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… him?

Suppose it’s hard to ignore it, but I don’t want to give the George Lee (or ‘glee’, as it’s being refered to on Twitter) thing too much attention. It’s a big story politically, not so important nationally.

Unfortunately it has come on the same day Simon Carswell’s journalism put a dent in the Nama spin-machine. That story would have led the news agenda for a few days had it not been for Mr Lee. 

Props to Matt Cooper and The Last Word team on Today FM for staying focused, for the most part, on the really important story; they even managed to get Brian Lenihan on the show today. I think it might the first time since the week the finance minister announced/admitted (?) he had a serious health issue that he has spoken live on air. You can listen to the minister ducking and diving, spinning and weaving, at this link.

George Lee ending his political ‘career’ will be a blow to Fine Gael. However, with an election not likely for another two years it probably won’t seriously impact the lives of anyone other than political junkies and Fine Gael members (and RTÉ News managers) in any real terms. 

The political correspondents who’ve been selling the “Fianna Fáil is dead” line in post-mortem-ish pre-mortem articles since the local elections will begin revising their opinions.

Enda Kenny will come under more scrutiny.

We’ll see if Eamon Gilmore actually believes Labour can lead the next government from his reaction to the sniping at Kenny.

The Fine Gael communications strategists will look to roll Kenny out for a do-or-die big-stage interview in a few weeks or months time.

It’ll work or it won’t.

Kenny will lead the party into the next election, or he won’t.

Someone will win the election. Someone will be Taoiseach.

Either way, Nama will still be around in two years time, and for a while longer yet to come.

Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin was on This Week today, defending the spending of large sums of taxpayer money on the residence for the Irish ambassador to Canada. The story had been highlighted by the Canadian media:

But prudence was not a consideration in the 15-month gutting of a modest stone house to recreate an abode of unbridled luxury for Irish ambassador Declan Kelly.

Coming in at more than twice the floor space of the Prime Minister’s official residence at 24 Sussex Drive with a reconstruction tab exceeding $7-million, the 24,000-square-foot, four-storey house is now the accommodation envy of the diplomatic corps in Ottawa.

Ireland embassy staff did not return repeated calls requesting an interview with Mr. Kelly and a tour of the residence, but a worker on the site proudly showed me blueprints of a project packed with every conceivable luxury and ornate columns rising to the roof.

“All that’s missing is a throne for Caesar,” the worker grinned. “I’ve never worked on anything like this before.”

Sounds like a nice pad. But where is it? Google answers. Here is a Google Streetview of the house, which was clearly at the time underdoing the renovations: Continued…

Shane Coleman reports on the closing of a controversial tax relief in today’s Tribune.

Section 4 of the Finance Bill, published last week, ends the benefit-in-kind tax exemption on employer- provided art objects introduced by [Bertie] Ahern, as a late amendment to the 1994 Finance Act, despite opposition from the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners.

This tax exemption became a major issue over a decade ago when the Sunday Tribune revealed the measure had benefited businessman Ken Rohan and that it was applied retrospectively for the previous 12 years, effectively neutralising any efforts to pursue Rohan for back taxes.

Ken Rohan, a multi-millionaire property developer, was tapped for donations to Fianna Fáil while Bertie Ahern was finance minister between 1992 and ‘94. He owned a mansion in Wicklow known as Charville House. The mansion was built in 1797 and is described by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as “one of the most memorable country houses in Wicklow”. As you might imagine, it’s worth a few quid.

Over a number of years Rohan decorated the gaff with many pieces of period furniture, antiques and artworks using money from his company Airspace Investments. The items were therefore owned by Airspace but Rohan was benefiting personally from them. The Revenue Commissioners thus defined them as being a benefit-in-kind of Rohan’s employment by Airspace and sent him a tax bill for 12 percent of the items value and two years of their use. This amounted to €150,000 per annum. Rohan disputed the bill. He knew that Revenue knew if they got payment for two years they could seek payment for the other ten years which he had personally enjoyed and used items bought by Airspace. Continued…

Our esteemed Senators have been at it again. Hold onto your hats. Senator Donie Cassidy kicked it off:

Donie Cassidy (Fianna Fail): Senators Fitzgerald, Coghlan, Quinn and Norris congratulated the Jekyll and Hyde foundation for the wonderful work it is doing. Senator Fitzgerald outlined the huge difference between the cost of the services being provided by the foundation and those provided by the HSE. It is something we must examine—–

Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael): It is the Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation.

Dominic Hannigan (Labour): Jekyll and Hyde is something different.

Donie Cassidy (Fianna Fail): My apologies. It is the Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation….

Your tax euros hard at work there.

In September last year the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector said ‘performance-related’ bonuses should be suspended and pay cuts made on basic salary, Government continuously cited their report in relation to pay cuts. The Review Body did not recommend the ‘bonuses’ be included as salary. The Government, in the Budget, agreed. They stated cuts were to be made in the method detailed in the report – i.e. bonuses suspended and salaries cut. See Martin Wall’s report post-Budget report in The Irish Times here for more.

Then the Government, following lobbying, suddenly decided to change how the cuts would be implemented, but only for a small sector of the public service. That sector includes assistant secretaries and deputy secretaries in the the Civil Service, senior personnel in the Army and An Garda, and positions like Ombudsman and Director of Corporate Enforcement. Each would have been taking home somewhere between €130,000 and €200,000 including bonuses. Harry McGee wrote an explanatory article on the topic in early January. Since then the numbers included have expanded. On the latest count almost 600 people fall into the group (the public sector would have tens of thousands of staff, obviously).

Instead of suspending bonuses and cutting basic salaries it was decided that for this elite group alone the bonuses would be counted as part of their salaries. This, the Government said, was because the vast majority of them received ‘performance-related’ bonuses no matter how they performed, thus the bonuses were, in practical terms, part of their salaries.

The eventual outcome; the group did not have their take home pay slashed due to the suspension of bonuses and further cutting of basic salary, as recommended by the Review Body and supported in the Budget by Government. Now bonuses are being are included in their pre-Budget salary totals and this figure is being cut by between 8 and 12. Therfore their basic pay cut is something around 3 or 4 percent. A clerical officer will be cut 5 percent, there are no bonuses, performance-related or otherwise available at these lower grades. Persepective: A clerical officer’s annual salary would have equaled something close to an assistant secretary’s ‘performance-related’ bonus.

The Government’s change is quite clearly a U-turn. It’s quite clearly disgraceful. It’s quite clearly immoral.

Despite just how clear it is, this week the Tanáiste Mary Coughlan claimed “the review body on higher level pay indicated that the bonus was indicatively part of their salary” in the Dáil.

Considering her Fianna Fáil colleague, Martin Mansergh, had already read the facts into the Dail record when putting the Budget legislation through the House:

The Government has accepted the review body’s recommendation that there be no increases in the pay of the higher public service groups, including any adjustments that might otherwise arise under national agreements, before the end of 2012. It has also accepted the recommendation that performance related award schemes in the public service should be suspended.

… and that this view could only be accepted by anyone of sane mind upon reading the report, any logical person would have to conclude that the Tánaiste has either lied to the Dáil and/or is far out of her depth.

Or is not of sane mind.

Dail newbie George Lee has been asking lots of awkward questions. One of his more recent ones has led to a bit of an information dump by the Department of Finance. Mr Lee asked:

Question 205: To ask the Minister for Finance the names and addresses of all nominees to bodies or agencies under the remit of his Department that were appointed since 26 June 1997, detailing by whom they were appointed; when they were appointed; the amount paid by the Exchequer to each nominee each year from 1997 to 2009 broken down into income, expenses, overtime and any other relevant category; the money paid by his Department each year from 1997 to 2009 to cover expenses or incidentals related to the nominees, such as accommodation, travel and so on; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5662/10]

To which Mr Lenihan provided quite an extensive reply. Maurice Ahern and Leonie Reynolds are two names that stand out for me. Comments please with extra info.

This post was scheduled to go up at 6pm tonight but it’s on Liveline now, so…

This article from the Limerick Post is worth reading. It tells us a company whose owners owe massive amounts of money to Anglo Irish Bank will be providing legal advice to NAMA.

LIMERICK solicitors Dermot G O’Donovan, three of whose partners are directors of the Fordmount Group, now in receivership, have been appointed by NAMA to provide legal services.

Fordmount is believed to owe in excess of €100m to Anglo Irish Bank.

NAMA will appoint more than 50 firms to sit on a panel of legal advisors. Being on the panel does not necessarily mean a company will be called to provide advice. Indeed the reason NAMA would claim such a large number of advisors is required is – for want of better wording – to dilute any conflicts of interest. Still, if claims of conflicts of interest are raised, it’s worth taking a look at them.

The story is also perhaps illustrative of just how interconnected the various elite facets of Irish society have become in the last ten or so years.

Thanks to the people on Twitter who highlighted the story this morning.