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    Villager May 2018

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    No Catholics or bastards please, we’re British Villager despises royalty, as anyone who believes in equality, merit or good taste, must. Interesting though that new-born Prince whatsit will come in fifth in line to the “throne”. Time was the new “Prince” would have been advanced to it over his older sister (Princess whatsit), as a male. The Bill of Rights 1689 and the act of settlement 1701, restrict succession to the legitimate Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover, of which there are over 5000, who are in “communion with the Church of England”. Spouses of Roman Catholics were disqualified from 1689 until the law was amended in 2015. The succession to the Crown Act 2013 leaves succession to the Crown no longer dependent on gender for lucky heirs born after 28 october 2011. With such incremental progress it will only be a few aeons now before the monarchy passes for democratic. INMajor trouble 23 years ago Vincent Browne got €90,000 in a private settlement with the state because the Garda tapped his phone over an eight-year period in part believing he was talking to IRA leaders for Magill Magazine. a decade earlier journalists Geraldine Kennedy and Bruce arnold were awarded £20,000 in the high court after their phones were tapped for a short period, for absolutely no reason. So how much will the around 200 lucky victims of Leslie Buckley’s version of phone-tapping – data breach – collect? INM has a cash pile of €90m but a stock-market value of only €110.9 million valuing INM in effect at less than €20 million, plus the cash. The problem is that 200 complaints of data breaches could easily hoover up most of that sum. O’Brien has spent €500m building up his stake, partly to show the O’Reilly family what good management looked like and er partly to boost his popularity, but his holding is now worth only €33m and shares are down 40% over the last year. This is an investment even worse, though not nearly as predictably so, as one in Village Magazine over the last decade. STabbing the competition On 22 april The Sunday Times (Irish edition) unkindly editorialised that the INM group was leaking selective extracts from the 240-page affidavit of the ODCE on which it has grounded its application for the appointment of high court inspectors who would examine various allegations against the media group and its former chairman, leslie Buckley. In particular, The Sunday Times claimed that INM was strangely silent on the allegations leaked from the affidavit that the largest shareholder, Denis O’Brien, had access to sensitive commercial information, courtesy of communications minister, Denis Naughten, before other shareholders. But ironically The Sunday Times is part of the Rupert Murdoch stable, news International, which was forced to close down its News of the World brand in 2011 in the light of damning revelations that some of its senior editorial staff had condoned the widespread tapping of phones and other criminal offences. At one point former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, soon after his inelegant departure from office in 2008 amid evidence of financial wrongdoing, graced a TV advertisement for the News of the World from inside a kitchen cupboard, his most ignominious television appearance until the recent Tim Sebastian interview. The Sunday Times was famously less than wholehearted in pursuing the politician for failing to account for over £200,000 unexplained in various bank accounts while he was Minister for Finance in the 1980s. ahern cultivated Murdoch whose sky division famously obtained rights to cover the Ryder cup in Ireland under Bertie’s premiership. Equally intriguing is the insistence by O’Brien that the leaks to INM from the affidavit came from the ODCE rather than from the copy provided to the newspaper organisation in which he is the largest, though – significantly – non-controlling, shareholder. The leaks came from people close to the non- O’Brien wing of INM. Radio Caroline ended party early Chris Donoghue, Niall O’Connor and Ed Carty have joined the ranks of independent journalists who now advise government. Government Press advisor Nick Miller once toiled for regional titles such as the Kerryman, Tullamore Tribune and Evening Echo. Now the one-time series producer of RTÉ’s ‘The Sunday Game’, and regular voice of ‘It says In The Papers’ on ‘Morning Ireland’, Caroline Murphy, has become press advisor to Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan. She is of course married to Sean O’Rourke, presenter of RTÉ Radio 1’s flagship current affairs programme, the ‘Today show’. The formidable Murphy described some years ago to the Irish Times how she fell for the uncontroversial presenter: “We met around 1983, when I had a singles BBQ in a house I’d bought in Killiney: everyone invited had to bring a friend of the same sex and Fintan Drury (later chairman of the RTÉ authority who resigned because of a conflict of interest over rights to cover the Ryder cup) brought Seán. He was still there with Fintan at 2am when I threw them out – Seán was shocked. I couldn’t believe anyone would think it wasn’t my right to say the party’s over”. Murphy told the Irish Independent her work at the national broadcaster has been “marginal” in recent years. Neutering neutrality Cosying up to NATO is now de rigueur inside ‘modern’ Fine Gael. Four of the party’s MEPs, Seán Kelly, Brian Hayes, Deirdre Clune and Máiread McGuinness, advocate a policy which would see us dilute neutrality by falling in line with deepening EU military co-operation. In a statement issued to accompany the launch of a discussion paper ‘Ireland and the EU: Defending our common european home’, by Brian Hayes on 9 March, the MEPs stated, “We want to make it clear that we do not support the creation of an EU army. However, Ireland can do so much more in collaboration with our EU partners in the area of security and defence”. These MEPs have not gone off on a frolic of their own volition. This is now FG and Varadkar’s euro-military policy. Ironically, the Taoiseach is known to

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    Villager February 2018

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    Listen up around what they’re at Villager likes nothing more than a shafted preposition. Most of the articles that come in to this magazine are from academics writing ‘around’ their subjects. They go into Village’s file of death along with cover letters for CVs that sign off cheers. So he was thrilled to see the Irish Times say of Nama that is lending €384m to allow developers to “build out projects”. Zagantagonism It’s been a bad month for Rugby schools. Paddy Jackson, the Kiely’s set-to, the illicit publication of the letter from Eunan O’Carroll. And now Frank Armstrong. The editor and half the Champagne socialists/ environmentalists whose whimsies fill the pages of Village have been taken aback by young Armstrong and his piece in the current edition ripping apart Gonzaga College, alma mater to non-conformist and unbulliable egos of all sorts, from Ranelagh right as far as Bray. Hypocrisy on Equality Talking of which it was amusing to see Michael McDowell bemoaning inequality – “the rich getting far richer” in the Sunday Business Post where he ties down an, unpaid, column. When he had power he was largely an agent for liberalism – and inequality, even claiming the economy “demands inequality in some respects”. In 2004 he told the Eonomist Survey of Ireland that he “sees inequality as an inevitable part of the society of incentives that Ireland has, thankfully, become”. He was quoted by The Economist magazine as offering a robust defence of the gap between rich and poor in Ireland. And he told the Irish Catholic that “a dynamic liberal economy like ours demands flexibility and inequality in some respects to function”. It was such inequality “which provides incentives”. He said: “As far as I am concerned liberal politics and liberal economics go together. In a liberal society, equality of opportunity is an equal opportunity to become unequal. A society which legislates and controls in every way to create some sort of mathematical equality just doesn’t work”. In his pomp he believed: “Driven to a complete extreme, the current rights’ culture and equality notion would create a feudal society”. McDowell sat at the Cabinet table for a decade while the country was run – to disastrous long-term effect – in the interests of elites and cartels, including the legal one he still feeds off. McDowell pulled the plug on the Citizen Traveller campaign when it dared to be controversial. He delayed and censored the reports of his department’s own inspector of prisons, Judge Dermot Kinlan. Dodgy Donegal There is still no sign of a date for the High Court case being taken by Michael McLoone, former County Manager in Donegal, represented by barrister Michael McDowell, over a 2014 Village article titled ‘Dodgy Donegal Planning’, alleging improper behaviour in Donegal County Council’s treatment of planning matters. Nor is there any sign of the Department of the Environment’s report into the activities detailed in the impugned Village article, though it has been promised for years. Loughinisland threats Village has received correspondence from the Hawthorns, Ronnie and Hilary saying they will take legal action over the naming, in these pages, of Ronnie as chief suspect for the Loughinisland massacre in 1994 when six Catholics watching a world cup match were gunned down in a pub. The Hawthorns’ concern vacillates between defamation and privacy. But they seem to be having trouble getting anything beyond a few emails together. Colgan threats And Michael Colgan has apparently initiated proceedings against Village for “defamation of character”, though Village hasn’t been served with anything so we’re not really sure. Colgan alleges a recent editorial implied he was guilty of serious crimes and rape. Village claims it was accusing him of harassment. Unthreatening After all that hassle Villager often wonders if it isn’t better to just say nothing. Then you can become as popular as William and Kate, Royal heirs in waiting, who have literally never saidanything anyone can remember. Kith and Quinn Villager never gets cross, never raises his voice. But he hates those Quinns. Complaints by Sean Quinn jnr and his wife Karen Woods about a recent failure to pay some of their €100,000 annual living expenses should be seen in the context of a “scheme of misappropriation on a grand scale”, the High Court has been told. Some €10m has been extracted from a company in India “and we don’t know where that has gone”, Barry O’Donnell SC, for the special liquidators of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, said. Documentation from India and Hong Kong showed “a scheme of misappropriation” was executed, over time and especially in 2010, at the instigation, and for the benefit, of members of the Quinn family. The transactions at issue “have never been explained” and while the family maintain they had no idea what was going on, that is “wholly implausible”, he said. This, and the fact Quinn and his wife are receiving close to €100,000 annually in living expenses, was of concern to the bank and it was “imperative” the matters were addressed. Villager absolutely begrudges them their 100k. If he had his way the radical left would have picketed the likes of the Quinns instead of faffing around harassing water-meter installers. And he wants to know where Peter Darragh Quinn, a nephew of the bankrupt former billionaire, on the run five years after an arrest warrant was issued for him, is. Ireland biggest environmental mess by a landslide In July 2008, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that Ireland had failed to carry out a proper assessment for the 70 turbine Derrybrien wind farm which was built in the early 2000s. The Government has yet to carry out the assessment on the site. The construction work on the wind farm led to a 2km landslide in October 2003, which the Commission itself has called “environmentally devastating”. The incident caused 450,000 cubic meters of peat to slide down the mountainside, which was washed into the local river systems. The European Commission has now requested that the

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    Villager – December ’17 / January ’18

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    Happy Christmas from Villager! No Trump lookalikes or Nominal determinisms this month. Villager’s had it with formula journalism. In fact he’s had it with a lot of things. Nothing ever changes: Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, one-off-housing and winter never went away. The only good thing is we see less of Martin Mansergh, now. And Christmas, well we’re writing for the January market too since the finances and staffing are so threadbare we can’t come out every month. so the editor’s told Villager not to emphasise Yule. Whatever the spirit of Christmas is Village is the opposite of it, Villager reflected. The only concession anyone remembers to the season of goodwill in this magazine was a sprig of photographic holly between the bar code and Frank Connolly. In 2009.   New So, the Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment has agreed to recommend a series of changes to abortion laws, including access to terminations without restriction, up to 12 weeks. That, Villager has to accept, is new. As is Sinn Féin’s new found queasiness about being the most radical gang in town. Sinn Féin abstained on the vote as it goes beyond the party’s position on the Eighth Amendment. However, the party’s health spokeswoman Louise O’Reilly said it would review its position on this matter, in light of the committee’s recommendations. Where stands transcendent feminism in the mix?   McCabes The leadership of Sinn Féin has demonstrated a cynical indifference towards Garda McCabe. Its collective silence about the injustice meted out to him is deafening. Villager is talking about the other Garda McCabe; the skeleton in SF/IRA’s bloodstained cupboard, the murdered Detective Jerry McCabe who was gunned down by the Provisional IRA at Adare in June 1996 during a Republican fundraising event (i.e. an armed heist). Back in 1996 SF told all sorts of lies about the killing. It took Gerry Adams until 2013 to make an apology in the Dáil. Mary Lou McDonald aspires to becoming SF Leader and, no doubt Tánaiste, in the future. We know what she thinks about Garda Maurice McCabe. She admonished the recently retired Tánaiste Frances FitzGerald about his case thus: “You may think, Tánaiste, that you’ll weather this storm, that you ride it out, but you won’t, because the terrible vista of a conspiracy to malign a good man, to smear him as a sex abuser in order to shut him up, is not some minor political episode that can simply be brushed away”. Fine words but what pray has our putative SF Tánaiste ever had to say about the murder of Jerry McCabe? The murder of a Garda officer is “not some minor political episode”. She might also care to answer the following question for Villager: “Have you or anyone on your behalf, either directly or indirectly, had any form of communication with anyone involved with the Provisional IRA, concerning SF leadership issues during the last three years? In other words: Have you obtained the Army Council’s blessing for your forthcoming leadership coronation?”.   Boulted-on to Disney Disney has bought much of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire including Sky UK and Adam Boulton with it. Villager didn’t mind Boulton referring to “You Irish” as being too sensitive about the Brexit negotiations. Partly because we are but also because there was a time when it would have been “The Irish” as an introduction to something patronising. Of course we’ve little enough to be patronised about these days (apart from our trashy party politics). Britain, or more precisely England, meanwhile has managed to throw away a Millennium-old reputation for sober and empirical, evidence-based stoicism in the eighteen months since it wrapped up all its understanding of history and economics, wrapped it up in a Union Jack and tossed it into the cross winds over Beachy Head. Now that’s something to get patronised about.   Boosting home Eoghanership The Department of Housing is to exempt a number of developments from planning permissions to help tackle the housing crisis. Under new regulations – which will need to be passed by theOireachtas – the redevelopment of so-called “over the shop” units will be allowed without planning permission. It seems a sensible measure. Nothing else has worked in thirty years and our towns, cities and villages are characterised by lack of energy overhead. Still they’ll need to ensure that Building Regulations on issues like sewerage and noise are somehow addressed, and that historic features like staircases aren’t casually jettisoned.   Dense Further development of a new town by Gannon Homes at Clongriffin in north Dublin is to proceed following the granting of planning permission for a landmark 16-storey 139-apartment building on the edge of the town’s’ Station’ square. Clongriffin has been designed as a new town with a main street and 3,600 residential units once complete. Its development stalled with the downturn. High-rise there will add visual interest, and high-density is justified as the DART stops beside it; just stay cautious about imposing it on the unyielding centres of our cities and towns where, particularly in Dublin, it threatens the unique selling point of the city, its historic human scale.   Dense Dublin hoteliers continue to take casual injunctions of high-density from Leo Varadkar and his mate at the Department of Justice, Eoghan Murphy, as a charter. Rumour has it the Ormond Hotel which adjoins the Village office on Ormond Quay Upper is looking to increase the density allowed by An Bord Pleanála in its decision earlier this year. And the horrible Ashling hotel near Heuston wants to become horribler still, and demolish some of its historic neighbours. The freeholders of the Leprechaun Museum (with a Ben Dunne gym overhead) on the Upper Abbey St/Jervis St corner in central Dublin too want to demolish an unusual and potentially attractive former corset factory, the Twilfit building, and replace it with a behemoth that would overshadow the concreted space that passes as Wolfe Tone Park.   Amnesty for Amnesty? The Standards in Public Office commission (SIPO) has instructed Amnesty International to

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    Villager – November 2017

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    Nominative Determinism An English Tory with the damning name of Chris Pincher has been accused of making unwanted advances including by way of an unwanted neck massage, to an athlete, while wearing a bathrobe. The victim, a former Olympic rower, who divulged the disputed details is appropriately called Alex Story. Similarly rapacious, the former British pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb, was referred to the Conservatives’ unpleasant sounding ‘disciplinary panel’ after admitting he sent suggestive text messages to a teenager.   If you Vote for Monkeys… When the Independent Alliance was forming, it should have worked out its policy on comprising delegations to tin-pot dictators.   Stellar Fair play to Paddy McKillen jr for his voluptuous rejuvenation of the art deco Stella Cinema in Rathmines. Through his company, Press-up, he has also restored and reopened the former Dollard Printing Works, next to the Clarence Hotel on Dublin’s Wellington Quay, as high-ceilinged restaurants and bars. It’s not so long since his Dad – collaborating with Bono and the Edge – got permission to demolish the whole lot, including the Clarence Hotel and Dollard building (except for the front wall), for a new spaceship-style hotel.   Oh no, Bono For some reason Bono seems to spend all day trying to pay less and less tax. He is the poster boy for raw global capitalism, though be leavens his image by his passion for charity (not to be confused with justice). The increasingly bigassed rock-constellation bought a shopping centre, not in Paradise but in Lithuania, which has paid no tax despite having made profits. The company was later transferred to zero-company-tax Guernsey. In a statement, the U2 frontman said he would be “extremely distressed if even as a passive minority investor…anything less than exemplary was done with my name anywhere near it”. Some years he outlined his approach to these things “It’s just some smart people we have working for us trying to be sensible about the way we’re taxed.” Meanwhile Lithuania’s tax authorities have said they are preparing to examine the details of the business over concerns that it avoided profit tax. They commenced “an inspection on taxpayers based on the evaluation of risk of tax breaches. Taxpayers having offshore transactions more often score higher points of risk”, they said. Bono did not apparently contrive artificial structures to avoid paying tax as did, for example, some of the stars of the execrable ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’. However, experts in Lithuania have suggested the underlying company incorporated for the purchase of the property may have broken local rules to reduce its tax bill. More fundamentally Bono’s adventurous, and greedy, tax roving serves to boost ultra-low tax jurisdictions and elaborate structures for cheating tax. And it is these things which are so harmful, not only to ordinary people in developed countries but also to the developing world. When plutocrats like Bono “shop around” different countries for the best tax deal they fan the flames of tax competition, putting ever more pressure on countries around the world to cut their tax rates.   Avoiding Tax, Responsibility and Villager’s Attention One of the ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ chaps caught up in the offshore shiftiness painted a picture of himself so inept that he had to google what tax avoidance was. Topping that, Villager had to google what ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ was.   If You’re Looking for Murderous Cover-Up Look No Further Northern Ireland High Court Judge Seamus Treacy has said he will compel the PSNI’s Chief Constable to complete an investigation into the activities of the one-time so-called Glenanne Gang, based at a County Armagh farm, which has been linked to up to 120 murders almost all of whom were “upwardly mobile” Catholic civilians with no links to Irish republican paramilitaries, including those of 33 people in the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings and of Miami Showband in 1975. The gang included members of the UVF, RUC and UDR. A report into its alleged activities by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) is 80% complete but unpublished. Earlier this year, a judge ruled that the PSNI had breached the human rights of the victims’ families and it had frustrated “any possibility of an effective investigation”.   Doing Dunnes Dunnes Stores cashier Mary Manning knew little about apartheid when, at the age of twenty-one, she refused to register the sale of two Outspan South African grapefruits under a directive from her union. In her memoir, ‘Striking Back – The Untold Story of an Anti-Apartheid Striker (Collins Press), Manning recounts how, on 19 July 1984, she was suspended and nine of her co-workers walked out in support. She said, “We all assumed we would shortly return to work but instead we were on that picket line for 2 years and 9 months”. The searing account of the strikers’ struggle against apartheid and the Irish Establishment will be launched on Friday 24 November at 6.30pm in the Gutter Bookshop, Temple Bar, as part of the inaugural Festival of Politics, by Joe Higgins, Socialist Party activist and former TD and MEP.   Villagrrr Newsbrands journalism awards are a misnomer, as well as a smugfest. For a start, they’re not for news brands or journalists but for newspaper journalists. At a recent drawnout gala event in the Mansion House that a bitter Villager avoided, they judged seven Irish Times journalists awardworthy. No-one else got more than three. The newspaper of reference’s dominance reflects the mutual loathings of newspaper rivals, manifest in nihilistic voting strategies, more than any particular respect for the mediocre Irish Times. Encapsulating the second-rate standards, the Best Headline of the Year went to the Irish Daily Star for the banner, ‘Quarter Pounder with Sleaze’, for a cover about a 44-year-old man who exposed himself to a teenager working in McDonald’s. Village’s best ever headline, over a story about distortions of the reality of fish farming, was ‘Lice, damned lies, and statistics’. Not that Newsbrands noticed. The editor says Village isn’t even a brand. The event was sponsored by the larcenous National Lottery

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    Villager – April 2016.

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    Old masters – of bad practice. Christies is the agent for the export and proposed sale by auction of nine paintings and a drawing – including paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, David Teniers II and Francesco Guardi – from the Alfred Beit Foundation’s collection, mostly based in Russborough House, Co Wicklow. Scandalously, and in breach of established good practice internationally, the sale is intended to meet ongoing upkeep costs at the Blessington mansion, one of the finest historic houses in Ireland. Two items have already been sold and, while a controversy erupted last year that averted the sale of the remainder, the Foundation stubbornly intends to auction four more over the summer. The Judith Woodward-headed foundation considers that it would have to pay Christies a penalty if it doesn’t go ahead with the auction. The problem is that Kildare-based Christies, whose website says it “maintains offices in the UK and Ireland” doesn’t have a licence from Ireland’s Property Services (Regulation) Authority to provide “property services” (defined as service for the auction of property whether land or otherwise) as required under ss 28 and 29 of the 2011 Property Services (Regulation) Act. It seems to be a criminal offence to hold yourself as able to auction goods in Ireland without such a licence. So the Foundation need have no fear of the consequences of doing the right thing… Not Allsops Ordinary folk will be celebrating the return to Ireland of whit-shoe auctioneer Sothebys which took a break from Éire during the country’s recent economic difficulty. According to the Sunday Business Post it is once again “to roll out its high-end property business to Ireland, offering ‘exceptional’ and ‘exotic’ homes only”. Intellectuals utterly and terribly abroad If anyone quotes “changed utterly”, Villager will spit. All. Changed. Utterly. Terrible. Beauty. Born. Nothing but cliché. Though he’s never written anything that bad, Michael D Higgins is famously Ireland’s worst poet but leading public intellectual, even if his only original idea about the Rising seems to have been that imperialist triumphalism hasn’t been adequately interrogated. And Villager thought the sixties and seventies were about little else. In fact Michael D seems to be Ireland’s only stayathome public intellectual. And he is thoughtful about, and as President appropriately immersed in, Ireland in 2016. Colm Tóibin, Roy Foster, Bob Geldof – all tourists with their fingers off the pulse of Ireland 2016 serve as mouthpieces for a nation, externally and increasingly internally too. Rooted in an era when they though the country irreformable they now seem uncomfortable in gauging the extent of its modernisation. They nod vituperatively, as they should, at the homelessness crisis, and suchlike, but really they don’t have a feel for the country now. While they have been admirable forces for progress in civil liberties it is not clear what view they take on contemporary issues of equality of social and economic rights. Fintan O’Toole spends much of the year in Princeton, New Jersey but, Villager thinks, keeps his feet on the ground enough to still know what it makes sense to get angry about.   Of Pearse and Connolly I admire the latter the most. Connolly was a realist, Pearse the direct opposite. I would have followd Connolly to hell had such action been necessary. But I honestly doubt… I would have followed Pearse. – Michael Collins 1921 As Village was going to print the Irish Times’ incipient new political editor, Pat “I’ve never been the same since Mara passed on” Leahy, reported that, “Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin is to tell acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny a Fine Gael minority government is the only option his party can support. It is understood Mr Martin is going to demand the acting Taoiseach withdraw his comments that Fine Gael cannot support a minority Fianna Fáil government”. If it’s going to support Fine Gael why is Martin so concerned that Fine Gael shouldn’t say it wouldn’t support Fianna Fáil? English muffin As Village went to press the still environment minister, Alan Kelly, was to join TV3 presenter Glenda Gilson, model Sarah Morrissey, soccer pundits Eamon Dunphy and Johnny Giles, Eurovision hopeful Nicky Byrne, and former Ireland soccer international Ray Houghton on the catwalk as a model for the Freedom Of Dublin Charity Fashion Show is in aid of the John Giles Foundation and the Capuchin Day Centre for Homeless People. Both charities are fronted by Freemen of the capital. “Later on tonight I’m partaking in a fashion show, your public will be delighted to hear”, Mr Kelly intoned to RTE’s Today with Sean O’Rourke, as Village was finalising his copy. “It’s being run by Emma English who is a partner of John Delaney’s”, he noted, confidence-inspiringly. Minded games The same Kelly announced an organisational review of An Bord Pleanála last year, largely playing to the rural one-off housing brigade’s hopes of decentralisation (ie an end to planning), though the terms of reference didn’t embrace anything so populist. The launch of the Review Group’s report last month escaped the media, now retired environment editor Frank McDonald only appears in the Irish Times on special occasions. Tellingly, An Bord Pleánála received 1979 new cases in 2015, 1810 in 2014 but 6664 in boomtime 2007. The report noted without enthusiasm that large numbers of judicial reviews under both the Habitats Directive and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directives and that a move to implementation of the Aarhus Convention Bill, which facilitates public participation in planning, makes it less likely An Bord Pleanála will get its legal costs in future litigation taken against it. it recommends simplification of the law through codification. Chairman Gregory Jones QC proved a solid pair of hands and nothing too radical emerged. the report contains over 100 recommendations across a number of themes, including: a more cohesive planning system, communication with stakeholders and an improved legislative base. The Group recommended amending Section 37 (1) (b) of the 2000 Planning Act to allow the Board to say that “it is minded to grant permission”, but to

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