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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
6June 2015
Villager
No interest
Villager is always amazed at how some
things that cost a lot just aren’t much good.
Denis O’Brien’s spokesperson, James Mor-
rissey, didn’t appear to know what he was
talking about, still less to believe it, in his
debate over parliamentary privilege with
an impressive Micheál Martin on RTÉ
Radio ’s ‘This Week’. He did tell us that his
master, who lobbied the government not to
sell its remaining stake in Aer Lingus “has
no aviation interests”. In fact, through
Topaz Energy, O’Brien owns % of Shell &
Topaz Aviation, supplier of fuel to Irish
airports and airlines, which might be
affected by a regime change.
Innocent
As the trial of phone-tap bad guy Andy
Coulson, former editor of the News of the
World, for perjury in the trial of former
socialist MP, Tommy Sheridan, collapses,
Villager got reflecting about delays to pro-
ceedings in the case of O’Brien’s best buddy,
Seanie Fitz, who has pleaded not guilty to
charges of making a misleading, false or
deceptive statement to auditors and six
charges of furnishing false information in
the years to . Judge Mary Ellen
Ring says the legal issues have now been
resolved and a new jury will be sworn in, in
October. It appears it has been difficult to
keep some of the evidence against Fitz-
Patrick tied down.
Casting a cold eye.
On life, on death.
Prince Charles (or ‘Charles’ as Sinn Féin call
him every second time they refer to him)
enjoyed his visit to Drumcliffe, where WB
Yeats is buried. The graveyard lost all its
charm when the car-park was extended to
within a yard of the great man’s grave and
the Sligo-Bundoran route widened to create
a constant background hum. Even the lime-
stone is cut somewhat crassly and the
capitalisation of “Life”, “Death” and “Eye”
just wrong.
Try cod instead
A study of the annual inspection records of
Irish salmon farms by the Department of
Agriculture, Food and Fisheries between
and has shown a complete
breakdown of the salmon-farm licensing
system. Author of the report, Friends of the
Irish Environment Director Tony Lowes,
said “We found there were no provisions
for ensuring inspections of the critical
mooring components that have led to pre-
vious breakaway disasters typically in
storms in spite of repeated recommenda-
tions by the Minister’s officials in accident
reports. When licence infringements were
identified there was a persistent failure by
operators to do anything about them”.
No to youth
Village’s editorial stance is secure. There
are more than , fewer people in
their s in Ireland than there were six
years ago, according to the Central Statis-
tics Office (CSO) indicate. The Vital
Statistics Yearly summary shows the
number of people between and fell
from , in to , last
year – a fall of ,, or . per cent.
Most readers of Village were in college with
Vincent Browne.
Dairy reality makes bad poetry
Hero George Monbiot puts his English boot
into the mythology of Irish dairy farming
in a recent article in the Guardian: “Per-
haps the starkest example of this
myth-making I’ve come across is a chil-
dren’s book distributed with Saturday’s
Guardian called ‘The Tale of City Sue’. It
tells the story of a herd of cows on an Irish
farm.
‘This friendly, Friesian family/were free
to roam and browse/and eat the freshest,
greenest grass/which made them happy
cows/They belonged to farmer Finn/Who
called them by their names/And when it
was their birthday/He brought party hats
and games/ He played his violin for them/
inside the milking shed,/and sung [sic]
them soothing lullabies/when it was time
for bed’”.
myth
June 2015 7
It turned out the book was in fact an
extended advertisement for Kerrygold
butter and following questions from Mon-
biot the Guardian made the provenance of
the article clearer. He still wasn’t
impressed: “From what I can glean, Kerry-
gold’s marketing seems to rely on the public
perception that Irish dairy farms are small
and mostly grass-fed. But they are chang-
ing fast. According to the former chair of
the Irish Farmers’ Association, ‘scale must
go up. … The dairy farm of the future is
going to have to be bigger’. Could the cur-
rent Kerrygold marketing blitz be an
attempt to embed in our minds a bucolic,
superannuated image of an industry that is
now changing beyond recognition? If so, it
might be an effective way of pre-empting
criticism about the changing nature of its
suppliers”.
L’hypocrisie
As France prepares to host the COP sup-
posedly charged with solving the climate
crisis, the French government has given a
worrying insight into the sincerity of its
commitment – in unveiling its choice of
sponsors. Among the twenty companies on
the initial sponsors list are Air France - an
airline opposed to emissions reductions in
the aviation sector, car manufacturers
Renault-Nissan, and Suez Environnement
– known for its pro-fracking lobbying. It
may be over-compensation for the Anglo-
Saxon perception that it’s all orgies and
never business in Europe’s most contrarian
land.
Yes, but why?
A low-light of the all-sweeping
Yes campaign was a blazing row between
Marriage Equality, Yes Equality and Glen
on the one hand and Lawyers for Yes, on the
other. The forensic ones wanted a focus on
the law, in particular to counter the formi-
dably analytical debating of “Dr” Tom
Finegan, one-time parliamentary assistant
to Ronan Mullen, the caped baron of ‘No’.
Indeed the furious thwarted lawyers con-
sider that continuance with the strategy of
promoting the human reality of gay mar-
riages and anti-gay discrimination, rather
than focusing on adoption, surrogacy and
those tiring differences between marriage
and civil partnership etc led to the loss of
% of the vote. The non-lawyers, led ironi-
cally by barrister, Noel Whelan, prevailed
by sheer numbers.
Doing no harm, everywhere
At a recent launch of a barrage of new fea-
tures, including ‘Google Expeditions’,
‘Google Next on Tap’ and a ‘revamped
Google Cardboard’, products that didn’t
come up much amid the razzmatazz were
Google Plus, its moribund Facebook-follow-
ing foray – “a social layer across all of
Google’s services” and Google Glass, the
specs that would have allowed wearers to
photograph what goes on in the next cubi-
cle, unbeknownst. Google Glass lives on in
some can-do workplaces, and Google hasn’t
ruled out future iterations for it.
An exhausted Villager fondly remembers
the days when Google was a number ( fol-
lowed by zeroes), not the world’s
biggest Means with the attitude of an End.
Doing harm, but not knowing it
It is almost the definition of a Village reader
that you do not slap children (or still better
do not have children). This will not have
hindered your enthusiasm for a ruling by
the Council of Europe under the obscure
European Social Charter that Ireland’s laws
which permit the slapping of children are a
violation of children’s rights.
While legislation which allowed parents
to use force against their children was
repealed in Ireland almost years ago,
the defence of “reasonable chastisement”
still exists in common law for parents or
child carers.
The Council found this defence was a
violation of the charter whose signatories
promise “to protect children and young
persons against negligence, violence or
exploitation”.
The parent-fearing Government’s
response here was strangely familiar: it
announced plans for a new review of
whether the defence of reasonable chastise-
ment should be maintained in law.
Tellingly, the ‘Growing Up in Ireland’ study
of three-year-olds found up to per cent
of their primary caregivers had previously
smacked them. What’s really needed is a
child to take a case under the sister Council
of Europe Convention, that on Human
Rights whose Article prohibits inhuman
and degrading treatment.
If we lost there the government would
actually feel embarrassed enough to do
something, as it did after David Norris’s
historic legal victory under the Convention
in the dark days when the Supreme Court
had found prohibiting buggery to be com-
patible with the joy that is Bunreacht na
hÉireann.
Everyone can be media now
The shiny new Competition and Consumer
Protection Commission which hoovered in
the nicely-ineffective former Competition
Authority has written to Village following
articles published in the May edition (pre-
sumably including the Denis O’Brien-proof
spoof correspondence between Ireland’s
richest man and his wiser but equally liti-
gious mentor, Dermot) about the sale of
Siteserv: “The Millington/Siteserv transac-
tion [whereby O’Brien took over the
repulsively spelt utility – and now water-
meter – provider] was notified to the
Competition Authority on March .
At that time, the definition of a “media
merger” was set out the Competition Act
– “a merger or acquisition in which
one or more of the undertakings involved
carries on a media business in the State.”
Based on this, the Millington/Siteserv
transaction fell within the definition of a
only in
private
now
8June 2015
“media merger”. The assessment conducted
by the Authority in relation to a media
merger under the legislation then in force
was precisely the same as that undertaken
in respect of any other type of notified
merger. The Authority’s assessment
focused exclusively on whether the pro-
posed merger would “substantially lessen
competition in markets for goods or serv-
ices in the State”. In other words, the
Authority’s only remit was to review the
merger on competition-related grounds”.
Not whether it was dodgy, then.
Chewing on Tuam
Exactly a year after the Tuam babies story
made global headlines, survivors say they
are “deeply disappointed” by the lack of
progress being made by the inquiry. The
Commission of Investigation into Mother
and Baby Homes (and Certain Related Mat-
ters) was announced in February of this
year by the Minister for Children and Youth
Affairs, Dr James Reilly, but despite a €m
($m) operating budget, it does not yet
have a website. In May, Terri Harrison from
the “Mother to Mother Dublin” group
called for greater transparency in the
investigation which is expected to run for
three years: “No Mother has yet been asked
to partake in the Commission”.
Judea
The ‘Non-Payment Network’ announced
recently that it will be running candidates
in the next election, in direct competition
with ‘RightWater’. The groups are clash-
ing over who will lead the radical new
political movement inspired by whatever
lessons they glean from the water-charge
demonstrations which have attracted up to
, onto the streets on a single day.
RightWater is backed by five unions
including Mandate and Unite and held a
conference on Mayday reported on in these
pages.
The Anti Austerity Alliance, a member of
the Non Payment Network, sniffily
described the conference as “limited’ and
“invite only”.
The Non Payment Network is supported
by AAA TDs Joe Higgins, Ruth Coppinger,
Paul Murphy and Richard Boyd Barrett. It
will stage an “unrelated” meeting focused
on non-payment and fighting the charges,
on June , six days before RightWater
holds its policy conference on June .
Drunk and stupid
Village entered the Magazines of Ireland
Editors’ Quiz in late May, featuring stal-
warts from ‘head office’, the editor and art
director, and ‘In the Sticks’ Shirley Clerkin
who was ‘In the Smoke’ for the night. The
quiz was viciously rigged in favour of teams
that were actually members of the Maga-
zines of Ireland with one round, for
example, focused on who the other mem-
bers were. And another on chocolate
papers, about which Village knows, and
wants to know, nothing. Village came
second. After the RTÉ Guide. Out of four.
Red-faced and Cross
Former Fianna Fáil minister Pat Carey who
‘came out’ with some dignity during the
recent referendum campaign has been
appointed chairman of the Irish Red Cross.
Mr Carey was nominated to the position by
the board and started in May. He succeeds
former AIB head honcho (salary :
€.m), Donal Forde, and, before him,
David Andrews, one-time minister for
Defence. Both the Head of Finance and the
Head of Communications have also recently
resigned.
In the end everyone resigns at the Red
Cross because it’s so badly run.
Remember the Arms Trial in : the
Irish Red Cross Society was used as a vehi-
cle for transmitting most of the aid
Haughey had to ensure that no transaction
involving arms should be traced back to
bank accounts in the “North of Ireland” in
case it would come to the attention of Brit-
ish Army Intelligence.
It has a bad record internationally too. In
the US after the September attacks, it
was revealed that a large portion of the
hundreds of millions of dollars donated to
the organisation went not to survivors or
family members of those killed, but to
other Red Cross operations, in what was
described by chapters across the country as
a “bait-and-switch” operation.
As long ago as the Sunday Tribune
reported “Red Cross in Crisis over Funds
report”. In June the Secretary Gen-
eral (SG) left in acrimonious circumstances.
She had been pushing for reform, a danger-
ous pursuit in the IRC.
The discovery of an undeclared bank
account in mid- in Tipperary under
the name of the IRC, which had had
€, lying in it for over three years,
caused consternation and panic. The
money was supposed to be for victims of
the Asian tsunami but money was not
forwarded to IRC head office as per IRC
financial procedures. The Vice Chairman of
the IRC, Tony Lawlor, was a signatory on
the account.
Whistleblower, Noel Wardick who
described the pattern of dysfunctionality in
an anonymous blog was fired in for
“gross misconduct” – though he has since
been vindicated and compensated.
The problem then as now is a number of
power-hungry recalcitrants on the execu-
tive who in reality control the organisation.
“I am looking forward to it”, Mr Carey
said. “It will be mainly chairing board
meetings and making sure it complies with
corporate governance and financial
governance”.
Drifting drafts
Draft reports are circulating to interested
parties about the long-stymied reviews by
the Department of the Environment of
planning practice in six counties: Galway,
Cork City and County, Dublin City, Carlow,
and Meath. Outside of Galway the drafts
are fairly hard-hitting. The review was con-
ducted by planning practice McCabe,
Durney, Barnes. It seems likely a senior
counsel will investigate Donegal, where the
problems are on a different scale, though
the investigation will be “non-statutory”
so its terms will be crucial in determining
how stringent it will be.
And a recent Dáil debate suggested Min-
ister Alan Kelly was considering adding
Wicklow to the list, partly on the back of
allegations aired in Village, by Frank
Connolly. •
NEWS Villager
Village
quiz team
(actors
used)
