Villager News Miscellany - Village Magazine

PB July-August 2023 July-August 2023 5

Times Ireland, which is legally based in England,

was served with proceedings.

Sheehan loses his sheen

In October 2022, the

Standards in Public

Oce Commission

(SIPO) voted not to

conduct even a pre-

liminary inquiry into

complaints against

Varadkar for leaking

the controversial

heads of terms of an

agreement between government and insurgent

doctors, union the NAGP to its head, Matt Ó Tu-

athail, a friend of the then-Taoiseach. A prelimi-

nary investigation is a fact-ﬁnding exercise before

deciding whether there should be a full inquiry.

Thesplit decision last Octoberwas the ﬁrst case

in which the commission ever lacked unanimity in

its 21-year history. According to the Irish Times,

SIPO, “chaired by retired Court of Appeal judge

Garrett Sheehan, was not keen to disclose what

went on”.

Two of the most senior independent ocials

in the State: Comptroller and Auditor General

Seamus McCarthy; and Ombudsman Ger Deering

dissented but were outvoted by Sheehan; Peter

Finnegan, clerk of the Dáil; and Martin Groves,

clerk of the Seanad.

McCarthy said some of Varadkar’s assertions

“represent low-grade evidence at best, in a mat-

ter in which he has a signiﬁcant interest”. Varad-

kar’s “lack of recall” was

unsatisfactory. “If there was

a signiﬁcant legitimate in-

tervention by the Taoiseach

in a matter, in the public in-

terest, then it should have

been memorialised”.

Deering argued Varadkar

was “not beyond the reach

Bigger

Village is expanding. We have an employee,

our ﬁrst, and we are re-

vamping our one-out-

of-ten website. Please

subscribe on ‘Stripe’ or

‘Steady‘ as we negotiate

the awful demise of print

magazines. We’ve been around for nineteen years

and we’re not going away.

Nominative determinism

The judiciary-shielding garda who decided

against prosecuting Tralee Judge James O’Connor

who abused his public oce to badger litigants

from his family court into meeting him is Detective

Superintendent Lackey.

The man who organised precaution-light trips to

the bottoms of the ocean to see the sunken Titan-

ic was Stockton Rush, founder and chief execu-

tive of OceanGate

Expeditions.

Pushing for the

sacking of Moscow

has been Yuriy Sak,

adviser to the Ukrai-

nian defence minister who told Sky News, “ it

feels very bizarre” that the Wagner rebels were

able to get so close to Moscow before “nothing

happened”.

The RTÉ of resigned DG, Dee Forbes, is really just

a racket for expanding the media-services busi-

nesses of celebs from the southern suburbs: a D

4 BES.

Sunday Times Ireland is English

The editor’s defamation action against the Taoise-

ach and the Sunday Times which in August 2022

falsely implied he was a Putinite, who is not repre-

senting himself even in his personal capacity but

is being represented by the Chief State Solicitor,

is chugging along with a long delay as the Sunday

News Miscellany

Villager

of SIPO”, noting that claims the leaked document

was no longer conﬁdential were not supported by

his own statements or public records.

According to Arthur Beesley, the Irish Times’ cur-

rent aairs editor, “When all that was made public

in December, the dissenters’ stance was seen in

political circles to have undermined Varadkar’s

claim that SIPO’s ruling cleared him of any breach

of ethics” .

Asked at the time about the McCarthy and

Deering statements, Varadkar responded by say-

ing he respected the SIPO decision and would

respect it “had it gone the other way”.

Murphy’s Law

Well he may have to show the reach of his respect

soon, because People Before Proﬁt TD Paul Mur-

phy, one of the three original complainants about

the leak, initiated a judicial review of SIPO’s de-

cision not even to consider the matter because

somehow it couldn’t consider Taoisigh – or the

lawfulness of their actions (which wasn’t what

Murphy was asking for), in February. The case is

scheduled for further mention in the High Court

next month.

Meenan’s meanin’: mean

At its last procedural hearing Judge Charles

Meenan wondered whether a judicial review was

possible of a decision not even to initiate the

preliminary investigation given that the usual fea-

tures of fair procedure rules do not apply to the

same extent at a preliminary stage. For Villager

that would mean an end to constitutional justice.

The greatest injustice of all is to be dismissed at

a preliminary or threshold stage. If there’s abso-

lutely no redress it would seem to massively, and

of course irredeemably and unappealably, preju-

dice fair procedures.

Siporiﬁc

Colwell

This magazine has been supportive of the work of

Heroic C&AG

6 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 7

SIPO down the years. It’s been dicult. In 2019,

on the back of a story in Village, the editor lodged

a complaint about Jim Colwell, an employee of

Meath County Council. In July 2021, two years

ago, an employee of SIPO, who now appears to

have moved on, advised that the complaint was

advancing to an Investigative Hearing but, on May

5, SIPO could only say, “Please be advised that

thematter is still ongoing and this oce will be in

touch with you when there is any further update

to provide to you”.

Enwrong

The editor made a

complaint about a

hoo ha in County

Wexford where

almost the entire

Council cheered the

County Chief Execu-

tive to the rafters

after he returned

from a SIPO dress-

ing down. SIPO con-

sidered Tom Enright

had abused his powers by threatening South East

Radio, a local station, with withdrawal of funding

after it was critical of the Council boss’s eorts to

bring employment to the County — in the follow-

ing terms:

“[His behaviour] fell below what is expected

of someone in his position, in terms of content,

tone, style and language. The Commission found

the second email – in which Mr Enright accused

the station of “censorship”, described Mr Fitzpat-

rick as having a “personal vendetta” against him

and described the threatened complaint under

the Ethics Acts as “sickening”– to be particularly

emotive and unbecoming of a person in such a

senior role”.

On 14 January 2022, the Irish Times reported

that WexfordCounty Council had voted that day

not to take any action against Enright following

the ﬁndings. They were legally required to con-

sider what action to take. It is not clear that they

considered this at all. At a special meeting pur-

portedly to do so, they gave “a standing ovation

to Mr Enright at the meeting’s conclusion”.

Enright churlishly told the Council that while

he“regrets the tone of his emails”to South East

Radio, he “was standing up to the radio station

who were shown to have breached the Broad-

casting Act and who I was informed were acting

in a deliberately biased manner against the Coun-

cil”. He emphasised he did “not regret standing

up for the Council”and he believed he was“just

doing his job”.

The Chief Executive said he had been advised

there were “strong grounds to legally challenge

SIPO’s ﬁndings”, however he said he “can con-

ﬁrm to the Council he has no intention of doing

so“.

The editor lodged a complaint with SIPO that

this, especially the standing ovation, “brought

the Council into disrepute”. But just as with Mur-

phy’s complaint SIPO decided the matter was “of

insucient gravity” and dismissed it.

Tomfoolery

In June 2022, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien

named Tom Enright to the board of the Housing

Finance Agency which has a €5.3 billion loan

book and is responsible for lending €5 billion of

the €20 billion in government funding available

over the lifetime of the Housing for All policy.

Tom Fáil

Even less progress too with another complaint,

about lands at Liscarton and Councillor Tommy

Reilly, now Cathaoirleach in Meath, which hasn’t

advanced since the editor was advised more than

a year ago, (to be fair) just two months after he

made the complaint, that an Inquiry Ocer had

been appointed to carry out a preliminary inqui-

ry to see whether there is a prima facie case of

breaches of ethics legislation.

Hyde out

And no progress at all with the complaint about

renegade An Bord Pleanála deputy Chairperson,

Paul Hyde — with 19 attachments — in April 2022.

In March 2023, he appeared in Skibbereen Dis-

trict Court on nine counts of failing to comply with

planning laws. His threatened legal action against

Village Magazine for defamation came to nothing.

Conﬁrm your mother’s maiden

name, your 8-digit password and

join the queue

Actually, Villager believes there is a general ta-

boo against recognising that almost everything

is taking a lot longer

since Covid, he seems to

spend most of his time in

queues or on the phone

to pedants who’re ob-

sessed with getting his

date of birth and elusive passwords. It’s almost

as if nobody wants to do… well anything they

don’t want to do.

Tom Petty

Tom Phillips is long-term planning consultant to

Johnny Ronan, Dublin Airport and some of the

biggest developers in Ireland, as well as Adjunct

Professor in UCD’s school of architecture and

planning. He doesn’t like the evil forces that get

in the way of the purist development agenda. He

recently fulmi-

nated on behalf

of industry Rott-

weiller, Property

Industry Ireland

(PII), that govern-

ment needed to

“grab the judicial review issue by the scru of the

neck”. The actual quality of development doesn’t

seem to ﬁgure large in his agenda.

A fascinating Ulster University study showed

how successful the property industry, led by PII,

was at getting its laissez-faire message through

to the Department of Housing. PII is the most ef-

fective agent of the Planning Industrial Complex.

Phillips wrote its ﬁrst report, which directly led to

the fast-track objector-light SHD (Strategic Hous-

ing Development) legislation that collapsed in a

morass of litigation and then was deactivated.

With his agenda it was interesting to see him

being one of the few people who leapt to defence

of outgoing Dublin City Chief Executive, Owen

Keegan, in a farewell proﬁle in the Sunday Times.

He said the cycleway champion who build few

apartments and left the city ﬁlthy “did a good job

overall”.

One of Phillips’ weirdest recent outings was

apparently just as a private citizen of Dublin 6

when invited to pontiﬁcate on ‘Scully’s Field’ in

Clonskeagh by Dermot Lacey, Chairman of Dublin

City Council’s South East Area Committee. Phillips

inevitably wants to see part of the site developed.

The Council owes it to the citizenry to declare in

what capacity people address its area commit-

tees, and why.

Tom orrow’s technology

Meanwhile at the dodgy, not merely ideologically

unsound, end of the planning system, Artiﬁcial

Intelligence may soon be activated in to replace

the useless local authority planning enforcers na-

tionwide, in Ireland. Cap Gemini, a French IT ser-

vices company, and Google AI have deployed the

same to pinpoint those not paying property tax on

120,000 undeclared French swimming pools and

the like. Luckily for Damien English, the recently

resigned Minister, he built before the technol-

ogy; though the beneﬁt he derived from lying on

a planning form still renders him susceptible to a

criminal charge for fraud, Villager reckons.

Buyin’ Brian

Is there anything Brian O’Driscoll, the man whose

voice is indistinguishable from Leo Varadkar,

would not en-

dorse? Ireland’s

best ever rugby

player is one

of more than

50 plaintis in

proceedings

against Seaﬁeld

Demesne Man-

agement Ltd in

relation to ser-

vice fees, management fees and the like for their

houses in the grounds of a hotel in Ballymoney

which was peppered with the traditional Celtic

Tiger fare of 60 houses by brothers David and

Stephen Cullen. But O’Driscoll deserves whatever

6 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 7

for the onetime newspaper of record, for the sil-

liest correspondent award: ‘Brianna Parkins: You

can always spot Irish men on a sun holiday’; or

‘what to do if your husband books himself ﬁrst

class on a ﬂight and leaves you and the kids to

turn right for economy?’. Typical of the frivolity

is another headed ‘Sitting in the Rolls-Royce I

thought, ‘I don’t care if you pay me – I’d do this

for free. The latest

inanity was ‘Brianna

Parkins: In defence

of Ireland’s McMan-

sions’ which kicks

o: “We sco at them

because we like to

tell ourselves we

would be better at

having money than

other people”. It’s a descent into pre-analytical,

pre-research, trivial randomism.

Interestingly for historians, Wikipedia says the

Irish Times serves as a newspaper of record even

though, to be fair, the newspaper itself says it has

moved away from that and is merely a newspaper

of reference (what isn’t?).

High-rise is low-brow

As the French Bourse somehow overtakes Lon-

don’s Stock Exchange as Europe’s leading equi-

ties market, Paris, after a ﬂirtation with tall build-

ings that has led to two or three controversial

projects scattered about the edge of its centre,

last week reimposed old rules that ban buildings

above 37 metres (121ft). he Guardian reports

number of ﬁnancial institutions, in relocating to

Paris, have found its insistence on quality of life

over growth at all costs increasingly attractive.

The Guardian notes that high-rise is usually not

sustainable and derisively: “As for their sup-

posed modernity, skyscrapers are like air travel:

they used to be as glamorous as the jet set, but

now they’re in a Ryanair phase – generic, dull

and predictable, a default option for unimagina-

tive property companies. As 23-storey buildings

move from drawing boards to sites all over urban

Ireland, courtesy of Eoghan Murphy’s guidelines,

we may be making yesterday’s mistake.

should join NATO”. But that’s wrong. 56% of

the 30% who support a change to our neutrality

policy “think Ireland should join NATO”. But 70%

[excluding don’t knows] don’t want a change to

Ireland’s neutrality policy.

On 28 August 2022, the Irish Times ran a headline

‘slim majority of Irish public support joining Nato’,

in an article which started: “The country is split on

whether Ireland should join Nato”. The ‘Behav-

iourwise’ opinion poll cited was aberrant.

And on 4 April 2022, graphs which appeared

in the paper illustrating percentages answering

the question “would you support Ireland joining

NATO, showed 63% did, when in fact it was 63%

of those who supported change in the ﬁrst place.

The pieces were all eventually more or less

clariﬁed.

Deterministic Nomination

Increasingly the once genuinely, if nothing else,

august, Irish Times is home to the “fun” school of

journalism. It’s not just that it suppresses scan-

dals and that so many of its reports are inaccurate

or — a speciality — not comprehensive. Or that it

doesn’t cover important areas properly – say the

arts, the courts or local government. It’s more that

there’s so much that’s silly, as if there were no ed-

itorial control. There are many purveyors but if Vil-

lager were forced to nominate, one is egregious.

Snarkin at Parkin(s)

Villager nominates Brianna Parkins, whose coy-

ness on Irish males seems to be a marketing tool

downside he gets here. He was engaged as a pro-

moter of the scheme to others who also suered

the alleged losses he’s whining about. O’Driscoll

has promoted a lot he shouldn’t. He praised John

McClean, his mentor in UCD, even after the ﬁrst

allegations of abuse emerged. When Village

drew attention to the link, O’Driscoll blocked us

on Twitter. He and and a bunch of shiny ethics-

light celebs including his wife the suspiciously

eervescent Amy Huberman, celebrity Kathryn

Tomas and celebrity-gardener Dermot Gavin also

advertised LandRover, the emissions-proﬂigate

rural toys for city dwellers. When you’re great,

or have been great, you can aord to be careful

about what you endorse.

Stick clear of paedophiles, gas-guzzlers and

don’t ﬂog dodgy property.

Of baths and bars

The Cullens who

also own the

once funky, now

closed, Turk’s

Head pub in Tem-

ple Bar whose

goujons were

once Villager’s lunch stable. Dave also redevel-

oped the long Bathless Clontarf Baths in Dublin 3

which are now ﬁnally functioning as a swimming

pool. Unlike the Turk’s Head it’s now also a pub/

restaurant.

Pulling polling

Villager is neutralish on neutrality but the Irish

Times is quite restive about it to the extent that

it keeps commissioning NATOphile op-eds and

that, more insidiously, its journalists have no less

than thrice in the last year tweeted misrepresen-

tations of polls on the issue.

On 30 April 2022, the paper editorialised:

“Ukraine, and the recent Commission on Defence,

have raised important questions about Ireland’s

defence preparedness: about funding, about

the appropriateness of ‘neutrality’ and even the

possibility of Ireland also joining NATO”. Villager

notes the positing of the possibility of what is not

a possibility. Michael D Higgins made hay with

this sort of stu.

The editorial went on, in similar half-ambivalent

terms: “Reinventing ‘neutrality’, whatever we may

mean by that, does not, however, have to mean

joining NATO, although the recent Irish Times poll

does appear broadly to conﬂate the two distinct

issues in the popular mind: 66 per cent were in fa-

vour of keeping neutrality “as it is”, while another

poll response put opposition to joining NATO at

70 per cent”.

Three mistakes, all NATO

boostering

On June 17, the Irish Times inaccurately tweeted:

“56 per cent of people surveyed think Ireland

8 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 PB

Didn’t Work

The City of Dublin Workingmen’s Club sounds

like a place whose time has come. And gone. 20

years ago the sprawling 1950s Nirvana, carved

into a Regeency quayfront house on Wellington

Quay, next to the Clarence Hotel, was bought out

by Harry Crosbie who, with U2 wanted to extend

the hotel. Some years later U2 with Paddy McK-

illen got permission to demolish the lot (behind

façade)_ for a spaceship designed by Lord Fos-

ter. Crosbie paid for the relocation of the Work-

ingmen’s Club to Little Strand Street just across

the river. But twenty years on the new Club has

been demolished making way for another now-

proposed aparthotel. The economy crashed and

Foster’s scheme never built, forcing the owners to

ﬁnd uses for the buildings they said were past via-

ble use. Let’s see what happens to the proposed

aparthotel.

Rock’s boozer knocked

Rumours reach Villager that a certain local Coun-

cillor who did not object to the demolition of Ross

O’Carroll’s favourite rugby pub, Kiely’s of Donny-

brook, ﬁnished up with some of the parapherna-

lia from the place which is now adding another

six-storey ‘co-living’ space, as the one-time village

of Donnybrook explores high-rise.

Steer clear of the landings

Lukashenko welcomes Prigozhin to Minsk. They

will drink deep of life’s complexities and talk into

the night of what has passed and is to come.

N(ice)

Farewell then Choc Ice. Just leave things alone,

why can’t you?

Hyde out

Paul Hyde pleaded guilty to just two charges at

Bandon District Court on 26 June and his solici-

tor expressed a desire that he should not even

receive a criminal record but rather the probation

act. The Garda claimed to have initiatd the pros-

ecution following articles in the Ditch and Village.

The editor had got very worked up last year and

drew up a letter with his usual 27 points. It was

sent to An Bord Pleanála which didn’t seem to

treat it seriously but copied to Minister Darragh

O’Brien who did. Hyde destroyed the reputation

of An Bord Pleanála, compromised a number of

sta in his relationships with them and . For Vil-

lager, white-collar crime almost always merits a

custodial sentence.

Inevitably then there is no progress at all with

the complaint about renegade An Bord Pleanála

deputy Chairperson, Paul Hyde — with 19 at-

tachments — in April 2022. In March 2023 he

appeared in Skibbereen District Court on nine

counts of failing to comply with planning laws. His

threatened legal action against Village magazine

for defamation came to nothing.

Paul Hyde is not to be confused with regular

Village contributor Paul Hyde, the champion of

Roger Casement, today outed in this magazine,

as straignt, by Conor Lenihan.

Landlords land on feet

We’re told there’s been an “exodus’ of private

landlords from the market. The reality is that ac-

cording to the recent census, in 2016, there were

309,728 households renting privately but by

2022, there were 330,632.

Sit down if you want but just

talk

Village should do more interviews and less end-

less whistleblowings ventilated by the editor. On

the other hand Villager deplores the vogue for in-

troducing a piece with

“We sat down with X” instead of “I interviewed

X”. The delicatesse inevitably heralds a conver-

sation of zero insight that is best ignored by those

whose time is scarce.

Get well

Best wishes to Eoin O’Broin and Mary Lou Mc-

Donald of Sinn Féin who’ve had health scares in

recent weeks. They are their party’s best perform-

ers, bar Pearse Doherty, and they are needed

back in action.

Too Green or too yellow?

A recent Red Sea opinion poll implied the Green

(i.e. brownish) Green Party would get…Zero seats

if a General Election were held now. In the era of

climate collapse! Has the Green Party learnt the

lessons of its catastrophic unpopularity? Does it

know, or even care, if it’s that the party is too en-

vironmental or that is not environmental enough?

Sixth most stressed in Europe

A study, carried out by CBDolie.nlhas found that

Greece has a depression prevalence of 6.52%,

the highest rate in Europe. Denmark ranks as

the least stressed and Ireland ranked sixth most

stressed.

Country Stress Score (/100) Ranking

Greece 71.8 1

Turkey 71.2 2

Portugal 68.4 3

Malta 51.4 4

Cyprus 50.4 5

Ireland 49.2 6

Spain 48.6 7

Italy 46.7 8

France 44.6 9

Switzerland 41.7 10

Lithuania 36.9 11

Montenegro 36.7 12

Luxembourg 36.5 13

Germany 35.7 14

Belgium 35.3 15

Norway 34.9 16

Finland 34.3 17

United Kingdom 33.9 18

Iceland 25.4 31

Czechia 25.3 32

Slovakia 25.2 33

Poland 22.3 34

Denmark 21.7 35

And with that and no further, Villager is o on

his holiday.

Enjoy the summer.