O’Neill judgment

Back in 2007 Gary Fitzgerald, a junior counsel, sought Cabinet records from the Department of An Taoiseach relating to carbon emissions under the European Environmental Information Regulations. The Department refused release of some records on the basis of constitutional Cabinet confidentiality. The Commissioner for Environmental Information ordered the release of the documents, but An Taoiseach appealed the matter to the High Court. The question in part related to whether the European Directive (which includes a mandatory release element in relation to emissions into the environment) took precedence over our Constitution – and also on how the Directive was transposed into legislation (SI 133/2007). An Taoiseach won the appeal, so the information will not be released. See Irish Times report here.

The full judgment is here:



Canadian Supreme Court decision

Yesterday there was a landmark decision by the Canadian Supreme Court, in Ministry of Public Safety and Security (Formerly Solicitor General) and Attorney General of Ontario vs Criminal Lawyers’ Association (and others). You can read the decision in full here. The Globe and Mail details the case:

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that an internal police report into a botched 1983 police investigation can potentially be suppressed without violating constitutional guarantees to free expression and informed public debate.

However, in a 7-0 ruling today, the Court also recognized the importance of information in a democracy and recognized a right to obtain suppressed information that is necessary to a full public debate of an important issue.

“To demonstrate that there is expressive content in accessing these documents, a claimant must establish that the denial of access effectively precludes meaningful public discussion on matters of public interest,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Madam Justice Rosalie Abella wrote for the Court.

It said in the right circumstances, citizens can wrest confidential information from government hands unless it is protected by privilege, Cabinet confidentiality or its disclosure would interfere with the proper functioning of a government institution.

And (my emphasis):

Lawyers who argued the case welcomed the ruling as a long-awaited recognition of the role that access to information plays in a democracy.

“Canada has become the first western country to recognize that access to information is not just a gift to Canadians,” said lawyer Brad Elberg, who represented the Criminal Lawyers Association. “It is guaranteed to us as part of our constitutional right of freedom of expression. If a court finds that a citizen requires government information to meaningfully express her or himself, the constitution may require the government to give the citizen access to that information.”

The best line of the judgement:

In sum, there is a prima facie case that s. 2(b) [of the c may require disclosure of documents in government hands where it is shown that, without the desired access, meaningful public discussion and criticism on matters of public interest would be substantially impeded. As Louis D. Brandeis famously wrote in his 1913 article in Harper’s Weekly entitled “ What Publicity Can Do”: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants … .” Open government requires that the citizenry be granted access to government records when it is necessary to meaningful public debate on the conduct of government institutions.

In case you missed it

Oireachtas Report covered it…

Mike Aynsley, Anglo Irish Bank chief executive, explains how the taxpayer will not get €22 billion back.

Just for emphasis, Aynsley speaking:

We get a big thank you from Mr Aynsley and Anglo, for the €22 billion we will never see again:

Alan Dukes (our supposed public interest director) refuses to say whether he interviewed new members of the board.

Anglo spill-over

So BP has pledged $20bn to cleaning up the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico…

WASHINGTON — US lawmakers on Wednesday welcomed BP’s agreement to create a $20billion fund to pay claims from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill but vowed to keep holding the energy giant’s feet to the fire.

President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies cheered the news as a solid step towards helping afflicted areas recover from the worst environmental catastrophe in US history but said that more action would be needed.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi welcomed the news but warned: “If it takes more than 20 billion dollars, BP will have to cover the full amount for the families, workers, and small business owners of the Gulf Coast.”

The republicans are calling the spill “Obama’s Katrina”.

$20bn is €16bn.

Also today, now in perspective…

Chief Executive Mike Aynsley said Anglo is seeking to establish a “good bank” with roughly €2.5bn of capital, meaning Dublin would be unable to recover the remaining €19.5bn it is likely to inject.

“The lion’s share of this will never be seen again,” Aynsley told a parliamentary hearing.

“That money is gone … It will not be recoverable.”

Anglo Irish Bank, probably more expensive than the BP Oil spill.

Dukes and Ross at Finance Committee

Anglo Chairman, Alan Dukes, has just left the Oireachtas Finance Committee meeting in Committee Room One of Leinster House. The transcript won’t be up for a while – and I’m not sure if this will get any coverage in the papers – but Shane Ross asked him some most interesting questions. The Sunday Indo journalist and Senator put it to Dukes, in no uncertain terms that recent appointees to the Anglo board were foisted on them by Government.

Paraphrasing (will link when transcript becomes available):

Ross: “Did you interview the new board members? Did you even interview [the Fianna Fail fundraiser and ‘protege’ of Charlie Haughey] Aidan Eames?”

Dukes: “Eh, well… I’m not going to answer that question”.

Ross: Why not? Why not answer that question? How much are these people being paid? How much is the taxpayer paying them?

Dukes: You can look at our annual reports for this year when they come out, I don’t need to answer these questions.

And so it went on. It’s not necessarily revealing that the appointments were government-made – they were probably chosen by Brian Lenihan, as he had the option – what’s interesting is Dukes’s refusal to answer the question; by doing so he protects the Government from criticism as he doesn’t confirm Fianna Fail appointed one of their own. Dukes being the former public interest representative on the Anglo board, remember. Gone native, anyone?

Oh, and also from the Committee Room, as RTE reports…

Meanwhile, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer Mike Aynsley said ‘the lion’s share’ of the €22bn, which will be put into the bank by the taxpayer, will never be seen again.

… Okey dokey.

Department of Justice reference book

All public bodies are obliged to publish Section 15 and Section 16 reference books every three years under the FOI Act. The Department of Justice website says:

The reference books are available for inspection in public libraries, Garda stations, court offices and all offices of the Department.

Great. No sign of the actual reference book though.

So I now give you: the Department of Justice reference book, available exclusively on thestory.ie, after some deep searching on Google. It makes for very very interesting reading. After reading through it, you might see why the document was deliberately not placed on the Department of Justice website. I should say I have used this reference book for at least two FOI requests that I have yet to write about.



Burke on another HSE mess

Health policy analyst and one of the best health journalists we have, Sara Burke, on the miscarriage misdiagnoses. As she puts it “another damn mess”…

And essentially, the poor performance of our maternity services is is about under-resourcing. The physical conditions of our maternity hospitals and wards are generally appalling; they are bursting at the seams, under staffed and under resourced. We pretty much have the same facilities we had 10-15 years ago when there were just over 50,000 births – a 50% growth in births without a 50% increase in investment.

We have fewer consultants per population than any other EU country 2.2 versus 4.5 Holland, which is the second worst. Also in Holland, the vast majority of births are mid wife delivered, the opposite to Ireland. Here, there is an over reliance on junior doctors and a crisis in junior doctor provision.

Full post.

Digest – June 13 2010

<bloggery overshare>My dinner was lovely, fish and chips on The MV Cill Arne.</bloggery overshare>

HOME

Constantin Grudgiev maps Dublin’s importance to the Irish economy.

Anthony Sheridan; expenses scandal confirms political system is still rotten to the core. Lot of quotes there I hadn’t read before…

P O’Neill with questions arising from the Honohan report.

Two former members of The Sunday Times’s legendary Insight team recall the time they spent investigating the events of Bloody Sunday…

Hours after the killings, we were sent to Derry as part of the Insight team by Harold Evans, the paper’s editor. We stayed there for two months. We interviewed 250 witnesses of what began as a peaceful, if illegal, civil rights march.

We saw Bogsiders, young and old, write carefully and purposefully in longhand on lined notepads about the horrific scenes they had witnessed that day. And we took our own statements. The pile of primary evidence grew and grew.

The families of the victims took us into their homes and into their hearts; people such as Lawrence McElhinney, whose son, Kevin, aged 17, wearing his Sunday best, a brown suit and new brown zip-up boots, threw some stones at the paras before fleeing the Rossville barricade as the live rounds came in. He was shot before reaching the flats.

The relatives remembered the brief and brutally truncated lives of their children, producing cherished photographs of happier times. Some of those we talked to still clung to the clothes their children were wearing when they died. One family had preserved a bar of candy that their son took to the march.

In their barracks in Belfast, the paras who fired shots made their own statements, equally harrowing, to the military police. Few of the young soldiers involved had ever before fired a shot in anger from their 7.62mm rifles, a weapon designed for use on the modern battlefield and capable of inflicting devastating injuries at close range.

We studied the army’s evidence as revealed in half a million words in those submissions. We talked to military officers and government officials. We collected 500 photographs to help us reconstruct the killing ground in the Bogside. An amateur radio ham gave us a recording of the army’s messages for the operations during the entire afternoon, an invaluable tool for reconstructing the day’s events.

Widgery concluded that some of the paras’ firing had “bordered on the reckless”, but our evidence suggested something worse.

Oh for journalists to be given the time to do work like that. Or for newspapers to have the funds to make it possible. It’s all about speed these days.

Are you involved with a non-profit or NGO? Journalist Markham Nolan wants to help out, no charge.

WORLD Continue reading “Digest – June 13 2010”

Kavanagh on IT/MRBI poll

Adrian Kavanagh has posted an interesting and extensive geographical analysis of the Irish Times/MRBI poll on the Political Reform blog.

He extrapolates resulting seat totals too. They would be Fianna Fail 40; Fine Gael 55; Labour 54; Green Party 0; Sinn Féin 11; Other 6. Which, if reflected, would leave us in a right tizzy, with no clear coalitions. Has Gilmore ruled out government with FF? I can’t remember but something in the back of my mind tells me he has…

Read the post in in full on Political Reform.