58 thoughts on “Saturday’s Papers

    1. Brother Barnabas

      that’s only the amount paid to doonbeg – in all, €370k on food (add in accommodation and it topped €900k).

      and dont mind the €260k paid to actavo events for equipment hire (owned by D O’B)

    2. eoin

      Irish press media, ladies and gentlemen. Gordon Deegan’s piece is front page Mail and Indo and the Times Ireland digital edition.

      “Actavo Events, owned by Denis O’Brien, which received €269,208 for the hire of equipment.”

    1. eoin

      Danny McConnell still doing his level best for water charges in the Irish Examiner today

      “Fianna Fáil, spooked by the revolt on its left flank engaged in a blatant and disgusting act of political populism at the expense of good public policy. It changed its position on water charges to one where it wanted them eliminated.”

      1. V

        But shur’ Meehall saw what way the wind was blowing in the Repeal campaign and filled his shirt to take advantage of it himself

        Nothing new there in the eFFers top table

        Wait’ll they run out of road using Brexit
        That’s when you’ll see their real leadership direction emerge

      2. Portroegirl

        It amazes me that so far no investigative reporter has done any comprehensive research into factual comparisons between LAs and IW, capital expenditure,etc.:here are some facts.
        1)When FG came into power they slashed capital expenditure on water by 85.1% between 2011-2013 before IW set up!The recession can’t be used as an excuse because FF Government kept up massive capital expenditure while doing 2/3rds of adjustment required by Troika!
        2)LAs had remedied nearly 200 supplies (199 supplies)on EPAs Remedial Action Lists between the 5years between 2008-2013 from 339 supplies to 140 supplies in 2013 with 70 more supplies to be taken off.From 2014-2019 ,5 years since IW set up there are 64 supplies on the Remedial Action Lists.
        3)By the time IW took over ,the LAs had 660 different contracts including DBO contracts with 15-20 years left ,projects and schemes in place which were transferred to IW.
        4)As for water leakage,LAs have had water leakage programmes eg Dublin City Council had Active Leakage Reduction Programmes as well as Water Mains Rehabilitation Programmes which reduced leakage levels in Dublin Region from 49% in 1997 to 29% in 2009!(How is Water leakage managed?Dublin City Council (www.dublincity.ie)etc etc.
        Good public policy would have been to leave water services with the LAs!
        I’m surprised that Taoiseach,before a General Election,has admitted that water charges will return.The last legislation re water stated that a future Government can lower the threshold so not surprised about that!

  1. Formerly known as @ireland.com

    $107K bill from Trump’s Doonbeg for protecting him. That explains all the events at his Florida place. Send the bill back to him, or maybe Trump and Pence’s preferred country, GB, can pay for it.

  2. eoin

    Most press reports on the crime figures reported by the CSO published yesterday but if you heard Garda Williams on RTE, you most certainly will have been misled. Some categories are up, some categories are down says Paul, which is fair enough, but of the 14 categories analysed by the CSO, 11 are up and three are down. There were nearly four times the number categories up as were down, but that wasn’t clear from RTE at all.

    Garda Paul referred to more people being “caught” under some categories, which conflated the figures with detection, which is not the same at all. These are crimes entered onto the Garda computer system, so they might be you going into the Garda station to report it, or it might be the Garda arresting someone in the middle of a crime. Listening to Garda Paul, the distinction wasn’t clear and if detections were truly going up, that would be a great thing, but that’s not the cas because these figures don’t provide detection rates at all.

    And sexual offences, here Garda Paul’s tone implied more people were reporting sex offences which is true but that the underlying number was staying the same, just more people were coming forward. That MAY be true, but it MAY also be true there are more sexual offences. You can’t tell from these numbers.

    Garda Paul paid passing reference to the fact that these cime figures from the CSO are “under reservation”, that is the CSO won’t stand by their reliability and that’s been the case for “some time”. Actual fact is, the figures have been dodgy since 2014 and, according to Drew Harris last week, they won’t be reliable until ……. 2021. If you go to Northern Ireland or Britain, you don’t find their statistical agencies having to qualify their crime stats. This is an Irish thing. It’s a mix of technological fault and Garda incompetence or worse. It’s all happened under FG, the party of law and order.

    And to top yesterday’s reporting off at RTE, there was a CAB raid reported by Garda Paul to coincide with the publication of the statistics. Fine timing or what? Would the Gardai schedule a raid to coincide with the stats to show they’re fighting crime? If anyone followed the “Day of Action” in Drogheda on the eve of last May’s elections, which was described as a fight against organised crime and then you saw the arrests and seizures were motor related, you’d be skeptical. And at least the Gardai aren’t showing close-up pics of the rolexes any more for cognoscenti to determine if they’re fake, the times on the rolexes are still wrong though (or for the two seized yesterday, they showed different times).

    RTE, ladies and gentlemen. #TruthMatters

  3. eoin

    Remember that story a little while back, the RTE North East correspondent was promoting it, the €1 billion of sunken gold off the coast of Donegal. That was four months ago. Where’s the gold? Maybe RTE’s North East eejit could update us.

    #TruthMatters #TellingTheWholeStory

      1. eoin

        Yes, you’re right North *West* correspondent which includes the Donegal territory.

        The North East correspondent is an altogether different eejit. Who will forget her report over a couple of days earlier this year of a giant blaze at an historic building. At the time, print media said the blaze was “suspicious” and Gardai were investigating. Good job as the building is located less than 100m from the Garda station. What the correspondent omitted to mention is, between the Garda station and the burned historic building is a 0.25 acre plot and on that plot, one of Ireland’s richest families has sought planning permission to build what will be tallest building outside Dublin or Cork. The planning application was lodged last December, but on 21 February, the Council responded with concerns, especially the effect the development would have on the adjacent historic building. But then, alas, three weeks later, the historic building was burned. What does that mean for the new development? We’ll find out in a month when the developer is due to respond to the concerns raised in February, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a response along the lines “you know that building you said we’d dominate with our development, well, you won’t guess what’s happened since….” Will RTE be doing any follow-up on this story. Will they fupp.

  4. eoin

    Still no sign of the Wrightbus accounts for 2018. Deloitte are acting as administrators to the company, but if they can’t find a buyer then the company will be liquidated. Meanwhile, most of the workforce has been made redundant.

    What about the church next door which received £15m in donations from Wrightbus

    “They [Wrightbus], along with many others, chose to be generous when their family business enabled them to do so.” says the church, which rivals the very best in US gospel TV, just check out their website.

    But did Wrightbus’s business enable them to make a donation of £4.2m in 2017, plunging the company into a £1.5m loss? And are the 2017 accounts sound? They were audited by a teensy accountancy firm from Ballymena and I’m sure they did their best, but I can’t understand how such a financially sound business in 2017 with a good balance sheet has turned into a basket case in mid-2019.

    Deloitte will have to take stock of the company;s finances, maybe they’ll have something to say on the matter.

    1. V

      Actually the question(s) to ask about that teensy accountancy firm from Ballymena is how long have they acted as the company’s external auditors.

      Size of the firm is merely asking to the resources not the skills applied, or the assurance they provide to the users of the accounts.
      IE: one of the Big Four would only have graduate trainees, and a mid-level associate on site, with the partner signing off from HQ.
      And I’ve seen enough of Big Four reports, and witnessed Big Four Audits to know I’d prefer a much smaller, tighter and more skilled shop putting their signiture to accounts.
      Deep pocket firms can take the risk of errors – small firms cannot.

      Confirming the number of years the firm were engaged, and/or any rotation of partners & audit managers will establish beyond doubt just how Independent they really are.

      Greater than seven and you’re most definitely into Conflict of Interest territory (familiarity risk.)

      Equally important is the % of total income WrightBus is responsible for in the said teensy accountancy firm from Ballymena and do they provide other services.

      Greater than 15% for a small firm also demonstrates a conflict of interest – fee influence, the most common and afaic, the most dangerous.

      At this point, all I’m interested in anyway, is to confirm just how Independent this teensy accountancy firm from Ballymena are.

      I can already see that the Directors were negligent and didn’t act in the Company’s best interests.
      I don’t need a big ticket firm or Broadsheet Eoinalytica to tell me that.

      I suspect a buyer will be found btw.
      Operationally it appears to be a healthy business with a solid Sales Order book, a good product, an insitu skilled *workforce ready-to-go, and a fully functioning assembly line.

      *religion and demographic profiles are meaningless when valuing the contribution of a labour intensive operation. And besides, I actually don’t care, it’s a good company with a good product, and a performing workforce; it’s their Directors slash Shareholders that shagged it up.

      1. some old queen

        According to the media, the big issue is the land on which the plant sits, which is owned by the family- they want to rent it but nobody is biting.

        Donating such a large sum to a charity, even if it is ran by your own immediate family, in the knowledge that it is going to seriously affect future cash-flow was reckless- surely there has to be more to it than that?

        And then there is the potential conflict of interest- where the church/charity owns shares in the company?

        1. V

          Your last two points refer to Board and Governance failures and they can be prosecuted and fined for that.
          As well as being barred from acting as Directors

          The point regarding the site, nothing unusual – it’s quite common in family owned / dominated businesses.
          But the external auditors would have reported it as a related party transaction.

          The value of the rent paid by the company to its landlords, and it’s relationship with Market Value would be of interest to the liquidators.

          It still shouldn’t stop a genuine buyer tho
          WrightBus has an order book that other manufacturers will want their hands on
          WrightBus have the product design, the manpower and the assembly line ready to go

          Location can easily be dealt with

          1. some old queen

            The most demographic Protestant county in the Republic of Ireland also has the highest number of immigrants- would you have an opinion as to why that is Vanessa?

          2. some old queen

            Let’s be quite clear- if there is to be a war along the border region then it is not between the Christians and the Muslims but those who think illegals should not shiver in thirty year old caravans in the depths of winter- and those who don’t.

            You should be ashamed of yourself Heather Humphreys- but I doubt if you are.

  5. shayna

    “Spitting Image” is back. I worked on the original show, in so far as my company supplied the monitors for the puppeteers – autocue monitors are modified so they’re a opposite of a mirror reflection – the puppeteers operate the puppets under stage watching the autocue monitors, so they know their left from their right. I remember Rory Bremner – bit of a dick, to be fair.

          1. Janet, I ate my avatar

            I believe in equal sticky fingers for everyone !
            used to love the French version of spitting image, les Guignols, have you seen it, every American was Rocky Stallone, fecking hilarious

  6. eoin

    The front page story on the FT above is no joke. Ulster Bank is having more IT problems.

    “As eurozone lenders scramble to pass on negative interest rates to customers, one bank in Ireland has encountered an unexpected problem: its computer says “no”. Ulster Bank’s ageing systems make it impossible for the lender to routinely charge large corporate customers in the Republic of Ireland for deposits that run into millions of euros, according to two people briefed on the issue.”

    1. GiggidyGoo

      And some Rep. of Ireland companies know it quite well and have transferred money into Ulster Bank for that reason.

  7. eoin

    How on earth is Regina Doherty still being supported by Leo. Reading the transcript of last Thursday’s hearing at the public accounts committee, it’s clear to me she has no interest at all in following any rules at all.

    The Commissioner said “as part
    of the directions that we issued to the Department, we did require the Department to contact all
    of the specified bodies and inform them of the findings in the report and the directions that we
    issued. It is clear that the Department has opted not to do that.”

    So, Regina wouldn’t even tell other departments that the requirement to use the PSC was illegal.

    https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/debateRecord/committee_of_public_accounts/2019-09-26/debate/mul@/main.pdf

    Also published last week was a letter from the Data Protection Commissioner on 16 September to the public accounts committee lamenting Regina’s refusal to publish the report. What does Regina do, publish it the next day after refusing to for weeks, even refusing FOI requests.

    1. V

      She’s shamefully bad

      And an indictment on Leo Varadkar’s leadership and attitude to Governing

      He’s there for the meet and greets, the nice lunches and dinners, the glad handing and the photo ops
      The #Taoiseach

      No matter what good he does smacking back Boris
      Or how many World Leaders he’s rounding up to stand by the Paddys

      He’ll be remembered for her, and his careless feckless attitude to Governing
      His Jobs for his supporters appointment strategy
      His schoolboy put downs
      And generally been more interested in his own personal appeal than leading the Country

    2. Cian

      Eoin. Did you miss the part where Regina said she didn’t agree with the DPC’s report and that if a formal notice was issued that she would appeal? It was in the news last week.

      And it is possible that a FOI request is denied for a valid reason, but the department may publish regardless. Otherwise they may set a precidence for publishing reports on the back of FOI.

    1. V

      Did you tick the boxes underneath there asking to be notified Shayna?

      Not prying, but it might explain what sounds like an automated email

          1. Dav

            They’re not targeting a specific site or person, the majority of those emails are computer generated some hacker wrote a programme a pressed enter, the programme goes off and does its thing

  8. V

    Btw
    Following on from the issue with Chrome
    I followed the advice about Firefox and downloaded it this morning onto the phone

    And definitely Broadsheet presents better on Firefox
    For me anyway

    So ta lads
    V

    1. martco

      ah Firefox is your only man @V and across the board all devices imho

      still amazes me all these years later how the supposed non-evil alphabet company managed to supplant themselves as the defacto internet for many

      resist!!! :)

      1. some old queen

        Naivety 101. The only difference is that tech expects you upgrade your machine every six months- because that is what they do- and the world spins around them because they no different.

        1. some old queen

          My one and a half year old non SSD machine is now- despite being wiped- somehow very slow on Windows 10..

  9. martco

    I see the online Indo are busy bateing into Ireland after this morning, no doubt the Sunday comic will continue with that.

    I think we’ve been well had with all the hype over the last year…talk of winning World Cups when in reality we’re a top 10 team capable of beating anyone on our day but never gonna get to that level.

    A lot of disappointment on the tracks ahead I fear….but will because of hype not sportsmen.

  10. some old queen

    https://www.rte.ie/news/connacht/2019/0928/1078800-oughterard-direct-provision/

    More than 2,000 people are estimated to have taken part in a silent demonstration in Oughterard at the possibility of a direct provision centre being located in a former hotel just outside the town.

    Protesters carried placards saying Oughterard said ‘Yes to refugees, No to direct provision’. The main banner stated ‘Oughterard says No to inhumane direct provision centre’.

    If it was far right agitators who kicked this protest off- it’s kind of took a turn in the opposite direction now eh?

    If I may make a point about the left side twitterati- some of whom I have great time for- everything is about their opponents- not one tweet about how Oughterard is wholly unsuitable for such accommodation.

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