Enterprise Ireland raw data

Further to previous posts, we are publishing further data on Enterprise Ireland grants, 2005 – 2008, inclusive.

First up is all four years combined into one spreadsheet.

Enterprise Ireland 2005 – 2008

This sheet still needs a bit of work though. Note some incorrect references to “Carlow Town” in Column B. I will rectify this shortly.

Next up is an analysis of which companies received the most money (h/t Robert again)

Company totals

In terms of total money received over the four years, the top 10 (under all categories) are:

GLANBIA INGREDIENTS (BALLYRAGGET) LTD
ATLANTIC BRIDGE VENTURES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP
DAIRYGOLD FOOD INGREDIENTS LTD
DELTA EQUITY FUND II LIMITED PARTNERSHIP
DUBLIN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
CURAM SOFTWARE LTD
BANK OF IRELAND KERNEL CAPITAL PARTNERS PRIVATE EQUITY FUND
HOWARD WEBWORKS LTD
TRINITY VENTURE FUND 2B
GREEN ISLE FOODS LTD

Willie O’Dea’s resignation letter

This is the letter of resignation of Willie O’Dea, along with Brian Cowen’s reply.



Willie O'Dea speaks to Limerick Leader about Sinn Fein Councillor

Willy O’Dea interviewed by Mike Dwane of the Limerick Leader/Chronicle makes a number of comments about Maurice Quinlivan of Sinn Féin, which he subsequently withdrew. O’Dea then swore an affidavit to court saying he made no such comments. He categorically and emphatically denied saying such things, then the audio below emerged and he changed his story.

Mary Coughlan on BBC HardTalk

In three parts, recorded about seven days ago. Strong interview by Stephen Sackur:

Note: At 4.40 of the above clip Mary Coughlan repeats the mistruth she has told the Dáil previously. She says performance-related bonuses of senior civil servants were judged by the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector to be “intrinsically” part of their salary.

This is not the truth. It is false. It’s a beyond misleading statement.

In no way, “intrinsically”, “implicitly”, “explicitly” or otherwise did the Review Body see bonuses as part of salary. Once again I have to wonder, is the Tánaiste stupid, out of her depth or lying? A disgrace.

“When we had the economic where-with-all we invested it in health, we invested it in education, we invested it in skills training.”

Eh. The HSE. Third level institutes. FÁS.

[h/t The Property Pin]

FAS notice board

Shane Ross, writing in today’s Sunday Independent, points out that the FAS internal notice board has been closed. Back in November we highlighted the existence of referral traffic from an internal FAS bulletin board, with traffic coming to this blog. Emphasis mine:

It seems that tensions had been running so high at FAS that the rules were being breached by the bucketful. Staff morale has plunged after the barrage of revelations at the agency. The internet board had become a treasure trove for messages of abuse.

Some senior staff recognised themselves in some of the anonymous messages, even if they were not named. They freaked out and made formal complaints.

At least one fun-loving outsider tried to break into the staff intranet board. According to FAS, “an external internet blog posted the internal address of the bulletin board pages and sought access”. FAS proudly declares that it became aware of the attempted breach and stopped the rot.

An all-time first for FAS.

Sources at FAS say the site was used as a tool to snipe at those who had been promoted and was an outlet for jealousies.

We would like to point that we never attempted to “gain access” in the somewhat illegal way this has been portrayed.

A six month review

It’s been about six months since myself and Mark started thestory.ie, so I thought I would take a look back to see what we have been doing over the past number of months. I know some of you stats people out there might be interested.

Thestory.ie has had nearly 40,000 visitors since our first post in late August. Subscriber numbers, either via RSS or email, is near 400. Stats for documents are not complete, since there is overlap with my own Scribd account, but since about late September thestoryie Scribd account holds 172 documents of varying sizes. Some are FOIs and some are Government reports. The 172 documents have been read 18,360 times and downloaded 569 times.

In terms of requests for information sent, the number of FOIs sent now numbers over 50. Our readers have generously donated €2,510 towards an FOI fund we established after readers expressed an interest in helping.

We can count a number of successes in the past six months. One of the first was the Morris Tribunal FOI, which led directly to the website being restored, along with a portion of the transcripts. We are awaiting the rest. Another success was the release of years worth of TD and Senator expenses, despite one refusal under Section 10 (1) (c) of the Act, which we successfully appealed under the internal review process. We also await publication of 371 days of Moriarty Tribunal transcripts, which we have been promised following an FOI request. We also recently published over €400 million worth of Enterprise Ireland grants data (received outside of FOI), which we have got help from readers in cleaning and reorganising.

We continue the process of publishing Ministerial diaries, and we have also begun the process of publishing FOI request logs, so we can all see what has previously been requested by others. The results of a number of further requests for information are awaited, some of them significant, while dozens more requests are in the process of being drafted. Some interesting stuff is coming down the line.

We would like to thank our readers for their support and here’s to the next six months.

Greece and Ireland

On the streets of Greece, protestors shout: “This is Greece, not Ireland. We the workers will resist”. As Channel 4 reported:

You do wonder sometimes about Irish people. As one Greek woman said, I am not going to sit on my couch.

Constantin Gurdgiev has called out something important too. The narrative thus far internationally appears to be that the Government has radically cut public expenditure. But is this the case? Gurdgiev points to the Government’s own projections, as of December 2009.

In that projection: Ireland – Stability Programme Update it says:

Gross Current expenditure (m):

2009: €61,108
2010: €61,872
2011: €63,518
2012: €64,284

Notice the distinct lack of cuts. And these figures exclude any bank bailouts.

It appears as though all those cuts we talk about in the public sector is simply money being transferred to other spending – you could call it “smokes and daggers” for the international markets.

Health Minister diary 2009

As part of an ongoing process. Below is the appointments diary for Health Minister Mary Harney from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2009.

It should also be noted that the Department of Health initially tried to charge me over €160 for this diary. It appears they mistakenly believed they could charge me for the time taken to redact entries – which they are not allowed to do under the FOI Act.



The redactions are mainly phone numbers and were exempted under Section 28 (1) Personal Information.