Villager - Village Magazine

4 November 2014

Villager

Meaningful surnames

So Jared Payne’s an injury doubt for

upcoming rugby internationals, while

Ireland’s second try-scorer against South

Africa is pretty-boy Tommy Bowe.

Keane to defend himself

Roy in Portmarnock book fracas…zzzzzzzzz.

Globalism and tax breaks

Bono and the IDA want to change the

World. Villager wonders what people

who want to keep it the same look like.

The People’s Peter Mathews

Michael Fitzmaurice is beginning to

make quite an impression in the Dáil.

Multinational Back

The French Front National’s Marine and

her dad Jean-Marie Le Pen seem to have

fallen out, after his dog ate her cat on the

family compound outside Paris over the

summer. A few months ago she said his

suggestion that Patrick Bruel, a Jewish singer,

should be “put in an oven” was a “serious

political mistake”. Villager certainly would

not demur. Now she wants to change the

national front’s name but he says “only

bankrupt parties change their names”. Ok

then, how about just change the policies?

Trust not Front

The Chairman of the English National Trust,

Sir Simon Jenkins, a former editor of The

Times, has attacked David Cameron, who

once said he’d no more put the countryside

at risk than his own family, for abandoning

Tory election pledges including by calling for

a £15bn “100-roads revolution” by the end

of the decade. Jenkins accused former Tory

planning minister, Nic Boles – whose father,

Jack, counter-intuitively was head of the

National Trust 1975-1983, of being eﬀectively

a recruiting oﬃcer for UKIP which apparently

is understanding about the countryside. Such

language would never be heard in Ireland’s

National Trust, not since the never-knighted

editor here – then An Taisce chairman -

called Eamon O’Cuív a gobshite, in 2001.

Morgangst

Villager doesn’t really do heroes. Gandhi

maybe or Mandela. In Ireland we’ve em Adi

Roche and Morgan Kelly. Anyway, the ECB

has gently done the bank tests and only PTSB

subterranean blues

Simon Jenkins

November 2014 5

is in trouble. Where does this leave Professor

Morgan Kelly? As recently as March he

speciﬁcally reckoned the ECB was “gonna do”

a “trial run” on Ireland.. It didn’t and won’t.

Stress tests would do for a large swathe of

our SMEs which were surviving on “bank

forbearance”: a “ticking time bomb”. “The

ECB has basically kept pumping that sweet,

sweet credit into our veins and we haven’t had

the real crisis yet” but “we are going to see a

big chunk of the Irish economy wiped out in

one go”, he predicted. As with Karl Marx you

shouldn’t get in the business of predictions if

you’re not prepared to take responsibility if

they prove false. Morgan’s prediction is simply

inaccurate. Village checked out the video of his

subterranean lecture to a bunch of spotty UCD

economists, and it’s all there. Never mind that

he says Ok a lot, presumptuously, and does an

irritating reverse praying gesture with waving

hands. Villager has therefore downgraded

him to McWilliams. It’s the clock/recession

comes around once every 24 hours/business

cycle syndrome. When that happens Kelly and

McWilliams will be right. Better than most

economists, but not great; and not heroic.

Gurdgangst

Still, like McWilliams, Kelly’s always been

ﬂoppily cuddlable. On the other hand,

Villager’s frankly always been a little scared

of Constantin Gurdgiev. Is there no end

to the misery, Constantin? He seems to

claim property prices are not rising when

everyone else claims the opposite. Yet a

cursory look at myhome.ie shows the prices

of most properties does seem to be falling.

Is there something we’re not being told?

Note to editor: ditch desperate, ill-thought-

out plan for Village Property supplement.

Statler and Waldorf

In a blur of redundant silver-fox smoothness

Frank Flannery and Bill O’Herlihy, two

compromised former public Fine Gael elders,

are to front a weekly iTunes podcast, paid

for by Heatley Tector, cricket and rugger-

buggering instore music and advertising

mogul. Flannery, who was once president of

the Union of Students in Ireland and shared

rooms with Pat Rabbitte (just imagine the

ﬁghts over who ﬁnished oﬀ the sliced pan)

received payments of €351,000 from Rehab

over six years. He was forced to resign from

its board and as a Fine Gael trustee earlier

this year after it was revealed that the charity

paid him to lobby the Government, and that

he was hanging around foxily in the portals of

the Dáil to do so. He also used invoices from

a dissolved company, Laragh Consulting Ltd,

when being paid by Rehab for such services.

O’Herlihy is a former investigative reporter

turned sports broadcaster and Fine Gael

handler, and is now chairman of the Irish

Film Board. O’Herlihy has marshalled his

reputation as a soccer sweet heart to lobby for

some dodgy clients over the years. He worked

on behalf of the tobacco industry in opposition

to plain cigarette packaging, on the grounds

that plain packages would make smugglers’

lives easier. In 2004, the Sunday Independent

reported that O’Herlihy had lobbied on

behalf of an Irish company, Bula Resources,

to lift sanctions on Iraq. He also lobbied

disingenuously in the early 1990s on behalf

of Monarch Properties, subsequently found

to have made corrupt payments after he’d

moved on, for the rezoning of Cherrywood

in South County Dublin. O’Herlihy told the

Mahon tribunal that Richard Lynn, the project

manager for the rezoning, explained to him

that the way the system worked was that one

picked a lead councillor in each of the political

parties and then discussed the matter with

them. An estimate of the amount of money

needed to buy votes was made and the money

was then provided to the lead councillor

who did everything after that. O’Herlihy

wouldn’t do that so Monarch replaced

him with Frank (Dunlop not Flannery).

So Villager waited up and podcast it, these

exciting ‘Flannery Files’. Cue sub-Pat-Kenny-

Show Mahler’s portentous Symphony No 6 in A

minor, then it’s O’Herlihy, drole honest broker,

introducing the great man who promises to be

forthright. Forthright. “The whole objective is

to be just that: totally objective, very calm and

unemotional”. Okay. “I was never a Fine Gael

hack”. Okay maybe. Then we get Frank’s hard-

earned insights. “So many of the government’s

problems are due to lack of planning, lack

of communication, of direct and unﬁltered

consultation: turbines, Corrib, Water. The

Water Company was seen in New Era [guess

whether Frank was involved with that] as

a way of giving clean water – cost only, not

revenue earning”. He comes back three times

to communications under the loose direction

of O’Herlihy who can be heard intermittently

clucking and assenting in the background,

and above all presuming that Frank knows

what’s going on in the Party that ejected him

and despises him now. “It should have been a

ﬁxed charge”, though “go ahead with meters”.

Why Frank, how Frank? No Frank. This is no

fun. Villager just couldn’t go any further. He

uncast the pod and reached for the wireless.

Stranger still

Turned out you couldn’t really believe in

the Change. In a new book, ‘the Stranger’,

Chuck Todd, host of ‘Meet the Press’, on

NBC, unravels “the promise versus the

reality of Obama”. His strategic verdict

is that “Obama’s struggles came from his

focus on ends to the exclusion of productive

means”. Problems include what critics see as

the President’s passive leadership and lack

of managerial experience; his disdain for,

but inability to change, politics as usual in

Washington; and his reluctance to reach out

to Congress and members of both parties to

compromise and bargain constructively.

Todd writes that “income inequality is

worse than ever,” that the Middle East could

well be “more unstable when Obama leaves

oﬃce than when he took it”, and that while

he “wanted to soar above partisanship”, his

tenure in oﬃce will likely “be remembered

as a nadir of partisan relations”.

Hillary Clinton felt that Obama’s White

House, “tended to micromanage American

diplomacy to an extent unprecedented

in previous administrations”. Todd

concludes that “Obama’s arrogance

got the better of him”, that he was “all

Scotch House

6 November 2014

telescope and zero microscope”. Worst

of all, for Villager, he’s purged an entire

generation of hope in idealism.

Less lonesome tonight

Cuts to welfare for lone parents who take up

work, due in January, will not now go ahead,

with a saving of €8m in 2015. The policy

reversal will beneﬁt 28,000 of the poorest

households with children. Currently, anyone

receiving the one-parent family payment who

takes up employment can earn up to €90 a

week and keep their full welfare entitlement.

It had been announced that this “income

disregard” would fall to €60 a week by 2016.

The shameless vote for the homeless

A budget of more than €771 million to run

Dublin city in 2015 has ﬁnally been agreed

by Dublin city councillors by 35 votes to 27,

averting the appointment of a commissioner

to run the city – as opposed to John Tierney

or Owen Keegan running it. Sinn Féin voted

in favour of the council’s annual budget for

the ﬁrst time ever, following amendments the

party agreed with Labour, the Greens and

some Independents with which it has divided

up such power as there is on the Council.

The cut in business rates was 0.5 per cent,

not a proposed 1%, liberating an additional

€1.7 million to run the city, and allowing

appointment of a cycling oﬃcer and funding

for 1916 commemorative events. Almost

€60 million will go to homeless services next

year, an increase of €7 million over 2014.

Raising Hackles

A heavy ‘Dear Colleague’ letter arrived in

the inboxes of polonecked members of the

Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland

on 11 November, from the President Robin

Mandal. “Let me state there is no basis to

any allegations of corruption or fraud in the

organisation, it fulminated. Eoin O’Cofaigh,

an unusually mild-mannered and honourable

ex-President of the RIAI, has complained

about the payment of €500, 000 to Bluebloc

digital, a company 50% owned by Odran

Graby, son of veteran RIAI Chief Executive

John Graby. Cognoscenti remember Graby

senior for his early oeuvre such as ‘Scotch

House’ on Burgh Quay (1974), a neo-Georgian

confection of luminous hideousness. “None

of us want a Rehab, a Positive Action, a DSCPA

situation”, Ó Cofaigh wrote to the board

before resigning. Ó’ Cofaigh’s ﬁrm designed

such mediocrities as the gym for Muckross

school in Donnybrook and the lecture

theatre for Wesley College. He has been the

most prominent member of an RIAI “reform

group” campaigning against an amendment

to Building Control Regulations, which

make it mandatory on architects to certify

that new buildings comply. Another former

President, Joan O’Connor, said she too was

resigning because the council had “failed in its

responsibilities” to ensure that the institute

was “solvent, well-run and delivering the

outcomes for which it is set up; and repeated

requests” from individual council members

for “essential ﬁnancial information” about

the institute’s aﬀairs had been met by “hostile

questioning of the motives of the authors”,

she alleged. President Robin Mandal said Ms

O’Connor’s claims were “ utter nonsense” and

that the institute had €2.9 million in the bank.

The RIAI has said Bluebloc was ﬁrst appointed

in the 1990s when O’Cofaigh was president,

and said there’d been no direct involvement

between John Graby and the company over

the last four years. As with the Law Society it’s

not at all clear how much Graby is paid though

the President said it has been benchmarked

with comparable bodies and found to be in the

lower range. Isn’t that what they said in Rehab?

Gore adds solar salvation

to list of his inventions

The amount of solar power generated in the US

is 139, 000 % more now than a decade now.

Germany now generates 37 percent of its daily

electricity from wind and solar. Indeed, one

day this year, they generated 74 percent of the

nation’s electricity. What’s more, Germany’s

two largest coal-burning utilities have lost 56

percent of their value over the past four years.

According to the Swiss bank UBS, nine out

of 10 European coal and gas plants are now

losing money. According to Al Gore, “We are

witnessing the beginning of a massive shift to

a new energy-distribution model – from the

“central station” utility-grid model that goes

back to the 1880s to a “widely distributed”

model with rooftop solar cells, on-site and grid

battery storage, and microgrids. And he told

Rolling Stone magazine he believes solar will

save us from catastrophic climate change.

Undeclared organs?

Villager would be worried about getting

sewn up again in some of the country’s most

idiotically posh hospitals. For Larry Goodman

(yes, indeed) is the majority shareholder in

the spiﬃng Blackrock Clinic and, through

private equity vehicle CapVest, a signiﬁcant

NEWS VILLAGER

The chart that keeps Villager awake – aggregate debt. Source:

The Economist

November 2014 7

shareholder in Mater Private, as well as in

the Hermitage and Galway Clinics. He is best

known as founder and chairmen of ABP Food

Group. A couple of years ago an ABP factory in

Tipperary was found to have supplied the meat

that was made into fresh beef bolognese sauce

for Asda. The supermarket found it contained

a good 5% horse. ABP’s Scottish factory also

supplied beef meatballs to Waitrose that the

retailer found had up to 30% undeclared

pork. At home in 1991. the beef tribunal

established that Anglo-Irish Beef Processors

(AIBP) – one of Goodman’s previous meat

processing companies – had been caught by

customs oﬃcials making fraudulent claims

for EU subsidies. Customs oﬃcers decided to

thaw out the meat to check it more thoroughly

and found that 15% of the beef was cheap

trimmings. AIBP blamed a subcontractor at

the time. Now that nice Denis O’Brien owns the

Beacon Hospital in South Dublin’s Sandyford.

You’d have no fear what you might ﬁnd in

the gap left by your appendix over there.

Embarrister

It is understood that more than 70 lawyers,

half of them barristers, applied for the

ten recent vacancies on the High Court,

suggesting recent Constitutionally-sanctioned

cuts in pay have not been terminal. But

entertainingly only one barrister, Robert

Haughton, was appointed. And nine judges

- seven men and two women - have been

appointed to the Court of Appeal, though

whether it alleviates case backlogs will largely

depend on its case management, including

how much it reins in the grounds of appeal

and how much it restricts oral arguments. It

already has 258 cases to be getting on with.

Keane and Eager

The enthusiastic rise to ascendancy of

former partners in once ﬁrey Dublin criminal

solicitors’ practice Garrett Sheehan is near

complete. Sheehan himself has been promoted

from the High Court to the Court of Appeal.

And senior partner Bobby Eager has gone

to the High Court. David Keane went on to

a career as a barrister and then the High

Court last year. Firebrand Peter Mullan left

in the last year to the gamekeepery position

of Chief Prosecutor in the DPP’s oﬃce.

Circuit complete

Judges Mary Faherty and Alan Mahon who

presided over the planning tribunal have

also been elevated. Faherty, a UN Appeals

Tribunal judge and former Chairwoman of the

Employment Appeals Tribunal has gone from

the Circuit Court to the High Court. Mahon

miscalculated his income or his allowances

and underpaid his taxes by some £16,000

in the late 1980s…and had the sort of mind

that took 15 years and up to €300m to deal

with an ‘urgent’ examination of corruption

in one county. He’s gone from the Circuit

to the Appeal Court. Together Mahon and

Faherty ran a tribunal which failed to nail

anyone who wasn’t already destroyed, anyone

who mattered (least of all Bertie Ahern),

which relied almost whimsically on Frank

Dunlop and didn’t even resolve much of the

evidence put to it. A tribunal which made

progressive recommendations on the planning

system all of which have been ignored –

and the weight of whose conclusions failed

to generate a single subsequent conviction

(apart from of its chief witness, Dunlop).

Name and address or I’ll…

Margaret Heneghan too rises to the High

Court on the retirement of Judge Daniel

Herbert in mid-November. A former

member of the Legal Aid Board, she has

served occasionally on the Special Criminal

Court. As a feisty Circuit Court beak in

2011 she awarded retired Garda Sergeant

James Gill €33,000 for a defamation case

that he took against prominent Shell to Sea

campaigner, Pat – the Chief - O’Donnell.

Mr Gill claimed that Mr O’Donnell falsely

accused him at a protest at Bellanaboy in

2006, while other protesters and gardaí

were in the area, of stealing diesel and

smuggling tyres across the border. O’Donnell

denied making the comments to Gill but the

Judge believed Gill and made the award.

James Gill is the Garda Sergeant who made

the infamous recorded comment “Give me

your name and address or I’ll rape you” about

protestor Jerrie-Ann Sullivan, leading to the

following challenging exchange in court:

Barrister Leo Mulrooney to

ex-Sergeant James Gill: “Complete

the now well-known phrase “’Give me

your name and address or I’ll..’”

“Ex-Sgt James Gill: “I don’t

understand the question”

Barrister Leo Mulrooney:“Do you know

what I’m referring to when I say those words?”

Ex-Sgt James Gill: “No”

” Leo Mulrooney: - “‘Give me

your name and address or ...”?

Judge Heneghan interrupts: “He

said ‘No’. Next question”.

The Fine Gael/Labour coalition has made

almost 70 judicial appointments since 2011

without reform of the appointments process. •

Marine Le Pen