Claiming Our Future has set an agenda at its recent Croke Park meeting – Niall Crowley
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By John Gormley. I know how Tom Gilmartin must have felt listening to Pádraig Flynn speaking on the Late Late. You’ll recall that this was the evening that Pee just couldn’t stop talking about how difficult it was to keep three luxury homes and in the process also ‘dissed’ the developer, Mr Gilmartin, who had given him money. Gilmartin, who was described by Flynn as being “out of sorts”, took umbrage and decided to spill the beans to the tribunal. I can guess how Gilmartin felt because I had similar feelings of annoyance when a succession of government ministers decided to discredit my efforts to deal with the planning difficulties in this country. Claims that I hadn’t done “an ounce of work” on planning enquiries were repeated by Ministers Alan Kelly, Chief Whip Paul Keogh, Minister Phil Hogan and Minister Jan O’Sullivan, all of them perfectly on message, all of them equally misleading. Rather than let the sleeping dog lie, the government had decided to give this particular former minister an unmerciful kick. Did they really believe I wouldn’t react in any way? Listening to Phil Hogan talking on the issue on Newstalk one morning I tweeted that Minister Hogan “was talking bull”. That’s not exactly a revelation, you might say – Phil regularly indulges his penchant for talking twaddle. But this was different even by his own egregious standards. To turn a story completely on its head takes some neck. So, for the record, I’d like to list what I had done as minister on the planning inquiries and what exactly Phil Hogan had in front of him on taking office. When Minister Hogan took office he had: a) an extensive dossier prepared by planning officials in the Department following an internal review of the complaints (Nov 2009) b) a series of reports from the Managers in each of the local authorities submitted in response to a formal request from the Minister using his statutory powers under the Planning and Development Acts c) terms of reference for a panel of planning consultants to carry out independent reviews in the seven local authorities d) a completed tender process to select this panel of consultants e) letters of appointment ready to be issued to the members of the panel Below is a list of the issues to be examined; and a chronology: Dublin City Council: Complaints from An Taisce that the City Council was not adhering to policies in its development plan, specifically in relation to tall buildings. Carlow County Council: Report from the Local Government Auditors highlighted weaknesses in the procedures followed by the planning department. Galway County Council: Complaints from An Taisce that the County Council was not adhering to policies in its development plan in granting planning permissions – a large proportion of permissions have been overturned on appeal to An Bord Pleanála. Cork City Council: Procedures around the holding of pre-planning consultations have been highlighted by the Ombudsman. Cork County Council: Complaints have questioned the appropriateness of a procedure of liaison between the planning department and councillors on specific planning applications. Meath County Council: Complaints received concerning adherence to development plan policies. Donegal County Council: Complaints received about processes followed in the planning department. I think it’s pretty clear from the above account that practically everything that could have been done was done in relation to these inquiries. And yet the government’s mistruths continue. Village was told by the Department in June 2011 that the review was being downgraded to an “internal one”. We have been told by Éamon Gilmore and others that internal reviews were taking place. But the above chronology shows that these reviews had already been completed when the government took office. So what exactly was the government doing in the intervening 12 months? Perhaps they were seeking additional information for these ‘internal’ reviews? Not so, it would appear. According to RTE’s ‘Primetime’, not a single phonecall, email or any sort of communication was received by any of the local authorities from the Department of the Environment regarding the planning Inquiries since the new government took office. It seems that Fine Gael and Labour were hoping that the planning inquiries, which Phil Hogan never supported in the first place, would quietly go away. And they would have got away with it had it not been for the publication of the Mahon Report. Mahon served to remind people and the media that planning malpractice went to the very heart of our housing bubble which in turn resulted in the financial meltdown. Minister Ciarán Lynch of the Labour Party downplayed any comparisons with Mahon when he appeared with Ciarán Cuffe of the Green party on ‘Prime Time’. How could any government seriously claim that the abuses of planning procedures that we witnessed in Mahon were somehow confined to the Dublin region? All of the complaints from members of the public suggested that there were widespread difficulties with planning in many parts of the country. Casting the net too wide would not have been very productive, practicable or affordable on the limited budgets. It has been noted by some critics that the word ‘corruption’ has not been mentioned anywhere. True. And there’s an obvious reason for this. (A) we did not want to be flooded by lawyers’ writs for libel – which would have stalled the entire process and (B) we did not want in any way to be seen to prejudge the outcome of the process. And prejudging the outcome is precisely what Minister Hogan now stands accused off. Remember it was he who, even before he took office, told Village that many of the accusations contained in the files were ‘spurious’. It was no surprise, therefore, when his junior Minster unceremoniously dropped the external, independent inquiries. And there was barely a murmur from the mainstream media. After all, this was a new government who would take a new broom to the Augean stables left by the previous administration – or so we were told.
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By Mark Malone and Andy Storey. Michael Noonan could have “walked on water across the Liffey” to the recent Fine Gael Árd Fheis. That was the view of one political commentator on RTÉ, following the “miracle” the Finance Minister had performed in relation to the Anglo Irish Bank promissory note, due for payment that day. This opinion was typical of mainstream media interpretation of the “deal” announced by Noonan. In reality, the deal was a mirage, not a miracle. The Department of Finance, it is true, did not write out a cheque to the Irish Central Bank on March 31st. However, NAMA did. And who owns NAMA? That’s right, we do. So Ireland did pay the bill, in full and on time. We simply paid it out of one of our accounts rather than another. In the film Scarface, Al Pacino’s gangster responds to a rival’s pleas for mercy by saying, “Don’t worry, Frank, I’m not going to kill you”, then turns to a henchman and says “Manolo, kill this piece of shit”. Frank still ends up dead. We still ended up paying the money. But it gets worse. The government has promised to repay NAMA the €3.1 billion. The promise taking the form of a sovereign, interest-bearing bond issued by the government. And NAMA plans to sell this bond on to Bank of Ireland, provided the latter’s shareholders agree. If that last deal goes through, the government will owe the money, plus the interest (which might be some €90 million this year), to Bank of Ireland; so a bank that is 85% privately owned will end up making money by lending to the Irish government to allow that government to repay a debt that was not of our making and which could easily have been suspended. This is what counts as a miracle in Ireland today – it’s called a scam in most other places. But stick with us here. Just when you think it could not get any worse, it does. The promissory note was ‘soft debt’, a debt that had limited legal status and which could have been suspended without significant complications arising. Not so the sovereign bond that the Irish government has issued to NAMA and that it plans to see sold on to Bank of Ireland. This is ‘hard debt’, the suspension of which would expose the government to potentially serious legal and other challenges. The government has boxed us into a corner, rendering it harder (but not impossible!) to write down this debt in the future. So it is not just a scam: it is also a stitch-up. For weeks in advance of the March 31st deadline, Noonan waxed about negotiations and wranglings with the ECB. This was framed as realpolitik and strategic political manoeuvring. The reality is far more prosaic, but also completely damning. Pierre van der Haegen, director general of the Secretariat and Languages Services in the ECB, was asked via a freedom of information request to provide documents submitted by the Irish government as part of the negotiations. His official response? “Having duly looked into this matter, we would like to inform you that the ECB did not receive any documents from the Irish Government on the renegotiation of the terms of the promissory notes”. A political stitch-up indeed – one entirely organised by our ‘own’ side. The decision by successive Irish governments to force people living in Ireland to pay for debts incurred by Anglo Irish Bank is one of the most blatantly unjust acts in the history of the State. We are faced with a bill of between €35 billion and €80 billion for the actions of a bank still under police investigation for fraud. A 14-year-old could tell you that’s dodgy. The same 14-year-old will have lived through a generation of state-imposed austerity by the time we have paid this bill (while a few people will make a handsome profit). To put some context on these figures, €3.1 Billion (the annual repayment expected of us) would pay for the running of the entire primary-school education system for a year. In 2008 it became clear that Anglo and Irish Nationwide, headed respectively by Seán Fitzpatrick and Michael Fingleton, did not have the assets to repay their debts to bondholders (the speculators who had lent money to them). Infamously the two Brians, Cowen and Lenihan, simply agreed with the banks that people living in Ireland would cover these bondholder debts. But where would the cash come from? The European Central Bank, and its franchise the Irish Central Bank, whose main interest was stopping contagion to European money markets, created the money out of nothing and called it “emergency liquidity assistance” (ELA). To qualify for ELA, Anglo and Irish Nationwide – by this point rebranded the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) – had to put up some collateral. However, both were broke. So Lenihan wrote out IOUs, known as promissory notes, to act as collateral. Anglo got its cash which was transferred almost immediately and in full, to its bondholders. Now we are being forced to pay back the ELA by redeeming the promissory notes. So far, €5 billion has been taken directly out of the economy, and given to the ICB/ECB. What uses did the ICB/ECB find for it? Answer: they simply wiped it off the system. A civil-society coalition was formed early in 2012 to campaign against this egregious injustice, arguing that we should suspend the promissory note payments and enter into negotiations to write down the debt. We felt confident that people in Ireland could devise a better use for the money than seeing it sucked out of Irish society and then taken out of circulation. A wide range of groups came together: global justice organisations such as the Debt and Development Coalition, academic departments such as UCD’s School of Social Justice, community groups such as Kilbarack Community Development Programme, faith-based groups like the Irish Missionary Union, and the trade union UNITE. We called ourselves the Debt
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State must provide for abortion.
Since a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, known as the X case, abortion has been theoretically legal in Ireland if there is a risk to the life of a pregnant woman. Bunreacht na hÉireann now allows Dáil Éireann to legislate on this; however, no political party has dared to, and the Irish Medical Council cravenly considers it malpractice for any doctor to perform an abortion: “The deliberate and intentional destruction of the unborn child is professional misconduct. Should a child in utero lose its life as a side-effect of standard medical treatment of the mother, then this is not unethical”. Remarkably, this edict extends to where the pregnancy does not involve the agency of the woman, such as cases of rape and incest. Meanwhile, the numbers of Irish women seeking abortions in Britain seem to be 150-200 weekly, though figures are unreliable. In May 2007, a pregnant 17-year-old girl, known only as “Miss D”, whose foetus suffered from anencephaly, was prevented from travelling to Britain by the Health Service Executive. The High Court eventually ruled that she could not be prevented from travelling merely because she was a ward of the state, but clearly women’s rights are under practical threat. In 2005, three Irish women who had previously travelled to England for abortions won their case in the European Court of Human Rights, that restrictive and unclear Irish laws violate several provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case, A, B and C v Ireland, held there is no right for women to an abortion, although Ireland had violated the Convention by failing to provide an accessible and effective procedure for a woman to establish whether she qualifies for a legal abortion under current Irish law. A recent Private Members’ Bill, put forward by Socialist Party TD Clare Daly, People Before Profit TD Joan Collins and Independent TD Mick Wallace, sought to create a legal framework for abortion in Ireland where a woman’s life is at risk, including from suicide. The vote was opposed by Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil. It was backed by Sinn Féin and number of independents, though many of them made it clear they were determined to provide only for abortion in the case of threats to the life of the woman. A recent and moving Irish Times article also notably dealt only with women whose lives had been threatened by pregnancy and who had therefore had abortions. There does not seem to be much of a constituency for abortion in other circumstances. In any event, Minister for Health, Dr James Reilly, rejected the Bill on the grounds that the House should await the report of an expert group on the matter, which will report within months. Abortion is complicated and involves a weighing of the rights of a woman with those of an unborn foetus. We do not even have a language for rights outside human rights and many, particularly in Anglophone countries outside Ireland, believe that the position of a foetus must yield to that of the woman, where her life, her health, her emotional welfare including in circumstances of rape or incest or even just her life plans (at least in the first trimester) demand it. As part of our acceptance that life is complex and circumstances often far from ideal, Village considers that the logic of sympathising with a woman who believes there is an imperative to have a first-trimester abortion extends to a legislative and constitutional imperative to provide for first-trimester abortion where a woman demands it. Ireland should legislate for X and move to provide in the medium-term, through constitutional change, for first-trimester abortions. No country that exports its moral issues in circumstances of great human pain can call itself a Republic.
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Among all the column inches given to the abortion debate in Ireland in recent months, the most bizarre opinion is that a pregnant woman whose life is at risk will get all the support and care that she requires within this State. More than 5,000 women called the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA)’s helpline in 2011 and hundreds of women attended our pregnancy-counselling sessions or post-abortion care services. Among these were women with serious medical concerns and women in need of life-saving abortions. None of these women had abortions in Ireland. Indeed, the IFPA is not aware of any lawful abortion that has been carried out within the State. Nor is the Government: in argument before the European Court of Human Rights in the A, B and C v Ireland case, the State could not point to a single lawful life-saving abortion that had been carried out. Pregnant women, even those who are seriously ill, travel to the UK to access abortion services. What the Court described as “a striking discordance between the theoretical right to a lawful abortion in Ireland and the reality of its practical implementation” is the lived reality of many women. It is no comfort to women who are denied life-saving services here and obliged to travel to another state to avail of them that Ireland has a low rate of maternal mortality. Other states that have comparable maternal mortality rates and equally good or better maternity services have similar rates of abortion to Ireland. But they do provide lawful abortion. No other country in Europe makes the distinction that is made in Irish law, permitting abortion to save a woman’s life, but not to preserve her health. From the perspective of a medical services provider, there is no bright line between life and health. The serious risk posed to pregnant women’s health—for example by heart and vascular diseases, pulmonary diseases, kidney diseases, oncological, neurological, gynaecological, obstetric and genetic conditions – may become a risk to life in particular circumstances. Pregnancy may exacerbate the risk to women of pre-existing conditions e.g. epilepsy, diabetes, cardiac disease, auto-immune conditions, severe mental illness. Best medical practice is to intervene when a serious health-risk presents, rather than wait for a situation to deteriorate. But women living in Ireland whose pregnancy causes risks to their health must leave the state to access such interventions. Women who make this journey do so without medical files detailing their medical history or proper referral by their doctor. A doctor would not expect any patient to access any other medical treatment in this way, particularly in the case of a patient with a life-threatening illness or possible future complications. The government has established an expert group to recommend a series of options to implement the A, B and C judgment. Ms C in the A, B and C case found she was pregnant while she was receiving treatment for cancer. The Court found that Ireland had violated the rights of Ms C. Addressing the violation of Ms C’s rights is the least complicated aspect of the expert group’s task. Clare Daly’s Medical Treatment Bill 2012 has demonstrated this. The more complicated task is to address the other issues raised by the judgment, specifically when a woman’s health and well-being are at issue. Ms A and Ms B argued that their well-being was at risk if they continued with the pregnancies. Not only did the Court accept that all three women had experienced stigma and isolation, and that the necessity to travel to the UK caused them significant psychological, financial and physical hardship, the Court also found that there had been an interference with the rights of Ms A and Ms B under the European Convention on Human Rights. Only a considered disregard for the Convention would limit the Government’s response to the judgment to the finding of a violation of the Convention in the case of Ms C, and ignore the health and well-being of women in the situation of Ms A and Ms B. While we await the Government’s response, women in all circumstances continue to travel to the UK to avail of abortion services. Niall Behan is CEO of the Irish Family Planning Association
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Government covering up for pulling of planning inquiry By John Gormley May 2012 Village “it was Phil Hogan who, even before he took office, told Village that many of the accusations contained in the files were ‘spurious’ I know how Tom Gilmartin must have felt listening to Pádraig Flynn speaking on the Late Late. You’ll recall that this was the evening that Pee just couldn’t stop talking about how difficult it was to keep three luxury homes and in the process also ‘dissed’ the developer, Mr Gilmartin, who had given him money. Gilmartin, who was described by Flynn as being “out of sorts”, took umbrage and decided to spill the beans to the tribunal. I can guess how Gilmartin felt because I had similar feelings of annoyance when a succession of government ministers decided to discredit my efforts to deal with the planning difficulties in this country. Claims that I hadn’t done “an ounce of work” on planning enquiries were repeated by Ministers Alan Kelly, Chief Whip Paul Keogh, Minister Phil Hogan and Minister Jan O’Sullivan, all of them perfectly on message, all of them equally misleading. Rather than let the sleeping dog lie, the government had decided to give this particular former minister an unmerciful kick. Did they really believe I wouldn’t react in any way? Listening to Phil Hogan talking on the issue on Newstalk one morning I tweeted that Minister Hogan “was talking bull”. That’s not exactly a revelation, you might say – Phil regularly indulges his penchant for talking twaddle. But this was different even by his own egregious standards. To turn a story completely on its head takes some neck. So, for the record, I’d like to list what I had done as minister on the planning inquiries and what exactly Phil Hogan had in front of him on taking office. When Minister Hogan took office he had: a) an extensive dossier prepared by planning officials in the Department following an internal review of the complaints (Nov 2009) b) a series of reports from the Managers in each of the local authorities submitted in response to a formal request from the Minister using his statutory powers under the Planning and Development Acts c) terms of reference for a panel of planning consultants to carry out independent reviews in the six local authorities d) a completed tender process to select this panel of consultants e) letters of appointment ready to be issued to the members of the panel And here’s the exact chronology of what occurred: 2007-2009: Various complaints received about planning practices in a number of local authorities. No process existed in the Department for dealing with such complaints and they were usually referred back to the local authority in question. 2009: I asked the Department to examine the complaints with a view to developing a more robust system of dealing with information brought to my attention concerning planning practices. September 2009: I requested a report from the Donegal County Manager under section 255 of the Planning and Development Acts, on foot of a complaint received. November 2009: An internal review of complaints against 11 local authorities was completed by planning officials. A dossier containing the Department’s analysis of each complaint was provided to me, as Minister. Late 2009/early 2010: I decided that further action was appropriate in a number of cases, including a review by independent consultants of planning practices in some of the local authorities. I then began work with Department officials to develop the most appropriate format for such reviews. 21 June 2010: I announced the commencement of the reviews. Using powers under section 255 of the Planning and Development Acts – for the very first time, I issued six local authorities with formal requests for reports on the issues raised: Dublin City Council, Carlow County Council, Galway County Council, Cork City Council, Cork County Council and Meath County Council. 16 July 2010: Reports are received from the Managers of each local authority. It should be noted that a report had already been received from Donegal County Council on foot of earlier request. 24 September 2010: Invitation to tender is issued by the Department for the appointment to a panel of expert planners to carry out independent reviews in each of the seven local authorities. 22 October 2010: 40 tenders were received from a large number of expert planners seeking appointment to the panel. November/December 2010: Department officials carried out assessment of tenders received. 12 January 2011: The Department recommended the appointment of 6 of the 40 applicants 17 January 2011: I approved the Department’s recommended panel and approved the issue of letters of appointment. 19 January 2011: The six successful bidders were informed of their appointment to the panel and asked to submit a tax clearance certificate. 22 January 2011: I resigned as Minister and the six successful bidders received no further correspondence from the Department And below is a list of the issues to be examined. Dublin City Council: Complaints from An Taisce that the City Council was not adhering to policies in its development plan, specifically in relation to tall buildings. Carlow County Council: Report from the Local Government Auditors highlighted weaknesses in the procedures followed by the planning department. Galway County Council: Complaints from An Taisce that the County Council was not adhering to policies in its development plan in granting planning permissions – a large proportion of permissions have been overturned on appeal to An Bord Pleanála. Cork City Council: Procedures around the holding of pre-planning consultations have been highlighted by the Ombudsman. Cork County Council: Complaints have questioned the appropriateness of a procedure of liaison between the planning department and councillors on specific planning applications. Meath County Council: Complaints received concerning adherence to development plan policies. Donegal County Council: Complaints received about processes followed in the planning department. I think it’s pretty clear from the above account that practically everything that could have been done was done in relation
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Our deluded ESRI (Village 2011)
In the heady days of 2005 with the economy roaring along and homeowners basking in the glow of ever-rising house prices, one institution went against the current and sounded a note of caution. In its Medium Term Review No. 10, regarded as a landmark publication, the ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) warned that “there are considerable dangers in the current situation: in particular the very high level of dependence on the building industry”. Nor were the risks purely domestic. “Global economic imbalances that, if anything, are growing in magnitude” also threatened.
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VILLAGER May-June 2012
Bono as bauble Bono was asked to meet Prince Waleed bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family, on his yacht in the south of France by Derek Quinlan when he wanted to finalise a £230m deal to sell the poshest hotels in London, the High Court there has been told. Bono clearly added decorative value. Derek Quinlan, disclosed details of the meeting in the bitter legal dispute between Paddy McKillen, the no-longer-never-photographed former DC Exhausts king and not entirely insolvent property developer and the billionaire Barclay Brothers who are fighting over the future of the Savoy and Claridges Hotels. “I suggested that Mr McKillen’s very close friend of 20 years, the singer Bono from the band U2, should join us”, Mr Quinlan wrote. “I recall that I sat beside [the] prince and Bono sat next to me. Mr McKillen, on the other hand, sat at the other end of the yacht”. This mirrors accounts of Mr McKillen’s eccentric isolation during Bono-led discussions over their attempts to re-develop Dublin’s Clarence Hotel. Quinlan also noted in his affidavit that Sir David Barclay, one of the two billionaire brothers who own the Ritz and the Telegraph newspaper, “has continued to support Siobhan [his wife] and me” and “transferred funds to enable us to support our children”. Covenient that for a man under scrutiny from Nama. Mr Quinlan added that he became friends with the Barclay brothers and in the summer of 2010 would regularly meet them for morning coffee in the Café de Paris in Monaco “shooting the breeze over a cup of coffee and a cigar”. Villager thinks it’s lovely that one of our own could rise so high. Quinlan said that Sir David Barclay offered him a loan in 2010 and told him that he “would like to know if I was ever selling my shares in the company [that owned the hotels]”. That’s the way it’s done. Villager guesses. Mr McKillen’s High Court action alleges that Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay infringed his “pre-emption rights” to have first refusal on stakes put up for sale by investors. Bankrupt but Fashionable Economics laureate Paul Krugman’s blog tells us all we need to know about how Ireland’s chic – once reserved for our Music but now transferred to our financial management, overrides reality in the eyes of a smitten world. “Wow”, he writes. “A reader directs me to this interview with John Peet, the Europe editor of The Economist, who declares: And of the countries that were in trouble, I would say Ireland looks as if it’s the best at the moment because Ireland has implemented very heavy austerity programs, but is now beginning to grow again. From Ireland’s Central Statistical Office: See the return to growth, there at the end? Me neither. To be fair, Peet isn’t alone. The legend of Irish recovery has somehow set in, and nobody on the pro-austerity side seems to feel any need to look at the data, even for a minute, to check whether the legend is true. Amazing”. The unDev Last month’s Village Idiot, Former Fianna Fáil deputy leader Eamon O Cuív has launched his own campaign for a “No” vote in the referendum on the European fiscal treaty and is threatening to throw his legal toys out of the pram if FF removes the whip from him for this. The Galway TD, who resigned from his deputy seat in February after falling out with leader Micheal Martin over the party’s pro-European stance, said the Government and Fianna Fáil’s reasons for supporting the deal were weak. He told RTE Raidio na Gaeltachta that even if it accepts the treaty, it will be unable to meet its terms if it is to carry the bank debts. Meanwhile he’s been and gone and described Sinn Féin as his party’s natural coalition partners: “the most compatible is the republican part because we are a republican party ourselves”, he says, although their “economic policies at the moment aren’t in the real world” according to worldly Mr O’Cuív. He then answered the one question only a Dev could answer to Villager’s satisfaction, “What’s the difference between Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil when it comes to it, except that it took them 70 years to recognise the Dáil”. 70 years doesn’t seem such a big thing to Villager who from now on will just think of them as absolutely the same. Éamon Dev would not be happy. Mattie and the Big Man Another recent recipient of Village’s Idiot award is Mattie McGrath (Village’s editor isn’t exactly rural –friendly). Villager, who’s no Dub, thinks that while Mattie’s an eedjit, he’s no idiot. Here he is in the Dáil on water-privatisation, taking a stern line on, and no nonsense from, Phil Hogan: “Bord na Móna and Bord Gáis were lobbying strongly for the administration of the water service. Why does it have to be the preserve of such people? I wish to see ordinary people, contractors and plumbers getting the work on the ground, not big conglomerates who might be friends of the Minister that he might meet on golf courses. I do not frequent such places. I refer to the K Club and other such places and some place in Kerry where the Minister was caught for intemperate language. This is a fine mess the Minister has created again. We should call him the messy Minister because what he is doing is not necessary. I agree with water metering but I object to the Minister’s cavalier attitude. An important referendum is coming up. I said to the Taoiseach the other day that he should send the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, and the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, to a foreign country on a six week long trip to return when the referendum is over, otherwise it will be lost because they annoy the people. They are like a nest of wasps which one wants to kick out
