Category: Regulatory Agencies

The missing link in the Irish regulatory system

The Government has still not implemented the key recommendations of the Mahon Tribunal almost a year after its publication.

This refusal to respond to major corruption is normal in corrupt states.

In Ireland, such matters are dealt with as follows:

Corruption discovered followed by denial and/or blame. If the scandal continues to attract attention the matter is sidelined into a powerless tribunal or government committee.

When a report is published it’s ignored.

The key point is that no action is ever actually taken against anybody.

The whole idea, which is the norm in functional jurisdictions, of taking the evidence/facts and placing them before a court of law is skipped.

The Irish system ignores this vital step of bringing people to account and simply carries on as if nothing of note had been uncovered by the investigation.

We can see this in the response to the Mahon Tribunal.

The tribunal made some very serious findings including the fact that corruption affected every level of political life.

In other words, the tribunal effectively agrees with the core philosophy of this website – that Ireland is an intrinsically corrupt state.

This fact has been completely ignored. Instead of actually doing something to cure the disease of political corruption the politicians focus on some other matter.

In this case it’s the problems and difficulties surrounding the establishment of an independent planning regulator.

Planning Minister Jan O’Sullivan:

A number of key issues had to be resolved before such a regulator could be established.

Should the minister’s powers be fully transferred to an independent regulator or should the final forward planning decisions remain political in nature to be taken by the minister/ government/ Oireachtas with a regulator providing an independent advisory/supervisory role?

Decisions, decisions, decisions – but never the real decisions that need to be made.

After diverting attention away from the actual corruption the political system reverts to waffle mode.

Minister O’Sullivan again:

I am determined to see this recommendation is fully and comprehensively considered and appropriately acted on.

It is important not only that we address this crucial issue but that we do it right.

So there you have it. Serious and widespread corruption is uncovered, an investigation ensues, a report is published, the political/administrative system ignores its findings and simply skips over the vital step of bringing the guilty to account.

This missing link in the regulatory/justice system is one of the principal differences between a country like Ireland and functional democracies.

Copy to:
Minister O’Sullivan

The 24 million documents lie

I simply refuse to believe the claim by the State that 24 million documents have to be examined before the Anglo Irish Bank trial can proceed.

If the figure was 24,000 documents I would be surprised but 24 million is just not believeable.

The principal allegation against Mr. Fitzpatrick seems to be that he was in breach of Company law when he allowed the bank to provide financial assistance to Sean Quinn and loans to ten customers, known as the ‘Maple 10’, to buy Anglo shares to prevent a collapse in the share price.

This is not, despite what we’re told, a complex charge and neither are any of the other charges.

There is nothing unique about the alleged crimes, that’s why they are listed in the Company Law Act. They are well known and, with the exception of Ireland, regularly come before the courts in functional jurisdictions.

If I was told that 24 million documents were processed during the Nuremberg Trials I would be surprised.

If I was told that the entire block of white collar crimes cases in America over a ten year period came to 24 million documents I would be surprised.

When I’m told that the trial of three bankers in a two bit, backward banana republic has to be delayed so that 24 million documents can be processed I think – Lie.

The safest place in the Cosmos for those suspected of white collar crime is in the welcoming arms of the ODCE

The investigation into the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank has been formally put into cold storage where it will remain until all those involved are dead and/or the whole scandal becomes nothing more than a thesis subject for students of history.

With hardly a murmur from the media and complete silence from the body politic the High Court has extended the investigation by the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) by a full year.

To date the ODCE had been granted only six month extensions which were, at least initially, strongly questioned by judge Peter Kelly.

But Judge Kelly has long since been put into his box and is now in full conformity with the State’s handling of the investigation.

The ODCE had sought a three year extension but, I suspect, this was to allow judge Kelly to look tough by granting just one year.

Next year, the ODCE will probably ask for a five year extension and receive three from the ‘tough’ judge.

In addition to endless extensions to what in other countries would have been a relatively simple legal process, we have also been informed that there will be a long wait before a trial date is even set.

This is because there is a need, apparently, for a ‘mammoth’ disclosure of documents by the DPP to the defendants.

The processing of ‘massive’ amounts of documents has now been added to the long list of State excuses for delaying investigations into white collar crime.

And when (if) a trial finally does commence we are told by the DPP it is likely to go on for some time because of the matters being investigated.

In functional jurisdictions such matters are dealt with regularly, efficiently and as a matter of legal routine.

And just in case somebody slips up and the process is accidently accelerated from a snails pace to that of a tortoise the ODCE seems to have taken out a little insurance policy

Apparently the investigation has disclosed (mysterious) matters that would warrant other decisions from the DPP.

Naturally, the great unwashed are not told what these ‘matters’ are but we can be sure they’re good for a least another couple of years delay.

Ok, let’s return to the real world.

As I have written on many previous occasions nobody will be held accountable for what happened at Anglo Irish Bank or any of the other banks.

The safest place in the Cosmos for those facing allegations of white collar crime is in the warm, welcoming arms of the ODCE.

Copy to:
ODCE

Corrupt states do not allow independent law enforcement

In the UK a senior police officer, April Casburn, has been found guilty of corruption and will, most likely, end up in prison.

Such an event is an impossibility in our corrupt state.

Casburn phoned the News of the World newspaper and offered to pass on information about a police investigation into the newspaper.

No money changed hands and the story was never printed.

In our corrupt state such an incident, if noticed at all, would be treated as a minor indiscretion warranting no action whatsoever.

The investigation, trial and conviction of Ms. Casburn were all completed within two years.

In our corrupt state any investigation into police corruption would take ten to fifteen years. There would be endless media discussion, politicians would waffle an about never allowing this sort of thing to happen again and, of course, there would be no convictions.

The crucial difference between functional, accountable democracies and corrupt states like Ireland is that in countries like Ireland there is no law enforcement agency allowed to operate independently of the (corrupt) political system.

Update on missing art works from Leinster House

I had a long and detailed telephone conversation with an official from the Office of Public Works (OPW) on Tuesday regarding the art works that have gone missing from Leinster House.

While the official was courteous and genuine in her attempts to explain the situation it was obvious that there are glaring contradictions surrounding the whole scandal.

According to this official the number of art works missing is nowhere near the 38 reported by the Irish Independent and several have been located since Christmas.

She did, however, inform me that some items have been missing for decades.

I was informed that the Art Management Office has been carrying out a continuous cataloguing of state art work since its establishment in 2000.

This involves cataloguing works aquired since the foundation of the state and even works that were left behind by the British administration.

In other words, prior to 2000 there was no oversight whatsoever of state art works. It was, apparently, open season for anyone who wished to help themselves.

Since 2000 however, I was informed that a very tight system of control was in place that involved the following procedures.

A data base for all art work. This system allows officials to instantly identify the exact location – building, floor, room – of all items.

All items (or at least the more valuable items) are digitally photographed, measured, described in detail and assigned a unique serial number.

Building managers are directly responsible for all items under their care. The OPW provides a list of all items to each building manager outlining exactly what items they are responsible for.

When an item arrives in a building the building manager signs it in. When an item leaves the building the building manager signs it out.

When an individual (official or politician) requests an item the building manager obtains it from the OPW. The transaction is noted on the OPW data base and the building manager receives a formal letter from the OPW outling the exact details of the items delivered.

All art works within Leinster House are controlled/monitored by this system.

Very impressive but the contradiction is obvious – If the system is so efficient why did dozens of items go missing just two years ago, years after the ‘effective’ control system was put in place?

The official denied that dozens of items had gone missing. The Irish Independent had got its facts wrong and several of the items have since been located.

A number of other excuses were mentioned.

We have a tiny staff and very few resources.

We are responsible for several hundred offices throughout Ireland.

Our inventory system is ongoing so an item may only be discovered as missing after a full inventory rotation (approximately one year).

We respond by writing to the building manger asking him to check it out.

Most disturbingly, the official said that the first response by the OPW when art items go missing is to presume that the items have been misplaced or innocently moved to another location.

The possibility of theft is seldom a serious consideration.

What we see here is a typically Irish two-faced bureaucratic system which on the surface claims to be efficient and accountable while at the same time studiously ignoring the fact that serious damage is being done to state/citizens interersts.

Penalty points allegations whittled down from 90,000 to zero?

Well, in fairness, you have to hand it to the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice.

Quicker than a Guard could say, that’s alright your lordship, penalty points only apply to the peasants, the original allegation that up to 90,000 penalty points cases had been illegally quashed has now been dramatically reduced to a mere 197.

Now if that’s not good police work I don’t know what is.

Apparently, documentation (we don’t know from whom or when) forwarded to the Garda Commissioner contained just 402 allegations.

Now who could blame our hard working commissioner if he threw the lot in a bin and got on with real police work like keeping the Mahon and Moriarty Tribunal Reports warm under his arse.

But no, our commissioner was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Working through the night with his magnifying glass he found that there was lots of duplication. By breakfast he had whittled the number of allegations down to a mere 197.

The Minister, who worked, sleeves rolled up, with the commissioner throughout the long night, said that many of the 197 were vague and short on details.

A spokesman for the Minister angrily denied that the number of vague cases miraculously matched the number of people of power and influence who had their cases allegedly quashed.

The Minister reminded all law abiding citizens that during the period in question a total of 1.4 million fixed charge notices were issued and that some Gardai were empowered to legally cancel penalty points.

Sure isn’t that the end of it. 90,000 down to, well, practically zero.

A spokesman for the Minister denied that the whistleblower gardai were being reassigned for duty in Kabul – they’re going to Damascus.

Penalty points scandal: Only one certainty; nobody will be held to account

If allegations that up to 50,000 penalty points cases were illegally quashed by gardai over a three year period are true then the matter can be categoried as a major corruption scandal.

And because Ireland is an intrinsically corrupt state we can say with absolute certainty, and well before any investigation reaches a conclusion, that nobody will be charged, nobody will be held accountable.

We are already seeing the standard state response to such scandals.

Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan:

We’ve proved over the years that we’re well capable of investigating ourselves.

Just one word in response to this – Donegal.

Any allegation of impropriety at whatever level within the Garda is a matter of huge concern and that’s why it’s so important to allow the Assistant Commissioner and his team to get on with the business of examing these matters and reaching proper conclusions.

This is the standard ‘nobody should talk about this matter until the (long drawn out) investigation is complete’ (and forgotten).

With luck this internal Garda investigation will be completed sometime before the end of 2013. If its publication goes unnoticed by the media the matter will be quietly dropped.

If there is a media reaction another investigation will be initiated and so on it goes.

If any lessons can be learned from the examination when it is complete these will be taken on board.

This is another standard strategy to cover any wrong doing that may appear in the report.

The wrong doing can be ignored by simply stating that lessons have been learned and it won’t happen again. When it does happen again, as it inevitably will, the process is simply repeated.

Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar:

People need to have confidence in the penalty points system and we absolutely cannot live in a country whereby people can get out of anything because they know somebody.

The corrupt system of ‘getting out of anything through knowing someone of power and influence’ is an integral part of Irish culture and has been since 1922. That corrupt culture is the sole cause of our downfall as an independent state.

I’m confident that the Garda investigation is going to be thorough and I trust them to do that.

This is either the opinion of a fool or of somebody not really interested in getting to the bottom of this scandal.

The most hilarious and bizarre response comes from Conor Faughnan of AA Roadwatch who has seen the evidence first-hand.

I do not believe this is corruption, but institutionalised bad practice that has become custom and habit over the years.

This is an extreme example of denial which is very common in Ireland.

The mindset behind it is simple – If we call it (crime/corruption) something else then it’s all right, we dont have to deal with reality, happy days.

The priority is that it stops from now, that it does not happen any more, and that is a bigger priority then raking over the coals of individual cases.

Translation: If it stops now we’ll say no more.

This attitude only applies to people of power and influence. Ordinary citizens are, of course, always subject to the full and immediate force of the law.

The priority was to clean it up and if that was done that should be the end of the matter.

Translation:

If we studiously ignore what has happened we can pretend that it didn’t actually happen at all and hope that those involved will be more careful about being caught in the future.

RTE:

The scandal was ignored on Morning Ireland (10th Dec).

The programme did, however, give extensive coverage to a murder that occurred in Northern Ireland 23 years ago.

This lack of interest in allegations of major corruption was repeated on the News at One.

The scandal got a mention at the tail end of the programme but was very cleverly folded into a report on the annual Christmas road safety campaign where it became practically invisible.

Garda Ombudsman:

You would imagine that the much lauded Garda Ombudsman would have an interest in these very serious allegations of corruption within the force.

I rang the Garda Ombudsman Office to inquire if they were investigating the matter – they’re not.

Apparently they can only investigate matters that involve complaints from members of the public who have been directly wronged by a Garda or a matter that they deem to be in the public interest

I was informed that they were ‘monitoring’ the situation and would decide what to do after the internal Garda investigation was complete.

Other state agencies ‘monitoring’ or ‘investigating’ the matter:

Department of Justice
Department of Transport
Comptroller and Auditor General
Road Safety Authority

Now that a (secret) ‘investigation’ is underway and Christmas is almost upon us it is likely that the whole unsavoury matter will be long forgotten by the time the next, inevitable, scandal breaks.

As I wrote at the beginning, there is only one certainty surrounding this whole murky matter – Nobody will be held accountable.

More questions for the Office of Public Works

Sent the following email to the Office of Public Works (OPW) in my continuing efforts to get some answers regarding the missing art work from Leinster House.

Dear,

In your email of Thursday 8th November regarding the art work missing from Leinster House you state that the OPW is not in a position to confirm that items are missing.

I would be grateful if you could clarify the following statements and claims as reported in the Sunday Independent dated Sunday October 21st.

Thirty-seven pieces of state-owned art work are missing or “unaccounted for” from within Leinster House, it has been confirmed.

Is this statement true?

Did an OPW spokesperson confirm to the Sunday Independent that 37 pieces of state-owned art work are missing or unaccounted for?

Is the reference to ‘missing’ items incorrect?

Individual paintings, prints, statues and other pieces of state-owned art work assigned to the Leinster House complex, under the charge of the Office of Public Works (OPW), have been misplaced following the largest changeover of offices because of the general election last year.

Is this statement true?

An initial inventory of the State’s art collection has been completed and it found that 37 pieces of art work from within Leinster House are “unaccounted for”, the OPW has confirmed.

Is this statement true?

Did an OPW spokesperson confirm to the Sunday Independent that an initial inventory found that 37 pieces of art work were unaccounted for?

Often, when staff move offices, they take art work they like with them and this poses great difficulty to the OPW and management staff in Leinster House to keep a track on them, the spokesman said.

Is this statement true?

The OPW was not in a position to put a valuation on the collection, or the missing pieces, but said none of the pieces in question was of “critical importance”.

Is this statement true?

Is the reference to ‘missing’ pieces incorrect?

The OPW said that while a number of pieces are unaccounted for since the general election, others have been missing since before that.

Is this statement true?

Is the reference to ‘missing’ pieces incorrect?

Clearly there is some confusion between your statement that the OPW is not in a position to confirm that items are missing and the Sunday Independent report which clearly confirms an OPW spokesperson as saying that items are missing.

To help you in your reply I contacted the Sunday Independent and they have confirmed to me that they did speak at length with a spokesperson from the OPW.

The Sunday Independent stated that the OPW confirmed all the details of the story.

The Sunday Independent stated that the OPW at no time complained or objected to the story in terms of its accuracy.

The Sunday Independent stated that the OPW has made no request for the story to be withdrawn or amended as a result of inaccuracies.

Yours Sincerely

Anthony Sheridan

Office of Public Works arrogantly refuses to answer questions

For over two weeks now I’ve been attempting to extract some very simple answers from the Office of Publc Works (OPW) regarding the large number of art work that has gone missing from Leinster House.

I’ve been through all the usual hoops – several emails, numerous phone calls, moved from extension to extension, from office to office, sidelined into the Press Office, put it in writing Mr. Sheridan, listened to officials trying to sound professional as they tell me fairy tales until, finally, I hit the standard bureaucratic brick wall.

The brick wall arrived, at is usually does, when I insisted on knowing the precise legislative basis for refusing to answer my questions.

I would be grateful if you could confirm to me the precise rules/regulations/laws on which your office is refusing to answer my questions on this matter.

I received the following email which, without exception, is the most arrogant/dismissive response I have ever received from a public official.

A public official who, in theory, is supposed to be working in the best intersts of Ireland and its citizens.

The form of the email is exactly as I received it.

Mr. Sheridan,

I refer to previous emails and telephone conversations. Please see responses below.

What are the name, position and rank of the person/s responsible for the safe keeping of the missing items?

The OPW Art Management Office manages the State Art Collection.

What action has been taken in response to the missing items?

The OPW Art Management Office is not in a position to confirm that items are missing.

In particular, what action has been taken in respect of items that went missing prior to the last general election?

The OPW Art Management Office is not in a position to confirm that items went missing prior to the last general election.

What is the overall time period in which the items went missing?

The OPW is not in a position to confirm that items are missing.

Please supply a list of the estimated value of each missing item.

The OPW is not in a position to confirm that items are missing. Therefore it is not possible to supply such a list.

Please supply a list of the exact offices/locations from which items went missing.

The OPW is not in a position to confirm that items are missing. Therefore it is not possible to supply such a list.

Please supply a list of the officials/politicians who occupied offices from which items went missing.

The OPW is not in a position to confirm that items are missing. Therefore it is not possible to supply such a list.

Please confirm or otherwise if members of the public are entitled to speak directly to OPW officials regarding this matter.

I confirm that responses will issue to you from the OPW Press office.

I would be grateful if you could confirm to me the precise rules/regulations/laws on which your office is refusing to answer my questions on this matter.

As previously stated the OPW is currently not in a position to answer questions relating to the ongoing art inventory.

I trust the above clarifies the matter.

Regards

A freedom of information request is on the way.