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The Prime Minister of our county has accused the Mahon Tribunal that was established by our National Parliament, of trying to frame him on very serious charges. This is, in effect, what Bertie Ahern meant when he accused the tribunal of trying to ‘stitch him up.’

In addition, several Government ministers, people who were elected to represent the people of Ireland and defend the integrity of the people’s parliament, the Oireachtas, have also made serious allegations against the tribunal and, by extension, against the State.

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, made a direct attack on the tribunal by questioning the length of time it was taking to complete its work. He also expressed astonishment at the line of questioning the tribunal was taking against the Taoiseach (Six One News, 1st item).

An even more serious attack on the tribunal was made by Minister for European Affairs, Dick Roche. He angrily declared that he was not happy with the way Bertie Ahern was being treated by the tribunal. He said it was petty, personal, prurient and at times bordered on voyeurism.

Even more seriously, he accused the tribunal of being biased against Ahern and trampling on his rights as a citizen (Morning Ireland, 1st item).

These are very serious charges and in a functional democracy would result in an immediate political and constitutional crisis that would see the immediate closing down of the alleged rogue tribunal or the immediate forced resignations of the politicians who made the attacks if they failed to substantiate their allegations.

Because Ireland is a dysfunctional democracy we got what we always get – a large gaggle of journalists talking among themselves about the matter before we all head off for the Christmas celebrations.

On Six One News we had John Kilraine, Samantha Libreri and Charlie Bird. Later, on a Primetime special, we had Miriam O’Callaghan, Katie Hannon, Michael Clifford and Stephen Collins discussing the matter between re-enactments of tribunal evidence.

On Drivetime, we had Mary Wilson, Fergal Keane, Brian Dowling Justine McCarthy, Harry McGee and others participating in a major fest of incestuous journalistic analysis and not an accountable or even an unaccountable politician in sight.

The Government is to hire consultants to review economic regulators including the financial watchdog (Irish Examiner). I presume financial watchdog here means the Financial Regulator. The consultants should start by asking the so called regulators to actually regulate.

We know, for example, that the Financial Regulator has yet to impose even a small fine on any financial institution or official. This is despite the fact that theft and fraud is rampant throughout the sector.

We also know that the Financial Regulator’s claim of always acting in the interests of consumers is questionable to say the least. Secrecy laws, strictly enforced by the regulator, have the effect of protecting the thieves and exposing consumers to serious risk of financial loss.

A recent operation by the regulator proves the point. Apparently, ‘undercover financial watchdogs visited a number of financial institutions and were overcharged by up to €15,000 on transactions.

Instead of cracking down on these institutions with heavy fines the regulator merely asked them to pay back the money ‘overcharged’.

This strategy is in keeping with the regulator’s unofficial but widely used ‘pay back’ policy. When banks or other financial institutions are caught robbing or ‘overcharging’ consumers they are merely asked to pay back the sums involved with appropriate interest – no fines, no police, no regulation.

Copy to:

IFSRA
Dept. of Finance

Strapped Ahern needs ‘dig-out’

Irish Independent Letters

Friday November 16 2007

Having been reduced to tears by Mr Ahern’s Dobson interview last year, I pity poverty-stricken Bertie having to exist on a mere €310,000 (plus expenses, driver, jet, make-up, and so on).

I feel like organising a whip-around, a dig-out AND a soft loan for him.

And I will be rushing to accept his oh-so-credible advice on wage restraint. In response to Bertie’s invitation to put other leaders’ arrangements up front, here goes:

• €310,000 – Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
• €279,000 – US President George Bush.
• €270,000 – Irish Tanaiste Brian Cowen.
• €268,000 – UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
• €261,000 – German Prime Minister Angela Merkel.
• €240,000 – Irish Cabinet ministers.
• €240,000 – French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
• €210,000 – Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
• €192,000 – Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.
• €123,000 – Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.
• €122,000 – Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Norway has the same population as Ireland).
• €49,500 – Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

The same “independent” process that so deservedly rewarded our leaders also determined that the chief executive of the HSE, Brendan Drumm, was currently being overpaid to the tune of €57,000 per annum, when compared to an equivalent position in the private sector. (Luckily, that one isn’t mandatory.)

And those greedy foreign leaders have prolonged holidays, unlike Mr Ahern, who spends a massive 1.5 days in the Dail for almost 20 weeks per year. Most of the rest of the time he has to undertake onerous tasks like opening pubs, off-licenses and private hospitals.

Ray Corcoran
Ballymun
Dublin 11

Following letter published in today’s Irish Times. (Sub. required)

Madam, – It has just been reported that Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel, is to face a criminal investigation into his purchase of a property. The investigation was triggered when a government watchdog concluded that Mr Olmert had bought the property at well below market value.

In Israel, as in most Western democracies, where there is strong suspicion of political corruption police involvement is immediate. If sufficient evidence is revealed there is immediate court involvement. If a politician is found guilty there is immediate accountability.

In Ireland, no government watchdog has ever begun a criminal investigation against a politician. The Irish police do not investigate allegations of political corruption.

Instead of immediate accountability, Irish politicians and officials simply turn up at very expensive – and, for the most part, ineffective tribunals to inform the nation that they are suffering from amnesia.

There is not the remotest possibility that our Taoiseach will face an investigation that would make him immediately accountable despite failing to provide satisfactory answers to the many serious questions regarding his acceptance of large amounts of cash.

Recent polls and elections confirm that the majority of Irish citizens are very happy with this state of affairs and apparently have no worries about the serious consequences that inevitably follow when low standards in high places become the norm. – Yours, etc,

Anthony Sheridan

Ireland’s victory in this year’s Rolex Fastnet Race brought back some memories of the disastrous 1979 race in which 15 people died.

I was on duty in the Communications Centre in the Naval Base at the time and judging from the reports coming in I was very happy to be on terra firma.

At the time the Irish navy had five ships, three ex Royal Navy minesweepers and two of the first generation of Irish designed/built patrol vessels. One of these, the LE Deirdre, was heavily involved in the Fastnet disaster rescue operation.

When the LE Deirdre was commissioned in 1972 she was described as an all weather ship designed to operate far out into the Atlantic in all conditions. Indeed, she spent so much time patrolling the West coast that she was given the nick name, ‘West coast greyhound’.

Incredibly, however, the Deirdre was less safe than Titanic. Titanic was doomed from the moment she struck the iceberg because her so called ‘watertight’ bulkheads were only watertight horizontally. The tops of the bulkheads were open and once she began to go down at the bow the water spilled over the top of each ‘watertight’ compartment in turn, sealing her fate.

But the bulkhead design of Titanic, inadequate as it was, did buy vital time for at least some passengers to save themselves. The Deirdre, on the other hand, had no watertight bulkheads whatsoever and would have gone down like a stone if the hull had suffered even a moderate breach. Its design could be compared to driving a car with no brakes in the hope that they would never be needed.

I served on Deirdre in subsequent years blissfully unaware of its potentially fatal weakness. Sometime during the 1990s she was finally fitted with the necessary watertight bulkheads and in 2001 was sold off for conversion into a luxury charter yacht. I believe she now operates in the calmer and less demanding Mediterranean Sea.

Bribery, graft, embezzlement, fraud, corruption, scandal, property boom, elites, property developers, corruption networks, planning, rubber stamps, backhanders, illegal building permits, cronies, bribes, mafia, money laundering, tax evasion, dirty money, property boom, sleaze

All words that have become part of the Irish way of doing things.

Judge, charged, prosecutions, jail, trail, investigation, arrest, police, seized

All words yet to become part of the Irish way of doing things.

All the words are from a report in today’s Irish Times on how a Spanish judge is cracking down on crime by the elite in society.

It is worth reading the entire article to hear the echo’s from Ireland. My favourite echo is a suspect €45,000 in cash seized by police but claimed by its possessor to be for daily household expenses.

Former Marbella mayors on fraud charges

Wed, Jul 25, 2007

A Spanish judge yesterday charged two former mayors of Marbella and 20 former town councillors with bribery, graft, embezzlement and fraud in connection with a corruption scandal linked to Spain’s property boom.
Eighty-six members of the Marbella elite, including lawyers, property developers and politicians, face prosecution.
The ringleader, according to Miguel Ángel Torres, a young judge in charge of the investigation, was Juan Antonio Roca, right-hand man of Jesús Gil, a notorious property developer, football club owner and mayor of Marbella, who ruled over the resort like a mafia boss between 1991 and 2002.
When Gil died in 2004, Mr. Roca became the “epicentre of a vast corruption network”, according to Mr. Torres’s report.
Mr. Roca, a former town planning commissioner, allegedly took backhanders from builders and bribed Marbella town councillors to rubber-stamp property developments, many in urban green zones.
Prosecutors estimate that more than one million illegal building permits were handled by Mr. Roca and his cronies. “Marbella’s town councillors were on Mr. Roca’s payroll. They were rewarded for their loyalty and subordination, rather than for each building licence they issued,” Mr. Torres wrote.
Mr. Roca paid for a facelift for Marisol Yagüe, a former mayor of Marbella now in jail awaiting trial. He also paid her €1.3 million in bribes and bought a flat for her son in Madrid, according to the judge’s report.
The judge, who is 36 and made his mark with Operation White Whale, a big money-laundering investigation in Málaga in 2005, spares no one in his latest investigation, codenamed Operation Malaya.
The judge let it be known he was preparing charges against more of Marbella’s beautiful people, including actor and singer Isabel Pantoja.
She was arrested briefly this year and is being investigated for suspected tax evasion and laundering money for her former boyfriend, Julián Muñóz, another Marbella mayor who has been jailed by Mr. Torres on corruption charges.
In January, police seized more than €45,000 in cash from Pantoja’s home, much of it in dollars and €500 notes. Pantoja denies handling any dirty money, saying the cash was for daily household expenses. She claimed she had been duped by her former boyfriend.
Mr. Torres’s year-long inquiry has given Spaniards a glimpse into the lives of those who have grown immensely rich from the country’s long property boom. Police seized thoroughbred horses, artworks and luxury cars from Mr. Roca’s home. In all, more than €2.4 billion in cash and assets has been seized.
The inquiry has also made the palm-lined city of Marbella a byword for corruption and sleaze. The city famous for its yacht harbour has been governed by a caretaker committee since most of the city council was arrested last year.
© 2007 Financial Times

Joe Walsh Tours (JWT) is an old and well established Irish tour company. The company has carried millions of people to exotic and distant destinations all over the globe.
But now there’s a new JWT, a JWT that will travel to the ultimate destination, the edge of the known universe.

In a joint venture between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency, the James Webb Telescope will replace the Hubble space telescope which has given long and valuable service to science.

Hubble has been able to see galaxies approximately 13 billion light years away but JWT will see much further, almost back to the Big Bang and the beginning of everything. Unlike Hubble, which operates from a position very close to earth, JWT will be placed an amazing one million miles out in space.

Another fascinating job for the new telescope will be the search for and study of exoplanets. These are planets outside our solar system which could provide us with the first evidence of extraterrestrial life. Currently, these planets are detected by the way their orbits dim the light of their stars but JWT should be able to see them directly.

So, how long before the Irish JWT is organizing tours to new planets discovered by the space JWT?

Madam, – Michael McDowell expected a double-digit result for the PDs. He was correct – in Roman numerals. – Is mise,

Dr DAVID THORNTON, Dyke Road, Galway.

There was an interesting piece on RTE Six One News last evening. (Sports, 1st item)

As the Clare and Cork hurling teams ran out onto the pitch in the Munster Hurling Championship they immediately got stuck into each other in violent conflict. An investigation is expected and the reporter suggested that the wisdom of allowing the teams out together will be questioned.

Perhaps the GAA should consider how the ancient Romans handled such events. Wild animals were released into the arena from separate tunnels, thus preventing violence until the games had properly begun.

Another solution to GAA violence could be to actually take effective action against players found guilty of serious violent assault.