“Only 4% consider the environment the issue that will influence their vote”.
Assessments carried out by expert ecologists for the European Commission in 2008 found that only 7% of Ireland’s habitats examined are in good status, with 46% inadequate and 47% bad. Yet Budget 2011 saw a fall the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government’s funding from €2.2 billion in 2010 to €1.6 billion in 2011 – a 28% cut. Under the National Recovery Programme, this will fall to €1 billion in 2014 – a reduction of more than 50% in 4 years…
Green/FF Legacy on environmental funding Cuts, cuts, cuts…and apathy By Tony Lowes Of all the species, man is the most destructive to the environment. Almost everything we do damages air, water, or soil. And other species are disappearing at an astonishing rate as mankind proliferates. Our water quality continues to fall, costing the exchequer more and more to meet higher and higher European standards under the Water Framework Directive, whose deadlines are typically 2015. Assessments carried out by expert ecologists for the European Commission in 2008 found that only 7% of the Irish habitats examined are in good status, with 46% inadequate and 47% bad. Many habitats associated with water were considered to be in bad condition, the Report noting “Even moderate declines in water quality makes rivers and lakes unsuitable for many fish and invertebrate species”. And unsuitable for human consumption without expensive Water Treatments Plants. Facing this seemingly inexorable tide stand an Irish Constitution which never uses the word environment and an electorate of which a recent poll showed that only 4% consider the environment the most important issue. Even the Irish Times has now abandoned ‘Horizons’, its Saturday Heritage Review. The Irish Times used to have an environmental correspondent as well as an environment editor but now retains only the latter. Since the end of 2010, RTE has no longer employed an environment correspondent. Is it any wonder then that under the National Recovery Programme, the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government’s budget will see a fall from €1601 million in 2011 to €1070 million in 2014 – a reduction of a third? In 2011 alone, the Heritage Unit, which has responsibility for protected structures (including world heritage sites like the Skelligs) will be hit by a 77% budget cut. 56% was sliced from the National Parks and Wildlife budget. Their responsibility includes the 14% of the land mass designated for protection under EU law – as well as running all our National Parks. Although some of these cuts were due to a transfer of salary payments to central funds, the recruitment embargo on civil service replacements over the past few years has hit this Service particularly hard on the ground, where Rangers – whose specialised roles can not easily be found through transfers – are missing in many areas of the country. There are increasing gaps in line-management and some rangers are now confined to desk duties instead of patrolling their beats. Although the level of staffing is less than that in 2002, the workload continues to increase as further areas are designated and new Protocols to protect the Hen Harrier and the fresh water pearl mussel now legally require consultation and inspection to prevent further decline. The far-seeing ‘Farm Plan’ programme which targeted farmers in designated areas since 2005 and assisted them in adapting their practices to protect these sites is no longer accepting entries. A Circular from the Department of Finance warned that “Opening hours of offices, parks and centres will be reviewed in 2011, in line with business needs”. Observers fear that cuts to the heritage sector combined with cuts in school trips mean that the heritage even as an educational resource is at risk. The Planning and Development Act 2010 imposes more responsibilities on Local Authorities to ensure that wide-ranging ‘appropriate assessments’ are undertaken not only of projects that might damage protected areas and species, but of their own County and Local Development Plans. These assessments require specialised expertise that Local Authorities do not have in-house and can no longer afford from outside consultants. The Heritage Council, whose role is to protect, preserve and enhance Ireland’s national heritage, suffered a 47% cut on top of a 30% cut in 2010. While €3 million has been recently restored after vocal protests, research grants will vanish, archives are at risk, programs to curtain invasive species will end, and 50% of the educational and outreach programme is to go, even threatening their flagship publication. The Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management recently wrote to Minister John Gormley to draw his attention to the OECD note in their 2009 ‘Environmental Performance Review’ that nature protection has “remained the poor relative of Irish environmental policy”, warning that the proposed budget reductions will make this situation worse. And none of this actually makes economic sense. An Irish 2010 study showed that in 2009 over three million overseas visitors engaged in cultural/historical visits – and spent an estimated €1.9 billion while doing so – almost exactly the same net benefit a study last year showed for Wales. John Gormley’s own ‘The Economic and Social Aspects of Biodiversity: Benefits and Costs of Biodiversity in Ireland’, published in 2008, estimated the current marginal value of ecosystem services at over €2.6 billion per annum – not including benefits to human health and well-being. In an attempt to shore up their budget, both the Department of the Environment and the Environmental Protection Agency (27% decrease) claim that the “The reduction in exchequer grant for 2011 is expected to be compensated by way of an increased allocation from the Environment Fund”. The Environmental Fund is fed by the plastic bag levy (€22 million) and landfill levies (€32 million). But it is already fully assigned with half of it going to fund waste-management and recycling and the rest meeting a rag bag of demands from EPA research to funding environmental goups (NGOs). Recently, it has been tapped to address cost overruns in Cork’s Haulbowline Island ‘clean-up’ – and the current toxic fire at the Kerdiffstown Landfill in Co Kildare. This year’s increased allocations are actually coming from some €40 million in reserves which has been carried forward for some years, allowing a once-off increase in the 2011 funding of 55%. Unfortunately, although allocations were arranged, John Gormley omitted to sign the necessary Ministerial Order before he resigned, leaving the final distribution in limbo. That may be just as well, as on February 4 the EPA released a report it had commissioned from SKM
Micheál Martin is a non-ideological constitutional republican who derides equality of outcome and believes in equality of opportunity How would you describe your political philosophy? I’m a constitutional republican and believe strongly that economic growth and social progress are closely linked. I believe the old left/right ideological divide has no real relevance for the 21st century. Is that different from the traditional politics of Fianna Fail? Are there areas where FF has been weak that you intend to emphasise? I think my political philosophy is very similar to that of the founding traditions of Fianna Fáil, which came from a revolutionary generation which understood the need for a radical change in both its programme and its approach to politics. In the General Election Manifesto I outlined a series of radical new proposals for political reform which will address the shortcomings in the present parliamentary system and are I believe vital for recovery. Fianna Fáil has always represented ordinary people. This is still the case. The organisation is made up of ordinary people who work in their communities and take nothing from politics except a sense of making a contribution. Is that appealing to potential coalition partners? I am not concerned with appealing to potential coalition partners. We have proposed a series of costed proposals that I believe if implemented will return this country to growth. That is my only priority. Do you believe in equality of outcome? If not, what do you understand by equality and do you support it? I don’t believe that there is a single example of a society which combines respect for human rights and high standards of living with enforced equality of outcomes. I believe in equality of opportunity, part of which is the necessity for social supports which enable this. Who are your political heroes? My main hero is Seán Lemass. He was a revolutionary and visionary who responded to the unique problems of the moment rather than being fixed to unchanging ideologies. How do you rate Enda Kenny? It’s not for me to rate Enda. I don’t believe he is the best man to lead Ireland and the level of control which has allowed to those around him is of concern. How do you see the very basic differences between FF and FG? There are plenty of differences between us and Fine Gael. Their campaign is based on the worst type of cynical politics – lots of tough talk but a driving commitment to pandering to every group. Their radical privatisation agenda for the health service and every part of state activity is actively dangerous. Their budget figures don’t add up and their reform platform is all about gimmicks and not at all about real reform. The plan to lay off 18,000 more public servants than any other party is ill-thought-out and will do immense damage to public services. What are the biggest dangers of a FG government? They have no credible plan to get Ireland through to recovery, they appear to be terrified of letting their leader have proper head-to-head debates with others and they are addicted to empty electoral gimmicks. Do you think on balance Ireland has been well governed since 1997? We have made mistakes and I fully acknowledge this and have apologised for them. However, I firmly believe that while we still face significant challenges Fianna Fáil in government has delivered real progress in many areas. Unemployment is unacceptably high but we must remember that there are still 1.86 million people working. Due to our educated young workforce we are seen one of the best places in the world for foreign and direct investment which employs over 240,000 directly and indirectly in this country. We have put in place a world-class cancer-treatment and screening programme. We now have a major new motorway network. We now have more Gardaí and more prison places. Finally during our time in office we have overseen historic developments including the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and the Hillsborough Agreement in February 2010 which led to the devolution of policing and justice powers from London to Belfast. What would you do to stop boom/bust cycles? Firstly, we must change politics. We also know now that the oversight mechanism in the banking sector were insufficient. We have reformed the banking and financial regulation and put in place two experts to do this: Professor Patrick Honohan in the central bank; and Financial regulator Mathew Elderfield. We are also committed to setting up a Fiscal Council made up of outside economic experts, independent of government to advise government on the budgetary situation and on the fiscal policies required to achieve fiscal sustainability. As a government it is now apparent that we relied too heavily on temporary revenues raised from stamp duty to finance increases in public spending. What is the difference between your solutions for unemployment and those of the other parties? The best way to get people back to work is to get our house in order – we are doing this by fixing the banks, stabilising the public finances and improving our competitiveness. We believe that Sinn Féin and Labour would jeopardise our public finances and prolong the crisis by extending the time-frame for tackling the deficit to 2016. Our five-year integrated plan for trade, tourism and investment will generate 150,000 jobs, and boost exports by one third. Over the next four years we will invest over €16 billion in our infrastructure. We have set up a €500 million innovation fund which will support enterprise development and job creation by drawing top venture capitalists to Ireland. The main plank of Labour’s jobs policy is to set up yet another Bank, the Strategic Investment Bank. We already have two banks that are almost owned by the state AIB and BOI, setting up another bank would only threaten our existing banks survival. Fine Gael’s plan has been dismissed by Michael Noonan as a PR gimmick. We are already making major inroads in this area. It is not
Silvio Berlusconi matted down the hair-like thing between his tentacles with his fat slimy fingers, removed himself from an Umbrian nineteen-year old, and slithered down in the lapping waters of the bath just run for him by a harem of Tuscan sexworkers. It was very late. The water gurgled gleefully in the Carrara-marbled lavatorium of the mansion he split three ways with the Ndrangheta mafia and Vladimir Putin. He ran the loofah down his fat oily thorax. It had been a long day, he reflected. He’d surfaced at mid-day after the previous night’s dancing and rooting. A disoriented roostering with one of his private secretaries. He’d have lilies sent. Then lunch running Finninvest on the phone, using his funny high-pitched voice so no one would realise it was him. It was difficult to keep the voice high on his hangover. Those bloody Nazis in the regulator had stopped him administering his multi-billion-Euro business empire when he became PM. Lunch had been paid for by some money-laundering lawyers who he had re-writing the statute of limitations to help him avoid the 6900 criminal cases he faced. After lunch it was a long nap, a chat with his holiness, and some rumpy pumpy with a mayor’s wife. One of his Masonic footmen had given her 2000 Euro on the way out and he’d blown a gasket: he thought it would be free – but it never seemed to be. Then he’d had a chin-lift, some surgery on his antennae (local anaesthetic only today) and a Thai massage. Bought some more TV stations. He’d launched some spurious libel actions and had some work done on his trail in the late afternoon. Then an hour pacifying that (ex-neo)-Fascist bore Gianconi Fini who was threatening to pull out of his coalition government unless he rebuilt Bologna. He hated Fascists, no good in bed. The warm water felt good against his cold mucous skin. Then a tea-time meeting and pick-up with Ghadaffi. Brown paper bags for one of his banks. After that he’d had a go on the colonel’s Ukrainian nurse. 10,000 dinar, not bad. Tanned homosexual cuckold. Ha Ha. Only kidding. In the evening he’d watched his AC Milan at a packed San Siro with some Nigerian royalty, then eventually gone home to drink Asti Spumante out of the slippers of a pornstar he’d met in the second half. Tomorrow he’d nominate her for State interior minister. At midnight he’d dealt with some parliamentary boxes – bloody economy still imploding, population down again. Yawn.Then two hours with a former popstar from Iskia who he’d found on the internet and her pet hamsters. He’d make sure she only got a thousand for that, replacement hamsters included. Sometimes he wondered why he always had to pay. Was it because he was 74-years old, corrupt and all fake? Or was it because he was a slimy gastropod? At least he wasn’t gay, he joked again to himself (his favourite joke). The wife had been calling all day about the maintenance and that incident where he’d forgotten all his children’s names after meeting a cherub from Genoa: how he hated her. From three until now it had been party, party, party until his encrusted loins hurt. The nineteen-year-old was leaving now, with his wallet and watch. As the dawn came on, outside he could hear rioters among the statuary complaining he’d rigged the afternoon’s no-confidence vote. Let them eat Tiramisu. Now where was the judge from the criminal case he was facing in the morning who he’d left in his boudoir and the judge’s naked seventeen year old daughter he’d been lubricating on bed number three? He de-oiled himself on a white cotton towel and left it suppurating on the marble. The night was young. Man-Slug.
North’s planning and environmental protection as bad as Republic’s by Anton McCabe Environmental issues have been low in the North’s political agenda. They have, however, had political repercussions. First Minister Peter Robinson was perceived as close to developers in his East Belfast constituency. The main reason for his losing one of the safest seats in the UK Parliament after 31 years was the public perception that he and his wife, Iris, had been claiming excessive expenses; but a contributory factor was his support for building 300 houses on Knock Golf Club. Peter Carr from Dundonald Greenbelt Association said the grant of planning permission on this site was in breach of five major planning policies. “It was an extremely highly protected piece of land”, he says. “It was a ‘landscape wedge’ – higher than Greenbelt. It separates Dundonald from East Belfast. If that could be overturned, what was the value of any protection? Any green space in Northern Ireland was not safe”. Granting permission for such a large development in the North requires three senior planning officials to sign off on it. One of the three wrote that he was signing the planning permission under protest; this was unprecedented. The prurient aspects of Robinson’s wife, Iris Robinson’s, relationship with 19 year old Kirk McCambley, distracted attention from a more serious question. Two property developers had each paid cheques of £25,000 (€29,864.74) when she asked them Tillie and Henderson’s – mentioned in Das Kapital to assist McCambley. Clearly the developers believed it was useful to have influence with an MP and Assembly Member, whose husband was First Minister. The North’s planning system is, in many ways, even worse than in the Republic. It is biased in favour of developers. Objectors do not have the right of third-party appeal. The Planning Service, which is part of the Department of the Environment, is the North’s planning authority. However, if developers are refused permission they have an automatic right of appeal to the Planning Appeals Commission. In the Republic both developers and third-parties can appeal. Thus, there is a perception that the Planning Service feels it is administratively easier to grant permission. To date, no planner in the North has ever been charged with, let alone convicted of, corruption. Rita Harkin of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society said: “The Planning System has been so heavily weighted in favour of developers (with its established policy presumption in favour of development) that it might be argued that there was no need for corruption”. Politicians are active on planning issues; this is usually on the side of the developer. A briefing document from the NIPSA trade union said much time and resources in the Planning Service were taken up with “The political involvement in the process through lobbying by MPs, MLAs etc which is not a feature in planning authorities in Great Britain”, though it surely is in the Republic. The pro-development bias extends to politicians, across the spectrum. There have been 284 objections to a proposed quarry at Mullaslin, Co Tyrone. It has received one letter of support – from local MP Pat Doherty of Sinn Féin: “Given that the current economic climate and the fact that the applicant is a contractor employing numerous workers, I am requesting that you once again look at the application with a view to fast tracking it” – the characteristic dynamic mirrors that in the Republic precisely. One of the legacies of more than a generation of Direct Rule from Britain was that unelected officials gathered huge power. That has produced a culture of unaccountability at the top of the public sector. A new Draft Planning Bill, now going through the Assembly, will return planning powers to local councils. It is planned to cut the present 26 councils to 11. Despite all the difficulties seen with planning powers vested in local councils in the Republic, this will mean at least there will be some degree of accountability to communities affected by decisions. There will still be no right of third-party appeal against grants of planning permission. The Planning Service faces this challenge having lost 270 staff to downsizing. That represents about 40% of planners. Inevitably, it is facing workload problems. In a briefing document, the NIPSA trade union told the Assembly’s Environment Committee: “Importantly, despite the recent fall in applications, average annual caseloads continue to be well above that recommended for planning authorities in GB in the Addison Report, commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister”. Budgetary constraints have meant it has had to cut back on enforcement. NIPSA’s document said: “The perversity of the proposed cuts is that, in the absence of sufficient commitment to funding enforcement activity, this revenue generating aspect will be compromised”. This may also leave the North open to infraction proceedings from the European Union. Currently, there are two major planning controversies in the North. They are a planned incinerator at Glenavy, Co Antrim, and the proposed A5 dual carriageway. In August, environment minister Edwin Poots of the DUP announced he was ‘minded’ to giver permission for the incinerator. Danny Moore of CALNI (Campaign Against the Lough Neagh Incinerator) said Poots was under pressure from agri-business interests in DUP. At the time of writing permission has not been given. The incinerator is proposed for a rural area outside Glenavy, on the east bank of Lough Neagh in south-west Antrim. It proposes to burn wastes from the North’s poultry industry, and will generate electricity. The developer is Rose Energy, owned by three agri-business companies. Lough Neagh supplies drinking water for 40% of the North’s population. Randox Laboratories, one of the biggest employers in the area, said it is considering moving some of its manufacturing to Donegal if the incinerator is built. CALNI has run a vigorous campaign. Objectors sent 6,782 letters of objection to Planning Service. CALNI has garnered unanimous support from Lisburn City Council, and all the North’s political parties. Moore and CALNI question the economic viability of the project. He said there
We don’t just have uninhabited estates, we have a largely uninhabited country by Terrence McDonough Recently several auctions around the country have been forestalled by hostility from locals. For example the auction of a farm in County Meath failed in the teeth of local opposition. The auction, instituted by a bank in payment of arrears, was abandoned with only a single euro bid. At first glance, it looked like a welcome rebirth of the kind of popular indignation that fuelled the Land League struggles of the 19th Century. But a closer examination draws this parallel into question. The land was not farmed by the owner though he did live nearby. He was landlord to another person who rented the farm. Far from being an indigent farmer in trouble, the owner was a property developer who had pledged the land as collateral for his bank loans. In the Land War, neighbours defended families who inhabited the land but did not possess it. In Meath the neighbours defended a man who possessed the land but did not inhabit it. This confusion about the true character of mere possession is endemic in modern Ireland. In Marie Jones’ Stones in his Pockets two Irish movie extras make great comic work of trying to follow an assistant director’s instruction to look “dispossessed” in the presence, on horseback, of the daughter of the Manor. What, they wonder, does dispossessed exactly look like. We, in turn, should wonder whether the opposite of dispossession should look like more than mere possession. The possession of land and territory is very much at the centre of a burning public debate. Both hill farmers and hill walkers each feel potentially dispossessed by the other. Mention the public acquisition of land before rezoning and you would have a ragged mob of farmers and developers quickly assembling outside the Dail. Yet in the absence of such public provision of land and housing, many were unable to afford a house and many others find themselves in negative equity and unable to service exorbitant mortgages. The extension of the road system even in the face of recession displaces many but enriches others as tribunal testimony shows. In many rural areas of Ireland it is safer now to be a card-carrying communist than a card-carrying member of An Taisce such is the opposition to the limitation of property rights in the name of landscape and heritage. In Mayo one local commentator raised the spectre of the Land War, intimating that An Taisce adopted its policy of opposing one-off rural houses in order to keep the countryside safe for gentlemanly pursuits like stag and fox hunting. While the vision of An Taisce in mounted pursuit of the stag is a bizarre delusion, the historical fact of Irish dispossession at the hands of a British colonial elite is real enough. This history is of course well known and need not be rehearsed here. Nevertheless, it is worth remarking on how late this fundamentally feudal land-holding system persisted. Not only the landlord class was pre-modern but their antagonists on the land were also made up of an essentially feudal peasantry. The economic and social dynamics of Ireland in the nineteenth century were written in the conflict between these two classes over the ownership, occupation and exploitation of land. It cannot be truly said that the Irish were dispossessed during the famine years for they did not in fact possess the land. Rather the poorer classes, the landless labourers, cottiers, and small farmers were prevented from continuing to inhabit the land. They were more than dispossessed. They were banished either to the other side of the grave or the other side of the water. For their part landlords adopted a new policy of pursuing rent through the consolidation of farms of optimal size and efficiency. The old townland villages were broken up and larger farms occupied by individual families were created. Only then did this newly prosperous group of farmers set about possessing Ireland. And they succeeded. The Land War, recalled in distorted fashion by the Meath events, resulted in a succession of Land Acts which ended the feudal land-holding system and deliberately substituted a system of peasant proprietorship. In order to make proprietorship a reality it was not only the landlords who had to be left behind. It was also necessary to leave behind Michael Davitt’s more inclusive and egalitarian vision of land nationalisation. Unfortunately, Davitt’s inadequately-landed constituency now lay in famine graves or dwelt far from the land in New York, Boston or Liverpool. Similarly James Connolly’s natural socialist constituency also lived abroad as Irish workers swelled the industrial armies of other countries. Ireland was to be possessed by a portion of the Irish nation but sadly only after the nation as a whole ceased to inhabit it. Through a long struggle the Irish have succeeded in possessing Ireland but have failed to inhabit it. The commentator Fintan O’Toole has observed the Irish tendency to treat the land as if we were only passing through, anxious to make a few quid while the going is good, before moving on. Seemingly someone else’s posterity will have to clean up the mess. The post-colonial legacy within Irish society is complex and contested. Many are understandably impatient with what is even now one of the wealthiest nations on the planet comparing itself with the currently wretched of the earth. Yet the past, perhaps unlike the future, is immutable and inevitably poses problems for the present. One of these problems is the crucial distinction between inhabiting and possessing the space of Ireland. It seems that Ireland can claim only what it has succeeded in snatching from the British. These things include a national identity (even if part of that identity is a fascination with debating it) and a cultural heritage. But as the controversy over the M3 and the despoliation of the Tara landscape makes clear there is a perilous disconnection between that national identity and cultural heritage and the physical
“None of us know what to do” Fintan O’Toole has a brilliant agenda but doesn’t know how to implement it Michael Smith interviews Fintan O’Toole First of all, Fintan O’Toole is very charming. He’s one of those people, like one of his Nemeses, Bertie Ahern, you think you know even if you’ve never met him. Because he is angry and a master of invective I’m expecting intensity, even testiness, and after a few unanswered emails and mutterings from some people who’ve met him I am a little nervous but, no: during our discussion over coffee and then lunch in the wine-bar below the Village office he’s almost disappointingly well-rounded, self-deprecatory, humorous, serious, a little shy. I open by asking him what he thinks of his Apres Match persona (all huffing and expansive angularity). He thinks it’s frighteningly like him. A lady in the chemist mistakenly congratulated him on “his” performance on the Late Late Show. I should say, during our extended interview, his arms remain exactly where you’d want them to be. Fintan O’Toole, of course, is a columnist, assistant editor and drama critic with the Irish Times. He has written over a dozen books, on drama, history and politics, including two in the last year. Ship of Fools outlined many of Ireland’s main social and economic problems. The first part of Enough is Enough again outlines the problems, centring on ‘Five Myths’ including that we live in a proper representative democracy when in fact “the Irish parliament is probably the weakest in the democratic world”. It’s the well-rehearsed exegesis of how public waste, disadvantaged schools, inadequate infrastructure and a two-tier healthcare system co-exist with crass displays of personal wealth. The second, more original, part of the book outlines solutions centring on ‘Five Decencies’. So here’s the agenda. He believes all the principles have been tried somewhere. If you go to his website www.fintanotoole.ie you’ll find it expressed in ten points; if you go to his book it’s in fifty. 1 Establish a genuine system of local democracy. Introduce a property tax to fund it. 2 Transfer the useful functions of quangos to local councils. 3 Bring in legally binding national standards for planning and development and give the National Spatial Strategy statutory status. 4 Implement the Kenny report of 1974, allowing councils to purchase development land for its existing value plus 25 per cent. 5 Establish “deliberative democracy” experiments in every substantial community. 6 Severely limit the ability of governments to use the guillotine mechanism to pass legislation that has not been debated in parliament. 7 End the fiction that Ministers are responsible for everything that happens in their departments. Make them responsible for decisions they take and for information they ought to know. Make senior civil servants responsible for the decisions they take. 8 Restore the right of the Oireachtas to inquire into all activities involving the use of public money. 9 Make all appointments to state and public boards open to public competition and subject to Oireachtas scrutiny. 10 Reduce the size of the Dáil to 100 members. 11 Either make the Seanad representative of civil society, social partners and the new local councils within a short time frame or abolish it. 12 Change the Dáil electoral system to the additional-member system. 13 Introduce a gender quota of at least 30 per cent, to be enforced by reducing public payments to political parties by the degree to which they fail to introduce gender balance. 14 Hand primary schools over to local and democratic ownership and control. 15 Replace GDP as the primary measure of progress with a well-being index. 16 Radically curtail tax incentives for private pensions and stop putting money into the National Pension Reserve Fund. Use the money to increase the state pension for everyone to 40 per cent of pre-retirement income. 17 Switch spending from both social-welfare rent supplements and tax breaks for landlords to the provision of decent social housing. 18 Introduce a national system of social health insurance, abolishing the two-tier health system and radically reducing the size of the Health Service Executive. 19 Switch more health spending towards community and preventive services. Implement the primary-care strategy. 20 Charge university fees to those who can afford them. Increase grants for those who are currently excluded. 21 Expand adult and continuing education. Consider the idea of individual “education funds” attaching equally to each citizen. 22 Identify children at risk of failure from an early age and intervene immediately with personal and family supports. 23 Make the pay of those at the top a fixed percentage of that of those at the bottom. 24 Bring taxes up to average European levels. Reduce tax breaks to average EU levels, saving more than €5 billion. 25 Limit to three the number of directorships of public companies that any one individual can hold at the same time. 26 Give coherent legislative protection to bona-fide whistleblowers. 27 Restore the Freedom of Information Act to its former status. 28 Create a register of lobbyists and publish records of all meetings between lobbyists, ministers and public officials. 29 Review company law to end impunity for white-collar crime. 30 Ban all significant private donations to political parties and force all registered parties to publish full annual accounts. Like David McWilliams, and perhaps Shane Ross, Fintan O’Toole offers an analysis so acute that he has become a messiah. Like them he is offering, more or less coyly, political solutions. So what drives the thinking of the Cassandra of Ireland’s journalistic left? He says he’s “obviously a socialist”, though not a “scientific socialist” and he considers socialism evolves. He believes there are levels of income beyond which people should not be allowed to rise, though pointing to China where he has lived, O’Toole says that “the depradations of an attempt to impose equality are greater than those of the market”. He’s influenced by Fabianism and British views of socialism – “Victorian socialism”. Still he’s quite prepared to half-describe himself as a social
Prosecute a banker (A DIY guide for Village readers) By Gary Fitzgerald Since the beginning of the banking crisis in September 2008, the government’s strategy has been to protect the banks at all costs. With the IMF/EU deal announced recently, it is now clear that the government intends that the taxpayer will pay for bank losses irrespective of the impact on public services and on the wider economy. The final cost of this policy is not yet known, and it may never be known. We have lost track of the billions of euro already spent and the billions more promised. The government’s decisions may lead to national bankruptcy. The voters will get a chance to express their opinion on this policy in the upcoming general election. It is also clear that there will not be any criminal prosecution of senior bankers under this government. More than two years have passed since this crisis began and apart from a little grandstanding by the Gardaí in March 2010 (with the arrest of Sean FitzPatrick) and the occasional public statement by the Gardaí, nothing appears to have happened. In a previous article I wrote about how some of these criminal offences were not very complex. Two in particular carry jail terms of up to 5 years and a number of board members from both Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Life and Permanent could be prosecuted and face jail terms of up to 35 years. Voters may take direct action against politicians on polling day, but is there any direct action they may take to prosecute white-collar criminals? The general rule in criminal law is that the State prosecutes the defendant on behalf of the people. For serious cases the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) initiates the prosecution and for minor offences it is the responsibility of the individual Garda who is in charge of the case to initiate a prosecution. But audit is not the only possible source of criminality that could ground an action; and the Financial Regulator is, for example, investigating allegations that banks provided “false and misleading information” to NAMA about the value of their toxic property loans. But there is a little-used process whereby any individual may initiate a criminal prosecution. This is known as the right of Common Informer. Over recent years the rights of the Common Informer have been limited by Acts of the Oireachtas, but the basic right still exists. The rest of this article will set out the process involved in taking a criminal case by way of Common Informer. But first, it is necessary to explain some principles of sentencing in criminal law. Sentencing offenders A summary offence is a minor offence, triable in the District Court, with the judge acting as both judge and jury. The maximum penalty is two years in jail or a fine of up to €5,000. An indictable offence is a serious offence, triable in the Circuit Criminal Court or the Central Criminal Court. The case is heard by a judge and jury and there is no limit on jail term or fine. The punishment available for any individual offence is set out in the relevant statute. For many crimes the statute sets out a punishment if the case is tried in the District Court and a heavier punishment if the case is heard in the Circuit Criminal Court. The choice of court is, in general, determined by the prosecuting authority (such as the DPP). For example, S197 of the Companies Act 1990 makes it an offence for an officer of a company to give a false statement to the company’s auditors. S240 (as amended) sets the punishment for that offence as follows: Summary offence a fine of €1,900 and/or up to 1 year in jail Indictable offence a fine of €12,600 and/or up to 5 years in jail Should more than one false statement be given to auditors, for example, were a false statement made in each of 7 different years, the defendant could be charged with 7 instances of the same offence. Were the prosecution to be successful, it would be up to the judge to determine if the sentences should be served concurrently or consecutively. Were the former chosen then the defendant would serve a 5 year jail term, while in the latter case he would serve a 35 year jail term (5 years x 7 offences). The normal procedure is for concurrent sentences to be handed down but if the offences are serious enough then the judge may impose a consecutive sentence, or a combination of both. The Common Informer procedure Any private individual may initiate a criminal prosecution as a Common Informer. The process begins with the making of a complaint under S10 of the Petty Sessions Act 1851. That act states that a complaint is made to a judge of the District Court. If the judge is satisfied that there is a prima facia case then he must issue a summons for the defendant to appear in court to answer the complaint. The judge must ensure that there is substance to the complaint and may refuse to issue a summons. But the evidential threshold that the Common Informer must reach at this stage is low. There is no time-limit on the making of the complaint by the Common Informer for offences that may be tried either in the District Court or the Circuit Criminal Court. Right at the outset the Common Informer has an important decision to make. He may seek a prosecution for summary offences only. In this case the Common Informer has full control of the prosecution and the DPP cannot interfere with the prosecution. Or the Common Informer may seek to try the offences as indictable offences. Here the Common Informer has control of the early stage of the proceedings but thereafter the DPP is obliged to take over. The DPP may either continue with the prosecution or decide to stop it. This decision is a difficult one. On
