An extremely dangerous government

Letter in today’s Irish Times.

Paying the property tax

Sir,

It was extraordinary reading the comments attributed to Minister for Finance Michael Noonan during the cropped property tax debate.
He claimed the tax was “fair and progressive”, yet a home owner in a €350,000 house earning €1,200 a week will pay the same as a State pensioner living on €230 a week or a person on €188 job seeker’s allowance living in a similar house. This is not “fair or progressive”.

When confronted on this, the Minster’s opinion was “everyone should make a small contribution”.

To those living on basic fixed incomes and those in negative equity, €5/6/7 a week would mean one less hot meal each week.

There is absolutely no regard for “ability to pay” other than to offer a “deferral” which carries a 4 per cent charge – which is nothing other than the poor being penalised for being poor. The last time we saw that in Ireland was under the Poor Laws.

This tax, with its absence of any “ability-to-pay” protection, is clearly a case of the well-off protecting the well-off at the expense of the money poor.

Only a Fine Gael/Labour government could arrive at the conclusion that this is a “fair and progressive” tax.

This Government is not only inept, it is also extremely dangerous.

Yours etc,

Jim O’Sullivan
Sligo.

Too late for reform: the rotten political system is already dead

In an article entitled ‘Let’s answer Ireland’s call: reform or die.’ Fine Gael TD Brendan Griffin calls for major reform of the political system.

His suggestions, unfortunately, are about forty years too late.

The corrupt political/administrative system that brought Ireland to ruin is not capable of being reformed.

It must be totally eradicated and replaced with a proper democratic system similar to that of all other functional democracies.

Even though we regularly hear from the likes of Kenny, Gilmore and Martin that the system is ‘broken’ and must be radically reformed there is not the slightest hint that real reform is actually going to happen.

And why would it, to do so would mean an end to the corrupt/gombeen/clientelist system that has served the exclusive interest of Irish politicians and their respective parties and friends since independence.

That corrupt system effectively destroyed the country and lost us our independence. It is far, far too late to talk of reforming such an irretrievably corrupt system.

In his article Mr. Griffin points out:

Only when we fully accept this reality, (that the system is ‘broken’) can we begin to properly rebuild our nation.

It’s good that some politicians like Mr. Griffin are, at last, beginning to accept the enormity of their betrayal of Ireland and its people.

However, he and his fellow politicians must go, or be forced to go, one step further and accept the reality that their rotten political system is history and can have no part whatsoever in building a new Ireland.

Reform or die?

Too late Mr. Griffin, what you represent is already dead.

Copy to:
Brendan Griffin
All political parties

Cheating at elections is now the accepted norm

Letter in Today’s Irish Times

Sir,

In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the Government wrongfully placed the rights of those in favour of the campaign over those against it (Front page, December 12th).

However, it seems that there are no sanctions in place for this breach of a constitutional principle.

If this continues to be the case, what is to stop the Government from committing the same act in knowledge that the electorate’s only recourse is to apply to the courts after the ballots are counted?

Yours, etc,
Simon Treanor

This is a good question that has a very simple answer.

Irish governments have become so undemocratic over the years that cheating at elections, ignoring the Constitution and breaking the law when it suits are all now accepted parts of doing (corrupt) politics

Penalty points allegations whittled down from 90,000 to zero?

Well, in fairness, you have to hand it to the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice.

Quicker than a Guard could say, that’s alright your lordship, penalty points only apply to the peasants, the original allegation that up to 90,000 penalty points cases had been illegally quashed has now been dramatically reduced to a mere 197.

Now if that’s not good police work I don’t know what is.

Apparently, documentation (we don’t know from whom or when) forwarded to the Garda Commissioner contained just 402 allegations.

Now who could blame our hard working commissioner if he threw the lot in a bin and got on with real police work like keeping the Mahon and Moriarty Tribunal Reports warm under his arse.

But no, our commissioner was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Working through the night with his magnifying glass he found that there was lots of duplication. By breakfast he had whittled the number of allegations down to a mere 197.

The Minister, who worked, sleeves rolled up, with the commissioner throughout the long night, said that many of the 197 were vague and short on details.

A spokesman for the Minister angrily denied that the number of vague cases miraculously matched the number of people of power and influence who had their cases allegedly quashed.

The Minister reminded all law abiding citizens that during the period in question a total of 1.4 million fixed charge notices were issued and that some Gardai were empowered to legally cancel penalty points.

Sure isn’t that the end of it. 90,000 down to, well, practically zero.

A spokesman for the Minister denied that the whistleblower gardai were being reassigned for duty in Kabul – they’re going to Damascus.

Penalty points scandal: Only one certainty; nobody will be held to account

If allegations that up to 50,000 penalty points cases were illegally quashed by gardai over a three year period are true then the matter can be categoried as a major corruption scandal.

And because Ireland is an intrinsically corrupt state we can say with absolute certainty, and well before any investigation reaches a conclusion, that nobody will be charged, nobody will be held accountable.

We are already seeing the standard state response to such scandals.

Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan:

We’ve proved over the years that we’re well capable of investigating ourselves.

Just one word in response to this – Donegal.

Any allegation of impropriety at whatever level within the Garda is a matter of huge concern and that’s why it’s so important to allow the Assistant Commissioner and his team to get on with the business of examing these matters and reaching proper conclusions.

This is the standard ‘nobody should talk about this matter until the (long drawn out) investigation is complete’ (and forgotten).

With luck this internal Garda investigation will be completed sometime before the end of 2013. If its publication goes unnoticed by the media the matter will be quietly dropped.

If there is a media reaction another investigation will be initiated and so on it goes.

If any lessons can be learned from the examination when it is complete these will be taken on board.

This is another standard strategy to cover any wrong doing that may appear in the report.

The wrong doing can be ignored by simply stating that lessons have been learned and it won’t happen again. When it does happen again, as it inevitably will, the process is simply repeated.

Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar:

People need to have confidence in the penalty points system and we absolutely cannot live in a country whereby people can get out of anything because they know somebody.

The corrupt system of ‘getting out of anything through knowing someone of power and influence’ is an integral part of Irish culture and has been since 1922. That corrupt culture is the sole cause of our downfall as an independent state.

I’m confident that the Garda investigation is going to be thorough and I trust them to do that.

This is either the opinion of a fool or of somebody not really interested in getting to the bottom of this scandal.

The most hilarious and bizarre response comes from Conor Faughnan of AA Roadwatch who has seen the evidence first-hand.

I do not believe this is corruption, but institutionalised bad practice that has become custom and habit over the years.

This is an extreme example of denial which is very common in Ireland.

The mindset behind it is simple – If we call it (crime/corruption) something else then it’s all right, we dont have to deal with reality, happy days.

The priority is that it stops from now, that it does not happen any more, and that is a bigger priority then raking over the coals of individual cases.

Translation: If it stops now we’ll say no more.

This attitude only applies to people of power and influence. Ordinary citizens are, of course, always subject to the full and immediate force of the law.

The priority was to clean it up and if that was done that should be the end of the matter.

Translation:

If we studiously ignore what has happened we can pretend that it didn’t actually happen at all and hope that those involved will be more careful about being caught in the future.

RTE:

The scandal was ignored on Morning Ireland (10th Dec).

The programme did, however, give extensive coverage to a murder that occurred in Northern Ireland 23 years ago.

This lack of interest in allegations of major corruption was repeated on the News at One.

The scandal got a mention at the tail end of the programme but was very cleverly folded into a report on the annual Christmas road safety campaign where it became practically invisible.

Garda Ombudsman:

You would imagine that the much lauded Garda Ombudsman would have an interest in these very serious allegations of corruption within the force.

I rang the Garda Ombudsman Office to inquire if they were investigating the matter – they’re not.

Apparently they can only investigate matters that involve complaints from members of the public who have been directly wronged by a Garda or a matter that they deem to be in the public interest

I was informed that they were ‘monitoring’ the situation and would decide what to do after the internal Garda investigation was complete.

Other state agencies ‘monitoring’ or ‘investigating’ the matter:

Department of Justice
Department of Transport
Comptroller and Auditor General
Road Safety Authority

Now that a (secret) ‘investigation’ is underway and Christmas is almost upon us it is likely that the whole unsavoury matter will be long forgotten by the time the next, inevitable, scandal breaks.

As I wrote at the beginning, there is only one certainty surrounding this whole murky matter – Nobody will be held accountable.

Happy days are just around the corner

Former working class politician but now comfortable minister Pat Rabbitte was on the Claire Byrne Show yesterday.

He was not happy with one of the panelist who criticised members of his political class.

It’s not fair to use loaded language like ‘the Ministers who protect the banks’. Whether we like it or not we live in a market economy and our banking system is dysfunctional and unless we get the banking system up and working again we won’t be able to put people back to work.

Basic rates of social welfare are quite reasonable in this country in comparison with other countries.

Now Mr. Rabbitte has merely moved from being a peoples politician to the much more lucrative club of the ruling elite.

The political editor of the Irish Times, Stephen Collins, on the other hand, has clearly just arrived back from an extended holiday on Mars.

Here he is on this and the previous government’s record.

They’ve done almost 75% of what needed to be done to get out of the mess that we were left in. After this budget it will be up to 85%.

They’re very nearly there. We had so many prophets of doom who got so much air time demanding suicidal options like leaving the Euro which would have destroyed the country.

And to be fair to the previous government they managed to wrestle the whole thing around so I think it’s nearly there.

So…..all done. Happy days are… er…just around the corner.

Savita Halapanavar: A transparent and accountable inquiry?

The Galway coroner who will be conducting the inquest into the death of Savita Halapanavar, Dr. Ciarán MacLoughlin, was crystal clear.

The inquest would sit in early January. Will have over 30 witnesses and will run over a number of days.

It will be open, there is compellability of witnesses and they can be cross-examined.

We expect to have all witness statements taken by December 7th.

It will be accountable, transparent and we will get to the bottom of what happened

.
If Dr. MacLoughlin is as good as his word then all the current and proposed ‘investigations’ will be unnecessary.