Ireland Archives - Page 8 of 19

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Dublin’s North Inner City

by Michael Smith 30 June, 2018 0 Comments

Dublin’s North City fell out of fashion after the flight of the future Duke of Leinster to Kildare St and the Act of Union. That’s more than two centuries ago and the journey back has been slow. It suffered shocking poverty over succeeding generations, the collapse of world-class mansions into tenements, dereliction, the flight of nearly all private residents and a drugs and crime epidemic. In the last twenty-five years it has been subjected to an inundation of third-rate private-sector apartments, the re- division of many old houses including the removal of period features and a pogrom of gang killings. It has also witnessed wholesale immigration and a degree of cultural diversity. It has a dramatic need for new apartments but the focus for new development in 2018 appears to be hotels and (high-quality if expensive) student housing, not – perhaps because standards are in flux – apartments. It seems likely a naïve Minister for Housing and Planning will indulge a reduction in building-height standards that may compromise perhaps the area’s principal attraction, its historic human scale. CONSERVATION The focus of this piece is on one small new pattern of development: some exciting conservation projects. ORMOND QUAY The construction of Ormond Quay Upper and Lower – named after James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde – began during the 1670s with the development of the former lands of St. Mary’s Abbey by Sir Humphrey Jervis, and with the setting out of a formal quay-line and carriageway as part of the Corporation’s grant of substantial lands to Jonathan Amory in 1675. These developments were facilitated by the construction of two bridges under the auspices of Jervis linking the walled medieval city with the new north-side suburbs: Essex Bridge (now Grattan Bridge), erected in the late 1670s, and Ormond Bridge (now O’Donovan Rossa Bridge), completed by 1684. The speculative development of the quay front soon followed, with the lands of Ormond Quay Upper developed as a fashionable residential parade with associated commercial uses under the freehold of Lord Santry, Henry Barry. 1-1A ORMOND QUAY LOWER The house on the corner of Capel Street and Lower Ormond Quay is most famous from its appearance on a late-18th-century Malton print (the ones you find on greasy place mats and on bathroom walls in Dublin 6) with a view across the river to the then Custom House where the Clarence Hotel now stands. It’s been derelict for twenty years since it served as offices for a solicitors firm fronted by Liam Cosgrave Junior who was disgraced after unedifying information about planning corruption emerged in the planning tribunal. It comprises an existing four-storey over basement protected structure with four bays and two shopfronts facing Ormond Quay and two bays with one shopfront facing Capel Street. The shopfronts are shuttered and now messy. There was previously a fast food restaurant at street level. The façade of the building is rendered and in a poor state of repair; however, there are interesting features including arched windows at first-floor level and corner quoins. Permission has been granted for development comprising conservation and a change of use at first, second and third floor levels from commercial occupancy to use as short-term-lease guest suites and change of use of the ground floor and basement to restaurant/cafe use, supervised by James Kelly of Kelly and Cogan Architects. Indeed it might be argued that in view of the strategic significance of the site, facing the overblown Temple Bar, in effect an ambassador for the North Side, public uses – pub or restaurant – might have been suitable for the entire building. The site of No 1 Capel Street was originally occupied by a larger house, which also occupied part of neighbouring plots. The exact age of the building is unclear but it is shown on a map dating from 1784, and also on a 1795 image by James Malton. The building was used as the state lottery office before 1800 and was then in a variety of uses including draper, feather merchant, stationer, bookseller and bookbinder in addition to briefly accommodating solicitors’ offices. By the mid-19th-century the building had been stucco-finished, with quoin detailing and decorative moulding added. The facade to the quays was partly blank but included an arched window at street level. During the Civil War in 1922 the façade and shopfront of the building were damaged. A new shopfront was then provided on the façade to Ormond Quay, which was divided into two parts and included a new entrance lobby onto the quays, though access to the building was, and remains, tricky with narrow pavement on two sides and a torrent of parking-free traffic down the quays. By the late 20th century the retail/commercial unit at ground floor level had been subdivided. It is stated that the building has been largely unaltered since the late eighteenth century, with the exception of the alterations to the shopfront and the plastering over the original brick façade. Original fabric, including the gothic rounded headed windows to Capel Street and the quays, survives, as do internal joinery works including architraves, staircase and doors. The building retains its commercial character, while the original plan form is substantially intact. 18 UPPER ORMOND QUAY On Upper Ormond Quay, to the South of the area, the Dublin Civic Trust is leading a project to restore an interconnected pair of riverfront merchant buildings. – the quayside house dates to 1842-43 and the rear building to the 1760s. The four-storey over basement house includes a rare arcaded Georgian shopfront composed from cut granite of, depending on who you listen to, a date of 1789 or around 1810. This is the most challenging and transformative building project the under-celebrated Trust has embarked on since its foundation in 1992 and is one of the most significant initiatives of its kind in Ireland. Both buildings require extensive structural stabilisation and careful conservation of fabric. The project will restore residential use to the upper floors and traditional shop use below. Number 18 started life as a river-fronting

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Russell, O Laoire and the Whitestown scandal

by Ciaran Mannion 29 June, 2018 0 Comments

When hazardous hospital waste was found in an illegal landfill at Whitestown, Co Wicklow Irish institutions and agencies were shocked. This wasn’t the usual domestic dumper avoiding charges of €1100 a tonne or a local authority dumping old road materials. The average cost of disposing of medical waste in 1998 was €11,480 a tonne. Clearly someone wanted to avoid such payments. The €40,000,000 bill handed to Wicklow County Council and, by default, Irish society that was explained in the February issue of Village puts the delinquency of those trying to avoid the disposal costs in perspective. Lest we forget the enormity of this case, which Judge Richard Humphreys described as centring on perhaps the largest illegal land ll in the history of the State, medical hazardous waste was found strewn in multi-tonnage amounts in initial examinations of the land ll. The World Health Organisation cites such illegally disposed waste as being responsible for 40% of hepatitis cases and 12% of HIV cases worldwide. The court case was primarily focused on the potential for pollution of water but those involved in the transporting waste to the site were also at high risk. The Judge and counsel bantered about Chicago in the 1930s and the Sopranos giving a avour of the waste-industry impropriety and corruption that figured in the case. Two of the individuals central to that case, Ireland’s Jarndyce v Jarndyce, that has lasted 16 years already, are Professor Ronnie Russell and Retired Commandant Donal O Laoire. The men have a business relationship through a range of associated directorships and companies that spans nearly 30 years to the present day. As O Laoire Russell Associates since 2001 and EMA International before that, they list clients including the World Bank, UNIDO, the European Commission and many Irish government, industry and regulatory authorities. With a PhD in Immunology from Glasgow University (1973-76), Professor Ronnie Russell is described on his own Linkedin page in terms that command respect: Adjunct Associate Professor TCD (1976 to present), Chairman HSE Decontamination Advisory Committee (2007-present), Vice-Chair of the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce (which runs Ireland’s Green Schools, Blue Flags and other environmental programmes, 2015-present) and the technical representative for the disarmament section of the Department of Foreign Affairs at the UN in Geneva (1994-present) in which role he Chaired the EU Bioweapons Disarmament Expert Committee during Irish EU Presidencies. An RAF reconnaissance liaison and trainee Concorde pilot while studying for his Ph.D, he probably had a lot to complement the distinguished military experience of Donal O’Laoire whose profile on the CEMS website describes a professional career background in the Irish Defence Forces: Donal O Laoire has practised as an independent consultant in Ireland, EU, Eastern Europe, North Africa and Asia for almost 20 years, and is a graduate and post-graduate of Trinity College Dublin. Working with agencies of the United Nations, he has designed and project-managed large-scale environmental projects including land decontamination and remediation in several countries. In some biographies he de nes a lecturing role at TCD. This pair constitutes a formidable galaxy of knowledge, influence and contacts. What is here relevant is their involvement with one of the companies listed as having possibly contributed waste to the illegal land ll in the first place, Eco-Safe Systems Limited. Russell and O Laoire were two of the initial directors in Eco-safe Systems Ltd and both were shareholders. The implication of this company went unchallenged at all stages and was accepted by the High Court last year. Eco-Safe Systems Ltd had become the only company granted an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permit to dispose of treated hazardous hospital waste legally – in a, designated, Irish land ll. The compelling, frightening image of this land ll was graphically depicted in court by Professor Ronnie Russell. On 14 July 2005 he swore a lengthy affidavit about his examination of the site. His first paragraph included the following: “The items tested included bandages and dressings, cannulas, hypodermic needles and syringes. Many of these proved strongly positive for the presence of blood indicating a contaminated state. Furthermore, intravenous lines, assorted plastic tubings, sample containers and other clinical materials showed no evidence of having been autoclaved (having been subjected to high temperature sterilisation treatment) as would be appropriate for such material before being discarded”. O Laoire in his affidavit stated: “During this initial inspection I observed gas bubbling through waste puddles on the surface. Parts of surgical gloves were observed on the surface. All these parts of gloves seemed to have been systematically cut or shredded. Further examination of the surface revealed small amounts of broken glass, shredded tin cans, and medical equipment such as masks, syringes, surgical gloves and theatre gowns at surface level”. Other engineers and consultants also swore lengthy affidavits in July 2005 as to what was on site, including hospital waste. In other words, Wicklow County Council may have unwittingly invited two of the founding directors of that highly innovative new medical-waste-disposal company to forensically investigate the scene of a crime where waste from that company might have been illegally brought. There are ways that this could happen without the knowledge of company principals but the looming ethics question is why they did not bring this to the immediate attention of the Garda leading the Criminal Investigation. If they had, the excellent insurance coverage Eco-Safe Systems Ltd had in place as a prerequisite to being awarded the EPA waste licence permit 54-01 could have covered 15m for each of the ndings of illegal medical waste which might have paid for the entire subsequent clean-up of the whole site before the problem was exacerbated by the botched remediation. There is no legal time-limit on hospital waste generator obligations for proper disposal. They could also have met a medical duty of care to the workers who may unwittingly have been exposed to hazardous material and now perhaps even be suffering mystery illnesses of unknown origin. The “botched remediation” effectively blended all categories of waste on the site together leaving a

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Wild geese

by Michael Smith 29 June, 2018 0 Comments

In April An Bord Pleanála surprisingly granted permission to Crekav Trading for 104 houses and 432 apartments on playing fields east of St Paul’s College on Sybil Hill Road in Raheny, despite receiving more than 1,000 objections, and a recommendation for refusal from Dublin City Council. The site was originally part of the St Anne’s estate, the home of the Guinness brewing family on which Lord Ardilaun forged a magnificent Palazzo out of the original seventeenth century house. According to Dublin City Council’s Parks Division, St Paul’s is the most important ex-situ (ie outside of the North Bull Island) feeding site for Brent Geese in Dublin, based on numbers (a large majority of the Dublin population feed at this site), regularity of use, geographical location in relation to North Bull Island, size, and the relative lack of disturbance. The Brent Geese on the North Bull Island Special Protection Area are now largely reliant on the availability of inland feeding grounds, like St Paul’s. These lands are not designated but are nonetheless protected under habitats legislation. The only exception whereby development might be deemed to be compliant with this protection would be in exceptional cases where there is overriding public interest, and even then, only when no feasible alternative for the development has been demonstrated, and compensatory measures to offset the ecological damage are implemented. There is no suggestion that these exceptional circumstances and compensatory measures are to be found in the case of this development. Development on feeding areas forces the geese to travel greater distances to feed and potentially brings them into conflict with agricultural interests feeding on winter cereal crops. This results in greater expenditure of energy which affects the condition of the birds and their ability to complete the annual migration to their breeding grounds. The cumulative effects of this residential development proposal alongside existing impacts on geese arising from other already permitted developments which have removed some of their feeding sites, should have been assessed by An Bord Pleanála. In addition it should have considered whether adequate feeding areas will be left for Brent Geese after these developments are complet and whether any such areas are zoned appropriately in the Dublin City Development Plan. An Bord Pleanála is obliged to comply with European law on these issues . In considering the proposal, An Bord Pleanála’s inspector noted that the extent of potentially suitable feeding areas for the geese within Dublin city is finite and that the currently recognised feeding sites that are considered to be an alternative to the lands at St Paul’s may currently be experiencing pressures, including recreational disturbances, that may limit their capacity to accommodate the loss likely to occur as a result of the proposed development. Not withstanding this concern by its inspector, the planning board went on to grant consent for the development at the St Paul’s site. Of course Bord Pleanála decisions are formulaic and legalistic but we can take some indirect insight into its possible thinking from the reasoning in the report of its inspector whose conclusion it adopted: “The numbers of inland feeding areas are relatively significant, the geese appear to be thriving based on their increasing populations and I consider that the loss of this site as a feeding ground will not adversely impact on the conservation objectives of any of the five designated sites. In light of this assessment, I am of the opinion that there is capacity for the existing ex-situ inland feeding areas to absorb the loss of St Paul’s and I consider it reasonable to conclude on the basis of the information on the file, which I consider adequate in order to carry out a Stage 2 Appropriate Assessment, that the proposed development, individually or in combination with other plans or projects would not adversely affect the integrity of the five relevant European sites, in view of their Conservation Objectives”. However, whether this reasoning meets the requirements of European law and related case law remains to be seen. Bord Pleanála is under political pressure to approve housing schemes, in a housing crisis and the government is infamously unconcerned with environmental and planning niceties. In particular, for instance. The lack of certainty around the capacity of alternative sites to absorb geese displaced from the St Paul’s site may be problematic. Dublin City Council had eloquently warned in its submissions to An Bord Pleanála that the suggested capacity of alternative sites to accommodate the displaced geese is questionable and may not be achievable. The St Paul’s site is one of the top eight inland feeding sites for Brent geese. Accordingly, Bird-Watch Ireland and the Irish Brent Goose Research Group commented in their submission to An Bord Pleanála on this application: “We conclude that is an unacceptably high proportion of the population to be expected to be displaced to and absorbed within the existing network of sites and not in keeping with the conservation objectives of adjacent European protected sites” and furthermore that: “To suggest that these birds are flexible and will simply move elsewhere is simplistic and is especially weak given the recent pattern of development (all representing habitat loss) in the area”. The application was made under the new Strategic Housing Development ‘fast track’ planning system. This allows applications for schemes of more than 100 homes to be made directly to An Bord Pleanála, bypassing the local authority decision phase and excluding the possibility of an appeal. This leaves judicial review as the only course of action for those aggrieved by the planning consent. A miffed Dublin City Council, which turned down a less intrusive application for an associated application for sports facilities on a site at St Paul’s adjoining this one (on grounds of impacts to Brent geese) is hostile to the decision. City Manager Owen Keegan told the Council: “My recommendation, based on planning advice, was the board should not have granted this”. He obtained, presumably suitably conservative, legal advice that it did not have “locus standing” or legal standing to take

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Abortion on the march

by Anton McCabe 28 June, 2018 0 Comments

After the abortion-repeal referendum, there is momentum for change in the North, though DUP-dependent Theresa May has indicated she will not not facilitate it. It has made reluctant bed-fellows of DUP traditionalists and Catholic moral conservatives. DUP Assembly Member Jim Wells has had the DUP whip withdrawn for openly criticising the party leadership. “I’m anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion. I would be conservative, and maybe that’s not the new image the party wants”, he has said. Wells went to Dublin to take part in the ‘Save the Eighth’ march. DUP leader Arlene Foster has noted support from former Sinn Féin voters disaffected by its stance on abortion, coming her party’s way. In early June Ian Paisley Jr tweeted: “I have a letter from a local priest in my constituency thanking the DUP for its stance on these issues and assuring me that he is urging his parishioners to vote DUP because of the stance we take on social matters”. Up to 50% of the North’s Catholics are estimated to be socially conservative, to varying degrees, with 2% to 3%, mostly urban, being fundamentalists. A minority of these actually vote DUP, for moral reasons. On the other hand, however, there are internal strains in the DUP, with some in favour of allowing abortion in certain circumstances and moving away from Paisleyite fundamentalism. Moreover, influence is not all one-way, with the recent West Tyrone by-election emboldening Sinn Féin to a Repeal stance. On May 3 Sinn Féin’s Órfhlaith Begley won that Westminster seat with a majority of just under 8,000. Pro-life campaigners ran a vigorous campaign targeting Sinn Féin in the election. The constituency is 68% Catholic, much of it rural and conservative. Sinn Féin calculates that it only lost approximately 1,000 votes on the issue. It accepts that not all its voters supported the right to choose, but most seem prepared to accept the party position. A factor was that Mary Lou McDonald came out clearly for repeal. Her statement may not have been as strong as most pro-choice campaigners would want, but it was clear. “Sinn Féin is campaigning in the upcoming referendum to remove the Eighth Amendment from the Constituion”, she said. “We are doing this because this is a public health matter. The Eighth Amendment should never have been put into the constitution because that was never the appropriate place to address issues of women’s health”. It’s a long way from the IRA in the 1930s which declared that it would take its social policy from Papal encyclicals. It’s even a big shift since the 2015 Westminster election in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. There pro-lifers had targeted Sinn Féin. In response, it circulated a lea et in the name of Martin McGuinness: “I hold very strong personal views on the issue (abortion) myself and have always been and remain pro-life… As one of the leading parties in the Assembly, Sinn Féin will continue to block the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to the North”. Despite this letter, sitting Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew lost her seat. While there has been no vote in the North on the issue, the clear majority of ‘yes’ votes in Southern border counties is suggestive of attitudes in the North, even in rural areas. These are areas where communities straddle the Border, and most people have family on both sides. Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, is on the Border with South Fermanagh. It voted ‘yes’ by almost two-to-one. Clones, Co Monaghan, is surrounded on three sides by Fermanagh. All five polling booths had a ‘yes’ majority. The same was true of parts of North Monaghan, physically, economically and socially intermeshed with Tyrone. The villages of Emyvale and Glaslough were strongly ‘yes’. That could be seen in East Donegal. Lifford, on the Border with Strabane, where most residents in several housing estates are from Strabane, voted 51% ‘yes’. From Monaghan and Donegal, there are indications that many members of the Presbyterian Church, the North’s largest Protestant denomination, did not support their Church’s call for a ‘no’ vote. In Aghabog, Co Monaghan, with a strong Presbyterian community, ‘yes’ took 160 votes to 140 ‘no.’ Nearby Drum is as Presbyterian and Orange a village as any in Ulster. It voted ‘no’, but narrowly, with 110 ‘yes’ and 119 ‘no’. In Monaghan even more than Donegal Presbyterians congregations are rural and doctrinally conservative. Thus, urban Protestants in the North could reasonably be assumed to be more pro-choice. In the longer term, the Referendum result will modify attitudes in the North. A significant driving factor of Unionism is the genuine fear of ‘Home Rule is Rome Rule’. Most Unionists would recognise there have been signi cant changes in the South, but would have certain doubts. This vote is proof of big change. In the foreseeable future it is unlikely that any significant proportion of the Protestant population will move to support Irish unity. A 2016 BBC poll showed 72% of them (and 47% of Catholics) against. But even in conservative Northern Ireland, now be sieged to the South and East by abortion liberals, a wave of change is rolling. Anton McCabe

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Mary, Mary, quite contrary

by Frank Connolly 27 June, 2018 0 Comments

By Frank Connolly. Former Minister for Health, Mary Harney, met one of the US firms at the centre of the cervical smear-testing scandal on three occasions in 2008 and 2009. Harney was Minister when US firm, Quest Diagnostics, secured the tender for smear testing in 2008 against the advice of leading Irish cytologists who questioned the reliability of the US laboratories. According to documents obtained by Village from the Department of Health, Harney met representatives of Quest in October 2008, June 2009 and October 2009 although details of the discussions were not revealed. The first encounter took place soon after Quest was awarded the multi-million-euro contract to provide laboratory-testing services to the HSE. It had been checking slides from Irish hospitals for breast and other cancers for some years but with the introduction of national-screening programmes and a significant backlog in Irish laboratories, it was decided to outsource the service to Quest and, two years later, to other US laboratories. Objections raised by Irish pathologists, including by Dr David Gibbons of St Luke’s Hospital, about the poor quality of US tests compared to Irish results were dismissed by the HSE and by Tony O’Brien who was then in charge of the National Cancer Screening Service (NCSS). Dr Gibbons has said that he resigned from the oversight board which supervised the NCSS after his warnings were ignored. O’Brien stood down from his post as Director General of the HSE last month in the wake of the cervical-smear scandal. In 2008, the NCSS awarded the contract to analyse 300,000 Irish smear tests to Quest Diagnostics. Two years later Clinical Pathology Laboratories (CPL), based in Austin, Texas, was awarded a tender to provide laboratory services for CervicalCheck, the programme run by the NCSS. Both firms continue to provide laboratory testing services to the Irish health service. Two months ago, Vicky Phelan (43) from Limerick settled her action in the High Court action against CPL for €2.5m. A smear test by the US firm in 2011 was misdiagnosed and failed to detect her cancer which was not found until three years later. She was not informed until September last that an audit in 2014 had discovered the 2011 misdiagnosis. Emma Mhic Mhathúna was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2016 after being told that a test of her slides had been wrongly diagnosed by Quest in 2013 and possibly as far back as 2010 when another slide was apparently misread by the New-Jersey-based company. The 37-year-old mother of five children is dying of cancer. In late May, further distress was caused to her when the High Court was informed that Quest was seeking to have her children interviewed by a psychologist to assess the impact her death would have on them. There was significant controversy when Quest was awarded the major testing contract in 2008 – with cytologists and medical laboratory scientists warning that there was already evidence that the US system produced results that were less accurate than the work done in Irish hospitals, including at St Luke’s Hospital and the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin and Cork University Hospital (CUH). Village has recently learned that an inquiry by HIQA into the incorrect diagnosis of tests of cancer sufferer Rebecca O’Malley was informed by a medical scientist in CUH in 2007, a year before the main contract was awarded to Quest, that there was an unacceptably high failure rate in its test results. The debate over the decision to award the contract to Quest was revived in February 2009 when it emerged that Harney had spent almost a week in the US, including on visits to Texas, Arizona and Washington DC a year earlier, in February 2008 – just months before the contract to Quest was awarded. Most of the media attention focused on her attendance, with her husband Brian Geoghegan, at the Super Bowl football game in Arizona during her trip. She visited several US health facilities including the Mayo Clinic and a cancer-treatment centre in Houston, Texas. The itinerary provided by the Department of Health to Village in recent days does not include any mention of meetings or visits to Quest or any other laboratory testing firms. Details released under Freedom of Information at the time disclosed that the trip cost some €190,000 involving 23 hours of flying time on the government jet at a cost of €163,000, €11,000 on hotel bills, €3,380 on food and drink and more than €11,000 on hiring mini-buses to ferry the seven-member delegation to various venues. Asked about the content and outcome of her meetings with Quest in 2008 and 2009, the Department did not address the question directly but said: “A dedicated team is in place in the Department to oversee and progress the CervicalCheck records trawl. Work is ongoing and the trawl is being informed by the broad terms of reference of the Inquiry being undertaken by Dr (Gabriel) Scally. At this point, however, the Department can advise that following a check of the Minister’s diary database there are three entries relating to meetings between the then Minister and Quest Diagnostics: 9/10/2008; 17/6/2009; 13/10/2009”. Harney, who was the leader of the Progres- sive Democrats during her time as Minister in the Fianna Fáil led government, is expected to appear before the Scally inquiry to explain the contents of her discussions with Quest. She will also be asked to explain her role in the decision to outsource to the US laboratories the testing of slides of Irish women seeking to avoid life-threatening cancer conditions. The decision to outsource the service to US companies was hugely influenced by the estimate by the HSE and the Department of Health that the programme would be significantly more cost-effective than the Irish system at the time. Irish laboratories complained at the time that the tender criteria, whereby applicants must be capable of carrying out large volumes of tests, rendered them unable to compete given the shortage of laboratory scientists although there were training programmes underway. Most of the

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Gardai look again at white collar acquittals

by Frank Connolly 27 June, 2018 0 Comments

Acounty meath businessman has fought a prolonged battle to recover what he claims are millions of euro in losses and damages caused by former employees who set up a company using his business name and equipment. Paddy Sheils of P Sheils Plant Hire (PSPH) has claimed that three former employees established a company also called PSPH, in 2008, to supply customers, including Meath County Council, with road digging, maintenance and other services using his equipment. One former employee, Siobhan Ryan, pleaded guilty in the District Court in 2014 to offences related to the fraud. Another former employee, David O’Donoghue, was acquitted following a jury trial in 2016. The charges against a third, Sinead McNamara, were withdrawn. The complaint by Sheils has been the subject of investigation by the Garda and by the local authority but he has never received compensation from Meath County Council for his alleged losses. Last week, the state solicitor for Meath, Vincent O’Reilly, was given leave in the Trim District Court to obtain transcripts of the trial of David O’Donoghue as it has been alleged that incorrect evidence was given to the court in his case. Paddy Sheils started his plant hire business in 1989 at Garballagh, Duleek, County Meath and by 1993 was obtaining civil and contract work from Meath County Council. In 1996, he incorporated P Sheils Plant Hire Ltd. (PSPH) and purchased a yard with offices at Rathdrinagh, Beauparc in Navan. He was managing director running the day-to-day operations of the company while his brother Fergus held a 1% share and was also a director. He purchased a quarry at Knockmooney in Slane in 2004 from which he supplied stone for building sites and motorway projects. He did extensive road and footpath work, water repairs, and maintenance for Meath County Council. His workforce grew to more than 80 employees over the next few years. In September 2009, he noticed discrepancies in the company’s financial records, including in relation to cheque-book payments. His accountant found that there were irregularities in cash receipts and in the payment of wages for goods and services provided by the company. Siobhan Ryan of Kells, County Meath had worked for the company since February 2008 being responsible for financial accounts, before she departed in April 2009. David O’Donoghue, from Collon in Louth, had worked with Sheils’ company since 2006, starting out as a lorry driver before being given responsibility for organising the servicing, repair and replacement of plant and machinery at the company. He left the job in February 2009. Sinead McNamara from Drumconrath, near Navan took worked with P Sheils Plant Hire from 2007 to 2009 managing contracts for clients, including the local authority, as well as holding responsibility for health and safety matters for the company. After they left, Sheils discovered that his company had been defrauded and that the three former staff had established their own company, also called PSPH, in 2008. His company logo, evidence of its health and safety compliance as well as insurance documentation, had been used by the new rm to tender for work from Meath County Council. He discovered that invoices had been submitted by former staff to the local authority for work done by his company with his equipment. The money was paid into an account in a bank in Ardee, County Louth, according to gardaí. When she pleaded guilty to the offences, Siobhan Ryan told gardai that all three were acting in concert. However, O’Donoghue was acquitted following his trial in 2016 and the charges against McNamara were withdrawn earlier. Siobhan Ryan admitted that she was responsible for false entries on the accounts system which she operated. She made a compensation payment of 120,000 to Sheils, and the Probation Act was applied by the court in February 2014. O’Donoghue was tried in the Circuit Court in Trim where he was found not guilty. Sinead McNamara provided evidence in this case on his behalf. Sheils has since produced information that contradicts the evidence of McNamara. He has also questioned why the charges against her were dropped given that investigating gardai had established that she had collected a cheque payment from Meath County Council which was lodged into the account of PSPH, the company his former staff established in 2008. Sheils has also pressed for an investigation into the role of Council officials and employees who dealt with his former staff and authorised payments to them and has sought the return of these monies to him. He claims that his company suffered losses of hundreds of thousands of euro as a result of the fraud and that the original Garda investigation was less than satisfactory. A new investigation was prompted following Dáil questions by County Louth Fine Gael deputy, Fergus O’Dowd, to then justice minister, Frances Fitzgerald, in December 2016 and March 2017. This led to a successful application by garda Michael Devine to the Trim District Court on 30 May for the transcripts of the earlier trial of David O’Donoghue which took place in the Circuit Court in 2016. Frank Connolly

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Villager June 2018

by Village 26 June, 2018 0 Comments

Harris asleep Young Simon Harris seems to think the women of Ireland will stay loyal to him if he just puckers up and adopts the mantra that it was all an honour and done for Mná na hÉireann. The night before the referendum he tweeted in what is being seen as a ‘Song of the Camino’ moment: “will sleep tonight in the hope of waking up to a country that is more compassionate, more caring and more respectful. It has been an honour to be on this journey with you and to work #togetherforyes. See you all tomorrow!”. Unfortunately no-one cares how well the Minister for Health sleeps, they care how well the mistreated patients under his aegis sleep. And Villager has been struggling to get the image of the eager nightcap-topped and pyjama-ed Simon out of his fevered head. Sinna Gáel Sinn Féin’s new leader Mary Lou McDonald has said it wants to form a coalition government after the next election with either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. “I want to lead the party into government. I want to do that from the strongest possible position. I want us to discuss, debate, agree with others a programme for government”, Ms McDonald told The Irish Times in an interview. All those years, all that effort, pretending Sinn Féin wasn’t just Fianna Gael for slow learners. The view from Dalkey David McWilliams, a metaphorical bow-tie wearer, sometimes gets a hard times in these columns but his Irish Times Saturday feature packs an economic punch and is always accessible and often entertaining and there’s no worthy ideology he won’t eventually come around to or at least promote. But he’s what Villager’s primary teachers used to call a notice box and he’s often wrong. Recently he said Dublin needs to be like Belfast in its policy on high buildings in its historic centre, to avoid a housing crisis. No expert says height is a solution to the housing crisis. The real problem is one of density in Dublin’s suburbs not height in its uniquely-human-scale city centre. Indeed fiddling around with heights sows confusion and is partly responsible for inertia in the city centre as developers wait for ever greater flexibility in standards and correlative extra profitability for their hoarded sites. McWilliams also said people are emigrating because of housing. But Ireland has net immigration. Armchair planning. The view from Dublin’s South Inner City The ascendant Press Up group has outbid several property developers to buy the Celtic Revival style headquarters of New Ireland Assurance on Dublin’s fast-rebeautifying Dawson Street, a more elegant counterfoil to the jaded global offering of next-door Grafton St. The group led by Paddy McKillen Junior and Matt Ryan is paying €38 million for the two interlinking five and six-storey office blocks. Despite helpful suggestions from the Irish Times’ veteran property correspondent, Jack Fagan, Press Up won’t demolish the buildings, but instead will convert the ground floor into restaurant and other retail uses and to add the usual greedy extra office floor to bring the overall office content to 70,000sq feet. In his day Paddy McKillen liked nothing better than a bit of façade-retention but Junior is cornering the market in historic refurbishments with Roberta’s and Dollard in the former Temple Bar printers that Senior (and Bono and Edge) wanted to demolish a decade ago, and the exquisite Art Deco Stella Cinema in Rathmines for which demolition permission had been granted. A bit of authentic taste will get you quite far in sophisticated Dublin now. And if it’s not real, Pressup can elegantly fake it – as with the (actually newish) Vintage Cocktail Club on Crown Alley, and the ye olde Peruke and Periwig pub on Dawson St and Lucky Duck on Aungier St. No pub paraphernalia for these whizzes, as they reportedly prepare for a stock-market otation, but not, Villager is certain, for a downturn. Weird Norman defines normal Norman Tebbit, the former Chairman of the Conservative Party, has announced that he will be boycotting religious services at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, whenever the Reverend Canon Joe Hawes officiates, because the Rev is gay. Lord Tebbit has described him as a “sodomite”, an offensive term. Tebbit, who has been worshipping at the cathedral for nine years, has explained that he finds “it difficult to accept a sodomite as a member of the clergy who will, for example, be called upon to conduct marriage services. I will struggle to attend if he is officiating”. Lord Tebbit discovered that Hawes, aged 52, is in a civil partnership with another cleric, the Reverend Chris Eyden, from a newsletter last March and that he was destined to become the cathedral’s most senior official. “The cathedral has taken this decision and I disapprove of it but I do not wish to damage the cathedral in any way. I will maintain my financial support for it every year because it will be there long after the dean and I are gone”. Tebbit is part of a dwindling generation that deems loving relationships between adults of the same sex to be offensive. What is really sickening is Tebbit’s toleration of an actual sinner, Sir Peter Morrison MP, who served as his Deputy Chairman back in the 1980s. Morrison was a violent child rapist. We need look no further than official British archive records for proof of Morrison’s proclivities. The archives show that on 4 November, 1986, Sir Antony Duff, Director-General of MI5, wrote to Sir Robert Armstrong, Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet Secretary, after allegations of child abuse had been made by separate sources against Morrison. Morrison had been accused (entirely accurately as it transpired) of child abuse. Duff opined that Morrison was only a minor “security danger”. After the Morrison memo came to light in July of 2015, Armstrong (famed for his use of the phrase “being economical with the truth”), defended his inaction thus: “Clearly I was aware of it…but I was not concerned with the personal aspect of it, whether he should or should not be

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Equality over freedom

by Village 25 June, 2018 0 Comments

Politics is a continuum from equality to freedom. If freedom is the vertical axis of a graph and equality the horizontal axis, every society – and every citizen – decides where the balance should be. A libertarian society tending towards survival of the fittest will not foster equality; an egalitarian society may need to be enforced by a strong state to the detriment of individual licence, and so on. Philosophers from Tocqueville to Hayek to mainstream liberals accept there is a trade-off. Village tends to the egalitarian end of the scale: truly free equality, after education and reflection – precise processes for which have been touted by many modern philosophers – is a mature and more stable goal than equal freedom. Workaday politics can be charted and defined on the graph. However, the same political action can be justified by different points on the graph. Issues like divorce, gay marriage, and abortion can be deemed imperatives of either freedom or equality. In this respect the language used is not a definitive indicator of the politics. A campaign can claim to be about equality but in fact on analysis be defined by positions only of freedom. Any campaign fronted by Simon Harris or Leo Varadkar – agents above all of the propertied, of the status quo for the wealthy – is unlikely to be rooted in any real substantive equality. It is perfectly legitimate to campaign for gay marriage or abortion because you want yourself or others to exercise rights to freedom to get married or have an abortion. Telltale signs if you do so you may include that you are less likely to make common cause with campaigns for others suffering discrimination of all sorts. You may ignore issues like racial equality, Travellers rights; you may express no concern about economic, social and educational inequalities. It is legitimate but it is not Village’s political motivation of preference. For Village recent referendums reached the right solutions but were disappointingly rooted in the politics of freedom rather than that of equality. The egregious wrongs in Irish society are best resolved by solutions driven by equality. This society above all facilitates those who are economically adroit. It provides opportunity for people who are strong; worse still it provides opportunity for them to make mistakes (trashing the environment is the one posterity will most register). It provides very little vision as to how they should exercise their freedoms. – this is in part the problem of 100 channels but nothing on the television. But on a societal scale. It is now time to move on to new agendas that are really radical. These include: agendas of radical redistribution of wealth in society, of radical changes to the opportunities available to those who have suffered traditional discrimination, including (still) to women and to those of minority sexual orientations, to racial minorities including Travellers; of educational opportunities facilitated by positive discrimination so even (or especially) the poorest in society can be whoever they want to be; of redistribution of power so it is exercised at the lowest, most local, most democratic levels; of attenuation of property rights so they are exercised in the common good. The goods in society should be distributed by that society so those least well off are most compensated. Everyone in society is morally equal, they should be treated by society in a way so they can participate in the fruits of the earth equally. It is a myth that the fruits of the earth are distributed in accordance with merit – they have been accumulated largely by force and luck. The idea that in 2018 a child’s future is determined by the time it reaches two years old is an abomination. Ireland is growing up politically. Ireland has waved good-bye to the invidious influence of an unrealistic Church and voted the right way on divorce, gay rights and abortion. However, these are really liberal causes focused on issues of identity. It is time we addressed the issues of endemic inequality enshrined down the generations. As regards the Constitution we do need to abolish Article 41 which recognises the woman’s life within the home, so devaluing women who choose not to work within the home; and to eliminate the part of the preamble which invokes the Constitution “in the name of the Holy Spirit”. Indeed the Constitution’s premises relate to another era and the whole document should be reconceived. More generally, materialism, capitalism and competition have had their day, it is time to welcome in a new agenda – of equality of outcome/condition: equality of wealth and power, of quality of life, of environment, of education, of fulfilment and happiness, of respect and opportunity. This should be achieved through politics and laws. The constitution should be amended to reflect it too. The most radical change would be to enshrine equality of outcome/condition as a constitutional imperative across the range.

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Right to buy means right for landlord to buy you out

by Éilis Ryan 16 June, 2018 0 Comments

The myth that Irish people have a historically-rooted preference for home ownership is a long-standing cornerstone of Irish housing policy. The story goes that Irish people will always have an innate preference to own their homes, regardless of how attractive, secure and affordable renting is made. In the middle of the country’s worst housing crisis, this myth has, extraordinarily, justified yet another round of Council-housing sell-offs, with the 2016 Tenant Incremental Purchase Scheme. Tenants are given a discount of up to 60% in the market value of their home, if they choose to buy it from the Council. It then disappears from Council stock and, a generation later, is sold onto the private market. If there is limited evidence to support the myth that the Irish have an in-built preference for home ownership, what is clear is that government policy in the last half century has done everything in its power to grant preferential treatment to the purchase of homes. What is touted as an ‘innate preference’ for home ownership has in fact been carefully incentivised and manufactured through decades of developer-driven housing policy. Margaret Thatcher, Ireland and the ‘right to buy’ In 1980, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed legislation granting a legal right to all Council tenants in the UK to buy their homes. It was the culmination of her philosophy that the freedom to accumulate profit was the foundation of all human freedom. Speaking about the scheme in 1984, she said that “Spreading the ownership of property more widely is central to this Government’s philosophy, because where property is widely owned, freedom flourishes”. Any freedom gained by those who managed to buy their Council home was temporary at best. As with all public goods that are privatised, Council-built homes were transformed into commodities to be bought and sold for profit. Now, it’s estimated that 40% of ex-Council homes are owned and let by private landlords. The Tory Minister behind the scheme, Michael Heseltine, once said that the major victory of the “Right to Buy” scheme was “the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people”. If by “the people” he meant “wealthy landlords” – then yes, he was probably right. Otherwise the darling of one-nation Toryism needs a rethink about his party’s victories. Astonishingly, successive Irish governments’ commitment to selling off social-housing stock pre-dated, and has arguably always been stronger than even, Maggie Thatcher’s. Provisions had been in place since the 1930s to enable tenants to buy their Council house in rural areas, and from 1966, with the introduction through the Housing Act of a nationwide ‘right to buy’, there was a surge in the numbers of publicly-built homes which were sold off. As in the UK, the temporary benefits of home ownership have not provided security for further generations. Over time our housing stock, particularly in sought-after areas closest to the city, has been commodified just like the in UK. House built by the Council in places like Marino and Cabra regularly sell for €400,000-€500,000. Working-class estates are under threat of becoming gentrified enclaves. Home ownership has never been affordable – so the State had to introduce schemes to make it so A critical point justifying subsidies to home ownership is that they are designed to somehow rectify temporary problems in the housing market. Lack of affordability is blamed on a temporary market malfunction (for example, lack of adequate supply), and temporary extraordinary measures are deened necessary to enable access to that market. In reality, however, these measures will be required forever – not just to rectify one-off market malfunctions. Michelle Norris has outlined how, in the 1960s, it was possible for a buyer to recoup up to a third of the purchase price of a house through various government subsidies. In the 1970s and 1980s, a hundred thousand Council-built houses were sold to tenants at knockdown rates, ostensibly as a way to make home ownership affordable. And as recently as 2004, the National Economic and Social Council was highlighting that:“The high entry costs of home ownership have conferred advantages on those whose families have housing equity and disadvantages on those who do not have access to ‘parental gifts”. In fact there has been no time when home ownership was ‘affordable’ in the sense of a majority of the country’s population being able to afford to purchase a home on the open market, unassisted by the government. Any ‘affordable housing’ initiatives delivered by this or future governments, will simply be the latest in a long cycle of state subsidies to the private market. Is it a good use of money for the State to subsidise home ownership? Fundamentally, what the debate about ‘right to buy’ and ‘affordable housing’ comes down to is whether it is a good use of public money to subsidise ‘home ownership’. As debates and inaction over the housing crisis rage on, a demand for public housing is being gradually subsumed into a broad and amorphous call for “social and affordable housing”. The notion is that some people will always want to buy their own home, and that they have a right to State support equal to that of those who rent from the State in secure, affordable publicly-owned housing. But what is being lost in this conflation of public housing and affordable housing, is that, unlike investment in public housing for rent, when the government subsidises ‘affordable home ownership’, the investment serves only one generation. The home can then be sold on to the chaotic, unjust and uncontrollable private housing market. “Affordable home ownership” – whether through land, or through ‘right to buy’ schemes selling off Council houses – keeps the property market bubbling. It suits the developers, solicitors and estate agents who benefit from increasing house prices that the state funnels money into pushing more and more workers into that market. But it does absolutely nothing to tackle the housing crisis. The real solution When considering how we invest public money to tackle the housing crisis, we need to look