Category: The State

Revolutionary doctor?

Letter in today’s Irish Examiner. It’s noteworthy that the author of this letter, one of the elite of Irish society, speaks of revolution.

My €25,000 pay hike is absurd in the circumstances

THE Bord Snip report makes interesting reading in respect of the recommendations for significant increases in out-of-pocket costs if you are a sick person attending a hospital or in need of medications.

It is particularly relevant in the context of a rise in my gross salary in May of €25,000 to €225,000 under the terms of the new contract for hospital doctors. The cost of implementation of the contract this year is reported to be €140 million.

It also seems absurd that this expenditure has been sanctioned by government and executed by Prof Brendan Drumm, CEO of the HSE, when the Government and he are witness to cuts in Crumlin Children’s Hospital and to totalitarian HSE managers in Naas who are currently forcing the most savage cuts in our public hospitals throughout the country without a care for the needs of patients or frontline staff trying to provide hospital services. While it would appear the terms of the contract must be legally fulfilled, one must question the morality of this in the context of the above facts.

Somehow I thought, given the financial crisis, a mechanism would be found by government to postpone or alter the financial terms of this contract through negotiation with consultant bodies or, if not, through Colm McCarthy’s public service report, whose terms of reference provided wriggle room for him at least to make some comment, if not recommendations, in this regard.

This thorny work, according to the report, is to be dealt with by the reconvened commission on pay for higher public servants.

I am increasingly despondent about the country’s political and health service governance. We are experiencing the worst financial crisis this country has ever seen, and yet Government, on the one hand, can allow a large increase in health expenditure on salaries for highly paid health service personnel and on the other, through its HSE arm, cut hospital and other health services to sick people. Its public service review body does not even refer to these facts, but at the same time makes recommendations to cut social welfare payments to those at the bottom of the ladder.

Is all of this not outrageous? I think we may have had attempts at kidnapping of executives in the HSE or government, or had a revolution, if this had happened in France!

Dr John Barton
Consultant Physician
Portiuncula Hospital
Ballinasloe
Co Galway

Waiting for the worm to turn

Letter in today’s Irish Independent.

Let me get this right. Brian Lenihan says we can’t continue to borrow €400m per week or we will go bankrupt. Yet our politicians are on holiday for 12 weeks by which time they’ll have borrowed an extra €4.8bn.

When Mr Lenihan works out which vested interest pays the most money to Fianna Fail, and therefore needs to be kept on side the most, it will be the end of January 2010 and we’ll have borrowed a further €6.8bn. All this money has to be repaid, with interest, plus an extra premium given our lower credit rating.

Every voter in Ireland has a duty of care to their children, grandchildren and parents to make their anger known to TDs, and in particular those in the Green Party who keep this Government in power, so that no TD gets a moment’s respite from that anger until they abandon their holidays, recall the Dail and take the steps required to start fixing this mess now.

The required cutbacks need to start from the top because the well-off, despite their moaning, haven’t paid their fair share yet. The Government is relying on the Irish public remaining as weak and ineffectually docile as usual, but there’s only so much hypocrisy people will take before the worm turns.

In 2009, every pillar of Irish society failed. We now know how the corruption we allowed flourish in politics, by re-electing TDs we knew were not fit for the job has seeped into every sector of society so that the financial, legal, professional and religious systems are as rotten as the political one. So who’s left holding the sky up in Ireland, and how long before the whole thing falls in?

Rather than recalling the centenary of the 1916 Rising; in 2016, we might be dealing with the fallout from the long overdue revolution that sweeps away the Irish political system.

Desmond FitzGerald
Canary Wharf, London

The puzzlement of Alan Dukes

DUKES
Former Fine Gael leader and Anglo Irish Bank director, Alan Dukes, is puzzled at the delay by the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE ) in his investigation into Anglo Irish Bank.

I find it rather odd that the Director of Corporate Enforcement announced in February that he was satisfied that there was a prima facie case for an investigation into the bank. Having announced it in February in sent people in, in April, to begin the inquiry and announced recently, that if things go well, in November he might be in a position to tell the DPP whether or not there’s a case. I don’t know why it’s taking so long.

Mr. Dukes is puzzled because he, in company with the great majority of Irish citizens, is unaware that he lives and works within an administrative system that is largely corrupt.

That system is specifically designed to protect white collar criminals, including politicians, from being made accountable. A whole range of useless agencies like tribunals, High Court inspectors, ODCE, Financial Regulator and Financial Ombudsman are set up to absorb public anger, prevent immediate action and eventually allow allegations to become historical and forgotten.

Let me state once again. Nobody in Anglo Irish Bank will ever be brought to account for their actions.

Banker: Everybody is to blame – except us

In recent times Irish bankers have been keeping very quiet while the Government makes arrangements to bail them out with billions of taxpayer’s money.

Now however, one of them, former chairman of AIB, Mr. Dermot Gleeson SC, has crept out from under his rock to tell Irish citizens that they are to blame for the financial catastrophe because they rejected the Lisbon Treaty and, to add insult to injury, has warned us all that we had better get it right in next October’s referendum.

Conor Ryan of the Irish Examiner writes an excellent analysis of the rest of Mr. Gleeson’s warped views.

WHEN you have chaired Ireland’s largest bank during a period of overheated property speculation only to watch as massive loan books crumble onto unwitting taxpayers, you must know who to blame – everybody.

Former chairman of AIB, Mr. Dermot Gleeson SC has been telling Irish citizens that they are to blame for the financial catastrophe because they voted No in the Lisbon Treaty and that they had better get it right next time.

Well, everybody but yourself that is.

Welcome to the world according to Dermot Gleeson – senior counsel and outgoing chairman of AIB.

Yesterday he treated the morning audience at the MacGill Summer School to a lengthy explanation on how it all went wrong.

Obviously being relieved of the burden of chairing the bank – which had doubled the size of its lending in recent years – has allowed Mr Gleeson to sit back and assess AIB’s embarrassing fall.

And here, for the first time, is a complete run-down of Gleeson’s Bad Guys – the people and factors who, he feels, created a situation where any banker could do little else but throw caution to the wind:

1. European regulations which imposed new accounting standards that only encouraged banks to be reckless.

2. Accountants. Don’t even start Mr Gleeson on accountants. According to him them and their “mark to market” valuing practices totally confused the price of heifers and houses alike.

3. Rating agencies who handed out healthy AAA ratings like a labelling machines at a Duracell factory to obviously unsustainable financial institutions.

4. Central banks. Their warnings of impending crashes could not be taken seriously because quarterly bulletins were otherwise gleefully optimistic. Interest rate policy is a grumble for another day.

5. Government policy. Public spending was excessive and stamp duty was never a long term option. Oh, and the litany of tax reliefs drove the construction boom which banks had to provide money for.

6. The Financial Regulator. It had access to the accounts of banks and should have saved lenders from themselves.

7. Monopoly power. GP fees were too high, energy prices were costly and social partnership was not competitive.

8. The feckless public. “When you are looking for the causes it is hard to exempt ourselves the public, I am not speaking from my capacity as a former chairman of a bank (of course, Mr Gleeson). The public played a role as well because many of us participated in the property bubble.”

9. The nation. ” We believed in things that weren’t actually true… And there is a sense that national pride and confidence boiled itself into over confidence.” You bold nation, you.

10. The media. The call by some commentators that people should vote no to Lisbon was evidence, Mr Gleeson felt, that the media had lost touch with reality.

And then, finally, we have the banks. They made mistakes and here, according to Mr Gleeson, are some of the reasons why.

1. Everybody the banks relied on to assess risks got it wrong. You name it, engineers, statisticians and PhD holders.

2. Risk assessors never exposed the problems in banking practices which markets needed to know.

3. “Sophisticated international consultants” who backed Anglo as a model for other banks and among their cheer leaders, financial journalists and brokers.

4. Anglo Irish Bank. “The presence of a competitor who appears to be striding ahead of you, certainly is taking customers from you, certainly is gaining market share and is being lauded and applauded not just by its own supporters but by [market analysts].” Clearly a bad example for impressionable bankers.

However, after pointing the finger at every other sector Mr Gleeson nobly conceded that following the crowd simply did not absolve his fellow senior bankers.

“The point I just made makes no excuse whatsoever for anyone who followed [Anglo’s] bad example. But it does make up a small part of the explanation,” he said.

And on this gracious note one can only assume had it all gone right, society would have been treated to an equally systematic singling out for praise.

Mr Gleeson’s speech certainly makes it hard to believe that a banker can take credit for anything.

The good news – We're better off than Iceland

The so called ‘great and good’ of Irish society (mostly those who have destroyed the country) are up in Donegal at the MacGill Summer School in Glenties issuing edicts of wisdom for the benefit of the masses.

Yesterday, the only pearl of wisdom they could come up with was that Ireland wasn’t in as bad a position as Iceland (RTE News, 8th report).

People power

Letter in today’s Irish Examiner.

I agree with Fergus Finlay (July 14) that political contempt for Dáil Éireann could lead to effective dictatorship.

I strongly disagree, however, with his conclusion that respect for our national parliament can only be restored by politicians.

It is clear that a majority of citizens have lost confidence in the body politic and therefore it is the people themselves who should act to restore respect for Dáil Éireann by bypassing the political system altogether.

Anthony Sheridan

Misplaced loyalty

As time goes on it is becoming more and more obvious that civil servants are more concerned about the interests of their political masters than the interests of citizens.

Consider the following letter published recently in the Irish Independent.

Sir,

Your lead headline (July 5) was predictable in its timing, but not only was it boringly repetitive, it was wholly inaccurate. TDs will not ‘cut and run’ for a ‘three-month holiday’.

Rather, the Dail and Seanad will be in recess until mid- September. During what you describe as a ‘holiday’, up to 40 parliamentary committee meetings will also be conducted.

Moreover, members will continue to conduct a wide range of constituency duties, a function that they fulfil seven days a week throughout the year. The Oireachtas actually compares well with other parliaments – it has a below average number of recess (nonsitting) weeks per year, Of parliaments we surveyed recently, it has the fourth least number of recess weeks.

It also has fewer recess weeks than Germany, Finland, Sweden and Denmark – countries often admired for their democracy.

In relation to sitting days, our parliament records second place in the same survey with a total of 1278 sitting hours and 177 sitting days for both houses per year. This is ahead of other two chamber parliaments, such as South Africa and Australia.

Finally, where parliamentary questions arise, the Oireachtas, with 40,875 questions tabled, rates second place out of the nine parliaments we surveyed.
I’d ask your readers to consider these points when forming a more considered opinion of the work of members of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

Mark Mulqueen
Head of Communications
Houses of the Oireachtas

Here’s an extract from the Civil Service Code of Standards and Behaviour as outlined on the Standards in Public Office Commission website.

(d) All civil servants above clerical level are totally debarred from engaging in any form of political activity.

Civil servants in category (d) may not engage in public debate (e.g. letter writing to newspapers, contributions to television or radio programmes, etc.) on politics except if required to do so as part of their official duties.

Real Madrid enters the same league as FÁS

Real Madrid, one of the richest football teams in the world which proudly includes on its team Cristiano Ronaldo, the most expensive footballer in the world, has arrived in Carton House, County Kildare for pre-season training camp (Irish Independent).

Real Madrid management will, I believe, only agree to send their super rich, super talented people to locations which provide world class facilities and security; only the very best is acceptable and cost is never a factor.

So, how were Real Madrid management finally convinced that Carton House was the very best that money could buy?

Simple, they heard that it satisfied the exacting standards and expensive tastes of FÁS staff.

We'll be waiting…

The discredited head of the discredited Central Bank, John Hurley, was on RTE (2nd report, 1st item) today blaming others for his incompetence.

Asked if he took any personal responsibility for what happened in the Irish banking system over the past year he said:

The international regulatory environment clearly has been found wanting and the rules in which regulators regulated in different markets clearly were inadequate.

Irish citizens are still waiting for an official, a politician, a banker, anybody to say – Yes, I’m to blame. I think they’ll be waiting.

Time for the people to take back their parliament

Fergus Finlay has a very interesting piece in today’s Irish Examiner concerning the relevance of the Dail. He refers to RTEs political correspondent, David Davin Power, from last Sunday’s This Week programme (4th report). (The full report is worth a listen).

Our national parliament has become a nuisance to the real powers in the land. They – and I assume he means the Government and senior civil servants – have come to see the parliament as essentially an obstacle to the orderly running of government. That is why parliament is ignored most of the time and then treated with contempt at times like last week when important and controversial legislation was guillotined through the parliament before they were sent on their holidays.

Finaly goes on to make the following points.

I believe that’s tragic. Actually, it’s also hugely dangerous. The more respect for parliament is allowed to be corroded, the closer we all get to a slippery slope – and it’s the slippery slope, believe it or not, that leads to effective dictatorship.

And the truth is that until it does begin to take itself seriously, as the place where the interests of the people are truly represented, on a basis of conscience and as a place where other institutions are held to account on behalf of the people, then there is little enough reason for others to take parliament seriously.

He concludes;

Our parliament can be made to matter again. But only by its own members – and only if, once and for all, they start earning all our respect.

I strongly disagree with this last point, that only politicians can make our parliament matter again. Politicians long ago squandered any hope of regaining public respect.

The time has come, I believe, for the people to take back their own parliament from the incompetent, greedy and largely corrupt politicians.