Archives

By Frank Connolly The various controversies surrounding planning and re-zoning irregularities in county Wicklow are mounting not least on the spacious desk of the environment minister, Alan Kelly, who is to decide very soon on the precise nature of an inquiry into all or any of them. Among those against whom serious allegations have been made in the Wicklow saga is property developer, Sean Mulryan, whose name cropped up during the first, lengthy and light interrogation of Brian Cowen at the banking inquiry on 2nd July. Cowen was asked whether he had met with any developers in advance of his appearance and he confirmed that he had recent contact with Mulryan at a social occasion. The developer is due before the inquiry in the coming weeks and may throw some light on his contacts with senior politicians, and his contributions to political parties, as well as his multi-billion contribution to the property collapse. Mulryan is at the centre of claims made by Wicklow auctioneer, Gabriel Dooley, who maintains that the developer owes him an outstanding debt of €4m. Readers will recall that Dooley helped Mulryan assemble lands at Florentine in Bray town centre in 2004 for a retail and residential development, and was a shareholder in the company that acquired the sites and was promised the €4m in the event that the development was completed or sold off. The lands were acquired for €1.9m under a Compulsory Purchase Order by Bray Town Council last year but Mulryan has resisted all attempts by the auctioneer to recoup any of the monies he claims to be owed. Meanwhile Mulryan, along with Sean Dunne his former partner in the 1,400-unit residential scheme at Charlesland outside Greystones, is facing other allegations from Dooley in relation to the manner in which valuable land rights were provided to them, without any apparent payment, through secret contracts agreed between the developers and Wicklow County Council in 2003. The exchange of easements signed by the two poster boys for the property boom was co-signed by recently retired Wicklow County Manager, Eddie Sheehy, and Fianna Fáil councillor, Pat Vance. The controversial nature of these agreements was raised in the Dáil in May by Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley, while his party leader Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald have also discomfited the government by their persistence in raising the irregularities in County Wicklow. Mulryan’s appearance before the Banking Inquiry will provide its members with the opportunity to explore his involvement with multi-million property developments, including those funded by Anglo Irish Bank and their relations with the main parties and its key finance and environment ministers over the bubble years. Dunne, of course, was mentioned in dispatches during the appearance by Charlie McCreevy on 1st July although the former minister was less than forthcoming about his relationship with the US-based, now-bankrupt, developer. It would have been particularly interesting to explore the commercial details surrounding the construction by Dunne of McCreevy’s elaborate mansion outside Sallins in Kildare in the 1990s which the former minister and EU Commissioner declined to discuss with the media at the time. Both were keen members of the K Club in the same county and had ample opportunities to discuss Dunner’s rapid rise to the top rank of developers before his equally dramatic fall from grace and self-enforced exile including from the home he once owned at the exclusive golfing range. • Vance house Following the revelations in Village last month concerning the various property assets of Wicklow councillor and Bray cobbler, Pat Vance, the Fianna Fáil politician and his family have clearly decided to move matters on. It was reported in May that Vance, his wife and his son have a number of properties and mortgages listed in the Registry of Deeds including two houses in the McInerney-built Saran Wood and Briar Wood estates in Bray. It was also mentioned that auctioneer Gabriel Dooley had made a complaint to Wicklow County Council that 15 Saran Wood was not listed in the declaration of interests by Councillor Vance since its purchase in 2004 and 2014. Vance insisted that it was not necessary to list it as it belonged to his son, Peter. It then emerged from the pages of property website, Myhome.ie, in early June, that an agreement for the sale of 15 Saran Wood was made after it went up for sale in May. There was no ‘for sale’ or ‘sale agreed’ sign on the three-bedroomed property but that did not prevent some eager buyer from identifying and purchasing the ‘des res’ in double-quick time. An inquiry into Dooley’s allegation is being pursued by the Council, the auctioneer has been informed. Council official assured McDonagh lands would be rezoned and his own downzoned Any official inquiry into Wicklow will first and foremost have to examine how certain people were allowed to play fast and loose with normal planning and re-zoning guidelines including the manner in which lands at Newtownmountkennedy were apparently the subject of assurances between council officials and developers before any motion for their re-zoning from agricultural use were discussed by the elected councillors. According to businessman, Brian McDonagh, in July 2008 he was offered 68 acres of land near the N11 which DLTM Taxation & Business Solutions said were worth €1.5m per acre while they were still zoned for agriculture. “Needless to say, once planning approval is received, this value will increase substantially”, a letter on 30th July 2008 from Ray Murphy of DLTM to McDonagh stated. According to the letter, a link road through the site “has been included in the Local Area Plan (LAP) for Co Wicklow and there is considerable support within the Council for the proposed (mixed commercial/light industrial) development”. It continued: “Our clients have been informed by the Council that there is unprecedented interest in the site due to its proximity to the N11 and unique access to the county’s arterial corridors. The Council itself has a vested interest in promoting development because of the much needed revenue

By Frank Connolly As the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) is forced to explain that “the Police Service of Northern Ireland is investigating activities relating to the purchase of €1.7bn of its assets, NOT the sale,” its latest controversy has embroiled the North’s first minister, Peter Robinson, in a battle for political survival that may be more difficult than the one which saw him resign his position for several months only a few years ago. Many will recall the embarrassment endured by the DUP leader when it emerged that his wife, Iris, was involved with a young restaurant owner though actually the more serious affair was alleged payments of money to the Robinsons by a prominent builder. On this occasion, Peter Robinson, and his party are at the centre of the storm unleashed by Mick Wallace in the Dáil when he posed a series of questions about the disposal of NAMA assets in the North, once valued at €5.6bn, to US company, Cerberus, for €1.7bn, last year. Robinson, along with Ulster Unionist Party leader Mike Nesbitt, have each denied they were the unnamed politician referred to by Wallace as the expected recipient of £7m (€9.8m) placed in an Isle of Man account by Ian Coulter, a senior partner in Belfast solicitors firm, Tughans, in connection to the deal. Over recent days, it has emerged that Robinson was accompanied by Coulter to a meeting with none other than former US vice-president and Cerberus board member, Dan Quayle, in April 2014, before the deal was cleared by the Stormont administration. This revelation has piled the pressure on the first minister and on Coulter who reportedly resigned when his partners discovered, and retrieved, the offshore funds. The fact that the money which Wallace insisted was intended as a payment to a politician or a party in the North was not actually delivered has taken the sting out of what would otherwise be a sensational story but it has raised more questions than answers so far. When Coulter resigned from his role as senior partner with Tughan’s and as head of the Confederation of British Industry in January the business world in the North was rife with rumour but the story only came to public attention with Wallace’s dramatic Dáil contribution almost six months later. For NAMA, already in defensive mode from a string of claims that it has been unloading bucket loads of assets in Dublin and across the country to vulture funds at knock-down prices, it has meant an unwelcome focus on its operations north of the border. In particular, it revived an earlier controversy surrounding two of its Northern Ireland special advisors, Frank Cushnahan and Brian Rowntree, both of whom stood down from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive following an unrelated controversy surrounding dodgy public land disposals two years ago. Cushnahan resigned early from NAMA and subsequently was allegedly to receive £5m in acquisition fees from PIMCO, a global investment firm, which pulled out of the tendering process after telling NAMA that it had been approached for payments by some of those it encountered during its discussions on the deal for 850 prime properties in what was called the Project Eagle portfolio. The NAMA assets were then sold to Cerberus. He referred, presumably lucrative, work to Tughans with whom he shares an office building in Belfast city centre and is an associate of Coulter, who has declined to talk to the media since he fell on his sword. Solicitors for Cushnahan have insisted that he fulfilled all his fiduciary responsibilities in any of his dealings for NAMA, while the agency said that he had no access to its confidential information on the Project Eagle portfolio while serving as an advisor to it. This tangled web will be unravelled before the Stormont finance committee in the coming days while the Law Society in the North is looking into Coulter’s role (a process that could take some time if its moves at a similar pace to its counterpart in Dublin) while Wallace has indicated that he may release further information he has gleaned about the Cerberus deal. Cerberus and its US solicitors, Brown Rudnick, have insisted that they did not make any payments to any other party connected to NAMA in relation to the bid. Brown Rudnick has also confirmed that it hired Tughan’s to carry out work on its behalf and had paid it some £7.5m out of the £15m in fees it earned from the deal. Handy work if you can get it. But not as sweet as the potential profit which Cerberus can earn when, and if, it flips the Project Eagle portfolio as the property market recovers in the North. The Dáil Public Accounts Committee will have an opportunity to explore this aspect of the deal when it questions NAMA about the manner in which the 850 properties were valued in what it maintains was a “robust sales process” which “achieved the maximum value to the Irish taxpayer”. Meanwhile Peter Robinson, whose son’s PR company provided services for some the companies at the centre of the controversy, will have a few sleepless nights as he ponders this latest “payments” row. He must also be regretting that private meeting with Coulter and Dan Quayle who has a habit of causing embarrassment to those around him. •

By Anna Victoria Lynch False and damaging rumours are all too regularly spread about migrant people. This is because we often don’t react well to difference and, in particular, it can be more difficult to understand people who have a different culture. The rumours can have negative immediate and long-term effects. They build barriers between migrant people and local people. They present obstacles to getting access to jobs and services. They can all too easily escalate into both individual and institutional racism. Something needs to be done about rumours, and Limerick has stepped up to the mark. The City Council of Barcelona, back in 2010, invested in a pioneering new approach to dealing with rumours and addressing the damage they can cause. Its strategy involved creating an anti-rumour network of local organisations, training anti-rumour agents to provide fact-based responses to dominant rumours through their own networks, and public education campaigns to challenge rumours and provide alternative fact-based perspectives. The idea has spread. Ten European cities are now participating in a Council of Europe initiative, ‘Communication for information’ (C4i). Limerick, no stranger to rumours about itself, is one of those cities. Doras Luimní, founded in 2000 to respond to the needs of refugees and asylum-seekers, has taken on and implemented the anti-rumour initiative in the city. Migrant people comprise about 10% of Limerick’s population with 18,427 migrants resident in the city and county. The principal nationalities are Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Pakistani, Chinese, Nigerian and Indian. They come for many reasons including to set up businesses, to work, to enjoy a better quality of life and to seek safety and asylum. Most live freely in the city and county while some 400, including fifty children, are living in the four direct provision centres in the city and county. All add to the cultural diversity and richness of Limerick and the majority are contributing greatly to the city’s economy by working in local businesses or setting up their own businesses. However, there is still some negativity towards them from local people. At the start of the C4i initiative in Limerick, Doras Luimní sent out a call to those in its network of local organisations to become part of a working group of “Anti-Rumour Agents” – a term used to describe people who are trained by the C4i team in how to combat rumours and to develop campaign strategies to counter rumours. The workshops provided a starting point from which to begin to collect the different kinds of rumours that Limerick people have about migrants. The five top rumours that seemed to have a hold in Limerick related to social welfare, integration, asylum-seekers, the economy, and free-buggies-on-demand. Migrants are seen as abusing social-welfare benefits. This was particularly strong in relation to payments of children’s allowance benefit. Migrants were viewed as unwilling to integrate into Irish society. Asylum-seekers were understood to live in luxury. Migrants were viewed as not positively contributing to the Irish economy. Migrants were understood to be entitled to free buggies or push chairs for their children, on demand. These rumours provided a basis from which to develop fact-based informational material to counter myths and misperceptions that can underpin such rumours. The next step was to design interesting and effective ways to engage Limerick people in the C4i campaign. Doras Luimní, working with the Anti-Rumour Agents, designed an Anti-Rumours training programme that could be run in schools and a variety of other organisations, a series of public events and some visual-communication activities. Anti-Rumours training was provided in the University of Limerick, Mary Immaculate College, and Limerick Institute of Technology. All of these institutions have integrated this training into modules on their courses. The Limerick Youth Service ran the training with their youth groups and brought it to secondary schools. A national conference on improving interculturalism in church communities also made use of the training. The reach of the training was broad and varied. An anti-rumour booklet is being produced. Limerick has an Integration Strategy and integration forms part of the agenda of the social inclusion officer in its Council. There is an Integration Working Group co-chaired by Doras Luimní. The Anti-Rumours work has helped Doras Luimní to make links with Council members and officials. This has led to a greater involvement for them with Doras Luimní and with issues of integration generally. For example, the City and County Council was involved in steering the Intercultural Cities conference held at the end of 2014. At this event, Mayor Kevin Sheahan signed an inspiring agreement for Limerick to become a European Intercultural City. • Anna Victoria Lynch is Anti-Rumours intern with Doras Luimní

By Ronan Burtenshaw As politicians begin to throw around proposals for the last Budget before Fine Gael and Labour face an election, it’s worth remembering that this time is really the only window where citizens are encouraged to engage in economic debate. Even then the space of time is too short and the range of topics up for debate too narrow to make much impact. When it ends, economics is the preserve of technocrats again. That is a serious problem. Economics is the discussion of how things in our society are produced and distributed. If you leave it to experts there is a big cost for democracy. Yet, while people feel comfortable engaging in debate about politics in the Middle East or presidential elections in the United States, there is a reticence to talk about economics. Part of this is down to economics as a discipline, which has become increasingly remote from day-to-day life. The primacy of the market as a means to resolve problems has led to the rise of ‘market scientists’, who are seen as the authoritative voices on running an efficient economy. The language deployed by these experts is deliberately exclusive. Certainly they are unlikely to start explorations of economics with parables about pin factories, as Adam Smith did in ‘The Wealth of Nations’. Yet they dominate economics discourse. When economics is discussed with any substance in the mainstream press market scientists from universities, think-tanks and finance houses are given free reign to make objective statements about the common good. Research by Julien Mercille has shown that between 2008 and 2012 77% of commentators on austerity were from elite institutions. Another factor leading to the retreat of ordinary people from economic debate is the narrowing space for democracy in the economy. The democratic sphere only extends to areas where there is or could be public ownership. Outside of this decisions are made by private individuals or organisations. As wealth becomes concentrated in fewer hands, fewer economic decisions are made with public participation. This has bred a cynicism about what can be achieved by discussing economics. With capital increasingly breaking free from taxation – and mobile enough to defeat strikes – people have come to accept that social problems can only be resolved by appealing to private individuals and organisations to solve problems profitably through the market. And so we are relegated in the economy from citizens to consumers. This must be reversed if we are to build a politics in Ireland that can reclaim our society from the political establishment and the interests they serve. Joan Robinson, one of the great economists of the twentieth century, was once asked why people should study economics. She replied, “so that economists can’t fool you”. If we are to construct a movement where people are agents as opposed to pawns in the hands of power we will have to create space for a broader, more emancipatory discussion of economics. To that end here are five assertions citizens can make in the economic sphere that can help alter the direction of debates: 1. Economics is political Mainstream economics discourse operates under the pretense that power in the economy lies only with the policy wonks and business suits. This is not true. Take the commodification of a public good with the water charges, for example. There is widespread opposition to this policy – as recent months have shown. It is possible to suggest quick-fix solutions to provide for the abolition of these charges. The amount they will take in could be accounted for by the kind of wealth and capital acquisitions taxes proposed by Unite and the ICTU’s pre-Budget submissions, for instance. But that won’t happen. Why? Because economics is political and power concedes nothing without a demand. An organised opposition is far more important than a shovel-ready alternative. A mass water charges campaign that imposes costs on politicians for continuing on the current path can win concessions, as we have seen, and stands a chance of having those water charges overturned. Making a compelling argument to Enda Kenny doesn’t. 2. There is more than one way of thinking about the economy In recent years students of economics across the world have been challenging the narrow nature of discourse in their universities with campaigns for what is called “post-crash economics”. Ireland could desperately use a post-crash economics movement – especially as so many of the experts invited to discuss our economy today are the same ones who advised us off a cliff in 2008. But the aim of the post-crash movement is broader than exposing the spectacular failure of mainstream economics during the recent crisis. It is to argue for diversity in the discipline. The kind of ‘market scientist’ approach I described above is a product of a particular way of thinking about the economy – the neoclassical school. That is only one school among many. In fact, in a recent book Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang identified seven schools of economic thought. So why does one of these schools have such predominance – especially after it was proven flawed so recently? Citizens should demand a diversity of economic analysis from their media and education institutions, especially public ones. No more single experts being given free reign to make objective claims about the economy as if there were no competing ideas. 3. Wealth is created by us One of the most pernicious aspects of mainstream economics discourse is the idea that wealth is privately created and publicly expropriated through government taxes. This is underpins the narrative of ‘wealth creators’ and ‘job creators’, who we must allow to accumulate more and more wealth for our society to function. This is a nonsense – and particularly important for citizen economics to dispel. If we truly believe that wealth is created solely by these people, how could we but see ourselves as insignificant in the economy? If the economy grows by providing the wealthy with bigger and bigger shares of the pie and then letting

By Frank Connolly The appointment of retired High Court judge, Daniel O’Keeffe, as chairperson of the commission of investigation to examine a series of financial transactions by the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation in the wake of the Siteserv/IBRC controversy earlier this summer must have the vulture funds and their corporate advisors cowering in their offices in Dublin’s docklands. O’Keeffe has been chairperson of the Standards in Public Office Commission since early 2014 and previously served as chair of the Irish Takeover Panel during the boom to bust years from 1997 to 2008. His reputation for governments as as a safe pair of hands is also reflected in his position as a member of the Commission for Public Service Appointments and the Inquiry Panel appointed by the Central Bank. A qualified accountant, O’Keeffe was born in Ennis, Co. Clare in 1943 and educated at Clongowes Wood College. After UCD and King’s Inns he joined the Bar in 1964 and was appointed a senior counsel in 1985 before eventual appointment to the High Court in 2008. He has a young family. A qualified chartered accountant, O’Keeffe, adjudicated on dozens of commercial disputes in the court although his productivity in terms of the number and speed of delivery of written judgements was at the lower end of the scale. Among the high profile cases he oversaw before his retirement two years ago was the dramatic prosecution of companies and individuals involved in the multi-million euro illegal dumping racket in County Wicklow. The case opened in 2009 when astonishing allegations of wrong-doing by public officials, including senior officials and an authorised officer of Wicklow County Council were aired, before its lengthy adjournment – for two years. During the early hearings, O’Keeffe learned that authorised officer, Donal O’Laoire, was employed by the Council to identify the nature and source of pollution at the massive Whitestown landfill in west Wicklow where a number of companies deposited over a million tonnes of commercial, domestic and hazardous hospital waste over several years. It emerged that O’Laoire had engaged in discussions with landowner, John O’Reilly, a defendant in the proceedings, with a view to securing a contract worth in excess of €30m to remediate the site. The court also heard that O’Laoire had discussed this ambitious plan with then county manager, Eddie Sheehy and the Council head of services, Michael Nicholson, in 2002. It emerged in the proceedings that O’Laoire was negotiating with O’Reilly to purchase or lease the land while he was investigating the landowner in respect of criminal charges related to the illegal dumping. In late 2002, O’Reilly refused an annual lease offer of €100,000 from O’Laoire’s company, Environmental Remediation Ltd., thus preventing the investigator from obtaining the lease he required in order to secure the necessary Environmental Protection Agency licence to clean up the site. Instead, he sold the land to Brownfield Restoration Ltd, another defendant in the case brought by Wicklow County Council, for a sum of about €2m. The company obtained an EPA licence, which was more restrictive than it sought, but was then obstructed from commencing remediation work and from developing a waste facility on the site. Brownfield along with O’Reilly, and companies Dean Waste and A1 Waste were then pursued by the Council in its effort to recoup the multi-million euro cost of cleaning up the site. This followed a damning 2005 judgment by the European Court of Justice which found Ireland in breach of the Waste Framework Directive as a result of the wholesale illegal dumping. After 26 days of hearings, during which evidence deeply embarrassing to the Council management was aired, the case was adjourned by O’Keeffe in October 2009. Allegations of conflicts of interest involving O’Laoire and his company were made and it was claimed that he was in contempt of court for breaching an order by the judge not to discuss the evidence with other witnesses, including county manager, Eddie Sheehy, before his own cross examination by Council for the defendants. O’Laoire was a key witness for the Council but in spite of O’Keeffe’s ruling had obtained copies of Sheehy’s evidence from the law agent for the Council and had discussed issues central to his cross-examination with another senior Council official and members of its legal team before he entered the witness box. O’Laoire, it also emerged, had helped prepare the Council’s objection to the application by Brownfield for an EPA licence even though he had himself sought to secure the contract and licence for the remediation work only months earlier. He had also been the chief witness in earlier and successful criminal cases taken by the Council against the illegal dumpers. Extraordinarily, it also came out in evidence that O’Laoire had failed to disclose the illegal dumping by the Council at Whitestown over a lengthy period, dumping which he had been employed to investigate. When the case resumed in October 2011, after numerous delays caused in no small part by the Council’s failure to comply with the court’s discovery orders, it was stated by Council lawyers in court that O’Laoire was incommunicado. The former member of the Irish defence forces was apparently in the Far West and was not available to continue his evidence. Only a last minute and dramatic intervention by then environment minister, Phil Hogan, saved the emergence of even more damning evidence prepared by the defence against the Council and some of its most senior officials. Accepting an application from lawyers for the Council, O’Keeffe adjourned the substantive proceedings after officials from Hogan’s department arrived in court waving a promise of up to €50m to remediate the site, ostensibly in order to comply with the EU judgement. Over three years later, fresh court proceedings have now been initiated by Brownfield Restoration which claims that less than €5m has been spent by the Council on cleaning up the Whitestown dump and which, the company says, continues to leech pollutants. In affidavits presented to the High Court in late June, Ray Stokes, chief executive of