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Varadkar appoints eighth special adviser days before Dáil recess

by admin 25 July, 2023 0 Comments

By Conor O’Carroll The Government has announced the appointment of a new special adviser to the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, just days before the Dáil adjourned until mid-September for the summer break. The appointment order is dated 11 July and was included in the 14 July edition of Iris Oifigiúil – Ireland’s official public record – however, it is only today that it has been confirmed as Jim D’Arcy. He will join the nine special advisers currently employed by the Department of An Taoiseach – seven by the Taoiseach and two by Chief Whip and Fine Gael TD Hildegarde Naughton. Ordinarily, the number of special advisers a Minister can have is limited to two, though this rule does not apply to the Taoiseach, Tánaiste or leader of any political party. As a result, An Tánaiste, Micheál Martin, has five special advisers, while Eamon Ryan has eight – two of which are employed on a job-share basis. The appointment of special advisers requires Government approval and the order confirming their appointment is published as a statutory instrument. The appointment order states that D’Arcy’s role has been effective from 16 January 2023, meaning 191 days have elapsed since his appointment and the release of the statutory instrument. This is the longest delay in announcement for the current crop of special advisers, but this practice isn’t unusual. Following the rotation of the Taoiseach in December last year, Ministers were required to re-appoint their special advisers. Analysis of each statutory instrument released since then shows that on average 94 days elapse between appointment and public notification. Noel Byrne’s appointment as special adviser to Fianna Fáil TD and Minister of State Anne Rabbitte on 21 December 2022 was signed by the Taoiseach on 4 May 2023, 66 days after he had left the post on 28 February. In total, fifteen of the 55 appointments were not officially announced until over 100 days after their start date as listed on the order. A further 23 announcements came more than 90 days after the appointment. The shortest gap between appointment and the statutory instrument being signed was 38 days, when Fiona Campbell was appointed as special adviser to Fine Gael TD and Minister for State Neale Richmond. Just ten appointment orders were signed within 60 days of the position being filled. A spokesperson for the Department of the Taoiseach stated “it is common for there to be a delay between the effective date of appointment and the making of the Order given the practicalities involved”. No response was offered when clarity was sought as to what these practicalities entailed. Further discrepancies arise when these statutory instruments are compared to the list of special advisers published by the government. The appointment order of Patrick Cluskey and Fiach Kelly as special advisers to the Taoiseach was signed on 16 May 2023 – 151 days after their appointment – but neither official appears in the list of special advisers published by the government. Responding to a parliamentary question submitted by Independent TD Violet-Anne Wynne earlier this month, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee confirmed that both were employed at the Department of Justice as her special advisers. The spokesperson for the Department of the Taoiseach continued, “The addition of the two advisers to the Department of the Taoiseach was a temporary measure due to the arrangements for maternity leave for Minister McEntee. The omission of the names of the two advisers from the list published by the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery & Reform was an oversight and the list will be updated in due course”. Despite the list purporting to be accurate as of 11 July, Jim D’Arcy too is not on the list, at the time of writing. The total salaries of those employed by the various Ministers and Ministers of State comes to just over €5 million, though this figure does not include Patrick Cluskey, Fiach Kelly or the Taoiseach’s latest appointment. It also does not include any incremental increases earned over time or the 2% pay rise received by civil servants as part of the 2023 public sector pay increase applied from March 2023. The salaries range from €51,679 (as part of a job share arrangement) to €195,137, though the two highest earners – Deirdre Gillane (€195,137) and Brian Murphy (€185,350) – have voluntarily returned an unknown amount of their salary. Alan Ahearne, special adviser to An Tánaiste Micheál Martin, does not receive any salary as he is on part-time secondment from NUIG. Of the 50 special advisers to receive a salary, 35 earn in excess of €100,000. It is as yet unclear how much the Taoiseach’s latest appointment will earn.

From Naughten to Neachtain: nothin’ worth notin’

by Frank Connolly 13 May, 2018 0 Comments

It is not a question of whether, but how many, more people will become embroiled in the developing row between Independent News and Media and the Office of the Director of Public Enforcement (ODCE). The battle should more accurately be described as one between the biggest shareholder in INM, Denis O’Brien, his appointed chairman to the company and confidant, Leslie Buckley, and Ian Drennan the director of the ODCE who is seeking to appoint High Court inspectors to examine aspects of the media corporations’ governance. In the latest twist to the saga the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, Denis Naughten was almost forced to fall on his sword after it emerged that he gave commercially sensitive information to lobbyist, Eoghan O Neachtain, indicating a probable referral of the attempted media purchase of Celtic Media Group by INM to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI). Heneghan PR for whom O’Neachtain works, was acting for INM when the lobbyist made the call to Naughten in November 2016, and company boss, Nigel Heneghan, promptly informed his client Leslie Buckley about the news that a referral to the BAI was likely. Buckley immediately passed it on to O’Brien, who controls 29.9% of INM, but apparently did not extend the same courtesy to other board members at the time. When asked about a possible referral by him of the Celtic Media purchase proposal to the BAI by Independent TD Catherine Murphy and Brian Stanley of Sinn Féin three weeks after the phone call with the lobbyist, Naughten had refused to confirm his likely course of action to the Dáil. In the normal course of events, in a normal democracy, a minister passing on such market-sensitive information to a company, or in this case to its largest shareholder, would precipitate a thorough investigation and probably a ministerial head on a plate. Not so in this case. Incredibly, the independent minister insisted that he was only expressing a ‘personal opinion’ to O’Neachtain, whom he said he knows socially from Connacht rugby circles. He confirmed that he had taken no notes of the call. He also said that he met Buckley at an event organised by INM in May 2017 just a month before INM cancelled the acquisition of Celtic Media and just before the minister was to determine whether the deal should proceed. He told the Dáil that he was “trying to recall the detail of that but I do not recall him (Buckley) raising with me at that stage” the issues pertaining to the Celtic Media purchase. In his affidavit to the High Court, heavily leaked, Drennan has suggested that the minister’s action may have breached corporate governance rules insofar as commercially sensitive information was provided to just one shareholder of INM in advance of the likely referral of the Celtic Media purchase to the BAI. By fully supporting the minister, Leo Varadkar may well find himself the focus of criticism further down the road by the corporate watchdog for pre-empting an investigation by the High Court inspectors he is seeking to have appointed to investigate a string of alleged serious, including criminal, behaviour in INM. Varadkar has until now managed to avoid any entanglement in the uncomfortable and controversial relationship between O’Brien and Fine Gael, going back to the mid-1990s when the businessman won the hugely lucrative second mobile phone licence with the assistance of then communications minister, Michael Lowry. The party managed to clear its debt within a few years and although its main fundraiser, Lowry, was forced out in the wake of the Moriarty tribunal investigation, the links between O’Brien and senior party figures, including former leader Enda Kenny and current EU commissioner, Phil Hogan, has long persisted. The main opposition parties have concentrated on this potential exposure of the Taoiseach to the ongoing dispute between the INM and the ODCE, which is investigating an alleged data breach by the company affecting senior staff, journalists, lawyers and others as well as issues over the, since abandoned, attempt by Buckley to get INM to buy Newstalk, the radio station controlled by O’Brien. According to a protected disclosure by former INM chief executive, Robert Pitt, Buckley tried to get the board to pay substantially more for Newstalk than he and his advisors thought it was worth. O’Neachtain, of course, is a former press officer for Fianna Fáil and once toiled day and night to defend Bertie Ahern as he sought to explain his inexplicable financial arrangements to the Mahon Tribunal during the period he was a finance minister, without a bank account. No doubt he knows where other Fianna Fáil skeletons are buried and indeed must be aware of a thing orf two about Fine Gael having advised Enda Kenny during his term at Taoiseach. But Fianna Fáil is also holding fire because it does not want to provoke a general election which would edge closer if Naughten were forced out of cabinet and government, potentially weakening the wafer-thin voting balance in the current Dáil. Besides, following the next election the party may need the support of independents like Naughten. Sinn Féin is reluctant to do anything which could jeopardise the stability of government in advance of the referendum to repeal the 8th amendment in late May. Frank Connolly

Village October 2017

by Village 25 October, 2017 0 Comments

Gratuitous Trump Image Section Bean and Bucket Theresa May is the most inelegant British leader since Gordon brown. It’s funny how the same person can be perceived as utterly unrecognisable in terms of elementary human characteristics, just by the unfair elapse of time. In office, these two leaders managed to entirely lose their reputations for frugal good sense. If brown was Mr Bean, May is surely Hyacinth bucket (pronounced ‘bouquet’, if that’s not French). The bill for their party Villager likes to consider how much the bailout cost us all, when he’s counting out the five-cent pieces from the jar at the end of the month, in a quest to find the price of a miserable cheese sandwich down at the Capel St Spar. Sometimes he swoons unmanfully. At the end of 2016 the cost of bailing out our domestic banks stood at €39.9 billion, with an annual cost of servicing the associated debt of over €1 billion. €66.8 billion was used to recapitalise the banks and €14.8 billion went in servicing debt. by the end of 2016, the State had recouped €25.1 million in income from the disposal of investments, income from the guarantee scheme, and other means. Subtracting one from the other yields a figure of €56.5 billion. The C&AG has estimated the residual value of our remaining investments in AIB (a 71 per cent shareholding), bank of Ireland (14 per cent) and Permanent TSB (75 per cent) at €13.6 billion. name is projecting a €3 billion surplus. It all comes to €16.6 billion. Irish bank resolution Corporation (Anglo Irish bank and Irish nationwide building Society) cost us €35.8 billion. you mean on judges Most of the money that might have been sprayed around in budget 2018 has gone on reinstating public-sector pay. Villager will be reading a good book when the unexcitable Paschal Donohue rises to his feet. Nothing to see here. Socks and Swimming pay off with undiscerning youth According to Irish Times/Ipsos/MRBI pollsters, satisfaction with Varadkar’s performance as Taoiseach is – for some reason – high, at 49 per cent. 31 per cent are dissatisfied and 20 per cent, presumably people who – like Villager – don’t know what to make of hipsters, are undecided. Varadkar is the most highly rated leader, ahead of Micheál Martin (down two points since May, to 37 per cent), Gerry Adams (down one point, to 30 per cent) and Brendan Howlin (down two points, to 20 per cent). Jayz, not another Healy-Rae on the Today programme Villager favours urban life and doesn’t like the rural perspective. nevertheless, Ireland’s most ostensibly serious broadcaster, Sean O’Rourke, continues to celebrate rural Ireland to the detriment of the capital and sport to the detriment of the arts. He is also the world’s leading user of the word wonderful. Villager caught it 15 times in one show, before the dial spun off the wireless. Women’s place Noel Whelan, barrister and political pundit, is a gentlemanly influence in the discourse but he has decided his schtick now is being unimpressed with the ephemeral machinations of the political process. Fresh from denouncing the serious attempt to impose identity cards for public-service users, as “silly season nonsense” over the summer, the second un-angriest man in Ireland (Colm McCarthy in this as so many other things remains unassailable) is dissing the attempt to visit a rake of referenda on an uninterested electorate as “a political stunt” from “a weak government trying to prove it has vision and durability”. but the man who found his progressive side during last year’s Marriage equality referendum campaign is surprisingly derisive of the likes of the attempt to remove purported acknowledgement of the special place within the home of (all women) from the constitution. Like the invocation of the Holy Spirit at the opening of bunreacht na Éireann the kinked vision of women taints the whole legal system. If you don’t get that you either don’t get equality, don’t get the point of the twentieth century or are from the ‘Fianna Fáil gene pool’. Arthur’s pay day Villager just loves development. And multinationals. When the two come together he loses control of his thesaurus. Diageo has announced plans to transform 12.6 acres at its St James’s Gate site in Dublin City to create a new mixed-use development, which will include residential units, and Villager says it is awesome. The maker of Guinness said that after “significant” investment since 2011 at St James’s Gate and advances in technology, it can now brew more second-rate beer with less, valuable, space. To this end it wants to transform 12.6 acres of the nearly 50-acre site it has been degrading for a generation to create a mixed-use development “a third residential, a third commercial and a third leisure”. called, inevitably, the St James’s Gate Quarter. During the boom Guinness talked of relocating to Leixlip where land was allegedly to be purchased from the ancient Guinness family for a “super brewery”. Oliver Loomes, country director for Diageo Ireland, told the Irish Independent that “it will be many, many years before a sod is turned on this site” for this latest development salvo. Villager therefore predicts it will not happen. parable of the Apple Villager is suggesting everyone should do in their own private and business lives what the Irish government is doing with our €13bn Apple loot. resist the pressure of the rich and powerful – the elite of Europe – to use if for ourselves. Give it back, we don’t need it. It’s Christianity in action and it’s endorsed by those always-just forces of global capitalism, the IT multinationals. Ireland is proving it is post-materialism. It just now needs to widen the ambit of its new strategic love for neighbour. beyond its stance on multinationals, to others. Neo-goldmanism Atavistic xenophobic populism has returned to German national politics with a ‘Knall’, in the unlikely form of a 38-year-old lesbian investment-banking economist, Germany’s own version of Ann-Marie Waters who once worked for Goldman Sachs. Alice Weidel is the