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    Michael D Higgins, Ireland’s ‘political intellectual’

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    Interview by Paul Dillon Michael D Higgins, veteran polymath TD for Galway West,  was born in Limerick in 1941. His father, a lifelong republican, had been sentenced to death by the Free State for blowing up Mallow Bridge, but reprieved, the Cork Examiner having called for his execution.  His father left his family and the very young Higgins who has written that while “there are images [of Limerick] which I retain, such as the pleasure of being brought up past Janesboro to the public park in Limerick, [that] memory  fades into insignificance when I consider the implications for all concerned of the leave-taking that was involved in the break-up of our family”. Raised in Newtown-Mount-Fergus, County Clare, from the age of 5 by an aunt and uncle,  Higgins  had  a nanny with an Anglo-Irish accent – trained in a Limerick ‘big house’, accounting perhaps for his unusual dialect, though not his intermittent shrillness. He was educated at St. Flannan’s College, Ennis, Co. Clare, University College, Galway, Indiana University and Manchester University. He is Married to Sabina Coyne, a founder member of the Focus Theatre and Stanislavsky Studio in Dublin. They have one daughter and three sons. Politician Higgins was active in Fianna Fáil as a student in UCG but in the end stood (unsuccessfully) for the Labour Party in the 1973 general election despite a fresh-faced Éamon Gilmore canvassing for him. A former member of Galway County Council (1974-1993), he has twice been Mayor of Galway. As Chairman of the Labour Party 1977-1987, he opposed coalitions with Fine Gael.  Higgins was a  member of Seanad Éireann 1973-1977 and 1982-1987 and was elected to Dáil Éireann in 1981 and 1982; and re-elected in 1987, 1989, 1992 and 1997.  In 1992 he thought of joining Democratic Left but stayed with Labour and became Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht 1993 -1997.  Dessie O’Malley said he’d ‘go mad’ in a ministry but he didn’t quite. Indeed he is highly regarded in arts circles for his achievements in office.   Currently he is President of the Labour Party and Party Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs. He will not stand in the imminent general election as he has his sights, not for the first time, on the Presidency.  A straw poll in the Sunday Times showed an overwhelming preference in the parliamentary Labour Party for the intellectualised Higgins over his party rival, the more worldly Fergus Finlay. Sociologist Higgins is Honorary Adjunct Professor at Large in Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and former Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Illinois. Writer/Poet HIs first collection of poems, ‘The Betrayal’, was published in 1990. His second book of poems ‘The Season of Fire’ was published in 1993.  The Irish Times’ reviewer wrote: “T]hough Higgins declares in one poem his dedication to “the blinding light/ Of the ordinary”, too many of the poems are damaged by his use of a language that doesn’t practise what he preaches. So even a poem of affecting memory can slide into a language that distances us from its experience, is clotted with abstractions”. A selection of his writing, speeches and academic work, ‘Causes for Concern’ was published in 2006. He is currently preparing a new academic work on political theory and practice, emphasising the necessity for an integrated approach and stressing the hegemony of values. Human Rights Activist Michael D  Higgins has campaigned for human rights and written of conflict in many parts of the world, including such areas as Turkey, Western Sahara, Nicaragua, Chile, Gaza, The West Bank, Peru, El Salvador, Iraq and Somalia.. In recognition of his work for peace with justice, he became the first recipient of the Sean MacBride Peace Prize of the International Peace Bureau in Helsinki in 1992. He has been an active feminist for all of his political life. Former Labour leader, Frank Cluskey once was told, when he asked why Higgins was not at a party meeting, “he is in El Salvador”, prompting the response that when given the choice of saving the world or the Labour Party, Higgins always took the easy option. This reflects the party’s sometimes  testy, but always respectful, indulgence of a man sometimes seen as the conscience of a party that perpetually wrestles it  and wins. What were your early political achievements and interests? When I first stood for election in 1969, I was 28. I made a conscious decision at that time to bring in economic rights and social rights to the discourse I was developing. I became a Senator in 1973 and I was very much involved in personal-rights issues, such as family planning. I recall the first attempt to abolish the status of illegitimacy. Between ‘77 and ‘81, my work was quite internal within the Labour Party and I was out of electoral politics. In ‘81, I was elected as a TD for Galway West and I won the seat on quite a left-wing agenda. There were 3 elections in 18 months. In the first election in 1982, I surviveD But then in the second, I lost my seat. I had been targeted by the Christian Political Action movement. The other people who were targeted by that group in that election were Jim Kemmy and Mary Robinson. No change in Ireland happened by accident and none of the thinking around change happened by accident. It was based on a very solid foundation of work on a rights-based agenda. How did your association with Central America begin? In 1980, you had the shooting of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador. Éamon Casey was involved in Trócaire and I was invited to go to El Salvador. And then I went to Nicaragua and it was then I began my long association with the Sandinistas. That began a relationship with Central America that would develop. Much later, I was part of an international delegation which met with Senator Ted Kennedy. It was Kennedy who put down the motion in the US Congress which ended the

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    Fr Chesney defamed

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    Fr Chesney defamed Contrary to lazy reports, the NI Ombudsman’s report on the 1972 ‘bloody Monday’ bombings in Claudy did not damn local priest, Fr James Chesney by Anton McCabe “Media confusion seems to have begun because the press statement from the Ombudsman’s office had a significantly different emphasis to the report” Media coverage of the Northern police ombudsman’s report into the Claudy bombing of 1972, when nine civilians were killed, was marked by an acceptance that Fr James Chesney was one of the bombers. This is at variance with one of the conclusions of the Ombudsman’s report: that detaining Fr Chesney “might have either implicated him in or eliminated him from the enquiry” (emphasis added). This media coverage did not just come from the usual conservative British outlets. The Guardian and the Irish Times carried a profile of Fr Chesney, beginning: “Fr James Chesney was as unlikely a character to fit the stereotype of a brooding terrorist as might be imagined”. Failing to grasp that there is no evidence the priest was a terrorist, brooding or otherwise. The profile then went on to quote as fact a description of a confession Fr Chesney allegedly made to an individual calling himself ‘Fr Liam’: “This horrible affair has been with me now for 30 years and it has been hanging over me like a black cloud. I must talk to someone in authority before I die . . . I must meet my maker with a clear conscience. The souls of the deceased are crying out not for vengeance but for justice”. This ‘Fr Liam’ sent a letter to a Claudy victim, which led to the Ombudsman’s investigation. The BBC News website says: “Fr Liam, who has not been identified”. The Ombudsman’s report is explicit that the letter was a forgery: “The Police Ombudsman has concluded that the letter was unlikely to have been from a Catholic Priest. The letter contained significant errors including the description of Father Chesney’s forename as ‘John’ when he was known as James or Jim. It also stated that Father Chesney was posted to Malin Head in the summer of 1972, which is incorrect”. The Ombudsman also established that no priest exists with the details ‘Fr Liam’ had given about himself. Thus a more useful question is: why did the Ombudsman carry out a lengthy and costly investigation based on a forged letter? Media reports, almost without exception, accepted ‘police intelligence’ from 1972 regarding Fr Chesney as fact. In Northern Ireland in 1972 internment was in operation, based on this police intelligence. At any one time, up to 2,000 were being held, nearly all young Catholic males. Even many Unionist politicians now accept many internees were totally uninvolved with either the Provisional or Official IRAs. Police actions in 1972 did not tally with their believing the intelligence on Fr Chesney. The priest was accepted as an alibi witness for a man being questioned about the Claudy bombing; now one of the police questioning the man says he believed at the time Fr Chesney was involved in Claudy. It beggars belief that the Northern police would free an IRA member because another IRA member provided an alibi – for a bombing both were involved in. Two months after Claudy, a police sniffer dog at a checkpoint reacted to traces of a substance similar to explosive in Fr Chesney’s car. At this time, police intelligence said Fr Chesney was both director of operations and quartermaster of the South Derry Brigade of the IRA (Provisional). But he was then allowed to go on his way. In the conditions of 1972, police were not going to free someone they believed was a senior IRA member after finding traces of explosives in his car. In October, police intelligence was reporting Fr Chesney’s  ‘Independent’ unit of the IRA. This says a lot about the quality of the intelligence. The ‘Independent’ unit was the former South Derry Brigade of the Official IRA. It had split away because of the Official IRA ceasefire. It had nothing to do with the IRA (Provisional), of which Fr Chesney was supposedly a local leader. The report is clear Fr Chesney was not moved to Donegal to prevent police detaining him for questioning. On 4 December 1972 the late Cardinal William Conway had a meeting with the late William Whitelaw, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The police had asked Whitelaw to speak to the Cardinal regarding Fr Chesney. The Cardinal noted in his diary: “…rather disturbing tete-a-tete at the end about C”; showing he knew the priest, not for a positive reason. However, there was no agreement to transfer Fr Chesney. A Northern Ireland Office note to a police officer states: “The Cardinal mentioned the possibility (emphasis added) of transferring him to Donegal”. The Cardinal spoke to Fr Chesney’s superior (probably then Bishop Neil Farren of Derry), who in turn questioned the priest. After this, according to the report: “The Superior, however ,had given him orders to stay where he was (Bellaghy in south Derry) on sick leave until further notice”. Nearly all media outlets reported Fr Chesney was moved to Donegal as a result of this meeting; the report says this was not until a year after the meeting. Bishop Farren’s successor, Dr Edward Daly, with the Vicar General for the diocese, questioned Fr Chesney in April or May 1974. They uncovered nothing to make them suspect the priest was a Claudy bomber. Dr Daly said police actions were inconsistent with believing Fr Chesney was a mass murderer: “He travelled almost every week from 1973 until his death in 1980 to visit his mother in Maghera (Co Derry). He went through checkpoints. He could have been arrested any time the security forces wanted to. You couldn’t have got from Donegal to Maghera without going through a checkpoint. It is clear from the Ombudsman’s report that there was not a shred of evidence against him.” He also believes Fr Chesney was an unlikely IRA man:

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    Serbia Alone

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    A journey through the complexity of former Yugoslavia By Frank Shouldice Agnostic Yugoslavs suddenly became Catholic Croatians, Orthodox Serbs or Bosnian Moslems. These differences were masterfully exploited by political leaders clinging to nationalist agendas – most especially by Milosevic in Serbia and Franco Tudjman in Croatia. The train that flits through the backwaters of northern Serbia is quaint but functional. Running twice a day it chugs along a single track for 40 kilometres to connect the Serbian city of Subotica with the city of Szeged in Hungary. The engine and carriage operate as one so the train feels more like a bus. Our driver sits hunched over controls at the front, peering into the baleful night while wipers squeak across his windscreen. A conductor finishes checking tickets and sits alongside the driver, the draughty interior of the carriage gloomy under low wattage lighting. At Horgos the Serbian border guard is mildly curious about seeing an Irish passport. It’s rare enough to find anyone far-flung on such a local line but he stamps it and hands it back without a fuss. Northern Serbia is not exactly a magnet for tourism but EU nationals no longer need a visa to go there. The conductor removes a wad of notes from his jacket pocket and counts the takings into separate currencies — Serbian dinar and Hungarian florint. The driver gives up on the wipers so all that’s left is a howling wind and the heavy percussion of rain. He knows many of his passengers by name, making random stops in the middle of nowhere to let people off. It’s the Balkan rail equivalent of the Lough Swilly bus. We reach Subotica in the Serbian province of Vojvodina. Among 27 different ethnic groupings here is a large ethnic Hungarian population. Thousands fled back across the border during Yugoslavia’s civil war, fearing an influx of Serbian refugees from Bosnia and Croatia. Generally however it’s relatively harmonious and in some ways Vojvodina offers rare evidence that former President Josep Broz Tito’s dream for Yugoslavia might have lasted. But of course it did not. The federation Tito nurtured now comprises seven states – Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, most recently, Kosovo. Convulsions that started in May 1991, when the first shots rang out in Vukovar (now part of Croatia), continue to rumble and simmer, most particularly between Kosovar Serbs and Albanians. “Once upon a time there was a country and its capital was Belgrade”, runs the opening line of Emir Kusturica’s ‘Underground’, a magnificent dirge to former Yugoslavia. The Sarajevo-born film-maker weaves a mesmerising tale that captures the complex tragedy that is the Balkans. “With pain, sorrow and joy we shall remember our country”, concludes the narrator, a Belgrade zookeeper. “As we tell our children stories that start like fairytales — Once upon a time there was a country — this story has no end”. There is indeed a circularity about history in these parts. Following Tito’s death in 1980, the charismatic leader was buried in a white-marble mausoleum named ‘Kuca Cveka’ (House of Flowers). The memorial is located on Bulevar Mira, a couple of miles from Belgrade city centre. On a visit in 1988 I joined a steady procession of visitors to the mansion — a cross between the Whitehouse and Graceland — paying tribute to the man whose 35-year reign made Yugoslavia a unique but imperfect success. Tito’s successor Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb nationalist, later took up residence on Bulevar Mira. For privacy he built a high wall between the house and the mausoleum. The former museum was cut off from the people and most of the artefacts simply disappeared. It was an audacious gesture witnessed with mute public disapproval. Milosevic and his wife Mira acted more like Yugoslav royalty, occupying a mansion high on the hill while Tito’s faithful made pilgrimages to a lower altitude. By the late 1990s the writing was on the wall for Milosevic. Through his 13-year reign he played a key role in sparking the disastrous civil war that ultimately brought Yugoslavia to an end. Reviving his lost pursuit for Greater Serbia he turned his attention to subduing ethnic Albanian separatists in Serbia’s southern province. NATO responded to Serbia’s policy of aggression in Kosovo by bombing Belgrade in 1999. Key offices, such as the Department of the Interior, Secret Police HQ and the national broadcaster, RTS, were surgically targeted during 78 days of bombardment. Eleven years later many of these vast buildings still totter precariously in downtown Belgrade, fenced-off reminders of the power beyond these borders. Visitors to ‘Kuca Cveka’ today will notice how few people still attend the mausoleum. Put it down to despondency or disillusionment but it’s not the shrine it used to be. Tito’s resting place went unscathed when the presidential mansion took a direct NATO hit but the adjacent gardens are full of weeds and a dry fountain peels in rust. It’s as though Tito’s dream died with him. While there is a degree of anger that the partisan hero failed to ensure stable succession the most pervasive feeling is regret for a bygone era that Serbs — and ex-Yugoslavs in general — realise will never be achieved again. Irrespective of origin, many citizens are still shocked at how quickly Yugoslavia tore itself apart. They recall how questions previously unasked — such as ethnicity or religious beliefs – suddenly became defining identities. Agnostic Yugoslavs suddenly became Catholic Croatians, Orthodox Serbs or Bosnian Moslems. These differences were masterfully exploited by political leaders clinging to nationalist agendas – most especially by Milosevic in Serbia and Franco Tudjman in Croatia. Balkan unity, capricious at the best of times, was doomed. Such was the inspiration for Nobel Prize-winning author Ivo Andric. He based ‘The Bridge on the Drina’ on conflict between Moslems and Christians in the mountainous Bosnian village of Visegrad. Published in 1945 the Andric classic centres on events at the magnificent 11-arch bridge built by the Ottomans in 1577. At this beautiful idyll it is

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    Constantin Gurdgiev derides the Left’s inertia on the bailout (from our Dec/Jan edn: ‘Against the Grain’)

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    Left out The vested-interest, Union-driven and flaccid left exhausted all its ideas before the catastrophe hit. The EU/IMF ‘bailout’ was supposed to be the moment of truth for Ireland’s political élites – the moment when the opposition were to come out from the shadows of the discredited and politically weak Government. In the end, the shadows became too comfortable a place for our ‘alternative leaders’ to leave. And thus, the ‘bailout’ became a moment of truth. The uncomfortable truth registered that the Irish Left’s opposition to the current régime was nothing more than grand posturing, devoid of any credible ideas and gutless to challenge the establishment. The failure of the Left to present a serious alternative to the Government’s disastrous policy responses to the current crises is, of course, nothing new. Instead, it is a function of the forces that have shaped the Irish Left for years. The first one is the complicity of the Left in the creation of the very crises we face. During the boom, the Irish Left came to rely on Social Partnership to deliver for its support-groups the spoils of the ‘class war’ with the rich Celtic Tiger blue-bloods. Social Partnership, cleverly exploited by  Fianna Fáil, but driven predominantly by the Left-aligned social-welfare pressure groups and trade unions, acted as a transfer mechanism that channelled vast amounts of private income into the coffers of its members. These very transfers came at the expense of the middle-classes and genuine entrepreneurs. The system actively solicited the means for extracting taxpayers’ funds to pay for endless spatial strategies and development plans and benchmarking awards. The former was political pork that became the support engine for the property boom, semi-state companies and in its later incarnations – to the Social Pillar interest groups. The latter yielded handsome dividends to union members allowing the Unions to retain their base within the privatised enterprises. The welfare, environmental, cultural, and anti-poverty (domestic and foreign) campaigners that sprang up in droves across the landscapes of our ‘social economy’ were the direct beneficiaries of this scheme to collect rents out of the working economy. Every new large-scale state investment project or benchmarking exercise was greeted by a chorus of voices demanding that the poor or the vulnerable or the creative or the Irish-speaking or the non-for-profit or the environmentally-concerned receive their share of the Celtic-Tiger spoils. Throughout the boom, the only criticism of Government policies that the Left registered was the incessant drone of voices demanding more transfers. “Tax more, charge more, build/provide more social housing, …more, more, more…” was the favourite refrain of the Left lost in the process of grafting its ‘Marxism for Dummies’ ideology to the bandwagon of Social Partnership. Only the extreme Left remained true to some of the core principles it held. And it was ostracised by both the state and the complacent Centre-Left parties. The lost souls and minds of the Irish Left did not pause for a nanosecond when their leaders took seats and pay at the boards of the state bodies, the Central Bank, Fás, Government-created quangoes and working groups. They might indeed have flinched for a nanosecond at Bertie’s declaration that he was the last standing socialist in Europe, but they partied on through the Inchydoney accord and went on tacitly endorsing the property boom. Demands for planning restrictions and social-housing allowances, affordable housing and ‘expanded lending to the less well-off’ all helped to inflate the bubble. The Irish Left’s response to the fiscal and banking crises that ensued has been a textbook example of mental collapse by an ex-hostage suffering from acute Stockholm syndrome. They decried the release from their captivity that was the collapse of Social Partnership instead. Faced with rapidly accelerating public debt and fiscal deficits, with a historically-unprecedented crisis in the banking sector and the deepest recession known to the civilised world since 1939, the Irish Left went on to produce not a single original alternative to the Government’s disastrous policies. In fact, the majority of the Left had simply slid into the Borg Collective response to the crises, raving “The State must protect our interests!” at every twist in the policy debate. Thus, the Left’s strategy on dealing with banks was the idea that Irish banks should be nationalised. Not for the purpose of rebuilding their balance-sheets and business models, but to ensure that they continued to underwrite absurdly-over-extended mortgages and start lending anew to the Leftist causes – the environmental and social ‘economies’. The Government, to their surprise, even obliged. The Irish Left has failed to see through the fog of its ideology that the state simply cannot go on running double-digit deficits year after year. Instead,  cuts to current expenditure were opposed, while stimulus to capital investment was promoted. Very few thinkers in the Left camp were able to grasp the simple arithmetic of deficit and debt formation, or to recognise that their preferred policies would only exacerbate the tortured death-spiral of the Irish economy. Even faced with a 32% deficit-to-GDP ratio this year, all the Left could produce in advance of the Budget 2011 was the battle cry: “Though shall not cut too much!” In place of deficit cuts, the Left has offered a clichéd ‘solution’ of taxing the rich and, once again, ‘stimulating’ the economy. But the sums never added up. Spurred on by the likes of the Irish Times and the Labour Party, the Left really does believe that Ireland’s private wealth is liquid, immense and unencumbered by leverage. They fixated on the Central Bank’s assets side of the national balance-sheet and ignored the liabilities. Out of this came the suggestions to tax deposits, including those of the multinational corporations held in IFSC accounts. This was followed by the equally brilliant suggestion of taxing wealth. All came at the time when depositors in Irish banks were already on the edge. A psychosis of inconsistent and innumerate policies continued all through the Government decision to review the state’s ownership of the semi-state enterprises. The Irish

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    Unloved Epa

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    The dysfunctional Environmental Protection Agency received cogent criticisms in a review that is taking too long by Tony Lowes Unless any of you have had to witness you ageing parents suffer with runny noses, respiratory infections and coughing, streaming eyes 14 hours a day 365 days a year. Unless you have had to endure the arduous, lengthy, irritating and annoying process which we have had to endure for almost 5 years you will NEVER know the pain of dealing with an agency like the EPA which lacks the basic courtesy of replying to a registered letter which was written by my 73 year old mother in the early hours of a November night in 2009 because she could not sleep with the pungent, noxious, odours. Kerdiffstown, Co Kildare resident The Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] was established in 1993 to protect Ireland’s environment and license potentially polluting activities. The EPA is responsible to no-one. Its Board of Directors includes no non-executive Directors to represent the public or ensure good governance. While the Minister for the Environment may make Regulations and issue Guidelines, the legislation makes it clear that “Nothing in the legislation shall be construed as enabling the Minister to exercise any power or control in relation to the performance by the Agency, with respect to a particular licence, of its functions”. Any appeals against EPA activities – or lack of them – are made to the EPA. The Ombudsman is barred by statute from considering activities undertaken – or not undertaken – by the Agency. An inexpensive ‘environmental court’, common in other EU states, remains a dream. The Green Party spent its years in opposition hammering the Agency, its activities, its Directors, and its Director-General, Mary Kelly. Mary Kelly is a former Assistant Director, with responsibility for environmental policy, of the employers’ group, IBEC.  She was reappointed Director-General this year in spite of the Green Party’s opposition to the initial appointment which was said to have come following an interview process which attracted an unusually low average calibre of applicant. At the time, Trevor Sargent publicly suggested that the appointment “utterly compromised” the EPA as she was “too close to businesses”. In a telling insight into the power of the Greens in Government, it’s said that the Greens approved the reappointment because they were afraid that someone worse would otherwise be selected. Village tried for more than six weeks to interview the Director-General – but one prevarication followed another. The offer is still open. In spite of being a central plank of the 1997 Platform for Government, it took John Gormley three years to announce – in February of this year – a review of the EPA. And the review, which was intended to take three months, will soon be celebrating its first anniversary with no sign of reporting. Meanwhile, the call for public consultation elicited more than 130 submissions from members of the public and agencies as varied as the Fisheries Boards, the Gardaí, the Presentation Sisters, and the County and City Managers Association (one significance absence was the Parks and Wildlife Service). The results are an astonishing catalogue of arrogant inefficiency in a dysfunctional State agency with 340 staff (including the proud beneficiaries of 44 doctorates and 100 masters degrees) which spends more than €60 million a year overseeing the deterioration of Ireland’s environment. Endeavours to support scientific research are of course praiseworthy, but the Trinity College Dublin submission suggests that much of the EPA’s research is in fact wasted because “there seem to be few, if any, officers with environmental policy, environmental economics or environmental studies expertise and so limited engagement with the project findings and therefore a lost opportunity to feed research results into policy frameworks”. IBEC’s submission coyly suggests that “a view exists that the system is overly bureaucratic, inefficient, inflexible, and process-focused rather than outcome-oriented”. It hammers “the framing of regulations, the practices of the EPA and duplication” – identifying ‘regulatory creep’ as a stumbling block to doing business in Ireland. The Health and Safety Authority draws attention to its experience of even small procedural matters requiring referral to the EPA board, resulting in ”delays in closing out issues”. Duplication appears even at the extremes of the EPA empire, with suggestions that offices like the Mallow hydrometric office could be amalgamated into the Cork office, the Donegal office into the Monahan one, and the Castlebar office into the Galway one. In fact, a high proportion of the Irish environmental complaints addressed by the European Commission – and subsequent EU Court judgments – relate to EPA failures. The normally discreet European Commission responded to the Review, noting the “limited scope” of the Agency and the “general tendency” to seek sanctions only at the District Court level, where the fines are limited to €5000. The Commission said while it was not its role to comment in detail on funding, it would like to remind the Agency of the fact that the polluter pays principle was part of both the waste and water EU Directives. Only a quarter of the Agency’s funding is derived from licensing fees with an insignificant amount coming from convicted polluters. Dan Boyle stated (before he joined the Government): “I believe that if we had a proper environmental body, a body in which the public had confidence and in which there existed a widespread belief that our environment was being properly protected, then many of our citizens should not feel the need of having to go outside and seek international support for the type of environmental protection we should be doing ourselves”. Yet even vested interests like IBEC, who might be expected to feel threatened, or at least challenged, by the EPA consider the penalty régime imposed in the Acts to be “proportionate” and “sufficiently punitive”. IBEC reproduces the oft-repeated litany presentations: that regularly infuriates environmentalists during EPA non-compliance is controlled by a company’s concern for its reputation. The first ‘systematic’ condemnation by the European Court of a member state’s environmental protection

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    Sara Burke

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    The Harney Health Legacy 1997-2011 – waste and the demise of universal healthcare, but improved cancer care As each day passes, the damage this government has done to the people of Ireland and their health becomes clearer. Government policy since 1997 created the biggest boom and bust experienced by any first-world country since the 1930s. Despite becoming one of the richest countries in the world, even at the height of the boom, the Fianna Fáil/PD government failed to invest sufficiently in social infrastructure, even though there is a direct link between social spending and quality of life. Government policy was often flawed. And much of the money actually spent was poured in without actually changing or improving the services it was funding. There is no better exemplar of the fiasco that is Irish policy making than health. Giving generous tax breaks to developers to build private nursing homes and hospitals, granting and then taking away medical cards for over-70-year-olds and the appallingly-orchestrated establishment of the Health Service Executive are textbook examples of how not to improve health services in the public interest. The tax-breaks were masterminded by Charlie McCreevy – one of the myriad property-related tax-breaks introduced under his stewardship in the Department of Finance. They allowed for-profit  healthcare to get a foothold in the Irish ‘market’ without any supervision or oversight by the Department of Health. As a direct result nursing homes were built wherever developers wanted them – unconnected to need, and usually far away from older people’s homes and communities. Similarly, although it was government policy to have fewer, bigger, safer acute hospitals, another arm of government was giving away public money to build small, profitable, unregulated  hospitals anywhere they decided, totally contradicting the policy. The decision to give medical cards to over-70-year-olds in December 2001 was a (successful)  pre-election ploy to get the grey vote out for the re-election of the Fianna Fáil-PD government in 2002. Paradoxically this move by McCreevy was to be the only endeavour of the government during its 13-and-a-half-year reign to provide universal healthcare, free at the point of delivery. And it was a very successful experiment with ‘richer’ over-70-year-olds accessing healthcare earlier as they did not have to pay to see the GP, which in turn kept them healthier, improved their quality of life; and cost less. As the decision was a last-minute call by McCreevy or his champion, Bertie Ahern (the stories are legion and so far unverifiable as to how this decision actually got made), the government then had to negotiate a very bad deal with GPs who (led by now-TD James Reilly) stretched them over a barrel. As a result, GPs were paid three times the rate for looking after richer over-70s than those who already had medical cards. This skewed GP services so that doctors were paid more to provide care to those who needed it least. And then in October 2008, with the excuse of the economic crisis, the government unwisely made the controversial call of removing medical cards from richer over-70-year-olds. After about four changes of mind, Mary Harney won the war – the universalism was withdrawn – but older people won the battle, as many more older people have medical cards now than they did in 2001. The establishment of the HSE is the biggest public-sector reform in Irish history. Prepared by Mícheál Martin but executed by Mary Harney, there is no doubt that it was a débacle in waiting even before it began. It was badly planned, it had no leader for the first seven months – with an ex-banker as acting CEO, there was no clarity what would actually happen, no proper structures, no vision. Most incredibly, it failed to address the biggest reform needed in the Irish health system – to provide universal, quality care, free at the point of delivery – which essentially exists in  all other European countries. Not in Ireland.  In fact this government has been, and continues to busy itself, removing any last vestige of universalism in the Irish health system, now all in the name of austerity. There had been increased investment in the Irish health system. The health budget quadrupled from under €4 billion in 1998 to over €15 billion in 2008 (it will be just €14 billion in 2011). But increased investment in the noughties was really only making up for decades of under-investment and neglect. There have been numerous attempts to reform but really what we have seen is so-called reform, without any real transformation. The renegotiation of the consultants’ contract was expensive and a lost opportunity to reform the Irish health system. Instead of using the new contract as a mechanism to deliver equitable, quality care, it continues to reward consultants who practise privately and publicly.  It paid them two to three times the salaries of their European counterparts and moved us nowhere nearer a universal system of care. Six years on from the instigation of the HSE, there are a few glimmers of hope. The new HSE CEO, Cathal McGee just drove through a €200 million cut in money paid to pharmaceutical companies and is looking to save another €170 million through hard-nosed bargaining with its top 50 suppliers. Barry White, the HSE national director of quality and clinical care, is trying to a start a quiet revolution whereby care would be provided on the basis of medical need, not ability to pay. Basically he is applying the old cancer tsar’s method to all diseases, at all levels of care. He calls it ‘clinical justice’ and is involving staff at all levels and is even engaging with patients. It’s a long uphill marathon but it is certainly worth a try. Cancer care is an illustration of where genuine progress has been made. It took decades of politicians affected by and interested in the disease to give it priority. Political commitment combined with abysmally bad cancer-survival rates for Irish people and a series of healthcare scandals propelled it to the top

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    FF imploding, election called: time to implement the Vision (editorial, December 2010)

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    As Village went to print, the main governing party had 13% support and its grumpy leader satisfied only 14% of voters.  The country looks likely to finish up losing 20% of its  predicted GDP to  ineptitude and corruption. The country is insolvent, unless it can maintain unsustainable 6.5% growth rates,  even though our leaders pretend not to have realised it.  Insolvency has been caused partly by a hasty and reckless government guarantee to insolvent banks, that cosseted speculator bondholders.  The country has just surrendered, following a period of dishonest governmental denial, to an ignominiously-loaned  European and IMF €85bn ‘bailout’ at draconian interest rates.  A vicious and somewhat regressive budget has hammered the whole of society particularly the poorest, in pursuit of  planned cuts of €15bn over four years.  The unapologising Taoiseach has appeared on the nation’s flagship radio programme soggily hungover.  One public-sector boss in Ireland takes home a staggering €752,568.  The government hasn’t had the will to annihilate bankers’ bonuses, though it has filleted the minimum wage.  The principal opposition party is led by a lightweight who lets himself down whenever there is a mic around.  And finally the coalition government, on the verge of internal-dissent-driven collapse,  has announced that an election will be held as soon as possible [later specified as March 11]. What would a visitor from Mars expect – anger on the streets, strikes against government policy, the occasional riot by those who cannot contain themselves?  And on the positive side exciting new public debate, new political initiatives, and above all alternatives to the discredited old guard. Not the very real, imminent prospect of more Fianna Gael and Labour. The country needs to take immediate action to avoid the excesses of the European/IMF deal. We should take the most aggressive position legally possible against every last bondholder, curtail future payments to redundant non-systemic cash-torchers like Anglo Irish and re-negotiate the interest rate on the bailout, including on those portions of it being advanced bilaterally by so-called friendly neighbours.  If this is not to the liking of our international friends, then we should threaten to default. The associated international debate on our institutionalised mugging can only work to our advantage. Eurobonds issued by the EU rather than member states would infinitely improve Ireland’s liquidity and solvency difficulties; and save the Euro. The least responsible thing is to commit, as Fianna Fáil and the Greens would have us,  to increased debt to get us out of a situation where we cannot pay our debts.  It is a recipe for societal immiseration and national bankruptcy. More generally, we need institutional and political reform. In the current edition of Village, Niall Crowley one of the protagonists in Claiming our Future, writes (p7), “A civil society force … needs to be able to shape and influence political discourse and to create a situation where political parties take up the ideas from the October event as their own”. This is all very well but it’s probably simply too late to get the political parties to take up any agenda before an election in March. It is clear that all the movements in the world do not a political party make.  The country needs two new political parties: one of the left; one of the right.  Prospective members tainted by either a Fianna Fáil or a  Fine Gael past should not be welcome in either. Defiannafailification (p32) is a national imperative but Fine Gael sat on their oppositional hands for a decade and more.  They are the closest thing to Fianna Fáil in the global political firmament; and should hasten into oblivion. If they are this bad in opposition, how despised will they become in government.  It would be refreshing to see the back of both of the retrogressive clans that have driven Irish politics since the very foundations of the state. The country needs an agenda.  It needs constitutional and institutional reform.  Village would favour the prospective party of the left. Equality, Sustainability and Transparency are national imperatives. The more specific agenda of Irish Times journalist, Fintan O’Toole’s (p48), is a good starting point. Time is short.  While there have been some half worthy attempts to establish new parties, they mostly seem to lack ideology and ideas.  The United Left Alliance, while strong on integrity and offering a sound analysis is a little too negative for Village.  We would like to see a party of the radical left formed out of a convention involving those who have shown willingness to engage.  That might involve those who have offered interesting analysis and solutions: journalists like Fintan O’Toole, Vincent Browne, David McWilliams, Duncan Stewart, Joe Mulholland and Elaine Byrne; movements and thinktanks like Claiming our Future and Tasc; Community and environmental activists;  individuals who have done the state some service like John Lonergan, Adi Roche and Niall Crowley; distinguished academics such as Morgan Kelly, Peadar Kirby, Diarmuid Ferriter and Kathleen Lynch; independent political stalwarts like Mary Robinson and David Norris.  It should probably also be open to the more open-minded activists from more or less progressive forces like Sinn Féin, the United Left Alliance, the Labour Party and the Green Party. Somebody needs to convene the first meeting.  Mary Robinson commands the most respect, has just returned to live in Ireland and would be ideal.

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    Getting settled, illegally

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    In the Occupied Territories Israel imposes ‘apartheid’ between Arabs and settlers. Frank Shouldice Trader Jack stands in the doorway of his souvenir shop in Manger Square in Bethlehem. Fifty yards from the Church of the Nativity it’s a prime location for selling knick-knacks and miniature religious crafts. Jack is not Bethlehem’s most famous son but he’s lived in historic times. A teenager when the Israeli State was created, he grew up watching Palestinians scatter worldwide as refugees, felt his country shrink to 12% of its original size, and now witnesses the bloody tumult of the second intifada pushing what’s left of Gaza and the West Bank over an economic and political precipice. “We need Israel and Israel needs us”. He wonders aloud: “it’s a two-State system but now they are taking the best land in our territory – do they not have enough?” A working pensioner in his mid-70s, he finds ordinary life is getting a lot harder. The water supply often cuts off without warning. He can’t take his car outside the Occupied Territories and needs a special permit to travel to Jerusalem, five miles away. All around him are Jewish settlements, the fruits of a key Israeli strategy since 1967. About half a million Israelis now call the Occupied Territories home. Most of them live on land confiscated from Palestinians. Both the UN Security Council (1979) and the International Court of Justice (2004) declared the settlements illegal. Israel’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, does not concur. The Minister lives in Nokdim, a West Bank settlement not far from Jack’s souvenir shop. In marked contrast to shanty-like Arab hillside dwellings, the hilltop houses are modern and attractive. Settlers get financial incentives from the State to buy them. As if joining up the dots, these hilltops are connected by a highway system that is off-limits to Palestinians. The effect is to create a hermetically-sealed Statelet which, in turn, paralyses movement for non-Israelis. Gilo is a typical model, built on a hilltop heavily fortified by the Israel Defensive Forces (IDF). “They build them up there so they can dominate us”, shrugs a Palestinian mother. “Many settlements – Ariel, for example – let sewage run down the hill and destroy farmland belonging to Palestinians. That’s what they think of us”. Palestinian commerce has virtually collapsed. Tourists have been scared away. While Jack stands outside his empty shop, groups of unemployed young men sit around the vacant square, passing time. Waiters in an adjoining café idle in the doorway, fanning the breeze with unperused menus. Tonight, the 72-room Bethlehem Star Hotel is home to four guests. For Zoughbi Zoughbi, founder of the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Centre, these are troubling times. A campaigner committed to non-violence, he believes the settlement programme is the greatest single obstacle to peace. But directly in front of his office looms another hurdle: the security wall. Also built on land appropriated from Palestinians, it stands eight metres high and runs for over 500 miles through the West Bank, protecting Jewish settlements, separating communities and in places ensuring cash crops like olives rot on the ground while the farmers who own the lands go bankrupt. “It is an apartheid wall”, says Zoughbi, glancing at the concrete horizon that greets him each morning. “It’s about annexation. It is used to confiscate more land and the best places for aquifers. It is also used to further divide and isolate Palestinian areas from each other”. Comparisons with the Berlin Wall are all too obvious but it is ironic that Israel should imitate so enthusiastically a policy dreamt up by a former German régime. The rationale is to reduce attacks by Palestinian militants; however another logic suggests that creating so much bitterness will provoke a violent backlash to reinforce the mindset that built the wall in the first place. In the name of national security, each consciously bewildering maze outside the Occupied Territories tapers into a crossing point. Arab residents, including women and children, clutch possessions through the babble of disorderly queues, routinely herded through a permit control-system, while armed guards bark orders from behind mirrored sunglasses. The scene conjures its own echoes of a Jewish past. “It is not easy”, concedes Boughbi, soft-selling a gospel of non-violence to growing legions of disenchanted Palestinians. “I am one of those who would like to deprive the Israelis of an enemy. Through its daily provocations Israel tries to push us to use greater violence, precisely because the Israeli government is well-equipped to deal with violence. It seems that [the] Israeli Government is threatened more by thoughts of peace and non-violence than by war”. And then there is Hebron. Nowhere else in the West Bank have Jewish settlers been placed among the Arab community. With a total population of about 160,000, Hebron is one of the West Bank’s primary cities. A busy marketplace fills the newer parts but what makes Hebron unique is the Old City, languishing in desolation. In a policy of aggressive displacement, over 200 Palestinian shops and houses have been shut down by military order, over a hundred more evacuated after its main drag Al-Shuhada was declared “a settler-only street”. The settler controversy here traces back to a 1929 pogrom when 67 Jews were murdered and Hebron’s minority Jewish community was driven out. The city passed through British, Egyptian and Jordanian hands until Israel assumed full control at the end of the Six Day War in 1967. Afterwards, former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion told a BBC interviewer that “in the cause of peace Israel should take nothing in the conquered territories with the exception of Hebron – which is more Jewish even than Jerusalem”. Hebron’s religious significance relates to the Cave of Machpelah, burial site for Abraham, patriarch of Jews, Christian and Muslims. The Ibrahimi Mosque beside it now serves as the disputed focus for rival traditions. Jewish settlers ignored a prohibition on civilian settlements and set up the Kiryat Arba camp on the outskirts. In 1979, a small number

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