Digest – June 6 2010

Digest coming to you earlier than usual this week as I am less hungover than most Sundays.

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Gerard O’Neill; looting for democracy.

One of my favourite writers, Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic, has been blogging about the ‘no dogs, no blacks, no Irish’ stuff this week. He has collected some fascinating imagery. More here and here. Do av’a read, the comments are usually good too.

Irish imagery coates

Liam Fay in The Sunday Times on Callely and the Seanad.

Not since Liam Lawlor was appointed chairman of a parliamentary ethics committee has a juxtaposition of words sounded quite so comical.

The notion that Callely has “duties” in the sense that he provides a service or function is absurd. As one of the taoiseach’s appointees, he’s a professional placeman, a chair warmer. Unelected and therefore unaccountable, he represents nobody but himself and has nothing to offer but his trademark self-importance.

Having been slung out of his Dail seat in 2007, Callely sought election to one of the rigged Seanad seats reserved for failed or aspiring politicians and for which only TDs, councillors and outgoing senators are permitted to vote. However, he couldn’t win sufficient support among his Fianna Fail colleagues.

Undeterred by the verdict of the electorate and his party, Callely probably went cap in hand to then taoiseach Bertie Ahern pleading that he had devoted his working life to Fianna Fail and had failed to receive an adequate yield on his investment. An understandably sympathetic Ahern anointed Callely as senator and the rest is geography.

Come Here to Me! with another lovely post on Dublin history that may have passed you by… or that you may pass by. This time on the man to whom a little plaque on O’Connell Street is dedicated.

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Expenses visualisation and spreadsheets

CORRECTION: One of the headings was incorrect. It is travel and subsistence not mobile phones that the most money was spent on. Somehow the headings got shifted across in the totals column. Apologies.

I’ve been messing with Gav’s spreadsheets. Here’s two one quick visualisationish (try saying that one out loud, radio students) thingy. This is TDs only, expenses claimed between 2005 and 2008.

Per category.

The Dáil posse spend a lot on phones, it appears. Wonder if they’ve started billing State for the bills on those unofficial Blackberrys certain TDs have started using. Texts sent or data downloaded from those would not be FOIable, remember. Nice way of circumventing FOI law, that.

Next time you see a Government minister with a second phone, you’ll know the score.

Oh, I’ve got an average figure a TD spent in each category per year. So you can how sort the data per heading and if your TD is above the bolded figure (the average amount spent per year per TD in that category) in any of the few years… well, it may interest you. Please download or copy the file before sorting the data for your own purposes. Each time you sort it, it gets resorted for everyone.

Note: I used the figure of 200 as the number of people who sat in the Dáil on average per year. The election meant one year there were 220 claimants, all the other years there were around 166. 200 is probably too high an average figure but I was feeling generous.

Sheet 2 at this link.

Move sheets by clicking the names across the bottom of the file. Download by clicking File > Download. If you use Gmail, click File > Copy.

Have a good long weekend.

Pyrite and housing via the M3 motorway

In case you missed it. Top regional story in The Irish Times…

The M3 motorway which cost an estimated €1 billion will be officially opened today.

The 61km motorway linking the Dublin/Meath border with the Meath/Cavan border is believed to be the largest single road project to be constructed in Ireland and incorporates bypasses of Dunshaughlin, Navan and Kells.

In addition to the motorway itself, the overall project involves a network of 49km of ancillary public roads and 34km of farm access roads.

And a separate smaller story down the page…

THE CHIEF executive of the National Roads Authority has written to a TD to inform him that pyrite was used in the construction of the M3 motorway in Co Meath.

In his letter to Fine Gael TD Shane McEntee, roads authority chief executive Fred Barry said that “as far as we are aware,” the pyrite was used as filling for embankments.

And the last line of an RTE report on an April 6 meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport…

Mr McEntee had asked the National Roads Authority if pyrite had been used in the construction of the M3 motorway and was told there was no evidence that it had.

A more complete Irish Times report on the same meeting…

Mr Barry told Meath TD Shane McEntee there was no need for an independent audit of the M3 or the section of N3 from the West-link toll to Clonee.

Speaking at the Oireachtas Committee on Transport today Mr Barry said infill material for support structures such as cement pillars and steel bars was rigorously monitored and could be traced. The NRA was happy no material from the two quarries identified had been used in connection with either steel or cement.

He said the material from the quarries could only have been used in relation to embankments. In this regard, pyrite – if it had been present at all – was not boxed in by foundations as it would be in a house. There would be minimal impact if the material “shifted, heaved, or expanded” as it might in foundations.

And finally, a quote from the letter which was received by Deputy McEntee from the head of the NRA this week…

“In so far as we are aware the use of pyrite-bearing rock for the construction of the M3 was primarily as embankment fill, with some use as roads base”.

“As far as we’re aware…” qualifying statements are often dangerous.

In reality, however – though Deputy McEntee’s enquiries are welcome – the likelihood of pyrite causing serious damage to a road is fairly small. Pyrite expands when it comes in contact with water, in the enclosed foundations of a dwelling structure that’s a serious issue, in the open base of a road there is space for it to expand, hence the ‘no-biggy’ reaction. Still, while this news story gets a ‘meh’ it does give me a tangetal jump-off point to address another point. Sorry for the delay in getting it to!

Pyrite in gaffs.

Serious problem, which goes beyond one or two developers. The expanding mineral in the foundations can leave massive cracks in the walls of apartment blocks and housing developments. I ain’t talking hair-line either, I’m talking visible-from-a-distance type stuff. There’s one development along the Dart line where they’ve had to close the adjacent playground because the crack along the ground means it’s too dangerous for kids to play.

A friend of mine works for a company which repairs buildings which have been effected by pyrite. He showed me photos of one block he was working on where the walls had bowed outward by about 25 degrees… crazy-looking. I’ll try to get them from him to post here later so you can have a goo. They had to knock down all the internal non-structural walls on the ground floor, dig up 8 feet of foundation inside, remove all that material, replace it with better stuff and allow it to settle – and do similar on the outside – before residents could return. Imagine me sucking air through my front teeth before I say this… “that’s a serious job”. Serious jobs cost serious money.

Oh… by the way, Nama.

Lastly, a further tangental footnote: For the last few months there were three big sites in Dublin which many said were the only things keeping what’s left of the construction industry in the capital afloat. The Aviva Stadium, the new terminal at Dublin Airport and the new Mater Hospital building. The Aviva Stadium site closed last month and the terminal is finished in the next six weeks, I hear. Thankfully, at least for some of those in the construction sector, the Mater isn’t due for a while yet. 14,000 people or so in all between the three sites. A lot expect it to be their last contract in a while.

We’ve turned a corner lads!

Hugh Green on Gaza, Israel, Flotilla…

Gav is in New York for a few days (he’s gone all Sex and the City, want some new malonos? Email him.) and I’m snowed under with work, so I suspect it will be quiet around these parts until Sunday. In the mean-time, you should read this brilliant piece of commentary by Hugh Green. I could quote the whole thing but…

Now, consider the Irish Times editorial from the other day. Its title is ‘Self-inflicted wounds’. But the wounds referred to in the title are not those inflicted on the bodies of the flotilla passengers by Israeli guns.

Rather, the editorial is speaking about the State of Israel as though it had the properties of a human body, and as though its murderous actions were primarily harmful, not on account of the lives wiped out by its elite commandos (to say nothing of what the Israeli state is inflicting on the Palestinians in Gaza), but on account of the damage done to the State itself.

This is just one example among countless of how, within the discourse of the nation-state, priority is given to the protection of the state over the protection of human beings. If the destruction of the human beings is wrong in this case, it is implied, it is because it runs counter to the interests of the state.

Perhaps the best case that can be made by this line of reasoning, is that since the state is supposed to represent the interests of its citizens, any action that presents difficulties for the state runs counter to the best interests of its citizens.

But there is no reason why the interests of a state should automatically coincide with the interests of its citizens. Furthermore, the interests of the citizens so defined are incommensurable with the interests of the human beings who fall under the category of citizen; and no account is given of what happens to those human beings who are not its citizens.

I really can’t do it justice with a quote. Go read it all. It’s the type of thing blogs were made to hold.

TD expenses 2005 to 2008

We were pleased to see the announcement from the Oireachtas that from yesterday, expense claims of the Members will be published on a monthly basis. It’s a step in the right direction, and important for greater public scrutiny of the administration of the State.

Unfortunately the information is published in PDFs and contain little contextual information. Open formats and more data would have been better.

For our own part, we have been seeking for the past eight months all historical data on the expense claims of Members, from 1998 to 2009. We have made some progress. In tandem with the Oireachtas releasing its figures, we are provisionally publishing the spreadsheets of all expenses and salaries for members for the period 2005 to 2008. It is however important to point out that expenses do not cover the full cost of Members to the public purse – travel costs for example are largely paid by the Oireachtas itself and are not part of the expenses regime. We believe these costs should also be published, and probably combined with expense claims, so we have a full picture. (These figures exclude Ministerial salaries and expenses)

Some figures:

From 2005 to 2008, €97,637,195.65 was paid out to TDs in salaries and expenses.

The top 30 for the period are (a proviso: the Ceann Comhairle and his deputy receive Ministerial-like salaries, and heads of Committees receive greater amounts)

Rory O’Hanlon € 789,543.77
Michael Moynihan € 726,873.65
Bernard Allen € 725,636.56
Noel O’Flynn € 723,782.51
Sean Fleming € 722,561.57
Johnny Brady € 720,676.88
Jackie Healy-Rae € 719,350.52
Dan Neville € 712,660.55
Brendan Howlin € 709,654.03
John Cregan € 704,570.69
Padraic McCormack € 699,120.51
Ned O’Keeffe € 695,606.45
Dinny McGinley € 692,391.64
Seymour Crawford € 692,011.42
John Perry € 691,415.49
Michael Lowry € 690,947.20
Tom Hayes € 690,436.23
Peter Kelly € 684,358.22
Paul Kehoe € 680,046.39
Michael Ring € 679,042.87
Enda Kenny € 676,745.95
John O’Donoghue € 675,828.78
Phil Hogan € 672,263.48
Niall Blaney € 671,759.13
Pat Breen € 669,201.01
Jim O’Keeffe € 668,538.10
Michael Finneran € 665,965.04
John Moloney € 663,295.21
Beverley Flynn € 661,031.29
John Deasy € 659,961.01

Here is a full breakdown by member

Below is the full representation by year, including committee membership and all other expense headings. Some curious figures arise. For example:

In 2007 the biggest overall recipient of salary plus expenses was Deputy Michael Lowry. He received €194,643.02 and did not head any committees. This was the highest of any Member in the Dail, including the Ceann Comhairle (John O’Donoghue at the time) who received a Ministerial style salary (earning €189,120.56, or about €5,000 less than Mr Lowry). The main reason I can see as to why Mr Lowry stands out is his travel expenses: €70,169.08 in one year, the highest of any member, and a good €15,000 more than the next highest recipient (Michael Ring).

I am sure there are lots of other curious stats in the spreadsheets, have a look. You might see slight misspelling of names (thanks to OCR processes), but all of the figures have been triple checked against records released under the FOI Act.

2008 TD (xls)

2007 TD (xls)

2006 TD (xls)

2005 TD (xls)

I will shortly publish the same set of figures for the Seanad.

Digest – May 30 2010

Another day another digest…

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Sunday Independent news feature on a teenage girl from Romania who Gardai believe was lured to her death by a ‘southside sex predator‘…

Marioara had been in Dublin for just three weeks when she disappeared. She was begging with her little brother on Lombard Street in the south city on a Sunday afternoon in January 2008.

A dark-haired man pulled over in a silver Ford Mondeo and Marioara approached him for money. Her brother watched as he rolled down his window to chat to his sister. When he saw her get into the car, he went over to see what was going on.

The driver gave him €10 and although he couldn’t understand exactly what was said, the boy heard the word “McDonald’s” and assumed the motorist was taking his sister for something to eat.

Marioara’s family never saw her again. She managed to make one chilling phone call the day after she disappeared. She called a brother back in Romania, because none of her family in Dublin had mobile phones.

Michael Taft takes on the Backroom column in the Sunday Business Post...

Just when you think you’ve read it all, along comes someone to present us with a statement so devoid of understanding that all you can do is be amazed that this stuff actually gets published. If the government had not taken harsh steps would our deficit have risen to nearly €35 billion? Of course not; but don’t take my word for it – here’s what the Department of Finance had to say about the matter.

The systemic banking institution… ehem… err… EBS…yeah… has been nationalised. Oh didn’t you hear? Constantin Gurgiev has the details. €875m over the next ten years… no bodger boys, give us a shout when you want another chunk’a’change!

Anyone ever watched something on BloggingHeads? Similar new website for debating Irish affairs, just launched, Stephen Kinsella and Joe Garde want your help. Minister Ciaran Cuffe is the first participant, he talks about proper planning. Check it out on Irishdebate.com.

Are the markets missing the elephant in room? asks Gekko.

[…] So to the data. The following shows the more comprehensive pciture of relative indebtedness across some European countries, including our fellow “PIGS”. Now think about whether you would rather be exposed to Greek debt or Irish debt?

I wouldn’t be so smug and probably wouldn’t swap Greek bonds for Irish bonds, despite the contrary view that market is placing on the relative credit worthiness of the two countries at the moment.

Oh dear, someone told Twenty about the SBP poll figures…

We’ve been lied to, cheated, defrauded, financially violated as a nation and as individuals, and in the latest opinion polls FF are up 1% instead of being set on fire, the whole fucking cunting lot of them.

Jason O’Mahony views it differently.

FG is still basing its campaign on not being FF, and Labour are still sending such mixed signals on public spending cuts and public sector reform as to neutralise FG. As a voter, if I bother to vote at all, I’m drifting towards FF (whom I really despise) because I at least know what I get with a vote for FF.

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Lottery grants 2008

I’ve started a process of trying to pull together Lottery grant information. It’s not easy. The distribution of grants is complex at best, but through a process of taking existing published data, and FOI requests, I will try and centralise in spreadsheets all grants made.

To start with here is the distribution of €193,981,422.00 of Lottery monies (as best I can tell) for the year 2008. The information was gleaned from the Comptroller & Auditor General’s Appropriate Accounts 2008. The county column is not complete yet, as some Departments do not give the county of the recipient.

This is not a complete representation, as best I can tell, because the Lottery Annual Report 2008 says that €267.8m was granted.

Spreadsheet download