Category: Government

Mansergh replies

Fianna Fail TD, Martin Mansergh replies to my letter of 27th November.

Madam,

While grateful for Anthony Sheridan’s complimentary remarks about my role in the peace process (Nov 27th), he misrepresents the point I was making about the Taoiseach’s future salary increase.

While the Taoiseach, as elected head of Government, has ultimately more responsibility for the welfare of this country as a whole than anyone else, I did not argue that therefore he ought to be paid better than anyone else, and I made this absolutely clear in several radio interviews.

What I did say was that, when it comes into effect in 2009, his revised pay would, by my rough calculation, with the help of information in reply to a parliamentary question from me to the Minister for Finance, place him around No. 13,000 in the list of high earners. Is this really so out of place?

While my point related to the office not the man, can anyone seriously argue that the successful completion of the Northern Ireland peace process in which he played such a central leading role is not of priceless value to this country, not to mention the most rapid and prolonged period of economic and social progress in our history under his leadership? The Celtic Tiger started when he was minister for finance, continued under the Rainbow, and has been underpinned by social partnership, of which since 1987 he has been one of the principal creators and sustainers, and which gave us the third quarter of this year free of strikes.

Finally, the relatively modest overall cost of the Taoiseach to this country bears absolutely no relationship to the cost of the president of the United States or the president of France to theirs.

Yours, etc,

MARTIN MANSERGH TD,
Dáil Éireann,
Dublin 2.

Mansergh cover up

Fianna Fail TD Martin Mansergh has contradicted the evidence given today at the Mahon Tribunal by Air Corps Brigadier General Ralph James. The evidence concerns an official visit by the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, to the Bahamas in 1994

Mansergh, who was on the trip as a special advisor to Reynolds said the three day visit was a formal trip and not an unscheduled diversion. On The Last Word (Today FM) Mansergh is reported as saying the general’s evidence was based on faulty recollection.

But in his usual sly and underhand way Mansergh is not telling the whole truth.

Brigadier General James did not claim that the trip to the Bahamas was unscheduled. He did, however, claim that there was an unscheduled flight from Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, to the island of Freeport North of the capital.

This unscheduled flight was specifically requested by Reynolds who spent six hours on the island. There is no record of what he was up to for those six hours.

It is clear that Mansergh has no scruples about calling into question the reliability of James’ evidence in an apparent attempt to cover up for Reynolds.

The relevant transcript from the Tribunal is worth reading. Questions 90 – 127 and specifically questions 96 – 98.

Mysterious stop over

The cigar smoking, greasy mustached general accompanied the dictator out on to the runway where the Government jet was ready for take off. His Excellency was on his way to attend a very important meeting where the price of bananas was top of the agenda.

Before boarding the general reminds his Excellency about ‘the other business’ he must attend to after his very important meeting. The dictator thanks the general and promises to promote him to Field Marshal on his return.

The very important meeting went well, much business was done and the dictator boarded his jet for the return flight. Two hours into the flight the pilot is instructed to divert to the Bahamas. Unfortunately, the pilot is new to the job and unfamiliar with the ways of the world; he protests;

“But your Excellency; I must follow the flight plan and take you safely back to our glorious republic.”

After a couple of clatters around the head and a threat that his family would be forced to join Fine Gael, the pilot does what he’s told.

The dictator is in a hurry, only spending six hours in the Bahamas attending to ‘the other business’, before continuing his journey home.

After all he has been away nearly a week now and his people must surely be suffering from the absence of his great leadership.

ENDS

Brigadier General Ralph James was one of those giving some very interesting evidence to the Mahon Tribunal today.

It seems that the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, made an unscheduled flight to the island of Freeport while on an official visit to the Bahamas in 1994. He was returning from St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the US.

Former developer Tom Gilmartin has alleged that Reynolds collected $1 million in New York, Boston and Chicago that year but that only $70,000 made it to the Fianna Fail party.

The general said there was no reason recorded for the unofficial flight.

Ahern's pay rise

Letter in today’s Irish Times

TAOISEACH’S PAY RISE

Madam,

It is widely recognised that Fianna Fáil TD Martin Mansergh is a man of high intellectual abilities.

His significant role in the successful Northern Ireland peace process is also an indication that he is a man of exceptional political and diplomatic intelligence.

It is therefore reasonable to assume he is fully aware that his claim that Bertie Ahern should be the highest-paid individual in the State, on the basis that he has more responsibilities than anyone else, is puerile nonsense (November 22nd).

The fact that a man of Dr Mansergh’s high reputation is reduced to mouthing such a ridiculous defence is itself confirmation that the pay rise was totally unjustified.

If this ludicrous logic was extended to the United States, for example, President Bush would be in receipt of an income greater than Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates, who has a net worth of $53 billion.

Sadly it seems that Dr Mansergh, for all his abilities, is motivated by nothing more than the traditional Fianna Fáil backwoodsman mentality of defending the party and its leader above all other considerations.

He cannot be unaware of the damage such an attitude does to the interests of the Irish people.

Yours, etc,

ANTHONY SHERIDAN

Puffed up politicians

When Minister for Health, Mary Harney, was asked for her reaction to a recent poll that said only 13% of people believed the health service had improved since she had taken over and a massive 53% said that it had got worse, she replied:

“That’s not surprising because the public perceive the health service on the basis of what they hear from programmes like yours.”

(RTE, News at One, 1st item)

This is more than just the usual cowardly political reaction of blaming the media. It is patronizing and insulting to the intelligence of Irish citizens. Effectively, Harney is suggesting that ordinary people are incapable of coming to their own independent conclusions.

As a further defence she quoted figures from another poll that found up to 90% of patients were very happy with the health service. The crucial difference here is that it was a poll of patients.

I remember around the mid 1980s when military personnel were getting more vocal about the primitive conditions in military hospitals the authorities responded by asking patients to sign a form declaring that they had received adequate care or, alternatively, outline any complaints they might have.

Not surprisingly, I never witnessed or heard of a single patient making a complaint.

The 90% positive response also reminds me of so called elections in places like Saddam’s Iraq or the North Korea of Kim Jong il.

These are situations where those in power are more interested in their own puffed up appearances rather than facing inconvenient realities – Much like Ireland in 2007.

Grotesque distortion of the English language

Michael Buckley is a former chief executive of Allied Irish Banks, an organisation responsible for the theft of millions from both customers and the State.

He is now the senior independent director on DCCs board, a board that is fully supportive of its executive chairman, Jim Flavin, who was found by the Supreme Court to have engaged in insider trading.

Buckley says that that the board’s stance is

“grounded in justice, fairness, honesty and decency”.

Words like justice, fairness, honesty and decency coming out of Buckley’s mouth in respect of these events can only be described as a grotesque distortion of the English language.

Later, he further justifies the board’s stance by saying:

“Anyone concerned for the reputation of the Irish market as a result of the affair would reach the same conclusion.”

This is a less than subtle message to regulatory agencies that if they make a big fuss about this it could make Ireland look bad internationally.

A similar strategy was employed during the DIRT scandal. Politicians, government departments like Revenue, Dept. of Finance and other so called regulatory agencies were warned that if they did anything to stop the mass criminality involved there would be a flight of capital out of the country.

This strategy worked until the only real regulatory agency, the media, got wind of the scandal.

Judging from the almost complete lack of action against DCC and Jim Flavin, it looks like the so called Irish regulatory/law enforcement agencies have again folded under pressure from the likes of Buckley.

Still asleep

I think the letter below is the one you are referring to Haymoon.

I strongly agree with the views expressed but I wouldn’t be confident about the sleeping Irish electorate waking up, the bulk of them are, I think, still sound asleep.

ARE TOP POLITICIANS UP TO THE JOB?

Madam,

If large corporations in the private sector adopted the same approach to selecting senior executives as our political system employs they would be bankrupted and out of business in double quick time.

The lunacy of the process becomes obvious in the first instance at local level, when candidates for county council elections are chosen. The most important attributes include being “well in” with the party suits, being related to someone in politics, or being a publican, undertaker, county footballer, token female, etc.

When electing people to make decisions that seriously affect the lives of thousands we don’t look for qualifications, experience, education, competence, references, past achievements or even an accepted level of intelligence.

This ludicrous system is replicated at government level. Take a close look at the most senior executives of our country – the Cabinet.

What qualifies them to run the largest corporation in the country, Ireland Inc? Does their training and expertise qualify them to run our lives?

How many of them would seriously be considered for an executive position in our top multinational companies?
As revealed in your edition of November 8th, the Minister of State for Education and Science, Sean Haughey, has more staff working in his constituency office (six) than he has to cover his ministerial duties (four). It is obvious where his priorities lie and this attitude is endemic across this wasteful Government.

Our chief executive, Bertie Ahern, lives in a parallel world where he is in charge of everything but responsible for nothing. He has distanced himself and his colleagues from all State responsibilities by setting up layer upon layer of insulating committees and authorities which can be conveniently blamed when things go wrong.

Here is a man who forgets about receiving extremely large sums of money while in office (strange accountant), gives contradictory testimony to a tribunal and brazenly expects us to have sympathy for his plight.

The leader of our State finds it difficult to construct even the simplest of sentences and constantly resorts to incoherent, senseless waffling – for example when speaking in the Dáil last week on hospital consultants: “The vast majority of them would form far more excessive than I would as a salary.”

Irish electors voted, with their eyes wide open, for this incompetent, arrogant, out-of-touch Government and so permitted it to continue to mismanage our affairs. The electorate must share the blame for the position we now find ourselves in. – Yours, etc,

AIDAN MULLINS, Foxcroft Street, Portarlington, Co Laois.

Nothing to do with me!!

Let’s cut through all the waffle surrounding the removal of John Crown from last Friday’s Late Late Show. (All emphasis mine)

It was censorship, at least by proxy.

The censorship originated from a Government source and was successful because, generally speaking, RTE does not have the courage to stand up to politicians.

State censorship of free speech is a serious threat to democracy so all those connected to this event will strongly deny any involvement, blame somebody else or put themselves in a neutral position.

Pat Kenny said.

“The decision was made at a higher level than the team of the Late Late Show production.”

So, Pat can say: Nothing to do with me.

Bertie Ahern said; “No phone calls were made to my knowledge”

So, Ahern can say: Nothing to do with me.

Mary Harney said she personally had no knowledge that Prof. Crown was to appear on the programme.

So, Harney can say: Nothing to do with me.

The Director General (Sub. Req’d) of RTE has emphatically denied that the panel change was made after a phone call to him by Ms Harney.

So, the DG can say: Nothing to do with me.

The Managing Director of RTÉ Television, Noel Curran said there was absolutely no political interference in the decision to change the panel of guests.

Mr. Curran said he made the decision to change the panel to achieve a more balanced range of views and said no-one had contacted him prior to his action.

So, we know who made the decision and most importantly, we know he made the decision on his own without contact with anyone.

Finally, the most unaccountable, the most important and certainly the most useful player in the whole episode – An anonymous Government spokesman – This is what he said;

He did tell the programme team that he was of the view that the proposed panel was unbalanced

(An anonymous, unaccountable civil servant can phone the national broadcaster and express his, apparently, personal views about who should or should not partake in a crucial television debate – and he’s taken seriously?).

He did not request that Prof. Crown be removed. (Why would he need to be so crude, the contact was the message not what was said)

So, while the anonymous and unaccountable Government spokesman, operating at a safe distance from Harney and Ahern, was telling the show’s production team that he thought the panel was unbalanced, the Director General of RTE was, coincidently and without contact with anybody, coming to the exact same conclusion.

Oh, by the way, politicians will be deciding today whether to approve an RTE application for a €2 licence fee increase.

The political world and the real world

Letter in today’s Irish Independent.

Tuesday November 13 2007

It was reported on the RTE current affairs programme ‘Drivetime‘ (3rd item, 2nd report) last Wednesday that Mary O’Rourke TD, finding herself bored during ministerial question time, decided to take a walk down to Brown Thomas. We were told how she met 11 women all with horror stories about friends and relations affected by cancer.

Nothing better illustrates the yawning gap between the comfortable world of our politicians and the brutal reality of many ordinary citizens.

Here’s a politician who has held several senior positions in government, who is a member of a party that has held power for more years than any other party, but who has become so removed from the lives of ordinary people that she only encounters reality when she wanders out of the rarefied world of our useless and “boring” parliament.

Her contribution during the special Dail debate on the latest cancer treatment scandal only served to confirm her ignorance of what is happening in the real world.

She started by congratulating Minister for Health, Mary Harney, for apologising to the women who were misdiagnosed, as if this empty gesture had any meaning.

This was followed by high praise for all politicians who put themselves out by agreeing actually to meet and discuss the scandal.

She then viciously attacked Prof Drumm as if it was he and not incompetent politicians who landed us with a Third World health service.

After telling the nation that she didn’t think we would ever have a proper health service, Mrs O’Rourke apologised in advance for her absence from the next day’s briefing of politicians by Prof Drumm.

Apparently she had a more pressing engagement — another trip to Brown Thomas, perhaps?

ANTHONY SHERIDAN

COBH, CO CORK

What?

Bertie Ahern on RTEs News at One today (First item)

“Sometimes I feel I have some power, most of the time I feel that I have limited power but I can tell you one thing that I’ve never had is the ability to direct anything in RTE. I’ve never had that in 30 years, if I had things would be very different but I can assure I don’t have it.”

If he had the power to direct things in RTE – “Things would be very different????”

What does that mean?