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4 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 5
benefi cial owners.
In fact Village had fi lled out the Stripe form
which asked for a full declaration of
“management and ownership”. Stripe then
inferred that one of the directors must be an
undeclared benefi cial owner rather than just
part of management, and failed to renew all
Village’s subscribers for fully a year leaving us
with no subscribers. Most of its dealings
apparently were by bots and at all time Stripe’s
representatives refused to recognise the
problem or to acknowledge fault. It’s the way
of modern customer service. But it’s decadent,
unethical and unlawful too, even if owned via
the ine able Collison brothers. Now does
Village have the energy to sue?
OLDSAGENT
Meanwhile when was the last time you saw a
shop, apart from Eason’s, that calls itself a
newsagent? And many of the depressing chain
convenience stores have stopped stocking
newspapers, let alone magazines. It’s a raging
battle out there. And news magazines, like
Village, didn’t benefi t from the zero VAT rating
that their competitor newspapers prostituted
themselves to tie down last year.
RIPE FOR STRIPE OR READY FOR STEADY
Please take out Steady membership (which
o ers benefi ts) or, if you’re a masochist or wish
Village to be, consider a Stripe subscription.
We need the money for the proofreeding.
POTEMKIN VILLAGE
There’s been a bloody pothole outside the
Village o ce for the last two weeks. It’s the
size of a badger and right in the bus lane
outside. Every time the 145 or Aircoach hurtles
down the quay the
seventeenth-
century Village
o ce shakes like an
ancient skeleton in a
gale. The Corpo, or
their agent, came to
fi x it but it’s in a
culvert, lads, and the badger came back in two
days. Management around here doesn’t —
Villager is guessing here — have any money,
and Villager gets the sense they probably
skimp on the insurance as much as they do on
the proofreading. The building’s not exactly
well-maintained, so please god the place
doesn’t fall down.
STRIPE IS TRIPE
Talking of money, the future of news magazines
is subscriptions and memberships. We really
encourage readers and supporters to take out
memberships on our website through ‘Steady’
which o ers more than just the mag-in-the-
post. Meanwhile the fools in ‘Stripe’, an Irish
tech fi rm that forwards subscribers’ funds to
Village and handles the administration and
renewals, cut o Village on the inept and
spurious ground that we had not declared our
News Miscellany
Villager
LIETIGATION
A ‘Yes’ vote on the forthcoming referendum on
care would enable citizens - including the
parents of people with disabilities - to take the
Government to court to ensure the State does
enough to support them, according to Minister
Roderic O’Gorman. He seems to be a nice guy,
Roderic, but that’s an untruth. A Green untruth,
and all.
BRUTAL HONESTY
Farewell John Bruton. Villager only met him
once, and that was during his wilderness years,
but he was approachable, decent and
impressively full of ideas.In 2021, when he had
a silly book about ‘Faith’ out, his publisher
suggested
journalists might
like to interview the
lively former
Taoiseach. The
morning of the
interview which was
to be with Village
editor, Michael
Smith, the man from
Currach publishers
texted to say Bruton
was concerned it should be primarily about the
book and then half an hour later to say there
was bad news, Bruton would not do it and he
would not say why.
Smith wrote a piece on the f0llowing lines:
In 2006 Bruton told the Mahon (Planning)
Tribunal that a donation of £2,500 to him as
party leader was received from Monarch
Properties in November 1992, during the
general election campaign.
At that time I was campaigning against a
make-or-break rezoning scheme being pursued
by Monarch for 234 acres in Cherrywood, Co
Dublin. Most Fine Gael County Councillors had
not supported the rezoning in 1992 but they
Hurtles over potholes
Collison brothers: their compny behved ineptly
The old wys: newsgent
4 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 5
would vote for it in 1993: in addition to Bruton,
nine out of the 12 FG Councillors who would talk
to their party’s internal Inquiry in 2000
admitted receiving money from Monarch or
Frank Dunlop (or both) in the 1991-1993 period
when I was concerned with the Cherrywood
vote.
Monarch’s boss, Phil Monahan, had told me
he was paying Councillors for rezonings and
that many of the Fine Gaelers would vote
against it in 1992 but in favour (when it really
counted) in 1993.
Monarch was duly found by the tribunal to
have obtained the rezoning corruptly. During
the 1997 general election campaign, the party
received a further cheque for £3,800 from
Monarch Properties.
Later Bruton said he had not tried to “whip”
Fine Gael Councillors on 78-member Dublin
County Council though he had pressured his 19
party councillors to act coherently when he met
them in September 1993: Councillor Mary
Muldoon told him that acting coherently would
require the minority of non-rezoners moving to
back the majority of rezoners.
The Council rezoned the Monarch lands
shortly afterwards, in November 1993.
According to leafl ets we produced at the time
FG voted 7:7 on the up-zoning in 1992. By 1993
their vote was 12:5 in favour. Why did so many
change their minds? The torpid tribunal never
asked”.
The begrudgers will say Village only printed
this after poor John Bruton’s death but of
course we printed it before too.
MILLION-DOLLAR MANN
Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist
and occasional contributor to Village, was
accused by right-wing bloggers, Rand Simberg
and Mark Steyn, of academic fraud, and
compared to an infamous child molestor.
Mann, a professor at the University of
Pennsylvania, famous for his “hockey stick”
graph predicting a sharp rise in global
temperatures, was awarded $1,000 in
defamation damages against Simberg and $1m
against Steyn by a jury in Washington DC,
ending 12 years of litigation.
DEFAMASINN
Village has long denied that there’s much of a
problem with Ireland’s defamation laws though
that is not a view the journalistic establishment
favours. Village’s publisher, Ormond Quay
Publishing, has never paid defamation
damages in twenty years of publication, So
Villager is inclined to feel the media are making
a meal out of Sinn Féin’s proclivities for
defamation writs.
For a start the other parties’ record is
comparable. As with Sinn Féin, most cases
don’t get pushed as far as resolution in court.
IAD FÉIN
Cowen
Newly minted current European Parliament
candidate and FF TD Barry Cowen threatened
the Sunday Times if it published details of
driving o ences. They went ahead and in 2020
published anyway but Cowen went away as he
always does.
While we’re on about defaming Cowens,
Villager has reason to believe a signifi cant
portion of Brian Cowen’s rehabilitation bills are
being picked up by a well-known builder.
Shocking. That we’d say it and that he’d do it.
Byrne
FF TD Thomas Byrne, junior minister for tourism,
a solicitor, told LMFM in Louth in 2020 he was
“consulting with his solicitors” about claims
made by party activist Ken McFadden, that he
had leaked poor Barry Cowen’s driving
transgressions but, he said, “as someone who
has worked on defamation cases, these things
take up all of your time” so he discreditingly did
nothing. In 2013, Byrne claimed he had been
grossly defamed by internet giant Google after
it published a picture of convicted solicitor
Thomas Byrne, of the same name, alongside
the politician’s profi le on the Google knowledge
graph. Incidentally that second, thieving,
solicitor who stole €52m from the banks — the
biggest theft in the history of the state — was
in class with Village’s editor.
Byrne II was
jailed.
S o w a s
‘cocaine’ Jim, from
the same class in
UCD Law. He
robbed the bank
he worked in, in
the late eighties.
And mor e
recently Judge Gerard O’Brien, also in that
class of ’86, was convicted of several counts of
sexual assault and awaits sentencing.
Brian Cowen was in a di erent year in the
same faculty but of course has never needed to
be convicted of anything.
Troy
In 2022 dodgy FF junior minister Robert Troy,
who had inaccurately fi led his Oireachtas
register of members’ interests documents,
issued a legal threat against the Ditch
website, demanding resolution within 24
hours. But he resigned as minister and did a
Barry Cowen on it.
And before this government:
Leddy
In 2019, a Fine Gael councillor and constituency
ally of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar initiated
proceedings against a Sinn Féin activist.
Councillor Ted Leddy represents Castleknock,
a seat once held by Varadkar, claimed Sinn Féin
activist Alan Donnelly defamed him in a
Facebook post which he says led to a death
threat and other “odious matters”.
Fahey
Former junior minister Frank Fahey, received
around €150,000 from the Irish Daily Mail, after
a 2006 report wrongly reported he was accused
in the Dáil of having been involved in tax
evasion.
Gallagher
FF presidential candidate Sean Gallagher
understandably sued RTÉ after its 2011
election debate where false claims about
brown envelopes were phoned in. He reputedly
netted €130,000 from the national broadcaster
but Michael D netted the Presidency.
Cooper Flynn
FF TD Beverley Flynn got a €1.25m legal bill
when she failed in her libel action against RTÉ
after Charlie Bird reported in 1998 that Flynn
had encouraged people to evade tax while
working as a fi nancial adviser with National
Irish Bank. The High Court found in 2001 that
even though she hadn’t encouraged the
particular person implicated, she had advised
others, and RTÉ had therefore not damaged her
reputation. The class act was still paying it o
a decade later!
Reynolds
Former FF Taoiseach Albert Reynolds took the
Sunday Times all the way to the House of Lords
in 2000 after its British editions alleged that he
had misled and, in e ect, lied to the Dáil in
1994 at the time the Fianna Fáil-Labour
coalition collapsed and Reynolds resigned as
Taoiseach to be replaced by John Bruton. The
settlement statement said: “While the Sunday
Times believed that the Dail and the coalition
Labour Party were not made aware of all
relevant information, it accepts Mr Reynolds’
assurance that he did not lie to them. We regret
any distress or embarrassment caused. Mr
Reynolds accepts that the article was not
published maliciously”.
Fingal County Council
In 1996 17 Fingal county councillors, mostly FF
and FG, sued former Dublin Corporation
spokesperson Noel Carroll and RTE for slander
after he made a damaging comment about their
land rezoning activities on The Late Late Show.
Dublin County Council
But perhaps the daddy of all Fianna Gael
6 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 7
restaurant closures.
What it is, precisely, is the tawdriness and
menace of the centre, and the lack of energy.
On 9 February Minister Eamon Ryan told
Miriam O’Callaghan on Prime Time that the
current system isn’t working for anybody and
that a proposed ban on through tra c would
make the city better for everyone.
“Look at Pearse Street, look at Tara Street,
look at the Quays, do you think that is an
attractive environment Taking out the through
tra c then makes for a better environment in
the city centre”.
But, as the following photo shows, neither
the Minister nor the messers in City Hall know
how to make good environments. For a start
street furniture needs to be high-quality and
permanent. It always appears like Dublin is
keeping its options open if fashion deserts
pedestrianisation and reserving the possibility
of reverting to road space.
Plants go in removable pots and boxes, the
line of the road is retained, and the seats and
lighting are so cheap they diminish the
citizenry.
A lot of this would have been avoided if
pedestrianisation and cycle lanes had been
subjected to Environmental Impact Assessment
(EIA), as the law, originating in the EU,
demands. For EIA requires photomontages of
plans as well as consideration of alternatives
and written strategic justifications for
proposals. It’s a guard against short-termism
and low standards. And Owen Keegan, abetted
by the Green Party, determined to avoid it.
The matter of EIAs, in the particular case of
the Sandymount cycleway, is due an imminent
decision from the Supreme Court in a case
launched by Councillor Mannix Flynn.
ALPHA AND OMEGA MALES
Villager is fascinated by Piers Morgan who
recently interviewed the British Prime Minister.
He is compelling, like Trump and Putin, for the
car-crash adrenalin of simple narcissism. And
the weirdness of his (and their) Botox-enhanced
hyper-bonce in your face down the television.
Rushi Sunak is, in contrast, the most
unprepossessing leader of all time without
cultural hinterland or personality. Politics is
bonkers: throwing up every time the antidote
to the last mistake rather than sustainable
leadership. Sunak is the antidote to Johnson
and Truss: nothing more.
JU
U2 have nothing to say on Gaza so
what are their values? Surely not
just global capitalism,
consumerism and Americanism?
Surely not charity without justice?
CALLANATTA
Ryan Tubridy continues to make a lot of himself
in England and in the pages of the Irish Mail.
His radio replacement, Oliver Callan, on the
other hand is very good at being other people
but seems to have trouble being himself.
Perhaps he is a Buddhist. Anattā doctrine
denies that there is anything called a “Self” in
any person or anything else, and that a belief
in “Self” is a source of Dukkha (su ering).
SIPOH NO
In October 2021, Villager wrote:
“Quite Dodgy Meath, and Varadkar
Meanwhile SIPO has announced it has fi nally
decided to hold an oral investigation of a nearly
two-year-old complaint made by Village’s
editor grounded by a Village article about
breaches of ethics in the award of contracts by
outings to the Four Courts was a successfully
settled action taken by a cohort of FF and FG
Councillors on the now-discredited Dublin
County Council in 1993 after the Irish Times’
environment correspondent, Frank McDonald,
facetiously referred to the free drinks being
provided by Monarch Properties in Conway’s
pub, once the watering hole of choice for dodgy
councillors but now closed down, being availed
of by the “usual suspects”.
TRULY FRANK
Frank McDonald is missed as the Irish Times
environment correspondent. His pieces, when
he wasn’t being catty, were meticulous and
clear. McDonald, who retired a decade ago, has
fl ed his beloved Dublin City, about which he
wrote one great book, ‘The Destruction of
Dublin’ an invective denigration of malpractice
in the disintegrating city, in 1985, and a number
of others works on the evolving city. Anyway
he’s taken the shilling from the owner of the
roisterous Temple Bar pub and received the
rarefi ed price of €975,000 for the sale of the
apartment he bought around 1995 from Temple
Bar Properties after he apparently stayed up all
night in the queue for it. In the end the noise,
partly generated by the Temple Bar, against
which he had long campaigned, got to him and
he has moved to
an apartment in
Blackrock
designed by his
favourite
architects, De
Blacam and
Meagher, from
which he can
take potshots at
the now again
declining city
centre, in peace.
The Irish Times
now has nobody
covering national
issues of planning and development. It must
be because the people who run what was once
the paper of record don’t want all that
negativity.
DUBLINVESTIGATION
We could do with a review of what’s happening
to central Dublin. It’s not just that nothing
interesting has happened since Docklands and
Temple Bar half a generation ago. Nothing is
happening with the festering markets area, for
example.
It’s not just the catastrophic lack of housing
for young people while anonymous and
unsustainable hotels creep in to every vacant
space. It’s not the unplanned high-rise now
rearing here and there, notably on Tara St.
Or the dereliction and over-shop vacancy. It’s
not the declining night-life and pub and
Rising over Tr street
EIA would’ve mde Cpel Street
pedestrinistion better
6 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 7
consolidate around an agrarian revolt against
state and federal authorities.
An alliance of anti-government landowners,
racists and climate-and-biodiversity deniers,
what’s not to like? And don’t think some of the
Independent weirdoes in Dáil Éireann won’t
supply some of the ignorant ballast for the
movement when it evolves.
HATERS WILL ONLY BE TREATED AS HATERS IF
THEY INCITE HATRED AGAINST THE
VULNERABLE
Much of the right-wing hysteria about the hate
legislation centres on failure to define hatred
but, for Villager, if you’re messing around with
abuse of people from vulnerable minorities you
just need to be careful anyway.
What the likes of the Musk interview with
Gript failed to acknowledge is that the
legislation is vastly circumscribed: it doesn’t
aect general free speech. It only applies to
behaviour or communication “that is likely to
incite violence or hatred against a person or a
group of persons on account of their (a) race,
(b) colour, (c) nationality, (d) religion, (e)
national or ethnic origin, (f) descent, (g)
gender, (h) sex characteristics, (i) sexual
orientation, or (j) disability”. It’s the political
equivalent of bullying.
When you were six, if you were causing the
weakest guy in senior infants to cry, you needed
to accept some culpability.
Anyway that’s simplistic and to be fair it
might be better to define the intensity or nature
of emotion necessary to constitute hatred. But
it also might be a mistake, as emotional
acceptability evolves over the generations.
Keeping things general often works best for
everyone. Nobody thinks it a good idea to
circumscribe the “reasonableness” of the
doubt necessary to pre-empt a criminal
conviction. One possible concern is that the
new legislation removes the requirement that
comments are “abusive, threatening or
insulting” which is present in current hate
legislation.
ASYLUM-SEEKERS ARE NICE
According to the Garda, “Apart from isolated
local incidents, we have not recorded any
significant increase in crime or public order
issues directly caused by asylum seekers”.
There has been no need to increase Garda
resources directly due to asylum seekers”.
CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION’S PROPERTY
RIGHTS BEFORE HOUSING RIGHTS
The Programme for Government commits to a
referendum on the right to housing. However,
there is no point in a new constitutional
provision if, as will be the case, it is not
justiciable i.e. if it cannot be used to ground
new rights.
Villager would like to see widespread CPO
powers. So widespread that if you’re not using
your property for the common good you’d be
fearful, after serial chances, that you’d lose it.
That requires a loosening of the rights to
property in the constitution in the interests of
the common good.
This would allow bullish implementation of
the 1973 ‘Kenny’ report.
Villager would like to make it possible for
powerful inspectors to pressurise the proper
use of underused land.
For example the public interest would be
well-served by the following model:
Local authorities employ dozens of fired-up
vacancy zealot inspectors.
Then, if an inspector sees rooms over a shop
that are not used, acting on “a reasonable
suspicion that a substantial part of a building
is vacant or derelict”, she will write to the owner
and, if the owner cannot be found, the building
will be purchased at the market price for a
building in its current state of underuse.
If the owner is found he will be asked to
resolve the vacancy within a year and told that
a 15% tax for that year and future years will be
exacted unless the issue is resolved within that
period.
If the vacancy is not resolved within a year
the building must, not may, be compulsorily
purchased at the market price for a building in
its current state of underuse.
And until that is possible we’re not going to
use property for the common good, and, more
practically, we’re losing an easy opportunity to
mitigate the housing crisis.
Meath County Council. Village had whined
about the appointment to the SIPO board of
Geraldine Feeeney, a creditor of wound-up
doctors’ union NAGP for which she lobbied 8
times. In that capacity she knew Dr Matt O
Tuathail to whom Leo Varadkar leaked a
confidential draft contract. We wondered how
that would play when dealing with a complaint,
like the Meath one, from Village; or indeed the,
now deferred, complaint from Paul Murphy TD
about the transfer of that contract. However, to
be fair, the advance of the Meath complaint to
a public hearing came on the back of a decision
to which she was a party”.
But in fact SIPO, having formally announced
the public hearing, unprecedentedly pulled
back from it and dismissed the case. They
didn’t bother to seek Village’s view on this
before they did so. SIPO currently faces legal
action from Paul Murphy on the same issue,
also referred to in that Villager column in 2021.
Murphy’s case against Varadkar for leaking a
document to a friend, a débacle first published
in Village magazine, was before Judge Barry
O’Donnell in the High Court on 13 February.
SIPO had dismissed Murphy’s complaint to it
on the ground they couldn’t investigate a
Taoiseach, a craven and unlawful approach
from which two of the SIPO board bravely
dissented.
PEASANTS REVOLT
As if farmers aren’t angry enough in Ireland, in
recent weeks, cities in nearly every country in
the EU have been blockaded by the Euro-
agricultural lobby. Farmers have closed down
motorways and takeaways, dumped manure,
hurled eggs, set fire to hay bales and pallets,
and clashed with police. Their focus is EU
environmental legislation especially targets to
halve pesticide use by 2030, cut fertiliser use
by 20%, and double organic production to 25%
of all EU farmland.
The far right, including the Dutch far right,
the AfD in Germany, the Sweden Democrats
and Fidesz in Hungary are successfully
exploiting these farmers’ protests, what used
to be called “agrarian populism”, in the “soul”
of each country, to build their base.
In the US, The Oath Keepers, and the Three
Percenters, two of the militias that led the
attack on the Capitol building in January 2021,
Aungier Street, Dublin: ‘not derelict’
