Category: The State

For some time now Karlin Lillington of the Irish Times has been writing and warning about the State’s draconian data retention laws. Under this legislation the State can retain details, but not the content, of every phone, mobile and fax call for three years.

The legislation was, in the best traditions of a banana republic, imposed rather than by open democratic debate and introduced in virtual secrecy.

Now Digital Rights Ireland is challenging the legislation. According to DRI, this type of monitoring is a breach of Irish citizens’ rights to privacy and is a complete reversal of the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty.

So, should we be worried? Most certainly, under the legislation the Gardai are making an incredible 10,000 requests a year for access to information on innocent citizens.

It would also be wise to remember that the legislation was introduced by a Justice Minister who has no scruples about leaking confidential police files that can destroy the good name of an innocent citizen.

Here’s the story of the West Link in a nutshell.

The bridge cost NTR a mere €14 million to build. In twenty years of operation they have milked a fortune from long suffering motorists/taxpayers. Now, those same taxpayers have to buy back the bridge for €600 million and into the future they will be forced to pay at least another €600 million in continuing tolls.

So who was involved in this very lucrative deal that has massively enriched big business by imposing penal costs on taxpayers?

Those familiar with how our banana republic is run will not be surprised to learn that George Redmond, the corrupt former Dublin Assistant City and County Manager signed the contract in company with the then Environment Minister Padraig Flynn.

To top off the sleazy deal, the bridge was opened by none other than the king of corruption himself, Charles Haughey.

The whole sorry saga stands as a potent symbol of how a country can go rotten when it is greedily exploited by low quality political leadership.

According to the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), National Toll Roads underpaid the State by nearly €2 million in 2003/2004. The director of NTR, Michael Walsh, did what the banks always do when dodgy financial activities see the light of day; he claimed it was an ‘error’.

Amazingly, or perhaps not so amazingly, this ‘error’ went unnoticed by NTR, its auditors, the National Roads Authority and the Department of Transport.

If it wasn’t for the beady eye of a civil servant in the C&AGs office, taxpayers would have been down €2 million.

But let’s face it; €2 million is chicken feed when compared to the vast amounts of cash involved in the whole M50 West Link saga. Here are some of the figures.

Up to 2004, taxpayers had paid about €1.1 billion building the M50 each side of the West Link Bridge. NTR paid an initial €14 million in today’s money for the bridge. Now the Government is giving them €600 million to buy the bridge back.

Every taxpayer in the country should stop doing what they’re doing when they hear that figure in the media and silently mouth to themselves – €600 million.

But there’s more; having paid for the road and bought back the bridge they will now, on threat of prosecution, be forced to pay for the whole thing again through continuing tolls.

This is in addition to the penal taxes already imposed on motorists. In 2004, for example, motorists paid €946 in VRT alone.

So, my question is – when are motorists/taxpayers going to kick ‘ass?

The following article is reproduced here in full because it’s such a rarity – an insider’s frank and revealing account of a corrupt system.

In this morning’s Irish Times, Michael Casey, former chief economist with the Central Bank of Ireland provides a fascinating insight into how the rotten Irish system operates. His final paragraph is as damning as it is depressing.

The many ways of corruption

According to the OECD, bribery and corruption have serious negative effects on economies. The most important of these are the distortion of market signals and competitive forces, the inflation of spending on public procurement, the undermining of productive investment, growth and employment.writes Michael Casey .

As far as Ireland is concerned, it would seem that the bribery and corruption of the 70s and 80s was one of the factors which postponed the arrival of the Celtic Tiger. Back then, “pulling a stroke” was seen as preferable to genuine entrepreneurial activity.

The most clear form of bribery is where a favour is promised or granted by a politician, say, to a benefactor in return for money or benefit in kind. It can take other forms such as nepotism, cronyism, graft, patronage, insider trading etc. Even in the most clear-cut form of bribery, where money changes hands and a favour is given, it is extremely difficult for the legal system to “prove” anything.

Bribery is the rock that the tribunals will founder on. A tribunal could sit for 20 years and still not be able to stand up a charge of bribery. This is certainly true where money is given in cash form and there is no paper trail.

Even though the law is not much help in weeding out bribery it can at least name and shame – although it is not immediately obvious that the recipients have much sense of shame. However, there are several ways in which the favours given in return for the bribe can be fudged to such an extent that all taints of bribery are expunged.

One method is the “name-dropping” one, where the businessman gives money to the politician – usually a very senior one – because it gives him credibility among his business colleagues. It confers name-dropping rights and, of course, all-important access to the corridors of power. Over the years, many businessmen have indulged in this limited form of bribery and it is hard to imagine that their business dealings did not prosper as a result – even in cases where the recipient politician provided no direct or explicit favours. It can also be used to get a quicker or more favourable decision from parts of the public sector.

There is also the “inclusion” method, whereby the politician ensures the benefactor’s company is included on all relevant lists for tendering and public-procurement purposes. The politician may distance himself from this practice by asking his aides to draw up the lists.

If the politician decides to go further and interfere in the tendering process, this can be done in complete safety by, for example, informing the benefactor company about the quotes of competitor companies. This can be done in complete safety since there is no paper trail whatsoever: a one-minute phone call will usually suffice. Another method is “gentle pressure”. A politician may only need to let his aides know what his preferred outcome is. Some aides will read the situation correctly and do their best to deliver the result required.

The benefit can be a benefit in kind. It need not even accrue to the politician but to a friend of his or to a member of his family. This “distancing” technique adds another layer of safety. An even safer version is where the benefit is not given until retirement, when the politician (or aide) will be invited onto a board as a director or consultant.

The provision of inside information (verbally, of course) is yet another foolproof way of doing favours. When an area of a city or town is designated for tax purposes it is a very easy matter to put one’s benefactors in the know so that they can be first in to buy the properties and thereby capture the price rises.

There is absolutely nothing in law or ethical codes to stop any politician from bringing in policies to help his chances of re-election and which do little for the public good. Our history is littered with cases of politicians providing infrastructure and other public goods and services in their own constituencies without any regard for the national interest, formulating fiscal policy without any regard to the needs of the economy, and so on. There are no sanctions whatsoever to prevent or even limit such practices. This is true also of political appointments to quangos and State boards.

New methods of safe bribery are being thought up every week. No code of conduct can keep up with the ingenuity employed in circumventing it. Tribunals won’t make much difference and will ultimately represent bad value for money where the hard-pressed taxpayer is concerned. And it is disappointing to note that the proposed corruption assets bureau has somehow managed to slip off the agenda, just as the authorities have rowed back on freedom of information.

The reality seems to be that as a community we don’t really want to put in the required effort to clean out the Augean stables for once and for all. We’re just not prepared to go that far – maybe because the most likely losers would tend to be the people who make the law.

Michael Casey is a former chief economist with the Central Bank of Ireland

Ireland is the kind of country where the Government monitors the opinions of citizen’s by operating a special unit that does nothing else but listens in on major talk shows and other media sources. In true banana republic fashion the unit does not work at weekends.

It is the kind of country that tolerates a rogue Justice Minister who uses police files to target and destroy the livelihood and good name of an innocent citizen.

A Minister who presides over a police force that has been discredited as largely incompetent and corrupt but which is given increasingly draconian powers to fight gang crime that the same Minister only recently declared was utterly defeated.

A Minister and also Senior Counsel whose standard of accountability leads him to suggest that a major inquiry into State corruption should be wound down because ‘we have the gist of what it’s all about’.

It is the kind of country where the Prime Minister can continue in office after revelations that he actively cooperated in corrupt practices with the most ruthless and corrupt politician in the nation’s history.

Where the same Prime Minister can describe such massive corruption as mere ‘lapses’ and refer to the downfall of the culprit as ‘a great tragedy’.

I see Tom Mulcahy, who retired as chairman of Aer Lingus after he was identified in an investigation as having had “tax issues”, and a former boss of AIB, the most corrupt bank in Ireland, has been appointed chairman of the new and powerful Dublin Transport Authority and Railway Procurement Agency by Transport Minister Martin Cullen.

The previous head of RPA, Padraic White, had the audacity to publicly oppose the Minister’s plans to merge DTA and RPA, saying;

“The RPA board did not see the sense nor the logic of that new organisation doing what the RPA was already doing successfully”.

Some might say that Padraic lost his job because he challenged the minister; I think, however, it has more to do with Padraic’s naivety in thinking that sense or logic have anything whatsoever to do with how our little banana republic is governed.

Let’s cut to the chase here. Clientism as operated by Irish politicians is a corrupt system that has only one aim – to buy votes.

There are 351,000 public servants in Ireland – yes, you heard right – 351,000 each earning on average €45,000 a year. This massive organization exists to serve a tiny national population of 4 million, to operate, inform and resolve systems and problems for those citizens. There are also numerous government and non government organizations totally dedicated to resolving citizen problems.

There was a very interesting discussion on the matter on last Sunday’s Marian Fincuane show (28th). Prof. JA Murphy said that clientism was

“An essential part of Irish democracy, everywhere, not only in Ireland but where Irish democracy took roots, in the US and Australia.”

Irish democracy? As opposed to what other type of democracy? Unwittingly, I think the Prof. has in mind Tammany Hall democracy, which of course is rampant in our little banana republic but which has been stamped out in America.

Pat Cox provided an invaluable insight into how others see our Tammany Hall democracy. Years back when he was a TD he phoned the American embassy for ‘a client’ who was having visa problems. They couldn’t help but out of curiosity he asked them about their policy on such approaches.

“Look it, the truth is that we get in letters from Irish public representatives about people’s character and so on. They come on demand, someone walks in, they get the letter. They get it from three, four, five, six public representatives. We just don’t bother with this stuff anymore, it just doesn’t count, we discount it completely.”

Pat went on to say “…those who are not part of the Irish political culture stand back, I think, a bit aghast…”

The most interesting and damning case discussed concerned a certain judge Brennan who sued Ireland because he was so annoyed at the level of political interference in his judgements. The case involved four judgements by judge Brennan.

Amazingly, the High Court found that the judge was one hundred percent right but they wouldn’t find in his favour because it would be unfair to single out the four test cases. (This was described as the court exercising an unusual discretion)

Apparently, the case also gave rise to serious constitutional problems but they would ‘revisit that another day.’

Tammany Hall – Alive and well.