More CAP stats

I’ve taken all 137k (€1.9bn) of CAP payments from 2009 and placed them into a pivot table. (Data thanks to farmsubsidy.org) Here are the stats:

I’ve added in both county population counts and county size by square kilometre. Here is a graphic of county distribution:

Would anyone like to run analyses of per head distribution, or maybe per sq kilometre distribution?

Update: Reader Anne has come back with the requested analysis! Cheers Anne!

Seamus Coffey on CAP payments

Interesting post from Seamus Coffey on the Irish CAP figures (published top 100 here recently).

Natural curiosity brought me to examine the figures from my home parish.

Here I saw that there were 150 recipients in the parish who received an average payout of €12,142, slightly below the national average.  The total monies received by residents of the parish under the scheme was €1,821,339.  It’s like the parish wins a lotto jackpot every year – guaranteed!

…

According to the 2006 Census data there were 26 males and 5 females with recorded occupations of ‘Farming, Fishing and Forestry Managers’ in the Cappamore DED.  There were also three males and one female recorded as ‘Other Agricultural Workers’.  This would suggest there is a maximum of 35 people employed as farmers in the Cappamore DED.  The parish of Cappamore had 150 recipients (131 males and 19 females) under the CAP scheme.

A blog worth reading, that’un.

Digest – May 10 2010

InDigestion, see below.

– HOME

This story is nuts (“Anglo boss ‘was told to keep quiet'” – Sunday Times). I think the people have shell-shock from the constant stream of similar stories coming out of Anglo and the Department of Finance. “Oh, that again? Heh. Yeah.”

Irish Times business podcast feature on public sector reform in Minnesota is interesting.

May 5th; Singing the sash, May 7th; singing the blues, from Slugger.

Abigail Rieley on the moment the jury returned the verdict in the trial of David Curran and Sean Keogh for the murder of two Polish men. Touching.

Dierdre O’Shaughnessy of the Cork Independent writes from Port Au Prince.

The most mundane aspects of life are here: women wash clothes in small basins of water distributed from tankers; they cook whatever food they have outside their tents at small camp fires; they hang clothing to dry on their tarps.

Cracker of an opinion piece from Patrick Freyne on the back page of the Sunday Tribune.

Yet, apart from a public sector march here or there, a once-off kerfuffle over medical cards for pensioners, and four million late night pub-rants, the Irish public have been very, very compliant. In Iceland, the populace responded to their economic clusterf*ck by descending on their houses of parliament banging pots and pans. In America, right-wing groups protest against their own healthcare interests with a network of gun-toting “Tea-Parties”. Here the public sector demonstrated their anger at pay-cuts by refusing to answer a few phones while the rest of us express our rage at a huge bank-bailout and the failure of our institutions by working harder (take that, banks!).

Faced with the same problems as Greece (and we have some of the same problems) I think we actually would resort to a campaign of dirty looks. We expect our politicians to guess how we feel, like the passive aggressive spouse in a sitcom called That’s Ireland! (“What do you want now, honey?” asks the Dáil shrugging its shoulders. “Is it a medical card? Is it a new road? I just can’t tell!” Cue laughter from the studio audience in the bond markets).

Feature on prostitution in Ireland by Conor Lally in The Irish Times.

– WORLD Continue reading “Digest – May 10 2010”

Anglo Irish JCF LLP

Last week I blogged about Anglo Irish JCF 1 LLP, a company with an illustrious list of board members. However, following some searches I found something else that looked strange.

According to the Register of Members’ Interests 2006, Senator Feargal Quinn invested in a similarly named company. It was Anglo Irish JCF LLP (without the 1). It is a curious coincidence. So I contacted Mr Quinn about the declared investment asking him the nature of the investment.

Mr Quinn stated:

I’m glad you asked as I didn’t actually invest in it, it was a mistake on my declaration.

I sought further clarification on the nature of the investment and whether Mr Quinn had corrected the record.

I regret that I cannot clarify further for you as I don’t personally deal with my investments and I don’t know the background. In relation to changing the record, your request has drawn my attention to my error and I will now correct it.

Interesting.

Der Spiegel explains…

There’s some very nice explanatory journalism in Der Spiegel today. Warning; long, long, long article is very long, but enjoyable and definitely worth reading.

Der Spiegel – The Mother of All Bubbles

Written for the layman with a global outlook, it explains how we… ehem… how we are where we are… and where we’re going. Pretty even handed – quotes from conservatives (e.g Niall Ferguson) and liberals (e.g Krugman) – in fairly equal measure.

Covers pretty much the whole globe, Ireland gets a mention or two. If I was to recommend reading one article today, this would be it.

Proposals for funding reform

I’m not in agreement with the suggestions in the The Irish Times editorial today for improving – in terms of reducing corruption and improving transparency – how our political system is funded. The leader writer is rowing in behind the Director of Public Prosecutions, James Hamilton’s recent comments. I quote today’s piece…

Some senior politicians still defend private sector political funding, even though it contains within it the seeds of corruption. They argue it is an important element in a participatory democracy. Invariably, they insist no favours are provided in return for such unprompted largesse. That self-serving bluster no longer carries any conviction, particularly in relation to planning matters, where the money trail has been easily identified. It is time to make a clean cut with the past.

When Director of Public Prosecutions James Hamilton warns that political corruption will continue for so long as there is private financing of political parties, what remains to be said? Do our politicians favour a continuation of dubious practices? After all, the State now provides alternative and generous funding for the political process. There was never a better time for comprehensive reform.

I’m inherently wary of suggestions that the State get involved in funding politics. As a firm believer in the value of diversity of viewpoints it irks me to think someone in the pay of the State would be deciding who gets what funding when. No matter how independent the office deciding the allocation, it won’t be independent enough. The possibility of tiered political system emerging also worries me. Continue reading “Proposals for funding reform”