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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
4April 2015
Villager
Just shut up
Villager is interested in the notion of
‘guest’ as applied to the ‘Tonight with
Vincent Browne’ show. The status seems to
be precarious. Tom Cooney, a pro-Israeli
former advisor to Alan Shatter, was told to
leave after interrupting, Jerry Beades was
ejected after being invited to ‘shut up’
(“just leave if you’re not going to stop
talking”) and now SIPTU’s Jack O’Connor
whose departure admittedly was his own
idea has suffered the ignominy of being
followed out of the studio by an unhostly
invitation to ‘Hit the Road Jack’ and
raucous studio laughter. After the
ignominy, journalist Colette Browne
feared that – much worse – O’Connor
might be stuck for an invidious half hour
watching the gaiety while a taxi was called
to TV’s studio in far-flung Ballymount.
All of this is fine when you don’t like the
victim; and Israel, and the New Land
League, certainly need robust criticism.
SIPTU, the Labour Party and the issue of
TV not being unionised deserve it less.
The problem with the ‘Tonight Show’ is
that – uniquely – the dignity of all the
guests is in play. As well of course as that
of the presenter. And sometimes that of
the issue.
No one-horse towns
The latest statistics show that % of
journeys made in Ireland (outside Dublin)
in were by car – driving (%) or
driven (%).
Ideolo-something
Joan Burton is proposing a cap on the
property tax when the freeze on increases
registers at the end of the year. Villager
can’t remember where that fits in the
socialist handbook. Karl Marx of course
wanted to abolish private property, so just
crucifying it with taxes should be allowed.
In similar spirit, the coalition
government was happy to abolish the %
tax on windfall profits to land speculators,
which had been introduced at Green
insistence, without a solitary murmur
from anyone in the Labour Party.
Ya can’t eat planning
Minister for the Environment, Alan Kelly,
isn’t really a man for any of that old leftie
stuff relating to land, planning or anything
really. According to the Irish Times. Mr
Kelly is considering allowing builders of
one-off houses to “opt out” of the usual
certification requirements. It’s of a piece
with recent news that the inspection
regime for the country’s , septic
tanks – agreed with the increasingly
pliable EU, would take years to
complete, even though nearly three
quarters of them are “high risk”.
Kelly and his Minister of state Paudie
Coffey have announced a review of the
Building Control (Amendment)
Regulations “to consider in
particular the impact of S.I. No. of
on single dwellings and extensions to
existing dwellings having regard to
specific concerns which have been raised
in relation to the cost burden of the
regulations and the level of certification
required for this sector”. This is code for a
nod to planning-control anarchy.
Unlawful Society
Villager returns to the case of Kenmare-
based solicitor, Colm Murphy, who was
struck off from the Roll of Solicitors in
on foot on foot of complaints from
another solicitor, Fergus
Appelbe. Murphy took a case
against the Law Society
which failed to investigate
Appelbe until very recently
when he was finally
restricted as to how he can
practise. Appelbe is a former
member of the Law Society
Conveyancing Committee
and was the subject of two
‘Today Tonight’
investigations in /
into his conduct. He and his
various companies are now
also in overwhelming debt
– to a sum in excess of
€m much of which will
have to be borne by the
state.
Allegations of “repeated
skulduggery on the part of officials of the
Law Society” were aired in the Supreme
Court last year as part of Murphy’s claim
of breach of duty, negligence, defamation
and misfeasance of public office against
them. Murphy claimed that his striking off
was based on spurious and inaccurate
information provided by the Law Society
to its Disciplinary Tribunal and the High
Court ten years ago. Key to the decision to
strike him from the roll had been a claim
Beades before he left
Magna
Carta –
Ken’s?
April 2015 5
saw the biggest increase with pay costs
rising by %. Health sector pay surged
by %, civil service salaries rose %.
By contrast the average industrial wage
rose only %.
Liveline for intellectuals
A new Irish podcast, free to download,
www.hereshow.ie, lets you get your voice
on the internet instead of just wasting your
day there. Here’s How, Ireland’s political,
social and current affairs podcast allows
listeners call any time and
record a voice mail of up to three minutes
on a topic of their choice, which is then
played in the next episode. William
Campbell, the show’s presenter, also
interviews politicians, representatives of
pressure groups, and anyone else who’ll
have him. The point is to provide an (even)
more intelligent analysis of issues than you
might hear on live radio phone-ins.
2015’s suite of neologisms
This year’s exciting new political
conversation-fillers are borrowed from
best international practice: The all-
purpose “Let’s be clear” and the simple but
surprisingly crafty “Look!” are as at home
on the BBC’s ‘Today’ show as on Marian.
Straight-talking is what it’s all (not) about.
The fine new gambits are filling space
formerly occupied in this country by “we
are where we are” and ‘going forward”.
We all miss even earlier modalities
including the vacuous “ruling nothing in
and ruling nothing out” from the Ahern
era and the Haughey era “hand, act or
part”, “not a scintilla” and “good, bad or
indifferent”, all of which were intended to
buy time so the speaker could ensure that
the next sentence chimed with the
previous sentence’s lie.
Eamon Gil-less
Although he resigned on July th ,
Eamon Gilmore’s website still refers to him
as Tanaiste, His twitter account
disappeared from July rd until February
th but is back in force now banging on
by a law society official, Linda Kirwan,
that Murphy had breached an undertaking
he had given to the President of the High
Court. Kirwan insisted at various hearings
against Murphy that she had been in the
High Court on the day the undertaking
was made. It was only after the
unfortunate Murphy was struck off that
she admitted that she was not in fact in the
court when the supposed undertaking was
made. No such undertaking is recorded in
the order from the court issued on the day
in question.
The three judges of the Supreme Court
decided in March that the Law Society had
misled Judge Hanna in the High Court.
They were critical of Ken Murphy, the
Society’s Director General and suggested
that Colm Murphy could resume practicing
as a solicitor and that there would be a full
hearing in respect of his compensation
claim. The judges awarded costs for the
Supreme Court hearing and all costs of the
High Court to Murphy (Colm not Ken).
Constantly keen Ken
Last year Ronán Lynch, formerly of the
Centre for Public Inquiry and now of the
Westport-based Lafferty Financial Group,
broke some icons in this magazine to
analyse the guests on Marian Finucane’s
weekend radio show. He found of
guests over the year no less than were
legal professionals – somewhat fewer than
politicians (), academics () and
businesspeople (). In the last two
months this same Ken Murphy, the
moustachioed head Law Society honcho,
appeared twice including once (February
) to give an enthusiastic endorsement of
Magna Carta – as if that has anything to do
with the way the legal profession runs
today; and on April to wax
uncontroversially about the print media,
Fianna Fáil and the issues of the day.
Ok, Marian show: you’re not fulfilling
your obligation to broadcasting having so
many lawyers on your show. They don’t
need people like you enfranchising them
and mainstreaming their influence –
they’ve rigged the system through their
contacts already. Does someone in there
know Ken or why do you keep showcasing
him? Why don’t you ever ask him about
solicitors’ anti-competitive practices and
overcharging or about the scandalous
failures to prosecute particular solicitors
– and indeed the tendency to prosecute the
wrong ones?
Chief Just Ice
Moving to the acceptable face of the legal
profession, readings taken by our
diplomatic and forensically elegant Chief
Justice, Susan Denham, during a week in
January showed the temperature in the
Supreme Court and its conference room in
the Four Courts complex varied between
. and degrees. Accustomed to
stalactites freezing from the keys on his
Remington typewriter in the ice box that is
what passes for the Village office, Villager
wasn’t sure whether it was meant to be
plus or minus.
Bank bunk
Borrowing to fund the bank bailout costs
around €bn a year – a small fraction of
the total fiscal adjustment of €bn since
, according to John FitzGerald – now
almost indistinguishable from the
presence his deceased Dad Garret used to
represent in the Irish Times.
Objectively most of the fiscal problem
was caused by increased public-sector
payments. Villager notes that in the period
- public-sector salaries rose
%; payroll went up % – ,
additional workers; and pensions
increased by .. The education sector
one-off housing
Supreme Court in warmer times
6April 2015
about housing in Sallynoggin and the like.
Though tending his constituency, he has
not contributed a word to the Dáil since
July . He makes Terence Flanagan
TD, who essentially cannot speak, look
loquacious.
Bags, bins and water
His buddy Pat Rabbitte seemed to let the
water out of the bag when he attacked the
anti-water-charge campaigners on ‘The
Week in Politics’ in late March: “Citizens
are going to be left with accumulating debt
that they need not have incurred. It
happened in the case of the bin charges,
and then the leaders moved on to a new
campaign, and the bin system was
privatised, That was the outcome last
time, and that is what will happen on this
occasion”.
Even Fine Gael, Labour right-wing
partners in government are denying Irish
Water, which after all the country has
taken so much to heart, will be flogged.
Dulce et decorum est
The Glasnevin Trust, necrologists for the
.m people interred in its cemetery, has
come up with a list of the men, women
and children killed in Easter Week ,
and intends to erect a wall at the cemetery
on which the names of all will be inscribed.
The breakdown of the casualties tells a
tale. The majority of the dead were
civilians – per cent. The British Army
and police accounted for per cent of
those killed, while just per cent of the
casualties were rebels.
A lover not a ghter
So Gerry Adams has told CBS he never
pulled a trigger, ordered a murder or set
off a bomb during the decades-long war in
Northern Ireland that he helped to stop in
. Ed Moloney, who of course is not
well disposed, notes: “There is no doubt
that Gerry Adams was in the IRA and that
he gave orders that led to others pulling
triggers or setting off bombs and, of
course, killing people. But he was not an
operator by any stretch of the
imagination”. The only story Moloney
encountered of Adams being personally
involved in violence was when – according
to a contemporary of his in the pre-split
IRA, the late Jim Hargey who kept friendly
relations despite the subsequent parting of
the ways – “Adams had fired shots at the
British Army’s base in Ballymurphy, the
Henry Taggart hall, very early on in the
Troubles. That was at a time when there
were nightly incidents like that… Gerry
Adams’ lack of operational experience was
well known within the IRA and a serious
handicap when he began steering the
Provos in a political direction”.
In , using parliamentary privilege,
the then DUP MP – and not notably reliable
– Iris Robinson claimed that Adams was
involved in the IRA La Mon
restaurant bombing. Adams denied the
allegation and said the remarks were made
to deflect attention away from
developments in the Stevens Inquiry into
collusion.
More damagingly former Belfast IRA
commander Brendan Hughes has named
Adams as having ordered the murder and
secret burial of Jean McConville in .
Former republican prisoner Evelyn Gilroy,
who was active in Divis where Jean
McConville was abducted, says that Adams
was the only person in the position to
order the murder. Among the abductors of
McConville was Dolours Price, who has
claimed that she did so on the orders of
Adams. Hughes, and Price, also claimed
that Adams was involved in approving IRA
bomb attacks in London in the early
s. Former Garda Detective
Superintendent PJ Browne has claimed
that Adams was “the leader of the
psychotic IRA unit in Belfast in the early
s”. Adams doesn’t mind a bit of old
lying, as evidenced by the string of them
he told the Belfast Crown Court about the
abuse by his brother Liam of Liam’s
daughter, Áine.
The CBS blurb notes “Many believe
Adams could be the Republic of Ireland’s
prime minister someday”.
Mandarin speakers wanted
No good will come of China’s five-year plan
of which requires Chinese firms to
acquire advanced technology and high-
quality brands from abroad and which is
now registering as deals worldwide.
Website Finfacts reported recently that
Chinese investment into Europe is at
record levels and at % higher than the
US level. With separate investments
worth $bn last year, Europe has
emerged as one of the top destinations for
Chinese foreign investment globally. The
UK is the top destination and $bn has
been invested in Europe in five years but
IDA Ireland, the Irish inward investment
agency, has yet to have an impact.
We haven’t heard much recently about
the €.bn trading hub and exhibition
centre for Chinese and European
companies proposed in for Athlone
but Dalian Wanda, one of China’s largest
and most ambitious conglomerates
snapped up two deals in the UK, a year or
two back, paying Irish firm Green Property
£m for a site in Wandsworth that will
incorporate a pair of new London
skyscrapers to mirror the unedifying
Shard further along the South Bank and
including the first high-end Chinese hotel
overseas; and buying Sunseeker Yachts for
£m from a consortium led by Peter
Crowley, former CEO of IBI corporate
finance; and brother of Village’s Niall and
of former INM CEO, Laurence. Wanda is
also the world’s largest cinema operator
after buying AMC, the US chain, for
£.bn In March China National Chemical
Corporation (CNCC), a state-owned
conglomerate has bought Pirelli, an Italian
tyremaker, for €bn.
In Britain, which has long been open to
foreign ownership, Chinese firms have
stakes in Thames Water and Heathrow
airport. In France they have invested in
NEWS Villager
Iris Robinson
not
coming to
Athlone
April 2015 7
Toulouse airport; in Club Med, a resort
operator; and in PSA Peugeot Citroën, a
carmaker whose deal with Dongfeng, in
partnership with the French government,
helped the firm return to profit in ; it
is now selling more cars in China than in
France. In Greece a Chinese firm runs part
of the port of Piraeus, though Syriza is
stymieing moves to sell off more of it. In
Sweden Volvo, another carmaker, is also
Chinese-owned. Geely’s acquisition of
Volvo in was the impetus for last
year’s record sales of , cars.
Speak up there
Anti-corruption group, Transparency
International (TI) Ireland, has published
its first report based on data collected
from over whistleblowers, witnesses
and victims of wrongdoing in Ireland
deriving from the only free-phone non-
profit helpline for whistleblowers, witness
and victims of wrongdoing.
The ‘Speak Up Report’ suggests that the
risk of corruption and other forms of
wrongdoing is relatively high in Local
Government and the Health Service, as
well as Social Services including Charities,
but TI Ireland’s Chief Executive John Devitt
has warned against assuming that these
sectors are more ‘corrupt’ than others.
The report identifies planning and
public procurement as key risk areas for
local authorities, while the high rate of
whistleblower retaliation in the Health
Sector (at % of calls) is highlighted as a
source of concern.
Climate picnics may not
be enough then
According to a recent Greenpeace-
sponsored Climate Skillshare in Zurich
there is no prospect of media developing
other than a passing interest in climate
issues until either: a) multiple extreme
weather events or other climate-related
crises (e.g. fodder) force them to address it
and/or b) climate activists are creative,
courageous and/or crazy enough to bring
it to public attention through innovative
and inspirational actions.
Cam off it
Villager doesn’t mind David Cameron
(except for his beliefs and background of
course). He’s quite articulate and rarely
seems to make unforced mistakes; and
unlike Ed Miliband he knows how to eat.
Anyway he has declared himself an
“evangelical” about his strong Christian
faith and criticised some non-believers for
failing to grasp the role that religion can
have in “helping people to have a moral
code”.
It comes after several big clashes
between the coalition and the church,
including a letter from Anglican
bishops and church leaders calling on
all political parties to tackle the causes of
food poverty.
Writing for Premier Christianity, a
Christian magazine and radio station, the
prime minister talked about “hard work,
fair play” and the importance of Christian
“values”. His vagueness has irritated many
practising Christians, and the piece has
been criticised by the Guardian as a way of
“fishing for votes”. Practising Anglicans
were twice as likely to vote Conservative
in than Catholics were. Partly, this is
cultural.
Swedenlightening
In October Sweden became the first
Western government to recognise the state
of Palestine. Margot Wallström, the
foreign minister – once accused by the
Economist magazine of offering a kum-
bay-yah approach to her then European
Commissionership – was duly invited to
address a meeting of the Arab League on
March th. Ms Wallstrom wrote a rather
anodyne speech exhorting the member
states to live up to their commitments on
human rights, particularly women’s
rights. Saudi Arabia objected, and the
league blocked her from speaking. Now
Sweden’s relations with much of the Arab
world are in vortex.
On March th the Swedish government
said it would revoke a weapons export
agreement with Saudi Arabia that had
been in place since and a few weeks
ago Wallström denounced the subjugation
of women in Saudi Arabia where women
are prohibited from travelling, conducting
official business or marrying without the
permission of male guardians, and as girls
can be forced into child marriages where
they are effectively raped by old men. She
attacked the Saudi courts for sentencing
Raif Badawi to ten years in prison and
, lashes for setting up a website that
championed secularism and free speech
- ‘mediaeval methods’, she said.
Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador
and stopped issuing visas to Swedish
travellers. The United Arab Emirates
joined it. The Organisation of Islamic
Co-operation, which represents
Muslim-majority states, accused Sweden
of failing to respect the world’s ‘rich and
varied ethical standards’. Outside Sweden,
the media have ignored the story, and the
EU has passed on the opportunity to
support her.
Saving trees from themselves
The tree surgeons are coming to the end of
their pointless mission to save Merrion
Square Park in Dublin from trees.
Meanwhile, as Spring kicks in, the City
Council also brings to the city the cutting
of trees along the Grand Canal at
Portobello. •
NEWS Villager
