Stench from the woods

It was reported on Six One News (14th item) yesterday that the State owned forestry company Coillte is considering selling an historic 200 year old forest in Moyode Co Galway. The forest is to be felled so that the entire area of 175 acres can be turned into a giant limestone quarry.

Residents of the area are very upset at the plans but Coillte has stated that no decision has yet been made on the matter.

So why would a State owned company responsible for forestry, want to destroy such a valuable national asset?

The answer, I believe, lies in the actual status of Coillte. In effect Coillte is a private company owned by the State. Yes, I know what you’re thinking but please, keep in mind, this is Ireland.

Writing in 2006 (Sub req’d) about the farce that was the Millennium Tree Project, Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole had some interesting things to say about Coillte. Here’s some of his points (My emphasis):

One of the reasons for the millennium forests debacle is the bizarre status of Coillte. When, in late 2000, environmental activist Tony Lowes wrote to Coillte seeking information of the environmental aspects of the millennium project, Coillte replied that it was a private limited company which operated on a commercial basis. It argued it had no public administration functions or responsibilities, and was not obliged to provide any information.”

“This is an astonishing position for a company whose only shareholders are the Ministers for Finance and Agriculture, and it has been repeatedly rejected by the European Court.”

“Coillte sees itself as a purely private, commercial operation, with no public responsibilities.”

Here are some important and interesting facts from the Coillte website.

In 1985/86 the Government set up a review body to advise on structures for the future management of State owned forests. Subsequently the Government decided to set up Coillte Teoranta as a private limited company to manage State owned forests commercially

Coillte was established in 1988 as a private limited company under the Forestry Act 1988.

When Coillte was established in 1989 it acquired ownership of the State’s forests in return for shares valued at IR£575 million (€730 million).

(No harm to remind ourselves that Haughey, the most corrupt politician in Irish history, was in power at this time).

The company is owned by the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture and Food. (Wrong; it belongs to the people of Ireland).

70% of all Irish forests today are owned by Coillte – 70%.

In 2005, Coillte had a turnover of €215.6 m, a profit of €19.6 m. All of these profits were re-invested in the business

Coillte owns approx. 7% of land cover in Ireland – just to repeat that – 7% of land cover.

I’m certainly no expert on high finance or legal matters but here’s what I believe is the situation.

The key fact is “acquired ownership of the State’s forests in return for shares valued at IR£575 million (€730 million).” This transfer of ownership under the Forestry Act of 1988 is the mechanism by which Coillte is, in theory, a State company but is in reality a private company. The Act and transfer of shares creates a clear divide between private and State ownership.

For the whole deal to work it only requires the acquiescence of co-operative politicians.

That’s why the company can tell Irish citizens to take a hike when they have the effrontery to question its motives. That’s why the company, which owns 7% of the land mass of our country, can buy and sell pretty much as it likes…

It’s yet another example of how things are done in Ireland. There’s absolutely nothing illegal about the deal, every angle is covered. But as with all these things the stench is overpowering.

Monitoring the media in South Africa

It’s clear that Bertie Ahern and his cohorts had a carefully devised strategy for the trip to South Africa.

No spokespersons were to be available at home and Bertie made it abundantly clear that he would not be answering any questions whatsoever about his personal finances.

In a word, the Government decided to impose a news blackout on the matter.

RTE did, however, manage to get reaction to the attacks by Enda Kenny from some Fianna Fail backbenchers (Morning Ireland, 7th item).

Laois-Offaly TD, Sean Fleming said that the attacks on Ahern were good for the morale of the Fianna Fail troops, it would galvanise them into protecting the leader.

Another TD, probably taking his lead from Ahern’s attitude to the tribunal, said that Enda Kenny should mind his own business.

Cavan Monaghan TD, Margaret Conlon spouted the usual party line drivel.

“We are united behind the Taoiseach, we have a job of work to do, let the tribunal as speedily as possible finish their work, produce the report and let’s move on.”

In an angry and impatient tone she finished:

“People are sick of this.”

Within hours of arriving in South Africa the strategy was in tatters with Ahern accusing Kenny of being a bare faced liar.

There was a curious incident when RTEs David-Davin Power was reporting from Cape Town (Morning Ireland, 7th item). Asked about the Taoiseach’s staff back in Dublin reporting on the situation back home Power replied.

“There’s one of them listening to this programme. He’s in front of me here at Cape Town on the telephone.”

The Government has always claimed that the special media monitoring unit is simply to keep it informed of what’s happening out there among the ordinary people.

It is strongly denies that the unit is used to monitor the media, at great cost to the taxpayer, so that politicians can head off potential trouble.

So why are members of this special unit in South Africa monitoring media reports?

Getting to the point

This letter in yesterday’s Irish Independent gets right to the point.

Taoiseach gives cause for shame

Thursday January 10 2008

I am very sorry if Ms Martin (Letters, January 8) feels embarrassed at our prime minister trying to answer questions about large cash transactions that defy rational explanation.

We have a man who received an unsolicited non-repayable loan of IR£39,000, mostly in cash, to pay off legal debts which he already had taken out a bank loan to pay off.

A non-repayment loan which had no term, rate of interest, or schedule of repayments.

A non-repayment loan which he never seriously made an effort to pay back for over a decade.

A non-repayment loan which some of his close personal friends have said was a gift that they never wanted paid back.

A man who didn’t have a bank account for several years, but managed to save IR£50,000 in cash.

Who received stg£30,000 in cash to refurbish a house which he didn’t own.

Who has no explanation to how $45,000 in cash was lodged to his bank account.

Who has no memory of why he withdrew IR£50,000 in cash from his former girlfriend’s bank account.

Who has no memory of why or how he purchased stg£30,000 in cash.

All this from a man who was the Minister for Finance. A man who told the Irish people in the infamous interview with Brian Dobson that: “I know the tax law. I’m an accountant.”

Ms Martin is dead right, it is farcical and enough to make one feel ashamed of one’s roots.

JASON FITZHARRIS

SWORDS, CO DUBLIN

Taxing matters

Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore was interviewed by RTEs Aine Lawlor (1st item) on the serious questions surrounding Bertie Ahern’s tax affairs.

Here’s an extract:

Gilmore:

“It is now in the public domain. I suppose the argument could be made that correspondence between him and his tax advisors and the Revenue Commissioners shouldn’t be in the public domain.”

Aine Lawlor:

“Well, it’s more than an argument, it’s a fact. An individual’s tax affairs are supposed to be private.”

Gilmore:

“Absolutely, correspondence between an individual and the Revenue Commissioners should not be published, no doubt at all about that.”

The Minister for Education, Mary Hanifin, was equally adamant on the matter (RTE Six One News, 4th item).

“The Taoiseach’s tax affairs are a private matter between him and the Revenue Commissioners.”

An article on the controversy by Senan Molony of the Irish Independent began:

“FIANNA FAIL sources are apoplectic with fury at the disclosure of his private correspondence with the Revenue Commissioners.”

I genuinely believe that I’m missing something here. All these people are speaking as if Bertie Ahern was an ordinary private citizen who was the victim of a malicious leak about his private tax affairs.

They seem to be totally unaware that he is the most powerful politician in the country; that he has failed to answer very serious questions about his acceptance of large sums of money from questionable sources and that he has, by his own admission, yet to fully deal with the matter from a taxation point of view.

Defending Bertie Ahern

“Chaos and confusion is being created willfully and wrongly by the most senior and powerful figures in the State.”

The above quote is how Bruce Arnold sums up his article on the reaction of some Government ministers to the latest developments at the Mahon Tribunal. His views are largely in line with my own (See previous two posts).

Ireland is the only country in the Western world where Government ministers could launch a cynical and dishonest attack on the very foundations of the State in an effort to defend a politician who received vast sums of cash from wealthy businessmen.

Corruption? Not in Ireland

The manner in which the Today with Pat Kenny Show (Friday) handled the latest serious developments at the Mahon Tribunal is also a good indication of how blind we are to what we are.

Again, it was all journalists talking to each other. No Government minister to defend or explain to the people of Ireland what was going to happen as a result of the very serious allegations made by the Prime Minister and others.

The matter wasn’t even mentioned until the 53rd minute when we had yet another report from a journalist.

My point is that if Ireland was a functional democracy this story would have eclipsed all others for days and within days there would have been serious developments for the politicians who made the allegations or for the tribunal itself.

But apart from the reports from Dublin Castle all we got was yet another analysis by a cabal of journalists. There was, however, a very interesting and telling exchange during this debate which demonstrated just how far removed many Irish people are, including journalists, from admitting that Ireland is a corrupt state.

The discussion had turned to the situation in South Africa and the possible consequences for South Africa after the election of Jacob Zuma as leader of the African National Congress. Zuma is seen by many as a dodgy character and could soon be in court on corruption charges.

Pat Kenny referred to Zuma as a Dell Boy character and expressed the view that he would bring his country into disrepute and make the leadership a laughing stock.

Michael O’Regan of the Irish Times who had earlier expressed sympathy for Bertie Ahern and the difficult time he was having spoke of Zuma in an altogether different tone.

“I find him quite sinister, the fact alone that he’s facing corruption charges in the New Year I would have thought precluded him from any kind of public office. He’s quite dangerous, I would have thought.”

When RTE journalist, Katie Hannon, made the obvious connection between Zuma and Ahern O’Regan defended the Taoiseach by claiming he wasn’t facing corruption charges. Hannon replied that neither was Zuma, as yet.

The very fact that a young country like South Africa actually puts corrupt politicians on trial in a proper court of law means that they are light years ahead in their understanding and acceptance of what corruption actually is.

Many Irish people, including journalists like Michael O’Regan, exist in a world of denial where corruption is an activity that only occurs in other countries.

Greedy, dishonest politicians

Brennan also strongly defended the scandalous pay rise that politicians have awarded themselves.
Brennan:

We had a discussion and made a decision and then we followed the public debate, very clearly we followed what guys like you had to say, what thundering went on in editorials, what statements were made by union leaders, what statements were made by other people in the queue for pay rises and we did what intelligent people do, we took account of all that.

Rice:

Couldn’t you have done that before if you’ve been in power for so long?

Brennan:

They hadn’t made the statements before that.

Rice:

I know, but you knew what people were going to say.

Brennan:

Well, did you? Because this system has been in place since 1969, I mean this is 2007, isn’t it?

We can be criticised for being weak or admired for taking the message but after weeks and weeks of debate we listened carefully to what was said and we said, ok pay talks coming up, the November figures that came in were not as good as expected and it’s a good thing to show example, to make a gesture.

The following is my interpretation of what the Minister said.

We greedily awarded ourselves a massive pay rise but miscalculated the extent of public anger.

To get ourselves out of the mess we are dishonestly claiming that the decision to defer the pay hike for a year was made in the interests of the Irish people.

We are hoping that our ‘gesture’ will be enough to fool the people and in a years time we can continue to stuff our wallets with taxpayers hard earned money.

Copy to:
Seamus Brennan

King Bertie

This letter in today’s Irish Independent gets it just about right

Never one to choose his words carefully, our Great Leader has announced that deferring the Government pay rises is “a good example of our goodwill” (Irish Independent, December 12).

Goodwill? Is it me or does this language suggest the actions of a kindly monarch who deigns to bestow favours, unasked and undeserved, on his lowly subjects?

Like Marie Antoinette’s people who might eat cake, we are a fortunate lot of peasants that Bertie would stoop to bless us with such signs of his goodwill.

I wonder was that the royal “we” he used?

Newsflash, Bertie — you were chosen by (some of) the Irish people to serve your country, and they would expect more from such a person than “goodwill”. On a salary of €270,000, the Taoiseach is no more a man of the people than was the Sun King. Not since the excesses of Versailles has so much been paid to so few for doing so little for so many.

DAVID ROBINSON
MAIN STREET, COLLON, CO LOUTH

A nation blighted by lying and cowardly politicians

The Minister for Education Mary Hanafin was on the Six One News (1st item) spewing out total bullshit in defence of the latest cowardly u turn by her fellow greedy incompetents.

Her performance shows that she is either a very stupid person or a cynical liar; I believe she’s a liar. Brian Dobson did a demolition job on her pathetic defence of the pay rise scandal.

She started off her lying by claiming that the deferral of the pay rise was a show of political leadership due to the downturn in the economy.

This is a lie, if there had been no strong public reaction to the pay rise the greedy politicians would have taken it. If our ethically compromised and greedy Taoiseach had insisted on taking the money no member of his party would have the balls to stand up to him, including the cowardly and subservient Hanafin.

She carried on her lying by asserting that the pay rise amounted to only about 2% over ten years.

Dobson quickly demolished this pathetic lie by putting it to her that she and her greedy, incompetent and cowardly colleagues had awarded themselves pays increases of 145% over ten years up to 2010.

Just after the lying minister said the figure was 2% Dobson asked her was it 2% or 145%, she replied that it was 12%, another lie.

She went on to insult the intelligence of every honest Irish citizen by claiming politicians were worth the increase because of their responsibilities in running the country and using taxpayers’ money well.

Irish politicians do not know the meaning of the word responsibility; we only have to look at our Third World health system where people are actually dying because of political cowardice and incompetence.

Again, in a desperate attempt to avoid Dobson’s searching questions she said;

“I think the general public accept that it is very important that the people who lead this country are paid good salaries so that they are not in any way susceptible to outside interference. That’s very important in any democracy.”

This is pure unadulterated bullshit.

Although this lying Minister seems to believe the fantasy tales of our ethically compromised Prime Minister, polls indicate that the majority of Irish citizens do not.

They have legitimate doubts about Ahern’s acceptance of vast amounts of cash from so called friends when he was one of the highest paid politicians in the country, so much for not being susceptible to outside interference.

Ahern also seems to revel in the putrid stench left by his corrupt hero Haughey; a politician who had no scruples whatsoever about robbing millions from taxpayers while in receipt of a massive state salary. Again, no worries about accepting enrichment through ‘outside interference’.

Meantime, over on Drivetime, we listened to the weasel words of another greedy and double talking politician, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern.

Once again we heard the lie that the pay rise was deferred because of a downturn in the economy when everybody knows the truth is that cowardly politicians ran for cover when they realised the extent of public anger.

Ahern got himself into all kinds of trouble when questioned by journalists. Apparently, this dishonest politician claimed that he and his greedy colleagues only got one pay increase in the last eleven years.

When the journalists pointed out that they had actually got 22 pay increases since 2000, amounting to a staggering total of 143% Ahern casually lied that everybody in society got the same increases.

When he was challenged on an interim pay rise of 7.5% awarded two years ago he asserted that that particular windfall wasn’t awarded by the independent pay review group while simultaneously, and stupidly, claiming that he had no memory of the award..

The journalists reminded him that it was awarded by the review group.

Copy to:
Fianna Fail
Hanafin
Ahern

Mafia country

Padraic O’Connor, the former director of NCB has stated that he is not and never was a friend of Bertie Ahern’s. In spite of this Ahern is adamant that they were very good friends. In effect, Ahern is calling O’Connor a liar. It’s as if O’Connor said that black is black and Ahern retorted, no; black is white.

This kind of fantasy world speak is common throughout all of Ahern’s evidence to the Tribunal. Only a fool would believe he is telling the truth and only someone from Mars would be in any doubt as to what really happened.

So why is he still the Prime Minister, why isn’t he being questioned by the police, why is it that, as sure as black is black, Ahern will never be brought to account for any of his actions?

Less than a week ago it emerged that the UK Labour Party had received large donations from a businessman using middlemen to pass on the money.

The next day there was a resignation. Three days later an opposition politician asked the police to investigate the matter. To my knowledge this has never happened in Ireland despite years of rampant political and business corruption.

Four days later the UK Electoral Commission also asked the police to investigate. The Irish equivalent, The Standards in Public Office Commission is debarred by law from initiating an investigation until it first receives a formal complaint.

This commission is a joke. The law debarring the commission from acting seems to have had only one function – to assist and protect the corrupt.

The reason Ahern will not be brought to account is because Ireland is a corrupt state. There is no authority in Ireland with the power, will or courage to bring rogue politicians or corrupt businessmen to justice.

This is why corrupt politicians like Haughey and Burke can successfully live out careers of rampant corruption doing untold damage to Ireland and its people.

It’s the reason politicians like Lorcan Allen can go on RTE and arrogantly admit that he doesn’t bother with obeying the law.

He knows with absolute certainty that nobody, no authority in the land can touch him. Allen is merely doing what any ruthless and unprincipled politician will do when he knows that the country he operates in is a corrupt entity. He allows his greed and arrogance full rein despite the massive damage done to society by his actions.

Jim Flavin of DCC possesses the same arrogant confidence that is common to those who know they are untouchable.

Found guilty (2nd item) of insider trading by the highest court in the land, a crime that sees long jail sentences in real democracies, Flavin knows he has nothing to worry about, he knows that there is no authority in the land that will take any serious action against him, he knows that the pathetic attempts by the ODCE to make him accountable are just that – pathetic.

Financial institutions and in particular the banks have robbed millions from consumers over the years. Not a single bank official has ever been questioned by the police. The banks too are supremely confident that they operate in a country where the system is specifically geared to protect their criminal behaviour.

The so called Irish Financial Regulator is a joke, it monotonously issues just one piece of advice to consumers –shop around. You want advice on buying a car, a house, a condom, a politician, the regulator has the answer – shop around.

In the meantime it enthusiastically enforces a secrecy law that forbids any consumer from knowing which financial institution is engaged in criminal activity and which, if any, is honest.

Nobody has even hinted that Ahern should resign or be fired for his behaviour. The only discussion that comes near to any possible consequences is that he might have damaged his chances of landing a job in Europe or that the controversy might damage his legacy – that’s it.

A Prime Minister who, when he was Minister for Finance, accepted very large amounts of cash from ‘friends and businessmen’ who insults the intelligence of all thinking Irish citizens with his ‘Alice in Wonderland’ explanations is not expected to resign, not expected to be accountable, not even expected to come up with a decent lie.

Let’s be absolutely clear about the situation. Ireland is not a normal country, it is not like any other Western democracy. It is a country run more along the lines of a mafia operation than a modern democratic state. It is a country where the powerful can do as they wish without the slightest fear that they will face justice.

David Cameron, leader of the UK Conservative Party speaking about the ongoing scandal said;

“There is a time in the life of every government when it slips over from complacency into arrogance, and from arrogance into even indifference for the law”.

To paraphrase him, I would say: There is a time in the life of many states when they slip over from the democratic process and become a country that operates principally for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

The corrupt Haughey began that process in the 1980s and his faithful and admiring protégé Bertie Ahern, has been successfully following his masters low standards ever since.

Copy to:

Fianna Fail
Standards in Public Office Commission
ODCE
Financial Regulator
Revenue
ISE
Dept. of Finance