In Ireland, secrecy is always the knee-jerk response to scandal

Consultant obstedrician Peter Boylan does not believe there should be a public inquiry in the Savita Halapanavar case. He give two reasons:

Mr. Halapanavar is grieving for his wife and expected child, so he’s in a state of grief at the moment and that needs to be taken into account when assessing his response.

I dont think Mr. Halapanavar would agree with this patronising view.

If it’s a public inquiry it will descend into a bit of a circus because there will be misinterpretations of the evidence given which will be bandied about in the media.

Secrecy is always the knee-jerk response to scandal in Ireland.

In functional democracies like the United Kingdom public inquiries are the norm.

This is becasue functional democracies have checks and balances built into their systems. They have in place authorities that have the power to act independently of political power.

The Leveson Inquiry has just produced an excellent report within a few months and cost a mere £7 million.

British citizens from practically every level of society from ordinary joe soaps, to journalists, to movie stars right up to the Prime Minister himself were questioned in public, under oath.

The sky did not fall in and British citizens are likely to see some swift and real reform as a result.

In Ireland, there is no law enforcement authority with the power to act independently of the corrupt political system.

This fact lies at the core of every scandal in Ireland.

It’s the principal reason why people of power and influence are never held to account.

Louis Walsh's money

John Meagher thinks that Louis Walsh should donate his €500,000 to charity. Fair enough, it’s an opinion.

But Mr. Meagher is being a touch arrogant when he justifies his suggestion on the basis that Mr. Walsh is wealthy.

Just because somebody is wealthy does not mean they should be subjected to moral pressure as to how they should dispose of that wealth.

Susie Long is remembered

Great to see Susie Long being appropriately remembered.

In one of her final interviews she was asked by Miriam O’Callaghan.

If you had one message for the Irish health service and those who run it what might it be?

The health service should be for everyone equally, and that’s it. Everyone is entitled to a good health service; it shouldn’t depend on where you live or how much money you have in your back pocket. The health service is paid for by our tax money and so therefore we’re entitled to every service available that we need.

Michael Martin will be nothing more than a footnote in Irish history

I’ve written on a number of occasions of my delight that the obnoxious, cowardly and incompetent Michael Martin is still leading Fianna Fail (See here and here).

I’m delighted because Martin is still living in the far off country of la la land where absolute denial is the only reality.

For so long as this traitor is leading the most corrupt political party in the country we can be sure it will never become a radical party of reform that will lead Ireland and its people out of the sewer of corruption.

Interviewed by Vincent Browne recently Martin confirmed his la la land credentials.

On bringing the country to the verge of disaster.

We made mistakes, I’ve apologised for those mistakes.

This is genuinely, first and foremost a financial and banking collapse, ok, which was global in nature and was very serious for this country.

So, nothing to do with Fianna Fail corruption then?

On grossly inflating the property bubble.

The property bubble was a function of the lending policies of banks.

So, nothing to do with Fianna Fail corruption then?

On the fact that Fianna Fail is unquestionably the most corrupt political party we’ve had since independence.

I wouldn’t accept your analysis.

Of course he wouldn’t, he lives in la la land.

Again on corruption.

I have been a member of government for quite a number of years and I can’t, and there wasn’t any active corruption in the lifetime of that government in terms of…

Martin first entered politics in 1985. Ireland has been an open sewer of political and business corruption since, at least, 1979 when the criminal politician Haughey came to power.

Martin was, and still is, a strong supporter of this criminal and of the party he led. So of course he didn’t see, and still doesn’t see, any ‘active’ corruption.

On the Mahon Tribunal Report.

That doesn’t cover the time I was in government.

It never ceases to amaze me that media people like Vincent Browne allow people like Martin to get away with giving such idiotic and dishonest answers.

More on corruption.

I’m not a corrupt person and I’m not a member of a corrupt party.

Oh yes you are a member of a corrupt party, the party that brought disaster and immeasurable hardship on the majority if Irish citizens.

On party that is the most corrupt (In his opinion).

Well, I think of the Sinn Fein party.

So Sinn Fein, a tiny party with almost no popular support and no power whatsoever within the Republic for most of its history is more corrupt than the juggernaut that was Fianna Fail that dominated Irish politics from independence until recently.

Such dishonesty and desperation on the part of Martin is a measure of the man and his corrupt party.

Martin, because of his lack of vision and courage, is destined to become nothing more than a footnote in Irish history.

Copy to:
Michael Martin

Stephen Donnelly: Nearly gets it right

Speaking on radio over the weekend independent TD Stephen Donnelly delivered an almost perfect analysis of Ireland 2012.

I say ‘almost’ because, with his final sentence, Donnelly demonstrated that he doesn’t really understand the reality of Ireland 2012.

The Oireachtas does not work, it’s a joke, it’s a farce. It’s a pretence of parliamentary democracy, this country is run by the Cabinet.

Fianna Fail became institutionally corrupt and that corruption spread right through the country. At the same time the civil service shut themselves off from internal oversight and from parliamentary oversight.

And so when the Tsunami came the country had become so unstable, so badly governed that we fell off a cliff. At the heart of it is institutional self-interest, weak politics because we kept voting along tribal grounds

Now that’s all gone.

It’s all gone…all the corruption is gone, all is reformed, democracy has returned…we don’t vote along tribal grounds anymore…Where…When…Who?

Feck, I must have blinked at some point.

Róisín Shortall: A glint of honesty in the political sewer

It really is refreshing to listen to an Irish politician speaking with absolute honesty.

Róisín Shortall did not mince her words in response to an Irish Times report that two locations in Minister for Health James Reilly’s constituency were added to a list of places chosen for primary care centres on the evening before they were announced by the Government.

Here’s some of what this principled politician had to say:

He started off by looking after some of his colleagues in some of those additions, all of the fifteen would have been added on that basis. At the last minute slipping in another four, two of which were in his constituency.

This documentation gives the lie to the many convoluted excuses and justifications that Minister Reilly and other ministers gave in the Dail and elsewhere where they tried to claim that there was other criteria used, that he had some basis other than pure political patronage.

Here’s one of the convoluted excuses that our moronic Minister for Health expects intelligent citizens to believe.

One and one makes two and two and two make four but four by four makes 16 and not four and four makes eight and so it is with this. It’s a logistical, logarithmic progression, so there is nothing; there is nothing simple about it.

Shortall again:

I think it’s a matter now for the Government to decide are they going to actually deliver the kind of new politics that they promised or is it going to be business as usual, stroke politics that has done so much damage to this country.

On the same programme we had a representative from that old gombeen/stroke politics regime that has destroyed our country, Fine Gael TD Regina Doherty.

Doherty sees nothing wrong with Reilly’s moronic excuses.

I’m quite satisfied that the explanation I was given is believable and plausible.

This gombeen response is a carbon copy of the cowardly excuses mouthed by Fianna Fail gombeens when defending the liar Bertie Ahern.

There is very little hope for Ireland and its people for so long as politicians like Doherty are in power.

According to her website Doherty’s favourite film is the Godfather.

Appropriate, I would say.

Her favourite saying is:

What goes around comes around.

Let’s hope that applies to her when she next stands for election.

Copy to:
Róisín Shortall
Regina Doherty

Please Mr. Halapanavar, respect our tradition of cover-up and political cowardice

The Taoiseach’s appeal to Praveen Halapanavar to meet with the chairman of the inquiry team can be translated as follows:

Please Mr. Halapanavar, please go along with the way we do things in Ireland. We don’t know how to do public inquiries, we’ve never done them.

Please do this for me Mr. Halapanavar. I promise you will receive justice, if it doesn’t threaten my career or the career of my colleagues. If it doesn’t expose our corrupt body politic and if the HSE can be brought under control.

Please respect our long established tradition of cover-up, secrecy and political cowardice.

Fine Gael politicians take to the cowardice bunker

Cover-up, denial, delay, secrecy, missing/destroyed files and moving blame.

These are the usual strategies employed by Irish authorities in response to state scandal.

Every one of them has been used in the last week in a desperate attempt by state authorites to avoid acting on or taking responsibility for the Halapanavar tragedy scandal.

None of them have worked so we’ve seen a strategy that is rarely necessary – public cowardice by elected representatives.

No Fine Gael politicians has been available in the last few days as each and every one of them took to the cowardice bunker.

And in a perverse way, who can blame them.

This scandal is different from all previous scandals because in this case the world is looking on as our corrupt political/administrative system struggles to cover-up the scandal while trying to maintain the fiction that Ireland is a functional democracy.

The first strategy to fail was the attempt to pack the original investigation team with consultants from Galway hospital.

If this was not an international incident those consultants would still be on that team, beavering away in secret to ‘resolve the problem’.

It has been said, and I have little reason to disagree, that these people are of the highest integrity.

I say ‘little reason’ because they did, after all, agree to participate in what the rest of the world clearly saw as an attempt to influence the outcome of the investigation in the state’s favour.

If these people are so wonderful they should have immediately recognised the implications of the situation and rejected the invitation to participate.

If this was not an international incident the people of Ireland would have been told by the ruling elite to take a run and jump if they objected to the form of the investigation team.

The HSE/State once again refuses to take responsibility

Cover up, denial, secrecy, bureaucracy, non-accountability, endangering life, corporate arrogance, corporate ruthlessness, political weakness, political cowardice.

This is the first paragraph of a piece I posted in May 2007 regarding the disgraceful treatment of Rebecca O’Malley by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

Mrs. O’Malley was told that a lump on her breast was benign but it turned out to be malignant.

The error cost her 14 months in wasted time. She had to have a mastectomy that probably would not have been necessary if that time had not been wasted.

It turned out that 300 other women had also been misdiagnosed but the HSE had decided not to inform them thus putting their lives in danger.

When Mrs. O’Malley expressed concern she was urged by the HSE not to go public.

She agreed on condition that an independent investigation be initiated. The HSE were lying, nothing was done.

The failure of the HSE to act forced Mrs. O’Malley to assume responsibility for the endangered women. She successfully forced the HSE to act by going public.

Five years on Praveen Halapanavar, husband of Savita Halapanavar, was asked why he had gone public after his wife died.

Because there was nothing happening after two weeks.

Mr. Halapanavar has assumed responsibility for dealing with this disgraceful scandal because the Irish State has effectively refused to do so.

Catholic militant Senator Mullen 'attacked' by culture of clapping

Want to make your skin crawl? Take a look at religious fanatic Senator Mullen on Frontline.

Like all the Catholic fanatics Mullen sees a conspiracy in every comment and action by all who disagree with his views.

After Mullen made a point about abortion in England Pat Kenny was applauded when he reminded the fanatic that thousands of Irish women go to England every year for abortions.

Mullen proceeded to attack the audience for daring to support Kenny’s comment.

Mullen: The clapping here tonight, I’m beginning to feel how Sean Gallagher felt actually.

Kenny: That’s a low blow, a low blow.

Mullen: No, this culture of clapping to beat down the side you disagree with is not going to do anything to reassure Irish men and women about the quality of health care.