Author: Mark Coughlan

There’s an strong comment piece by Frank Callanan in the latest edition of Village in which a number of points worth discussing and challenging are presented. Headlined ‘Fianna Fáil in government has changed us all’, the opening paragraphs neatly summarise the main thrust of the article. Strangely I agree with a lot of the reasoning he employs but not the conclusion drawn.

The opening two pars…

One of the least-considered characteristics of Irish politics is that which has most defined it: the ascendancy of Fianna Fáil. This asserted itself between 1932 and 1973, broken only twice, gave way to a pattern of alterence (rotation) over the quarter-century 1973-1997 and then seemed to re-establish itself in the general elections of 1997, 2002 and 2007. It was as if the electorate had acquired, and then lost, the knack of of turning Fianna Fáil out.

There is a remarkable derth of analysis of, and reflection on what might be called the macro-pyschological effects of the decades of three consecutive Fianna Fáil election victories on civic society including the media, opposition and civil service. These were considerable, even devastating.

I disagree with the Fianna Fáil focus. Yet it’s pretty tricky to compose a rebuttal the following which he uses to support the above…

My point is that there was and continues to be a striking lack of self-awareness, of reflexive consciousness, of the peculiar state of living Ireland over the Ahern decade and not being Fianna Fáil or Progressive Democrat. This also had a marked effect on the media which had to negotiate this strange psychological state. Some commentators, without necessarily having thought too much about it, came to regard Fianna Fáil ascendancy over opposition parties in brutalistically Darwinian terms.

The country had seemed to lose the most modest and most under-rated virtue of democracy, the habit of alterance [his emphasis]. The phenomenon was cumulative. Without changes of Government, the sense of the necessity of politics atrophied. The electorate was habituated to Fianna Fáil governance, and – somewhat unfairly, certainly by the 2007 election – the lack of governmental experience became a reproach against Fine Gael and Labour.

Certainly periodic changes of government are healthy for democracy, however, in our case I’d be more inclined to place the blame for the lack of alterence at multiple doors than solely at Fianna Fáil’s. Continue reading “It's too easy to blame just one organisation”

In case you missed it. Top regional story in The Irish Times…

The M3 motorway which cost an estimated €1 billion will be officially opened today.

The 61km motorway linking the Dublin/Meath border with the Meath/Cavan border is believed to be the largest single road project to be constructed in Ireland and incorporates bypasses of Dunshaughlin, Navan and Kells.

In addition to the motorway itself, the overall project involves a network of 49km of ancillary public roads and 34km of farm access roads.

And a separate smaller story down the page…

THE CHIEF executive of the National Roads Authority has written to a TD to inform him that pyrite was used in the construction of the M3 motorway in Co Meath.

In his letter to Fine Gael TD Shane McEntee, roads authority chief executive Fred Barry said that “as far as we are aware,” the pyrite was used as filling for embankments.

And the last line of an RTE report on an April 6 meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport…

Mr McEntee had asked the National Roads Authority if pyrite had been used in the construction of the M3 motorway and was told there was no evidence that it had.

A more complete Irish Times report on the same meeting…

Mr Barry told Meath TD Shane McEntee there was no need for an independent audit of the M3 or the section of N3 from the West-link toll to Clonee.

Speaking at the Oireachtas Committee on Transport today Mr Barry said infill material for support structures such as cement pillars and steel bars was rigorously monitored and could be traced. The NRA was happy no material from the two quarries identified had been used in connection with either steel or cement.

He said the material from the quarries could only have been used in relation to embankments. In this regard, pyrite – if it had been present at all – was not boxed in by foundations as it would be in a house. There would be minimal impact if the material “shifted, heaved, or expanded” as it might in foundations.

And finally, a quote from the letter which was received by Deputy McEntee from the head of the NRA this week…

“In so far as we are aware the use of pyrite-bearing rock for the construction of the M3 was primarily as embankment fill, with some use as roads base”.

“As far as we’re aware…” qualifying statements are often dangerous.

In reality, however – though Deputy McEntee’s enquiries are welcome – the likelihood of pyrite causing serious damage to a road is fairly small. Pyrite expands when it comes in contact with water, in the enclosed foundations of a dwelling structure that’s a serious issue, in the open base of a road there is space for it to expand, hence the ‘no-biggy’ reaction. Still, while this news story gets a ‘meh’ it does give me a tangetal jump-off point to address another point. Sorry for the delay in getting it to!

Pyrite in gaffs.

Serious problem, which goes beyond one or two developers. The expanding mineral in the foundations can leave massive cracks in the walls of apartment blocks and housing developments. I ain’t talking hair-line either, I’m talking visible-from-a-distance type stuff. There’s one development along the Dart line where they’ve had to close the adjacent playground because the crack along the ground means it’s too dangerous for kids to play.

A friend of mine works for a company which repairs buildings which have been effected by pyrite. He showed me photos of one block he was working on where the walls had bowed outward by about 25 degrees… crazy-looking. I’ll try to get them from him to post here later so you can have a goo. They had to knock down all the internal non-structural walls on the ground floor, dig up 8 feet of foundation inside, remove all that material, replace it with better stuff and allow it to settle – and do similar on the outside – before residents could return. Imagine me sucking air through my front teeth before I say this… “that’s a serious job”. Serious jobs cost serious money.

Oh… by the way, Nama.

Lastly, a further tangental footnote: For the last few months there were three big sites in Dublin which many said were the only things keeping what’s left of the construction industry in the capital afloat. The Aviva Stadium, the new terminal at Dublin Airport and the new Mater Hospital building. The Aviva Stadium site closed last month and the terminal is finished in the next six weeks, I hear. Thankfully, at least for some of those in the construction sector, the Mater isn’t due for a while yet. 14,000 people or so in all between the three sites. A lot expect it to be their last contract in a while.

We’ve turned a corner lads!

Gav is in New York for a few days (he’s gone all Sex and the City, want some new malonos? Email him.) and I’m snowed under with work, so I suspect it will be quiet around these parts until Sunday. In the mean-time, you should read this brilliant piece of commentary by Hugh Green. I could quote the whole thing but…

Now, consider the Irish Times editorial from the other day. Its title is ‘Self-inflicted wounds’. But the wounds referred to in the title are not those inflicted on the bodies of the flotilla passengers by Israeli guns.

Rather, the editorial is speaking about the State of Israel as though it had the properties of a human body, and as though its murderous actions were primarily harmful, not on account of the lives wiped out by its elite commandos (to say nothing of what the Israeli state is inflicting on the Palestinians in Gaza), but on account of the damage done to the State itself.

This is just one example among countless of how, within the discourse of the nation-state, priority is given to the protection of the state over the protection of human beings. If the destruction of the human beings is wrong in this case, it is implied, it is because it runs counter to the interests of the state.

Perhaps the best case that can be made by this line of reasoning, is that since the state is supposed to represent the interests of its citizens, any action that presents difficulties for the state runs counter to the best interests of its citizens.

But there is no reason why the interests of a state should automatically coincide with the interests of its citizens. Furthermore, the interests of the citizens so defined are incommensurable with the interests of the human beings who fall under the category of citizen; and no account is given of what happens to those human beings who are not its citizens.

I really can’t do it justice with a quote. Go read it all. It’s the type of thing blogs were made to hold.

The Emergency obtained an interesting leaked letter. See below…

A subscription to their blog is recommended if you’re into political satire (who isn’t?)

Ivor is a goner. Has’ta’be.

Noel Whelan makes some good points about the benefits of transparency to the exchequer in his Irish Times column today.

[…] the scale of the saving made by the Embassy in 2009 illustrates how powerful publication or the fear of publication can be in transforming the decision-making process as to how public money is spent.

Unfortunately – or perhaps understandably, given he is a political columnist – he talks about it only in terms of data relating to public expenditure and politics. In doing so the larger point about the benefits of publishing public data gets missed.

Imagine for the past five years Tallaght hospital had been publishing two set of figures. One set for the number of people they employ who are qualified to examine x-rays and another for the number of x-rays examined. Would someone have noticed that at some point apparently less people begun examining more x-rays than during the previous time period? Who knows. There would have been more chance of it happening if it was public, that we can say. It would have allowed someone – an analyst, academic, expert – to ask an intelligent (see the way I didn’t include ‘journalist’ there a few words back?) question and maybe solve or avoid what, it later emerged, was a serious problem.

Not to mention the fact releases a load of public data would result in a daycent number of high-skilled jobs and a serious amount of start-ups.

In Ireland public data is published arbitrarily and in file formats which do not encourage further analysis. Most government departments release only the datasets which they are required to by law, nothing more. Even when datasets are sought under the Freedom of Information Act they’re, bizarrely, often supplied as paper copies of electronic spreadsheets, not the electronic files themselves. This makes it far more difficult to analyse numerically and extrapolate publicly valuable statistics. That’s got to change.

We need a Data.gov.ie. We already pay for all public data to be collected, stored, examined and maintained, why can’t we use some of it?

In today’s world the value is not in keeping the information and selling it, it’s in making it available and using the resultant information to do what you do better. The US has recognised this, after a campaign by the Guardian the UK Government did too, check out the information you can get on those sites and consider the uses. Even the World Bank has started throwing massive datasets online and saying to the people “have it at it, lads”. Not to compare this little website to any of those entities but the expenses information and datasets Gav throws up, and analyses we do, comes from thinking along the same lines.

A better informed public is a more engaged electorate. Information is power. In a republic power should be in the hands of the citizens. So give us our data.

Footnote: What’s eTransparency, Noel Whelan? Surely putting it online is the default way to make information available nowadays. The E is completely superfluous. Putting Es before stuff to make them interwebzish… like totally soooo 1998, dude. Seriously though, solid column, worth reading.

Forgive the scraggy style, I’ve something on my chest. Typing off the top of the head.

Amnesty International Ireland have criticised the human rights record of the Irish State for for failing to protect children. Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has also weighed in against the HSE for refusing to supply files on children who died in care. A report on Irishtimes.com has more.

An earlier article, since updated, had this amazing set of quotes and pars about HSE chief, Brendan Drumm… Continue reading “Four One Nine”

John Devitt of TI lays it out on Dermot Ahern’s whistleblowers’ charter-type proposals…

The legislation will not protect a single employee in our banks reporting dodgy loans to directors. It will not protect anyone reporting insider dealing or any other of the multitude of offences under the Companies Acts. It will not protect any public servant reporting the cover up or misuse of power by other officials or ministers.

In fact, the Government’s sector-by-sector approach to whistleblower protection will not protect many whistleblowers at all. The DPP’s call for meaningful legislation is likely to remain unanswered.

Read all on The Irish Times opinion pages.