Cormac Ó hEadhra presented The Late Debate on RTÉ Radio One tonight with guests Independent TD, Shane Ross; Fianna Fail TD, Sean Fleming; Dearbhail McDonald, legal editor of the Irish Independent; and Ken Murphy, of the Law Society of Ireland.
Fiach Kelly, of The Irish Times, joined them to report on tonight’s Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting dominated by cronyism..
From the discussion:
Dearbhail McDonald: “What’s catching up with Enda Kenny and his party at the moment is what caught out other bodies, such as the Catholic church, it’s not the…for example, in the Catholic church, it wasn’t the fact of clerical sex abuse, it was the cover-up and I think what the public are very very disenchanted and angry at is the manner in which it is being held, being insulted, you know. ‘And I’m sorry if you thought this was something that you imagined it to be’ or whatever that mangled phrase by the Taoiseach was.”
Shane Ross: “In the Dáil today, there wasn’t a single Labour minister there, or yesterday when Enda Kenny was taking questions on this cronyism. They deserted the Dáil, they were deliberately absent, they didn’t want to be associated with it and they did nothing about it. They are as guilty as Fine Gael, not just by innuendo, but because they’re at it themselves, they’re at it themselves. Because they’ve got…look at the board of An Post and see how many Labour people who are on there who are ex-apparatchiks, they’re at exactly the same game themselves and they’ve been caught. I think, I think, and I may be wrong, the proportion is it’s 2:1, Fine Gael get two, Labour get one and that’s the end of the story.”
Fiach Kelly: “The [Arts] minister herself [Heather Humphreys] made a contribution to the meeting. Again, she didn’t really go further on what she said in the past few days. She told TDs that when it came to Mr McNulty’s appointment to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, she did it entirely on his merits and she was described as having made an address, that she could have read from a script, and didn’t really say much that we didn’t know already.”
Listen back here
(Photocall Ireland)
Humphreys needs to go
take Edna with her
This debacle is indicative of politicians attitude to the the arts in Ireland. Use culture as a cv springboard while contributing little or nothing worthwhile in it’s actual development. Humpty Numptys surprise appointment as Art minister would fit this mould. It’s not really surprising the only mention of Arts on her website is in her new title.
Where did the post go about kenny’s neighbour who got the Solas job?
yeah I noticed this too
BS you’re increasingly doing this…and I think it pi$$es people off bigtime
I recall several items now that go up and are pulled after a bit BUT with no explanation. WTF?
if you throw an article into the pot you need to have the balls to leave it up
(its not the same as having the option to edit/cull stupid comments)
otherwise you’re just another random arse commentary dumphole
don’t publish stuff you can’t
You aren’t owed an explanation.
Also, your post basically boils down to, “you should leave articles up because I don’t like it when you take stuff down.”
Get over yourself.
sorry I believe that’s offside, please read what I wrote again
this is nothing personal, I couldn’t care less what BS do with comments against articles or people proposing postings that don’t get published. I’m not implying that there shouldn’t be some kind of control on comments made against a posting either
but when it comes to the publishing article itself control should come BEFORE posting the article live (and on the occasions when that accidentally slips and an article has to be removed AFTER it’s posted there should be some kind of log or explanation as to why)
otherwise BS is just smelling like some child’s transition year gig
Has the Irish Times taken over?
The Labour Party have always been the worst nepotists of the lot. Even Fianna Fail would be embarrassed.
All you have to do is look at the appointments which Labour has made during their time in office and count up the hacks, friends, and family which Labour reward with YOUR MONEY!
Not as though FF & SF would not do exactly the same thing… have done the same thing. I would guess that it is pretty standard in politics, it is also pretty standard in other jobs, eg. Law, medicine, etc
Yes, of course – I hear the familiar mantra ‘They’re All At It!’
But that is no excuse for it, and it is certainly is not an excuse for cynical members of the public to do nothing
On a separate and somewhat related matter. If you want to see a cynical case of how the state and the permanent government works take a look at this.
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/civil-servant-who-stepped-down-from-justice-to-move-to-hse-1.1948595
In the private sector, this guy would be fired, in the Irish public service he is moved to the HSE?
Why?
+€180,000. Twice the value of my house.
Give it a couple of hours, it won’t look so bad.
Because he knows someone. That’s it, nothing to do with competence or ability, but he knows someone.
Lead by example
Did Dearbhail McDonald just compare this to the catholic church sex abuse cover ups?!
The 4th estate have lost of sense of perspective on this one…
I disagree.
It was a good analogy to draw, on the arrogance of institutions of power and how ‘doing it my way / the party way / Enda’s way / the church’s way’ and not the way the people want things done will receive an eventual back lash… or immediate one, in Enda’s case.
Its the same culture, to rather different effect. Remember, secular parts of our society were only one degree, if even that, removed from the church’s doings, and that tradition is still deeply embedded, but so long as it isn’t as bad as sex abuse and only jobs for the boys sure what’s the harm.
+1
Says Shane Ross. Author of ‘Never waste a good crisis’ year on year since the meltdown. Co-authored by Nick Webb (his son in law) and his successor at the Sunday Independent. I suppose that’s not really cronyism but rather nepotism
+1
Not the public sector though.