For the time that's in it

Rare to see a minister get a good reception on TV but that is exactly what happened last Monday night on RTE’s “Frontline” Roisin Shortall was setting out her views on how to tackle binge drinking. Roisin is the minister responsible for the drugs strategy and she is seeking to reduce our addiction to alcohol consumption. She has a hard job however she set out in a positive way exactly the extent of the problem our society ignores. Absenteeism on Fridays or Mondays due to late night drinking is part of the €1.5B bill attributed to absenteeism in the workplace. It’s not too long ago since a local supermarket in Wexford gave a free case of beer when you bought one case.

Casual violence and vandalism adds to the damage. A few years ago a local garda told me that he was looking forward to his retirement as he’d spent enough Saturday nights in the company of enough of Wexford’s drunken youths to last him a lifetime. Alcohol contributes significantly to our levels of mental health. We’ve always tolerated the problem however it now seems that enough is enough and Rosin is looking at the volume of alcohol that is purchased here. Add to that the % alcohol content of alcopops and continental lagers, significantly stronger than the usual pint of plain. As a generation we’re storing up a problem of diabetes for the future. The health needs of the generation damaged by the over consumption of alcopos will have to be met somehow. Minister Shortall committed to ring fencing revenue raised for dealing with addiction. If a fraction of what she proposes comes through, it’ll be a good dasy work.

Lets deal with the potential downside. Cross border traffic for alcohol tends to be slightly older people who are not targeted by the alcopops manufacturers. There is little in the difference in price between many spirits here available on offer and the price across the border. Would you be bothered going to the north if the bargains aren’t there anymore? That’s not to say that some people will not go for variety and novelty. However the reality is that like the smoking ban which the north copied, any move that works on reducing alcohol consumption will in time make its way into law elsewhere. If a reduction of consumption in cheap youth orientated alcohols is Shorthall’s vision then I hope she succeeds and she deserves the support of all.

Political pantomime leaves us with 7 dwarfs!

I wish the surviving 7 cabinet ministers good health. That may strike you as being out of character for someone who opposes the policy of the Fianna Fail government and as of a few hours ago it is a Fianna Fail single party government that runs this country for the first time since 1989. However if any more ministers resign and the Dail does not replace them then there will be no functioning government in this country. You need a minimum of 7 cabinet ministers for a cabinet meeting. This possibility would be farcical. My main concern is that the international standing of Ireland and the political standards that should apply in this country have been trashed by the government that is now leaving power.

As far as I’m aware there are no ministers junior or senior in the Department of Transport and the ongoing dispute at Aer Lingus threatens to escalate. What started out as an internal Fianna Fail matter brought on by Golfgate developed into a crisis after a good old fashioned Fianna Fail stroke backfired. The likelihood is that the next Fianna Fail leader will never be Taoiseach and that what we are witnessing is the relegation of Fianna Fail to the role of just another political party. They’re not a movement as Mary Hanafin claims but an embarrassment. Eamon Ó Cuiv’s hope’s of re-establishing the party on a parish by parish basis fundamentally misses the point that people’s focus under this government has gone from the community that they live in and the party stands no chance of re-invigorating a sense of societal participation as Fianna Fail spent the last 14 years in power cosying up to the wealthy at the Galway Tent. Many people live detached from their communities because they couldn’t afford homes in the communities that they were born in.

Brian Lenihan and Mary Hanafin seem to have shot themselves politically in the foot and that leaves the main battle between O Cuiv and Martin unless Connor Lenihan makes good his threat to run. Running is good for the profile and may be the difference between re-election and the P45. I hope Micheal Martin wins. Of all the candidates he spent the last 14 years in cabinet stoking up the bubble and he cannot distance himself from the impact of his policies. Fianna Fail under Martin will fit into the 2 and a half party system very well in the half party slot.

I expect a General election to be called for Friday February 25th. I wouldn’t be surprised if Fianna Fail appointed 3 new junior ministers as the vacancies exist and the appointments are by the government and not by the Dail. Here’s hoping that the people of Wexford put the boot in to the Fianna Fail ticket. It seems likely that the older FF TD’s with a reputation for clientelism will survive. That’d be a bonus as the image that a new Fianna Fail leader would like to create in the opposition benches will conflict with the reality.

Or maybe just maybe there may yet be a sting in the tail for us all? A reverse Tallaght strategy where Fianna Fail support Fine Gael so long as Enda Kenny follows the 4 year economic plan? Or Fine Gael falls short of a majority and is supported by the new right wing economist grouping? By the way isn’t it peculiar that these right wing economists will only stand for election in constituencies with good social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, LUAS, DART etc? If some of these guys felt that their policies were beneficial for the entire population why won’t they run for election in socially disadvantaged parts of the country?
Strange country with peculiar politics.

Enough of Harney picking over the nation's carcass!

Few Ministers have presided for as long as Mary Harney in the history of the state. She’s spent 12 years in office continuously and add to that the period that she spent as a successful Junior Minister at Environment where she pioneered smokeless fuel. Her senior at the time was Padraig Flynn and the pair were nickname Smog n’ Smug!
When Harney transferred to Health in 2004 she told us that she’d bring her business like approach to health and shorten waiting lists, improve services and give us a first class health service. After the latest scandal at Tallaght Hospital she’s no nearer her goal than she was over 5 years ago when she took up the job. In 2005 she said she wanted a 7 year stint to complete her job. Her optimism is groundless, she’s brought us no nearer a better health service. It’s about time we as a nation heeded her advice from another issue and shopped around for another Health Minister.

She really has a dreadful record, Missed diagnosis at Port Laoise, Galway, Limerick, Hospital closures in Monaghan, Ennis, Dundalk as well as the infamous reconfiguration of the Mid-West, North East, South, and South East, the Co Location financing of private hospitals, PPARS, Failure to regulate the nursing home sector, A&E charge doubling in the last 5 years and all the time physiotherapy and psychological services for children services are long fingered as Ms Harney hones her taste for foreign travel. Her constant companion in clocking up the air miles is her FAS veteran husband. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, particularly if your on a waiting list for surgery on a vegas nerve.

The ire of most people is kept for her creation , HSE. Patients are glad of a service and appreciate the work done on wards, in operating theatres and clinics up and down the country. What they want to see is more. We are told that Ireland is striving towards best international practise and that at the end the HSE will be held up as a model for other small countries, consultant led teams treating patients in modern speciality hospitals. What we’ve mostly got so far is duplication of management and a Minister who fundamentally cannot distinguish between a social economy and a market. Since 2005 civil servants in the Health Department mirror the HSE employees who work in brand new offices on the Millennium Park HSE complex, leased from her good friend by tax payers. Amid the chaos Harney refers question on health the political section of the HSE. When the Head of the HSE Professor Drumm goes to meet TD’s its bedlam as about 100 deputies try to question him about the implications of his decisions in their own area in a limited amount of time.


I’m fed up with those who run our health system stumbling from crisis to crisis. Where will it be next month? Can we afford any longer Harney’s clichés? Fair deal or “If it was just a question of money it’d be solved by now”. The sad reality is that Harney has demoralised the staff and frightened the general public into an expectation of poor standards in our hospitals. The reality is otherwise. Recently one of my children broke their arm. I went to Wexford General Hospital at 5 PM. My son was x-rayed, diagnosed, treated and referred to a fracture clinic within 2 hours. There are good experiences in our health services to be had in spite of the quality of leadership at top.

So what is the way forward? The genie is out of the bottle, accountability is gone, every day Wexford gets closer to a re-configuration that will mean the service delivery in the South East is regionally based rather than local. If there is a change of government in the morning this roll out won’t change because management have been given control of delivery. It’s reconfiguration or nothing!

The forthcoming re-shuffle is fundamentally different to what Ahern did in 2004 when he morphed into a socialist who broke bread with Fr Sean Healey. That transformed FF in the polls and set them up for 2007. The forthcoming reshuffle is predicated against taxpayers being taken to the cleaners to keep bankers, developers and FF in clover. The most potent expression “There’s no NAMA for me” says it all. There’ll be no bailout for FF, Harney and the Greens.
Enough is enough, The health minister should return from New Zeeland to take control of the latest crisis. Then Harney should be shown the door at the reshuffle, accountability has to start.

Shot at Dusk for the defending the indefensible

Not even the greens could tolerate the arrogance at the end. The suggestion that Willie O’Dea who had paid a significant sum to settle claims of slander was somehow a victim was one that not even John Gormley could swallow. In the end it was the appalling inability on O’Dea’s part to understand his position that did for him. When I heard on Matt Cooper that an unscheduled meeting of the FF Parliamentary Party was being held at teatime and that FF speakers were unavailable for media interviews the writing was on the wall for Willie.

My initial response is that his demeanour reflects a government out of touch. They thought they’d get away with a truncated vote of confidence, that sneering at the opposition sufficed for debate and high handed references to blue shirts, George Lee and the Northern Bank or low handed ones to Gardaí, brothels and ladies of the night would throw enough dirt in the air to see Willie safe just one more time. Did he actually think for one minute that the general public would feel sympathy for a cabinet minister in the most unpopular government ever who settled a claim against him because he claims he is a victim?


There is a view however that being attacked in a personalised way by your political opponents is a plus at an election. I’ve been called a few things in my time, some in public others in private most of them slanderous. I look at them as a badge of honour. Where does public life go if politicians resort to law to financially compensate themselves against the realities of public life? It's likely that a politician other than Willie O'Dea may well have got away with the slander but would many other politicians have had the neck to suggest what Willie did?

The O’Dea affair has actually camouflaged the reality that the government was almost beaten in a vote on the Finance Act today. Had that happened there would have been a General Election and I’d have spent today canvassing. As usual there is a Wexford connection, Enniscorthy’s FF TD John Browne was AWOL for the vote. If George Lee had still been around then the opposition would have won.


Last month Brendan Howlin told the Labour branch that he thought that an election could happen anytime citing “events”! The Williegate affair arose over 24 hours, the fact that he’s gone will introduce a friction between Greens and FF. As with Brian Lenihan Snr and the famous mature recollection affair of 1990, the shafting hurt and we know what happened to Haughey and subsequently that government. When trust goes in a government it hits the rocks. Cllr Quinlivan’s colleagues at Stormont know this only too well. In time tonight’s dramatic events will be seen to be a turning point between Greens and FF.

Willie O’Dea here I come!

Brian Friel’s ground breaking play “Philadelphia Here I come” features a character who spends most of the time centre stage dividing his time between his private self and his public self. He wrestles with himself but in the end there is only one winner.
I think Willie O’Dea can identify with Friel’s character. O’Dea compensated a Limerick SF councillor arising from a malicious claim made by O’Dea about the councillor after gardaí discovered prostitutes working from a property owned by his brother.


O’Dea now accepts that his sworn affidavit on the matter is a “mistake”. Minister O’Dea accepts this because a journalist has a tape recording of O’Dea making remarks that he now accepts are mistaken. However how could a solicitor like Mr O’Dea write an affidavit having been warned about swearing an untruth. But what hasn’t been alluded to is that the SF councillor Quinlivan lost his initial case which relied on the incorrect affidavit.

For the record Minster O’Dea’s affidavit is littered with references to; as a public representative, as a life long democrat, as a Teachtala Dala, remarks that I was entitled to make as a public representative.

The best that FF can come up with to mitigate Willie O’Dea’s latest “mistake” is that Willie exists in a parallel universe to Defence Minster Willie O’Dea where he can divide personal accountability to public accountability of a minister. It’s not the first time that Willie has fallen foul of the microphone. During the Albert Reynolds libel case his contributions in the subsequent Dail Committee investigating the matter had an Old Bailey QC calling for an interpreter. 8 years ago, Willie was caught out by on radio encouraging taxi drivers to protest against his own government’s policy on liberalising licensing.

Fine Gael has now submitted a motion of no confidence in Willie in an attempt to drive a wedge between the Greens and Fianna Fail. It’s not going to happen. It’s a huge change from 20 years ago when FG pursued Jim McDaid on his nomination to the post of Defence Minister because he gave evidence in support of a member of the republican movement in an extradition case. Then they were strongly anti-republican now they are strongly backed by SF!

It’s not quite the head of steam that the McDaid affair built up. The greens are satisfied that the matter has been dealt with to the satisfaction of the court. The Greens are now exhibiting signs of Stockholm syndrome that mirror the symptoms of Munchausen by proxy that FF reps exhibit every day. While the greens are behaving more like FF of old, FF themselves are identifying signs of recovery in the economy that don’t exist. For the greens to jump ship would mean political obliteration so they’ll put up with anything to put off the day when they’re toast.

Indeed Willie is one of those who’re most vocal about the economy recovering and has been touted as a future Minister for Finance. That was until his financial settlement with the SF councillor whose brother is a well known stalwart of the IRA. It’s not the first time that Willie has been before the courts as recently he was involved in a case where a man falsely claimed that O’Dea had struck him.


Regardless of the outcome O’Dea is damaged. But he’s ultimately safe in cabinet. Who’ll rebuke him? Coughlan who bungled jobs at Dublin Ariport, , Martin who sleepwalked around the Gresham giving rise to the organ retention scandal, Harney who presided over mis-diagnosis after mis-diagnosis in the HSE, Dermot Ahern who was up every tree in North Dublin, Dempsey or Gormley, Minister for Snow or indeed the Daddy of them all Brian Cowen who poured petrol on the economic fire 4 years ago?
Anyone familiar with Philadelphia knows that in the end the main character exits. However, I don’t think that Willie will be going anywhere yet!

Justin Keating RIP 1930-2009

Sorry to hear today of the death of Justin Keating. Justin died just days short of his 80th birthday. Keating was the son of Sean & May Keating, 2 stalwarts of the radical left in the early 20th century. His father painted and his mother was also involved in the arts. Justin studied veterinary science at UCD and one of the few on the left who applied leftwing economics to agriculture in the 1960’s. He presented RTE’s agriculture programmes and received a Jacobs award for his pioneering work, the Irish equivalent of a BAFTA. Justin opposed Irish entry into the EEC, leading Labour’s acampaign in the 1972 referendum. His death removes from the stage the final intellectual pillar that Brendan Corish attracted to Labour in the 1960’s.
Justin was my local TD and he was strongly disliked by Fianna Fail. When he served as Minister for Industry and Commerce in the Cosgrave Coalition he was pilloried because he believed in regulation of prices. He was targeted by Fianna Fail because he believed that the state should play a role in developing our natural resources and that the economy should be planned. He imposed terms on exploration companies that would see royalties and taxes paid on prospecting and recovery of hydrocarbons within Irish waters and ensured that the state paid below world price for gas from Kinsale while also taking as take in the field. This ensured that NET, ESB and Bord Gais could expand in Cork Harbour when gas brought ashore. The conditions he set on oil companies were significantly reduced by Ray Burke at a major loss to the exchequer.
He had very little time for free market economics in industry or agriculture. While prices rose under his tenure, so too did wages and I don’t recall cross border trade impacting hugely on state finances at that time.
Shortly after he lost his seat in 1977, I remember walking home from mass with my father and a neighbour who was a strong FF supporter. Our neighbour rejoiced at the defeat of “that card carrying communist Keating”. This description intrigued me about the man who made a genuine attempt in his political life to share the wealth our society produced. A walk home from mass was something that Keating was a stranger to as he was a committed humanist, being President of the Irish Humanist Association. He was a strong opponent of Zionism calling for the occupied territories to be returned to Palestinian control.
Justin also served as a Senator and MEP. He also pioneered Sunday morning news broadcasting on RTE in the 1980’s after he left politics. He was a committed socialist and a genuine radical who made more than a contribution to our country. It’s sad that my first blog entry of 2010 is to mark his passing. My sympathies to his family.

McGuinness snipes at Coughlan from the right!

Every year it arrives like clockwork. I’ve never met him, cannot vote for him but yet he thinks I’m important enough to merit a Christmas Card. I don’t know if he thinks that Kilkenny and Wexford should bury the hatchet and celebrate the nativity together but I don’t think he understands Wexford nor most other counties for that matter judging by his performance on last night’s Late Late.
John McGuinness’s 15 minutes of fame started on the late late show. Nearly 25 years on from the establishment of the PD’s (they haven’t gone away yet, you know!) and the right wing demand to get the state off the back of business and 7 years of a PD minister in the Department of Enterprise and Employment John complains that the department still doesn’t understand the business sector. John went on to say that the future of the republican party depends on the encouraging the small business sector! Heavy stuff that, poor old WB Yeats had it wrong when he wrote about fumbling in the greasy till. There’s a new type of victim in the Gospel according to St John the latter day martyr. It’s business!
Like many who watched, I wondered how John could isolate in his mind the people who will lose Christmas bonuses, the overcrowded classrooms, the reduction in hospital services which John supported so that the Banks could be re-capitalised in order to get money flowing to small business and to end the credit crunch.
But when you run the rule over the current crop of Fianna Fail back benchers who are faced with losing their seats at the next election, many of them are accountants and solicitors, the type of profession that thrived during the boom. This sort of logic is aimed at them and maybe John sees himself as Des O’Malley once did at the head of club that will push Fianna Fail further into the hands of business and further away from its origins in every community in the country. The days when Fianna Fail drew candidates from within a community and could rely on the deep well of volunteerism are gone.
A new type of social partnership is needed according to John. John says unions should get real and do what they do in Germany. But there’s a fear going round workforces in Ireland and it started in the last few months. Workers worry that management and owners are taking advantage of the economic downturn to deliberately re-structure not from the point of protecting the business and jobs but to maximise profits. All of this started on John’s watch as Minister for Trade. The former minister should note that in countries that he referred to, those governments moved to protect jobs much better than he did, when the German ambassador pointed out a few home truths about the Irish business class John’s government rebuked him for pointing out the glaring obvious.
I’d be delighted to see Fianna Fail take on John’s vision. This will further deepen the vacuum that exists between Fianna Fail and communities and create opportunities for the Labour Party. I think real Fianna Fail people are very uncomfortable with McGuinness. If his former senior minister was to go public and remark about him she’d be hounded in the media. John will find out during the year that FF do croneyism very well but not Neo-Thathcherism. So if its cutbacks he favours, spare the tax payer the cost of my card this year, no offence taken but most of all Happy Christmas, John!

Wexford Library project stalls

For the last decade Wexford town Library has been housed in a converted children’s playhouse in a car park to the rear of a shops. Not quite the landmark building that most people would expect to house a library in. The previous library was sold by the council about 10 years ago to facilitate the expansion of a hotel. While the staff have done their best to improve the service by opening longer and using the facility to educate and entertain all ages the reality is that Wexford needs a new library.
A site was identified by Wexford Borough Council and in partnership with the county council, our side of the deal was put in place. The new library was to be sited on the present Mallon St car park, as part of a cultural spine linking the new opera house, the arts centre and the historic Selskar Abbey. A competitive tendering process resulted in a successful bidder and contracts were about to be signed. We thought we were there despite the present economic realities until last night.
At the end of our meeting an official told us the Department of Environment had advised that a new tendering process had been put in place and that the previous competition which had produced a contractor was to be superceded by a new tendering process. I believe that the new process will fix costs for which the state is liable. Fair enough , who will argue with getting more bang for your buck? However one wonders what was going on before? We now know that contractors bidding for state contracts are tendering significantly below what the tender documents proposed just 1 year ago. Where was value for money when it came to handing out PPP contracts in the last 10 years? Presumably the new contractors are still making a profit of some description so how much was creamed off the state in past I wonder?

The down side for Wexford is that according to the department it will be another year before the new tendering process will see a contract in place for Wexford library. In the meantime users in Wexford will have to tolerate substandard conditions as indeed will staff. What concerns me however is that given the reality in the economy at the moment that it may be quite some time before the library in Wexford is built. The council has decided to spend €30,000 re-surfacing the site so that it can re-open temporarily as a car park. I don’t share the enthusiasm of the Fianna Fail councillors who immediately welcomed the re-opening of the car park. I accept that the officials need every last bob they can get but what becomes temporary has a habit of becoming permanent, as the library staff will tell you themselves. They after all are temporarily housed for over 10 years now!
And what about the man in the middle of all this the minister? During the last General Election the Green candidate made his feelings known about the library in no uncertain terms. The greens dismiss the need for a new library. Read the 2007 Green agenda for Wexford at http://wexwicca.blogspot.com. Mind you he didn’t get much support for it but if this is also the view of the Minister then it’ll be a long time before so much as a block is laid in the site let alone a book opened.

I fought Finance and Finance won.

To paraphrase Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has been bowled over by the new wave of fiscal rectitude. He looked across Stephen's Green towards the Department of Finance and promptly hid in the basement when it came to budgets.
The Clash rose to prominence with their warning to British society in the late 70’s as to where urban alienation would take them. Sure enough along came Margaret Thatcher to prove them right in a brutal summer of 1981 that saw Strummer’s “Guns of Brixton” acted out for real 2 years after he recorded it. The implicaiton is clear, stringent policing, short sharp shock was the cliche, cut funding to commumities and the results were disastrous. The nature of policing in any community is esential towards holding together citizens by re-inforcing their stake in society through their security.
Suddenly it seems we’re going to do a u-turn on spending on garda numbers. Dermot Ahern has flagged that today that numbers are going to drop. I’m worried that it will see a reduction in the work that gardaí do that is time consuming and perhaps do not grab the headlines. I’m worried that it will see rural areas without a garda presence even more than at present. I’m worried that it will mean a town like Wexford where gardaí are stationed in a building built in the 1930’s won’t get their new station. There’s a dogmatic left view of the garda that they represent authority, don’t live in the area they police and as a consequence should not be trusted. It’s not a view I’m inclined towards seeing as I do how they operate on the ground. Policing is a bit more complex than the classic scientific analysis from a sociological textbook. To be fair the PSNI has significantly changed in its approach and culture over its RUC predecessor. I’d like to think that An Garda could move on too. But for this they need money.

I’ll give you just 2 instances; community policing and juvenile liaison officers (JLO) but I could give you more. Is it not more effective to deal with problems first where they arise rather than allowing a problem fester? Both these approaches work and I think many councillors would like to see these schemes extended. They are very effective because they embed the garda in the community where they should be. In the 80’s people complained that gardaí were in squad cars and as a result some communities in particular in inner city areas were effectively thrashed by gangsters running a black economy in heroin. The response is to patrol on foot with officers who are known to the community. This works very well, slowly but surely gardaí on foot and on mountain bike are reshaping how policing is seen in communities. In Wexford we have a number of community gardaí. They are well received in the allocated areas and I’m always looking for more. However now I’m expecting to hear the management on the ground to predicate suggestions with “where resources will allow”. Not their fault, I’m the first to accept that.

You see communities hopes were built up when Fianna Fail were elected to power on a promise of zero tolerance. The notion caught on even though the Garda Commissioner at the time poured cold water on the whole idea as a gimmick rather than an effective policy. FF sold the idea to voters who were fed up with the rise in violent crime and the apparent ineffectiveness of legal measures to stamp it out. Garda numbers were promised to go to 15,000 by 2010 and 16,000 by 2012. Dermot Ahern campaigned on this at the last General Election 18 months ago. Only Fianna Fail can look you straight in the face and tell you that for the next step forward you must take 2 steps backward! That’s why the New Year holiday is used to announce reductions in garda numbers. I think that there’ll be zero tolerance shown to this type of spin in the 2009 local elections.