Author: Mark Coughlan

Kate Shanahan, a TV and radio producer and lecturer in the DIT School of Media, has a piece in the ‘Think Tank’ slot on the [paywalled] Sunday Times opinion pages today. The headline is ‘Media can’t chase after squirrels’. The piece chastises the media for following the shiny stories from hour to hour instead of staying focused and providing depth on the important stories over long periods.

I largely agree with her until she begins her conclusion…

“In the Irish context, we may prioritise news values as they apply to the current crisis.

A story about Ivor Callely’s expense claims should not overshadow one about a semi-state that has squandered millions, such as Fas.”

Let’s not forget that the Ivor Callely story is not your average expenses story. It’s not about him being kicked out of the Seanad and going to the courts. It’s not about him claiming travel expenses from a house in Cork which wasn’t his principle residence.

It’s about him allegedly using forged documents to claim money from the taxpayer-funded parliament. That would be fraud.

That’s serious.

Dismiss your politicians’ apparent financial discrepancies as small-fry because it’s only a few quid here and there and watch it happen again and again. Then watch that attitude permeate through society and into – amongst other places – semi-state bodies. “Fair play to him, sure wouldn’t we all do it?”. Well, no.

When it comes to public representatives – those charged with giving direction and providing moral and political leadership – we shouldn’t care how many figures follow the currency symbol.

Ivor Callely isn’t a squirrel… he’s a… let’s not forget that.

Slow posting around here of late because we’ve just been gunged with data from two or three sources. We’re processing it at the minute and will post as soon as we can. Sit tight. We’re a duck. All the effort going on where you can’t see it. A journalistic duck.

In the meantime, I’m outsourcing comment to Ireland After Nama.

Firstly, Delphine Ancien…

The comment came as a reply to Richard Crowley asking about future government’s borrowing and the high level of (over 7% at the moment, compared to average levels of 2 to 4% across Europe). Brian Lenihan attempted to dismiss the question as he said something like “we have enough in the government’s coffers to keep the country going until the middle of next year, so no need to borrow”. Until the middle of next year? Wow, phew, I feel much better now, I thought we were about to run out of money, but we have until the middle of next year.

The presenter insisted with his question though, and mentioned that sure the government was going to need to borrow again around February-March, because we will need money (you know, to keep the country running after the middle of next year), and asked something along the lines of “what will you do if the interest rates remained as high?”, insisting on the fact that they may be as high as 8% (and, as admitted by Taoiseach Brian Cowen, they are not foreseen to be lower than 6.4% in 2011).

That’s when Brian Lenihan replied: “I’m not going to be tied down with numbers”. (I know, I’ve written down that quote several times already, but I just can’t get over it…. A Minister for Finance in charge of the budget who says that he is not going to be tied down with numbers?!? Americans would add something like ‘WTF?!?’ here – not meaning to be rude, but I feel that expletive sounds about right here, I reckon that’s how many people would feel hearing that).

Secondly, Mary Gilmartin on the cost of education.

And lastly, Cian O’Callaghan on budgetary madness.

FOOTNOTE: Cathal Furey, a friend of mine, shot the excellent footage below of the student march during the week. Gardai clearly over-reacted, possibly in an illegal manner. They behaved as if their job was to exact revenge for protesters’ behaviour and damage instead remaining above and upholding the law while regaining order. They acted like the biggest bullies in the playground when they should’ve been the school principal.

Anyway, it’s strange how none of the media coverage mentioned the presence of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement. They’re clearly some of the ring leaders. Watch for the black nylon hooded jackets with the small green emblems on the chest and shoulders (see image). Continue reading “Still live and kicking”

Elaine Byrne has a good post over on PoliticalReform.ie about the recent Transparency International Corruption Perception Index.

Ireland ranked 14th [least corrupt] worldwide.

Elaine Byrne raises some questions about how perception and reality may differ due to the methodology employed. Corruption is inherently an extremely difficult thing to measure. What is corruption? What do the people surveyed perceive as corruption? Yadda yadda yadda.

The reports on individual countries in the International Progress Report are usually more interesting.

FOOTNOTE: Regular readers may (?) be happy to know I managed to avoid being shot by a trench-coated man with a silenced pistol as I casually walked through the dark rain-soaked city today. Always a positive, that.

… Or maybe it’s not the ‘Real Mark Coughlan’ typing this and I just want you to think I’ve not been assasinated?

Okay, I’ll stop now.

Myself and Gav have a policy of not revealing much detail about the servers from which we get visits to this website. The info we receive isn’t really useful – or usually interesting – anyway. The logs will only identify very broadly the company or location of someone viewing the site. Stuff like “Department of Environment” and “Ireland” to give a top-of-the-head example, it never really refines by individual or even building, though that depends on how the server is named.

Oh, and if we are found via a link it’ll give us details of the link too, so we can see who’s referring to us. All that is done through the free version of Statcounter, so this ain’t nothing fancy or technical. It’s pretty much standard for most people with a website to get such information via logs.

Anyway, I was browsing the Statcounter account earlier, saw this and thought it quite amusing…

VISITOR ANALYSIS
Referrer	http://www.google.ie/search?q=%22ivor callely%22 the story.ie&num=50&hl=en&source=lnms&ei=kvDGTKWPEcu84AaD4oXpDw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&ved=0CBkQ_AU
Search Engine Phrase	“ivor callely” the story.ie
Search Engine Name	Google
Search Engine Host	www.google.ie
Host Name
IP Address	REDACTED BY MARK
Country	United States
Region	Ohio
City	Columbus
ISP	Dod Network Information Center
Returning Visits	0
Visit Length	18 hours 51 mins 49 secs

The DoD Network Information Center in Columbus, Ohio is…

a combat support agency responsible for planning, developing, fielding, operating, and supporting command, control, communications, and information systems that serve the needs of the President, Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Combatant Commanders, and the other Department of Defense (DoD) Components under all conditions of peace and war.

… and they were googling “thestory.ie Ivor Callely” which brought them to this page. They then spent several hours on the site before exiting. They arrived again soon after, this time googling “site:thestory.ie Ivor Callely” which directs Google to provide results for only mentions of Ivor Callely, only on this website. A while later they left again…

Well, chums, there you have it; Ivor Callely’s story, an issue of US national security.

Don’t saw we didn’t warn ye’.

FOOTNOTE: In a shocking turn of events the person in DoD arrived back this morning at 11am after googling, ominously… wait for it… “Mark Coughlan”.

If I disappear after pressing publish on this post please tell my mommy I love her.

Here’s a Green Party press release that just arrived in the inbox. It’s headlined “Days of the corrupt politician are numbered – Ban on corporate donations will help clean up politics for good”…

Green Party TD for Dublin North and Justice spokesman Trevor Sargent has welcomed the latest progress in relation to investigations into the allegations that money was paid to politicians in return for land rezoning votes during the 1990s.

… “There is still some way to go yet, but no person who either gave or received a corrupt payment should be let off the hook for their shameless disregard for sustainable planning and development.”

Deputy Sargent concluded: “It is for this very reason that the Green Party in Government is working to bring forward an immediate ban on corporate donations to political parties. This ban is not just in regard to Government parties either. It is common knowledge that both Labour and Fine Gael accept corporate donations to support the funding of their respective parties and their elections.”

Firstly, all the councillors were from Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil continue to accept corporate donations. No mention of that in the press release.

Secondly, the alleged payments were not donations. Does Mr Sargent believe the alleged payments would not have been made were a ban on corporate donations in place at the time? Does Mr Sargent really believe the people allegedly involved would have taken heed of the proposed law were it on the books?

Thirdly, Mr Sargent’s party is in Government with Fianna Fáil who only two days ago applied a whip to its members to reject the Lost at Sea report from the Ombudsman. The report raised serious issues about the ‘maladministration’ of FF TD, Frank Fahey, when he was a minister in the department of agriculture. Where was Mr Sargent on this matter?

Back to donations; as I have said time and again; our current system would work well if the disclosure thresholds were simply lowered or removed so that details of all donations were made public, not just the tiny proportion declared currently. A ban on corporate donations will simply see donations come through other, less public – perhaps less legal – means.

As the Council on Corruption in Europe (GRECO) has said time and again for the last eleven years – repeat, eleven years – all political parties should be forced to publish financial accounts. Ireland has been continously criticised for not legislating for that by the Council. Just last January GRECO published a report on Ireland. In an unusual move our own Standards in Public Office Commission explicitly stated the Government should implement the GRECO proposals.

The Government – led by Fianna Fáil, with whom the Greens are now in office, for the whole period – has ignored them consistently. Mr Sargent, when will the GRECO recommendations be acted upon?

By-the-bye; GRECO does not recommend a ban on corporate donations.

Still, if the Greens are going to do it, they should get on with it. They’ve been issuing pressers on this in-the-works legislation since entering office.

FOOTNOTE: On the topic of the Green Party and corruption; yesterday John Gormley announced that the era of bad planning was over. Just like that.

Green Party leader John Gormley said this evening he was confident the era of bad planning had come to an end.

Speaking in Downpatrick at the AGM of the Northern Ireland Greens, Mr Gormley said he had “noted with interest” the announcement yesterday evening that corruption charges were being brought against four former Dublin City councillors.

“I am reminded of the episode where one of those charged, former councillor and senator Don Lydon, put my colleague Trevor Sargent into a headlock in the chamber of Dublin County Council, as Trevor highlighted payments to politicians involving land zoning,” he said.

“Then as now, the Green Party was a solitary voice against bad and reckless planning, while councillors from Fianna Fáil , Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin – at the behest of developers – rezoned as much of our countryside as they possibly could.”

… That comes two weeks after this press release was issued.

Green Party Senator Niall O Brolcháin has lashed out at rezoning councillors on Galway City Council, claiming that they have learned nothing at all from the property crash.

Following a decision to rezone over 20 acres of land in various locations across the City to commercial and industrial use, Senator O Brolcháin said: “Councillors are still rezoning land to feather the nests of individual property developers and speculators – indeed some of the Councillors are developers themselves and have been forced to declare conflicts of interest in the past.

“I would commend the Councillors who have stood firm against this rezoning, which was carried out against the advice of the acting city manager and senior planners. The current mayor went so far as to use his casting vote to rezone one of the most controversial sites on the Tuam road…

Doesn’t seem like the era has ended to me. Still, you’ve got to commend O Brolcháin for publicising it. I suppose you can’t legislate for… err, idiocy, let’s call it this time. But “then as now” is pretty much dead right.

Via Conor Pope on Twitter

The Irish Times: Former Dublin City councillors Tony Fox, Colm McGrath, Sean Gilbride, and Don Lydon charged with corruption.

More details soon, I’d expect.

UPDATE: Bit more context. All deny it.

Lydon is the guy who put Trevor Sargent in a headlock in a panic after Sargent waved a cheque from a builder in the air at a council meeting and asked “who else got one of these?”

He went on to become a Fianna Fáil senator.

Gilbride was an unsuccessful Fianna Fail general election candidate in 1987 and and 1989. He was a councillor in Balbriggan. Here’s a 2006 report from the Indo on the Mahon Tribunal hearings…

Former FF councillor Sean Gilbride took a career break from his teaching job to canvass for the Quarryvale development and also for a seat in the Dail, the Mahon Tribunal heard.

Developer Owen O’Callaghan paid him IR£15,500 for his efforts but the bill was never invoiced to Mr O’Callaghan’s company, Riga.

Yesterday Clare Cowhig, the auditor who prepared the accounts for Riga, told the tribunal that she had not looked for an invoice from Mr Gilbride.

She had been told by Mr O’Callaghan’s business partner, John Deane, what this IR£15,500 was for and accepted it without an invoice as the amount was small in the overall context.

But tribunal counsel Patricia Dillon put it to her that if she was prepared to accept the word of a director in the absence of an invoice for the payment to Mr Gilbride, then it was conceivable this could be done in relation to other items in the accounts.

A corrupt payment of €1,000 to Mr Gilbride was also included in the list of charges against disgraced former Fianna Fáil press officer and lobbyist, Frank Dunlop.

Tony Fox was a Fianna Fail councillor in Dundrum. He was removed from the ticket as a candidate in the recent local elections by party headquarters following the charges against Dunlop. He ran as an Independent and won a seat in DL-Rathdown.

Frank Dunlop described Colm McGrath as Mr Insatiable according to this December 2000 Indo report…

FORMER Fianna Fáil Councillor Colm McGrath, the man dubbed “Mr Insatiable” by Frank Dunlop, is now alleged to have received at least £60,000 in payments to assist in rezoning.

The Flood tribunal was told on Friday that he received £30,000 in cash to assist in the rezoning of part of one of Europe’s leading breeding farms Airlie Stud in Lucan from agricultural to residential lands in 1993. The payments followed persistent demands by McGrath, who originally wanted £50,000 in cash from Sonja Rogers widow of Captain Tim Rogers, renowned thoroughbred breeder, former aide de camp to Winston Churchill and a close friend of Charles Haughey.

He ran in the recent local elections as an independent but failed to win a seat.

Amazing how these things happen on a Friday afternoon, isn’t it?

I admit to being pleasantly surprised on seeing this headline in the Irish Independent, especially since there isn’t much to be gained publicity-wise from it (as opposed to the political benefits of a Seanie Fitz arrest).

Multi-millionaire businessman and property developer Jim Kennedy was in garda custody last night after officers arrested him for questioning about corruption and bribery allegations.

The 63-year-old man was detained by officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) — which has sought to question him for the past seven years.

Kennedy has since told Gardai he felt unwell in custody and been brought to hospital.

It is alleged Kennedy paid Frank Dunlop, the disgraced former Fianna Fáil press secretary and lobbyist, to bribe councillors in Dun-Laorghaire to rezone agricultural land in Carrickmines as industrial. The land is owned by Jackson Way, property company which is linked to Kennedy and an Isle of Man based solicitor, John Caldwell. The rezoning immediately raised the value of the lands from €7.9m to about €60m.

Any sale, transfer or disposal has been frozen by the courts since 2006. After interviewing Dunlop and county councillors, CAB officers provided an affidavit to the High Court stating they believed Kennedy and Dunlop had an agreement that Dunlop would receive the commercial value of one acre of the land (c. €60,000) if they were ‘successfully’ rezoned.

Both Dunlop and Goerge Redmond, the former Dublin assistant county manager, have served time on charges relating to corruption… maybe one day we might get on to the politicians? Ye’ know, the lynch-pins of the whole scheme with the blatant corrupt actions?

For the record; I reckon nothing much will come of the Kennedy arrest. Could be wrong, could be wrong.

Any news on that lobbyists register that you think will make a difference, dear ol’ Green Party?

Malachy Browne of Politico.ie has developed a useful and welcome database of national representatives. It contains details/profiles for all TDs, senators and MEPs and takes updates from KildareStreet.com, Google News, the Magill and Village archive, and the individuals’ Facebook and Twitter pages.

Excellent stuff. Only thing I’d question is naming the salary and expenses section ‘The Gravy Train’. But who am I to question cynicism… Very nice work, Mister Browne.