Category: The State

Mary O'Rourke: Talking out of both sides of her mouth

Mary O’Rourke’s book, Just Mary, received a warm and cuddily review from the panel on the Marian Finucane Show this morning.

She also received a lovely warm reception on the Late Late Show from both the audience and Ryan Tubridy.

This capacity of Irish citizens to treat those principally responsible for the destruction of the country with warmth and respect is an indication of just how far away we are from any meaningful reform of our corrupt political system.

Mary O’Rourke is a loyal member of the most corrupt political party in the country. A party which is principally responsible for destroying the wealth, hopes and dreams of the great majority of Irish citizens.

She is also a strong supporter of the the criminal Haughey who played a major role in the destruction of the state.

I will grant O’Rourke one thing, she’s an expert at talking out of both sides of her mouth at the same time.

I’ll further concede that she has managed to fool practically the whole country that she’s a straight talking politician of honesty and intergrity.

The following is just one example of the ability of this gombeen politician to speak out of both sides of her mouth.

In an interview with John Murray (RTE just can’t get enough of O’Rourke) she tells of how Bertie Ahern shafted her in the 2002 election in favour of Donnie Cassidy.

The point to keep in mind as you read her comments is that she’s looking for sympathy for alleged wrongs done to her but at the same time cannot actually bring herself to accuse Ahern or her beloved (corrupt) party of any wrongdoing.

Murray: Why would they have wanted to shaft you Mary?

O’Rourke: I wasn’t a wide boy now, I wasn’t a wide boy. You know what I mean?

Murray: I don’t.

O’Rourke: I wasn’t on that inner circle.

Murray: Donnie was, you were deputy leader of the party but weren’t part of the inner circle is it?

O’Rourke: Yes, something like that, I wasn’t open to all sorts of things, I just wasn’t and I think that was the reason.

Murray: What sort of things?

O’Rourke: Ahh, I don’t know, sort of deals of one kind or another. I didn’t want to know about them.

Murray: Deals? Now I am intrigued

O’Rourke: Well I don’t really know because I’m not hiding anything from you, I just didn’t know but I did know that I wasn’t included in the golden inner circle for some reason or another.

I did fine to be deputy leader, man woman thing, you know.

(O’Rourke is here trying to escape the line of questioning by suggesting that she was shafted because she was a woman but Murray persists).

Murray: But wide boys and deals. Are you talking about stuff that shouldn’t have been happening?

O’Rourke: No, I just think there were things that were moving and moving around and happening which I sort of half knew and half didn’t know.

And maybe it was as well I didn’t know and the only way I wouldn’t have known was, phuemfff, disappear Mary, disappear. Rub the magic lamp and she’s gone.

This last comment is the Irish version of Donald Rumsfeld’s known unknowns.

Here’s some straight talk that O’Rourke would never understand never mind actually accept as true.

Mary O’Rourke is a traitor to Ireland and its people just like her brother, Brian Lenihan Snr. And her nephew Brian Lenihan Jnr.

On the road to hell

Letter in today’s Irish Examiner

The criminal and the corrupt are the norm

Criminal activity and amoral behaviour are being normalised in Ireland.

Our society is akin to the Italian mafia, complete with murders, hit men and racketeering, and corrupt politicians who can be bought and influenced by special interests.

Murder has become common, and with it an indifferent and de-sensitised nation that has become accustomed, and acquiescent, to it.

The old Ireland is dead and gone, only to be replaced by a sick and twisted Ireland with hypocritical values that are self-serving in the extreme.

The overall picture for this country is the development of an ‘Irish mafia’ who have taken over the suburbs with all kinds of vice.

Our idle and decadent, conservative upper class should be concerned, because the country is on track to be taken over by those who are gaining more and more power.

Former attorney general and senior counsel Michael McDowell emphasised the threat of the underworld to the authority of the State.

We are now a nation that has developed its own mafia and they have become part of the silverware in a country without an effective government, a government that is, at times, arguably just as corrupt as our most hardened criminals.

The term ‘organised crime’ should not be construed too narrowly either, because so-called legitimate business is rife with price-fixing cartels across the country and it is clear that frowning on the underworld can only go so far.

The line between honest business and criminal activity is as thin as a hair — if it exists at all — in a country that is never far away from the criminal courts. Many “pillars of our community” have gone down in shame with the legacy of a bad example to others.

Dear old Ireland is very much a country that has resigned, given up, and couldn’t give a damn one way or the other.

We are surely on the road to hell … can there be any doubt given that crime, organised or not, is such a prevalent factor in our national life and takes up a huge share of media reporting?

Maurice Fitzgerald
Shanbally
Co Cork

Impressed and not impressed

I was impressed with a quote by an angry lady on the Frontline last night when the issue of property tax was being discussed.

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes a duty.

I was less impressed with the self-proclaimed hypocrite Luke Ming Flanagan when the issue of appropriate dress for TDs was being discussed.

It’s what you say and what you do (that’s important).

Indeed, and we all know Flanagan believes that supporting his friend, the tax fraudster Wallace, is more important than serving the national interest.

Vulture capitalists, corrupt politicians and poverty

Wilbur Ross is a billionaire businessman who specialises in taking over, restructuring and selling on distressed businesses.

Some have referred to him as a grave dancer or vulture capitalist.

He is a key member of a consortium that bought 35% of Bank of Ireland last year to keep it out of state ownership. He personally owns 9% of the bank.

Mr. Ross is obviously a man who checks out every detail surrounding a venture before he commits large amounts of cash.

I assume therefore that the comments he made to George Lee about how well Ireland and its citizens are dealing with the current crisis are meant to encourage the markets while at the same time trying to convince Irish citizens that their situation is not so bad.

It’s very tough medicine but it’s necessary.

The Irish people understand that there’s a big problem, they understand there’s only one way out so as far as I can see they’re bravely gritting their teeth and they’ll get through it.

If Mr. Wilbur actually believes what he says then he’s not as well informed as he should be.

He might, for example, find it useful to listen back to a discussion between Marian Finucane and Irish Times columnist Conor Pope on the brutal reality facing a good percentage of Irish citizens.

Keeping in mind that the average industrial wage is €35,000 it has been found that to run a household, without being lavish, costs the average Irish family about €1,000 per week – after tax.

This figure does not include holidays, social life and expensive events like Christmas.

Neither does the figure include property tax, water charges, or the big increases recently announced for electricity and gas.

It does not take account of cutbacks and extra taxes and charges which are coming down the road in the December budget.

Recent research by the Irish League of Credit Unions found that 1.82 million adults say they have less than €100 per month to spend after bills have been paid.

It was also found that about 17% of adults, about 602,000 people, say they have absolutely nothing left for discretionary spending once the bills have been paid.

More than 150,000 people are unable to pay their mortgage and 300,000 are in negative equity.

About 300,000 are struggling to pay gas and electricity bills.

Wilbur Ross couldn’t be more wrong when he says the Irish people are gritting their teeth and getting on with it.

Irish citizens are still in transition from relative prosperity to a level of poverty not seen since the 1940s.

This catastrophe is entirely down to the corrupt political system that has ruled Ireland from at least the early 1980s and which still holds power today.

People like Wilbur Ross are ruthless businessmen coming in to suck as much blood as possible from the rotten carcass of the first republic which received its final and fatal blow from its corrupt political system on 29 September 2008.

Looking at the big picture Irish citizens have just two things to consider.

Are they going to meekly accept severe poverty for the coming three or four decades?

And

Are they going to allow the corrupt political system that brought them to such poverty to continue to exist?

Time will tell.

Time to lock up the political and business suits

Economics Editor for the Irish Times, Dan O’Brien, sounded slightly right wing as he debated crime in Irish society with Fr Peter Mc Verry on Today with Pat Kenny (Tuesday).

According to O’Brien recession, poverty and inequality have little effect on crimes rates (See O’Brien’s Irish Times article on the issue here).

The availability of drink and drugs coupled with a reluctance to throw people in jail are, apparently, the principal causes of increased crime rates.

O’Brien was very confident discussing crimes committed, in the main, by the lower classes but when questioned about white-collar crime he became decidedly less gung ho.

Keep in mind that the following views are expressed in a country destroyed after a corrupt political system allowed (and still allows) white-collar criminals to break the law with impunity.

O’Brien: If society decides something is a crime then, you know, it should be investigated and those who break the law should be punished as society decides.

So, you know, whatever we decide and clearly, you know, there’s a problem with white-collar crime and there has been an enormous….interrupted.

Pat Kenny: But even white-collar wrong doing which has not yet being categorised properly as a crime…interrupted.

Peter Mc Verry: Society doesn’t decide what’s a crime; people in designer suits decide what’s a crime.

O’Brien: Well, I certainly think that we need, from a political perspective, to say that certain types of behaviour in financial institutions…

we need to look at making certain actions criminal as a means of deterring people because the consequences are so enormous that there is a case to be made for criminalising certain kinds of reckless behaviour particularly in financial institutions.

So, after the Titanic has sunk O’Brien wants the State to look at making certain actions criminal and believes there’s a case for criminalising certain kinds of reckless behaviour.

It would be interesting to hear what kind of (white-collar) reckless behaviour he believes should remain outside the law.

O’Brien believes that jail should be used to take criminals out of circulation and to act as a deterrent to protect society but, apparently, only wants this to apply to the lower classes.

Fr. Mc Verry is right on the button when he says that it’s people in designer suits that decide what’s a crime.

Ireland and its citizens will continue to suffer severe consequences until those suits, both political and business, are locked up.

A party of national interest is required

Excellent letter in today’s Irish Examiner

We need party of national interest

Minister O’Reilly must be congratulated for his wisdom in announcing that the “burden” of cuts must fall on the “better paid” and not the sick and vulnerable.

However, for some strange reason he appears to have difficulty identifying the “better paid”. He, like the rest of his colleagues to date, seem to be searching for them in the wrong places.

His peers in the previous administration lacked the same powers of detection. Could it be that things ‘too close cannot be observed’ as the poet said? It might help Mr O’Reilly if he started by looking at the pay and expenses he and his colleagues enjoy and make comparison with the going rates in other European countries.

He might also factor in the size of our country and economy and the fact that we are effectively bankrupt and dependent on the benevolence of the ECB and the IMF. If he writes it down on two columns, it might help him to focus his mind.

To help him get underway, I suggest he make a sort of remuneration league table of heads of government worldwide. Where would the noble Enda come, he who so graciously accepted a pay cut of €20,000 that brought his salary down to a mere €200,000, leaving him with just over €70,000 or so more than the British and Swedish prime ministers, and even twice as well paid as the prime minister of Spain.

After that he can look at top professionals like doctors and administrators in the health service and compare them, like with like, with their European colleagues.

Only then, and when he and his colleagues do the right thing and the necessary thing, should they take their search for the “better paid” further afield.

Indeed if he really took this exercise with the seriousness it warrants, he might find himself considering a far more important point, which is the inexplicable quiescence of the Irish people in the face of two successive governments who stand unrivalled in modern times for their cowardice, crass insensitivity, greed and sheer neck.

There is a lethal vacuum in Irish politics at the moment, one that should be feared by both government and opposition. It cannot be filled by commentators and pundits.

The country is crying out for a new movement in politics, a party of national interest, that will field candidates in local and national elections and bring something back to Irish politics that seems to have died with the rise of Charles Haughey — a moral compass.

Margaret Hickey
Blarney
Co Cork

Garret Fitzgerald's elitist mindset still with us today

It may seem bizarre to many that Garret Fitzgerald could write in great detail about his long political career without mentioning, never mind actually analysing, the corruption of Charles Haughey.

But there is in fact a very simple reason.

The criminal Haughey was a member of the same ruling elite club as Garret Fitzgerald.

Members of this exclusive club instinctively know that they must stand by each other if they are to survive as the ruling elite.

So while it is perfectly acceptable to play the game of politics, slagging each off in the Dail, hotly debating issues through the media, it is totally unacceptable for club members to call into question the right to rule pedigree of any member by accusing them of criminal or corrupt practices.

In December 1979 when the criminal Haughey came to power Fitzgerald rightly referred to him as a flawed pedigree

Fitzgerald realised immediately that he had overstepped the mark, that he had offended the sensibilities of the ruling elite who were all present for the nomination of Haughey as Taoiseach (See here for my view of this incident).

Thereafter, and for the rest of his long career, Fitzgerald constantly apologised/explained this insult to a member of the ruling elite club.

In his book, Just Garret (page 288) he once again tries to explain away his (totally accurate) assessment of Haughey’s real character.

The phrase ‘flawed pedigree’, an oratorical embellishment that must have owed something to the hour of the night at which I had finally drafted my remarks, achieved lasting fame.

I should of course have recognised the danger of using a colourful phrase that could easily be distorted by being taken completely out of the specific context of a comparison between Charles Haughey’s and his predecessors’ repute among their peers (my emphasis).

Fitzgerald tells another story that confirms how the ruling elite support each other and gives us a hint of how some in the media are more than willing to cooperate with protecting the interests of the ruling elite.

In 1983 Labour leader and then Tánaiste Dick Spring had a bit of a row with Haughey at a meeting of the New Ireland Forum.

Haughey became so upset that he had to be escorted from the room.

It later transpired that earlier on the same day a biographical book, The Boss, had been published which greatly upset Haughey and his family.

Fitzgerald’s response to this incident is incredible and bizarre when we consider that he had already accurately described Haughey as a flawed pedigree.

In other words he knew that Haughey was nothing more than a political gangster.

The publication of The Boss which outlined in great detail the corrupt activities of Haughey in the short three-year period since becoming leader of Fianna Fail confirmed in black and white Fitzgerald’s flawed pedigree assessment of the criminal.

To avoid being accused of quoting Fitzgerald out of context I include his full response in his own words.

The Forum was immediately adjourned, and Dick Spring made his peace with Charles Haughey.

But following the afternoon session, I realised that I had earlier responded to a query from Vincent Browne, editor of the Sunday Tribune, about my Christmas reading, saying that The Boss was something that I would want to read during the break.

I then found that Dick Spring had also mentioned the book to Vincent in this way.

I rang Vincent, who I found already knew what had happened that morning, and he agreed not to publicise the traumatic event in the Forum and to substitute other works in place of The Boss on my list, and in Dick’s.

So here we had the Prime Minister and his deputy going to great lengths, with the willing cooperation of a journalist, to minimise the impact of an accurate account of Haughey’s corrupt activities.

The response by Fitzgerald and Spring is a perfect example of how members of the ruling class, first and foremost, look after each other.

That elitist political mindset is still the guiding force in the body politic today.

Garret Fitzgerald's delusional tome

While mooching around my local library yesterday I came across a book, Just Garret, written by Garret Fitzgerald.

The book was published in 2010 and is an account of Fitzgerald’s life from early childhood right up to his retirement from politics and beyond to 2010.

I would have no interest in reading the entire book but I do have a habit of checking the Contents and Index of books by or about Irish politicians for the word ‘corruption’.

No mention of the ‘c’ word in the Contents and, amazingly, no mention in the Index.

So here we have an account of political events from one of the most prominent politicians in recent Irish history spanning a decades long career that almost exactly mirrors the career of the most corrupt politician in Irish history, the criminal Haughey, and the word ‘corruption’ is not once mentioned.

It’s like writing a history of World War Two without mentioning D Day or writing a history of Ireland with no reference to the year 1916.

It’s denial and revisionism on a grand scale.

It is an absolute impossibility for anyone to write a credible account of recent Irish political history without an extensive chapter on political corruption.

To write a book of 430 pages spanning the most corrupt years in Irish political history without even once mentioning the word ‘corruption’ is a farcical exercise of the most hilarious kind.

Fitzgerald’s delusional tome is subtitled:

Tales from the political front line.

Clearly, Fitzgerald spent his entire career deep within an Alice in Wonderland bunker well behind the front line of corruption.

Spot the difference

Comment by RTE broadcaster on the Wallace tax scandal.

Owing one million to the tax man is one thing, owing a million in VAT is something entirely different.

Translation:

Owing one million in tax is entirely different from owing one million in tax.

Efficient justice system for those without power or influence

Today with Pat Kenny recently did a piece from the Four Courts concerning those who failed to pay their TV licence.

On the day, court 8 was given over entirely to deal with the 150 cases on the books. All those appearing in court had been caught in the previous six months.

Clearly, the TV licence law enforcement agency and court system for dealing with these people is very efficient.

Many of the cases were struck out when those owing paid up but there were convictions especially for those who failed to turn up to defend themselves.

Again, the justice/punishment system is extremely efficient when it comes to dealing with people who fail to pay their TV licence.

The formula is:

Fined €300, €50 costs, three months to pay, five days in lieu (jail) for not paying.

No endless tribunal, no endless investigation by ODCE; no secret deal with Revenue, no excuses accepted.

Justice must not just be done; it must be seen to be done – for those without power and influence.

A reporter spoke with a woman outside the court.

Very stressful. Had to get my licence yesterday but all my weekly money is now gone. I have €10 for the week now.

Do you have arrears?

I do, €80 but I won’t be able to pay because I’m in financial difficulty.

Can you tell me about that?

I’m supposed to get maintenance of about €30 a week but he hasn’t paid it since October. I’m in arrears of over €6,000 in my mortgage, I’m a single parent, on my own for the last 15 years.

I’m in arrears with my gas, my electricity, my phone, my TV, everything. I went to MABS and they help to keep the wolves at bay for the mortgage but I will be going to court about that.

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I very rarely go out, I’ve started shopping in charity shops.

What are you going to tell the judge when your case comes up?

Hopefully I won’t have to pay the €80 arrears because if I have to pay I’ll have €17 to live on.

Are you on lone parents allowance?

Yes, I get €197 because they take €20 for my electricity. I pay €100 for my mortgage and I’m left with €97.

So, I guess a trip to Poland for Euro 2012 is out of the question for this woman.