Law enforcement in Ireland is a joke

The mosquito was focused, hungry and determined to get his fill of blood as he swooped towards the massive rump of the elephant’s rear end. Alas, all his ambitions, hopes and puffed up self importance were instantly snuffed out with one contemptuous flick of the elephant’s tail.

And so it was that Paul Appleby, Director of Corporate Enforcement, was summarily dismissed by the Supreme Court when he tried to obtain a disqualification order against certain personnel at DCC in relation to the recent insider dealing case.

The principal target of ODCE is Jim Flavin of DCC who was found guilty of insider trading by the Supreme Court last July (Sub. Re’q). One of the judges, Mr. Justice Fennelly, said;

“To trade on the use of inside information is recognised for what it is. It is a fraud on the market.”

Actually the judge is wrong. If insider trading in Ireland was recognised for the fraud it is there would have been immediate action from at least some of the many so called regulatory bodies involved.

Nobody has moved. All the so called enforcement and regulatory agencies of the state, the police, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Revenue, the Stock Exchange, The Association of Investment Mangers who allegedly oversee corporate governance in listed companies – all acting like frightened rabbits caught in the glare of a bright light.

The ODCE, in what can only be described as a laughable and pointless gesture, arrived unannounced in court to ask the judge to grant a disqualification order. The judge told him to take a hike.

Paul Appleby put a brave face on the humiliating dismissal (RTE News, 6th item).

“In dismissing my application, the issue of a potential disqualification in these proceedings is now open I have therefore achieved my primary objective in taking this application.”

I have no idea if Paul Appley lives his life under a constant state of delusion but if he thinks he is going to succeed in his aim of obtaining a disqualification order against Jim Flavin or any other dodgy character who may have been involved in this fraud, then in this regard at least, he is most certainly living a delusion.

For over three years Mr. Appleby has been trying to obtain a similar order against nine former National Irish Bank ‘characters’ who were in charge at a time when the bank robbed millions directly from customers accounts and indirectly from the State through the operation of major tax evasion scams.

Only one order has been successful and that’s because the man involved is retired, has no involvement in business and decided not to fight the case.

Mr. Appleby has also, to date, spectacularly failed (Sub. re’q) in his attempts to have the Bailey brothers disqualified. These fraudsters recently came to an ‘arrangement’ with Revenue for over €22 million.

The bottom line is that law enforcement in Ireland is a joke, a farce, especially when it comes to white collar crime.

I recently cited the case of P. Nacchio convicted in the US of insider trading. He was sentenced to six years in prison, fined $19 million and ordered to forfeit $52 he earned in illegal stock.

Now that’s law enforcement.

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

Shocked solicitor

I see in the today’s Irish Times that I have shocked a solicitor. That’s one to note in the calendar.

The core issue for solicitors is simple.

They can opt to remain within their unassailable legal fortress where they can do pretty much as they like with the single drawback of being rightfully seen as a largely disreputable profession.

Or

They can come out into the open and submit themselves to regulation by the law just like everybody else.

They will benefit greatly if the decide on the latter. The unacceptable number of dodgy solicitors will be quickly rooted out and the profession will begin to regain public trust and respect.

Here’s my ‘shocking’ letter and the solicitor’s reply.

Madam,

Several solicitors have expressed concerns (November 2nd, 3rd, 6th) arising from the activities of two of their colleagues, Michael Lynn and Thomas Byrne.

Some blame the situation on the intense pressure solicitors are under, the exploitation of solicitors by the banks and the greed of some clients who are prepared to risk paying peanuts for monkeys.

Also, in mitigation of their profession, they trot out the old canard that only a few rotten apples are involved – thus suggesting that, by and large, the legal profession has its house in order.

The reality is different. In recent years it has become obvious that solicitors, operating under the privileged protection of self-regulation, are among the least accountable groups in society. It is ridiculous and unacceptable that the Law Society should regulate and at the same time represent its members.

This scandal is just the latest in a series that have brought the profession into disrepute. The disgraceful rip-off by solicitors of abuse victims appearing before the Residential Institution Redress Board has yet to be resolved more than two years after the victims were assured by the Law Society that their cases would be dealt with immediately and transparently through a fast-track system.

In his letter of November 2nd, Muredach Doherty is highly critical of the banks, claiming they are at least morally deserving of the difficulties they find themselves in as a result of the activities of Byrne and Lynn.

He and his colleagues would be well advised to examine the quality of morality in their own profession in order to preserve a rapidly dwindling level of public trust. – Yours, etc,

ANTHONY SHERIDAN,

Madam, – I am shocked by Anthony Sheridan’s conclusion that, because of the recent controversies, we solicitors are now morally suspect (November 7th).

It presupposes that as a profession we are some sort of moral supermen and superwomen who are not subject to human failing.
I, at least, claim no moral superiority or insight and am a human being subject to the same failings as everyone else.
He and other commentators are correct, however, in concluding that The Law Society cannot be both a representative body and a regulatory body.

It has now become oppressive to practising solicitors in its attempt to assure the public of its regulatory role. It no longer functions as an effective representative body for solicitors.

It is only right that when solicitors fail legally and morally, an effective regulatory body should hold them to account. It is also right that when solicitors fail they have a representative body to speak for them. The present system is satisfactory for neither solicitors nor clients.

I do not care who regulates me. If they do not do their job the public will let them know. I do care who represents me.

Yours, etc,

RODERICK TYRRELL, Solicitor, Haddington Road, Dublin 4.

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?

Well, of course, we belive you, Pat

Pat Kenny made a robust defence of his boss Cathal Goan, Director General of RTE, over the controversy surrounding the axing of Prof John Crown from last Friday’s Late Late Show. (Pat’s emphasis)

“The Director General Cathal Goan did not get any calls from the minister or the minister’s representatives or PR companies or anything.

I have known Cathal Goan for more years than the two of us care to remember, I worked with him originally on Today at Five, he was one of the creators of that programme and worked with him many times over the years and I know him to be a man of the highest integrity.

I cannot stress that more, he’s a man of the highest integrity and if such a phone call had been made to him, which it wasn’t, he would have no hesitation in telling that caller, politely generally or otherwise if necessary where to get off, that’s the kind of man you’re dealing with.”

Well, of course, we believe you, Pat. However, your finishing comments didn’t do much for your credibility.

“The rest of this matter is obviously internal RTE business and it will be dissected and parsed and hopefully will not embarrass us again in any manner as we’ve seen over the last couple of days.”

Avoid embarrassment? Was that not the very reason the Government allegedly acted to have Prof. Crown silenced?

Brute censorship

This article/letter/editorial? (The online version of the Irish Independent is a disaster) in Sunday’s Irish Independent sums up well the controversy surrounding the banning of Prof. John Crown from last Friday’s Late Late Show.

It was a case of brute censorship only possible in a democracy that has become so weak that it barely warrants the name.

Sunday November 11 2007

Censorship comes in many forms, some subtle and some blunt. RTE’s decision to ban John Crown, a hospital consultant, from last Friday night’s Late Late Show was censorship of the bluntest kind. Crown, like many of his colleagues, has strong views on the health service and on the performance of Health Minister Mary Harney.

Unlike many of his colleagues, Crown is willing to engage in public debate. RTE, however, decided that his views could not be accommodated on the Late Late Show. According to a statement from the national broadcaster, a “decision was taken to reconfigure (the) panel to represent as broad a spectrum of positions and opinions as possible”, and so Crown was dropped.

Instead of a debate that might have shed some light on the problems afflicting the health service, RTE served up a bland and discordant concoction that was neither informative nor entertaining.

What was RTE afraid of? That the views of one panellist among four would so distort the national debate on health care that some unknown peril would unfold? That Pat Kenny, the station’s most experienced and highly-paid broadcaster, would not be able to do his job when faced with the might of Dr Crown?

In its statement, RTE also said that it “would like to strongly state that this decision was taken internally within RTE”. That, we assume, is meant to be reassuring: the state broadcaster feels it necessary to tell the people that it did not take instructions from the Government before taking a decision that, quite possibly, spared the Government embarrassment.

We do not need to be reminded that RTE belongs to the people and not to the Government of the day, but clearly RTE needs to remind itself from time to time. By stating “strongly” that this decision was taken internally, RTE leaves open the question of what other editorial decisions have not been taken internally.

The broadcaster has a duty to the public to provide high quality news and entertainment and in return it receives a substantial hand-out from the people — €182.8m last year, collected as a tax on anyone who owns a television. It has a duty to provide balance, but not to the point that it denudes debate. It should also trust the editorial judgment and broadcast skill of Pat Kenny and his team.

The decision to exclude Crown cannot be justified on editorial grounds, and to argue that balance must be introduced into every debate is deeply flawed. If balance requires that both sides be represented, then it only requires one side to refuse to participate for debate to be silenced.

On Friday night, both the minister and the Health Service Executive refused to participate on the show. That is their choice to make, but it must not mean that the views of a respected and vocal consultant cannot be heard because of their refusal. Should all debate on politics cease if the Government decides to boycott the airwaves? Does RTE feel the need to balance a comedian with a straight man? It is an arid argument, and it is one that puts RTE in a very poor light.

RTE’s must never be allowed to forget that its duty is to the people of this Republic. It has no remit to protect the interests of Government or to spare the blushes of a minister. The Late Late Show has a venerable place in Irish television history and is renowned for its controversy as much as it is for its blandness. It can be awful and it can be very, very good, but it must not be censored on spurious grounds of political balance.

The RTE statement claimed that it wanted as broad a spectrum as possible, and yet it does not believe that John Crown has a valid voice on that spectrum. Its decision to exclude him was wrong and smacks of panic.

The result is censorship, applied on the broadcaster by the broadcaster. Cathal Goan, the director general of RTE, should apologise publicly and to John Crown personally.

The cold and impartial hand of the law – mostly

I see republican Thomas ‘Slab’ Murhpy has appeared in court on alleged revenue offences. The police, Criminal Assets Bureau, Revenue and the courts all working together to make sure this citizen, who is suspected of cheating the state of about €2.5 million is brought to justice.

After all, it is only right in a functional democracy that people who cheat on their taxes should feel the cold and impartial hand of the law.

Meanwhile, that toothless tiger, the Director of Corporate Enforcement is still struggling to have the corrupt Bailey brothers disqualified from the management of any company (Sub. required) on the grounds of serious misconduct and fraud.

Last year, these corrupt businessmen made the largest tax settlement in Irish history, €22.17 million, when they came to ‘an understanding’ with Revenue.

We don’t know why the forces of the state failed to act in this instance but I would like to reassure any concerned citizens out there that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that these fraudsters are major contributors to a number of political parties – the very idea!

(Previous post on this matter)

Sunshine for the politicians; shade for the peasants

Prof. Drumm must be sick, sick that he accepted the job as chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE). Sick that he allowed himself to be duped into taking the job of reforming a heath system that has become an uncontrollable monster. Sick to witness the very people responsible for creating that monster; turn on him like a pack of vicious wolves.

For decades, Irish politicians were in charge of the health service and for decades they did what Irish politicians do best, used it as a means of buying votes. It was ‘jobs for the boys’ and to hell with the consequences.

There was a time when there were only two or three health boards but because every politician wanted a board in his area this number mushroomed into eleven. Imagine, eleven health boards to organise health facilities for about three million people.

This meant that there was eleven separate, grotesquely overstaffed, administrations choking the system to death and literally putting lives in danger. When the situation began to get out of control it was decided to abolish all eleven boards and replace them with a single authority that would bring reform, efficiency and, most importantly, a good health service to the Irish people.

To achieve this laudable aim job cuts would have to be made, work practices would have to change; civil servants would have to move, efficiencies would have to be made, some jobs would even have to be lost. In a nutshell, politicians would have to show courageous leadership and civil servants would have to cooperate.

This, of course, never happened. Instead, the cowardly politicians pretended to abolish the boards, it was all done – on paper. Not a single civil servant lost his job, nobody moved, there were no rationalisations or efficiencies. Everybody was still entitled to guaranteed promotions, guaranteed wage rises, guaranteed benchmarking – for life.

In effect, all that happened was the creation of a new twelfth health board. This was the mother of all health boards, it was going to supervise the inefficiencies and incompetence of all the other boards and for that it required and got a super bloated layer of administration staff.

From that moment, the grotesque monster was rampaging out of control and Irish citizens began to suffer even more, and at times, die. But the cowardly politicians had covered themselves well. In a by now common strategy, the HSE and in particular its chief executive was used as a buffer to distance cowardly politicians from the mess they had created. Mary Harney, the alleged Minister for Health, frequently suggests that the latest scandal is a matter for the HSE, nothing to do with her.

It must have been sickening for Prof. Drumm to listen to the wolf pack as they set about their work of abdicating responsibility in our national parliament yesterday; it was certainly vomit inducing for me. Here’s a flavour of what the cowardly incompetents had to say: (Full report on Drivetime, 3rd item)

Labour TD, Joan Burton spoke about the lack of trust that the public and politicians had in the HSE, about how impossible it was for politicians to get answers. No mention of political culpability.

Fianna Fail TD, Mary O’Rourke who has been in politics for decades, who has held several senior positions in government, who is a member of the party that has held power for more years than any other party, who, by dint of her cowardice, is one of the principal architects of the present mess, was ruthless in her condemnation of the HSE and in particular Prof. Drumm.

She related how she had recently left a boring session in the Dail to take a walk down to Brown Thomas. On the way she met eleven women all with horror stories about friends and relations affected by cancer.

Think about that, an Irish politician leaves our national parliament suffering from boredom, meets several distressed citizens and is incapable of making a connection between the two events. She then demonstrates a complete lack of intelligence by using the event to bolster her attack on Prof. Drumm as if it was he, rather than her that was responsible for their distress.

Fine Gael TD, John O’Mahony from Mayo spoke with the typical narrow minded parochialism, the hypocritical ‘but’ factor that Olivia O’Leary (Drivetime) spoke about. “I’m all in favour of centres of excellence” ‘but’ my constituency should keep its facilities.

Labour TD, Liz McManus spoke of the need for the establishment of a patient’s safety authority. Yet another layer of bureaucracy staffed by self serving unaccountable civil servants.

Fianna Fail TD, Margaret Conlon, amazingly, spoke the truth with clarity. “We cannot talk out of both sides of our mouths; we need to ensure that our resources are not spread too widely and too thinly because if this is the case, everyone loses.” Cleary, Ms. Conlon is a new TD and has yet to learn the mafia traditions of her chosen party.

Fianna Fail TD, Beverly Flynn would make an excellent tutor of those mafia traditions. A politician with no reputation to lose, daughter of a disgraced politician who had no scruples about cheating on his taxes and operating illegal offshore accounts, took the same narrow minded and hypocritical view as Fine Gael TD John O’Mahony.

Progressive Democrats TD and Minister for Health (without responsibility), Mary Harney, mouthed the standard and by now insulting apology to the victims.

Mary O’Rourke spoke about a dawn that is always promised but never actually dawns, that she was in despair over the health services.

Why would she be in despair? She exists in the unaccountable, grotesquely overpaid and arrogant world of Irish politics. She, like most of her colleagues, do not have the courage to actually do anything about the situation.

She only encounters reality when she wanders out of the rarefied world of our useless and boring parliament, she will never find herself in the situation of the eleven distressed women she met, she will never have to worry about a lack of medical facilities for herself or her family.

Her dawn and that of her colleagues arrived years ago when they created a system that provides constant sunshine for themselves, family and friends but leaves a large percentage of the people they claim to represent in the shade and some of them – condemned to the ultimate darkness.

Copy of this post to:

Prof. Drumm
HSE
Mary Harney, TD
Joan Burton, TD
Mary O’Rourke, TD
John O’Mahony, TD
Liz McManus, TD
Margaret Conlon, TD
Beverly Flynn, TD
Fianna Fail Party
Fine Gael Party
Labour Party
Progressive Democrats Party
Green Party