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    Publish the Final Report on the NPWS now, Minister Noonan

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    74March/April 2022‘Strategic Action Plan for the NPWS’ which is the planned outcome of the Review process”, he replied to a written Parliamentary question on 21 January 2022.This technique of making a fnal report part of an ongoing multi-part bigger report, to avoid release, has been resolutely struck down by the EU Commissioner for Environmental Information.Unfortunately for the Minister, he forgot what he had said in his written reply. Pádraic Fogarty author of ‘Whittled Away’ wrote on 4 February that he had been “assured by the Minister that the review of the NPWS and an action plan to implement its recommendations would be published next week or the week after”.The ‘NPWS Review’, was leaked to anonymous but well-informed campaigning website – irishriverproject.com’. It was even more devastating than anyone imagined. Tim O’Brien of the Irish Timessynopsised its fndings: “not ft for the task, according to a Government-commissioned report”. What was needed was “a fundamental overhaul of structures and governance” (the NPWS doesn’t even have a single boss), “a clear strategic plan and leadership to implement it, better internal and external communications, and re-energised teams”. Otherwise the NPWS “cannot meet current obligations, let alone plan for and respond to future challenges and legislation, including the Climate Action Bill and EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2030”.Paddy Woodworth summed it up: “It is vital that the review, and associated materials, are published now so that the public can judge for themselves whether this ‘action plan’ really follows through from the incisive proposals put forward in the Final Report on the key fndings and recommendations”. Final Report on the Key Findings and recommendations, June 2021’. But according to a spokeswoman for Malcolm Noonan, it is in fact not so much “fnal” as a ‘draft review’. She said “Mr Noonan will not be commenting as a fnal version is as of yet unpublished”. Clearly there is a battle over the fnal version with some people close to Noonan keen to adulterate the substance of the review. The Minister was more polished, explaining in a written parliamentary response to a question on 21 January this year that there were in fact three phases to the Review process. The frst phase of extensive research, consultation and orientation “feeds into the remaining phases as the rest of the Review process continues apace”.Veteran restoration ecologist Paddy Woodworth pointed out in the Irish Timeson 15 February that it went through a laborious process within the NPWS. Now, “It would hardly be acceptable for an independent report to be rewritten by those it’s reporting on”. We are now in the second phase. The ‘refect phase’. That is the Minister is in the ‘refect phase’. Though – keep up – we the public don’t actually get to refect before it’s all over – when we move onto the fnal phase – the ‘Renew Phase’. “None of the component parts of the Review process will be disaggregated or published separately ahead of a Government decision on the The NPWS handles the State’s nature conservation functions. As well as managing the national parks, the activities of the NPWS include the designation and protection of Natural Heritage Areas, Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas.A 2019 report to to the EU written by the informed scientifc division of the NPWS stated that “85 per cent of habitats are in unfavourable (i.e. inadequate or bad) status, with 46 per cent of habitats demonstrating ongoing declining trends”.Recognising this, the Dáil declared a biodiversity emergency that same year. Green Party leader Eamon Ryan fulminated that the climate and biodiversity emergency meant “absolutely nothing unless there is action to back it up”. Well there is no action. Ryan went on: “That means the Government having to do things they don’t want to do”. Well in government the Greens won’t push their agenda when it hurts or annoys. In an article last year in VillageI posited that the NPWS need the following: more money, deference to EU habitats laws, more emphasis on science not local politics and more power to experts not bureaucrats.Perhaps recognising these and other defciencies a strategic review of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) by Professor Jane Stout and Micheál Ó Cinnéide had been commissioned in 2021 by Green Heritage Minister Malcolm Noonan, Last June, the authors submitted their “Final report on the Key Recommendations and Findings” to the Minister. It was expected, from the Terms of Reference, that it would be published shortly afterwards. The June report remains unpublished but details have leaked into the public domain. It appears to be an admirably frank and forensic analysis of the NPWS. The authors fnd the organisation is not ft for purpose, and “cannot meet current obligations, let alone plan for and respond to future challenges and legislation”.The title page calls it ‘Review of the NPWS 2021: It is vital that the review, and associated materials, are published now so that the public can judge for themselves whether this ‘action plan’ really follows through from the incisive proposals put forward in the Final ReportBy Tony LowesENVIRONMENTPublish the Final Report on the NPWS now, Minister NoonanAn extraordinary chance to change our conservation culture is being blown by a weak minister, intimidated by a cabal of senior civil servants and National Parks and Wildlife Service careerists who don’t want a critical report publishedGrasp the nettle, Malcolm

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    Inis Mórto

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    March/April 2022 73Health ofcer visited in 2018. He recorded complaints of “nausea, headaches, irritation of the eyes and stomach sickness”. He wrote that: ‘’The ponding was so thick and stagnant that birds and wildlife were walking along this pond of waste”. “Both solidifed and liquid material” were reported “at least 0.5-0.75 metres in depth”.As for beginning the work on the Council Cottages site, an Irish Water email dated 2 November 2021 made it clear: “As well as not having the resources to run tender, we haven’t the capability to do any required design work either’, As to the Public Toilets and their unauthorised connections, almost 10 years after first prosecuting Galway County Council for a failure to clean up the Council Cottages discharge, the EPA commenced proceeding in 2021 against Irish Water for the failure of the Public Toilet. With no planning permission, no EIA, and no Natura 2000 Impact statement, Irish Water instead lined up on the dock at Galway 20 purafow units for the Council Cottages, telling residents that: “As there is no funding in place for the site, this need will compete for funding along with other national needs in the next Investment Plan (2025-29)”. The February 2022 screening for an Appropriate Assessment under the Habitats Directive for the 20 units failed to mention the adjacent protected lagoon. Called in by residents, solicitors for Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) stopped all work on 11 February 2021. ‘Kilronan and Killeany Sewerage Scheme’. A treatment plant was costed at €7.2 million with a Time for Delivery of 2014. On 6 June 2013 the Environmental Protection Agency brought its frst prosecution under the Waste Water Discharge (Authorisation) Regulations. In Kilronan District Court it prosecuted Galway County Council for its failure to control the pollution – from the Council Cottages only. In October 2014, a certifcate of authorisation was issued for a constructed wetland to deal with the sewage – again only for the Council Cottages. Good for one year, it was extended for a further year, costed at €350,000, and never built.A 2017 Galway County Council site-inspection report again warned that: This cesspool poses a serious environmental and public health and safety issue”. But Galway County Council published its own legal opinion the following year that the matter was not the responsibility of Galway County Council but of Irish Water.The Health and Safety Authority Environmental InIreland, raw sewage runs freely from the mountains to the sea. 54% of urban sewage is classified untreated by EU legal standards. There are 400,000 to 500,000 septic tanks across Ireland which an EU Court case required Ireland to inspect from 2014. The subsequent septic-tank inspection system of 1,000 per year shows average failure of over 50%. And of those failed, the failure rate of householders to fx the failed systems has risen every year since inspections began in 2014 – and is now more than 50%.Ireland is awash with raw sewage. It sinks into our groundwater and contaminates our surface waters, leaving us with the highest cryptosporidiosis infection rate in Europe. The debilitating parasite was responsible for the virtual close down of Galway’s mains water system in 2007. Statistics show an increase in incidence in the last two years of 33%. And it’s not just animal faeces. Recent studies have shown toxic chemicals and pharmaceuticals in wastewater have reached a third of global rivers, causing not only pollution but contributing to the build-up of antimicrobial resistance in humansBut nowhere can it be more fagrant than on Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands (population 870). 160,000 tourists visit the island each year. Each time they use the public toilet in Cill Rónáin their faeces pool in an open cesspit a few hundred metres below the village. If it rains hard and there are many tourists, raw sewage runs down the main street.Up to a dozen businesses have unauthorised connections to the small septic-tank system which serves the Public Toilet and which now overfows and ponds on the surface where the original septic tank stands. In the next feld, a separate long-failed septic tank is host to the raw sewage from 10 houses, known as the Council Cottages, only metres away.Both are separated only by a traditional stone wall from a protected coastal lagoon, listed as Annex I in the Habitats Directive – the most important habitats.Kilronan/Cill Rónáin was one of 46 schemes approved by Minister Síle de Valera in 2003 at a projected total cost of €350 million for some 46 schemes. It never happened. Water Needs Assessments confrmed the need in 2006 and again in 2009. In 2008, the Council published the The ponding was so thick and stagnant that birds and wildlife were walking along this pond of waste. Both solidifed and liquid material were reported ‘at least 0.5-0.75 metres in depthInis MórtoThe biggest Aran island is awash with raw sewage but after years of neglect a legal action has been initiatedBy Tony LowesENVIRONMENT

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    Feeling the Heat

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    72March/April 2022to participating in climate demonstrations – it appears that being photographed waving a banner remains a “bridge too far” for the majority of working scientists. Whether this too changes as climate impacts intensify remains to be seen.While as individuals, most scientists are happy to engage in advocacy, three quarters of respondents did not think the IPCC itself should engage in advocacy work, believing it is more efective when it is seen to be strictly “sticking to the science”. Given the repeated eforts, mainly from the right, to politicise climate science and to discredit scientifc evidence by casting doubt on the integrity and honesty of the entire IPCC process, this caution is understandable.The stone wall that most scientists erect between their personal lives and their work has, in the face of the climate emergency, begun to crumble. Two in five survey respondents admitted that their knowledge of global warming has afected their decision on where to live. When it came to the most intimate personal decision on whether or not to have children, some 17% stated it had had an impact, while 21% said that global warming had infuenced their lifestyle choices, including those relating to diet, transport and travel.Being a professional in a feld often confers feelings of invincibility: many doctors for instance intuitively believe that illness is something that happens to other people, and can feel genuinely shocked to fnd themselves as patients. Similarly, scientists may have hitherto felt professionally immune to touchy-feely concepts like “climate anxiety”. We now know for sure that this is no longer the case. John Gibbons is an environmental journalist and commentatorassessing the causes and extent of climate change. It published its Working Group report last August.According to the IPCC: “Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 °C or even 2° C will be beyond reach”. When asked whether they believed they would witness “catastrophic impacts of climate change in your lifetime”, an astonishing 82% of respondents said yes. With ages of IPCC scientists ranging from the 30s-60s, this indicates just how close the great majority believe we are now to catastrophe.On a more positive note, one in fve scientists said they still expect nations to act to limit global warming to around 2°C.While traditionally, scientists have been extremely reluctant to engage in climate advocacy of any kind, fearing it might be seen as a loss of objectivity, the Nature survey found 81% of respondents agreeing that climate scientists “should engage in advocacy on this issue”.Some two thirds of scientists report that they already engage in climate-advocacy work, with science-promotion via speeches, articles and videos being by far the most common mediums. Two in five said they personally contacted lawmakers or government ofcials to advocate on climate-policy issues, and a similar number sign petitions and letters supporting climate action.However, just one in four scientists admitted As the climate emergency deepens, the pendulum of public and political opinion is swaying wildly, from optimism to absolute despair, and every point in between. However, one group uniquely placed to ofer both a personal view and an expert perspective are the hundreds of scientists who co-author the mammoth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports.The science journal Naturerecently canvassed the views of these IPCC experts. The results are far from encouraging. A total of 234 scientists replied to the anonymised survey, and three in fve of them believe the Earth will heat by at least a devastating 3°C by the end of the century. The target of the 2015 Paris Agreement was to limit global warming to “well below” the 2°C danger line, and ideally, to as close to 1.5° as possible. Seven years and one global pandemic later, global emissions remain on an extremely dangerous trajectory.When asked if they believed the world now faces a “climate crisis”, nine in 10 respondents agreed. Almost two thirds of the scientists surveyed admitted to personally experiencing “anxiety, grief or other distress” because of their concerns over climate change.What is particularly sobering about these fndings is that senior scientists are professionally sceptical and cautious, with their careers built around objective observation and empirical data, rather than personal feelings or impressions. They are, in essence, the very last group you would expect to be sounding the alarm bells – unless they truly believe the situation is indeed dire. The scientists surveyed by Nature are members of the IPCC working group charged with The science journal Nature reported three in fve IPCC experts believe the Earth will heat by at least a devastating 3°C by the end of the centuryFeeling the HeatEven the scientists admit to feeling personal anxiety, grief or distress, over global warmingBy John GibbonsENVIRONMENT

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    The work of Claire Keegan: Can you ever have the same thing twice?

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    66March/April 2022WEXFORD-BORN CLAIRE Keegan burst in on the Irish literary world in 1999 with her aptly named collection of short stories, ‘Antarctica’. These studies in extremity were followed by another collection, ‘Walk the Blue Fields’ (2008), which saw Keegan apply a less heady, more sedate artistry. But it was in 2010 that ‘Foster’, her novella and winner of the Davy Byrne’s Award for Irish Writing, frst located her alongside Maeve Brennan, William Trevor and John McGahern as one the fnest The work of Claire Keegan: Can you ever have the same thing twice?The ideal short story is like a knifeWhen working within the confnes of a short story, the result will either work or it won’t.practitioners of the short form. After an eleven-year-long wait Keegan has resurfaced with the highly anticipated ‘Small Things Like These’, another miniature study. Many writers have agonised over that perfect thing, that mythic little creature, the short story: so favoured and pursued and perfected, most obvious–ly by the great minds of Irish and American storytell–ing. Still more voices have sought to conjure the ex–act formula required for its construction. Where does that instinct come from we may wonder, the instinct By Nadia WhistonCULTURE March/April 2022 67to categorise the elements that must combine to ensure that a miniature work of art happens in the way it is meant to. Perhaps this aware–ness tells us that, when working within the confnes of a short story, the result will either work or it won’t. It is either a perfect thing or is not. The success of the thing is absolute.For F Scott Fitzgerald the secret lay in fnd–ing the “key emotion”. Michael Swanwick felt that the short story “should be something that can be held in the mind all in one piece”, that the “ideal short story is like a knife – strongly made, well balanced, and with an absolute minimum of moving parts”. Claire Keegan’s ‘Foster’ (originally pub–lished as a short story in the New Yorker, later as a novella by Faber) has haunted readers for a long time. It is the type of story that comes to rest in you. When you think of it, you can feel it there, the way you remember the feeling of your dog’s head in your hands, its weight, its memory. It tells the story of an unnamed 10-year-old narrator and her stay with the Kinsellas on their farm in Wexford in the hot summer of 1989. Her mother is pregnant again and she is to stay with them until she is called back. It is the familiarity of ‘Foster’, its clarity, its specifc mode of humanness which makes it a difcult book to get over. Linguistically it is propelled by the purity of vision in the describ–ing ‘I’ of the narrator. Her essential innocence acknowledges and uncovers, without senti–mentality, the pain of the adults whose world she enters. She enables their grief to breathe, to be understood. And while she tells us who they are, about the tenderness with which they treat her, we come to glimpse her pain and her longing. With remarkable, bafing, simplicity readers are reminded of the imperative for, and the exquisite consequences of, afection; of our need for it, of the moment when we re–alise what having it feels like, of the moment when it gets taken away from us. In ‘Foster’Keegan re-entered, shape-shifter-like, into a space she had occupied before. In her debut, ‘Antarctica’, Keegan had stepped weightlessly a handful of times into the soul of a pre-adolescent girl. It is a role over which she displays quixotic power. One which, by vir–tue perhaps of its timing, ofers the author the ability to intercede upon the privacy of their thoughts, capturing them with a light androgy–nous hand. These very young women are often watching their mothers, see their fathers mis–understand – often mistreat – their mothers, they watch their mothers try to be women, try to be mothers, they watch their mothers fall, retreat, rebel and collapse. Interestingly and refreshingly, their almost tomboyish observa–tions ofer no feminist stance, no pointed or driven critiques. The women’s tales are set among the very physical provincialism of rural Ireland, root–ing them in an earthy salty muddy very real and quite asexual nightmare. Humanness is positioned directly against the elemental; the harsh demands of life take the form of trau–matised chickens. Heifers cry and moan and bewildered sheep are driven to the sales in the boot of the family Volkswagen. There is a degree of comedy which binds the margins be–tween nature and love, sex and violence very close together, and it has the efect of neutral–ising the many elements, establishing them as inseparable forces; capturing the ofbeat, awkward, cruel, often tragic reality of human existence. But through all of this Keegan exerts an im–pressive control over her visions which prohib–its drama. And unlike, for example, the important voice of feminist short-story-teller, Meave Kelly, Keegan communicates the devastating emo–tion of her stories with images rather than by lines of reported thought: we are not told what to feel, nor what our characters feel, instead meaning is trapped inside the images of what our characters see. The efect is not strident, it does not protest; it is evocative, poetic and necessary. The androgyny of Keegan’s voice draws un–expected comparison with other Irish voices in literature. Colin Barrett’s ‘Young Skins’ (a collection When you think of Keegan’s ‘Foster’, you can feel it there, the way you remember the feeling of your dog’s head in your hands, its weight, its memoryfrom 2013 which won the Frank O ‘Connor International Short Story Award, the Rooney Prize for Literature, and the Guardian First Book Award) has the abrasive power of early Keegan. Barrett’s ‘Bat’, like Keegan’s ‘Love in the Tall Grass’,is one of the fnest studies of a life I have ever read. Unlike the author of ‘Foster’, Barrett chooses as his constant stage the Irish provincial town; his hero the male adolescent. His characters do not witness sexuality, they are

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    Irish as ecology

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    62March/April 2022SoulPÁDRAIG PEARSE, the Irish revolutionary leader of 1916, declared “Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam,” which translates as “A country without its language is a country without a soul”. Certainly, by 1916 Ireland was a country that had lost its sense of self. Although acts of rebellion ultimately resulted in an independent state for roughly two-thirds of the island, much of what was hoped would be restored fell by the wayside. The reasons for Ireland’s predicaments are, of course, historical. The sins of colonialism reach into contemporary Ireland still. What Ireland has become is an imitator of trends, as opposed to a nation certain of itself and its defning characteristics. What Pearse described as the country’s soul remains lost. This sense of loss predominates in us as a people since residing in Ireland’s language Gaeilge(Irish) lies much of our heritage. It’s a language most of us don’t know. The language is at the periphery of a nation dislocated from itself. Irish as ecologyBy Liam Tiernach Ó Beagáin and Laoise Ní FhearchairThe language: from politics to culture to society marketed as environmentalismis promised for us, the humans. Neoliberalism is winning the ideological battle. The Irish view of life is weakening. But it can be resuscitated by the gems held in our language. Our culture is often mocked and belittled. The language is often demeaned. Viewing one language as superior to others is utterly rejected, indeed disdained, by contemporary linguistic theory but how often do we hear of contemptuous alienation from the simple pieties of the Leaving Certifcate novel, ‘Peig’. Modern life is full of this. The relentlessly driven ‘power-couple’ Vogue Williams and Spencer Matthews (we shall refer to them as “WM”) recently described Gaeilgeas “an ugly language”. Ryanair, Ireland’s low-fares airline openly mocked the language when Irish speakers asked for an Irish-language option on its website, while 3 Mobile asks people with “difcult” Irish names to translate them into English. Attitudes like these are not new. For example, the great Catholic emancipator and royalist Daniel O’Connell viewed Gaeilgeas inferior to English. We discuss here how our currently unused language can help move us toward a psychologically healthier, more culturally rich and caring society, and in doing so end the alienation of a nation. 1. Contemporary Ireland: Neoliberalism, humans and superhumansToday Ireland is haunted by colonialism, while a rampant capitalism perpetuates deference to outside ideologies that confict with who we are as a people. Neoliberal ideology encourages the false neo-Darwinian belief that it’s sink or swim. One must outdo the other to ‘get ahead’. But always inherent in the Irish attitude to life is zeal for strength in unity: that we are all in this together and that we look out for one another. This is what we want, but it’s not what we have. On the one hand, massive tax-free profts are guaranteed for multi-billion dollar corporations that we will describe as the superhumans. While, on the other hand, little CULTURE March/April 2022 63Some of these mind-sets towards Irish culture can be summarised in the following aphorism: what was: inferior, what’s now: superior. But it’s an absolute myth. What we currently have is an unsustainable greed machine built on a post-colonial porridge of wafe-ideology. Certainly, whatever of O’Connell, contemporary views such as WM are driven by the language of a specifc individualism that, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche so despised (‘On the pathos of truth’, 1872) – one that Jean-Paul Sartre warned would lead us to an inauthentic life (‘Being and Nothingness’, 1943). In buying into the view of life that the superhumans ofer, the individual, believing themselves to be free, hands over responsibility for their lives to them. From a deontological perspective, the individual is but a means to an end, who is unknowingly used in acts of repulsion towards Kant’s ethical demands and thus becomes the amadán or fool. If a language not only represents societal concepts but also shapes them, in what the great linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) described as a nation’s “character of language”, then perhaps the language common in Ireland today (whatever its tongue might be) describes where our values lie. Elite decisions appear to result in ever-greater choices for everyone. However, choices trend to what seem to be consumer-driven demands, since these choices are agreeable with elite interests. Vacuous freedoms of choice in consumer purchases are illusions. Actual choices in other areas bear this point out, since there are little or no choices. Healthcare and housing are not easily available unlike, say, noodles.Humans demand togetherness. For example we want afordable healthcare and housing and we want the superhumans to pay their fair share. However, this is not in the interest of the superhumans who are so neatly entwined with government. For example, over half of Ireland’s TDs are millionaires tied to property and fnancial instruments (Philip Ryan and Wayne O’Connor, ‘Revealed: Half of Ireland’s TDs are Millionaires’, The Irish Independent, 13 May 2018). The cosiness between elites and TDs has been encouraged by successive Irish governments through tax-exemptions that allow the superhumans to buy up large swathes of housing, efectively barring the humans. What has resulted is another governmental crisis and is one that is best swept under the rug since such stories are not becoming in a media concerned with elite interests (the classic by Herman and Chomsky, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, 1988, explains why). Real freedom is saved for persons seen to be of merit. Despite what their very own mythoswould have us mere mortals believe, these superhuman entities are not signs of humanity overcoming itself, but more than likely, if allowed to continue they are signs of humanity ending itself. Let us focus on tax for a second. It is estimated that multinational corporations have avoided €1 trillion in taxes through what is known as the Double Irishtax loophole (Paul Mark, ‘Ireland is the world’s biggest corporate “tax haven”, say academics’, Irish Times, 13 June 2018). Apple has been an egregious benefciary of the Double Irish. While Ireland was still struggling under

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    Haughey: Conor Lenihan reviews the well-written, but unfortunately authorized, biography of the disgraced former Taoiseach

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    60March/April 2022Both the source of the Haughey money and his energetic libido deserve more detailed exploration GARY MURPHY of Dublin City University hit the pre-Christmas market with a 716-page tome on Charles J Haughey. Unfortunately it will not be the last word on his subject.It is not a criticism of this book to state that many more books will emerge on the topic of Mr Haughey. Murphy has provided the most exhaustive account to date. The DCU academic has been greatly helped by his access to the Haughey private papers and assistance from the Haughey family. The result is a colour portrait of a man who has often been painted in black and white.My own book, ‘Haughey – Prince of Power’,  written in 2015, drew from my own connections with the former Taoiseach. The pressure for me was to pare the material down to make my biography readable and accessible to younger readers. Gary Murphy, as befts an academic, has written at length and in great detail. His  portrait of Haughey’s early years and fam–Haughey: Conor Lenihan reviews the well written, but unfortunately authorised, biography of the disgraced former TaoiseachHis assertion that “there was no evidence of any political impropriety by Haughey in relation to the monies he received” counts as one of the most egregious misjudgements in recent Irish political biographyily background is new and insightful. However, Murphy treads carefully and too cau–tiously on the two explosive aspects to the Haughey career – his corruption and his 27-year relationship with femme fatale Terry Keane.The frst Moriarty report concluded that Haughey “unethically” received more than £9m from busi–nessmen between 1979 and 1996, and that he had done corrupt favours for some donors including a youthful Revenue-challenged Ben Dunne and a passport-seeking Arab sheik. The incidence and scale of these payments, Moriarty declaimed, “particularly when governments led by Mr Haughey were championing austerity, can only be said to have devalued the quality of a modern democracy”. CULTUREFlash, for the 1960s March/April 2022 61Murphy unwisely downplays this. His assertion that “there was no evidence of any political impropriety by Haughey in relation to the monies he received” counts as one of the most egregious misjudgements in recent Irish political biography. Certainly the book sufers as the ofcial or authorised biography and UCD professor Diarmuid Ferriter inferred that Murphy was derailed by deference. It as if Murphy has both a disdain and mental reservations on Haughey’s prime delinquencies. Wide-ranging existing research on his seamier sides: corruption and Keane, goes unreferenced. Keane gave a series of very telling interviews about her fery and longstanding relationship with Haughey. Both the source of the Haughey money and his ener–getic libido deserve more detailed exploration. For instance with the Haughey millions stashed in the Crown colony of the Cayman islands it is hard not to believe that CJH was fatally compromised in relation to dealing with the British, a belief propounded by his successor Albert Reynolds. Haughey’s furtive ofshore accounts can hardly have passed unnoticed by hostile UK security services.I knew Terry Keane and conclude the opposite to Murphy –  she was very infuential and did act as a political confdante to Haughey throughout their time together. My father, Brian, often dined with the couple. He often noted that in many respects her political judgements were far more acute than Haughey”s. Terry Keane also brought an eclectic string of new admirers to the Haughey table – drawn from the world of media, the arts, and fashion and not naturally supporters of Fianna Fáil.Haughey’s supreme failure was his caution. He rarely refound in his late career as leader and Tao–iseach the extraordinary reforming and enlightened approach that he purveyed as Minister for Justice and Finance in the 1960s – the Succession Act, the tax exemption for artists and free travel for the el–derly.   The decisiveness of the early years years was later superseded by a surprisingly dithering Charvet modality.The Arrns Trial, a serious car crash and repeated health problems seem to have rendered him risk averse on key agendas. On the positive side, unlike his nemesis Garret FitzGerald, he had tremendous executive skills and could both conceive and imple–ment big, some might say grandiose, projects or plans; the IFSC, Temple Bar, the Museum of Modern Art. Haughey was also the frst Taoiseach to hire an advisor on the environment, academic ornithologist David Cabot, well before ecology was normalised in the Irish public consciousness.For ofcial Ireland his greatest shame is his naked venality and criminal pursuit of money to support his lavish lifestyle and high-maintenance political career. Ownership of racehorses, a Gandon Mansion with a stocked cellar and an island of Kerry, sparked rumours but embarrassingly little media investiga–tion. It’s honestly difcult to say if the same caution would prevail today.Unfortunately, very few villains of Irish public life actually go to jail. The irony in Haughey’s case was that it was prejudicial gauche comments by the often zealous Mary Harney that allowed him to avoid the rap of the criminal law.In the Gary Murphy version Haughey’s dodginess reads like the prosaic graft and cor–ruption of US city bosses like Boss Croker and James Cur–ley of Boston. Such carry-on was of course antithetical to statesmanship. Counter-intu–itively the abrasive Haughey was chronically insecure ap–parently preferring to play as a big fsh in a small pool than risk his strokes in a big pool. The novelist Francis Stuart once acerbically remarked that the problem with Haughey was that he wasn’t gangster enough.Disillusioned with his early experiences as Taoiseach Haughey confded in Terry Keane that he wanted to quit public life and settle in the South of France, with her of course. Sadly he spent so much efort becoming Taoise–ach he was either too cynical or too exhausted by the time he ascended. His success after 1987 was largely due to an under-appreciated new-found humility and the knowledge that he only had a very short time to confound his critics.Insecurity didn’t cut across his ego. PJ Mara recorded that Haughey had “a

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    Donkeys and Lions led by Lyons

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    56March/April 2022GRADUATE RESEARCH students are often told of a drunk who has lost his keys elsewhere but insists on searching for them under a street lamp “because that’s where the light is”. It is a warning of the danger of relying on data merely because they are available rather than because they address a research question. More formally termed “convenience sampling”, data gathered by this methodology, unlike random sampling, are treated with caution because of difculty in applying the results generally.For this reason, academic research papers publish a prominent statement of the limitations of the scope and application of their methodology. Acknowledge–ments of any such limitations are conspicuously lacking in the coverage of reports of Irish property markets published by the two leading property web–sites, Daft and MyHome. Nor, for that matter, do such considerations prevent politicians waving these reports at each other across the Dáil chamber as con–clusive proof of their arguments. Admittedly, it is difcult to explain nuance and com–plexity. But that is precisely the job of experts, and all the more so when they have chosen to put themselves forward as a public commentator. Too many of the con–tributions to our debate on housing are either blithely, or wilfully, ignorant of just exactly what is being meas–ured in the reports that are so readily quoted. In some instances, the reports themselves do little to correct these misconceptions. What qualifcations J Vivian CookeDaft:the solution to the housing crisis depends on facts-led public-policy but we need to be discriminating about the facts we choose and who chooses them, even when it’s Ronan Lyons Daft Reports whose “statistics are based on properties advertised on Daft.ie for a given period” all too readily confate the observations of its sample with the overall national situationand explanations are to be found skulk at the very back of the reports in the small print.Daft Reports whose “statistics are based on proper–ties advertised on Daft.ie for a given period” all too readily confate the observations of its sample with the overall national situation. And they do so with a shocking casualness that would not be accepted in peer-reviewed academic publications. Just one of the many examples of this tendency is the commentary in its Q4 2021 Rental Report, which refers to “712 ads for rental homes in Dublin”, but, in the report’s headline, this becomes “712: The number of available rental homes in Dublin”. And, in the Irish Times: “Daft.ie’s rental price report for the fnal quarter of 2021 shows there were just 712 properties available in Dublin, the lowest level since its records began in 2006”. This was inac–curate and the Irish Timeswas far from alone in misrepresenting it.What the Daft property fgures measure is not a crisis in supply available to rent, but – to be entirely accurate – a crisis in the number of adverts on its web–site. While Daft could be, indeed most likely is, experiencing a cashfow squeeze due to underlying market shortage in property supply, such a conclusion is suggested but not proven by their own data. Property website reports are unable to overcome problems generated because they do not capture transactions that are:• Not advertised on their website (!);• Actual prices paid as distinct from the initial prices advertised (also !);MEDIADonkeys and lions led by Lyons March/April 2022 57• The rents paid by people in existing tenancies;• Of-market transactions;• Self builds;• Institutional activity.This fawed methodology also explains the discrepancy between Daft’s fnding that “(T)he number of available rental homes in Ireland is 1,397” in Q3 of 2021 rental market, and record–ing by the Residential Tenancy Board of 15,711 new tenancies in the same period. While the data underlying both statistics are true, they present very diferent pictures from each other. Diferences in research design and methodol–ogy inevitable leads to diferences in fndings. The Department of Finance’s comparisons of property reports from diferent sources show sig–nifcant variations in their results. The magnitude of their diferences precludes the possibility that all of them are accurate. suggested technical refnements to the Council’s predictive model, PII were satisfed with a call for an “independent review of the HNDA and supply targets to ensure that Dublin can achieve its full potential”. Both submissions were true to their authors’ track records and concluded that DCC should remove existing restrictions on the con–struction of build-to-rent projects. Supply and Demand is an important analytical construct, but it has its limitations. Most notably, it only holds true when all other things are equal; yet all other things never remain constant. This is a point that Lyons made in these pages back in the November 2014 issue: “Everything else being equal. . . [U]nfortunately, everything is not equal”. The information generated from a simplifed model of supply and demand can inform a coun–terfactual situation: that is what prices would have been for a diferent quantum of supply. Which, although interesting of itself, only pro–vides a necessary but insufcient frst step to explain price movements. Accurate, real-world observations of the property market require more methodological sophistication that, among other things, account for intervening variables and con–trol for diferences within a sample population.For instance, in addition to other limitations, the author qualifes the Daft Report fndings by highlighting how market trends have changed due to the increase in the proportion of longer terms tenancies – ie 4-year tenancies. It is difcult to see how the Daft Rental Report controls for this factor as the flter on its website only provides for tenancy terms as far as 3 years. Even then, the 6 properties nationally returned by this flter as available for a minimum tenancy term of 3 years, put the minimum term as 1 year + in the text of their adverts. If the Daft Rent report only uses observations from its own listings, then it is fail–ing to account properly for what its author admits Supply and Demand is an important analytical construct, but it only holds true when all other things are equal; yet all other things

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