Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
I see the obnoxious bully Proinsias De Rossa has decided to retire from politics.
Here’s a quote from his press release:
I have dedicated all my energies to the pursuit of peace and the elimination of poverty and inequality through peaceful change, and the deepening of democracy.
Well, what more can one add to that comprehensive self-praising assessment – Sainthood?
A board member of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) has made some very serious allegations against the body (Sunday Independent).
The allegations, made by Jerry Beades, include:
That around €30m from the CIF pension scheme is controlled by senior CIF and trade union officials unknown to the membership of the CIF and employees who make contributions.
That the CIF has shown a blatant disregard for safe accounting and that the matter should be investigated by the Pensions Ombudsman.
That large sums have been collected which are not used for pension-contribution purposes.
The Director General of CIF, Tom Parlon, is not at all happy with Mr. Beades and has accused him of making wild allegations without foundation.
He accused Mr. Beades of showing a total lack of respect for the chair of the meeting, the integrity of the officers of CIF and the private business affairs of individual members
He demanded that Mr. Beades should conduct himself in a professional and civil manner at CIF meetings and that he apologise in writing to fellow members for his behaviour at a meeting last week.
The curious thing is that, apart from a lot of bluster, Parlon doesn’t actually deny or explain any of the serious allegations.
Fianna Fail leader, Michael Martin, was doing the media rounds last week in an effort to promote himself and his party.
Inevitably, the question of Fianna Fail’s part in the economic crisis was raised and inevitably Mr. Martin wallowed in traditional Irish denial and dishonesty.
Here’s some of what he had to say in an interview last week with the Sunday Business Post (Sub req’d).
We made mistakes but I’ve a broader sense of history and big events like this have more profound and complex origins.
The underlying message here is twofold – what happened in Ireland was caused by the global crisis (the Lehman Bros. thesis) and most Irish citizens are not as intelligent as I am and so are unable to grasp the big picture.
Mr. Martin goes on:
Now people are reading articles about the origins of the crisis going back to the formation of the euro itself; that it was a fundamentally flawed design which has given rise to property bubbles in the periphery of Europe including Ireland, Portugal and Spain.
Suddenly, people are reading these articles and saying it’s a bit more profound, a bit more complex than ‘it’s all Fianna Fail’s fault, which was the refrain for nine months before the election.
This is a global crisis on a par with 1929.
So, people are beginning to read articles and wake up to the ‘fact’ that Fianna Fail is not so corrupt and incompetent after all.
This is the grossly insulting stance Martin and his party have decided to run with in order to restore their status with Irish voters.
Depressingly, if recent polls are correct, the strategy is already succeeding.
Copy to
Fianna Fail
Michael Martin
Michael Noonan made a joke about the e-voting machines debacle and some Irish eejits over in America are upset.
Ciaran Staunton, for example, who owns two Irish pubs in New York, said he’s disappointed the machines are not going to be installed in embassies around the world in order to allow emigrants to vote.
In charity, I’m going to assume Mr. Staunton is trying to outbid Mr. Noonan in the sarcasm stakes.
Noonan’s joke did provoke great hilarity and that’s only appropriate for a gombeen minister in a gombeen state.
Over 50 million recklessly wasted on a very questionable enterprise with no accountability whatsoever and what is the return for Irish citizens?
A sarcastic joke from a leading figure operating within our corrupt political system.
Ireland is a very shady country when it comes to property matters. This was especially true during the great Celtic Tiger era when the wink wink, nod nod culture reached its zenith.
But what went on in Wicklow County Council last July is very, very odd, even by Irish standards (Irish Times).
Last July Wicklow County Councillors voted to approve management plans to complete the purchase of a three acre site after they had been told a compulsory purchase order had been initiated in 2006.
Apparently, none of the Councillors thought it odd that a five-year-old compulsory order, initiated at the height of the property boom, was now being activated.
They may have been convinced by two assurances from management.
That an original valuation of €5.2 million had been reduced to €3 million after talks with representatives of the owner and occupier. Surely, a not to be missed bargain?
That the money would be recouped from the Department, as the land was earmarked for housing. In other words Wicklow County Council would be enriched at the expense of all other taxpayers.
And then some truth emerged; the land is actually worth no more than €400,000.
So, on first glance, it seems that somebody was trying to pull a fast one on the councillors – but who?
Was it somebody in Wicklow County Council management, was it somebody in the Department of the Environment, was it the owner of the property – was it a combination of all three?
The Attorney General has engaged a senior counsel to investigate the Department’s role in the whole matter so we should soon know exactly what happened.
Ah no, I’m only joking. Senior counsel has been appointed but we’ll never know what happened.
The matter will be dragged out in the traditional manner until it becomes just another giant impenetrable smudge on the by now very ragged taxpayer’s current account book.
Some protesters against the septic tank charge were interviewed on Today with Pat Kenny.
We didn’t’ have assistance from any government of any sort or any society. We had to mullock all our lives to put the price of it together and now they’re trying to get more off us.
Well the first fellow that that will come and try to mullock me will end up inside in a coffin and I mean that.
I don’t care if I have to stay in jail for the rest of my life, he’ll get it.
My mother before us, when fellows tried to bully her, she blew the gun over his head and that was the last she saw of him.
Pat Kenny:
Dear o dear, passions running very high.
The Irish Bank Resolution Corporation has succeeded in having Seán Quinn’s bankruptcy status in Northern Ireland annulled.
I’m truly shocked to hear of the death of journalist Mary Raftery at the young age of 54.
Ms. Raftery was one of the few bright shining lights in Irish investigative journalism.
She was the journalist principally responsible for the exposure of the child abuse holocaust perpetrated by the Catholic Church
Colm O’Gorman, survivor of clerical sexual abuse and current executive director of Amnesty International Ireland, put it well:
Mary Raftery was one of the most principled people of the highest integrity that I’ve ever been fortunate enough to meet.
She has done this society and this country an extraordinary service.
Fergus Finlay writes today about the Irish attitude to paying tax (Irish Examiner).
Here’s how he finishes the article:
We had been through decades of the black economy, the grey economy, the nod-and-wink economy. Ansbacher, the Oireachtas DIRT Enquiry, the Beef Industry Tribunal, the McCracken and Flood Tribunals.
They all taught us that some people lived high on the hog by evading their taxes, and the rest of us paid for it through lousy public services.
Whatever we do, let’s not go back there. Of course it’s no fun paying taxes, and of course it can be a terrible shock to be told you owe more than you thought.
But fair tax, on all sorts of incomes, is the key to a fair society.
We’d all benefit from that.
Whatever we do, let’s not go back there???
I must have missed the moment when those who live high on the hog by evading their taxes were brought to account and are now paying up.
I see former Taoiseach John Bruton is absolutely determined to hold onto every cent of his massive €138,000 ministerial pension (Irish Independent).
I don’t think service as a politician is any less worthy than any other form of service, particularly as politicians have been directly and personally selected by the people in a way that other public servants are not.
This is the same greedy politician who regularly lectures Irish citizens on the need to make sacrifices for the good of the country. Some quotes from the ‘patriot’.
Given that we fought a war of independence to get the sovereign right to borrow…we have a responsibility to repay every penny we owe, on time.
In essence, the cause of today’s debt problems is that developed countries awarded themselves a living standard they had not earned.
It will all mean postponing increases in living standards, paying more tax, and getting fewer benefits from the Government.
The above demands do not, of course, apply to Mr. Bruton.
I wrote the following last August.
Does this mean that Bruton will be giving up or substantially reducing the following Government benefits?
The nearly quarter of a million he has drawn down under the (totally unjustified) Secretarial Assistants Scheme for former Taoisigh.
His TDs pension.
His Ministerial pension.
His Taoiseach’s pension.
Any EU (Government) benefit he’s in receipt of as a result of his stint as EU Ambassador to the US.
Any generous Government/EU payments or subsidies he may be receiving for his farm.
A reduction in his present salary as chairman of the IFSC.
Somehow I think Bruton will be holding on to all his ‘entitlements’.
The ‘we’ he is demanding major sacrifices from are, I suspect, ordinary citizens struggling to survive the financial disaster brought down upon them by ruthless, incompetent politicians like Bruton.