Examining corruption in Ireland
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20% of Irish business owners have said they would vote for Fianna Fail if there was an election tomorrow (Sunday Independent).
Isn’t it incredible that there’s still 20% of people involved in business willing to vote for the party that destroyed the economy?
Letter in today’s Sunday Independent.
Sir,
The German Chancellor, salary €220,000 plus €22,000 bonus, representing a population of 82m people has just paid another visit to China, a country with a population of 1.3bn, selling her country’s wares.
Our own President, salary €293,000 plus €195,000 ‘expenses’, representing a population of under 5m has visited the Vatican six times in as many years, a state the size of Drogheda, with nothing to offer but ignorance and prejudice.
These statistics prove why we’re in such a rotten state.
Paddy O’Brien
Balbriggan, Co Dublin
Kevin Cardiff, head of the Department of Finance, is on a salary of €255,304 – after having his salary cut by 20%.
An event occurred yesterday morning that should have sent shivers down the spine of every poverty stricken taxpayer in this country.
It was announced on Morning Ireland (5th report, 2nd item) that Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport Mary Hanafin was planning to meet the National Asset management Agency (NAMA) to discuss the problems of the hotel sector.
When Hanafin was asked would she be encouraging NAMA to get rid of surplus hotels she replied:
We will be encouraging NAMA not to leave it run for a number of years. I need them to look at it at the end of the year. To take a look and see, area by area, what exactly is required of the market to see how many of those hotels are going to be viable.
I need them to look at it at the end of the year??? To see exactly what is required of the market??? This is direct political interference in NAMA, something we were told would never happen.
Hanafin, one of the most ruthless politicians in the country, is a very loyal member of the most corrupt political party in the country.
A party that’s principally responsible for the destruction of the country, a party that provided the very generous tax breaks to developer friends to build all the surplus hotels now residing in NAMA.
This is the politician who is now going to tell NAMA what to do with all these hotels and there’s not a word of protest from anybody.
This arrogance coupled with the recent blatant appointment of a Fianna Fail hack to the board of Anglo Irish Bank are clear signs that Fianna Fail still believe they are untouchable, that they can do as they please.
There is not the slightest indication that they are mistaken in their arrogant confidence.
Tags: NAMA
On a recent radio programme, The Late Debate I think, a group of young politicians, mostly councilors, were asked about their ambitions for themselves and Ireland.
It was a depressing experience as each one came across as a clone of their respective parties – no vision, no radicalism whatsoever.
One of them was asked how she would improve the political system and, incredibly, assured the nation that she was doing great work on getting pot holes repaired in her area.
When the (very puzzled) presenter put the question again the young politician was completely stumped, had no idea what to say, spluttered a couple of inanities before being rescued by the meaningless waffle of a fellow politician.
Roll on the young, ‘enlightened’ generation.
So I would ask the media. Look at all of the report. We have enough of this pervasive negativity all the time trying to take a bad interpretation of a report which in fact is supportive of what Government is doing so that we finally get the real message out there.
The message from Cowen to the media is simple – stop telling the truth.
But what is the truth? Well, David McWilliams makes a good stab at it in today’s Irish Independent when he writes that Ireland is staring down the barrel of bankruptcy.
McWilliams analyses all the figures and the brutal truth is that they just do not add up – no matte how many lies Cowen and Lenihan spout.
With a very broad brush here’s the picture I see.
Ireland has never been a real democracy; it has always operated more like a mafia organisation than a modern Western democracy. Citizens sell their votes to the local strongman in return for favours, most of which are services that the ignorant citizen has already paid for through taxes.
This selling and buying of votes eventually corrupted the entire system of politics, state administration, business and the general population. The system was, and still is, all about power, money, who you know and who you can influence.
The great bulk of Irish citizens, because of their political ignorance, were more than happy with this arrangement so long as their particular strong man delivered the goods. But a corrupt society is extremely inefficient and is thus very, very expensive.
This massive cost of corruption was never a problem until recent times, politicians simply dipped into the bottomless pocket of the taxpayer and wrote a cheque for whatever favour was required, for whatever needed to be done to ensure the rotten system trundled along.
That situation would have continued indefinitely if it wasn’t for the global financial tsunami that rocked the planet a few years ago.
Since then we have been desperately trying to convince ourselves and the international community that we are not a corrupt state; that we are, just like most other states, honestly struggling to repair the damage caused by that global crisis to a sound, accountable good quality democracy.
We will fail to convince, Ireland will default on her loans, and the situation will become critical to the point of national crisis.
The reason for this is simple – the taxpayer has no more money – the well is dry, the pocket is empty.
All talk about property tax, water charges, pensions cuts, reform of the public service and so on are nothing more than desperate and doomed to failure strategies to put off the day when denial must end.
Again, broadly speaking, there are only two roads open for the country.
Road one will see Irish citizens reduced to a standard of living/poverty similar to that of the 1950s. In addition to living in poverty Irish citizens will also sheepishly agree to the following conditions.
Continue to pay off massive mortgages and other loans at (corrupt) Celtic Tiger rates.
Continue to bail out corrupt (and still very rich) bankers and developers.
Continue to tolerate a corrupt political system that betrays them time after time in favour of power and enrichment.
Road two will see Irish citizens, after decades of ignorance, finally waking up to what Ireland really is as a country.
They will act to destroy the corrupt political system that has been responsible for the destruction of their country and they will begin the long hard job of building (for the first time in Irish history) a real democracy based on accountability, transparency and the best interests of the Irish people.
From the Attic Archives.
Letter to the Cork Examiner in (I think) 1991.
Sir,
We, the undersigned, have been concerned for some time about the manner in which the Irish State is constituted.
We believe that the machinery of government, the way it is financed, and the way it redistributes wealth, are paralyzing government, frustrating initiative and enterprise, undermining public morale and causing the growing emigration of intelligent and well-educated young people.
These defects, we believe, are inherent in the State itself, as it is now constituted, and will defeat the best efforts of any political party, Cabinet, Dail or local government council.
Our system of government was not designed to suit the needs of the Irish nation today. It is largely inherited from the British government in Ireland in the 19th century, or derived, uncritically, from contemporary practice in the United Kingdom.
This inadequate model has been made worse by the politicians and officials of our centralizing government, who believe they can manage Irish life better than the people directly involved in it, regionally, locally or professionally.
We believe that a better system of government, serving the needs of the Irish people today, can be devised and implemented.
We believe, moreover, that the usefulness of this enterprise would extend beyond its direct, practical benefits.
The creation of a new, distinctively Irish State, tailored to our particular needs and purposes, and exemplary in some respects, would overcome, to a considerable degree, our present crisis of national identity.
With all of this in mind, we have met and founded the Constitution Club.
The purpose of this club is, first, to persuade citizens and politicians that the State needs to be reorganized; secondly, to promote thought and discussion on how a framework of government might be created which would release the skills and energies in our society while increasing democratic accountability.
The club will provide a centre and a forum for new thinking on the following themes: National government, government of the communities (regional and sub-regional), the financing of government, government financing of citizens.
Our first meeting, at which the public will be welcome, will be held in Buswell’s Hotel, Dublin, on Wednesday, November 5th at 6 pm.
Dr. Roy Johnston will speak about ‘Innovation, Employment and Regional Government’.
Anyone who has done some thinking on any of the themes mentioned above, and who wishes to present his or her ideas to a sympathetic and critical audience, should send a summary of them to the Secretary, The Constitution Club, 28 Emmet Road, Dublin 8.
Finally, any individual or group outside Dublin who wishes to found a Constitution Club locally is welcome to contact us by writing to the same address.
Tom Barrington
Raymond Crotty
Desmond Fennell
Roy Johnston
Michael O’Flanagan
John Robb
John Roden
The following sectarian prayer is recited every day in Dail Eireann.
Direct, we beseech Thee, O Lord, our actions by Thy holy inspirations
and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance; that every word and
work of ours may always begin from Thee, and by Thee be happily
ended; through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
The prayer is a direct appeal to the Catholic god for assistance in the running of the country.
Other gods, for example, Muslim, Jewish, the pantheon of voodoo gods and the god of Scientology, are all ignored.
The daily recitation of this prayer is an insult to rationality. It’s an insult to all those many people who do not believe in the power/magic of the Catholic/Christian god.
It’s an insult to the growing number of people who don’t believe in any god whatsoever.
Most of all, however, it’s an insult to democracy.
I’m in the process of sorting out old newspapers that have been stored in my attic for some years now, some dating back to the mid 1980s.
From time to time I’ll publish articles that may be of interest.
The following article, by Pat Brosnan, was published in the then Cork Examiner on Monday 11th March 1996.
A very disturbing story was related to me this week, and the unfortunate aspect of it is that the victim of this sorry tale didn’t even know he was taken to the cleaners.
A friend of mine told me how his brother was telephoning a branch of a bank in Cork and happened to get a crossed line.
It was a coincidence that he happened to overhear a conversation that was taking place between and bank manager he was ringing and the manager of another branch of the same bank.
What he overheard related to a discussion the two managers were having about a customer who had complained either about his overdraft or bank charges.
Either way, the customer felt he had paid too much.
The substance of the phony conversation was that the bank had, indeed, overcharged the man – to the tune of £25,000.
And what were they going to do about it?
In this case their customer was the owner of a small business which was in trouble, a fact that they knew only too well.
So what was the advice one of those miserable weeds offered to his colleague?
Offer him £9,000 and he’ll be only too happy to accept it because of the state of his business.
Because this happened some time ago I don’t know what the final upshot of it was. The one regret my friend’s brother had was that the name of the bank’s customer wasn’t mentioned during the conversation, because if it had he would have phoned him and told him what the real score was.
I’m sorry myself, that he was not in a position to do so.
As Irish citizens know to their great cost, nothing has changed. Still rampant criminality within the financial sector, still no regulation.
Fianna Fail MEP Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher still hasn’t decided whether to give up his pension of €23,634 which he receives along with his €91,500 MEP salary (Irish Independent).
He claimed he had issues from his constituents on his plate and had to focus on them without thinking about his pension.
Fine Gael MEP, Jim Higgins, said a court order relating to a “family law matter” was preventing him from surrendering his ministerial and Dail pensions, which amount to €60,000 a year.
Hypocrisy and greed still rampant within our political system.
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