Enterprise Ireland grants 2005 – 2008

I have received copies of all financial support given by Enterprise Ireland for 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. It details tens of millions of euro worth of grants to companies throughout the country. The supports are broken down by county.

For now I have not ‘cleaned’ the data, ie I have not removed spaces and extra sentences that are not needed for the purposes of better presentation. The document is ‘as
is’ and is based on PDFs which have been imported into Google spreadsheets.

Enterprise Ireland grants 2005 – 2008

You can view each year of data by clicking the respective year at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

Two links to make you think

Myself and Gav are both up to our eyeballs at the moment. Here’s two quick items worth reading:

Firstly, Mark Tighe’s post on his blog following his story in the latest edition of the Sunday Times. He writes in more detail about the problems, obfuscations and delays he has incurred in attempting to obtain information on the night of the bank guarantee via FOI.

Our original request for these documents was made on October 3rd, 2008. Within four weeks Finance had replied with a big bundle of paperwork. Unfortunately the documents released were useless. They consisted of speeches made by Brian Lenihan after the guarantee was announced and a series of PQs answered in the Dail. They basically sent us a load of documents that were already in the public domain. A complete waste of paper.

I instantly sent in the €75 appeal cheque and asked the Department to stop taking the michael. We hadn’t asked for public documents created after the guarantee. We wanted the internal notes, memos, emails etc that would shed a little insight in to how the guarantee meetings of September 29/30 came about.

Hit the link above and read the rest.

Secondly, Edward McGarr of McGarr Solicitors seems to have noticed something  interesting relating to the DCC/Fyffes/Jim Flavin decision. The post is too short to pull a quote from, you’ll have to head over there to find out anything more.

Digest – Jan 24 2010

It’s how it goes down every Sunday night/Monday morning.

– HOME

Garibaldy of the Cedar’s has an interesting post on the changes in centre-leftism. The comments are worth reading too. Also over on the CLR, WorldByStorm deconstructs John Waters’s latest musings; the financial crisis… it’s all in your head… courtesy of the journalist [claims John Waters].

…[Waters] apparent inability to accept that people can arrive at opinions about matters without mediation by journalists or politicians and that these opinions can diverge quite strikingly from his own thoughts is now palpable. Or, to put it another way, he just doesn’t seem to get that other people have beliefs and thoughts of their own and aren’t just empty vessels or actors who must dance to his, or anyone else’s tune.

Journalist, Gerard Cunningham, on the news business. Note the word business.

Author and freelance court reporter Abigail Rieley has been covering Eammon Lillis’s trial for the Evening Herald and Sunday Independent, but her blog is where the real depth can be found. She’s writing long-form, descriptive, prose almost daily about what happens each day in court. Go there and read up.

Constantin Gurdgiev expands on Brian Lucey and Charles Larkin’s Sunday Business Post piece on where our third level sector needs to be moving.

Nyder O’Leary, despite finding himself hitting a wall with FOI, has an excellent article on the cost of building schools. It nicely illustrates  the general non-decision-making of Government and their habit of kicking to touch via Commissions.

– WORLD Continue reading “Digest – Jan 24 2010”

Harper's Magazine on Gitmo 'suicides'

This, while maybe not strictly within the TheStory remit, does show the value of journalism (and FOI and whistle-blowing and cross-referencing data).

Harper’s Scott Horton on The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle – published online on January 18.

Late on the evening of June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently… None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.

As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown… Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves.

Two years later, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which has primary investigative jurisdiction within the naval base, issued a report supporting the account originally advanced by Harris, now a vice-admiral in command of the Sixth Fleet. The Pentagon declined to make the NCIS report public, and only when pressed with Freedom of Information Act demands did it disclose parts of the report, some 1,700 pages of documents so heavily redacted as to be nearly incomprehensible. The NCIS documents were carefully cross-referenced and deciphered by students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and their findings, released in November 2009, made clear why the Pentagon had been unwilling to make its conclusions public. The official story of the prisoners’ deaths was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centerpiece of the report—a reconstruction of the events—was simply unbelievable.

According to the NCIS documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

This is the official story, adopted by NCIS and Guantánamo command and reiterated by the Justice Department in formal pleadings, by the Defense Department in briefings and press releases, and by the State Department. Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached…

Harper’s is probably best-known for exposing the My Lai massacre through the reporting of their Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh. The full article on Gitmo will be printed in the March edition of Harper’s, which hits shelves on February 15 (really).

The above is only an intro…

Moriarty update

The Tribunal contacted me today to say that they had received a number of requests for transcripts over the past few days, and that they had decided to contact DCR to stop the release of a disc to me containing all transcripts of the Tribunal.

They have decided that rather than sending discs out to everyone who had asked for it, they will instead publish all transcripts onto the website of the Tribunal. They have said this will happen next week.

Here’s hoping.

More on conferencing councillors

Last week I flagged a story about councillors in Kildare attending some unusual conferences at the expense of the taxpayer. I asked if it was something reflected nationally and suggested local journalists and bloggers check it out in their respective areas.

The Donegal Democrat gives added impetus to this suggestion with their story this morning.

Exclusive: Councillor refunds double expense claim – Donegal Democrat

Reporter Michelle Nic Phaidian details how one Fine Gael councillor – a possible candidate in the forthcoming bye-election – claimed for attending two conferences over the same three day period, one of which was held over the weekend of October 16th-18th, the other on October 17th. He claimed mileage, subsistence and fee expenses for both but it appears he didn’t show up for the one-day event, telling the Democrat simply that he “mandated” to do so by the relevant authority.

Following the Democrat‘s investigation Councillor Terence Slowey has apologised and repaid more than €1,000 to the Border Regional Authority.

So, the authorities between them initially gave him more than €2,000 for three days conferencing? Nice work if you can get it.

If you haven’t got onto your local authority about conference expenses yet…

Thoughts on TI meeting, Ireland and corruption

Yesterday I attended the Transparency Ireland (TI) meeting where a report was launched which calls for whistle-blower protection similar to that legislated for in the UK. John Devitt, head of Transparency Ireland, chaired the discussion. Completing the panel were Justine McCartney of The Sunday Times, Fintan O’Toole, assistant editor of The Irish Times, AIB whistle-blower Eugene McErlean and Tom Clonan, who brought to light sexual abuse and bullying in the Army.

Note: Nat O’Connor of TASC has a thorough post on Progressive Economy which covers related topics, it’s well worth reading.

I spoke briefly from the floor, putting it to the panel that there is a need to change wider Irish culture and attitudes to corruption before whistle-blowers get the respect and admiration they deserve. While I agree legislative protection for people who ‘shout stop’ would be beneficial, what is required is a changing of the perception of corruption (legal or otherwise) to encourage more people to take action. I’m not sure if a law will do that. Continue reading “Thoughts on TI meeting, Ireland and corruption”

Details of inquiry into Irish banking collapse published

The Government has published an amended Private Members’ Motion by Labour on a banking inquiry. Essentially, it outlines how such an enquiry would function.

Labour Private Members’ Motion on banking inquiry and Government amendents

The main reading is from “To delete all the words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following:…” on page two, onwards.

My brief summary upon one reading, updated as I re-read and read elsewhere: the Government proposes to establish a commission of investigation (similar in structure to the Commission into child sex abuse) after two reports are submitted by the Central Bank upon which the Commission’s investigation will be based. Therefore the quality and depth (or lack thereof) of the reports from the Central Bank will be hugely important to the quality, depth and findings of the Commission.

The reports will be submitted no later than May 31 2010. Pretty early if one wants in-depth reports.

The commission will be established no later than June 30.

It will only cover the period up to September 2008. Why?

Commissions of Investigation sit in private, bar in especially exceptional circumstances. It is therefore extremely likely the banking inquiry will sit in private due to the sensitive nature of its operations politically. They do have the power to compell witnesses.

It will be chaired by an ‘internationally respected independent expert’. Interesting, who? Respected by who? With a background in which sides of the banking industry? And from where, and what is their background?

It will lay its findings before the Houses of the Oireachtas no more than six months after it is established. This won’t happen.

Moriarty Tribunal transcripts

Update: I was contacted by the Tribunal, who said they had contacted DCR, who have said “a disc is being prepared”. I await with bated breath.

Last month I put an FOI request in with the Department of the Taoiseach for the following:

(1) All transcripts of public sittings of the Moriarty Tribunal from its inception to the date on which this request is received.
(2) The contract for transcription services and a breakdown of fees charged for transcription services.
(3) The breakdown of fees for the maintenance and building of the Moriarty Tribunal website, and the contract for this.

Today I received the reply. I had to read it twice to let it sink in.

Moriarty reply

I can, in some way, live with the fact that the taxpayer spent the bones of €1 million on transcription fees since the inception of the Tribunal in 1998. But I cannot fathom how a) the transcripts are not available online and b) that I have to pay (again) to see the transcripts of the Tribunal and c) that Doyle Court Reports retains copyright on transcripts of public sittings of a Tribunal of Inquiry setup by the Department and paid for by the Irish people.

I called Doyle Court Reporters this morning and they were very courteous and helpful. I asked for a quote as to how much I would have to pay for digital (.doc) copies of all 370 days of public sittings of the Moriarty Tribunal. They called me back a short time later, stating that for all days the cost would be €16,600 @ €45 per day. But if I was bulk buying they would be prepared to offer a discount of 25%.

I did suggest to DCR that since the public had already paid nearly €1 million for the transcripts, it seems a little odd that I would, as a citizen, have to fork out another €16,600 to get copies of the transcripts. DCR were again courteous and helpful, and suggested I speak with the Moriarty Tribunal.

I then called the Moriarty Tribunal, where I spoke with the registrar, Siobhan Hayes. First I asked if the Tribunal had copies of all transcripts, to which the answer was yes. Are these subject to FOI I then asked… to which she eventually replied no, and that copyright was with DCR. I then asked why other Tribunals, such as Mahon and Morris, had published transcripts on their websites, and Moriarty ones were unavailable. I was told that the original agreement was that copyright would stay with DCR, and that was the way it was. I then asked for a copy of the contract or agreement between the Tribunal and DCR in relation to stenography services. Siobhan said she would get back to me on this issue.

Of course a couple of questions arise. First is whether the Department of the Taoiseach does hold the transcripts, but simply pointed me in the direction of Doyle Court Reporters for copies of them. Second is how, exactly, copyright on transcripts of a public sitting of a Tribunal applies.

Third, and most importantly, is why the transcripts are unavailable for public consumption as a matter of public record. These are historically important transcripts containing the sworn evidence of former Taoisigh including Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern, as well as other former senior ministers, civil servants and businessmen, all in relation to extremely serious issues of public concern. Indeed when a Tribunal is established it is invariably included in the Terms of Reference that it concerns “definite matters of urgent public importance”.

Yet in relation to a matter of urgent public importance, for a Tribunal that is shortly to issue its second and final report, I can’t see who said what in relation to anything on any given day, whatsoever.

Mad, isn’t it?

Related post:
Morris transcript FOI