Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
4 February 2015
Villager
Mates of Yates
Under this heading in the last edition
Villager made reference to Leo Varadkar.
The intention of the piece was to imply that
sexuality is workaday and of no particular
interest but Village accepts that the
reference was offensive and a mistake. In
general, Village does not support the
outing of the sexual orientation of anyone.
Villager and Village apologise to all
concerned.
Saving trees from themselves
In keeping with its general philosophy of
doing more to achieve less Dublin City
Council has erected signs in Merrion
Square signalling that it is about to begin
cutting down 300 trees there in
accordance with a Conservation
Management Plan. The idea is… well
actually Villager couldn’t really see the
idea at all. But it’s dressed up as facilitating
more visitors and of course deterring
‘anti-social’ and something about freeing
up the lucky 700 trees that will be spared.
Then-Lord Mayor Oisín Quinn told the
Herald in 2013 that officials wanted to
remove trees to protect older tree species.
“And a sizeable number will be removed in
order to revitalise it”. The foolish,
busybody idea is to reinstate the park
closer to the way it was originally
intended, with views of the architecture
beyond. No importance is afforded those
of us who just want to get away from the
city (and its Council) for a while. Merrion
Square was laid out after 1762 and was
largely complete by the beginning of the
19th century. The government of Éamon
de Valera proposed plans to demolish the
“un-natural” ie tree-filled Merrion Square.
These plans were only prevented from
going ahead by the Nazi invasion of Poland.
Villager looks forward to a similar
philosophy of weeding out excessive
buildings on the square that surrounds the
park. Inevitably a shop and
“amphitheatre” are also on the way.
Obedientia-civium-urbis-felicitas: Give it
back to the Archbishopric.
Inishbuffoon
More than €9m was spent in the five years
up to 2009 constructing airstrips on
Inishbofin that have never been used and
are dilapidating. The entire annual budget
for the islands for Department of Arts,
Heritage and Gaeltacht’s is now only
€600,000. Éamon Ó Cuív was Minister for
Community, Gaeltacht and the Islands
from 2002-2010, so the usual rules did not
apply.
DoEing very little
Village has now asked the Department of
the Environment Press Office twice in the
last three months if there is any progress
on the advice from the AG received in
August 2014. Or on the independent
report into the other six planning
authorities that was expected in June 2014
to “be concluded soon”; or on the possible
extension of the independent report into
other counties, notably Wicklow. To no
avail. The Department won’t reply to
emails.
Villager gets good story
“Exclusive: Irish VIP in Sex Tape Scandal.
Naked hotel romp with escort”. So ran the
cover of the Irish Sun in early January. But
it wasn’t an exclusive, for Villager in his
modest way had scooped the Sun in the last
edition and
even named
Ben Dunne
(“Zip it
upstairs and
down, Big
Man”).
Meanwhile
the editor’s
been assailed
by emails
from Dunne’s
escort
promising
cash for “XXX videos, dates and room
numbers”. He says the magazine can’t
afford it. Other Celebrity Sex Stories to
Villager c/o far corner, Village office,
Ormond Quay. Exclusives only, please.
Silence from Law Library on
defamation proceedings
Meanwhile the proceedings drafted by
Michael McDowell last year rest on the
Village mantelpiece. They seek “damages,
punitive damages, aggravated damages
and an order prohibiting the further
publication” of unspecified statements the
subject of the proceedings. The
proceedings relate, if it even matters, to
evidence given in the High Court by Gerard
Convie, who worked in Donegal County
Council as a senior planner for nearly 24
years and has claimed, in an affidavit
opened in court, and reported in Village,
that during his tenure in the Council there
was bullying and intimidation of planners
who sought to make decisions based
exclusively on the planning merits of
particular applications and that planning
bloody trees everywhere
sex tapes
February 2015 5
performed the trick for the Boston Globe in
2013, paying the New York Times, as it
happens, $70m for it.
Near the end of Bloomberg’s time as
mayor, he told Times chairman and
publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr that he was
interested in buying the Times but
Sulzberger replied that the paper was not
for sale.
Bloomberg has evidently returned from
politics to media. According to one friend,
who spoke to New York magazine he
lunches almost weekly with Rupert
Murdoch. “Before he came back to the
company there was talk he was going to be
a combination of Bill Gates and Rupert
Murdoch. Now he’s only going to be
Murdoch. He’s not paying as much
attention to the
philanthropy.
And to have
media impact,
he’s gotta get
something
bigger. He
can’t just have
Bloomberg”.
Bloomberg is
the thirteenth
richest man in
the world,
worth
$36.5bn. He
could have
Village (and
Villager) if he
wanted. Only
saying.
Nobs
John Micklethwait has just left the
Economist after 27 years, including the
last eight as editor-in-chief, to join
Bloomberg News. He was replaced at the
Economist by its first woman editor, the
formidably named Zanny Minton Beddoes.
The chairman of the Economist is Trinity
alumnus, Rupert-Pennant-Rea, most
famous for nobbing (or being nobbed by)
Mary Ellen Synon, aesthete and one-time
scourge of Travellers, Immigrants etc in
the pages of the Sunday Independent, on
the floor in the Bonk of England in 1996
when he was deputy governor.
Nobama
Barack Obama hasn’t vetoed much during
the first six years of his presidency. With
Democrats holding a majority in the Senate
for that entire time, then-Majority Leader
Harry Reid could hold up any bills that
weren’t favoured by Obama. So far, the
irregularities were perpetrated by named
officials at the highest level in the Council
including former Manager McLoone, as
well as named county councillors.The
action has not proceeded to court.
Curry my yogurt can coca coalyer
The Ceann Comhairle was beaten to the
Village Idiot spot by Isis this February, so
the editor gave him to Villager. Seán
Barrett comes from the John O’Donoghue
school of discreet speakery. He reminds
Villager of urchins who, in the 1970s, used
to stop him in the street and ask him if he
was starting. To which there is no good
answer. Talking to Miriam O’Callaghan
about the Opposition, Barrett said they
were “out to get him” but withdrew the
comments in the Dáil. He said he made the
comments in the heat of the moment.
Speakers are only really supposed to have
cool moments. Barrett has now told the
Dáil the Committee on Procedure and
Privileges will consider if the ambiguous
standing order, under which he ruled out a
debate on a motion setting up a
commission of inquiry into alleged Garda
malpractice in Cavan-Monaghan, is
susceptible to another interpretation.
In December Barrett accused Sinn Féin
of using him as a “pawn to deflect
attention” from their own political
difficulties, such as the Maíria Cahill
controversy. “If there is one thing I take
grave exception to, (it is) accusing me in the
wrong and . . . briefing people outside.
Morally, it’s wrong”, he fulminated. Of
course: but you’re the Speaker, man, you’re
not allowed to whinge. You’re supposed to
be the sort of guy who dreams in the third
person, not someone who goes on the
media making personal comments.
In 2006 Barrett told the Mahon
Tribunal he had been offered an £80,000
consultancy to lobby for a land swap
involving the movement of either Killiney
or Dún Laoghaire golf course to lands at
Cherrywood near Loughlinstown in
County Dublin. In 2000 Barrett, who
stood strongly against the rezoning of
Cherrywood in the 1992-3 period,
admitted to his FG internal Inquiry that he
received a cheque for about £600 from
Monarch Properties which owned
Cherrywood, or their agent, at the time of
the 1991 local elections and gave it to his
local constituency organisation and an
unsolicited cheque for between £500 and
£1,000 from Frank Dunlop at the time of
the General Election in 1992. Monarch
were found by the Mahon Tribunal to have
obtained their rezoning corruptly, in
1993, but no taint applied to Barrett.
Milking the stats
Livestock emissions in Ireland are
503,400 tonnes per year (in 2011).
According to Cambridge University
climate economist Chris Hope who models
the social cost of carbon emissions, this
puts the unpaid cost of livestock climate
pollution at about €670 million per year.
This does not include nitrous oxide cost
which is also considerable. And of course it
is before the massive proposed expansion
of the livestock herd. It amounts to a
hidden cost of about €9,500 per dairy
farmer per year.
Dismal and frightening
200 years ago, the field of economics
barely existed. Today, it is treated as the
queen of the social sciences. Or their
whore. Using the new Chronicle tool that
catalogues the entire New York Times
archive, Justin Wolvers has discovered that
in recent years around one in 100 articles
mention the term “economist,” and these
typically occur in the context of
introducing a proponent of the dark arts.
Far fewer articles mention the terms
historian or psychologist, while
sociologists, anthropologists and
demographers rarely rate a mention.
Unlike in Ireland where interest in
economists rises and rises as the economy
rises and sinks, the New York Times’
interest in what economists have to say
rises and falls with the economy. It wasn’t
always this way. Historians held the largest
market share until the Great Depression
intervened in the 1930s, leading a
frightened public to take a greater interest
in economics.
Blooming berg
For years it has been speculated that
billionaire former New York Mayor, Mike
Bloomberg, could be a white knight and
save the New York Times which lost $9m in
the year to October and has laid off close to
110 employees. John W. Henry, a one-time
billionaire whose other holdings include
the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool FC,
sex tapes
methane machine
Blooming
6 February 2015
NEWS VILLAGER
president has expressly vetoed just two
bills, the lowest number since Abraham
Lincoln, apart from James Garfield’s brief
six-month stay in office. That will soon
change now that Republicans control
majorities in both the House and Senate.
Obama has tired of what little purchase
he got from bipartisanship with
recalcitrant Republicans and has
announced he will consider vetoing key
measures including: Keystone XL: the
pipeline to transport oil from the tar sands
in Canada oil refineries in Texas and
Illinois; Repeal of Obamacare, Financial
regulation to erode Dodd-Frank, the
Democrat’s 2010 law to fix Wall Street; and
Regulatory reform: In January the House
passed the Regulatory Accountability
Act, a bill that would force all agencies to
conduct a cost-benefit analysis for each
rule. This process tends to favour business
interests over consumers.
Breeding
Breda O’Brien of the Iona Institute is like
the kids’ mums Villager remembers from
his childhood. Anyway, she told ‘Morning
Ireland’ in January that she didn’t oppose
the Civil Partnership Act but she did. In
2007 she wrote in the Irish Times: “Brian
Cowen believes that this will not dilute the
meaning of marriage. One wonders what
he thinks would, if this doesn’t? Of course
marriage is not just about children, but
about love, sexual attraction, and
commitment. Yet this proposed Bill is yet
another step towards removing from
marriage the defining paradigm of mother,
father and child. It begins to move it
entirely towards the adult sexual
relationship model, where the needs of
adults dominate”. Unless Breda is in favour
of the adult sexual relationship model, and
she isn’t, this amounts to opposition to
Civil Partnership. Hopefully she’ll get her
coherence together for later in the
campaign. It’s her speciality.
Getting money back for
corrupt Haughey
Villager enjoyed ‘Charlie’, though
primarily for the politics not the drama
which was clunky. He enjoyed the
caricaturing of the eejits who reigned in
the era of multiple-adjectives-when-one-
would-do. Not a scene seemed to pass
without Haughey being smothered by
another wad of cash and the short series
managed to nail Haughey for most of his
grubby delinquency. It did not, however,
refer to his arranging Ben Dunne’s Capital
Gains Tax bill reduction by £23m. The
pressure Mr Haughey put on the Revenue
Commissioners resulted, according to the
Moriarty Tribunal, in “a complete about
turn in the consistent thinking of the
Revenue over the previous two years”.
Or to the fact Haughey embezzled
£20,000 from his mucker Brian Lenihan’s
medical fund. Haughey also received a
£50,000 payment from a Saudi diplomat
and businessman to provide Irish
passports.
Taxi-drivers often claim that the Little
Man never did anything actually corrupt
but that is not the case. The dodgy, but
probably not illegal stuff was different:
Haughey pocketed secret payments
totalling 171 times his gross salary
between 1979 and 1996.
Councillor Sean Haughey bristled to an
sympathetic and unquestioning media at
the series but it’s very difficult to take
righteousness from anyone in that family
until they give back the proceeds of theft
and compromised dodginess, including
Inishvickillaune.
Smug and smugger editors
The Village editor seems to be following
Phoenix magazine by signing his (self-
indulgent) editorial. In January, Phoenix
included a po-faced editorial signed for
once (by editor, Paddy Prendeville) about
the massacre of journalists in Paris: ‘Je ne
sui pas Charlie [sic]’. If proof were needed
that Phoenix is not ‘seriou’ this must be it.
We do not need to agree with much of what
Charlie says to stand with them after they
were butchered. Since being Charlie is a
metaphor it does not take much generosity
to limit the metaphor to an effort at human
solidarity in the face of grisly tragedy.
Villager shares the view of many that
Charlie often picked on Islam, a
constituency that is beleaguered and
therefore not a desirable target for
systematic pillorying. Occasional
blasphemy yes, but not to the point of
oppression.
Smuggest
After the Charlie Hebdo massacre the Irish
Times pontificated editorially that the
“right to offend must be defended with
courage and vigour”.
However it failed to take its own advice
when last April its editors censored and
removed from the web a cartoon drawn by
cartoonist Martyn Turner. With reference
to the mandatory reporting requirement
to the Children First Bill, the cartoon
depicted two priests and a bishop singing
“I’ll do anything for children but I won’t do
that”. The cartoon was removed following
objections by senior members of the Irish
Catholic hierarchy. The Irish Times’
apology said the paper “regrets any
apologises for the hurt caused”.
This has, it went on, “unsurprisingly,
caused considerable offence and we regret
and apologise for the hurt caused by the
cartoon whose use in that form, we
acknowledge, reflected a regretable [sic]
editorial lapse”.
The apology noted that the views of
columnists and contributors are “largely
sacrosanct”, but that under obligations
placed on the paper by the Irish Times
Trust, “there are ground rules”.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said: “I know
that many priests and people feel hurt by
[the] cartoon. I am a strong believer in
freedom of speech and of the vital role of
satire in social criticism, but I object to
anything that would unjustly tarnish all
good priests with the unpardonable
actions of some”.
Wherever I lay my hat…
JP McManus has paid €30m for the
ancestral home of the Earls of Dunraven
– the Quins, some of the few peers of Gaelic
origin. Adare Manor hotel and its
inevitable golf course and spa lie on 840
acres in Co Lmerick. He already owns the
biggest (and vilest) private house in the
country, a stud on 600 acres, which he
built for €50m at Martinstown, Co
Limerick. •
not Adare
February 2015 7
Village is Ireland’s
Political Magazine
Village is published 10 times
annually. The cover price is €3.95 in
the Republic and £3.30 in Northern
Ireland. A subscription for ten
editions costs €39.50 in the Republic
and £33 in Northern Ireland.
Village
pays for postage.
A
Village
subscription is an ideal gift.
Village
is published by:
Ormond Quay Publishing,
6 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7.
Email: sales@villagemagazine.ie;
Tel: 01 873 5824
RECIPIENT
First name: .............................................................................
Surname: ................................................................................
Address: .................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Tel: .........................................................................................
Email .....................................................................................
⁄
I enclose a cheque for € .........
(Please make cheque payable to Ormond Quay Publishing)
Please send to:
Ormond Quay Publishing, 6 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7
We also welcome bank transfers.
Tel: +353 1 873 5824; Email: sales@villagemagazine.ie
Ireland’s political magazine www.villagemagazine.ie
Sha tter
Reforming law
A v o c a
Organobourgeois
OM G!
Mor onspeak
Io n a
Panti’s in twist
Ombudsman
Siggins wins
Economissed
the point
Do economists
undervalue happiness,
cause Depression?
Irela nd’s pol itica l maga zine www.villagemagazine.ie
February/March 2014
Iss ue 27
• D on e ga l P l an ni n g: En v ir on m en t D e pt im p li ca t ed
• A os d án a – co ss e tt e d a nd co s y
• J oh n T i er ne y/ M ay or ac t i on lo se s i n H i gh Co ur t
• L aw So c ie t y f ac e s s er i ou s q u es t io n s
• Ve g an i sm ’s R o ge r Y at e s
• G re e ns ’ S e am us Sh e ri d an in t er v i ew
• C or k Tr a ve ll e rs tr a ve st y
• G ua n ta n am o u nc l os e d
€3.95 // £3.30
‘Economissed’
Fac eof f
Gurdg iev v S mith
pp 12 -1 7
Whistleblower
Auctioneer
Fr a n c e
Fermé
Rent- Control
No barrier
Denis
Emails Dermot
Heaney
Time-server
Scotland
It depends
Irela nd’s poli tical maga zine www.villagemagazine.ie
June/ July 201 4
Issu e 29
• C on st an t in G ur d gi ev • N ia ll Cr ow le y
• S hi rl ey C le r ki n
•
Pa d ra ic K en n a
Fi nu c an e sh o w, P re ss Om bu ds ma n , Ve ga ni sm
• L A B O U R - L E A D E R - E L E C T I O N I N S I G H T S
• P at R ab b it te • Fr a nk C on n ol ly
• Fe r gu s Fi nl a y • R ay K av an a gh
€3.95 // £3.30
DONEGAL
Counc il ston ewalls
planning
whistleblower
p19
Pr iv ileged
6 0 y e a r s o f
Law Society
self-regulation
11-page investigation
by Dr Maeve Hosier and Michael Smith
