’s calls for a Six County border poll stating that it would “fly in the face of Republicanism”. The traditional Republican position rejects a Six County vote on unity, arguing that it is tantamount to a unionist ‘veto’ and argues instead that the unit of decision-making should be on an all-Ireland basis. The unit of determination regarding Irish unity has assumed a central point of antagonism and division in the contemporary political period. During the Hume-Adams dialogue of the late 1980s Provisional Sinn Féin rejected the SDLP leader’s argument regarding what would become the consent principle. In correspondence to Adams, Hume

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    Small increases to Unemployment Benefits

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    ‘Building a just society’ was the title for the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) Pre-Budget Submission. This title reflected our concern that without a strong commitment to addressing social exclusion and economic inequalities, many people will be left to observe, rather than participate in, Ireland’s economic recovery. The recent Budget provided a key chance for Government to give some practical expression to this commitment. We particularly wanted Budget 2017 to start the process of restoring working-age social-welfare rates to 2009 levels, and to end the age segregation introduced into the Jobseekers Allowance payment during the economic crisis. It is welcome that, for most social protection payments, the claimant’s rate will be increased by €5 per week. However, this increase should start from January next year, as would have been the experience when such changes were announced in the past. This is the first increase to working-age payments since Budget 2009. However, the new rate of €193 will still be €11.30 below the maximum working-age payment made in 2009 of €204.30. The supplementary Budget of 2009 was the budget that introduced a reduced Jobseekers Allowance rate for young people of €100. This was initially for those aged 18 and 19 years. It was extended out in subsequent budgets until it applied to people aged 18-24, while people aged 25 could only receive a maximum payment of €144. Jobseekers Allowance (JA) is a means-tested payment, and the €100 is the maximum payment available for people aged between 18 and 24 years of age. For someone to receive the full amount they must be a young person who personally, and whose family, has few other means. It is disappointing that nothing was done in this Budget to address this inequality. As a consequence, young Jobseekers are only to receive a proportion of the €5 increase on other payments. This amounts to€2.70for young people aged 18-24 and €3.80 for people aged 25. On a positive note, young people will receive the full JA rate if they participate in an education and training programme. In acknowledgement of their restricted income, young people who are in receipt of Rent Supplement payment will make a smaller contribution to their rent. The big challenge on housing, for anyone in receipt of Rent Supplement, continues to be finding and maintaining accommodation that is within the agreed limits. The INOU was not alone in calling for the significant scaling-up of social housing provision to address the level of demand and need. A range of measures was announced in Budget 2017, but they are still a long way off what is required to address the current dire situation. The full restoration of the Christmas Bonus and a change in eligibility criteria was another INOU demand. An 85% restoration was announced and this is a move in the right direction. However, 100% restoration would have been particularly welcome at a time of year where inequalities are most manifest. It was disappointing that the eligibility criteria for this were not changed. Currently, unemployed persons must be in receipt of a Jobseekers payment for 15 months before they can receive this additional payment. As unemployed people are deemed to be long-term unemployed at 12 months, these should have been the new qualifying criteria. Among the earliest austerity measures was a cut in the duration an unemployed person could be on the social insurance unemployment payment, ‘Jobseekers Benefit’. As a consequence of this cut, people who did not make the transition from this payment to the means-tested payment, ‘Jobseekers Allowance’ have found themselves without access to supports and services. Many people have not made the transition because of their family circumstances. Their partner, for example, may be working, not necessarily in a well paid job, and so the family find themselves down one key income. One of the motions to the INOU’s Annual Delegate Conference earlier this year called on the Government to “restore the duration of Jobseekers Benefit to 12 months and 9 months from the current levels of 9 and 6 months for people who have, respectively, at least or less than 260 paid contributions since starting insurable employment”. This change is needed to alleviate the difficulties facing these unemployed people and their families, and to facilitate their participation in education, training and employment programmes. The INOU will continue to work on these issues, as part of our commitment to an acceptable standard of living for unemployed people and their dependents. The next step in this work is addressing the forthcoming Social Welfare Bill. Brid O’Brien is Head of Policy and Media with the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed

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    Oxfam: hypocrites or pragmatists?

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    A man walks into a bar and orders a pint. The bartender turns to him and says: “€36.80 please”. Thinking this must be a mistake, the man asks the bartender why his drink is so expensive. “Well”, says the barman, “there was people in here earlier who got a meal and a few drinks, but they didn’t pay. We have to pass the cost on to the next customer”. This is not a joke punchline, but one of several real interactions between a barman and some of his punters, recorded in a Dublin pub as part of a hidden-camera video, to promote Oxfam’s #MakeTaxFair campaign. Oxfam says the campaign’s purpose is to highlight the injustice of tax deals that assist multinationals, and bring inequality and economic hardship to the societies in which these companies operate. The video – alluringly titled ‘Ireland’s Most Expensive Pint?’ and shared on Facebook – brings the campaign to a social media audience, and in just over two minutes offers an entertaining simplification of the effects of tax avoidance. Shots of different customers and the unreasonable barman induce incredulity, and comical threats of violence follow. The barman asks his customers if they think it’s unfair. “Of course it’s unfair”, comes the chimed response. But the campaign has an unintended side-effect: by ridiculing tax avoidance, it draws down questions of sweeping stringency about the arrangements of Oxfam itself, a multinational, albeit a multinational NGO with Charitable Exemption Status. “Every single day, we end up paying for those who don’t pick up our tab”, says the barman’s voice at the end of the video, before he’s seen biting symbolically into an apple as if at a dysfunctional iPhone launch. What gives Oxfam the right to say how other companies should pay taxes? Might it be its agenda? Well it is not the purpose of this article to take any issue with Oxfam’s dynamic and progressive agenda. So it’s not about that. These ads aren’t about that agenda, they’re about tax avoidance, tax cleverality. So it can only be its approach to tax in itself. It must be because it has a discrete and separate agenda – beyond relief of global poverty – about tax. Sure enough, and unfortunately for Oxfam, it makes this argument itself in its own promotional video. The campaign is #MakeTaxFair not MakeEverythingFair, after all. So Oxfam can expect, like those it judges, to be held to the highest standards of tax scrupulousness. In the wake of the release of the Panama Papers, Oxfam’s Irish CEO Jim Clarken made impassioned calls for the closure of legal loopholes that allow companies to avoid paying tax. “It is not good enough to argue that tax avoidance is permissible because practices fall within the letter of the law”, he told the Irish Times. “All governments, rich and poor, must work to end tax dodging because it is their citizens – their electorate – who are the biggest losers”. Oxfam is no petty player: it is respected and pioneering. Oxfam’s Irish subsidiary owns almost €4m worth of assets, had an income of €12m last year, and pays its CEO, Jim Clarken, €90,000 a year. So what does Oxfam do about its own tax? Oxfam’s retail operations, on which it made just under €1m last year, evoke an interesting comparison to how multinationals pay tax, as both Oxfam and its more capitalistic global peers are affected by commercial rates of tax under Irish law. Perhaps controversially in the context of the #MakeTaxFair campaign, Oxfam has lobbied the Government, as a member of the Irish Charity Shops Association, to have its retail trading exempted from such rates. Its tax arrangements in the UK have generated controversy. Richard Teather of Bournemouth University is one critic, arguing that Oxfam and other UK-based charities make use of legal loopholes that look “remarkably like tax avoidance” to avoid paying commercial rates on their shops there. Outlining Oxfam’s more general modus operandi for the Institute of Economic Affairs, Teather describes how, instead of managing their own shops, charities control their retail operations through a private subsidiary, which then donates its annual profits back to their parent company under a scheme called ‘Gift Aid’. Set up by the British Government under the Finance Act 1990, Gift Aid was originally intended to encourage taxpayers to donate more money to charity, and works by allowing a charity to claim 25% back on donations made by anyone subject to UK income tax as a form of rebate from the Government, effectively increasing the amount of the donation. In 2006, the scheme was extended to include the operation of charity shops. In Oxfam’s case, the parent company (Oxfam International) owns Oxfam Activities Ltd. (OAL), whose primary activity is listed as the “recovery of sorted materials”. Last year, OAL ‘donated’ £783,000 to its parent company, tax-free. Beyond rates and UK-government-encouraged tax rebates, the way Oxfam has seized on news items that have highlighted tax avoidance in the past also opens it to accusations of hypocrisy. But what would hypocrisy look like for Oxfam? We must distinguish two things. Firstly ends from means. And secondly philanthropy from profit-making. It’s a mistake to cloud the morality of tax avoidance in terms of ends and means, to believe that charities should get a free pass because of their benevolence. It cannot be the case that if the end is a good one it is legitimate to be tax-avoiding in pursuit of it. For example: Oxfam’s end is excellent; BP’s goal is not good; Apple’s is in between. So a certain logic might suggest tax avoidance is merited on a sliding scale that reflects this. But this should not be the case any more than the tax system can be tailored so the benevolent and the wise are levied for less than the malign or profit-obsessed. Such argumentation cuts across the very essence of the fairness of the system. If certain activities or individuals merit favourable treatment it must be effected by exemptions, grants and

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