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VILLAGEAugust/September 

Not smiling now

Breton Sandrine Brisset, author of ‘Brendan

Kennelly – Behind the Smile’, has recently

lodged High Court proceedings after her

book was banned from Trinity College where

she and her one-time good friend Kennelly

worked, and from other outlets, with-

out even a suspicion of a legal threat. The

Trinity professor and one-time law lecturer

is suing Trinity, Kennelly and his daugh-

ter, Independent News and Media and the

Belfast Telegraph. The Press Ombudsman has

already upheld a complaint against the Sindo

which had alleged Brisset had “revealed”

personal details acquired through her per-

sonal contact with the Kennellys. Trinity

removed the book on grounds that are best

described as faux-legal and out of sensitiv-

ity to Kennelly whose daughter, Doodle,

was upset to the verge of suicide by some of

the detail revealed about her. The book was

unfavourably reviewed in the Times, which

denigrated “psychobabble” (in, tellingly for

that newspaper, a review by Kennelly’s own

publisher) and in the Sindo, but to ban it is a

step beyond what would be expected of a uni-

versity. The saga is an unhappy one that put

paid to a mutually respectful relationship and

no-one comes well out of this. Except Brisset

who did what you’d expect a biographer to do.

Abuse of Power

So Jim Power, chief economist for Friends

First, writing in the Business Post on August

, tells us that “somebody who I deeply

respect suggested to me that oﬃcial data

releases and general popular discourse are

not fully reﬂecting the magnitude or the real

upturn in the economy. This view resonates

with my sense of what is going on around

the country”. He goes on: “This week’s news

from the banks is unambiguously positive”.

This is the same Jim Power who abjectly

told irisheconomy website in :

“There are many things in my life that

I regret. Spending  years with Bank of

Ireland is one of them, but appearing on

RTÉ’s ‘Prime Time’ with Morgan Kelly

early in  is top of the pile. I was totally

wrong and he was totally right. I haven’t

met Morgan since, but when I do I will oﬀer

him my sincerest apologies for doubting his

prescience. I now realise that I was totally

duped by what the regulator and the banks

themselves were telling us about the health

of the banking system. I also realise that I

need to educate myself on the workings of

a bank balance sheet and the credit cycle.

Contrary to what the IT said, Morgan is a

past pupil of Templeogue College, of which

I am now on the Board of Management.

The College is quite proud of its former

pupil, as indeed it should be. Fair play to

you Morgan and have some sympathy for

us lesser mortals who have to ply our trade

in the awful ﬁnancial services sector”.

Quite. But Jim quite frankly you made such

a disgrace of yourself last time, when you

were in a position to inﬂuence policy, you

should resist the urge to be ahead of the posse

in predicting economic rosiness. Zip it.

Ties ﬂy high

Ruairí Quinn wanted to publish his

Admissions to Schools Bill to get his three

priorities “over the line” before he left oﬃce

as Minister for Education. It would have

provided for curbing of the practice of giv-

ing priority to children of past pupils, ended

waiting lists for schools (often used by insid-

ers), and banned requirements for deposits.

A perfect agenda to undermine the pri-

vate school hegemony from a good Labour

man with a zeal for equality of oppor-

tunity. The Department of Education

told the Sunday Times the bill was “one

of the most important to [Quinn]”.

But… since he promised the Sunday Times

he’d do it in June, events overtook him and

the bill, sadly, has not been published. Will

be interesting to see if Jan (there is noth-

ing in Gerard Convie’s evidence/let’s make

the planning regulator an advisor not a

regulator) O’Sullivan who was educated

at the private Villiers’ School retains the

ardour of Quinn who was educated at the

private Blackrock College against the privi-

leges of pampered old boys and girls.

As with Shatter’s legal reforms the old-

school-tie brigade still pull the strings

on private-school reform. Is the deba-

cle a metaphor for Quinn’s long career?

Villager

Brisset and Kennelly, happy at the launch

Templeogue College

August/September VILLAGE

Darling leaps

Unfortunately the man with the black-

est eyebrows north of Culloden, Tory

Alistair Darling, whipped the always char-

ismatic Alex Salmond in the ﬁrst televised

debate on Scottish independence, mainly

because the SNP leader couldn’t say how

Scotland would cope if it couldn’t print

pounds or control its own monetary pol-

icy. A case of salmond falls, darling buds.

Unsnipped

Galway Harbour Company is seeking per-

mission for the development of a -hectare,

€m extension of the harbour, which

will include the creation of commercial

quays, a deep-water docking facility and

the reclamation of lands from the sea.

It would seem preferable that the Harbour

Company’s functions be carried out by

the City Council whose remit and demo-

cratic orientation is clearer. The need is now

becoming clearer as the Harbour Company

produced only a toothless ‘framework’ plan

for development of the area, though a City-

Council-endorsed binding ‘Local Area Plan’

had been recommended by the Department

of the Enviornment. The port-extension

application was lodged directly to An Bord

Pleanála on grounds that it is needed for

“imperative reasons of overriding public

interest”. The Harbour Company has been

following a property development policy

since the mid s, when it started sell-

ing oﬀ surplus sites to builders who went on

to construct the Dún Aengus apartments,

and the hotel and apartments developed

opposite at Richardson’s Bend, as well as the

site of the former Shell Oil tank farm which

has yet to be built on while its new owner,

Gerry Barrett, negotiates with NAMA.

The  Bord Snip report considered it

“evident that there are too many ports for

the trade available that......the sector would

beneﬁt from a rationalisation of ownership/

management structures. Separate boards,

management, auditors and investment plans,

are diﬃcult to justify for companies which in

some cases have annual turnover of € mil-

lion or less”. Galway’s was around €.m

in , a fraction of that of Foynes, the

country’s second biggest port company.

The Galway Harbour Company CEO

earns €, annually, around what

a Minister of State earns, and its aver-

age employee cost is €,.

Dirty butterﬂies

Micheál Martin has asked FF chief whip,

Seán O Fearghail and Cavan Monaghan TD,

forgettable former Justice, Agriculture and

Children Minister, Brendan Smith, to help

General Secretary, Sean Dorgan come up

with a plan to improve communications

between FF ‘headquarters’ and its unwashed

TDs who have complained relations are

“dysfunctional”. The crisis arises after under-

performing MEP Brian Crowley escaped the

Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe

(ALDE) group in the European Parliament

and joined the European Conservatives

and Reformists (ECR); and grumbly dep-

uty leader Eamon O Cuív was dropped as a

result of opposing the ﬁscal treaty. Though

netting former Labour Chairman, the quies-

cent Colm Keaveney, might be regarded as a

coup. Villager can’t help thinking Dorgan’s

job is not so much herding cats as trying

to catch butterﬂies with a ﬁshing rod.

Speed of lights

Villager’s spies tell him that among the

very few traﬃc lights in Dublin that change

within seconds of the pedestrian push-

ing the appropriate button is one beside

Leinster House. Another is en route between

City Hall and Dublin’s Civic Oﬃces. This is

so those with power don’t suﬀer the delays

absorbed daily by Dublin pedestrians, and

indeed Villager, who hyperventilates when

he can’t cross the quay immediately. Another

job for keen cyclist and Boy Scouter, the elu-

sive traﬃc-controlling, Owen Keegan.

Villager wants them to ban traﬃc from

the quays and plant a jungle, ﬂowing amid

lawns down to a Liﬀey aloud with the music

of swimming and kayaking citizens led by

Team Village. Whingeing ruralites who don’t

get that a city needs to be a destination not a

route, led by the Irish Times’ Kathy Sheridan,

want to wait for years to even semi-pedestri-

anise the riverside. Time for someone of vision

who can plan for more than a decade ahead.

In which spirit Villager doﬀs his bowler

to An Bord Pleanála which followed the

Corpo’s refusal of QPR boss, Tony Fernandes’

application to rebuild an Ormond Hotel

that was unsympathetic and simply too

greedily high. Mercifully no-one got too

caught up in the Joycean association since,

though the Sirens scene in ‘Ulysses’ was

set there, very little if any of the inte-

rior, let alone the exterior, remains.

Byrnes fallon feet

Meanwhile, across the quay, stylish Fallon

and Byrne, the frou-frou gourmet capital

of bourgeois Dublin is to open an outpost

shortly in Dollard House on Wellington Quay,

next to the Clarence Hotel, now thriving

after Bono and the boys declined to pur-

sue the permission they obtained for a Lord

Foster-designed spaceship over it and in

adjoining buildings such as the now-heav-

ing Workingmen’s Club they had uncivically

claimed were past their useful lifespans.

Incidentally, U’s long-delayed album will

be called ‘Sirens’, perhaps as a tribute to

those who try to demolish quayside hotels.

The scheme includes a “high-class retail

store and a niche market micro craft

brewery with classical style shop fronts,

elegant painted signs and window dis-

plays of traditionally-presented foods”,

facing the oft-under-recognised quay.

Better times more generally for the protago-

nists in Fallon and Byrne, builder Paul Byrne

and his wife, former Sunday Times Ireland

editor, Fiona McHugh. They brought in new

funding partners after a relation of Byrne gen-

erated an accounting crisis and ultimately

examinership for the business some years ago.

Its most recent annual accounts, however,

show a stonking €m proﬁt. The DPP recently

dropped charges against Byrne for an incident

in the Leeson Lounge where a barman’s face

was disﬁgured by a broken glass a few years

ago. The DPP was persuaded by video evidence

that there was no case for Byrne to answer.

Court appeals

Although Peter Kelly’s threat to resign six

Galway Harbour

herding cats

VILLAGEAugust/September 

VILLAGER

years before required to from the High Court

where he has been a ﬁerce defender of the

public interest in commercial cases – after

pay reductions – seems to have been a bluﬀ,

he has now fallen for the temptations of the

newly constituted Court of Appeal. He is to

be replaced in the High Court commercial list

by Judge Brian McGovern who is already get-

ting stuck in to the O’Flynn and O’Donnell

cases. In the latter Judge Kelly recused him-

self, though Judge McGovern refused to do

so, to even though his wife had been involved

in a partnership dispute where there been

borrowings with Bank of Ireland which was

acting against the O’Donnells. McGovern

noted he and his wife had discharged the

borrowings some time ago, and unsurpris-

ingly retained jurisdiction of the matter.

Pol corr

The Village editor is to be loosed on Dáil

Eireann with a proper press pass, to which it

appears Village is entitled, and a tie. He had

one day in there before the recess and came

back looking more than usually pleased with

himself and claiming it was “like school” in

there. He blagged his way onto the press gal-

lery for the announcement of the new cabinet

and then by all accounts hung around way too

long after every single one of the proper hacks

had left the gallery following the ﬁrst three

speeches. He says the most notable things

were the bad body language between Enda and

his new Tánaiste and the demonic way little

Brendan Howlin brays out “have you noth-

ing positive to say?” every thirty seconds at

the opposition when one of them is speaking.

Toadies

Only after poor Tony O’Reilly was on his

insolvent knees did the Irish Times revert to

calling him Tony. But the unctuous wing of

Ireland’s newspaper of reference soon moved

in so later versions re-united the great man

with his knighthood and full honoroﬁc.

Power lies

Under the heading “Mr Denis O’Brien –

Apology” the Sunday Independent of 

August printed the following: “In an arti-

cle headlined ‘Lies won’t compromise the

Sunday Independent’ written by the Editor,

Ms Anne Harris, and published on July ,

, in the early street edition of the news-

paper, it was stated that Mr Denis O’Brien

controlled INM. In subsequent editions of the

newspaper, this statement was corrected.

The Sunday Independent apol-

ogises for this inaccuracy”.

Yet there’s life in the Harris yet. A

close reading suggests that it is the

correction (ie the apology) not the

statement that is inaccurate.

More interestingly, when the Competition

Authority and the Minister for Enterprise

assess whether Denis O’Brien has con-

trol of INM and whether his media

holdings are anti-competitive they

should investigate the process whereby

the stilted apology was extracted. It

might show where the real power lies.

Yes it could

The Sindo blames Nama for inﬂating a bub-

ble through thwarting supply, and indeed

for everything else. Dublin has enough zoned

land for more than , houses of the

, that need to be built in the capi-

tal and the , that need to be built in

the (wider) Greater Dublin area over the

next seven years, according to a the hous-

ing supply taskforce set up under the

Government’s Construction  strategy.

However, up to June only  planning

applications for housing estates – schemes

with more than  units – were granted

this year in Dublin city and county; and

only  houses will be built in total.

Permission has already been granted for

more than , homes – , houses

and , apartments – which remain

unbuilt. Applications for a further ,

houses and  apartments have been

lodged, leaving more than , homes

which could be built on zoned lands.

Almost half the zoned land is to the north of

the capital in Fingal, which has the potential

to provide more than , homes. So there

it is on quantity. But oh jeez is no-one talking

about the quality. Or keeping the prices down.

It is the mark of madness to repeat behav-

iour and expect diﬀerent results. But surely

Ireland couldn’t be about to repeat its world-

losing performance on housing and planning?

Naming things before

McWilliams does

In keeping with this déja vu, it’s only a mat-

ter of time before some whizz invents a

tiring term to describe the allegedly purr-

ing recovery, and David McWilliams claims

credit for it. The Celtic Retriever (because

it was always going to come back)? For the

moment Villager, a pessimist in these mat-

ters, prefers the Celtic Parrot because for

most people the economy feels dead. The

Celtic tenor because no-one he knows ever

has more than a tenner in his pocket. Or the

Celtic Bookmaker because it feels bankrupt.

Shame

The current Phoenix features a cartoon of the

Israeli Prime Minister being advised to “try

gas” on Gaza, under a headline “Gaza Blitz”.

Villager has no time for Israel’s savage adven-

tures in spurious “self-defence” in Palestine

but confounding Israel with the Jewish victims

of the Holocaust is a triumph of the ethics-

free juvenility that often drives Ireland’s

anonymous satirical fortnightly. Civilisation

yes sir, no sir, evolution of an

Irish Times

headline

Anne Harris

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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?

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February/March 2014

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• 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

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• G ua n ta n am o u nc l os e d

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‘Economissed’

Fac eof f

Gurdg iev v S mith

pp 12 -1 7

Majoritarianism

Ukraine malfunction

Happiness

Measure it!

Denis

Emails Dermot

It aly

Culture=Politics

Hockey-stick

Mann interviewed

S o , w h o ’ s

illiberal

h e r e ?

E X C LU SI V E

John Waters answers

the liberal establishment

and the craven

Irish Times.

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• Suz y By rne , I vana Ba cik , Joh n Gor mle y

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DONEGAL

planning mire

Editorial

Whistleblower

Auctioneer

Fr a n c e

Fermé

Rent- Control

No barrier

Denis

Emails D ermo t

Heaney

Time-server

Scotland

It depends

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June/ July 201 4

Issu e 29

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•

Pa d ra ic K en n a

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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

VILLAGEAugust/September 

VILLAGER

depends on remembering the Holocaust.

There are no good jokes about that.

Robin Williams RIP

Sadly, the most topical Robin Williams

quote is “death is nature’s way of telling you

‘your table’s ready’.” Villager hopes this

comedy genius is enjoying his starter.

Mouldy

The €bn promised for Limerick Regeneration

embracing Moyross, Southill, St Mary’s

Park, and Ballinacurra Weston has been

cut to just under €m of which only

€m has been spent so far. Meanwhile

the International Federation for Human

Rights lodged claims with the Council of

Europe on behalf of , residents in

estates in inner city Dublin and Limerick

over sewage problems, persistent leaks,

harmful damp and mould after belea-

guered charities at home did not take up the

cause. Residents of Dublin’s Dolphin House

suﬀered breathing problems and depres-

sion as a result of the poor conditions.

The impressively robust complaint

accuses the State of a strategy of deliberate

neglect to further run down already dilap-

idated ﬂat complexes which sit on prime

development land. It’s not just in restau-

rants that Irish people don’t complain.

Leo brio

If you have a reputation for rising earlier you

can sleep until noon. Leo Varadkar has a name

for straight talking and so has got away with

breaching the government’s commitment

to introduce universal health insurance by

. Indeed he implies insurance may not

even be the way to go. And he’s also doctored

James Reilly’s commitment to Free GP care

for all – “Free. Full Stop” to the Varadkar ver-

sion: “free or subject to a nominal fee”. The

government had already U-turned on the dis-

cretionary medical cards taken from ,

people with long-term illnesses, on the basis

that medical condition not just capacity to

pay should be factored in, and withdrawn the

threat to means-test for disability beneﬁts.

Other U-turns haven’t been so compassion-

ate. The programme for government promised

reductions in the price of private health-

care but they have risen, and done little to

move to expedite a shift to cheaper generic

drugs. The government has failed to extend

Breastcheck to women between  and ,

failed to increase GP training places, failed to

build promised new primary-care, stepdown,

long-term and community care facilities, and

failed to publish a national Alzheimer’s and

dementia strategy. And there may be more

climbdowns to come: GPs don’t believe he can

deliver on the commitment to free GP care for

over s and under s by the end of the year or

that it is workable to give medical cards which

cover the range of illnesses to patients with

speciﬁc medical conditions, such as asthma.

They believe it will be impossible fairly to

grade illnesses. Varadkar will need to keep all

his lizard-like spinning faculties whirring.

No to war

Financial Man and former taoiseach John

Bruton’s belief that Britain would have yielded

independence to Ireland without an armed

struggle has been described as “delusional” by

Fianna Fáil agriculture spokesman Éamon Ó

Cuív, Young Dev. Bruton suggested that both

the Easter Rising and War of Independence

had been “unnecessary” and that Home Rule

was on the statute books and would have been

implemented at the end of the war in any case.

It seems a pity to have to come down on the

side of either Bruton or Ó Cuív on any issue

at all. But, if pushed, Villager has always

unfashionably considered that on a spec-

trum of justiﬁcation for violence – say from

the Allies in World War II (mostly good) to

the Israelis in Gaza (very bad) – there was

little enough morally between the impera-

tives that drove the leaders of the Rising

and those that drove the leaders of the post-

 Provisional IRA. Not that they were the

same but that they were of the same order.

Villager’s preference would have been for

neither. Nor for World War I, on either side.

Commemorate the lot, if you must, with anger

and sadness, not glory: for what they gave,

not why. None of it reﬂected well, on anyone.

For the Rising, the War of Independence and

Civil War, the “Troubles” and World War I, the

best we can do is remember the Man (and of

course they were nearly all Men), not the Act.

Meanwhile Fianna Fáil Senator Mark Daly

has nastily called on the new Minister for

Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather

Humphreys to clarify her views on the

Rising. Ms Humphreys is the chair of the

committee organising the commemora-

tions, but is not of the same tradition – or

gender – as the Senator. Daly said: “It would

seem deeply inappropriate for the chair of

the group tasked with organising the com-

memorations to hold the same views as

[Bruton]”. Not to Villager, it wouldn’t.

That’s all

During a news conference in early August,

US President Barack Obama admitted that

– under his predecessor – the United States

had tortured some “folks”. For some the

terminology, which can only be described

as ‘folksy’, evidences an overcompensa-

tion for Obama’s inner nerdishness.

The worst manifestation of this condescen-

sion was during a debate with Mitt Romney

in . The term just spewed incessantly

out of his clever, Presidential mouth that

evening. So Obama noted that Mitt Romney

wanted “to make sure that folks at the top

play by a diﬀerent set of rules”. Obama, on

the other hand wanted to “give middle-class

families and folks who are striving to get into

the middle-class some relief”. Later in the

evening he attacked Romney for investing

in companies that “are building surveil-

lance equipment for China to spy on its own

folks”. And on immigration: “What I’ve also

said is if we’re going to go after folks who are

here illegally, we should do it smartly and go

after folks who are criminals, gang bangers”.

And he has form on describing the Enemy as

folks. On Benghazi, he drew attention to his

vindictive side:”[O]ne of the things that I’ve

said throughout my presidency is when folks

mess with Americans, we go after them”.

Yeuch, Obama, you promised sincerity. •

Southill, Limerick, 2010

Celtic Tenors

August/September VILLAGE