Category: Government

State sponsored legal rackets

A United Nations committee on torture has described as stunning the high number of Nigerians whose applications for refugee status are refused by Ireland (Nine News).

The Secretary General of the Dept. of Justice, Sean Aylward, defended the record by saying that there was a legal racket going on in stringing things out.

Could it be that those Nigerians, who Mr. Aylward so casually accuses, are taking their cue from the multitude of legal rackets engaged in by Irish politicians and civil servants?

Never ending tribunals, useless Dail Committee inquiries and numerous police investigations that never seem to end in convictions.

Ruthless and corrupt politicians, bankers and other white collar criminals all rest easy in their beds in the secure knowledge that they and their ill gotten gains are well protected by a myriad of state sponsored legal rackets.

Once again we're disgraced by a political leader

I spoke with a friend shortly after the speeches by Enda Kenny and Barack Obama in Dublin.

He thought Obama’s speech was better and that Kenny went on too long.

I disagreed; I thought Obama’s speech was a standard, harmless election speech aimed solely at the Irish constituency in the US.

Kenny’s speech, I thought, was passionate and very well delivered. I was aware that he might go on too long but Obama, in the background, seemed to be enjoying the Taoiseach’s contribution.

Now I know why Obama was laughing in the background. It wasn’t from admiration for Kenny’s oratory skills but, probably, from contempt that neither he nor any of his officials were capable of writing an original speech.

What we, and the whole world, witnessed was just another typical Tammany Hall stroke by a gombeen Irish politician.

When the scam was uncovered the reaction was predictable – lies.

The use (theft) of Obama’s words was, we were told, to honour the man. This, of course, is bullshit.

If this was true Obama would have been informed and would have received public and proper credit for his own words.

Once again the Irish people have been disgraced by a political leader.

Pension levy: Strictly for the peasants

Taken from a ‘letter to the editor’ in today’s Sunday Independent on the matter of the recently imposed levy on private pensions.

A few short weeks back he said in the Dail that he was unable to do anything about a very large pension pot awarded to former AIB boss Colm Doherty because of contractual arrangements and pension legislation.

Yet on Tuesday last, as quoted on the Department of Finance website, he appeared to have no difficulty in changing the self-same contractual arrangements and pension legislation to rob the ordinary person. Could you ask Mr Noonan to explain the difference between Colm Doherty and me?

Electoral law? – Whatever you're having yourself

I wasn’t happy with the response I received from the Dept. of Environment, Heritage and Local Government to my complaint regarding Fianna Fail TD Eamon O’Cuiv so I rang seeking further clarification.

Specifically, I wanted to know; what exactly was the role of the department regarding complaints from the public in respect of suspected breaches of electoral law.

Me: As a senior official in the dept responsible for the proper enforcement of electoral law, have you any concerns whatsoever regarding these events?

Official: When it comes to electoral law we’re forever changing the law on electoral issues. Tweaking here and tweaking there and those tweaks always reflect the fact that there’s something not quite right in the electoral law, that’s how we generally respond to these things.

But in terms of the law there are two approaches, there’s what the law is at the moment and what the law could or should be and we do a lot of entertaining about what the law could or should be and in that regard we would be taking on concerns that people might express.

Me: (In growing astonishment at the answers I was getting) Is it a crime to submit a false name on a nomination paper?

Official: Life isn’t as black or white as all that.

Me: It either is a crime or it’s not or you don’t know.

Official: You’re using very emotive words. It’s the nomination process and you’re supposed to use the name you’re ordinarily known by.

Me: Are you not the regulatory body in charge of electoral law?

Official: Yes, we’re in charge of electoral law.

Me: So it’s up to you to investigate?

Official: No.

Me: It’s not? (Accompanied by astonished laughter).

Official: What I’m willing to do here and I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge is that law as made is never perfect, law is an ongoing process and should be reviewed from time to time.

The information gleaned from this official can be summed up as follows.

The department is forever changing electoral law, tweaking here, tweaking there.

(Irish) Electoral law is never static, there’s what it is at the moment and there’s what it could or should be.

The department is in charge of electoral law but doesn’t investigate complaints.

Government to re-float Titanic

Latest…

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has successfully applied a coat of paint to the wheelhouse door on Titanic which lies buried deep in the mud two miles below the cold Atlantic.

A delighted government spokesperson said that Minister Noonan would continue to work on the wreck and was confident that the ship would be fully restored to its former glory in the near future.

Is that a Fine Gael or a Fianna Fail corner?

The government reaction to the latest bank bail out tells us that the Fine Gael/Labour government is now firmly on the same road as the previous government, a road with many, many corners.

The Financial Measures Programme was already paying dividends across a range of areas said Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan.

In other words, don’t worry folks, we’ve turned a corner, all will be well.

Is that a brand new Fine Gael corner I wonder or perhaps it’s a corner left behind by Brian Lenihan.

Ah yes, Brian Lenihan, he must be feeling nostalgic for all those corners he so enjoyed turning before becoming completely moribund on the backbenches.

Upward only rent law: All clear now

I had always been puzzled by the upward only rent law, I thought there must be some reasonable explanation for such an apparently unfair law.

All became clear on the Frontline last Monday as Ann Hargaden, of Lisney’s Estate Agents, literally squirmed in her seat as she tried to justify this law.

If this law is changed, she warned, it will have devastating effects on international investors coming into Ireland to buy property from NAMA.

When that argument failed to convince Hargaden’s line of thought became even more bizarre.

Think about it, she argued. Who’s going to be hurt by this? (if the law is changed to allow rents to go down). The taxpayer, she triumphantly declared, will pay.

The taxpayer is now the landlord. The taxpayer owns the banks, the taxpayer owns NAMA. If property depreciates in value it’s the taxpayer who will suffer.

So it’s all clear to me now.

The upward only rent law is a scam put in place by our corrupt political system to protect and enrich those involved in the property market at the expense of taxpayers.

Marian Finucane: Stop telling me the truth

Marian Finucane (Saturday) began her interview with Pat Cox last Saturday in a very angry tone.

A lot of Irish people are feeling really, really angry with Europe at this stage, that Irish taxpayers have been forced by Europe not by the IMF to pay for loans that the Irish people didn’t take out, there seems a dreadful injustice at the heart of that.

Throughout the entire interview Finucane refused to accept that, as a nation, we were in any way to blame.

It’s the fault of the Europeans; they allowed the nasty European banks to take advantage of our gentle and innocent banks.

Cox tried his best to tell her the truth.

In fact, right throughout the interview he kept on saying – It’s our fault, we did it to ourselves but Finucane was having none of it.

We’re Irish she seemed to suggest, we can’t be expected to face reality, we don’t do reality.

Why, asked Cox, are other European countries both inside and outside the Euro much better off than Ireland, why did Ireland fail?

Yes, said Finucane we know all about bad regulation and the politics of it all but those nasty banks were taking a punt on our financial institutions and they’re getting away with it.

It’s our fault said Cox, we had no contingency plan, we made a mess of it.

But Finucane insisted the European banks were investing here because they figured that the Irish mug would have to pay for it through tax.

Cox was patient.

The unilateral decision made in 2008 to guarantee all the Irish banks was the single most reckless decision in the history of the Irish state.

The decision was made without telling our EU partners, it posed a serious danger to their interests. We put on the Green Jersey, the Germans didn’t make us do it, the French didn’t make us do it, we did it ourselves.

But Finucane was determined, at all costs, to avoid facing reality.

But we’ve made so many sacrifices, tax increases, pay cuts, there’s a lot of pain and the nasty investors who lent recklessly to our gentle innocent banks are getting away without any pain.

Cox is a saint.

We did it to ourselves he said. The EU and even the IMF stopped believing us; they don’t trust the Irish, that’s why they insisted on an external examiner to supervise the latest bank stress tests.

But, said the by now crazed Finucane, the people who put money into Anglo, for example, knew it was a basket case, it’s so unfair that we should have to take the pain.

I switched off, went for a walk.