General

  Mr Eddie Sheehy and Village   The Press Council of Ireland has decided to uphold an appeal by Mr Eddie Sheehy that two statements complained about in an article published by Village in March 2018 were inaccurate and therefore a breach of Principle 1 of the Code of Practice of the Press Council of Ireland. Decision of the Press Ombudsman On 25 June 2018 the Press Ombudsman upheld a complaint made by Mr Sheehy that Village breached Principle 4 (Respect for Rights) of the Code of Practice. He decided that he had insufficient evidence to make a decision on claims of a breach of Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy). In March 2018 Village published an article on a Senior Counsel’s investigation and report into the compulsory purchase in 2004 of lands by Wicklow County Council.   Mr Eddie Sheehy (the complainant) was the Wicklow County Manager at the time the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) was made. The article also reported on a subsequent defamation action taken in the High Court by two County Councillors following the Council’s publication of a press release on the Senior Counsel’s findings.    Mr Sheehy complained that the article, which was published in print and online, contained a number of false and misleading allegations about him, and that it omitted to include a number of rebuttals made by barristers acting for him and Wicklow County Council in the defamation action. Mr Sheehy complained  about a number of particular statements in the article: that an Order made by him was  “false” and “misleading”; that the Senior Counsel was provided with two Manager’s Orders (when, he says, there was only one);  that a number of claims made by the barrister representing the plaintiffs in the defamation action, including one about a landbank  held by the County Council,  had been rebutted by barristers acting on behalf of the defendants (Mr Sheehy and Wicklow County Council); that in her judgment the Judge referred to the extensive documentation available to the Senior Counsel for his review but withheld from the Councillors; that claims in the article concerning  negotiations for the exchange of land were inaccurate and that no effort had been made by Village to contact him in advance of publication of the article. The editor of Village responded to the complaint defending the article as published. He stated that during court proceedings relating to the defamation action Mr Sheehy “accepted that there was a site of over 10 hectares (22 acres) of land which were zoned residential in the immediate vicinity” of the land subject to the CPO in 2004. The editor stated that Mr Sheehy had produced no documentation to support his contention that the 10 hectares had been “earmarked” for the development of Greystones harbour.  He said that the Judge cited the documents available to the Senior Counsel for his review which proved that Wicklow County Council owned the 22 acre site which was zoned residential for housing and said that on this basis it was “factual to state that the Manager’s Order on which the CPO was based was “false” and “misleading” as stated by the barrister representing the plaintiffs in the defamation action. In regard to the claim in the article that there had been two Manager’s Orders, he said that a second Order, dated November 2003, had been “referred to extensively during the High Court action and also in the detailed judgment … which was delivered on 10 July 2017”. In regard to the claims made by the barrister representing the defendants about a landbank held by the Council, the editor said that there was no documentation to support the claim that there was any legal or other impediment to providing social housing on the land, which was zoned for residential use. In regard to the statement in the article that the Judge in the defamation case referred to  extensive documentation available to the Senior Counsel for his review but “withheld” from the councillors,   the editor stated that  the defamation action judgment  referred to the fact that certain documents provided to the Senior Counsel for his investigation had not been in the “Room of Documents” made available to councillors at the time of the CPO. These included reports on possible flooding on the lands subject to the CPO. In regard to references in the article to negotiations for the exchange of land, the editor stood over what was published. In regard to Mr Sheehy’s complaint that he had not been contacted in advance of publication to respond to assertions made in the article the editor stated that efforts had been made to contact the Senior Counsel who had carried out the report and that he had “declined to comment”. In addition, the editor stated that Village had been in correspondence with Mr Sheehy and his officials “over several years” regarding some of the issues reported on in the article. Mr Sheehy responded to the editor’s submission. He described the article as “a partisan piece” that relied heavily on the plaintiffs’ Counsel in the defamation action without reference to “the counter submissions” of the defendants’ Counsel. He reiterated that there had only been one Manager’s Order and that when the plaintiffs’ Counsel had referred in the defamation action to a “2003 Order” it had been done so inadvertently. Mr Sheehy provided the Office of the Press Ombudsman with copies of documentation relating to the 2004 Manager’s Order. In regard to claims in the Village article of the withholding of documents from councillors at the time the CPO was made Mr Sheehy argued that these documents were created after the appointment of the Senior Counsel in 2012 to investigate the matters and could not have been withheld from councillors as they did not exist at the time of the CPO. Finally, in regard to the claim by the editor that the magazine had been in correspondence with Mr Sheehy and Wicklow County Council in the years before the article appeared Mr Sheehy stated that he had

Village is unashamedly Leftist.  Its agenda is equality of outcome, sustainability and accountability. These are all driven by the overarching goal of treating people  as equals. The right labours freedom to the detriment of equality, tending to fixate on the provision of choices rather than on how in practice those choices are exercised. The non-ideological, non-visionary parties of the pragmatic centre hold little appeal for Village. Depressingly, with a signal in June that it wants to go into coalition with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, Sinn Féin has signalled its immediate destination is that pragmatic centre. For fourteen years Village has tried to champion parties taking egalitarian stances but it’s been difficult. Our left has been – and let’s be blunt – remains a disaster, a let-down.  That is not an accident.  For historical reasons most Irish people, though they have a weakness  for leftist rhetoric,  are conservative and property-fetishising with a limited sense of the common good.  Many are viscerally hostile to an agenda of treating people equally. It is almost of the essence, of course, of the current government and its supporters that property rights are sacred. That is why it will never get to grips with the homelessness crisis.  Its respect is already tied up with those who have a home. A variation on this mentality accounts for its reluctance to challenge our over-priced professions. The Independent Alliance is utterly incoherent of policy and membership embracing the apparently disaffected from the likes of  ex-stockbroker Mr Ross to the likes of turfcutter Michael Fitzmaurice. Its agenda was always going to unravel. The Fine Gael-Independent coalition is supported on a ‘confidence-and-supply’ basis by Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil is tainted by its reckless past and the incoherence of its platform. It believes serving the people and business in equal measure is viable. It has learnt little beyond the need to regulate the banks and, under impressive Micheál Martin to eschew hoorism of all colours. Labour never does what its manifestos promise. Because of the elasticity of its conscience Labour has long attracted the wrong type of representatives. Sinn Féin is evolving, and not overall in a good way.  Village has taken a coherent stance on post-Troubles Sinn Féin, making pessimistic predictions based on the nuances of its politics over the last twenty years.  Those predictions are now vindicated. Its  commitment to a Left agenda has never been convincing bearing in mind its defining preference for irredentist nationalism over ideology and its governing strategy in the North. Its performance at local-authority level is not impressive or particularly leftist. It is cultist, ambivalent about democracy and transparency, and in thrall to the Northern Army Council. As recently as late June, Mary Lou McDonald was saying she believed Gerry Adams that he was never in the IRA. With shiny, tough-minded new leaders it could do so much better. But it has not avoided the traditional hurtle to hunger for power over principle that characterises the evolution of nearly all our parties. It is now on an uninteresting path to become Fianna Fáil in twenty years. Village has a weakness for the Social Democrats, whose mild platform is essentially the same as Labour’s, but its progress is depressingly slow and it should never have allowed the clever but right of centre and pro-business, Stephen Donnelly to become one of its three leaders. It needs to develop fire, shininess and some new personalities. The radical Left – Solidarity and People before Profit – offer the huge appeal of integrity and seriousness, and some zealous personalities, but its opposition to property taxes is inexcusable, and its focus on opposition to water taxes rather than a broader anti-inequality platform, including opposition to the iniquities of NAMA, corruption and the resurrection of the developer classes has sold its revolutionary ideology short.  It has blown the opportunities of the Economic Crisis and seems destined to remain peripheral. Tragically it has not digested this. No amount of campaigning can disguise its distance from power. The Green Party’s policies are often radical, and its agenda mature, but it is not hard-minded and it achieved so little in the last government that it is difficult to be enthusiastic. Its message needs to be presented in new ways and it needs new faces. A coalition of the parties of the left, radical left and the Greens would, as always, best promote Village’s agenda, if no doubt imperfectly. With Sinn Féin’s flight to the respectable centre or worse, and the sidelining of Solidarity and People before Profit, Ireland seems doomed to another generation of time-serving centrist government boosting the economy but doing little for society, community, the environment or quality of life. What is needed is foundation of a new party of the conventional Left, modern, common-good-embracing, quality-of-life-monitoring, taxing, planning, developing, accounting, envisioning.  It has rarely seemed so unlikely. The vista is bleak.    

We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at five stars Roslyn Fuller interviews Eleonora Evi, MEP for Italy’s Five Star Movement [5SM] which has been depicted as racists and fascists who want to destroy Europe   Fuller: Eleonora, how did you come to be active in politics and why did you join the 5 Star Movement? Evi: I joined in 2010. At the time we were polling at two per cent and had no elected representatives. I joined to support campaigns for public water, against nuclear energy, but also for cleaning out the parliament [of corruption]. At first my activities consisted of collecting signatures for those campaigns. It was after seeing a show by Beppo Grillo [a comedian and one of the movement’s founders] that I decided to stop stitting on my sofa and watching politics, but to do it myself, and within eight years I am here in the European Parliament with a platform that we created. Fuller: Was it difficult as someone with no prEvious political experience to become an MEP? Evi: There is a lot to study, a lot of documents, directives and regulations! But we are not representatives in terms of old-style political representatives. We strongly believe in direct democracy and these decisions are taken through online platforms involving our members. It is more difficult to have a connection when you are physically removed from the local level, as we are here at the EU. Nonetheless, online consultations in a number of areas and debate inside the delegation gives us a clear direction for the political positions we take. Fuller: Can you explain how these consultations with party members work? Evi: On the national level all members can propose legislation or amendments to existing legislation. They vote every so often on which proposals should go forward to  the Parliament and start the legislative process. On other issues, we launch consultations on legislation that is already in the pipeline at the national level where we need to consult our members to determine a clear policy position. That happens quite often. It cannot take place everyday, but we do it for those areas where we need to have a strong political position backed by our members. Fuller: On a national level the Five Star Movement has plans to introduce a minimum basic income in Italy. What is the 5SM position on equality: do you support equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? Evi: We are the only European country that does not have comprehensive social protection schemes and we have been working to fill this gap. It is important to have access to a minimum income in order to live in dignity. But our proposal also has an economic purpose. People receiving the minimum basic income must also commit to engaging in some form of service, for example, helping out in their local city. It is not, as it is often presented in the media, giving money to people to stay at home and do nothing, but an economic plan to help people start again. Our numbers of unemployed and people living in extreme poverty are dramatically increasing, so it is a huge priority to change this situation. Fuller: Do I understand correctly, that there is currently no unemployment or welfare aid in Italy? Evi: We have temporary unemployment assistance only under certain conditions. You can potentially end up without state help of any kind. We do not have other kinds of assistance like paying bills for elecricity, etc. Fuller: One of your particular interests is the environment. How have you formulated your environmental policy? Do you feel people are willing to forego some economic advantages in the interest of the environment or is that a false choice? Evi: It is a false choice, because economic opportunity and job potential is in line with environmental protection. Every star of the Five Star Movement stands for a major theme, one is public water, one is sustainable transport, one is the environment as such. For us the environmental aspect characterises all our policies – the environment and our health – those are deeply interlinked. For example, we are working on new limits for CO2 emissions for cars and vans. Every year more than 400 000 people die prematurely because of air pollution in Europe. This is part of delivering on the climate targets we all signed in Paris a few years ago, but are too often neglected. Fuller: M5S is often said to be a Eurosceptic party and in the EU Parliament you sit in a block with UKIP. Would you ever consider leaving the EU? Evi: We have never considered leaving the EU. We believe that the EU has to be changed from the inside. The monetary union as it is today puts a lot of constraints on some countries while others are exploiting the situation. Germany, for example, is constantly breaking the economic rules for its surplus in imports/exports, but there is no political will to solve this problem. We need a more fair approach in terms of respecting the economic rules and European law. Fuller: When you refer to some countries ‘exploiting the situation’ are you referring to tax havens? Evi: The European Union and Commission are always shouting and fighting all over the world against tax havens, while we have them within Europe. In the long run this will not benefit the creation of this common house that we should create. Fuller: M5S has had a quite hostile reception in the English-speaking press… Evi: Yes, we have been depicted as racists and fascists and as a movement that wants to destroy Europe. We had a great result in the recent national elections, but did not win [despite M5S being the single party with the largest number of votes, the centre-right coalition of parties received more votes and seats]. We thought our responsibility was to engage in a new government. The government that has been created with the Lega [a right-wing