Author: Anthony

How many taxpayer's euros does it take to change a light bulb – €366

Interesting figures revealed at the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association yesterday on Office of Public Works expenditure in garda stations (RTE News, 23rd minute).

€15,000 refurbishing a gym in Letterkenny for which they got a quote for €5,000

€15,000 to put a shower in Ballinahassig garda station.

€4,000 for ten square yards of floor covering in Churchhill garda station.

In other stations:

€1,100 to replace three light bulbs.

€9,500 to take down a central wall.

€36,000 to install a garage door.

It’s the same old story – when the taxpayer is forking out just name your price.

Pot calling the kettle black

Bankers are not normally associated with comedy so it was interesting to see Mark Duffy, former chief executive of Bank of Scotland (Ireland), providing the whole country with a great laugh on Questions & Answers last night.

The question under discussion was the evoting debacle.

Duffy: The thing that stood out for me was the lack of accountability. I work in an environment where if you screw up somebody pays.

Bowman: Was that banking? (Loud laughter from the audience, the panel and I’m sure all across Ireland).

Duffy: I work on the basis if you do a bad job you don’t get paid, if you do a very bad job you lose it.

Bowman: (incredulous). But the bankers did a very bad job and they were paid bonuses.

Duffy: No, I’m looking at this from the perspective of where I’m working and our principles and philosophy

Bowman: I’m looking at what actually happened.

Duffy: When I look at what happened I see no apologies, I see no accountability, I see nobody stepping down.

Great scandal and nobody bats an eyelid

On last Friday’s Late Late Show, Fianna Fail TD John McGuinness, repeated the following statement which he first made in September 2008.

“The public service destroys ambition, resists change and is so insulated from reality that information can be withheld from a minister, unfavourable reports are doctored and answers to parliamentary questions are master classes in dissemination and obfuscation.”

If a serving minister in an accountable democracy accused civil servants of doctoring unfavourable reports it would be a cause of great scandal and would spark an immediate investigation by state authorities.

In Ireland, nobody batted an eyelid.

National Roads Authority: Secret (sewage) Service

Intermittently, over the years, I’ve had problems with my house sewage system. Normally I would get out the rods and clear it myself or hire one of those drain cleaning companies.

Last year, however, the problem became more serious so I contacted Cork County Council, the relevant authority, and they cleared the system. Unfortunately, the system became blocked again last week so after failing to clear it myself I again called the council.

It usually takes about three days of phoning before contact is made with someone who actually deals with this particular problem. You know the sort of thing, passed on from office to office, promises of a call back that never happens and so on.

Today was different, today I experienced something very odd, something I’ve never experienced before in all my contacts with the civil service. Here’s the conversation.

Me: Hello, I rang yesterday about a sewage blockage, somebody was supposed to ring back but didn’t. Could you put me through to the relevant department please?

Civil Servant: I’m sorry but there’s nobody in that department today. Somebody died and they’re all at the funeral.

Me: Ok, could you ask them to ring me as soon as possible as I have sewage coming up in my garden? (This was an exaggeration but in a day or two it would be fact).

Civil Servant: Oh, that’s an emergency. I’ll give you the number of the NRA and they’ll call down today.

Me: The NRA? Do you mean the National Roads Authority?

Civil Servant: Yes.

Me: Long pause as I quickly checked the date, prodded myself with a biro to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and replied – But what possible connection could the National Roads Authority have with domestic sewage systems?

Civil Servant: Oh, they deal with this sort of problem when we have nobody else available.

I scribbled down the number but I won’t be ringing. It’s probably the phone number for the local dog pound or maybe the parish priest, I’m not falling for that old trick. No, I’ll wait a day or two until all those people return from the funeral and pretend it’s my first call.

Later on, while cooking dinner, I had a Father Ted moment – Did she say the National Roads Authority would be calling to clear my sewage?

Revolution: Nothing less will do

We will not get through this crisis if our political institutions and system of governance do not change radically.

We should be clear that, economic stabilisation, much less recovery, will be stymied by alienation from our political system, by fragmentation of political support, and by the very real prospect of a rise in disenchantment and extremism among the tens of thousands who have joined the dole queue.

We need a realignment of politics in Ireland – we need democratic choices that mean something to contemporary society. We need a sense of right and wrong. We need a whole new political ethic premised on values-based leadership.

We need to engage individuals who have little interest in power as such, who have a commitment as well as a widely acknowledged expertise that is capable of restoring trust, confidence and a sense of direction.

So writes Prof. Ray Kinsella in today’s Irish Times. The professor is calling for the complete dismantling of the present (corrupt) political and administrative system.

He is, in effect, calling for a revolution and certainly nothing less will do. It is (depressingly) fascinating to observe politicians from all parties continue to behave as if the approaching disaster is nothing more than a local political/financial crisis.

Subjugation of servile drones

Letter in Sunday Tribune.

Right to resist government is no longer in dispute

Social contract envisages an agreement between people to form a society, as the alternative would be too terrible to contemplate. The process is entirely consensual.

The authority of government is derived from the consent of the people in return for a guarantee which seeks to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

When government fails in this duty it has broken the contract and in extreme circumstances may be deemed to be at war with the people. At this point the contract fails, mutual obligations end and the right to resist government authority is no longer in dispute.

At what point in our history did the Irish people assume the status of servile drones subjugated to the cynical dictates of a group of mid-Ireland mediocrities masquerading as political leaders.

Is the West awake?

Gerry Walker
Tinahely
Co Wicklow

Gay Mitchell goes mad

Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell went a bit mad on The Last Word today during an interview with Today FMs Anton Savage.

I tuned into the discussion after it started but apparently Mitchell wants a full time radio station to broadcast the ‘debates’ in the Oireachtas.

Mitchell went off the rails when Savage asked him if he could give an example of anything interesting that happened in the Senate during the last month.

Mitchell: No, I’m not going to give you; I’m not answering the question just because you make them up. I can’t think of anything in the last month but I can tell you for example…

Savage: Is that good enough

Mitchell: The issue is that people like you who are meant to be the medium are responsible not people like me I make the laws I’m a very intensive legislator. I work on developing world I work on economic and monetary affairs and when people come along and say ‘we don’t know what you do’ you blame us, you’re to blame, you should be communicating this.

Savage: I’m giving you the forum then, give me something from the Senate that will interest people.

Mitchell: I’m not going to give you any example, listen to me there’s an awful lot of people in this country who are involved in non governmental organisations who would be very happy to hear what is being done about the ten million children a year who are dying in the developing world, who never get to hear about it.

Savage: You said you wanted a radio station, you have a radio station now, I’m giving you open forum

Mitchell: No, you’re not giving me anything, I’m talking to the people I’m not talking to you. People are listening to me and their listening to you and what I’m saying to those people is this, I have an idea and I don’t care if people like you don’t like the idea I have a lot of ideas about a lot of things and I’m entitled to express them.

All I’m asking for is something interesting out of the Senate in the last month.

If you’ll let the people listen to what I’m saying, I’m not going to give you anything for the last month, it’s the third time I’ve told you that, I’m not going to give you anything. I’m going to tell you what the people want an opportunity to listen to…

Savage then played a clip from a debate in the Senate to give listeners an idea of what goes on there.

When the clip was finished Mitchell had hung up.

Seems he wants to burden us with endless political waffle but he couldn’t stand it himself for more than 30 seconds.

HIQA independence in question

TWO families who triggered the independent review of services at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Ennis are furious no one has been held accountable…The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) found it was unable to blame anyone because of a lack of clarity around local accountability and the authority to make decisions (Irish Examiner).

Once again a so called independent investigation into death within the HSE has been unable to hold anyone to account. I don’t think anybody really expected anything better. After so many other whitewash reports why would anyone think this one would be any different?

We’ve had the usual waffle from bureaucrats and politicians who have employed the usual cynical strategies to protect their backs.

A particularly nasty but common strategy is to supply the report to the victims just hours before its publication. This means they have no time to read it in detail and as we’re heading into a long weekend it will be old news by next Tuesday.

Mary Harney had promised to supply the report to the families of the victims before publication; she did so, at 11.30 on the morning of publication. It’s difficult to get more ruthlessly cynical than that.

This is in stark contrast to how the State favours the Catholic Church. The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation into clerical sex abuse is due for publication in May or June but Archbishop Martin and others have already been given a copy of the report so that they can prepare their response to what is said to be an absolutely shocking litany of abuse (Irish Examiner).

A solicitor for one of the families involved in the Ennis hospital misdiagnosis scandal said that the report seemed to have a political agenda connected to the downgrading of hospitals.

This was put to the chief executive officer of HIQA, Dr. Tracey Cooper, on the Six One News (1st report, 4th item) yesterday, she replied:

“As an independent authority we’re established to take work independently from the rest of the system. What’s driven the findings of the investigation is that it isn’t about political agenda’s; it isn’t about territorialism of local hospitals.

It is about the fact that international evidence is very clear that patients that require emergency care, specialist care have to be treated in care by people who see sufficient volumes of patients with those types of conditions to keep their skills up to date.”

This statement could have been taken straight out of Mary Harney’s files so close is it to government (political) policy regarding the downgrading of hospitals.

The merits of this policy have been widely debated throughout the media but why is this so called independent authority that was supposed to be investigating the deaths of two patients by misdiagnosis, parroting Government policy as a justification for its conclusions?

Is HIQA independent? I don’t think so.

Copy to:
HIQA

Heading for the wasteland

Kevin Myers takes Fine Gael to task in yesterday’s Irish Independent for the party’s failure to adopt a Tallaght Strategy type cooperation with the Government. It wasn’t easy at the time, he says, for Fine Gael to cooperate with a “truly dreadful man like Charles Haughey” he continues:

“He was, moreover, personally horrible, a sneering, ridiculing bully, a hypocrite who escorted his mistress to fine restaurants as he preached Catholic values. And he was visibly corrupt (though just how spectacularly so, we didn’t know for decades).”

“We didn’t know for decades”??? I’m about average when it comes to adding numbers and ditto on ability to join up dots.

Since the early 80s I’ve been adding the numbers and joining the dots and the result has always been the same. Haughey was not just ‘visibly’ corrupt; he was corrupt to the core.

For all those decades when Myers wasn’t quite sure of Haughey’s pedigree I was ranting on to anybody who would listen that this man should be stopped, that he was very, very obviously doing enormous damage to Ireland and its people, that he should be rotting in jail to prevent him from spreading the deadly disease of corruption throughout the land.

Haughey’s career of corruption was a resounding success principally because people like Myers were, and apparently still are, incapable of seeing the brutal reality right before their eyes.

Let me spell out that reality to Mr. Myers, it may save us all from having to read of his shock and horror at some point in the future (hopefully not decades) when he finally realises just how ‘spectacularly’ corrupt Ireland has become.

The corrupt Haughey did not operate in a vacuum. He carried out his crimes within the comfort of a corrupt Fianna Fail party. Many of the people who unquestionably supported the corrupt Haughey are still in the party, some of them at the highest level.

The party leadership almost to a man unquestionably supported the chancer Ahern even when he was swearing under oath that he won his dodgy money on the horses.

Fianna Fail has been in power for most of the history of this blighted state and it has corrupted the state to its core, not just some ‘visible’ corruption, but to its very core. Nothing will change until that reality is faced up to, until the rot that eats away at the heart of Irish society is ripped out and destroyed.

It is that corrupt entity that is still in power; it is that corrupt entity that Mr. Myers apparently thinks has the vision, courage and honesty to take us out of the crisis.

Myers tells us that if Fine Gael continues to oppose in order to court popular approval. . . the road ahead will lead to a wasteland.

No, Mr. Myers, if Fianna Fail is not destroyed as a political entity as a first step towards reform of our corrupt political system – then we are indeed heading for a wasteland.

Copy to:
Kevin Myers

HIQA joins HSE in the sewer of cynical strategies

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) was set up only two years ago and already it has descended into the sewer in company with the Health Service Executive (HSE).

Just like the HSE, HIQA has now apparently adopted the cynical strategy of waiting for the most opportune moment to bury unfavourable reports (Irish Independent).

It became clear that HIQA had descended into the sewer of cynical strategies when they published the report into Rebecca O’Malley’s misdiagnosis on the day Bertie Ahern resigned.

Nobody knew in advance that Ahern was resigning but it’s likely that HIQA had the report ready and were waiting for the right moment.

It could have been argued that this was perhaps just a coincidence, like all the other amazing ‘coincidences’ in Irish public life but the latest report publications leave us in no doubt that HIQA has abandoned its commitment to “operate to the highest standards of corporate governance.”

The report into cancer misdiagnosis at University College Hospital Galway was published (buried) on the eve of the Budget when it was certain to go unnoticed by the media.

Another report; that of the misdiagnosis of Ann Moriarty, was published (buried) just after the budget and before the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.

Karl Henry, whose wife died of breast cancer a year ago after doctors failed to diagnose her cancer in Ennis General Hospital, said:

“It is a cheap stunt. Are we being taken for complete and utter fools?”

Unfortunately, we are being taken for complete fools. The person/s in HIQA who are responsible for publishing these reports are probably congratulating themselves on how clever they are as they head off to enjoy the long weekend.

By next week it’s likely that their betrayal of the people they claim to serve will be forgotten as they consider how best to bury the next report.

Copy to:
HIQA