Picking Up The Tab

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UPDATE: More Dinners

Earlier: He’s To Come Back With A few More Answers

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36 thoughts on “Picking Up The Tab

    1. Rob

      I actually thought they had learnt, in that they learnt that they always get away with it.

      I’m surprised that he’s resigned, despite it being the appropriate outcome.

      Now, we just need a rule barring any entity connected to someone who has had findings of corruption made against them from being granted public contracts.

  1. LeopoldGloom

    Maybe he listened to himself because no multimillionaire’s teenage daughter (a) wants to have lunch in the Dail restaurant and (b) would expect it to be paid for by a minister. The absurdity of it all!

  2. Ronan

    Wow!

    This must be a record in terms of days of pressure before a minister resigns. The national broadband plan wouldn’t have survived with Naughton in charge (and still might not).

    It’s *almost* accountability. The difference here is breaking an EU rule, instead of an Irish one.

    Interesting to see if any backbone providers now challenge the process with EU authorities.

    1. phil

      Now Im not saying its happening here, but in the UK they discovered a scam, the short and simplified story is , say 3 public contracts , and 3 big companies with the skill and capacity to do the job, Company A puts in a bid for x2 the fair price, B & C puts in a bid for x6 times the fair price. A wins the contract, the Public contract comes up for bidding, company B puts in a bid for x2 the fair price and company A & C puts in a bid for x6 times the fair price and B wins the contract. After that its company C’s turn.

  3. Hansel

    I think it important to note the good work done by the fourth estate on this story.

    If only we had this level of quality journalism when former Communications Minister Michael Lowry assisted businessman Denis O’Brien in acquiring a mobile phone licence.

    1. Ronan

      Slam dunk for anyone who spotted it, in fairness.

      You don’t often get evidence of rule bending this unequivocal. Usually there’s a suggestion of impropriety and a questionable calendar of events. Here, there was a blatant public procurement rule break (meeting outside of the process and the provision of gifts – monetary, experience or access) which, while small and the least of our concerns, was the single undeniable fact which unravels the rest.

      That small bit of proof unties the knot that unravels everything.

      I worked on private and public bids for years, and had to do painful training annually on what’s allowed. I wonder is there a Dáil suggestion box I can pop the idea of annual mandatory training into.

      What a dope though, seriously. Timmy Dooley has been boxing clever around this plan for years, pwning him on the airwaves, and after squeezing past a good thrashing (with the crowd distracted by de howmless) Naughton scores an own goal in injury time.

  4. Marklar

    “Fianna Fáil’s Timmy Dooley said he felt sympathy for Mr Naughten, because no one in Opposition sought his resignation.”

    Why didn’t they jump on him? Happy to keep the status quo and see how the election goes?

  5. curmudgeon

    HE RESIGNED AS MINISTER NOT AS TD!

    No real repercussions, still gets his pension and Dáil seat etc. Will probably run at the next gen election too.

  6. Giggidygoo

    So now we will have a new Minister, but the job has been done to include Actavo. Mission accomplished for FG?
    Let’s hope not and a proper investigation is done into the jiggery pokery by Mccourt and his new look consortium. Let’s hope this process is now ended in its current state

    1. martco

      @Giggidy
      regarding the broadband affair by my reckoning there’s only 2 things gonna happen here:

      a) the greasy till jiggery pokery continues, ESAT v2.0
      b) general election

      Naughten looks to me was sent under the axles…your unelected Taoiseach’s fingerprints are all over this & will be interesting to see now how conniving he really is

      1. giggidygoo

        They both have been taking swipes at each other in their Dail statements. Varadkar totally damaged by this, seeing as Naughten phoned him at midnight last night to tell him of other dinners, and also one at the home of McCourt. Varadkar still had confidence in Naughten this morning. It must have finally dawned on Varadkar the seriousness of this to him in his capacity of con-taoiseach later on in the day, hence the shots fired across each other’s bows.
        Of course, Varadkar spreads the blame, adding that a junior minister had arranged the dinner in McCourts home.
        Now, there were department officials at the US ‘dinner’ where broadband was discussed. Don’t these also need to consider their positions.

  7. martco

    @Giggidy
    regarding the broadband affair by my reckoning there’s only 2 things gonna happen next here:

    a) the greasy till jiggery pokery continues, ESAT v2.0
    b) general election

    Naughten looks to me was sent under the axles…your unelected Taoiseach’s fingerprints are all over this & will be interesting to see now how conniving he really is now, what are his numbers like?

    I think b) is a big possibility. Brexit is a red herring. your unelected Taoiseach is arrogant, Mehole’s grassroots has to be tired of looking like the gimp.

    Frilly?

  8. Vanessa Foran

    I’m surprised he resigned, but I do think he needs better close advisers
    He doesn’t seem to have any competence in recognising Conflict of Interest events or noticing any form of attached risk to his careless behaviour with vested interests

    On the other side of it though, it might an opportunity for Kate O’Connell

  9. baz

    A solo of idiots posting above me, don’t you realise the minister was probably begging the last competitor to arrange terms for a project all others had walked away from?
    What was the objective of the competition? To provide rural high speed broadband
    If such an attractive proposition why wasn’t there a queue?
    I would look to blame the department and permanent CS for this mess of a competition/ framework, a lot of time wasted and now potentially the state will be sued for Granaghan McCourts costs to date.
    Lose lose for the taxpayers again

    1. Marklar

      “don’t you realise the minister was probably begging the last competitor to arrange terms for a project all others had walked away from” Any proof of that? What nonsense.

        1. martco

          @baz
          your question regarding the object of the competition…I can answer that for you now, it’s not attractive, commercially it’s not remotely viable (unless the end consumer is happy to pay €100+ per month or who knows how much for their modem)

          the so-called competition is a sham

          if the government of the day wants to give the state proper broadband for rural areas they’re gonna have to come up with a very very LARGE sum of money to build it and own it (notwithstanding it would be on a “build it and they will come” basis) it just doesn’t fly as a straight commercial proposition…..not until some cheap and plentiful magic new star trek technology comes along in the meantime. anyone who has worked within 10km of a datacentre can tell you this.

          now, assuming we are building infrastructure it’s all an accounting question, where does the spend show up? public or private balance sheet?

          the so-called competition is a sham

          you know full who the players are (oh, and on that point all I’m hearing in the media is McCourt, McCourt, McCourt but we all know there’s a controversial billionaire who is intrinsically intertwined with your minority government party managing to stay out of the lights) you are watching ESAT v2.0 and this time its playing out in front of your eyes.

          I think the only real question here is do we as a people accept all the optical accountancy mullarkey, are people happy to have ESAT v2.0 occur, or not.

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