'Work for dole'

Sunday Times political correspondent, Stephen O’Brien, provides some facts…

The government plans to put thousands of dole claimants to work in their communities and cut off welfare payments from those who refuse to take up the jobs. Eamnon Ó Cuív the social protection minister, will employ up to 10,000 dole recipients over the next four months, providing childcare, working with sports clubs and on environmental tasks, such as improving forest and mountain walkways as part of a bid to break the cycle of long term unemployment and to disrupt the black economy.

The follow-up by RTÉ refines it slightly…

The participants are expected to work in areas like after school services, childcare, services for older people, environmental projects and in the improvement of sports and tourist facilities.

The proposals would see participants work 19.5 hours a week and receive around €210 in return.

To begin with you have to wonder how the department of social protection will find several thousand dole recipients with the garda clearance, qualities and abilities to work in after school services, childcare and services for older people within four weeks. As people have said today already, there is a six-month wait for Garda clearance at present. Anyway, that’s logistical question, it doesn’t consider the social impact of workfare itself. Continue reading “'Work for dole'”

Department of Foreign Affairs Expenses data 2009

As previously mentioned I am converting expenses data sent to me in PDF form back into spreadsheets. 2009 is the first. You might notice some missing data in the last few rows of the 13,388 claims – I will remedy this later this evening – sometimes the conversion process is a bit wonky. The database contains €1.65m of expense claims for 2009.

You can look at the data on Socrata or download it from there

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This is the same figures broken down by payee, in order of size of total expense claim:

And the same under the mileage heading:

And a bar chart showing mileage claimants:

And a pie chart showing in what categories expenses are claimed:

And the spreadsheet for categories:

An email or two from the Fás file

A month or so ago we’d a story in the Sunday Times about Fás. It involved a Mr Terry Oliver, whose company, OSK, had been found to be “consistently successful” in winning Fás contracts. The headline read ‘Fás in new cronyism row over lease’…

FAS, the state training agency, is renting a warehouse from the former tax partner of a consultancy firm which has been “consistently successful” in tendering for work from the agency.

Unit 9 at Tolka Valley business park in Finglas, north Dublin, has been rented since 2000 from Terry Oliver, formerly of OSK, an accounting and business consultancy. Internal audits have concluded that Greg Craig, the former head of corporate affairs at Fas, had a conflict of interest in awarding contracts to OSK because of his close personal relationship with Oliver.

[…] According to documentation obtained under the Freedom of Information act, the Finglas warehouse was to be used to train apprentice plumbers and electricians. It appears no-one has ever been trained there and instead it has been used for storage or left empty due to concerns about it meeting planning standards. The rent is more than €40,000 per annum.

You can read the story as it ran in print here.

During that investigation we obtained about 600 printed pages of emails containing correspondence between individuals we believed to be of interest. I mean neither to imply nor state that anyone did anything wrong, I just think some them are worth a read.

Here’s one snippet from May 2009; Greg Craig emails Terry Oliver with a copy of this press release…

The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms. Mary Coughlan, T.D., has today (Thursday 14 May 2009) confirmed that the 3,067 construction trades apprentices currently standing redundant will be able to progress their training towards qualification through a number of special measures this year, providing a capacity for in excess of 3,600 redundant apprentices…

And adds…

Terry,
See below that should sort out Mr REDACTED. I am making a call also.

Greg.

And another one from August of the same year; Greg emails Oliver with an email attached from a Mr Oliver Egan, a Fás employee.

The correspondence – with the subject line; ‘Finglas’ – from Mr Egan reads;

Greg,

Apprentice will be given repeat & the services of an instructor — Bernard Bird -— to assist him. The other instructor will be found more suitable duties.

Regards

Oliver

Mr Craig forwards this email to Terry Oliver saying, simply…

Terry,

Sorted.

Greg

Might post a few more if I get time to re-read them over the next week.

"Ain't got no place to lay your head?…

… someone came and took your bed?

Don’t worry, be happy”.

The Economist have a piece on Irish banking out today.

Headline: “Money pit: Ireland’s banking mess – Austerity is not enough to avoid scrutiny by the markets”.

Anyway, we should be looking on the bright side, lads. The ECB will buy the rest of the bonds too.

“A’int got no cash to make you smile? Don’t worry, be happy now.”

CIE fuel consumption (part 2)

Last week I published information released by CIE in relation to the amount of diesel the company consumed over the five years from 2005 to 2009. I pointed out to CIE that their figures for totals, and as a result for carbon emissions, might be incorrect.

CIE have got back in touch to say that the figures were incorrect, and they have now issued revised figures. We all make mistakes.

The totals I published are the correct ones, so the revised figures are:

Spreadsheet

Digest – August 15 2010

It’s back. The Digest is all up in this here! Rejoice dear reader! Rejoice!

Or don’t.

HOME

Gerard O’Neill, ‘fear itself’.

Here in Ireland we appear to be suffering from an unholy combination of inaction and over-reaction – giving rise to the mood of negativity that Coleman and others have recognised. NAMA is the over-reaction: the inaction relates to the wider re-structuring of our economy to ensure we never again suffer the consequences of our self-inflicted crack-up credit boom. One advantage of de-commissioning NAMA would perhaps be to re-start a debate about the future structure of our financial institutions.

Iain Nash goes for the chicks (I kid! I kid!) of  The Anti-Room.

Gav Reilly; How AIB’s gym fees staff expenses could cost more than double the amount it will make from increasing mortgage interest rates.

In the name of faux-balance (more because it is a beautifully written piece of work) June Caldwell of The Anti-Room on the ‘still missing’ women post-Larry Murphy’s release.

Despite the medieval braying from the tabloid press that he’ll strike again and soon, I personally don’t believe for a second that Larry Murphy is going to put a foot wrong for a very long time. He can wait. He can play with the authorities and the public. Memories will sustain him. This day is a very special one for him after all. Even just the God of small things: he hasn’t seen any of our modern capital’s hallmarks for a start: the Luas, the spire, etc. There’s a lot to take in. Especially the reams of happy young women pacing along the city streets, tired women too, stomping home from work. Women who will have no idea who he is or what he’s done. It’s been an age since he was able to glance sideways at strangers, with every ounce of his civil rights protected. The fact remains that there are dozens of Larry Murphys out there, a lot of whom we’ve handily forgotten.

Seamus Coffey on stamp duty; ‘Stamped out’.

I’m not sure if Hugh Green’s criticisim should be directed at the editorial or the broader arguement, either way, he makes some interesting points in this piece about Wyclef Jean, the US and Haiti.

Did you miss this? The Last Word with Matt Cooper; Minister O’Cuiv admits rollback on employment investment.

Speaking on The Last Word on Today FM Thursday evening, Minister for Social Protection Eamonn Ó’Cuiv admitted the Employment Subsidy Scheme – to which the government allocated €250m – had in fact ceased with only €133 million spent.  The Employment Subsidy Scheme was set up in 2009 to protect jobs at viable but vulnerable businesses. ISME Chief Executive Mark Fielding sought the Minister’s clarification on this point to which O’Cuiv confirmed, “Yes, that figure is correct”.

WORLD Continue reading “Digest – August 15 2010”

Minister for Finance diary 2007

As part of an ongoing process. The appointments diary of the Minister for Finance for 2007.



Previously:

Finance diary May 2008 to March 2009
William Beusang diary May 2008 to May 2009
Ann Nolan diary May 2008 to May 2009
Derek Moran
Kevin Cardiff diary May 2008 to May 2009

Public Information and Power

Guest post: Nat O’Connor is a policy analyst with TASC and contributes to their Progressive Economy blog. He recently published two discussion papers on democratic accountability and the economic logic of strengthening public access rights to official information. The first paper can be viewed here and downloaded as PDF here. The paper on public access to official information can be read here and downloaded here. In recent weeks there has been much media attention given to the papers with articles in The Irish Examiner, an appearance on Morning Ireland and an opinion piece by Hugh Linehan in The Irish Times stemming from their publication, to name a few. – Mark

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It may be stating the obvious, but the extent to which the public can readily access official information has got a lot to do with the health of our democracy.

The Freedom of Information Act 1997 has come to represent this idea in some ways, in direct opposition to the Official Secrets Act 1963 (still in force) which represents government decision-making behind closed doors, where the reasons for those decisions remain secret.

Yet, the need for public access to information in a democracy is much more than just freedom of information law.

In a democracy, people need reliable information to vote; otherwise voting is a meaningless exercise. And just as importantly, people need reliable information between votes, when the real business of running the country takes place. We need information so that we can monitor where tax money is being spent, what policies are in place, what evidence informs decision-making, etc.

This democratic argument is spelled out in more detail in one of the discussion papers I wrote for TASC.

Continue reading “Public Information and Power”