Category: Comment

…as the O’Leary-bullying-the-State-story seems to have become known, Gerard Cunningham says it best.

…Then imagine that another company comes along, and decides it wants some of the plant the OPW has already leased.

Imagine that this latercomer calls in a few political favours, and the Minister in charge instructs the OPW to break the leasing contracts it has set up, take back the plant and machinery it has already leased, and give it to the latecomer, a competitor of the company which took out the lease in good faith….

Read the rest, it’s only a short post. And subscribe to that blog too, it’s on my ‘Check First Thing in the Morning’ list.

I’m with the Government on this one. Michael O’Leary could with remembering he’s just a taxpayer, not matter how much of it he may pay. Also some seem to be forgetting there are occupied, already operational, currently-people-are-being-paid-to-do-it Aer Lingus roles involved too.

O’Leary is a master communicator (self-promoter and spinner), he does make Coughlan look even more incompetent than she is, but he’s wrong and being facetious in this case.

Now, getting back to Willie O’Dea and that resignation thing. Harry McGee outlines the details in a good post on the Irish Times Politics blog for those looking for a recap.

Green Party, where’s all that rule-of-law and ethics talk from back in the Planet Bertie days gone?… Did I see you lot curling up in a ball again there earlier?

Irish Times lead editorial today is on Willie O’Dea’s… ehem… ‘false statement’ in a sworn affidavit to court.

In other jurisdictions, prominent people have been sent to jail for incorrect statements. Here, Fianna Fáil closed ranks. Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern ignored the substantive issue and described Fine Gael’s behaviour in pursuing the matter as “despicable”. Earlier, leader of the Seanad Donie Cassidy declared that the people of Limerick were fortunate to have such a capable representative. There is no question about Mr O’Dea’s political or ministerial abilities. What is at issue is his behaviour in maligning a political opponent during an election campaign and the legal and political consequences that have flowed from that action. As a solicitor, Mr O’Dea must realise the seriousness of the situation. If he does not, then Mr Cowen, who is also a solicitor, should be able to advise him.

Good piece. The pressure rightly builds. Fair play to the Limerick Chronicle.

Willie is loving the attention. This is him laughing as Fine Gael deputies shout at the Ceann Comhairle demanding a time for his statement on the matter be set…

– Screengrab via Christine Bohan

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]

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.

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.

Comedic interlude courtesy of Bill “Still a Fine Gael Councillor” Tormey,

Open letter to George Lee – Bill Tormey

Highlights include the misspelling of An Taoiseach’s name, use of the word “prat”, and this trio eyebrow-twisting paragraphs:

I never regarded you as a heavy economic commentator because I never read you in the Irish Times or other broadsheet. I rarely watch TV news. I read newspapers by the tonne. Sad B……d amn’t I?

Fine Gael would be much better with you in the Lindon [sic] Johnson position inside the tent. I wish you all the best with RTE and challenge you to publish your prescriptions for Ireland in peer reviewed academic journals.

You could start your renewed career by chairing a tv series on how to save Ireland. Your point about export driven recovery is prescient. We must get services going but selling services at home as well as overseas is crucial.

Not forgetting this…

Well Mr Lee, like you I was drawn to politics to try to change society and make things fairer. John Kennedy, Supermac, Harold Wilson, Sean Lemass, John F Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Lindon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, Donogh O’Malley, Pierre Trudeau, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Francois Mitterand, Pope John 23rd , Indira Ghandi, Jomo Kenyatta, Michael Okpara, Justin Keating, Brendan Corish, Declan Costello, Garrett Fitzgerald, Ruairi Quinn, Dick Spring, Peter Barry, Fergus Finlay, Pat Magner, Nelson Mandela, Michael Gorbachev, Anthony Wedgewood Benn, Ted Kennedy were all significant influences on me. James Reston, Dick Walsh, Olivia O’Leary and many other journalists also played key roles in my formation. However, I have never been a mere fan, more a critical admirer of each.

Supermac? Harold Mcmillan? Or the guy who does the chippers?

Anyway, enjoy. Don’t you go saying we never have no craic n’or nuttin’ on TheStory.

… 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.