From Green to red in less than 48 hours

The Bizarre Green Timeline pre-O’Dea’s Resignation: On Wednesday Minister Eamon Ryan was in in the Dáil saying… eh… well see for yourself.

[Thanks to Alexia for the clip.]

And it that, I suppose, that is the crucial issue. That when there was a mistake [noted] in that affidavit, when there was something [noted] that was not true, it was acknowledged in Court, dealt with in Court, and accepted by the other party.“

As shown above, Minister Ryan, “speaking on behalf of the Green Party” defended Mr O’Dea in the Dáil. Minister John Gormley also stood behind Mr O’Dea. As did the rest of the party when they voted confidence in the then defence minister on Wednesday afternoon.

According to Minister Gormley around the same time he had been assured by Mr O’Dea that an article in the Limerick Leader the following morning would “vindicate” him. However, at this point various unchallenged reports (not to mention the court settlement) showing that Mr O’Dea had falsely claimed an electoral opponent ran a brothel (and then denied doing so in a sworn affidavit to court) were already in the public domain. What exactly could vindicate a minister in this situation is unclear.

Despite this, Minister Gormley said he was waiting for the next edition of the Leader before considering whether or not he had confidence in Mr O’Dea. He did so so0n after, or just before… erm… voting confidence in Mr O’Dea. Continue reading “From Green to red in less than 48 hours”

Willie O’Dea’s resignation letter

This is the letter of resignation of Willie O’Dea, along with Brian Cowen’s reply.



Willie O'Dea speaks to Limerick Leader about Sinn Fein Councillor

Willy O’Dea interviewed by Mike Dwane of the Limerick Leader/Chronicle makes a number of comments about Maurice Quinlivan of Sinn Féin, which he subsequently withdrew. O’Dea then swore an affidavit to court saying he made no such comments. He categorically and emphatically denied saying such things, then the audio below emerged and he changed his story.

On Hanger Six…

…as the O’Leary-bullying-the-State-story seems to have become known, Gerard Cunningham says it best.

…Then imagine that another company comes along, and decides it wants some of the plant the OPW has already leased.

Imagine that this latercomer calls in a few political favours, and the Minister in charge instructs the OPW to break the leasing contracts it has set up, take back the plant and machinery it has already leased, and give it to the latecomer, a competitor of the company which took out the lease in good faith….

Read the rest, it’s only a short post. And subscribe to that blog too, it’s on my ‘Check First Thing in the Morning’ list.

I’m with the Government on this one. Michael O’Leary could with remembering he’s just a taxpayer, not matter how much of it he may pay. Also some seem to be forgetting there are occupied, already operational, currently-people-are-being-paid-to-do-it Aer Lingus roles involved too.

O’Leary is a master communicator (self-promoter and spinner), he does make Coughlan look even more incompetent than she is, but he’s wrong and being facetious in this case.

Now, getting back to Willie O’Dea and that resignation thing. Harry McGee outlines the details in a good post on the Irish Times Politics blog for those looking for a recap.

Green Party, where’s all that rule-of-law and ethics talk from back in the Planet Bertie days gone?… Did I see you lot curling up in a ball again there earlier?

Irish Times editorial on Willie O'Dea

Irish Times lead editorial today is on Willie O’Dea’s… ehem… ‘false statement’ in a sworn affidavit to court.

In other jurisdictions, prominent people have been sent to jail for incorrect statements. Here, Fianna Fáil closed ranks. Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern ignored the substantive issue and described Fine Gael’s behaviour in pursuing the matter as “despicable”. Earlier, leader of the Seanad Donie Cassidy declared that the people of Limerick were fortunate to have such a capable representative. There is no question about Mr O’Dea’s political or ministerial abilities. What is at issue is his behaviour in maligning a political opponent during an election campaign and the legal and political consequences that have flowed from that action. As a solicitor, Mr O’Dea must realise the seriousness of the situation. If he does not, then Mr Cowen, who is also a solicitor, should be able to advise him.

Good piece. The pressure rightly builds. Fair play to the Limerick Chronicle.

Willie is loving the attention. This is him laughing as Fine Gael deputies shout at the Ceann Comhairle demanding a time for his statement on the matter be set…

– Screengrab via Christine Bohan

Mary Coughlan on BBC HardTalk

In three parts, recorded about seven days ago. Strong interview by Stephen Sackur:

Note: At 4.40 of the above clip Mary Coughlan repeats the mistruth she has told the Dáil previously. She says performance-related bonuses of senior civil servants were judged by the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector to be “intrinsically” part of their salary.

This is not the truth. It is false. It’s a beyond misleading statement.

In no way, “intrinsically”, “implicitly”, “explicitly” or otherwise did the Review Body see bonuses as part of salary. Once again I have to wonder, is the Tánaiste stupid, out of her depth or lying? A disgrace.

“When we had the economic where-with-all we invested it in health, we invested it in education, we invested it in skills training.”

Eh. The HSE. Third level institutes. FÁS.

[h/t The Property Pin]

"…I'm simply not prepared to sign off on a proposal that provides that a blanket sum is handed out irrespective of whether the sum has been incurred or not."

In the early days of this blog we covered Oireachtas members’ expenses quite a bit. Using documents we’d FOId we calculated the average weekly, daily and hourly claims the top three ‘spenders’ were making. The Sunday Tribune published a double-page spread using the documents, and the Daily Mail mentioned the calculations. It made a bit of an impact.

Mark had promised to publish the same figures for an average TD but, unfortunately never got around to it. Life was hectic, it was simply too time consuming to lay out a spreadsheet in the same way with details for each person who has served in the Oireachtas since 2005. Of course things would have been easier had the Oireachtas sent us the documents in electronic format, as requested… but that’s a blog post for another day.

At the time there was lots of hand-wringing about expenses, Ken Foxe – may the country thank him – was in full flight with his prolonged FOI campaign on the topic, John O’Donoghue’s expenses in particular. Other journos were gradually climbing onto the bandwagon and the Government for various reasons, expenses not least among them, was looking shaky.

There was much talk of “fully vouched”, “transparency”, and “openness”.

This week a revised expenses system was introduced, billed as reform.

It’s disappointing. The Oireachtas members – on all sides – have missed the point. Read the proposal and you’ll see it is focused on numbers. Instead of nine or ten headings under which expenses/allowances can be claimed, there’ll be two. They’ll be able to claim a travel and accommodation allowance and a public representation allowance.

The T&A allowance is the one that’ll be based on members signing into the Houses of the Oireachtas and the distance from their contituency which they must travel to get to the same location. Continue reading “"…I'm simply not prepared to sign off on a proposal that provides that a blanket sum is handed out irrespective of whether the sum has been incurred or not."”

Digest – Feb 14 2010

The weekly round-up:

– HOME

Tom O’Connor of Progressive Economy on government policies and the revamped spin being put on them. Read the comments too.

Ronan Lyons with a great piece of analysis on men between 20 and 24 and unemployment;

These astonishing figures add up to almost 100,000 job losses in a segment of the population that had only 175,000 employed at the peak of the boom. Over 55% of jobs for young men have disappeared. One occasionally hears the argument that, as bad as things are, an increase in unemployment of ten percentage points means that 90% of us are in more or less the same position now as during the boom. What these figures show is that while the rest of the economy has lost perhaps about 10% of its jobs, young men have lost more than half theirs.

Rob Kitchen of IrelandAfterNama puts his finger on it.

The Cedar Lounge has the best piece on the George Lee thing. (The Tribune has a four page spread on it today, four pages! Plus other stories on Lee on the news pages. It happened Monday!)

Damien Mulley’s FOI on wasteful government spending on a now-scraped website is on his blog.

– WORLD Continue reading “Digest – Feb 14 2010”

FAS notice board

Shane Ross, writing in today’s Sunday Independent, points out that the FAS internal notice board has been closed. Back in November we highlighted the existence of referral traffic from an internal FAS bulletin board, with traffic coming to this blog. Emphasis mine:

It seems that tensions had been running so high at FAS that the rules were being breached by the bucketful. Staff morale has plunged after the barrage of revelations at the agency. The internet board had become a treasure trove for messages of abuse.

Some senior staff recognised themselves in some of the anonymous messages, even if they were not named. They freaked out and made formal complaints.

At least one fun-loving outsider tried to break into the staff intranet board. According to FAS, “an external internet blog posted the internal address of the bulletin board pages and sought access”. FAS proudly declares that it became aware of the attempted breach and stopped the rot.

An all-time first for FAS.

Sources at FAS say the site was used as a tool to snipe at those who had been promoted and was an outlet for jealousies.

We would like to point that we never attempted to “gain access” in the somewhat illegal way this has been portrayed.