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Culture

Ireland’s day-glo revolution 35 years on: in Blackpool

by Village 31 October, 2012

Punk is alive in the mouths of the scowling aged Article by Michael Mary Murphy The London Olympic Opening Ceremonies featured the sounds of the Clash, the Jam and heaven forfend, the Sex Pistols. The hockey games were preceded by the sounds of ‘London Calling’. With its lyrics of nuclear destruction, famine and a visit by the apocalypse to the city, it was an odd choice to inspire feats of athleticism. There was a time when the authorities in Britain wanted nothing more than for punk to go away. Now it does go away. But only to Blackpool for a long weekend. This most English of cities hosts the annual Rebellion Festival with a peaceful invasion by thousands of punk fans. The assorted attendees are full-time, part-time, and one-time punks. The host city even manufactures a celebratory confectionary assault on good teeth – a stick of rock with the words Punk Rock imprinted in it. Elements of the gathering resemble the out-patient department of any urban hospital. The punks are not the healthiest subculture. There was even one apparent ‘Lourdes moment’ when a less-than-young punk body-surfed over the crowd. As he was held aloft prostrate by dozens of hands he twirled his walking stick with the dexterity of a drum majorette. Yes, the punks are back. And this year they were fatter, older and balder. For all that, there is an extraordinary sense of community: a community that embraces diverse factions, styles, ages and nationalities. And this year, the Irish were out in force. Judging from the line-up, Ireland has an impressive ratio of punk bands per capita. Autumn 2012 is a fine time to reflect on thirty five (or six) years of punk in Ireland. The Blackpool Festival gives a tidy, non-scientific, data-set to gauge the health, or should that be the disease, of the movement. Granted not everyone wants to play here. Before I started attending it seemed like a punk elephant’s graveyard. A collection of has-beens playing the songs of their youth. Songs by youth about youth. It seemed like a waste of time. Now I find it inspiring seeing performers play music they love to people who love hearing it. Who cares if these people have seen better days? At least they have days. And they are making the most of them. Neil McCormack recently controversially wrote that “there were really no out-and-out angry punk rock groups on the emerging Irish scene”. Surely the Threat and the Pretty would be outraged at this affront to their rage? And what of the Outcasts? Being described as not angry would surely make them, well, angrier. They were Dennis the Menace without Dennis. They would be expected to triumph in any international contest of ‘out-and-out angry punk rock’. One of the enduring moments from Blackpool was Dublin’s Paranoid Visions performance of ‘Strange Girl’. The song is a haunting reminder of Ann Lovett, the schoolgirl who died giving birth in a grotto in Longford. As the words about this tragedy were sung, a punk stood in front of the stage to adjust the most punk of accoutrements, his bum-flap. He squirmed as he adjusted his wardrobe malfunction so that the image of Sid and Nancy was restored to its rightful place over his derriere. So is punk about style or substance? Clearly that has not yet been decided. Does the anger have a point? Or is his all a revolt of style? The aforementioned Outcasts still pack a wallop. They exemplify one of the great punk paradoxes – being deadly serious and savagely funny, simultaneously. A song dedicated to the singer’s wife seems out of step with the Outcasts of old. Has romance finally caught up with them? Have they mellowed with the years? No. The song they perform as a matrimonial tribute is ‘You’re A Disease’. No sell-out here. Their songs were bloody Tarantino scripts sliced into lean cuts of rock music. No fat. Just pulp, sinew and muscle. Unlike other contemporaries they weren’t just angry; they were also tuneful. So their songs stand up surprisingly well. ‘Love You For Never’ and ‘The Cops Are Coming’ still retain a punch and a kick or two. ‘Programme Love’ and ‘Winter’ prove they had more arrows for their bow than the average punk quiver. Their Killing Joke-type pop smarts placed them ahead of the early eighties punk pack. Like Stiff Little Fingers they put the ‘Troubles’ into popular culture. In Blackpool, scowling Greg Cowan, the band’s frontman, introduces the song ‘Gangland Warfare’ about “another Belfast Saturday night” as being about gangs. It’s about ‘the Bloods and the Crips’ he quips before admitting he is only joking. It is about the ‘Taigs and the Prods’ he announces. It is funny to think how songs from 1983 have had their meanings changed by the forces of history. It’s even funnier to think how Northern Ireland had been broadcast by the Outcasts and Stiff Little Fingers before U2 started the promotional campaign for their War album in February ’83. The ‘out-and-out angry punk rock’ bands paved the way. More importantly than mere musical achievements Stiff Little Fingers proved that a career in punk could be a long and productive one. They enjoyed chart success with decent songs straddling the treacherous divide between rock and pop. ‘At The Edge’ with its tale of teenage suppression and generational conflict inspired a rousing sing-a-long from the assembled gathering. Most of them appeared to be of the age where their thoughts most be impinged upon by their own teenagers! It was unconceivable at the time that a band from Ireland singing about human drama and the situation in Northern Ireland would be performing those songs thirty odd years later. Liz is Evil, Setting Off Sirens and Chewing On Tinfoil who all performed at the festival prove that Irish bands can still contribute tenaciously to the global legacy of punk. North and South, and even with the brilliant buoyancy of ska in the case of Chewing On Tinfoil,

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VILLAGER Sept – Oct 2012

by admin 31 October, 2012

Hogan’s magic touch So water charges will not become fully operational until 2016, at the earliest. Coincidentally, a general election will be held before that date. Big Phil Hogan who has gone politically AWOL after presiding over the household charge and septic-tank fiascos, is now applying his monkey-repairing-a-television-set nous to domestic water metering. Bord Gáis has been awarded the contract for running the system. Expect to hear very little until the last minute, and certainly no justifications for any new unpopular taxes from this, the State’s least ideological Minister ever. Going Nowhere Reflecting the general stasis, it is remarkable how small the fluctuations in the numbers of unemployed are. Even anecdotally there is little talk of hordes heading to Nirvanas in the New World. A beleaguered domestic population has resigned itself to pestilence and reality TV. Numbers on the register have fallen only marginally, from 440,300 in January to the current level of 434,400. In 2012 the unemployment rate has ranged in the very narrow band between 14.7% and 14.8%. Letterkenny coming to the Home Counties With the Cabinet reshuffled to incorporate even more Oxbridge Tories, and Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson installed as Minister for the Environment, it is interesting that Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has signalled plans for a major deregulation of planning laws, raising the prospect of allowing more development of England’s 6,000 sq miles of green-belt land. He wants to see more “imaginative” thinking by planning authorities and, in thinking redolent of swan- and snail-hating Bertie Ahern, will ‘fast-track’ whatever it takes by October. Ireland doesn’t really bother with green belts, so no lessons there for us, anyway. Osborne also refused to rule out the option of building a third runway at Heathrow, saying “all options” were being considered. This has annoyed Zac Goldsmith, the toffee Tories environmental conscience and Boris Johnson, not to say the Lib Dems (remember them), who note the expansion was foresworn in the coalition’s manifesto. Clegg should dial up the blower to John Gormley for a pep talk. Socialists panic over Indo onslaught The implosion of the Socialist Party over Clare Daly’s support for Mick Wallace can only be rated as a victory for those behind the Irish Independent’s vitriolic campaign against the financially troubled property developer turned TD. At the height of the controversy earlier this summer surrounding Wallace’s outstanding debts to the Revenue the Indo bizarrely ran the Wexford TD’s problems across its front page every day for two consecutive weeks. As many of the remaining Socialist Party and ULA deputies ran for cover the heat came on Daly for standing by, and in the Dáil continuing to sit with, the embattled Wallace, who apologised for his unquestionably unacceptable dealings with the Revenue Commissioners and offered to pay them half his salary. For some in the Socialist Party turning on Daly provided a long awaited opportunity to cut the Dublin North representative down to size particularly in light of her strong media and Dáil performances since elected as their second TD. Those who relented in the face of the campaign by the Independent News and Media titles against Wallace did not seem to notice the irony of a media group attacking a politician over his revenue problems when its tax exiled owners have been evading their responsibilities on multiples of the amounts owed by the Wexford TD for decades. Click Villager has replaced his plastic-framed Athena poster of Brad and Angela, ‘Brangelina’, with one of Clare and Mick. Click? Lie or just bluff? Day one: Mitt Romney, man of action, will “declare China a currency manipulator, allowing me to put tariffs on products where they are stealing American jobs unfairly” . Futurology does not record what the reaction of China will be, nor on what day. But Villager notes that China is the biggest foreign buyer of US debt securities. If it decides not to participate in the next Treasury auction, desperate recourse to the financial markets will be required, sending interest rates soaring and, most importantly, polls dipping. GM What? No-one in Ireland cares about Genetically-Modified food and how they may spawn irrepressible super-species. Teagasc (whatever that is) was recently granted permission by the Environmental Protection Agency to grow GM spuds and they’ve apparently now been planted at Oak Park. Minister Phil Hogan can instruct Teagasc in writing to do, or undo, anything he wants, so ultimately the decision falls on his desk. Meanwhile, twelve applications were made in the High Court recently for NPE (Not Prohibitively Expensive) Orders by EU citizens, invoking the only-recently-ratified EU Aarhus Convention. The NPE Orders sought protection from risk of exorbitant expenses in this, the most expensive legal system in the EU. But the potatoes are growing away, oblivious. Savage but Prone Village has in the past noted the correlation between meaningful surnames and personality or profession. So for example, in a move that may presage development of a new Heathrow runway, Minister Justine Greening has been moved out of Britain’s transport portfolio. Meanwhile, Nick Buckles of security giant G4S admitted, under severe time pressure, that the firm couldn’t meet its obligations to provide security staff to the London Olympics. Villager has always been disproportionately fearful of the Communications Clinic, led as it is by Terry Prone and the Savage family – if only because of the potential for Nice/Nasty role-playing on their PR victims. What’s the Rory story? Villager is surprised how little fuss is being made of Rory Coveney’s appointment as special adviser to Noel Curran, DG of ‘independent’ broadcaster, RTÉ. Coveney is brother to Greencore MD, Patrick, and Minister for Agriculture, Simon. Scorched earth The recent An Bord Pleanála approval for demolition of nos. 32 and 33 Henry Street was the worst decision in Dublin City in years’ according to Kevin Duff of An Taisce. It runs counter to recent decisions on Frawley’s in the Liberties, the Ardee House pub on Newmarket and a number of buildings

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Feminism and farming

by Village 25 September, 2012

Going back to the land promotes sustainability and is living feminism Article by Ailbhe Gerrard What do you think of when you consider farmers? Is it a macho guy smelling of pig shit and covered in engine oil? Our in-built expectations about gender keep women relatively under-paid and disempowered in Ireland. If you Google “woman farmer in Ireland” you may come across this gem on Boards.ie: “Not trying to sound bad but I’ve never heard of a woman farmer in Ireland. I know of plenty that help… but full-on farmers themselves would quite shock me”. Environmental justice is an oft-neglected gloss on equality. Poor and disempowered people frequently have little say over access to and disposal of environmental goods such as clean water, fertile land, timber and other fuel for warmth and cooking; and often have disproportionate exposure to environmental bads such as poor air, unhealthy food-sources and urban blight. Meanwhile a powerful few have access to real decision-making about who controls natural assets such as minerals, land, beauty spots and water. Ivana Bacik’s article in last month’s Village was a mainstream if perhaps unradical feminist history of the women’s movement in the Irish state from 1922 to present. It is important to remember and acknowledge the power of the female collective voice. However, living feminism means addressing the implicit ceilings, taboos and shibboleths of what women can or should do and can or should not do. The expectations about women and men’s roles are a constant source of frustration in this gendered and conservative society. Irish feminism has a long way to go. In the same edition Shirley Clerkin’s ironical article ‘Stuck in the Sticks’ is about living in a rural area and is a crie de coeur for men with trailers to stack logs by her back door. Clerkin makes us realise that cheap timber, like cheap food, does not price for environmental bads. She concludes: ‘We the independent women need to be more demanding’. Indeed. ‘We the independent women’ need to be more demanding of ourselves and recognise that we can be our own primary providers of fuel and food. Following a period working in construction – another traditionally male industry – three years ago I realised that primary production of food and timber is vital. Without food production by skilled and motivated farmers, finance, war, mining, forestry, advertising, even magazine production are impossible. The key to an efficient workforce is specialised food production and, in climates like Ireland’s, adequate, locally-produced heat. It is not often recognised that women have a huge input into food production and farming worldwide – 43 percent of the world’s farmers are women and they produce most of the food consumed locally according to the FAO. This is despite owning only between 10 and 20 percent of farms. Women farmers are also ignored by government assistance: female farmers receive only five percent of all agricultural extension (training and advice) services worldwide. So we have a situation where women farmers produce most of the real food eaten in the world, but men farmers tend to be more involved in food commodities, for instance the world grain market, where the money is. Conscious of this, in 2010 I bought a 65-acre tillage farm with 15 acres of deciduous tree plantation. Recently I saved the second year’s grain harvest, and am selling the first timber harvest. The farm’s oak, ash, beech, sycamore and larch plantation is managed with two principles in mind: long term timber quality through sustainable timber production and forest biodiversity. I am immersed in the ritual of the farm’s seasonal turns – forestry and fencing in the winter, food and forage production in the summer. There is no way to persuade a recession-stricken rural population to pay the full price it costs for the farm’s ecologically-sensitive firewood carefully hand-cut and horse-extracted. The going market-rate for firewood timber in rural areas, to urban dwellers would seem a pitifully small amount per ton of timber. This is the dilemma of primary producers (foresters or farmers) and the local market. However, rural people are starting to seek out sustainable and artisan forestry products – for firewood, fencing, charcoal and many other uses. Not only the quality of the timber is recognised, but also the knock-on benefits to the local community: employment of skilled foresters, chainsaw operatives, wood-workers and horse-loggers; and environmental benefits. I believe that tough-minded nurturing can ground a modern feminism as an antidote to the slash-and-burn machismo of many Irish industries and professions. Sustainable farming benefits consumers and is an outlet for practical and feminist egalitarianism. Ailbhe Gerrard has a tillage and forestry farm in Ireland and is studying for an MSc in organic farming

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News

Referendum will elevate children’s best interests

by Village 19 September, 2012

The anachronistic 1937 perspective needs sensible, unradical change Article by Tanya Ward: My childhood in Cabra, Dublin, was a happy one. Money was probably a bit tight but I had absolute certainty that my parents and family were there for me. I didn’t end up in Cabra by accident. My Grandad was deaf and he left his home in West Limerick at an early age to attend St Joseph’s School for Deaf boys in Cabra. We lived near the school for many years, often played in its grounds and snuck into deaf sporting events. The 2009 Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (the Ryan Report) included a chapter on St Joseph’s. It found that complaints of child sexual abuse had not been forwarded to the Gardaí because the Christian Brothers thought abuse more a moral failure than a criminal act against a child. It also found a lack of follow-up by the State, when complaints were made. While I had pleasant memories of this school, I realised that for many it had been a site of abuse and neglect. The Ryan Report did something very important for us in Irish society. It documented the consequences of institutions putting their own interests before those of the children they were supposed to be caring for. It also uncovered the human cost of not listening to children when they tell us they are victims of abuse. A referendum on the rights of children will take place in late 2012. The referendum won’t solve all ills, but it should give us an opportunity to make sure that children’s rights are no longer hidden away within the Constitution. The Constitution was written in 1937 when children were ‘seen and not heard’. The legacy of this is that the courts continue to make decisions about children that are not child-centred. A good example is the ‘PKU’ case, where parents refused to allow their baby to be given the harmless heel-prick test, which involves taking a small sample of blood to identify several diseases, for which early identification can be of huge benefit. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the judges said that even though the parents’ decision not to have the test was “unwise” and was clearly not in the best interests of the child, there had to be an immediate and fundamental threat to the life or health of the child to overrule the parents’ decision. You might agree with the outcome of this specific case, but clearly there is something wrong if the courts can only intervene when a child’s life is in immediate danger. Poor decision-making for children exists also within family-law cases. The unfortunate reality of family breakdown in Ireland today is that the Courts are often asked to resolve a conflict between a mother and father. If a decision is to be made about a child, the Courts should be required to give first and paramount consideration to the best interests of the child in resolving such disputes: a key current failing. The Constitution should also enable each child’s actual voice to be heard, in the context of his or her age and maturity. Listening to children does not mean that Court decisions should be based on the child’s view alone. But it does mean that the child’s view of his or her best interest should be taken into account by the judge along with the views of other actors in the case. In care proceedings, the child’s view is often taken into account by way of a Court-appointed independent Guardian ad litem. This type of good practice does not happen in all court cases – something this referendum could potentially remedy. There are critics of the proposed referendum. Some argue that excessive power will be given to the State and there will be excessive intervention in family life. Ultimately, they fear that ‘the family’ is under attack. This is not true. The Children’s Referendum is not radical. It will not change the status of the married family in the Constitution. It will not lead to children divorcing their parents, or families losing their children because they allow them to eat junk food. The referendum is not about breaking up families. The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald TD, is currently finalising proposals for this referendum. The Minister is not starting from scratch. She is taking, as her starting point, the 2010 proposals from the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children. With all-Party support and general appreciation from the children’s representative sector, these proposals offer an excellent blueprint for this referendum. We can’t take away what happened to children in industrial and religious institutions in Ireland. And we can’t protect every child from abuse in all situations. However, we can ensure that our Constitution, at the very least, offers the best possible protection to children. Tanya Ward is Chief Executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance

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News

Villager September-October ’12 including threats to whistleblower, Sugarman

by Village 11 September, 2012

Cover-up Jonathan Sugarman, a former Risk Manager, blew the whistle on his then employer Unicredit Bank, Italy’s biggest, which in 2007 failed dramatically to maintain proper liquidity ratios – which keep banks from customer runs on their funds. Village was the first to name Unicredit, despite threats from McCann FitzGerald solicitors that Unicredit would sue if implicated. Subsequently the Central Bank Financial Regulator’s Department, announced that it would consider any information offered about the affair “in confidence” but when Sugarman contacted them they revealed that in fact they reserved the right to report him to the Gardai for criminal activity if he offered the Central Bank information that implicated him. In the end – in February – Sugarman bravely nevertheless met the Central Bank, which indicated that they had already asked Unicredit to recreate reports dating back to the alleged breaches in 2007 but gave no information as to how their investigations were proceeding. Subsequently the Central Bank indicated, with no reasoning, that it was closing the file – and notably failed to produce minutes. When the Irish Independent’s intrepid Mark Keenan recently started sniffing about the issue, the Central Bank finally sent minutes of the meeting, It is not clear if the file remains closed, or why, and the Central Bank, for the moment is keeping schtum. Hogan’s magic touch So water charges will not become fully operational until 2016, at the earliest. Coincidentally, a general election will be held before that date. Big Phil Hogan who has gone politically AWOL after presiding over the household charge and septic-tank fiascos, is now applying his monkey-repairing-a-television-set nous to domestic water metering. Bord Gáis has been awarded the contract for running the system. Expect to hear very little until the last minute, and certainly no justifications for any new unpopular taxes from this, the State’s least ideological Minister ever. Going Nowhere Reflecting the general stasis, it is remarkable how small the fluctuations in the numbers of unemployed are. Even anecdotally there is little talk of hordes heading to Nirvanas in the New World. A beleaguered domestic population has resigned itself to pestilence and reality TV. Numbers on the register have fallen only marginally, from 440,300 in January to the current level of 434,400. In 2012 the unemployment rate has moved between the very narrow band between 14.7% and 14.8%. Letterkenny coming to the Home Counties With the Cabinet reshuffled to incorporate even more Oxbridge Tories and Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson installed as Minister for the Environment it is interesting that Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has signalled plans for a major deregulation of planning laws, raising the prospect of allowing more development of England’s 6,000 sq miles of green belt land. He wants to see more “imaginative” thinking by planning authorities and, in thinking redolent of swan- and snail-hating Bertie Ahern, will ‘fast-track’ whatever it takes by October. Ireland doesn’t really bother with green belts, so no lessons there for us, anyway. Osborne also refused to rule out the option of building a third runway at Heathrow, saying “all options” were being considered. This has annoyed Zac Goldsmith, the toffee Tories environmental conscience and Boris Johnson, not to say the Lib Dems (remember them), who note the expansion was foresworn in the coalition’s manifesto. Clegg should dial up the blower to John Gormley for a pep talk. Socialists panic over Indo onslaught The implosion of the Socialist Party over Clare Daly’s support for Mick Wallace can only be rated as a victory for those behind the Irish Independent’s vitriolic campaign against the financially troubled property developer turned TD. At the height of the controversy earlier this summer surrounding Wallace’s outstanding debts to the Revenue the Indo bizarrely ran the Wexford TD’s problems across its front page every day for two consecutive weeks. As many of the remaining Socialist Party and ULA deputies ran for cover the heat came on Daly for standing by, and in the Dáil continuing to sit with, the embattled Wallace, who apologised for his unquestionably unacceptable dealings with the Revenue Commissioners and offered to pay them half his salary. For some in the Socialist Party turning on Daly provided a long awaited opportunity to cut the Dublin North representative down to size particularly in light of her strong media and Dáil performances since elected as their second TD. Those who relented in the face of the campaign by the Independent News and Media titles against Wallace did not seem to notice the irony of a media group attacking a politician over his revenue problems when its tax exiled owners have been evading their responsibilities on multiples of the amounts owed by the Wexford TD for decades. Click Villager has replaced his plastic-framed Athena poster of Brad and Angela, ‘Brangelina’ with one of Clare and Mick. Click? Lie or just bluff? Day one: Mitt Romney, man of action, will “declare China a currency manipulator, allowing me to put tariffs on products where they are stealing American jobs unfairly” . Futurology does not record what the reaction of China will be, nor on what day. But Villager notes that China is the biggest foreign buyer of US debt securities. If it decides not to participate in the next Treasury auction, desperate recourse to the financial markets will be required, sending interest rates soaring and, most importantly, polls dipping. GM What? No-one in Ireland cares about Genetically-Modified food and how they may spawn irrepressible super-species. Teagasc (whatever that is) was recently granted permission by the Environmental Protection Agency to grow GM spuds and they’ve apparently now been planted at Oak Park. Minister Phil Hogan can instruct Teagasc in writing to do, or undo, anything he wants, so ultimately the decision falls on his desk. Meanwhile, twelve applications were made in the High Court recently for NPE (Not Prohibitively Expensive) Orders by EU citizens, invoking the only-recently-ratified EU Aarhus Convention. The NPE Orders sought protection from risk of exorbitant expenses in

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General

Call for Coombe inquiry

by Village 11 September, 2012

FRANK CONNOLLY: Micheál Grealy has waited almost 40 years to find out what caused the death of his wife, Kathy, just weeks after she gave birth to their first child in Dublin’s Coombe Hospital. Admitted in full health to the hospital after 39 and a half weeks of a normal pregnancy on Christmas Day 1972, Kathy Grealy died seven and a half weeks later in the intensive care unit of St Vincent’s Hospital where she was taken soon after her baby, Casey Anne, was born. The child died from congenital haemolytic disease on the day of her delivery after the Coombe hospital medical team failed to identify the incompatibility between Kathy’s Rhesus negative and her husband’s Rhesus positive blood groups. In this case, the hospital had not established the incompatibility through a routine test for anti-bodies, or taken adequate steps to ascertain that Kathy had a pregnancy terminated some years earlier. Kathy Grealy was an Australian-born citizen who met her Mayo-born husband when she first came to Ireland to trace her roots in the mid-1960s. She died after food entered her lungs – a complication known in medical terms as Mendelson’s Syndrome – during the administration of the general anaesthetic before the Caesarean birth. She had requested, and was promised, that an epidural rather than a general anaesthetic would be administered. The Coombe hospital report of her case describes a “regurgitation of small amount of gastric contents on induction of anaesthesia after failure to pass Ryles tube”. The St Vincent’s in-patient summary on her admission to the intensive care unit on St Stephen’s Day 1972 records that “this woman was admitted from the Coombe Lying-in Hospital for intensive care following accidental inhalation of vomitus (Mendelson’s Syndrome)”. The confirmation that her death on 16th February, 1973 from complications including ‘haemorrhage from tracheostomy site’ and irreversible lung and kidney damage was precipitated during the anaesthetic procedure in the Coombe led her distraught husband on an increasingly-desperate journey to establish the full circumstances surrounding her medical care in one of the country’s largest maternity hospitals. Kathy Grealy had chosen the Coombe over other, private, facilities, not least because she was impressed by the reputation of its leading gynaecologist, the late Professor J K Feeney. The Journal of the Irish Medical Association published in November 1973 provided an apparently unambiguous explanation of where responsibility lay for Kathy’s death, although it also contained seriously inaccurate information about her mental state. In its Annual Maternal Mortality report for 1972 it described her death as “avoidable” while the “hospital” was the only item listed under the heading “Factors of Responsibility”. After almost 40 years of personal investigation and legal inquiries, not one individual or institution has been made answerable for Kathy’s “avoidable” demise. Nor has there been any explanation why the 1973 report in the IMA journal described her as a “psychotic patient” although she had never displayed any psychotic tendencies according to subsequent reports from experts in the field. In a letter sent to Grealy in August 2005, the Master of the Coombe, Dr Seán Daly, stated that there was no reference in the clinical notes “to any type of psychosis or details that would suggest that the description of psychotic patient should have been applied to your wife”. Dr Daly stated that he did not know “who made the diagnosis, when it was made or upon what is was based as there is no evidence from the clinical notes that such a diagnosis was made”. Yet the ‘diagnosis’ is written in black and white in the IMA Maternal Mortality Committee report on her case. Efforts to get all of the notes, documents and reports relevant to the issues have been unsuccessful despite the involvement of lawyers, politicians, a private investigator and the Information Commissioner who was informed back in 2002 that no relevant files exist in the Department of Health or in the hospital. Grealy met former Labour TD, and later Fianna Fáil health minister, Dr John O’Connell, in the early years of his search for truth and was told by the politician that an inquiry was urgently needed into certain circumstances in the Coombe, a view echoed by two senior civil servants in the Department of Health at the time. Over the years he has met with a wall of resistance, not least from within the medical and legal professions. It took an extraordinary ten years before Micheál Grealy was informed of the identity of the anaesthetist who administered to Kathy. He claims that he was told, wrongly, by Professor Feeney that the procedure had been carried out by someone of another name. When contacted since, the now-retired consultant anaesthetist declined to answer any questions until they were first put to his lawyers. Attempts to contact other members of staff, including nurses and mid-wives have proved fruitless to date. Recently Village has been informed by senior medical sources that there are issues of serious public importance surrounding medical practice at the hospital during the years around Kathy Grealy’s death. Her husband is now seeking the assistance of the Ombudsman’s office to help uncover any illuminating official information – and hoping someone who may know what really happened makes contact with him. It may require an independent inquiry assisted by an expert obstetrician and anaesthetist to help explain why Kathy Grealy and her daughter did not survive childbirth and why other patients may have suffered negligent care by personnel of that hospital, in the Coombe and elsewhere.

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General

Zoning change destroys new town plan

by Village 11 September, 2012

FRANK CONNOLLY: The conviction and jailing of former Dungarvan Fine Gael councillor, Fred Forsey (43), on corruption charges has been hailed as a great victory by the establishment although the party has maintained a dignified silence in the whole affair. And why wouldn’t they as the man from whom Forsey is accused of accepting an €80,000 bribe is another former Fine Gael councillor. Michael Ryan (60) is also the owner of Al Eile stud farm in Kilgobnet outside Dungarvan and of a famous race horse of the same name and is expected to appear on similar charges next year. He owned the land which Forsey convinced his fellow councillors to rezone so that Ryan could develop it for a tidy profit. It was only because he fell out with his wife that Forsey was rumbled and is now facing four years in Midland Prison. Former environment minister, John Gormley, stopped the re-zoning. What is shocking is not that a Fine Gael councillor was found with his hand in the till – it is that dozens, if not more, have not been as successfully pursued by the Garda given what emerged of Frank Dunlop’s corrupt activities at the Mahon tribunal. While the disgraced lobbyist bribed his way across more than 15 controversial re-zonings in Dublin in the 1980s and 1990s on behalf of his various clients not one of them has been properly held to account while Dunlop served less than two years in jail. Developer, James Kennedy, former FG senator, Liam T. Cosgrave and a handful of other former councillors are awaiting trial based on Dunlop’s claims. What is also disturbing is that an attempt by Gormley to deal with the ever-growing list of complaints about planning irregularities was effectively suppressed by the new government when it took office last year. A proposed inquiry into questionable planning decisions in no less than seven counties – Dublin city, Carlow, Cork city and county, Donegal, Galway and Meath – was underway before it was stifled by a combination of civil service intransigence and a lack of political enthusiasm on the part of the Government. The story under review in Meath alone could occupy a team of investigators for several months as it is an intricate tale involving competing developers, planners, councillors, a leading soccer club and even national politicians that ends up covering no-one in glory. It is rooted in a proposal in 2004 by Drogheda Borough Council, and Louth and Meath county councils, to establish a new conurbation south of Drogheda and inside the Meath county boundary, incorporating lands known as Bryanstown. A decision was also made that other lands on the Mornington Road closer to to Drogheda would remain reserved and would not be developed until long-term plans for the port in the town were completed. Wicklow-based developer, Bill Doyle, recognised the potential of the Bryanstown site and began to assemble lands there after receiving what he claimed were assurances from Meath County manager, Tom Dowling, that the proposals by the three local authorities would proceed as envisaged. Doyle eventually purchased 124 acres and – in co-operation with other landowners – designed a major residential, retail and industrial new town on the site. He also assisted Drogheda United in securing new grounds on a 20-acre site adjoining the Bryanstown lands and close to the M1 motorway which was to give the successful soccer club a new lease of life. It was agreed after discussions involving Doyle, his professional advisers and the council management that a variation of the county development plan was the best way to achieve his objectives. With millions borrowed from Anglo Irish Bank, Doyle was then shocked to learn that some councillors were objecting to the completion of the East Meath area plan, including the Bryanstown development unless the reservation on the lands on the Mornington Road was lifted. These lands were controlled by Seamus Murphy, a local builder and quarry-owner and by Phil Reilly of Shannon Homes, a major house builder in the Louth and Meath area. Shannon Homes also developed a retail centre at Grange Rath south of Drogheda. Reilly was also a political supporter of local FF TD Thomas Byrne and his father Thomas Byrne senior, an auctioneer who sold the Shannon Homes properties over many years. The objections of the three local councillors Jimmy Cudden (Ind), Pat Bushell (FF) and Thomas Kelly who was a member of the Green Party until it fell out with him out over his support for building houses on flood plains in county Meath, stalled the implementation of Doyle’s plan. An intervention by then minister Dick Roche in August 2008, who was connected through marriage to one of the Bryanstown landowners and who wrote to the county manager and minister Gormley, expressing his concerns, failed to break the deadlock. Doyle was then shocked to learn that when the final plan was eventually published in 2008 some 80 acres of his land bank at Bryanstown had been de-zoned from residential to green space and industrial making it commercially unviable to proceed with the development. At the same time the views of the three local councillors had prevailed and the lands at the Mornington Road were freed up for development to the potential benefit of Phil Reilly and his business partners. According to council officials, the decision to allow development on Reilly’s site meant that the Drogheda sewerage scheme could not accommodate the scale of the Bryanstown proposal. With millions in bank debts, Doyle was eventually forced to drop the ambitious scheme while the plans by Drogheda FC for a new playing and training facilities in a modern stadium, surrounded by retail and other commercial ventures, also collapsed even though it had received planning permission from Meath County Council. Coming so close to the banking collapse any plans by Shannon Homes to develop its lands also went by the wayside with the result that both sites are idle and unlikely to be developed any time soon. The

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Euro deal a mere re-brand

by Village 11 September, 2012

CONSTANTIN GURDGIEV: Last month’s desperate deal reached by the euro-area leaders in a bid to rescue the common currency could have borrowed its cover from the famous guide. The Irish Government, coming out of the June eurozone summit, was full of conviction that Ireland will be delivered salvation from the onerous debts imposed onto the taxpayers under the successive government programmes for bank recapitalisations. The “seismic deal” allegedly “secured by the Taoiseach”, “gives Ireland the credibility to get back to the markets” and sets the government on track to “aim high in negotiations with euro-zone authorities”. That this bravado had a contagious effect on the Irish official Left – the Labour Party – simply adds some icing to an already grotesquely sugar-coated rhetorical cake. Let’s start from the top. Éamon Gilmore used to claim he stood for the ‘working people’ of Ireland. So, the Labour Party are allegedly striving to put forward solutions to the crisis that protect the interests of ordinary taxpayers and consumers. And yet the Labour Party leader has wasted no time in throwing his support behind the ‘debt deal’ which will simply re-brand some of our Sovereign Debt into consumer and mortgage-holders’ debt. Instead of writing down some €30 billion worth of the outstanding banking-sector-related debts and putting the insolvent banking institutions through a receivership, Mr Gilmore will replace the old debt with a new one. The ‘deal’, assuming it does apply retroactively to Ireland’s case (an assumption of a tall order as will be explained below), will require the Irish state to guarantee banking debts to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) which will act as a funding authority to the bust banks here. Instead of holding equity in Irish banks against capital put into them, the Irish taxpayers will end up issuing guarantees to cover the ESM holdings of Irish bank equity. Irish taxpayers will then, as consumers of banking services and mortgage-holders, be required to repay the ESM. This, in turn, means mortgages rates must rise, charges for bank-account holders must go up and enforcement of distressed mortgages will have to become more stringent. Families will be going to the wall paying the ESM back on bank debts, while Kenny and Gilmore will be washing their hands of any responsibility: “We’ve restructured banks debts, you see. Not our headache anymore. All complaints to the ESM, please.” The problem with the entire deal is that neither the euro-area leaders, nor our own cabal of entrenched “State first, Citizens last” ideologues, seem to understand that the crisis we are living through is a crisis of excessive debt. The ‘seismic deal’ signed by the euro-area leaders changes nothing except the names of the legal holders of our bad debts. The payers of it remain the same, namely us. Add to that the fact that according to the latest German government statements and the euro-area white paper on banking union prepared by Herman von Rompuy, the common supervisory infrastructure and the deposits-guarantee scheme will be financed out of the mandatory euro-area financial transactions tax (FTT) and we have an even bigger problem. Even basic economics would tell you that when market power is concentrated in the hands of a monopoly or duopoly, any tax or charge will be immediately passed in full to the end buyer of services supplied by the monopolist. Now, recall that under Irish government plans, our banking system is moving toward a ‘Twin Pillar’ system – in other words to a Bank of Ireland plus AIB duopoly. In such an environment, the EU-set FTT will simply be a levy on the ‘ordinary workers’ availing of basic banking services here. So, go ahead Mr Gilmore, do the ‘right’ thing by your socialist textbook – punish the bad banks with a good ‘Robin Hood’ tax and see our private households’ debts become even less sustainable. And the crisis will not be solved via ESM either, courtesy of the latest ‘deal’. The ESM’s set capacity is €500 billion. Setting aside the fact that it has yet to raise any of the funds it will be lending out, we already have EFSF-related demands for ESM funds (which will replace the EFSF in 2014) of €240-250 billion. But wait: retrospectivity imports retrospectivity for all. If so, recall that Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria have also used taxpayers’ funds to recapitalise some of their banks. Thus before any of the new (post-2013) lending can be extended by the ESM, before any of the bonds buy-outs from the markets, and before any new capital injections into insolvent euro-area banks can start, the ‘seismic’ deal signed in June would have the ESM coffers fully exhausted. The trials of the ESM, however, are semantic, compared to the heroic efforts of the Irish government to win a PR battle for the hearts and minds of the ‘ordinary workers’. The ‘deal’ in their view, allows for ‘relieving the burden of the banks debt’ and promises to ‘restart our economy back to growth’. If the former proposition, as argued above, is questionable, the latter is outright bogus. Since about 1999 – the year Ireland entered the fast-paced world of Ponzi finance with the first (dot.com) bubble, our growth was dependent on borrowing ever-increasing amounts of money from an ever-wider (geographically) set of lenders and blowing it on: Investments in improved public services (e.g HSE, Fas, failed ICT systems debacles); Benchmarking awards to raise productivity in the public sector; PPPs that enriched politically-connected private sector players via contracts for ‘infrastructure development’ and subsidies to various schemes; Private investments in land and development, as well as households’ investments in housing and property; Excessive private consumption; and Over-optimistic investments and acquisitions by the Celtic Tiger Irish companies. Now, we are being told by our leaders – from both the centre and the left of our political spectrum – Ireland needs even more debt to kick-start the very same debt spiral with more public investments to ‘generate