Digest – Feb 28 2010

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For serious? What the…

Gardaí investigating the source of a leak which culminated in Trevor Sargent’s resignation last week have acquired the phone records of the reporter who broke the story and believe that his source is a serving garda.

Holy…

All the Gardaí require to obtain the phone records of a journalist or one of their members is a suspicion that there was some sort leak? Whatever the source’s motives Sargent did wrong. The source is a whistle-blower and the journalist was doing what they’re there to do. Scary. Very scary. And not only because I’m a journalist.

The headline should be about the Gardaí observing the private activities of a private citizen by obtaining his private information (on the face of it) without reasonable suspicion that the citizen has done anything illegal. Whatever about it being against the law for a garda to leak information, the journalist has partaken in no illegal activity.

Gurdgiev on double dipping.

Gene Kerrigan on the Your Country Your Call nonsense. Simon McGarr’s blog post looks at it from a different angle, he points out several details in the terms and conditions of entry that would make you wonder. Additionally, the people behind the scheme are interesting. Continue reading “Digest – Feb 28 2010”

Documents sent by Jerry Beades to media

Someone has published the documents Jerry Beades sent to media over the last number of days on Sendspace. The newspapers have been wary of running the full details, I’m told, due to possible legal issues. As far as I know, the docs available at the link are the only online copies…

For context, here’s the latest Irish Times coverage of the issue between Beades, a member of the Fianna Fáil National Executive, and Minister Noel Dempsey. I’d bet there’ll be something more in tomorrow’s papers.

Download link to correspondence sent by Jerry Beades to various members of the media on February 28 2010.

Note: They’re in a .zip file, you’ll need WinZip or WinRar to open, free trials are available online, hit up Google. All Microsoft Word (.doc) files inside.

I can verify these are the correct, unedited, files. Thanks to the person who notified us of their availability.

"[It's] the dearth of ideas and the dearth of policies"

Oftentimes posts on the Irish Times Politics blog are about the theatrics, minutiae, of politics. Such theatrics and details, while sometimes making for interesting reads for politics obsessives, are often fairly meaningless in a wider context. Dermot Ahern slagged off who? Which Green minister of state doesn’t get along with which minister? The wider public doesn’t really care.

This post by Harry McGee is about politics and governence in a broader context.

What really scares me is that all the mantras that we all bought into were wrong. Low taxes were a myth. Perhaps low corporation tax was the only exception to that. The only reason we got away with them for so long was because of the property boom and the temporary bonanza in once-off transactional taxes like stamps, VAT, capital gains tax, and capital acquisition tax. As long as we continued to build record numbers of houses and scored obscene loans securitised on obscene valuations of properties we didn’t own, we could continue on our journey into never-never land.

What worries me about the situation we are in is the dearth of ideas and the dearth of policies. We’ve had a couple of announcements about job creation that are more fluffy than solid. The green and smart economy initiative looks all very well until you realise that some of the jobs (tidal energy) are still a long way off. Moreover, some of the jobs are merely replacements for existing jobs (alternative energy replacing conventional energy). And then you find out that the Government hasn’t actually put its money where its mouth is in terms of stumping up the money for its ‘ambitious’ (yeah!) national home retrofitting project (the one that’s supposed to provide gazillions of jobs in the construction sector). []

It’s headed ‘The mess we’re in and the meaningless speculation about a reshuffle’ (though ‘…and the speculation about a meaningless reshuffle’ may describe the content slightly better) and it’s definitely worth a read.

Disclosure: As a freelance one of a number of companies which chips in to pay my bills is Irish Times Ltd.

Cars and people

NOTE 14.11 Feb 26: Spokesman for Batt O’Keeffe has told a national newspaper that the car in the photograph is not his vehicle. Right. Report below remains unedited.

I’ve been doing some research on homelessness in Dublin for a piece I’m planning. The last person I met told me he was born in eastern Europe but moved to the the US in his twenties. He lived there for more than ten years, during which time he lost touch with his family, and moved to Ireland eight years ago. These days he speaks with a Dublin accent.

Until summer 2008 he was the assistant manager of a gastro-pub in one of the more affluent suburbs. Then the owner told him he was cutting staff and, apologetically said the assistant manager’s role would be the first to go. He kept up with the rent for a few months but gradually fell behind. No jobs. He lived on friends’ couches for a while, until he felt like a burden.

Eight months ago he started spending his days in the City, usually between Nassau Street and Templebar. He sleeps in a 24 hour internet cafe because it’s only €5 a night and “there’s no drugs or screamers in them”. He’s in a strange situation with his welfare entitlements; getting rent allowance of €35 a week but unable to the dole. He was due to meet a welfare officer a week after we spoke to sort it out, a meeting he’s been waiting six weeks to happen. The last time he met her, a few months ago, she said she was going to get his paperwork readied, so he was hopeful. Continue reading “Cars and people”

BIM decommissioning grants

Bord Iascaigh Mhara paid out €5.2m in decommissioning grants to fisherman in 2008, while the EU paid out €15.7m. The total numbers of grants paid was €20,999,998.96, to the owners of 44 vessels. The highest paid out was to Keating Fish Ltd, for the Molly B – a total of €1.7m. The next highest was for the decommissioning of the Joseph S, owned by Alan Scanlan – €1.3m. The full list is here:



The paycuts that never happened

Ken Foxe has blogged some interesting correspondence concerning the proposed paycuts for senior civil servants. He has also published the original documents. Ken writes:

THE Department of Finance climbed down on major pay cuts for 650 senior civil servants and other highly-paid public workers, primarily because they feared a costly legal action.

Legal advice had been sought by the Association of Assistant Secretaries and Higher Grades, which found that performance-related
awards were in fact part of a “core remuneration package”.

The Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan eventually decided to scale back the pay cuts for senior civil servants to take into account these bonus payments, which had already been stripped from their salaries.

A series of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act detail the to-ing and fro-ing that went on between the Department and the civil servants, as early as last May.

A letter sent by Bryan Andrews of the Association of Assistant Secretaries and Higher Grades said: “Our membership is also strongly
of the view that for the purpose of any exercise being contemplated as part of a reform of public service pay, Performance Related Awards must be seen as part of our core remuneration package.

“Such a position is strongly borne out by the legal advice now available to the Association. As you will appreciate from the foregoing, the Association has considerable concerns about this review exercise.”

“Legal concerns” seem to be quite common these days. Rody Molloy told us much about it.

Bye bye, Sargent

So he’s resigned. Sure isn’t it all the rage these days up in Leinster House.

He’s gone from department. Rightly. Doing so speedily and with dignity appears to have kept damage to the coalition to a minimum. Thus, unless the Greens gather some more evidence to put foundations beneath their suspicions of the identity of The Leaker [maybe ‘The Leeker’, would better in this instance?], this ‘scandal’ looks set to peter out by mid-day tomorrow.

Kevin Doyle of the Herald “wouldn’t confirm either way” where the leak came from when asked if it was Fianna Fáil by Prime Time. You’d have to wonder. Sargent was done in by someone.

Really, the revealations do more to illustrate Sargent’s stupidity and naivety than expose some massive hidden trait of corruption.

I doubt more than half the TDs in the House can honestly claim not to have contacted a Garda to “enquire” about a constituent’s case at some time. Prehaps not so many done so in a tone similar to Sargent’s, but he is certainly not alone. Of course, I can’t back this up with more than what I’ve heard, in the main because An Garda can’t be FOI’d.

Usually the politicians are a little more “street-wise”. They call the relevent senior local officer instead of (deep breath) sending multiple letters by registered post on department-headed paper to low-ranking Gardas who are obviously going to bring it to their superiors to ensure their own backs are safe in case someone gets word of the correspondence in the future. It’s particularly bizarre when considering Sargent was most critical of Bobby Molloy back in the day for similar ‘transgressions’.

However, the above is in no way to be read that it’d be acceptable to for Sargent to have claimed “everybody does it, I was just caught, it’s no biggie”. I’m glad Sargent was caught. I’m glad he resigned. It was a corrupting act, an unlawful act. He has stained his reputation and will have to live with that. What’s really unfortunate is that we’re unlikely to catch the rest of them.

It’s worth noting that he’ll remain in his seat despite admiting commiting an unlawful act. I wonder if he’d have resigned had he’d been simply a TD, as opposed to minister of state. It does seem a position is something that can be lost, but a vote in the House? “Nah… keepin’ dah’.”

Still, I did raise an eyebrow when I heard some Opposition TDs moralising today. They’re not all at it, but he’s far from alone.

Enterprise Ireland – two more data sets

Following on from my earlier post on the raw data related to company totals and the raw combined spreadsheet, I am publishing two further data sets.

Last month I attended the ScraperWiki Hacks and Hackers event. During the day, and with the sterling efforts of two Python developers, a scraper was written. This scraper does something relatively simple (though was a little complex to write). It inputs each company into the EI website here and then outputs the Development Advisor (if any) for that company. It then puts that data into a .csv file. This data is raw and incomplete (many returned with no DA). If people want the code for the scraper do leave a comment.

Enterprise Ireland Development Advisors

The second scraper ran was Joe Drumgoole’s CRO scraper. A reader ran the scraper for us, and sent us the result. I am now publishing this also. I did run the result into a geocode batch analyser for Google Maps, and it was largely successful. But I am sure there are people reading this that can do cool mapping with this data and do so better than I can.

Enterprise Ireland company addresses

I again emphasise: we are publishing the raw data. Because the process was automated we cannot guarantee the results are 100% accurate. It does not purport to be a full representation, and if you want to use it you might have to spend a bit of time cleaning it up.

I can think of some nice research or visualisations that could result from it though.

The last few hours?

There is a slight nuance to the Trevor Sargent story on the front of today’s Evening Herald not immediately apparent to me at least – on first reading.

The constituent on whose behalf Sargent wrote to the Garda Siochana, it is claimed, was subject of a malicious prosecution, if the talk on News At One is to be interpreted correctly.  The question therefore is whether Sargent in his correspondence, was referring specifically to a case and attempting to influence it, or simply informing the Garda Siochana that a constituent was concerned about a matter.

If the former, can Sargent stay? I doubt it. The letters – if the politicians don’t – will tell all, but the Herald have not printed them in full [yet]. So we await.

In the meantime, the fact the Green Party statement has confirmed that Sargent communicated with a Garda is important. Furthermore, the quotes used in the Evening Herald article don’t shine Sargent in a good light.

All in all, right now, it’s not looking great for the deputy.

Unless he can pull out a surprising (and rock solid explanation) – and the malicious-complaint claim doesn’t cut it as the tecnicalities of the case are largely irrelevant – or this story has been hugely misreported, this looks like the end of his career.

The ball is in the Green Party’s court. Do they cut Sargent, arguably their most “ethically conscious” of all deputies, over this apparently extremely serious matter? Those insterested in seeing ethics upheld and political accountability imposed, would say they should.

Or do they try to make an excuse for Sargent and cling to power? Surely not?

Last week the Irish Times editorial finished with “[for the Green Party, the handling of the O’Dea ethics issue is] a hard lesson learned”. I doubted, [in Footnote IV] whether or not they’d learned any such lessons. I suppose we’ll see in the next few hours.

Might be worth keeping an eye on Dan Boyle’s Twitterstream.