General
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by Michael Smith Angela Kerins was born in Waterford and grew up between Cashel and her mother’s hometown of Tramore Co. Waterford. Educated at the Presentation convent in Cashel, she was trained as a nurse and midwife in England in which role she worked in the UK, the middle East, the USA and Ireland.. She is married to Sean, lives near Woodstown, Co Waterford and has one daughter and one son. A one-time member of the Fianna Fáil party, she is a ubiquitous face on Ireland’s boards. Angela Kerins is a board member of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, a member of Comreg’s Consumer Advisory Panel and a member of the Department of Foreign Affairs NGO committee on Human Rights. She has also served as a member of the National Executive of IBEC. She is a judge on the 2009 National Media awards and even appeared on off the Rails to “see what it’s like shopping for the larger figure”. In 2003, Kerins was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws (LLD) by the National University of Ireland, University College Dublin for her achievements in the disability sector. It is, however, for her roles in disability and equality bodies that multi-tasking Ms Kerins has been the object of some controversy. She is chair of the Equality Authority. Following cuts to its budget its chief executive, Niall Crowley, and several board members resigned. Kerins has had to endure particular criticism of her own role as chairwoman while retaining high-profile positions as chair of the National Disability Authority, board member of the Health Information Quality Authority and chief executive of the multi-million euro Rehab Group, which is her day job. For several years, Kerins has been a favoured insider for successive Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrat administrations and was known to be close to the junior ministers with responsibility for disability at various times, Mary Wallace and Frank Fahey. She is a professed admirer of health minister, Mary Harney. Kerins also has good contacts with in Fine Gael as she worked closely in Rehab with party strategist, Frank Flannery, whom she replaced as chief executive in recent years. She earned kudos for helping former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, deliver the controversial Disability Act in 2005 despite widespread opposition from a number of groups who felt it did not provide for the “disability-proofing” of all government legislation which they believed conferred minimal and inadequate rights on those with disabilities. In her capacity as chairwoman of the Disability Legislation Consultation Group (DLCG), Kerins helped to generate sufficient support from the sector to push through the Act which commits the government, rather vaguely, to “take account of the impact on people with disabilities” when preparing legislation and policy. While it gave individuals a right to assessment of their needs it did not guarantee any services on foot of the assessment. It also gave public bodies ten years to ensure that their buildings are accessible to the disabled. Last year, Kerins was plunged into controversy when the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, announced the drastic cut of 43%, from almost €6 million to €3.3 million, in the Equality Authority’s budget. Having spoken publicly of the need to retain the resources necessary to do its work effectively, Ms Kerins later appeared to accept the budget cut and was less than generous in her praise of Crowley when he did the honourable thing and resigned. His departure was followed by those of six board members including Therese Murphy of the National Women’s Council, Frank Goodwin of the Carers’ Association, two representatives from IBEC, and two trade union appointees. In early March, in the presence of a notably grateful John Waters who claimed in the Irish Times that his agenda had come in from the cold, Kerins launched the 2009-2011 Strategic Plan for the Authority and promised that it was satisfied it could meet its targets despite the swingeing budget cuts. “We are confident that through effective use of resources and a can-do attitude we can fully deliver on the ambitions set out in this plan”, Kerins said. Mark Kelly is the spokesperson for the Equality and Rights Alliance representing some seventy rights and disability agencies which was formed last year in response to the budget cuts across the sector. He said Kerins and her remaining board colleagues “had no grasp of the economic reality” if they thought they could achieve their targets with a 43% cut in funds. Kerins compounded the credibility problem when she told journalists that the Authority expected to open 450 case files this year. In 2007, at the very peak of its operations and on a full budget the Authority opened 204 cases. The plan states that 200 case files will be “progressed” every year of the plan but it is unclear how this relates to the figure of 450 new case files that she predicts will be opened this year alone. The details of the plan also raise further questions about the future ability of the Equality Authority to fulfill its mandate and to comply with European Union standards and directives on equality. Its goals, while admirable, are largely aspirational including an aim to promote greater awareness of rights and responsibilities, developing engagement with the European institutions and engaging with “men’s” groups. Critics of the recent budget changes and the planned decentralisation of staff to new offices in Roscrea complain that the whole exercise is designed to neuter the body which, under Crowley’s direction, caused no little discomfort to the establishment, including government departments, by its determined pursuit of equality cases against the State. Given her roles in the National Disability Authority, HIQA and Rehab, Kerins must be aware that other planned investigations by the Equality Authority under Crowley had the potential to cause her some personal discomfort. A now abandoned proposal to examine the conditions of employment for disabled people working in sheltered workshops could have had repercussions for the Rehab Group which she heads. The NDA was supposed to have developed strong guidelines for
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For once, a broadsheet is talking about Village’s initiative to prosecute possible offences arising from the planning and payments tribunals and banking collapses. To be specific, it’s the Sunday Times, and we welcome their interest. The next step, when we have our press conference, will be to get some accurate coverage. This morning I wrote to the Sunday Times explaining that I was disappointed with coverage of Village’s prosecutions initiative in the prominent Atticus political gossip column in last Sunday’s newspaper which, I said, was “damaging and largely inaccurate”. The author of the column, well-regarded news editor Colin Coyle, replied unabashedly saying he was merely reporting what someone else said. He wasn’t and, even if he was, if he had more professional journalistic values he’d publish the necessary corrections rather than fobbing me off with the breezy suggestion that I submit a letter. This seems typical of the low standards that are indulged in Irish journalism. A few weeks ago the same newspaper wrote that Village had gone out of business! I’ll write to the editor now but it may well ultimately be a job for the Press Ombudsman/Council [Ed’s note: the ST editor in the end agreed to publish an op-ed article in reply] – to be published on 24 Nov] Have a read of the Sunday Times Atticus coverage below along with my reply: “’Man from the Village still wants his day of judgment’ We are still waiting for Michael Smith, editor of Village Magazine, to unveil the details of his promised public prosecutions against ‘tribunal villains and allegedly dishonest bankers’. Smith promised an announcement in September if the DPP did not take action against named individuals. He plans to exploit a little-used common law mechanism allowing members of the public to take private criminal prosecutions and hopes this will ‘change the prosecuting authorities’ attitudes to alleged white collar crime’. Last week though, he admitted the process was ‘slow moving’ but said a well known solicitors’ firm and an ‘eminent and dynamic’ senior counsel has been hired, while a witness is preparing an affidavit. Joseph B Mannix, a solicitor, writing in the Kerryman recently, doesn’t fancy Village’s chances of success. He points out a recent High Court judgement ruled that a private prosecution taken by a hotelier against two IBRC officials could not go ahead without the consent of the DPP. Without consent, the prosecution must be struck out by the District Court”. My reply I wrote that the article: “is damaging and largely inaccurate. The thrust of it posits quixotic me and my team of under-prepared eminences being struck out by the District Court, because we ludicrously weren’t aware of the consent requirement that sage Mr Mannix, and Atticus on behalf of the Sunday Times, could have told us about. The key line, I’m sure you’ll agree, is ‘Without consent, the prosecution must be struck out by the District Court’. In fact, consent is not required. Nor does the IBRC case referred to by Mr Mannix say it is generally required. It is required for certain cases which we will avoid. One of those is fraud, which was the issue in the IBRC case. Crime is dealt with either summarily or on indictment. In neither case is ‘consent’ required as a rule. In fact a private prosecutor can carry the matter all the way to conviction if it is a summary offence. For indictable offences s/he can take it to the return for trial and then the DPP has the option of issuing a nolle prosequi, which may be susceptible to judicial review. I conveyed this in my short email last week to you where I said ‘The objective is to take a case as far as we can’. But choosing the right offence is one of the issues occupying our lawyers. The IBRC case, contrary to the implication in the column, is generally seen as (very) liberal for common informers and was reported as such by the Sunday Independent over the summer. I include below links to that article, to the case itself in full, and to a Goodbody synopsis, which confirm what I am saying. Nor am I looking for my ‘day of judgment’ as the second most important line in the article – which leads the whole column, states. As I said ‘The objective is to take a case as far as we can’, for reasons stated. And no-one ever said I would unveil details of ‘public’ prosecutions as the article states, but of ‘private’ ones. I’m sure you can concede this is complex and that care is needed in dealing with it, as well as in covering it. I’m sure you’d agree this fragile, though potentially important, initiative deserves better. Do you think you could please engineer corrections, of the same (considerable) prominence as the mistakes, in this weekend’s edition? I think it could be helpful if I was consulted about the wording. All the best, Michael Kelly v Distict Court Judge Ryan http://courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/09859e7a3f34669680256ef3004a27de/96091e90305ef8fa80257baa003d2e6e?OpenDocument; http://www.algoodbody.ie/insightspublications/high_court_permits_private_prosecution_against_bank_officials; http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/court-clears-way-for-people-to-sue-individual-bankers-29453856.html” And the Sunday Times’ response “Michael, Colin Coyle here. [I received] your email. Feel free to write a letter to us for publication. I disagree that the piece is damaging and inaccurate. I simply report what Mr Mannix has published already. If you want to take issue with his view, set it out in your letter. Colin Colin Coyle News Editor The Sunday Times 4th Floor Bishop’s Square Redmond’s Hill Dublin 2 Ireland +353 1 479 2437″
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Why do billionaires tend to be visionless climate-denying misanthropists? Village Oct/Nov 2013 – 11 Oct As evil plutocrat villains go, Australia’s Gina Reinhart is straight from central casting, writes John Gibbons. The daughter of a mining tycoon, she is now regarded as the world’s wealthiest woman, with an estimated worth of around $20 billion. Her fantastic wealth is all inherited; her parents’ vast fortune was made by exploiting Australia’s mineral wealth. Reinhart is also quite outspoken. Last year she bemoaned the fact that Australians were not prepared to work for less than two dollars an hour, unlike African workers. This fact made the multi-squillionaire “worry for this country’s future”. Reinhart, whose wealth is entirely serendipitous, is not shy of advice for other people who would like to get ahead. They should, she says, “stop whingeing” and “Do something to make more money – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working”. Mind you, at the two dollars an hour wage she prefers, the average Australian would have to work for approximately five million years to match the pile Ms Reinhart got handed by daddy and mummy. “humungous wealth is of little value when the electrical grid is permanently down, the global economy is dead and food production has been destroyed by chaotic weather. Odds-on” Reinhart is also, shock, horror, a climate-change-denier. In the last three years, tired of all the left-wing whining in the media, she has taken the step that more and more billionaires, both home and abroad, have discovered is foolproof in dramatically improving your media profile –that is, to start hoovering up newspapers and broadcasters. She is now the largest shareholder in Fairfax media whose journalists were reportedly openly fearful that Reinhart would turn them into a “mouthpiece for the mining industry”. Her best buddy is Rupert Murdoch (net value: $13.4 billion), the tycoon who uses his web of media interests to grossly interfere in politics and undermine democratic oversight and accountability around the world. The influence of Murdoch’s odious Fox network in polarising and debasing US politics and demonising science, specifically climate science, is now well understood. According to Forbes magazine, there are 1,426 billionaires in the world. Collectively, their combined wealth is around $5.4 trillion – $5,431,810,000,000 in longhand. The net worth of energy-industry mega-tycoons the Koch brothers is around $68 billion – around the same as the entire GPD of Cuba, a country with a population of over 11 million. The Koch brothers invest some of their vast wealth in funding anti-climate change disinformation and astroturfing groups. They are also now dabbling in buying up media companies. Here’s a simple thought experiment: imagine our 1,400-odd billionaires were planning to head off, in a fleet of luxury aircraft, on a flight path that would take them thousands of miles from land and crossing through some hazardous airspace along the way. First off, you can be certain they would insist the aircraft had been thoroughly checked prior to departure. This work would have been entrusted to the best engineers. Similarly, plotting their course, getting detailed weather forecasts and ensuring their planes’ fuel supplies were adequate, all this work would be placed in the hands of the leading experts in their field. And, if they decided to bring along an in-flight medical team, these would be hand-picked based on experience, expertise and their status among their peers. You get the picture. The world’s billionaires generally know how expensive it can be to take the counsel of numbskulls. And yet. When it comes to the Big One, whether or not industrial civilisation can survive the next couple of decades, and whether humanity itself can escape the jaws of an encircling trap comprising resource exhaustion, biodiversity collapse, ecosystem failure and climate catastrophe, the world’s richest people can hardly be accused of doing nothing. Quite the opposite: their funding, media access and moral support is enabling an international cabal of climate deniers, liars and assorted charlatans to befuddle and bamboozle with impunity. What these patrician geniuses appear to have entirely misunderstood is that we (and yes, that includes the super-rich) really are all in this leaky tub known as the biosphere together. Wealth, even humungous wealth, is of little value when international trade has collapsed, the electrical grid is permanently down, the global economy is dead and food production has been destroyed by chaotic weather. All of these vistas are odds-on in a world in which average surface temperatures will have shot up by over 4°C this century. The controversy-averse IPCC routinely low-balls risks by excluding real but difficult-to-measure threats such as permafrost methane releases, yet it still says we have no better than a 50/50 shot at avoiding a 4°C global warming calamity. And that slim shot assumes we all act now to slash emissions. You and I can fret, we can lobby, we can make our plans, but in reality, as individuals, we remain almost powerless. Our billionaire betters, on the other hand, have power and influence almost beyond measure. Yet, rather than acting to save even their own necks, many of them work diligently and spend freely to actually hasten our collective appointment with mass extinction. Let’s conclude with a – perhaps wishful – update to that ancient Greek quotation: ‘those whom the gods would destroy, they first make filthy rich’. John Gibbons is a specialist environment writer and tweets @think_or_swim
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Public sector not reforming or cutting – as taxes rise Health service inflation second highest in EU ‘spending on health has shrunk by just 128 million euro over the last two years’. ‘Between December 2005 and mid-2012, cumulative Irish consumer price inflation (CPI) was 9.5%. Health CPI was 21.4%’ With an early Budget looming, the circus of ‘austerity is overbaked’ politics has rolled into town. The Labour and the FG backbenchers are out in force trying desperately to salvage what little popular support they still might command on the streets. Not to be ever outdone, Fianna Fail, freshly again converted to the Church of Socialistas has been unleashing torrents of social consciousness. Things are getting so hot on the backlash speaking circuit that Siptu was able to net even Jack O’Connor a gig. Their star performer was last seen thundering at the MacGill Summer School a potent brew of outlandishly misinformed comparisons of European and American policies for dealing with the Great Recession and calls on for an end to ‘human-rights-violating’ austerity. The problem is that, once you come down from the highs of this Keynesian Lollapalooza, you’re still in Ireland where the Government continues to run an insolvent state with spending less than revenue and where society needs bigger and more effective expenditures. The fiscal mess we are in has nothing to do with the lack of economic growth and everything to do with the policy institutions that the current Government inherited from the decades of political clientelism presided over by its predecessors. Let us look at some numbers. In the first six months (H1) of 2013, the Irish State’s current expenditure was 27.12 billion euro, just 352 million euro shy of the level in H1 of 2012, and 3.2 billion euro more than we spent in H1 of 2011. Meanwhile, tax revenues rose from 15.3 billion euro in H1 2011 to 17.6 billion euro in H1 this year. Crunching ‘austerity’ based on ‘savage cuts’, five years in, still looks more like a tax squeeze and slippery spending re-allocation from one programme to another. Meanwhile, Department of Health spending is now running at 6.539 billion for H1 2013, down on EUR 6.754 billion for H1 2011 – a whopping reduction of EUR215 million. Remember too that 2011-2012 increases in the cost of beds charged to the private insurers (ie to ordinary insurance patients) have more than offset the above reductions in spending. Net current (ex-capital) spending on health has shrunk by just 128 million euro over the last two years. Register that, dear Village reader. The Department of Health is a great example to consider when dealing with the failure of our reforms. It is the quintessential ‘frontline’ service, of the type we all are willing to pay for. Yet, it is also a symbolic dividing line between the poor (allegedly having no access to the services) and the rich (allegedly all those who hold health insurance and as ‘private’ patients clog public wards). Healthcare was also the epicentre of endless rounds of reforms over decades, including the decades of rapid economic growth. And it is one of the two largest departments, with a budget only slightly smaller than the 6.545 billion euro spent in H1 2013 by the Department of Social Protection. For all this spending, 35% of Irish households have to purchase private insurance to obtain any meaningful level of health services. For those who think insurance a luxury, the Irish Government is considering making health insurance obligatory. Meanwhile, basic healthcare is shambolic. While emergencies get reasonably decent attention, Ireland ranks at or below the European average in treatment of most chronic diseases, before we control for differences in population demographics. Our primary care and access to specialist consultants is pathetic – apart from hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units. Despite the fastest rise in healthcare expenditure per capita 1997-2007 in the entire EU27, according to the EU itself, Irish increases have made only “a modest contribution to [improved mortality], substantially less than one third of the total, and possibly only a few percentage points”. In reality, of course, Irish healthcare is run for the benefit of Irish healthcare staff. The 2005-2007 pay bill for the HSE stood at an average 50.7% of the entire HSE non-capital budget. In 2009 it was 50.1%. In 2010, Irish salaries (excluding other income) for medical specialists were the highest in the EU, with the second highest paid (in the Netherlands) coming at a discount of roughly 25% on their Irish counterparts. These salaries were not inclusive of Irish specialists’ earnings from private patients. According to the EU’s 2012 assessment, 33% of Irish people find access to hospitals unaffordable (the 8th highest in the EU) and the same percentage find access to a GP to be out of their financial reach (the 4th highest in the EU), while 53% claim that they cannot afford medical or surgical specialists (the 8th highest in the EU). This is hardly surprising. Between December 2005 and mid-2012, cumulative Irish consumer price inflation (CPI) was 9.5%. Health CPI over the same period was 21.4% – more than double the rate of overall inflation. Of EU15 states, Ireland and Holland were the only states where health costs rose faster than general inflation in the last 7 years. 2005-2011 inflation ran at 47.3% in hospital services (state-controlled charges), followed by 28.6% for dental services , 23.5 % for out-patient services and 21.3% for doctors’ fees. This inflation added to the already high cost base of 2005. Extraordinarily, from 2005 through mid-2012 Ireland had the lowest rate of inflation in the EU15, while our health services inflation was the second highest after the Netherlands. Austerity, it seems, has been a boom-time for healthcare costs. Or put differently, while the rest of the world defines efficiency-improving reforms as changes in delivery of services that reduce the cost of services while maintaining or improving, in Ireland
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Article on Louth Planning: Mark Dearey was not a member of Louth County Council in 2007 and so did not vote, indeed could not have voted, for the Carnbeg material contravention mentioned in our News section article which focused on payments made to appellants who withdrew their appeals from An Bord Pleanála, “Nearly €1 million paid for planning appeal withdrawal’ (Village, Aug-Sept 2013, p 36). Village apologises to Councillor Dearey and wholeheartedly accepts his assertion that he is fit to seek public office and that there is no question mark over his probity in planning matters
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