Corruption comparisons

Not only is America the most powerful country in the world today but it is by far the most powerful country in history. Therefore, when we talk about those who are presently in power in the White House, we are talking about the most powerful people ever in the history of the world. Yet, we read that one of these people, Lewis Libby, the vice-president’s chief of staff, could be facing 30 years in jail and millions of dollars in fines.

His alleged crimes? Perjury, making a false statement and obstruction of justice. I mention this case because it is useful in strengthening my opinion that Ireland is not just a country that suffers from a degree of corruption but is, as an entity, a corrupt state. Making comparisons is a good method of confirming this.

Anyone familiar with corruption in Ireland in recent years will know that perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice are very common. This is especially true of the more powerful members of Irish society.

Charlie Haughey, for example obstructed the McCracken tribunal but a judge ruled that because he was so well known he would not get a fair trial. This, in effect puts him above the law, a position he shares with hundreds of other so called elites of Irish society.

If Lewis Libby was an Irish politician, he would be receiving standing ovations from his political party and high praise from the leader of the country.

Revenue still toothless

In yesterday’s Irish Times we read that a Dublin businessman, Mr. Leslie Reynolds was sentenced to three months jail for tax evasion.

At first glance this might give the impression that Revenue is beginning to get tough on tax criminals, like real democracies do. Not a chance. They still operate a policy of amnesties. No other country in the world can match the number of tax amnesties so far granted to tax criminals in Ireland. Nine according to my latest reckoning, it could be more.

What affect does this policy have on Irish citizens? Well, Mr. Reynolds is a good example. For years, he robbed millions from the State in a well organised fraud. He was confident, and his confidence is justified by today’s sentence, that even if he was caught, he would not be treated as the major criminal he really is.

A mere three months in jail, sure won’t it be a grand rest for him from all his criminal activity. He was also fined €15,000. Mmm…lets see where that registers on the scale of Mr. Reynolds wealth…No, sorry, it doesn’t register at all.
If Mr. Reynolds was unlucky enough to live in, say, America, he would now be serving, at a minimum, five years and would be paying out millions in fines in addition to the wholesale confiscation of his properties.

What kind of reaction could we expect from the ordinary Irish taxpayer to this totally incompetent treatment of major tax criminals?

‘Feck that, I am going to cheat the State and everyone else every chance I getâ€?

.

And who could blame him?

Groundhog Day

The establishment of “Forum for Opportunity’, an elite club where political influence can be bought, the re-commissioning of a military parade to celebrate1916 and a standing ovation for Charles Haughey at the recent Ard Fheis, all indicate that Fianna Fail have learned nothing from the events of recent history.

Irish citizens should prepare themselves for Groundhog Day.

Different standards

The following is how Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell reacted to Independent Newspapers treatment of the Liam Lawlor story.

‘It was grossly offensive, it was cruel and it was utterly lacking in any foundation in fact…apologies in the circumstances will never undo the trauma.â€?

In contrast, his reaction to his solicitor peers after they were found to have robbed their vulnerable clients of thousands was – Silence.

Irish Holocaust?

What would come to mind if you heard the following? Rape, gang rape, sexual abuse, shock treatment, drug trials, medical experiments, death and burial without record, slave labour, mental and physical cruelty, cremation of bodies, murder, mass graves, selling babies for profit.

Yes, most people would say the same.

The following is a transcription of the experiences of Kathy O’Beirne while she was a captive of the Catholic Church as a child. She was a guest on The Vincent Browne Show, RTE radio, on the 22nd June last. It’s a lengthy piece but well worth reading carefully.

Vincent Browne: Tell us your story, how did come to be in the Magdalen Laundry?

Kathy: Well, I was sexually abused from the age of five by three different people, one was a priest and my life went wrong. As Fr. Mc Verry said, the first seven years are the most important part of your life really and the night before my First Holy Communion I was raped and things went from bad to worse and I was out of control and I didn’t know what to do.

I knew there was something happening and it wasn’t right but I didn’t know what it was.

Just before my eight birthday, I was taken to a panel of doctors on the advice of one of the clergy that abused me.

My parents didn’t know what happened to me and didn’t know I was being abused and I didn’t say anything. I was brought to a panel of psychiatrists in Dublin and they diagnosed me a child with a troublesome mind and a week later, I was sent to an industrial school run by the nuns, I was there for just two years

Vincent Browne: Where was this?

Kathy: I can’t say because it’s in the enquiry so I can’t mention the name of it but it was in Dublin, like a training ground for the Magdalen Laundries, I believe anyway. I was there for just two years and I was sexually abused by a visiting priest that came there and I told one of the nuns

Vincent: Was this another priest? Yet another priest?

Kathy: “ Yes, in the industrial school, I wasn’t the only girl, there was other girls raped there and sexual abused

Vincent: “ By the same priest?

Kathy” By the same priest and I did tell a nun about it and when I told her I was taken off again

Vincent: You told a nun, is it?

Kathy: I told a nun that was looking after us and I was taken off again anyway to speak to this doctor and he was going to help me and the whole lot and I came back and a couple of days later I was sent to a children’s mental institution in Dublin where I was for two years.

I had electric shock treatment and drug trials for the two years I was there. We were abused; horrible things went on in it.

Vincent: What sort of things?

Kathy: Abuse and drug trials and electric shock treatment

Vincent: Can you say where this was?

Kathy: I can’, no, because it’s all in the enquiry and you can’t mention the names of the places until the enquiry is over. It’s all in the other book, I have another book coming out The Aftermath, who am I? is the name of it but until the enquiry is over you can’t mention the names.

So I was transferred after two years, we got up to a lot of mischief there and we came across this guy called Johnny and he was just a breath of fresh air so we became friends, himself and another couple of girls.

Our punishment when we did anything wrong was to send us down to the gate and at the gate there was a morgue and we’d have to wash the dead bodies of people who died in the mental institution.

Vincent: What age were you then?

Kathy: I was there from when I was ten until I was twelve. Of course, Johnny had bright ideas to burn down the morgue so we wouldn’t have to wash the bodies. You would have to read the book. But anyway, he burned down a birds nest, he didn’t burn the morgue down but he was sent off to an industrial school, we never saw him again.

My friend was sent off and a week later I was transferred to a Magdalen laundry in Dublin where we worked from half seven in the morning until half six, maybe seven and eight o clock at night washing sheets all day.

From the priest’s quarters, hospitals, the deliveries came from all over Dublin, prisons, hospitals, dirty sheets, dirty linens and we’d work all day long and we were abused there. And there was a visiting priest there that used to sexually abuse us as well.

We were visited by lay people every Sunday and they’d either take you out or take you out in the grounds but I was abused from the age of fourteen and I had a baby girl called Annie a month before my fourteenth birthday in the Mother and Baby Home.

She lived for ten years and died with an illness she was born with. I looked after her for three months and I was sent back to the Magdalen laundry and she was transferred to an orphanage where I had access to her and she died on her tenth birthday.

I was transferred on to a girl’s home in Dublin. I spent two years there and then transferred on to another Magdalen laundry in Dublin, then back to the girl’s home and a social worker took an interest in me. She had known me from one of the Magdalen laundries I was in when I was only thirteen. She lost contact and then I met up with her again when I went to the girl’s home.

So she kind of got me on the right road, you might say and got me a flat and got me out and helped me. But my life went absolutely desperate for the next twenty years.

Vincent: What happened?

Kathy: Well, I was distraught and I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know where to go because when I reported it to the priest he told me nice and politely to fuck off, that no one would believe me and I was damaged and no one would ever want me.

So, when I came out I kept that in my mind and I thought I was damaged and no one would ever want me. So, I had to keep what had happened to me to myself because if I told anybody, no one would want me and I would’t have any friends.

And then I went on this revenge thing, I’d have to make everyone hate me, it was just unbelievable and I ended up in hospital on three different occasions. I took two or three different overdoses, I cut my wrists, I tried to commit suicide. It was just absolutely unreal.

It was just the second part of hell I was delivered to in the first place when I was eight.

A lot of things went on and it’s not only what happened to me, I saw girls being raped. I witnessed a young girl of fourteen/fifteen being gang raped in one of the homes, not the Magdalen laundries but one of the girls homes, by five men. When they were finished with her one of them broke a bottle and shoved it up to her and we never saw her again.

l never forget that night because I was banging on that door for that priest to come out and help us because his punishment was to put us out on that step for the night and if we weren’t there and he hadn’t punished us that wouldn’t have happened to Mousey, that was her nick name.

Horrible things happened, people died and they were buried and you never knew what happened to them, you never knew what they died of, it was just unreal and it was living hell. I thank god that I survived.

My psychiatrist or any doctors that I had been assessed by don’t understand how I survived because I was in a lot of biopsy trials and things like that. Biopsies were taken from our livers and bowels and we never had sedation and they were sent away for, you know, to improve lives of others that may die in years to come and for cancer research.

I’m just very lucky but I do believe that I did survive to tell the story and get justice for the hundreds and thousands of people who suffered because it’s not only me and it’s not only women and children, there was men as well.

I have met men from Artane and the Dangles and the stories are so horrific. They can’t bear to live with themselves, I mean 58 survivors of institutional abuse and Magdalen laundries have committed suicide in the last five years and they are only the one’s we definitely know about, the one we have names for and that’s a very high rate.

When we went to require our files they told lies and said we were never there or that we were only there for so many weeks, we were there when we were such an age because it was illegal to have us there at the age we were. Now I required my files from the first industrial school that I was ever in when I was eight and I was told, that to their great regret, that all my files were lost in a flood.

I’m doing this campaign thing for the last eleven years for justice to get the word “penitents” which means sinners from over hundreds and hundreds and thousands of innocent Magdalen Laundry women’s heads.

Up in Glasnevin is a big monument with pray for the repose of the souls of the female penitents. We weren’t penitents and they weren’t penitents. They worked and they washed priest shirts, your shirts, everybody’s shirts because everybody brought their laundry. The woman down the road brought her laundry, the man from the grocery shop brought his laundry, the man from Smithfield brought his laundry.

We worked all our lives and we got nothing for it. There was people in the Magdalen Laundries from the time I went there and they were there from the time they were twelve, you know, they were sixty when I went there and they were eighty and eighty five when they died in the laundries and they got nothing. They got no recognition, got no thanks for what they did. The only thing they got was dumped into a mass grave with hundreds of other bodies.

I mean in one of the Magdalen laundries, and I’m sure you’ve all read it in the papers. In Dublin, they had their own burial ground, most institutions did and eleven years ago, when I was thinking about getting this all together and getting the truth out I got a phone call to say that the nuns were selling off the land to a builder to build private apartments and houses.

But they needed an exhumation; they had to take up the bodies that were buried on that ground in order for the builder to buy the ground. He couldn’t buy it with the bodies there so they sought it anyway and they were granted it and diggers (bulldozers) went in.

They were supposed to take three or four days but they were still working three weeks later because when they dug down a foot deeper after exhuming 35 bodies they came across 22 bodies, other bodies that were a foot deeper.

All in all they took up 155 bodies and they put them in cardboard boxes and drove them across the city to Glasnevin cemetery and they put all the bodies into the one furnace and they burnt them. They put them in three different urns and buried them along with seven to eight hundred other Magdalens in a mass grave at the top of Glasnevin.

We sought an enquiry into the exhumations because when the nuns were asked; what happened the bodies? and the cause of death; no death certificates were obtainable and there was no cause of deaths. Cause of death unknown. Marital status unknown.

Of course they weren’t married, they were there since they were twelve and thirteen, they were never out of the place. So we have twelve bodies up in Glasnevin that nobody knows who, where when or what, but I know because I have all their names. But, when we sought the enquiry from An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern and the police, it was turned down.

Now it is an offence to bury a body without a cause of death and if there’s a body found in your back garden then I guarantee it will be sealed off and you will be arrested and they will know what that person died of even if it was a hundred years old.

So the nuns and clergy can bury innocent women and children, pluck them up, bring them here, bring them there and burn them and do what they like with them and nobody knows why, where, who.

They were somebody’s children and they are only the one’s we know about, there are hundreds and hundreds of bodies buried on the lands of the Magdalen Laundries all around Dublin and the country and in Letterfrack.

And they just didn’t die from being undernourished or anything else, a lot of the children were murdered, they were murdered and they were left to starve to death.

And we’re sitting here as a nation and everybody in Ireland and all over the country because I have it well spread. I have been all over the country, I’ve been in England, I’ve been everywhere and we all know about it and we’re all guilty because we know about what happened those innocent children.

You, me and everybody else, the people that’s here tonight are letting it happen and I think it’s about time that people got out and stood up and be afraid no more because I’m not afraid of the clergy and I’m not afraid of the nuns. They ruined my life and they took away my life but never again. (Kathy breaks down crying here)

Vincent: My god, what a story

Kathy: And that’s only some of it, it gets worse but it’s too hard to talk about, sorry, I’m fine. It’s just absolutely appalling.

There was a mass up in Glasnevin on Sunday for 50,000 children. It was covered in the papers as still born births, it wasn’t still born births. I got my daughters birth and death certificate after thirty years on Friday.

And I was up there with all those people at that big mass, 50,000 children, there are 50 children in each plot from all walks of life, there not just my children they’re not just Magdalen children, they’re not just survivors of institutional people’s children, they’re from every walk of life.

They’re from working class people and everything else 50,000 people, children, buried in one of the graves, we have five mass graves up in Glasnevin and you never seen anything like them.

There’s a field up there three or four acres long and you wouldn’t put your dog or cat in it if it died and that’s where there’s hundreds of people buried.

And you come to this big stone which says “pray for the repose of the souls of the female penitents asylum” which means sinners.

They weren’t sinners, how dare they and I’ve been fighting for eleven years to get that off. I’m going on hunger strike next week and I’m definitely going to stay there and if I die doing it, well, I died for a good cause.

We’re all sinners, there’s none of us perfect, we know that but I think it’s up to god to judge them women, not up to the nuns; they’re only human beings like us and everybody else.

I was in an enquiry in Archbishop Martin’s palace for the last year, with Guards, with everything else, seven hours a day, a dreadful time I went through, I nearly went mental, I nearly committed suicide.

Vincent: In Drumcondra?

Kathy:The Child Protection Service run by Phil Garland. They were very good to me and they looked after me very well and Phil is very good and the people up there but there’s only so much they can do.

When I was to go on hunger strike seven months ago the nuns came out and said they would meet me after they denying me, and you know as bad as things were, it was a worse kick in the teeth for me for them to deny me than it ever was for them to abuse me

Vincent: What do you mean they denied you?

Kathy: They said they didn’t know me, that I was only in their care for six weeks because it was illegal for me to be there when I was eight. In the middle

Vincent: This is in one of the institutions you can’t identify now?

Kathy: Yes, the first industrial school I was in when I was eight and it was a five hour meeting up in the Child Protection Service with a nun, a couple of nuns. Phil Garland headed it and another nun because every meeting there the minutes are taken and everybody has to sign that they satisfied with what was said

Three hours into the five hour meeting about the mass graves this nun looked across the table at me and she said.

You know Kathy I have some of your files from the industrial school when you were a child and I also have some letters that your mother left you

My mother was dead three years at that time, that was last year. Sure, how would my mother write letters?

Yes, she said, letters, your mother left them for you when you were a child in the industrial school.

Thirty five years later after them denying me and saying that they never knew me, I was never in their care, only for six weeks she had my mother’s letters and when I required my files I was told my files were washed away.

I never knew my mother left letters for me. She handed me over the file and I said to Phil Garland, “how long ago was that, because I couldn’t think straight, he said, Kathy, thirty five years ago, and I looked at her and I jumped up and I ran out.

I went mad because here was I with these lovely letters and what she did say to me was “oh Kathy, don’t get upset they’re loving letters from a loving mother”.

My mother left them for me when I was nine in that industrial school, thirty six years later the nuns was handing them over to me.

But to add insult, they couldn’t have insulted me any more than they insulted me, and talking about throwing salt in an open wound.

When I got home, I couldn’t take myself to open them until two weeks later.

I brought them to my mother’s grave and I opened them there “cause all I wanted to do when I opened them was to go over and take my mother out of the grave and say oh Mam, I’m sorry, I didn’t know these letters were here, you know.

When I opened them, they had the cheek to give me photocopies of my mother’s letters and refused blank to give me my mother’s original letters.

I have spent hundreds of pounds trying to get them off them. My legal team have sent solicitors letters. Phil Garland has sent letters, Archbishop Martin has sent word and they haven’t answered one of them and they won’t give me back my mother’s letters and that’s why I’m going on hunger strike next Wednesday.

I want my mother’s original letters. They’re mine, she wrote them to me, my mother will never write me another letter and I think they’ve made me suffer enough and if I have to die doing it, well it will be worth it.

To get my mother’s letters and penitents off the headstones, well, that’s what I will do and I’m determined and that’s why I’m here today because they never broke my spirit and they never will break my spirit.

And I still have my faith but I don’t believe all people are the same. I have some very good friends that are priests and nuns. It was just a few evil people like them that got into the church that turned a lot of people sour.

The church is a temple to me and I don’t blame the church. People said that I had to stop going to mass, it’s not the church. The church didn’t do anything on anybody.

It was a few evil people that went into the church, who gained access to the like of my innocence and hundreds of thousands of other innocent people.

I go to church, I pray. I’m sick at the moment; I’m waiting for news from the hospital on a biopsy. With the help of god it will be alright.

I definitely believe that I survived to tell this story and to help all those innocent people, not just me. I’m only a small part of it. You think tonight’s story was bad, you want to read the next book. It’s absolutely disgusting what happened here in Ireland to innocent children.

Babies were sold. I was lucky; my baby wasn’t sold because the wealthy Americans didn’t want sick babies. When the babies were born, they were sold off to the wealthy Americans. They were driven once a month by a man.

Vincent: How do you know that?

Kathy: I was there, you could buy a boy for fifty shillings and a girl for ten shillings. You got a girl cheaper.

They were all shipped down, because I was on a programme and the man that drove the babies heard me and he rang in and said I’m the man she’s talking about, I’m the man that drove the babies, that was only last year.

He came forward to the enquiry. The babies were taken in his taxi once a month and they were brought down to the North and put on a ship to America and sold to the wealthy Americans.

To good Catholic families in America where the godless bastards would be brought up to have a good life while their mothers washed away their sins in a Magdalen laundry.

I’m human, I’m human. Hitler didn’t treat his people like that, he was decent, he put them all in and he gassed them.

Vincent: My god, shocking stuff

Avalanche of corruption

I mentioned before how difficult it is to keep track of corruption in Ireland. The following list compiled from media reports over the last few days will help to make the point.

1. Two nursing home patients who died last year were buried without death certificates being issued. No action taken.

2. 75 year old man dies from blood loss after attempts to transfer him to three different hospitals for emergency surgery failed. This case is related to a chaotic and incompetent third world health service still suffering from ruthless cutbacks in the 1980s.

3. Transparency International annual report sees Ireland again slipping down the corruption index.

4. Billionaire Dermot Desmond writes an open letter to the Moriarty Tribunal complaining, among other things, that the tribunal is a waste of public funds. Dermot is a close friend of corrupt politician Charlie Haughey. Dermot apparently had no problem when his friend cost the taxpayer a lot of money by his non co-operation with the McCracken tribunal some years ago.

5. An Oireachtas committee is to inquire into the multi-million euro conference centre deal entered into by Dublin Port Company with a number of private developers. This case has been simmering for some time now. An Oireachtas committee is just a talking shop. Whatever is going on here we can be sure of two things. It will cost the taxpayer millions and no action will be taken.

6. Computer systems that cost millions for the Dept. of Health but don’t work. Millions paid to consultants to make sure they did work. Nobody accepts responsibility. Taxpayer is hit yet again.

7. The family of Brian Rossiter (14) who fell into a coma in Garda custody and later died have said they cannot afford to take part in the inquiry unless Minister for Justice Michael McDowell increases their fees.

8. Dublin’s Mater hospital stopped the trials of an important drug for treating lung cancer because the scheme didn’t comply with the Catholic ethos of the hospital

9. Dozens of vulnerable people who were abused by the State and church have again been abused by their solicitors who double charged them for work before the Residential Institutional Redress Board.

10. The pensions ombudsman, in his first annual report states clearly that some employers, particularly in the construction industry, have been stealing money from their employees. No action will be taken.

Keep in mind that all these cases have been in the news in just the last 7 to 10 days. Neither is this just a once off, this level of corruption and dodgy dealing is common all year round in Ireland. I would ask readers to carry out a small experiment. Check out media reports from a number of other countries and compare them to the above list of cases. You will find that even the most base banana republics will come nowhere near the level of corruption seen here in Ireland.

Scampering rats

Panic, panic, panic, the thieving solicitors are tripping over themselves to pay back the money they robbed from their vulnerable clients (victims). The obvious question arises – why? If, as many of them claim, the monies taken were legitimate fees, why the headlong rush to pay the money back?

We can get some idea of how these vultures operate from the latest development in the scandal. Apparently, some thieving solicitors, as a condition for returning the monies robbed, are insisting that their victims sign a statement promising that they will not make a complaint to the Law Society.

This matter was due to be aired on Liveline today but because of the kidnapping of the Irish journalist in Iraq, there wasn’t enough time. Hopefully, Joe will discuss the matter tomorrow.

Nine days now since this corruption was uncovered and still no police or State involvement, just not interested. Meanwhile, the Law Society is working away on behalf of its members. As I said in my first posting on this outrage, not a single solicitor will face real justice. That’s how it goes in the Banana Republic of Ireland.

Rossiters to boycott inquiry into son's death

The parents of Brian Rossiter have decided to boycott the inquiry into their son’s death, and the story was making the rounds in the evening news stories yesterday. McDowell was on Morning Ireland this morning to give his view, you can listen to that here.

He argued that the fees are reasonable, while the hack on Morning Ireland argued that the Garda Representative Association (GRA) may end up helping the Gardai involved by paying extra for the more expensive (read ‘better’) Senior Counsels. Some SC’s can charge as much as 3-4000 euro per day, while the Rossiter’s have been given a fee of €1008 a day.

Conor Lally and Joe Humphries report in the Irish Times:

He said a daily fee of €1,008 had been offered for senior counsel, €720 for junior counsel and €800 for a solicitor.

However, because there was no provision for payment for preparatory work or for expenses incurred during the hearing, the Rossiters could not take part in the inquiry.

“I think everybody is going to have to get used to the daily fee, but if the Minister thinks this works like a district court, where you just stand up and talk, that’s not how it works,” Mr O’Carroll said.

He was having difficulty finding a senior counsel who was available and willing to take on the work because they were not going to be paid for their preparation.

Mr O’Carroll also said that because he was based in Cashel and Clonmel, the lack of any expenses on offer was a cause of considerable difficulty.

“They won’t be [able to attend], it’s as simple as that. And we should not be expected to hand over any of the information we have gathered over the last three years if I am not there to represent the interests of my clients,” he said.

Mr McDowell said he regretted the Rossiters hadn’t availed of the “generous legal fees” he had provided for lawyers in the inquiry.

The inquiry had statutory powers to request people to attend whether or not they had a lawyer.

The Minister said all solicitors and barristers were being paid the same rate for all commissions of inquiry in accordance with recently passed legislation. This followed “a pattern of higher fees which has been the subject of much public criticism”.

While some lawyers might have “ingrained expectations” for the old pattern of fees, a new era had arrived and expectations would move to reflect that.

Mr O’Carroll told The Irish Times he has also informed the chairman of the statutory inquiry, Hugh Hartnett SC, that the Rossiter family believed the inquiry’s terms of reference were too narrow.

They were concerned the inquiry was taking place in closed session and could not be reported on by the media. The inquiry proper is expected to begin next week.

Brian Rossiter was found unconscious in a cell in Clonmel Garda station on the morning of September 11th, 2002, following his arrest on suspicion of a public order offence the previous night.

He was taken to St Joseph’s hospital in Clonmel and later transferred to Cork University Hospital but never regained consciousness and died there on September 13th, 2002.

Four weeks ago Mr McDowell announced that Mr Hartnett would conduct the inquiry into the death. The dead boy’s parents, Pat and Siobhan, are also pursuing a civil action.

They have questioned the appropriateness of establishing an inquiry under Section 12 of the Dublin Police Act, 1924, which Mr O’Carroll has said means the inquiry is “in essence a Garda Sa­ochana disciplinary forum”.

Mr Hartnett will have the power to summon witnesses and to examine them under oath.

20 gardai turned up 'to support' colleague

A bit of a non-story really, but related to the ongoing Morris Tribunal.

About 20 gardai­ and some business people from Sligo turned up in court in 2002 to support a garda who was being prosecuted for submitting forged certificates, the Morris tribunal heard yesterday.

Anthony Barr SC, for the tribunal, asked Insp Gerard Connolly, Sligo, what the purpose was of having so many gardai­ turn up for the court case of John Nicholson.

“Was it the case that Mr Nicholson was in a very public way taking the rap for the seven certificates, when in fact his involvement, according to his evidence here, was much less than the seven?” he asked.

Insp Connolly replied that at that time, Mr Nicholson’s health was very bad.

Mr Barr asked how the presence of gardai­ and a number of business people would help his condition.

“I’d say it was a form of support for Mr Nicholson. He was very supportive to everybody over the years – to colleagues and the public in general,” Insp Connolly replied.

Mr Nicholson, now retired, pleaded guilty to three charges of uttering, or submitting, forged certificates and received the Probation Act.

€2.8m a year in tax reliefs from pool deal, court told

The Dublin Waterworld case continues:

Limerick businessman Pat Mulcair is gaining enormous tax advantages, amounting to some €2.8 million a year in tax reliefs, arising from “funding arrangements” put in place for the €62 million National Aquatic Centre, the High Court was told yesterday.

John Moriarty, a director of DWL, said yesterday he was reluctant to give certain documents about those funding arrangements to CSID because he had concerns those documents would be leaked to the media. He had previously given financial details to CSID and matters had appeared in the media. He did not want “purely commercial matters” between himself and Mr Mulcair appearing in the press. Certain documents were provided to CSID but, he agreed, other documents were not.

He denied a suggestion by CSID’s senior counsel, Denis McDonald, that CSID was not told of the precise arrangements involving Mr Mulcair because this would leave the State company in a difficult position in that the arrangement involved enormous tax benefits for a private citizen. Mr McDonald said the capital allowances available for a corporate tenant such as DWL would be a lot less than those available for an individual such as Mr Mulcair.

Mr Moriarty said he had revealed Mr Mulcair’s involvement in the project on February 20th, 2003, and the funding arrangement involving Mr Mulcair was revealed on April 15th, 2003. He had brought Mr Mulcair’s representative to the lease signing.

He said the proposed funding arrangements for the centre did not prejudice CSID in any way and the whole purpose of the funding arrangements agreed with Mr Muclair was to bring money into the aquatic centre project.

Mr Moriarty said Mr Mulcair had since 2003 provided some €1.8 million to the aquatic centre in money paid to an assets repair account used to pay repair and energy costs arising from defects in the building.