Politics

By Ronan Lynch Follow Ronan Lynch on Twitter In an online profile, Colum McCaffery describes himself as “Lecturer, researcher, contrarian”, but his contrarian side is professional and in person he’s witty and agreeable. “Contrarian is something that other people call me”, he says. Born and reared in Inchicore in Dublin,  McCaffery trained as a technician and he worked for RTÉ, mostly in the engineering division, for 30 years. During that time he studied political communication and broadcasting and earned his PhD at UCD where he then taught Political Communication for 20 years. A socialist and Labour party member, he’s now retired but he still teaches adult education classes – and he’s a regular blogger. Colum, what inspired you to start blogging? I was encouraging my students to get out and participate and get involved in public debates, and one of them said to me, ‘Well, why don’t you do it yourself?’ So I started a blog. For a while it was the most ignored blog on earth but about two years ago, people began to mention to me something that they had read on the blog. The blogosphere is old hat now; these days it’s all about social media. But you can put the link from your blog on your Facebook site and it will attract some readers. You write about the impact of the Internet on political communication. It’s conventional wisdom that the Internet has increased the amount of information available to interested people but you dispute that view. With the arrival of the Internet, my course on political communication was becoming much more about citizenship. I talk about the average citizen having a think about things, and having information, and coming to judgment of an issue. But when we talk about information, going back to John Stuart Mill, we are not talking about bits of information, because information includes all the relevant arguments, in other words committed arguments on this side and this side and this side. Also, we’re not just talking about balancing one argument against the other, because there might be five arguments. The best way to look at it is that if you go into court, the defence has the same facts as the prosecution. Facts of themselves are not enough. What sways the jury is the arguments, the use of the facts. Yet people increasingly just don’t want to be bothered with all of that stuff. The technology of the past century, including the Internet, is facilitating closing down challenge and argument. When you talk of people ‘not being bothered’, you’re referring to these models of liberal and republican citizenship? [At this point, Colum hands me a book by Robert Hutton titled ‘Romps, Tots and Boffins’ and invites me to read a quote from the opening pages, by Evelyn Waugh: “News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. It’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.”] That’s liberal citizenship: ‘I really don’t care. I want you to amuse me, to give me stuff to gossip about. But if there’s something that really threatens the way I live this life, that threatens my having a nice house and a nice car, then what I want you to do is ring the alarm bell.’ Now,  there is a totally different view of what it means to be a citizen, going back to Pericles in ancient Greece. Pericles said: “We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics minds his own business. We say he has no business here at all.” Then you have the republican citizen who wants what I call the full spectrum service. This person wants to talk to his mates about everything that is going on. He wants to be part of a political opinion that means something. In your blogs you refer to the need for citizens to involve themselves in public controversies, but what do you mean by public controversy? A recent public controversy is the junior doctors’ dispute. I went all over the place, online, trying to find out about it. Is it about scheduling or money? Will rescheduling bring in a requirement for lots of new doctors, in which case the problem won’t be solvable in the near future? I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. I asked on Facebook if someone would please explain the dispute to me. One guy  explained that it was to do with the handover from one shift to the next, and that you need someone that continues all the way through. If you don’t have this, then it means bringing the consultants in more regularly, and they are opposed to that. Now, I didn’t find that explanation anywhere in the media. My point is that if, as a citizen, I want to decide which side I’m on, it is virtually impossible using today’s media to work this out. So what do you see as the role of the media in public controversies? Well, it’s no use telling me that there’s a whole pile of information on any particular controversy available on the web if I have to search to find it. You can’t expect the average interested person to do that. They need to have the important controversies plonked in front of them: here’s all the issues, here’s what you should be thinking about today. Journalists are the people that have the access to all the information and they have the time and it’s their job to sort that out so that I, who haven’t got the time, will know what this debate is about. So despite the increase in the availability of information through the Internet, the manner of presentation of that information is limiting? Well, have you ever bought anything on Amazon? When you buy something like a book, Amazon comes back with ‘Stuff recommended for you’. So what they have done is they have looked at the things that you have bought in the past,

GSOC should be involved   The Government response to the removal of the two Roma children from their families this week can only be described as short-sighted, defensive and, sadly, entirely predictable in view of the State’s long-held policy of ethnicity denial and cultural assimilation towards Traveller and Roma peoples. The Minister for Justice’s initial response on Wenesday of this week to yet another Garda controversy (albeit with HSE involvement in this instance) was to order another internal report of Gardai by Gardai about possible Garda misconduct in their exercise of emergency powers under Section 12 of the Child Care Act 1991.  This approach does not comply with constitutional standards of fairness and natural justice, and represents a clear breach of the rule against bias, No-one should be a Judge in his Own Cause.  It would appear from the facts available, that the Gardai made decisions about child welfare based on tabloid journalism, ethnic categorisation, and an unrelated case in Greece – rather than a rational consideration of  independent evidence and application of the principles of reasonableness and proportionality.  There appears to have been an overly simplistic reaction by the Gardai/HSE to the raging media frenzy, which – as law enforcement and health professionals – they should have been immune to.  Of course we should really be armed with the full facts before making such assertions but given the defensive response of the Government and the ‘blue wall of silence’ that has frustrated previous investigations of An Garda Siochana, this certainly appears unlikely. Although the Minister did publish a version of Assistant Commissioner O Mahony’s internal report in the penalty points controversy (but only after the Government Press Office had completed some clever massaging of the statistics in the executive summary and without publishing the appendices which contained the supporting documentary evidence for the report’s conclusions), on this occasion the Minister has already confirmed that he will not publish any part of the forthcoming Garda report.  In order to impart a sheen of legitimacy to the proceedings, he then confirmed on Thursday in the Dail that he had now decided to pass it to the Ombudsman for Children – along with the HSE report – so that she may then conduct a report of those reports. The Ombudsman for Children’s own press statement on Thursday informed us that she had decided of her own volition to investigate – on a preliminary basis – the actions of the HSE only; and indeed any examination of the conduct of the Garda Siochana is specifically excluded from her remit.  After this decision, the Minister for Justice contacted the Ombudsman for Children to raise the possibility of an “expanded role” and on Friday 25th October the Minister announced in his third statement of the week, that he has now confirmed to the Ombudsman for Children his intention to appoint her under Section 42 of the Criminal Justice Act 2007 to carry out a full inquiry on the matter, to include an examination of the role of the Gardai.  Although Section 42(10) permits the Minister to publish the Ombudsman’s report, the Minister has not confirmed yet whether he intends to do so. While we await confirmation of the terms of reference of the inquiry which should be published in the Minister’s Order of appointment under Section 42, it would appear that the terms of reference will be just wide enough to satisfy public opinion but too narrow to allow for a proper examination of Garda powers and procedures, the functioning of the Ethnic Liaison Officer system, the force’s relationship with the media, and the incidence of racial profiling within the Garda Siochana – an examination that could precipitate real cultural change within the Gardai. In any event the Minister has already declared that he has “no doubt that the Gardai acted in this instance in good faith in the intervention that took place” in contrast to his earlier admission that the “international backdrop” of the case in Greece may have had “some undue influence in the decisions that were made”. It is curious to note that the Minister bypassed the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission entirely in his response to the week’s events.   In the particular circumstances, a joint investigation would seem the most appropriate route, combining GSOC’s experience and knowledge of Garda procedures with the Ombudsman for Children’s experience and knowledge of child welfare procedures. Under Section 106 of the Garda Act 2005, the Minister could consider exercising his power to request GSOC to examine the practice, policies and procedures of the Garda Siochana in such instances.  Unfortunately GSOC’s hands are tied unless Minister Shatter specifically requests such an investigation, a glaring gap in GSOC’s statutory powers which has been recently flagged by M. Seggayaka, the UN Special Rapporteur in March of this year. Although the Ombudsman for Children’s commitment to “conduct an independent impartial investigation from first principles” certainly brings  with it some hope of a transparent process with worthwhile conclusions, she may encounter serious difficulties investigating the Garda Siochana,  an impenetrable body that has consistently met any such efforts with impressive resistance. Given GSOC’s experience in dealing with the difficulties and delays when seeking information from the Gardai – which led in May to an unprecedented public airing of their frustrations – it would seem that their involvement could be of considerable assistance to the Ombudsman for Children.  It would also allow access to the Pulse system through the  seconded Gardai who perform this function within GSOC. Although GSOC, again of their own volition, have demanded a copy of the internal Garda report, the only possible investigation GSOC can subsequently initiate – without any official request from the Minister – is of an individual Garda’s conduct under the very restrictive terms of Section 102.  In any event our GSOC, unlike its Northern counterpart, cannot impose sanctions on any individual Garda, nor award any compensation.  Nor of course can the Ombudsman for Children. In light of the wider issues raised by this particular case,

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Human Rights and Equality Commission needs to examine the model of development we are currently pursuing through the prism of human rights and equality

If the age of the youngest child for eligibility is to be reduced further we must get improvements in childcare and training, and abolition of the cohabitation prohibition for one-parent workers