Access to Information Updates
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.
Alri’ boyez and gurrels… The new Monday Digest as promised.
HOE’UM
Gerard O’Neill on the economic impact of declining marraige rates.
John Naughton; Twitterphobia and the mainstream media.
Read this by the inspiring Mark Pollock; undressed and smiling again.
Top journalist spun by continuous repeatition of government claim. Karl Whelan gets the nuance.
Mark Davenport of BBC NI on a political session of competing insults.
Ken Foxe on a trip Noel Dempsey took to London on the government jet…
When I sought details of what Mr Dempsey was doing in London under the so-called Freedom of Information Act, all references to the meeting were deleted from the records.
Access to them was refused under a variety of different grounds of the FOI Act, chiefly relating to ongoing government deliberations and the argument that it might indicate a government position.
The Department of Transport – which in my personal experience has a particularly severe approach to Freedom of Information – thus censored the documents in the “public interest”.
[…] He arrived at the Embassy from the Kensington Hotel, had a 90-minute meeting, was collected and headed back to Dublin on the government jet.
The Minister was accompanied by his Private Secretary Veronica Scanlan, who is the decision maker on this Freedom of Information request.
It is nice to know that Ministers can now use the government jet, run up a bill of €23,000 in the process, and then simply refuse to give an explanation of what they were doing.
This, at least in my experience, is an unprecedented situation
Documents are there too.
P O’Neill; You can’t lock up and entire bank, can you?
As part of an ongoing process, we now have published the FOI logs for the Department of the Taoiseach from 2003 to 2009. Here they are:
Related:
Letter in Saturday’s Irish Times…
A chara,
I write to voice my concern about the future of this country. I am sitting on the steps of the Department of Justice & Law Reform, the sun is beating down on my shoulders and I write to expel a dark thought from my mind. What is to become of the disenfranchised generation of Irish citizens whose future happiness and prosperity in this country has been cast in great black shadows by the criminal activities of our financial institutions and the gross mismanagement of our national affairs by our trusted Government?
Like so many other young Irishmen and women, my partner and I have decided to leave Ireland to live and work in another country. I came to the city today to prepare some things for our trip and to say goodbye to the capital for a while, to soak in some of her unique flavour before departing for Perth in Australia. What is it that makes Ireland a special country? What are the deepest moral values that are the foundations of Irish society? As I walk, thinking about Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan’s recent announcement of the country’s national debt (death?) I was deeply concerned not that I no longer knew what this core moral value might be, but saddened to find that I no longer care.
Seemingly, the woeful economic state we find ourselves in is merely a symptom of a far more threatening problem – a spiritual or existential crisis at play in Irish society. My own sense of moral apathy makes me think a deep wound has been inflicted by the bankers’ greed and it is not in our pockets but sadly in the collective heart of the Irish people. We can endure the toxic financial wreck that is Nama’s balance sheet, the grossly unfair debt saddled so abruptly on honest, hard-working tax-payers.
We cannot endure however, the sheer sense of injustice and the total loss of moral law at the filthy hands of these so-called rogues and sleeveens (it is equally disheartening to see we have had cause over the years to establish a colloquialism to best describe such recurrent characters in Irish society).
An example has been set by the leaders of this country that their selfish and cynical behaviour is an acceptable discourse in modern Ireland. Our potential to act meaningfully and righteously in this society has been shrouded in this cynicism by the greedy, ignorant brutes that head our banks and by the lacklustre unimaginative politicians that sit in our Government offices.
As a young able man I am ashamed that my chosen course of action is not violent protest (there should be rioting in the streets outside Dáil Eireann and Anglo Irish Bank); rather I choose to leave the wreckage – feeling as if a bully has just entered the playing field, burst the ball and walked away.
Sitting outside the Department of Justice Law Reform, whose steps feel like empty totems of the now laughable notion of justice, I think that the task at hand is not to set the country’s financial institutions back on track. It is to inspire an entire generation of skilled workers leaving our shores to return at some point to rebuild Ireland in the spirit of honesty and hard work, with a belief in our ability to live for the prosperity of others as well as ourselves. – Yours, etc,
BEN MULLEN,
Raheen Park,
Bray, Co Wicklow.
Wexford-based blogger Guido Fawkes – who usually focuses on the goings-on in Westminister – has published what he says is “the list of foreign Anglo-Irish bondholders as at the close of business tonight.”
That’s a pretty refined sentence. He doesn’t mention if they’re senior or sub-ordinated, though you’d guess at sub. Nor does he say if there is a corresponding list of Irish-based bondholders, though you’d presume there has to be.
Also, it’s only €4bn of €30bn and many are funds probably running accounts for clients.
Still, it seems he has figures – some damn important context – for each one published too, so if you’re interested stay tuned there.
Of course TheStory would be interested in any similar information also! Props to Guido on obtaining the list assuming it stacks up.
We have long been interested about the rather large investments the Quinn Group made in Russia and the Ukraine back in the day. Or not back in the day, depending on your viewpoint. Afterall, it was only last year, post Anglo nationalisation, that Mr Quinn was out in Kazan (yes that’s a Russian city you’ve never heard of), opening a warehouse/distribution facility. I wonder how it’s going? If you’re in doubt, here’s where the plant is:
The Quinn Group were kind enough to offer us this hilarious video of the opening of the facility via YouTube. I do wonder who owes money to who in this case and if the taxpayer is at this stage involved, especially as Quinn/Quinn Group is the largest debtor to Anglo Irish Bank.
It is also worth noting that we pointed out the basic subsidiary structure some time ago. Quinn Assets Sweden AB is one of the Swedish subsidiaries of Quinn Group (Nedacin Limited (Cyprus) is a subsidiary of Assets Sweden AB. Nedacin has a subsidiary in Russia called Striotlend (стриотлэнд) . Striotlend was apparently used to purchase Russian assets.
Ukrainian assets appears to have been bought via Quinn Holdings Ukraine, which is a subsidiary of Quinn Holdings Sweden (AB). This Ukrainian website appears to report news that Quinn Sweden Holdings AB bought a 92.75% stake in Quinn Holdings Ukraine Ltd in April 2008, around the time the Anglo share price was falling, and the Anglo 10 were getting their act together. Quinn Holdings Ukraine paid upwards of $155m for two assets in Kiev in 2006.
Here’s a slight re-ordering/re-wording of the bottom-of-the-page story that appears of page 4 (the In The Courts page) of this morning’s Irish Times…
‘Judge compares incident with Garda to infamous US beating’
A JUDGE has compared an incident between a Garda and a member of the public to the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles.
Garda Curtis (23) of Ardee, Co Louth, had pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault and assault causing harm to John Paul Maughan (19) on Alexandria Road in the Dublin Docks on July 11th, 2009.
Referring to the CCTV recording of the incident, Judge McDonagh said: “On first viewing one is reminded of the Rodney King beating.”
“Self control was sadly lacking”, he told the court in the absence of the jury. “This to me is a case of a single garda overreacting.”
He also questioned why gardaí decided to smash the car’s windows instead of waiting for Mr Maughan and his accomplice to get out when Mr Maughan was clearly not going to escape after the stolen vehicle crashed.
During the five-day trial, the jury heard from several Garda witnesses that Garda Curtis had used justified force.
Referring to other gardaí who gave evidence, Judge McDonagh said: “I do not believe his colleagues bathed themselves in glory either. Too much of the evidence in this trial was clearly partisan.”
On Tuesday the jury was shown footage of the moment when the car crashed and Mr Maughan was dragged out. Some 15 gardaí arrived on the scene and a garda could be seen striking the suspect with his baton.
Several gardaí gave evidence that Mr Maughan was kicking out violently during the arrest.
Garda Gerard Curtis was found not guilty by direction of Judge Donagh McDonagh after he ruled that the prosecution failed to disprove the garda was acting in self-defence when he hit the suspect with his baton after a car chase.
And so it ends. We’ll probably never know if the Garda was/is disciplined, moved, re-trained, questioned internally… An Garda is a black hole of information.
Like some other organisations…
Previous posts on An Garda on this site:
OECD/Transparency International report on Ireland
New details relating to the Terence Wheelock case
FOI and An Garda: And again, I quote from that link…
All that is needed for An Garda Síochána to come under FOI is the signature of Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, and some regulations to be implemented. Then we can take our place among such nations as Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan as a country that allows citizens to request information from their police force. The Gardai must be brought under FOI as a matter of urgency.
Heh.
Those of our readers with an interest in Irish political history, or indeed old enough to remember, may recall the small controversy over Telecom Eireann and a Johnston Mooney & O’Brien site involving such people as Dermot Desmond, Michael Smurfit and JP McManus. The controversy led to the resignation of Michael Smurfit from the board of Telecom.
Indeed, so hotly contested are the contents of this report, that Dermot Desmond went all the way to the Supreme Court in a bid to prevent the contents of the report being read into the record of the Moriarty Tribunal in 2004.
Here is a handy backgrounder from Ted Harding and Kathleen Barrington from 2002:
One of the great controversies of the 1990s, it turned on the purchase by Telecom Eireann of the former Johnston Mooney & O’Brien (JMOB) bakery site in Ballsbridge, Dublin.
In April 1989 financier Dermot Desmond reached an agreement with the JMOB liquidator to buy the site for £4 million. The property was sold to a firm called Chestvale in September 1989. In January 1990 Desmond told semi-state firm Telecom Eireann that the best price he could get for the site was £9.4 million. Telecom agreed to pay this amount.
When a controversy blew up over the sale, inspector John Glackin carried out an inquiry on behalf of the Department of Industry and Commerce. Desmond denied that he had a beneficial interest in any of the companies involved in buying and selling the site.
He rejected all suggestions that he owned a company called Freezone, which was registered in the Isle of Man tax haven. It provided much of the financing for the purchase of the property and received £1.3 million in profit. Glackin’s report, hotly contested by Desmond, found that the financier was among those who made over £5 million from the sale of the Ballsbridge property.
This report has been collecting dust on various shelves for the past 16 years, and thanks to the wonders of the interwebs we are able to bring you the full report:
Check out the third table.
Really, all we need is some positive thinking and the meeja to stop talking down the economy. We’ve already turned a corner, don’t you remember?
Here is a copy of the Covanta (Dublin Waste to Energy Limited) contract with Dublin City Council (related to Poolbeg incinerator), in redacted form, released under the Environmental Information Regulations: