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2 4 Nov/Dec 2016
It had become apparent that this election
had become more difficult than previously
predicted. As McLoughlin Healy gained support
outside the party base on her pro-Repeal stance
on abortion, adoption of modern technology and
engagement with voters, Fine Gael Ministers
Simon Coveney and Michael Noonan visited the
constituency, spending time with Deputy Heydon
but appearing to shun his running mate. Whether
an act of desperation or a rash gamble on being
trendy, Martin Heydon took part in a Back to the
Future parody election video beside Councillor
Darren Scully, best known for his resignation as
Naas mayor over a racism row. The move seemed
for some reason to pay off as the video went viral
online.
Election day and
return to Council
Anecdotes of unforgiveable requests for Fianna
Fáil vote transfers along with a wave of vandal
-
ism specifically targeting McLoughlin Healy’s
banners and billboards raised eyebrows up until
voting day 2016. The General Election saw Martin
Heydon elected in Kildare South, this time with
a significant drop in support of almost 35%,
alongside Seán Ó Fearghaíl and the almost hom-
onymic Fiona O’Loughlin, both of Fianna Fáil.
Fiona McLoughlin Healy finished in sixth place.
As the dust settled after a difficult campaign
and an even more difficult time forming a govern-
ment, Councillor McLoughlin Healy returned to
her position banging on about the issues she
had become attached to during her quest to
become a TD. She continued to voice support for
campaigners attempting to solve the school-
place crisis in the county, inevitably attracting
further conflict with her own party but boosting
her popularity as the public praised her and criti
-
cised other politicians’ inaction.
At a public meeting outside McLoughlin
Healy's district attended by Councillor Darren
Scully and Councillor Ivan Keatley, the school
places issue was raised, as was support from
Councillor McLoughlin Healy. The men told the
audience that support from councillors was prac-
tically meaningless as the issue was outside of
a councillor’s scope of influence. An audience
member complained that a nearby town in Coun-
cillor McLoughlin Healy’s area had better
services, to which another meanly shouted:
“And they have better councillors too”. An edu-
cation services campaigner later said she
believed Fine Gael members were ignoring the
issue because of their tensions with Councillor
McLoughlin Healy and her support for the cause.
While her detractors accused her of latching onto
issues she had little involvement in, for political
gain, her maverick appearance to the non-polit
-
ical aligned public undoubtedly made an
impression.
Pre-election squabbles
and disciplinary action
Some months before the election, Councillor
McLoughlin Healy believed she had unearthed a
conflict of interest regarding the allocation of
Decade of Commemoration funds to the Blue-
bells and Buskers festival in Rathangan, which
Fianna Fáil Councillor Fiona O'Loughlin presided
over. The festival had been founded by
O'Loughlin and her family in memory of her
father, a former Councillor, some years previ
-
ously. She also scandalously claimed that the
festival had connections, the confounded
O’Loughlin’s family. Councillor McLoughlin
Healy demanded a debate on the issue and
tabled a motion seeking a breakdown of the
grants paid out by the Decade of Commemora-
tions committee, only to gain no support.
Notes from the discussion of her motion show
a fierce exchange, as the councillor fought with
figures on all sides. Her conflict with Councillor
Weld over time-allocation was particularly
heated, while the CEO of Kildare County Council
Peter Carey went so far as to describe the motion
and subsequent discussion as “regrettable” and
“embarrassing”. Director of Services, Peter Min-
nock, issued a statement in which he said he
found the manner in which it had been raised
“disappointing” and that he had “no concerns
regarding the impartiality, integrity and manner
in which the work has been performed by all
persons engaged in this process". This state
-
ment came before the Fianna Fáil councillor
admitting on local radio that she had not
declared the conflict of interest in dealing with
the grant application made in her brother’s
name. Local commentators following the story
overwhelmingly found little substance to the
conflict, as did politicians publicly discussing it
on social media, as all proceeds went into the
redevelopment of a local community centre.
Despite this, some integrity-zealots continued
to express unease with the lack of
transparency.
Speaking to Village about the incident, Fiona
O’Loughlin, who is now a TD and therefore has
resigned her seat on the Council, said the
following:
“The ‘allegations’ were completely unfounded
and addressed by both the officials of KCC and
the now chair, Councillor Padraig McEvoy. I was
not part of the adjudication of the awards. A
grant was not paid to myself or my brother. A
grant of €600 (one of many around the county)
was paid to the bank account of Rathangan Com-
munity Association in order to part pay for a
publication about William A Byrne, a Rathangan
poet who took Thomas McDonagh’s place in UCD
after McDonagh’s execution. A local cultural
community group called ‘Bluebells and Buskers’
which organises Community events and fund-
raises for the local Community Centre made the
application. My brother, a locally civic and com
-
munity-minded volunteer, happens to chair the
group”.
McLoughlin Healy, however, still maintains
that O'Loughlin and her committee had had sign-
off on the grant which was for an event intimately
linked to her family.
On the back foot with the lack of support for
her motion and diminished warmth in the Coun
-
cil, McLoughlin Healy believed that Mayor Weld
was holding secret meetings regarding her
motion and had sought cross-party agreements
not to support any further motions she put for
-
ward in the future. Local Fine Gael members
clearly denied this, saying no meetings took
place. Councillor McLoughlin Healy believed oth-
erwise, pointing to the voting record which
showed the vast majority of her motions were
seconded by her colleagues before this, with
none being supported afterwards. Attempting to
discuss the issue with the mayor a number of
times, she found him unresponsive, which led
her to decide to table a motion of no confidence
in him. Independent Councillor Paddy Kennedy
said it “was not a nice meeting” and there was
“lots of shouting”. He described the scene as
unprecedented and said the public gallery had
to be cleared before the vote took place.
The no confidence vote was defeated, with a
quarter of the Councillors absent and McLough
-
lin Healy being the only vote in favour. A major
setback.
'My brother, a locally civic
and community-minded
volunteer, happens to chair
the group'
Former Fianna Fáil leader on Kildare County
Council, Fiona O'Loughlin TD
NEWS
Nov/Dec 2016 2 5
Discipline
After the catastrophic motion of no confidence,
Councillor McLoughlin Healy found herself criti
-
cised in the Irish Independent newspaper and
told by angry colleagues that she was no longer
welcome at Fine Gael members’ meetings. A
complaint was raised against her by Councillor
Darren Scully and Councillor McLoughlin Healy
was brought before the national Fine Gael disci
-
plinary committee in September, under the
watchful eye of Tom Curran.
Councillor Scully claimed that the meetings
Councillor McLoughlin Healy had questioned
were simply about protocol and running the
council but that no decisions had been reached,
which he said explained why there was no record
of it. McLoughlin Healy said that she had con-
tacted Mayor Weld more than six times, only to
be ignored and that she was trying to expose an
old boys’ club. Weld had also served on the
Decade of Commemorations Committee.
Meanwhile Councillor Scully was telling local
reporters “that’s crazy stuff. It’s very damaging
to politics. It’s very damaging to give the impres-
sion to people that politics is like that”. Speaking
on local radio, Mr Scully said Mayor Weld, his
family and friends had been hurt by the allega-
tions, again saying they were not true. When it
was put to him that perhaps Councillor McLough-
lin Healy had a lack of support in Fine Gael or that
her gender was an issue, he dismissed the
notion, saying that she “was given a free pass
to run in the general election by Fine Gael”.
The committee sanctioned McLoughlin Healy
with the removal of the Whip for six months in
early October this year, for causing “serious
damage to the integrity of the party”. Reacting
to the decision, she said: "it was very disappoint-
ing that the former Mayor Brendan Weld did not
turn up to the investigation. That and other
issues arising on the night of the investigation
and since, mean that there is no final outcome
yet". Councillor Scully welcomed the outcome,
maintaining there had been no effort made to
block his colleague’s motions.
Then, in a spectacular turn of events, two
weeks after the decision was announced, Sinn
Féin Councillor Íde Cussen backed up Councillor
McLoughlin Healy’s allegations. Responding to
comments by Councillor Darren Scully published
in the Leinster Leader newspaper, Councillor
Cussen said that she was present at the meet-
ing, as was Fiona O’Loughlin as Group Leader for
Fianna Fáil. Councillor Cussen said that she felt
it was “inappropriate” to discuss the motion of
no confidence and “ways of managing Fiona
McLoughlin Healy” with Ms O’Loughlin present.
“...I decided to write to you and state clearly for
the record that yes a meeting was called, yes it
was to discuss Councillor Fiona McLoughlin-
Healy’s motions and yes I was clearly told that
we – Sinn Féin – weren’t helping matters by sec
-
onding her Motions”.
Reacting to the councillor’s statements, TD
Fiona O’Loughlin said that she was present at
the meeting mentioned but it was not a meeting
about “managing” any particular member of Kil-
dare County Council. Instead she said it was
about “protocols and procedures”. “At no point
did Councillor Cussen state that she felt it was
inappropriate that I was present. When the topic
was raised about the said Councillors previous
motion and subsequent commentary, I clearly
said myself that I would not comment on the par-
ticular issue”.
Speaking to Village, Councillor Cussen
revealed how Councillor Scully was not even pre-
sent at the meeting and how she was hesitant to
get involved in the matter but was bothered by
claims she had misinformed anyone about the
subject of the meeting. She underlined how it
was not another councillor or party’s job to
silence an elected representative and noted that
seconding a motion did not mean supporting it,
but allowed people to discuss it and vote.
Surprisingly, given how vocal he had been on
the topic, Darren Scully remained tight-lipped.
When asked if he would be disputing Councillor
Cussen’s letter to the Leinster Leader newspaper
or retracting his previous comments, he did not
respond. Instead, he issued a short statement
which read: “Cllr Fiona Mcloughlin Healy has had
the whip removed from her by the Fine Gael dis-
ciplinary committee. This was in relation to her
putting a motion of no confidence down at full
council in the then Mayor, Cllr Brendan Weld (FG).
As Cllr McLoughlin Healy has now appealed that
decision I will be making no further comment on
the issue”.
Councillor Scully is a former mayor of Naas,
who lost the party whip and was forced to resign
as mayor after comments he made about black
Africans (and his unwillingness to represent
them) in 2011.
He was subsequently accepted back into Fine
Gael and was the highest placed Fine Gael can
-
didate in the local elections. Last year he had a
letter published in the Sunday Times, suggesting
that the family of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old
Syrian child who drowned along with his five-
year-old brother off the coast of Turkey, were not
fleeing for their lives.
In 2008 Scully made headlines for comments
about young women, claiming teenagers were
looking to get pregnant in order to obtain free
housing.
The allegations that he has in effect lied about
the nature of meetings about Councillor
McLoughlin Healy, will not help with those who
doubt his fitness for office.
While some members of the electorate will see
this whole saga as confirming their beliefs in
shady deals between political elites, crushing
dissent and maintaining the status quo, others
will see it simply as a crude clash of political per-
sonalities scrambling over each other to further
their party careers, a comforting return to busi
-
ness as usual.
The law, however, is clear. Former Councillor
Fiona O'Loughlin should have declared her inter-
est and withdrawn from the vote which
concerned interests of her brother.
Councillor McLoughlin Healy awaits a vindi
-
cation.
In a spectacular turn of events, Sinn Féin
councillor Íde Cussen backed up Councillor
McLoughlin Healy’s allegations. Responding to
comments by Councillor Darren Scully published in the
Leinster Leader newspaper, Councillor Cussen said that she
was present at the meeting, as was Fiona O’Loughlin as
Group Leader for Fianna Fáil
Councillor Scully told
local reporters “that’s
crazy stuff. It’s very
damaging to politics. It’s
very damaging to give the
impression to people that
politics is like that".
Councillor Darren Scully
2 6 Nov/Dec 2016
Oxfam: hypocrites
or pragmatists?
Just because the end is a good one it
is not always legitimate to avoid tax in
pursuit of it
by Stephen McDermott
A
MAN WALKS into a bar and orders a pint. The
bartender turns to him and says: “€36.80
please”. Thinking this must be a mistake, the
man asks the bartender why his drink is so
expensive. “Well”, says the barman, “there
was people in here earlier who got a meal and a few
drinks, but they didn’t pay. We have to pass the cost on
to the next customer”.
This is not a joke punchline, but one of several real
interactions between a barman and some of his punters,
recorded in a Dublin pub as part of a hidden-camera
video, to promote Oxfam’s #MakeTaxFair campaign.
Oxfam says the campaign’s purpose is to highlight the
injustice of tax deals that assist multinationals, and
bring inequality and economic hardship to the societies
in which these companies operate.
The video – alluringly titled ‘Ireland’s Most Expensive
Pint?’ and shared on Facebook – brings the campaign to
a social media audience, and in just over two minutes
offers an entertaining simplification of the effects of tax
avoidance.
Shots of different customers and the unreasonable
barman induce incredulity, and comical threats of vio-
lence follow. The barman asks his customers if they think
it’s unfair. “Of course it’s unfair”, comes the chimed
response.
But the campaign has an unintended side-effect: by
ridiculing tax avoidance, it draws down questions of
sweeping stringency about the arrangements of Oxfam
itself, a multinational, albeit a multinational NGO with
Charitable Exemption Status.
“Every single day, we end up paying for those who
don’t pick up our tab”, says the barman’s voice at the end
of the video, before he’s seen biting symbolically into an
apple as if at a dysfunctional iPhone launch.
What gives Oxfam the right to say how other compa
-
nies should pay taxes?
Might it be its agenda?
Well it is not the purpose of this article to take any
issue with Oxfam’s dynamic and progressive agenda. So
its not about that.
These ads aren’t about that agenda, they’re about tax
avoidance, tax cleverality.
So it can only be its approach to tax in itself. It must
be because it has a discrete and separate agenda –
beyond relief of global poverty – about tax. Sure enough,
and unfortunately for Oxfam, it makes this argument
itself in its own promotional video. The campaign is
#MakeTaxFair not MakeEverythingFair, after all.
So Oxfam can expect, like those it judges, to be held
to the highest standards of tax scrupulousness.
In the wake of the release of the Panama Papers,
Oxfam's Irish CEO Jim Clarken made impassioned calls
for the closure of legal loopholes that allow companies
to avoid paying tax.
“It is not good enough to argue that tax avoidance is
permissible because practices fall within the letter of the
law”, he told the Irish Times. “All governments, rich and
poor, must work to end tax dodging because it is their
citizens - their electorate - who are the biggest losers”.
Oxfam is no petty player: it is respected and pioneer
-
ing. Oxfam’s Irish subsidiary owns almost €4m worth of
assets, had an income of €12m last year, and pays its
NEWS
€
Instead of
managing their
own shops,
charities
contrive private
subsidiaries, which
then donate their
annual profits
back to their
parent company
as ‘Gift Aid'
The face of global egalitarianism, Oxfam
Nov/Dec 2016 2 7
CEO, Jim Clarken, €90,000 a year.
So what does Oxfam do about its own tax?
Oxfam’s retail operations, on which it made
just under €1m last year, evoke an interesting
comparison to how multinationals pay tax, as
both Oxfam and its more capitalistic global
peers are affected by commercial rates of tax
under Irish law.
Perhaps controversially in the context of the
#MakeTaxFair campaign, Oxfam has lobbied the
Government, as a member of the Irish Charity
Shops Association, to have its retail trading
exempted from such rates.
Its tax arrangements in the UK have generated
controversy. Richard Teather of Bournemouth
University is one critic, arguing that Oxfam and
other UK-based charities make use of legal loop-
holes that look “remarkably like tax avoidance”
to avoid paying commercial rates on their shops
there.
Outlining Oxfam’s more general modus oper
-
andi for the Institute of Economic Affairs, Teather
describes how, instead of managing their own
shops, charities control their retail operations
through a private subsidiary, which then donates
its annual profits back to their parent company
under a scheme called ‘Gift Aid’.
Set up by the British Government under the
Finance Act 1990, Gift Aid was originally intended
to encourage taxpayers to donate more money to
charity, and works by allowing a charity to claim
25% back on donations made by anyone subject
to UK income tax as a form of rebate from the Gov
-
ernment, effectively increasing the amount of the
donation. In 2006, the scheme was extended to
include the operation of charity shops.
In Oxfam’s case, the parent company (Oxfam
International) owns Oxfam Activities Ltd. (OAL),
whose primary activity is listed as the “recovery
of sorted materials”. Last year, OAL ‘donated’
£783,000 to its parent company, tax-free.
Beyond rates and UK-government-encouraged
tax rebates, the way Oxfam has seized on news
items that have highlighted tax avoidance in the
past also opens it to accusations of hypocrisy.
But what would hypocrisy look like for Oxfam?
We must distinguish two things. Firstly ends
from means. And secondly philanthropy from
profit-making.
It’s a mistake to cloud the morality of tax
avoidance in terms of ends and means, to believe
that charities should get a free pass because of
their benevolence. It cannot be the case that if
the end is a good one it is legitimate to be tax-
avoiding in pursuit of it.
For example: Oxfam’s end is excellent; BP’s
goal is not good; Apple’s is in between. So a cer-
tain logic might suggest tax avoidance is merited
on a sliding scale that reflects this. But this
should not be the case any more than the tax
system can be tailored so the benevolent and the
wise are levied for less than the malign or profit-
obsessed. Such argumentation cuts across the
very essence of the fairness of the system. If cer-
tain activities or individuals merit favourable
treatment it must be effected by exemptions,
grants and other policy measures, not by allow-
ing them to game the system, by avoidance.
To promote its agenda, which includes paying
its own staff and executives, Oxfam has seized
on one of the issues of our time, tax avoidance
and made it its own. Seizing on topical scandals
– from corruption to inequality to famine to cli-
mate change to tax avoidance is largely how
charities get ahead.
Highlighting the ramifications of multinational
tax avoidance could be seen as particularly
rewarding for charity, in Ireland. In October, the
majority of respondents to an Irish Times/Ipsos
MRBI poll said they agreed with the Government’s
decision to appeal the ruling which deprives the
Irish taxpayer of €13bn, before interest.
Charities like Oxfam campaign for accounta
-
bility and legitimacy. One of the tenets of the
#MakeTaxFair campaign is to urge visitors to
Oxfam’s website to sign a petition, which urges
Michael Noonan to publicise the tax arrange-
ments that Irish-based companies have with
other countries, in the hope of achieving greater
transparency.
The #MakeTaxFair campaign is one of the
better examples of a charity adding insight and
expertise to the public discourse in a sustained
way, highlighting the consequences of tax avoid-
ance in countries like Malawi, where a generous
double-taxation treaty signed with the UK in
1955, when the country was still a British colony,
has created wide-scale inequality that has seen
it become the world’s poorest nation.
Figures from the Malawian government show
it lost $125m in tax allowances between 2008
and 2009 alone, equal to the government
spends annually on its national grain subsidy,
and recent comments from Malawian president
Peter Mutharika decried the effect that multi-
national tax evasion is having on the country.
It’s a case that has been almost entirely ignored
by Western media.
Oxfam’s own website explains the crippling
effect that a lack of funding is having on public
services in Malawi, while a campaign by another
charity, ActionAid, revealed earlier this year that
the doctor-to-patient ratio in Malawi is roughly
1 to 60,000 (in Ireland it’s about 1 to 370, itself
below the OECD average).
This is not to suggest that tax fairness offers
a sureshot solution to such problems, but fund
-
ing issues in countries like Malawi would
certainly be resolved if their systems of taxation
were made fairer. According to figures from the
IMF, tax-avoidance schemes cost developing
countries roughly $200bn a year – more than
they collectively receive in foreign aid.
Oxfam Ireland’s accounts show that last year
it donated over €325,000 to projects in Malawi,
more than a third of the net profit made from the
charity’s commercial trading activity here. Pro
-
viding charities with the means to pay less tax
on their retail operations, through incentives like
Gift Aid, could arguably increase this figure.
Oxfam’s ostensible hypocrisy comes at a time
when scandals in the charity sector have put the
benefits that they receive under further scrutiny.
Questions surrounding the legitimacy and
accountability of charities since this summer’s
Console scandal have been reflected in the drop
in donations since, with one in three charities
polled by umbrella organisation, The Wheel,
reporting a significant drop in donations.
It is a terrible mistake that Oxfam, one of the
most respected charities has unnecessarily
opened up a front for criticism.
They might not make your pint cheaper, but
campaigns to make tax fair can ultimately reduce
exploitation, increase accountability, and enable
developing countries to achieve greater legiti-
macy and the ability to make their own
decisions.
However, if the proponents of tax fairness
don’t practise it, the campaigns risk setting the
goals back. In the case of Oxfam it is probably
fair to say that, in Clarkin’s terms, it engages in
avoidance, though not of course in (illegal)
evasion.
To say the least Oxfam needs to be careful.
According to figures from
the IMF, tax avoidance
schemes cost developing
countries roughly $200bn
a year – more than they
collectively receive in
foreign aid
It cannot be the case that if the end is a good
one it is legitimate to be tax-avoiding in pursuit
of it, any more than the tax system should be
tailored so the benevolent are levied for less than the
merely profit-maximising
