Leaders
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Enda Kenny has defied those detractors who have claimed for many years that he is not up to the job of leading the country. Or has he? His supporters claim that he has brought the country, and the economy, from the brink of complete meltdown to steady recovery and is now set to be the first Fine Gael leader to claim the title of Taoiseach in successive elections. Others say that timing and luck have played a huge part in his belated success after more than 40 years in the Dáil and that victory in this month’s poll is by no means certain. Kenny never forgets his friends even when the going gets tough Over the past five years, Kenny has displayed many of the characteristics that marked the career of his long-term adversary, Bertie Ahern, including the ability to shake off, or at least postpone, controversies that would have caused terminal damage to other party leaders. His claim to have secured a significant debt write-down from his EU partners in June 2012 proved to be untrue. His siding with the ECB and the Bundesbank against the struggling Greek people who put the radical leftists of Syriza into power was self-serving and opportunist and arguably undermined any prospect of Ireland getting some early relief on its enormous legacy of banking debt. His instruction to the Secretary General of the Department of Justice, Brian Purcell, to make a late-night visit to the Garda Commissioner, Martin Callinan, leading to the resignation of both senior public servants and of his own long -time supporter, Alan Shatter, in mid-2014, is all a fog of obfuscation. Similarly, the manner in which the Commission of Inquiry he announced to examine the purchase of Siteserv by long-time party supporter, Denis O’Brien, and other IBRC sales in mid-2015, was allowed to run into the sand due to its restricted powers and inadequate terms of reference bears all the finger prints of his senior handlers. His outrageous and inaccurate remarks from Davos to Madrid to Paris on Ireland’s crisis and his government’s role in recovery have confirmed that he has not lost the habit of appearing the clown, unintentionally, at the most unexpected moments. Enda Kenny also merits opprobrium for his broken promise to fix the health system, the failure to deal with a deepening housing crisis and the widening of the income divide between the richest and most vulnerable during these past few years. Yet the stars, and international factors, including a strong dollar and sterling, unpredicted multi-national tax payments and the dramatic oil-price collapse have combined to see Kenny emerge as the architect of the fastest-growing economy in Europe and the cheerful bestower of a fistful of promises to simultaneously cut taxes, improve public services and recruit thousands of nurses, teachers and gardaí. Kenny has luck on his side. He was fortunate to lose the leadership contest against Michael Noonan after John Bruton lost the 1997 general election to Ahern and before the 2002 poll when the Fine Gael vote imploded. Kenny survived with his lowest ever first preference vote in Mayo and Noonan resigned. The Mayo TD took over the party in June 2002 after a battle with Richard Bruton. Kenny was helped by transfers from his soon-to-be key ally, Phil Hogan, in the run-off and after the elimination of Jim Mitchell. He faced into the 2007 general election as the blitz of his bizarre financial arrangements threatened to take out Ahern but failed to convince voters that he could do better than Fianna Fáil in managing a faltering economy. Once again, luck was on Kenny’s side as Brian Cowen replaced Ahern a year later and was engulfed by the banking and property collapse. In 2011, after two failed heaves against him, the Fine Gael leader hauled his party to an historic victory and into government with a resurgent Labour Party, after the Fianna Fáil/Green administration collapsed in acrimony and the people gave it an unprecedented battering in the February election. He merits opprobrium for his broken promise to fix the health system, the failure to deal with a deepening housing crisis and the widening of the income divide between the richest and most vulnerable during these past few years There is no doubt that he has rid himself of the ‘Bertie lite’ tag that dogged him for years, although his closest aides still do not trust him enough to let him out on his own too often. Kenny maintains a quirky, hail-fellow-well-met style that makes him seem like a country bumpkin but disguises a more ruthless political streak and shrewdness.. In mid-2014, Kenny publicly distanced his party from its key strategist, and his close friend, Frank Flannery who was embroiled in a financial scandal which erupted after details emerged of enormous salaries and other payments involving the Rehab charity and its senior executives. Flannery who had left the charity some years previously was still being well paid by Rehab for consultancy work which involved lobbying his colleagues in Fine Gael. He had a pass for Leinster House and free parking which the public was informed was being removed. It was a humiliating experience for the suave PR man and no doubt difficult for Kenny. A few weeks later the pair sat down for lunch in Dobbins restaurant near the Dáil along with another old friend and party elder, the late Bill O’ Herlihy. Kenny expressed a degree of regret that Flannery had been shafted and was sorry that he had to withdraw his valuable Dáil pass. “Don’t worry about that, Enda”, replied Flannery, or words to that effect, as he pulled the pass from his jacket pocket, to laughter all round. Kenny never forgets his friends even when the going gets tough. Kenny was gifted a Dáil seat for Mayo west in November 1975 after the premature death of his father, Henry, from cancer. The young teacher was a newly appointed principal at Knockrooskey primary school near Westport and followed in his father’s footballing
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Whistleblower says key witnesses and evidence omitted from Banking Inquiry and prepares for a public battle.
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Village has always tended to support a vision of equality of outcome in society. Unfortunately, the most widely supported form of equality is equality of opportunity. Since it has more of the qualities of “freedom” than of “equality” even Margaret Thatcher revered it, for example. Unfortunately, too many human rights these days are being pursued on the back of equality of opportunity or freedom rather than equality of outcome. One of the regrettable symptoms of this is that the victims of topical forms of discrimination seem to have little empathy for, or solidarity with, victims of other types of discrimination. It is good to see a refocus of the equality debate on issues where outcomes can easily be measured – on income, and wealth. Issues of equality of opportunity cannot so easily be measured since opportunity can be intangible. A lot of the re-orientation is down to Thomas Piketty and his recent book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ which draws on extraordinarily wide-ranging objective data and which is admirable too for drawing attention to the influence of policy on inequality as manifest in perverse income and wealth distribution. Almost everyone in economics and (therefore) mainstream politics had for years agreed that higher taxes on the rich and re-distribution to the poor have hurt economic growth. As Paul Krugman has noted “liberals had generally viewed this as a trade-off worth making, arguing that it’s worth accepting some price in the form of lower GDP to help fellow citizens in need. Conservatives, on the other hand, have advocated trickle-down economics, insisting that the best policy is to cut taxes on the rich, slash aid to the poor and count on a rising tide to raise all boats”. But, because of the Great Recession and Piketty, fashion has moved phenomenally swiftly to a different view, that there isn’t actually any trade-off between equity and inefficiency, that inequality has become so extreme that it’s inflicting economic damage so that redistribution – taxing the rich and helping the poor – may well raise, not lower growth rates. The latest manifestation of this surprisingly comes from economists at Standard & Poor’s with their beguilingly titled ‘How Increasing Inequality is Dampening U.S. Economic Growth, and Possible Ways to Change the Tide’. The fact that a reviled Ratings Agency is addressing economic inequality suggests that a debate that has been largely confined to the academic world and left-of-centre political circles could become practical. Piketty analyses historical data to show that at the end of World War II the top 1% in Ireland, the UK and the US, for example, collected about 15% of all national income. The share collected by the wealthiest people dropped in the subsequent decades and then rebounded from the mid-1970s. At the start of the new millennium the concentration of income at the top was back at around pre-war levels, though it dipped in the Great Recession. In the US incomes of those in the top 1% have now recovered and surpassed pre-crisis levels, though in Ireland the Gini Coefficient seems to suggest that efforts over the last few years to redistribute wealth, through taxation and welfare, have been successful, though absolute levels of deprivation for the poorest are at crisis levels and shockingly, in Budget 2014 for example, the lowest income group lost proportionately more income than any other group. On the back of the data, in ways that are redolent of Karl Marx’ views on Capital, Piketty makes the case that it is inevitable that the returns to capital will be higher than those to labour, and that since the richest already have more capital, they will inevitably simply continue to get richer (at least unless a global tax on capital is imposed). Piketty, a mild man, considers this a problem for economics, but eschews the ethical issues it poses. He therefore posits a theory that is fragile: in the event equality were once again deemed bad for the economy, presumably it might be justifiable to jettison equality. As an economist, Professor Piketty’s focus is too narrow. Village believes equality of outcome is an ethical not an economic imperative. We are all equal from birth, and equal moral agents. If we designed a social contract with these essentials as the starting point, with a veil of ignorance as to our actual circumstances and prospects (or a radical open-mindedness as to how nourishing society could be), we would see that equality of outcome is the optimal politics. Society’s goal is to recognise that, distributing resources to reinforce that underlying equality – by promoting equal outcomes. Unfortunately the debate about equality – and its different forms – remains very crude, partly because those who benefit from inequality want to keep their privileges. We need to promote structures that address overall levels of inequality but which also focus on pre-existing difficulties for the very least well-off. And we need to ground the structures in ethics, rather than economics. • (editorial September 2014)
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Official Ireland is indifferent. This time about Donegal. Gerard Convie is a whistleblower, but you won’t have heard of him. Over the last few years Village has helped a number of other whistleblowers whose cases are to varying degrees unassailable but have not been championed by the media or pursued by the authorities: Jonathan Sugarman on Unicredit Bank, Noel Wardick on the Red Cross, Paul Clinton on Treasury Holdings and Dublin City Council, Séamus Kirk on planning appeals withdrawn after a €1m payout in Louth, Colm Murphy on solicitor fraud and Law Society ‘skulduggery’. As Frank McBrearty, the whistleblower whose attempted framing for the murder of Richie Barron led to the instigation of the Morris Tribunal, told Village this week: “without whistleblowers you can’t expose corruption”. But the lack of official interest in these brave citizens, or action on their allegations, bespeaks an overwhelming cynicism veiled only by the correlative rush to be publicly perceived as welcoming of whistleblowers such as the gardai who revealed the penalty-points scandal. As one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, so one man’s whistleblower is another’s deluded obsessive. You only really become a whisleblower once your whistle has been heard by the ‘political correspondents’ and the party spokespersons. When you are at your most vulnerable they won’t seek you out or even answer your letters. Convie worked in Donegal County Council as a senior planner for nearly 24 years. He claims it was well known in Donegal and beyond that he would not capitulate to the “goings-on in planning” by certain councillors and senior officials in Co Donegal. He tried to control one-off housing, produced the first design guide, and used to appeal to An Bord Pleanála on his own behalf and at his own expense all decisions to grant planning permission via the infamous S4 motions. This was controversial. He claims one councilor constantly referred to him as a ”wee shit from the North”. Convie has claimed, in an affidavit opened in court, that during his tenure there was bullying and intimidation within the council of planners who sought to make decisions based exclusively on the planning merits of particular applications. In the affidavit, Convie alleges another planner: 1) recommended permissions that breached the Donegal County Development Plan to an extent that was almost systemic 2) submitted planning applications to Donegal County Council on behalf of friends and associates 3) dealt with planning applications from submission to decision 4) ignored the recommendations of other planners 5) destroyed the recommendations of other planners 6) submitted fraudulent correspondence to the planning department 7) forged signatures 8) improperly interfered as described in a number of planning applications 9) was close to a number of leading architects and developers in Donegal, including the head of the largest ‘architectural’ practice in Donegal, with whom he holidayed but the relationship with whom was undeclared. His affidavit also refers to irregularities perpetrated by named officials at the highest level in the Council as well as named senior county councilors. The Minister and Donegal County Council made no defence of any averment in Convie’s Affidavit. Convie had a list of more than 20 “suspect cases” in the County. As he reverted to private practice he claimed that there must be many more, perhaps hundreds, “a cesspit”. His complaints to various Ministers for the Environment and to the Standards in Public Office Commission went nowhere. After the Greens got into government, Environment Minister, John Gormley, announced “planning reviews” in 2010, not of corruption but of bad practice – in seven local authorities including Donegal. Convie’s case studies comprised all the material for the review in Donegal. But when the new Fine Gael and Labour government took over they very quickly dropped the independent inquiries. A lazy 2012 internal review stated: “The department’s rigorous analysis finds that the allegations do not relate to systemic corruption in the planning system…Nonetheless, they raise serious matters, ranging from maladministration to inconsistency in application of planning policy or non-adherence to forward plans, such as development plans”. As regards Donegal, the Department, extraordinarily and scandalously, decided – according to Minister Jan O’Sullivan in the Dáil, that: ‘’ … the complainant [Convie] has failed at any stage to produce evidence of wrong-doing in Donegal Council’s planning department”. Convie felt this left him in an invidious position and, in the absence of any defense of him by from any source, he successfully sued. In the High Court Order all the conclusions by the Minister were withdrawn, including reports on the matters prepared for the Minister by Donegal County Council. The government has been forced to reinstate the planning enquiries. But it will be important to see the ramifications for the civil servants who concluded that Convie’s complaint did not constitute “evidence”, and for the Minister who accepted the conclusions. While some of the council officials who are named in the irregularities in Convie’s Affidavit have retired, some remain in the Council’s employ and have seen their careers soar. The Convie file has been referred to the Attorney General for direction and she has now reported back to the Minister. The Department will report its review before the summer. Meanwhile a taint hangs over the administration of planning in Donegal, and a whistleblower twists in the wind. As Village was going to print, things were finally heating up in Donegal County Council. The Director of Housing and Corporate Services told Village the Council would be responding to Convie’s reported allegations, shortly, and Ethics Officer, Paul McGill, said the matter was being examined by management. As regards County Councillors, the current mayor of Donegal, independent Ian McGarvey, while making it clear he did not wish to be involved in anything ‘scurrilous’, said he would refer the issue to the county secretary. Independent Donegal County Councillor Frank Mc Brearty noted it was difficult for current councillors to ascertain the truth of such matters because of difficulties getting files – even last year when he was mayor. While complimentary of the current
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Frightening.
Leader – Ireland’s media are in difficulty due to finance, ownership and … Denis O’Brien
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So the DPP isn’t prosecuting …
Leader: Village is promoting an initiative to assess the viability of, and if the assessment is positive, pursuing prosecutions of tribunal villains and dishonest bankers
