From top: Tanaiste Leo Varadkar; Eamonn Kelly

Recently the Tánaiste had a pop at basic income. It was during a finger-wagging exercise on the need for Ireland to ratify the controversial CETA trade deal with Canada.

Misrepresenting the situation, as he likes to do, he described Ireland as “laggards”, despite the fact that Ireland is among several EU countries yet to ratify the deal, basically for the same reasons, not least of which is the fact that the deal will allow corporate entities the right to sue the state should the state interfere in any way with profits.

The Tánaiste’s angle about basic income was similar to the one he used recently to suggest that arguing for social housing is arguing against private housing. Here he was suggesting that arguing for a basic income is arguing against trade, as if the two were mutually exclusive.

A few days later he was describing social housing as “free” housing, as if social tenants don’t pay rent.

I’ll tell you what free housing is. It’s when your parents are wealthy enough to buy you the best education on the market, where you can classroom into your 20s, then hand you capital loans for your first house and car, introduce you to their influential circle of friends, guide you into politics as the best option for a lifetime of smugly lording it over the riff-raff, before eventually dying off and leaving you a free house.

Basic Income

It’s the first time I’d heard the Taniaste have a dig at basic income, and it was so out of context that I assumed that the idea is gaining in popularity and he doesn’t like it. Then, a few days later, it was announced that the long-awaited basic income pilot for artists will be given the green light starting in 2022. From this the assumption must be that FF have gone for basic income and FG are annoyed to see “free” money being released on their watch.

The announcement however was a bit dented by the news a day or two earlier that the pandemic payments would be cut in the Autumn. Along with this news came the other news that in practically everyone’s estimation €350 per week is not enough to live on, which I’m sure will interest other welfare recipients and pensioners still struggling along on €203 per week, not to mention the youths who receive less than half this in pocket money.

Tax Free

And all this in the shadow of the news that a Microsoft subsidiary with an address in Ireland paid no corporation tax on profits of €357bn. My understanding of tax breaks for corporations was that it was in return for jobs. But this particular subsidiary doesn’t have employees, just a few directors. It sounds more like some kind of elaborate money-laundering operation.

Still, it was charitable of the government to give them a “free” office here. Otherwise, they’d have been homeless in Bermuda, with only an off-shore bank to hold their hand. Corporations are frail creatures you know. That’s why they need protections, tax breaks and more rights than human beings. Otherwise, they’d just shrivel up, liquidate and get a bail out with bonuses for all their head honchos.

Above the Law

In other news, the authors of the Mother and Baby Homes report were being called to account for selectively editing survivor testimony, even allegedly altering facts to suit the “boss”, in this case the Church. The victims, unlike the Church, were given no right of reply when the report was published and were apparently kept in the dark wherever possible. Sounds familiar. A committee was asked to look into this and the authors refused to cooperate. That’s about as above the law as you can get without moving to Bermuda.

Still, it’s good news that basic income is being given a test run, even if the timing makes it seem a wee bit bribey. The danger of course is that by confining the payment to a select group, arts practitioners, there is a risk of stoking resentment elsewhere.

Ideally a basic income would be universal. That’s the accepted view if there is to be any hope of winding down capitalism, which is the underpinning idea behind basic income, as one of a range of possible ways to manage the climate crisis and somehow stop the corporations from eating up the planet.

However, it’s a good idea to test basic income on the arts community, since the positives are more likely to be immediately apparent given that arts practitioners tend to be self-motivated. This, by the way, is a characteristic of arts practitioners that the employer/employee paradigm absolutely fails to understand.

Good News and Bad Suits

There was more good news last week when a private member’s Bill on enshrining the right to housing in the constitution cleared second stage. This will hopefully lead to a referendum on the right to housing, or the right to “free” housing, as Leo would have it.

Expect lots of dillying, plenty of dallying and endless warnings about meddling with the Constitution, now that there’s a proposed change that might actually benefit non-millionaires.

The week ended on a celebratory note with massed Gardai mingling with massed revellers on Dublin’s streets, proving that there’s nothing like an onrushing line of baton-wielding cops to wreck a party vibe.

Finally, whatever about Edwin Poots’ creationist views, he desperately needs some wardrobe advice. Poots’ suit featured on RTE News as a kind of walking haberdashery tragedy. Best guestimates are that Poots’ suit is probably around 6,000 years old.

Eamonn Kelly is a freelance Writer and Playwright.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

RollingNews

Fine Gael’s Dublin Bay South by-election candidate James Geoghegan (right) and Minister for Finance Paschal Donohue canvassing last Saturday in Sandymount, Dublin 4; Eamonn Kelly

The positive thing about the promotion of James Geoghegan by Fine Gael for the vacated Dublin Bay South seat is that it opens a curtain on a world of privilege that most of us can only dream about. Here is a man who during the worst housing crisis in the history of the state just bought a house for three quarters of a million Euros.

Being put forward as a representative of ordinary people, a voice for those locked out of the property market, as he comically described himself, his background is one of leafy suburbia privilege. Both his parents are high court judges, his grandparents were TDs, he was a member of young Fine Gael in college and so on. But the real eye-opener is that he once worked lobbying for the tobacco industry.

This is no coincidence really.  A young Fine Gaeler lobbying for the tobacco industry fits right in to the neo-liberal political philosophy of profit regardless of social or environmental harm.

Just to be clear, the tobacco industry devised strategies for undermining scientific truth which are still used by right-wing media and corporations selling harmful products, among others. The Trump administration used the same strategies.

According to a 2019 HSE report, the majority of smokers are from a poor background, while the Fine Gael candidate, a barrister, is from an extremely privileged background. Essentially, he worked as a lobbyist in an industry that preys on the poor, that undermines science and that knowingly continues to market a product that has been scientifically proven to cause cancer.

In his lame defence Geoghegan claims that he lobbied for several companies and he wasn’t aware that one was a tobacco company. With all his education and advantages, and with his sights set on elected office, here is a barrister who offers ignorance as a defence.

Expendable

This conjunction of the philosophies of Big Tobacco and neo-liberalism raises further questions. Are neo-liberals blind to the social collateral damage caused by their policies? Do privileged Fine Gael TDs see lower class people as somehow expendable, or less important than people of their own privileged class?

For instance, it was recently reported that 10 homeless people are dying per month in Ireland. Or, to put it another way, 10 people per month are dying from homelessness in Ireland. Or to put it yet another way, 10 people in Ireland are dying per month from exposure, as a consequence of the largely Fine Gael-created housing crisis.

The wording is important in things like this, because if you lead with 10 homeless people, the reader may be blinded by a prejudice about homeless people and switch off. Whereas if you say 10 people per month are dying from homelessness, any prejudice the listener might have about homeless people may be temporarily by-passed.

So now you have a political party whose housing policies are arguably killing 10 poor people per month, putting forward a candidate who once worked lobbying for the tobacco industry which preys mainly on poor people. It’s easy to conclude that the philosophy of the tobacco industry and the philosophy of neo-liberalism are similar in their disregard for those without wealth.

Seen in this light, homelessness and cancer deaths from smoking seem less like accidental by-products of policy, causing damage further down the social scale, and more like disregard for those down the social scale, leading to the creation of policies that ultimately damage them.

Once you see that, then everything else about the ideology of neo-liberalism falls into place, and the sometimes callous-seeming policies make perfect sense.

Faulty Perception

Is it possible that being in the grip of an ideology like neo-liberalism, has a similar blinding effect to being in a cult?

Because neo-liberalism appears to be not only a problem of social inequity, but also a problem of perception, by those from privileged backgrounds, in genuinely understanding that all classes are equal.

This is maybe why neo-liberals barely notice that their housing policies are now killing ten Irish citizens per month, or that lobbying for Big Tobacco is an atrocious way to make a living, on a par with drug-pushing, if the truth be faced.

Over the last number of years, the rate of smoking in Ireland has been declining. It is the job of a tobacco lobbyist to reverse this trend, using arguments of anti-science. Here’s one now who might one day be a minister for health.

That Fine Gael would think such an individual is a good candidate for public office indicates that Fine Gael too must also subscribe to the tobacco industry view that the ends justify the means in terms of creating profits and maintaining power and privilege.

From this it is natural to conclude that Fine Gael have no problem in creating political outcomes that may cause real damage to people lower down the social scale.

Eamonn Kelly is a freelance Writer and Playwright.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

Pic via James Geoghegan

From top: Fine Gael Dublin Bay South by-election candidate James Geoghegan (centre) with Tanaiste Leo Varadkar (left) and Frances Fitzgerald MEP (second left) recording a campaign ad on Sandymount Strand last Sunday; Eamonn Kelly

Killian Woods’ explosive article in the latest Sunday Business Post revealing that the state invested in cuckoo funds that bought up hundreds of homes on behalf of investors, before ordinary people could get a look in, brings to a head the growing suspicion that the current government seems more inclined towards representing corporate interests than the interests of ordinary people.

Woods writes:

“More than €225m of taxpayers money has been put into funds that are not building homes, but instead are vying to buy family homes ahead of regular buyers.”

These investors would also enjoy other state benefits related to property acquisition in the form of tax breaks and similar property-related benefits.

On top of this there was the recent revelation that the housing minister, at a time where affordable now means half a million, was actually an investor himself in a so-called vulture group. The housing minister! Is a vulture! That’s like having your cake, eating it, renting it out and selling it as well.

Meanwhile in the Dáil, the Tánaiste sought to force the false perception that arguing for public housing on public lands was somehow an argument against private housing, which it isn’t, it is simply arguing for public housing on public lands.

But the Tánaiste is a committed neo-liberal and is keen to pass public properties into private hands. Except his own office of course, which is best left publicly funded for the security and benefits it provides to the occupier. He could retire tomorrow on several pensions and his own RTÉ TV show.

High rents, low wages and privatised services are neo-liberalism in action. A flawed political philosophy based on the now discredited concept of trickle-down economics. The idea being that if you make the rich richer some of their surplus wealth will trickle down to everyone. The rich, however, tend not to trickle loose change if they can possibly help it.

President Biden declared recently that trickle-down economics doesn’t work. It has had a generous innings, tested to breaking point for over 50 years, and it doesn’t work.

Cronyism

It is no news that Ireland is greased by cronyism. Everyone knows this. Cronyism is so woven into the fabric of Irish political life that the only way forward most people can ever see is to try and become a crony of some politician.

An electorate that plays the game of trading votes with the crony establishment, in the hope of favours in return, are the ones, ultimately, who keep the game going, creating opportunities for neo-liberals to push forward their privatisation agenda from the comfort of government seats.

Every vote given in the hope of a favour from a representative of the crony establishment, is a vote in favour of the ongoing project of privatisation of public utilities and services; a game that will ultimately lead to the individual voter footing the bill in some form, either through hiked medical expenses, inflated housing costs, fees for public services, or being the last the payee in a company liquidation scenario.

That promise of a favour is no more than a bribe to win your vote, by a politician who will fob you off with trinkets, like pushing through planning permission on that kitchen extension you desire, while quietly getting on with the greater game of corporate privatisation of public services.

Debenhams

It’s not just in property acquisition that the government appears to represent the interests of corporations over ordinary people. Take the Debenham’s workers for instance, who staged pickets outside Debenham’s stores when they realized that the workers were last in line for redundancy payment consideration when Debenham’s went into liquidation.

The workers argued that the stock in the Debenham’s stores could be sold off to pay their redundancy, but were told that the stock was worthless. The government then ordered the gardai to break up the picket so that the stock could be released and returned to Debenhams where, presumably, it somehow regained its value ready for the market when Debenham’s reopens in the UK.

The point being, the government provided garda protection to facilitate a corporation in an industrial dispute, while also setting a precedent that is likely to make peaceful protest in general an unlawful act, or at least legally awkward. This too is neo-liberalism in action. The gradual closing down of freedoms.

Then, when the so-called Debenham’s Bill was put before the Dáil, which sought to guarantee that workers’ redundancy payments be made before other costs in the event of a company liquidation, the government voted against the bill, again expressing their loyalty to the needs and requirements of corporations, on the basis of trickle-down economics.

Power

The power to undo this game lies with the individual voter.

At the moment, politicians of the centre-right are losing support in their base on the housing issue. But such losses happen occasionally and can be managed by the centre-right. It is not something they greatly fear.

What politicians of the centre-right really fear, are the votes that are never used; the votes that if they were ever cast could change everything. In the marriage equality referendum of 2015 young women in particular came out to vote in huge numbers and the win was a landslide.

Unfortunately, the same cohort largely failed to show in the general election of 2020 when their contribution might have nudged a left alliance over the line.

There are enough young people here now to change Ireland’s crony ways. It used to be that they emigrated en masse and the old crony ways continued unchallenged. But now circumstances have delivered a young population. All they need do now is vote against the old crony ways and make something new.

Vote

If you want to enjoy a fair and just society, you simply have to vote to try and make that happen. If you don’t vote, don’t be surprised when those who know the value of votes take power, and create policies that favour their cronies, while passing costs on to you.

Then, when you’re putting your hand in your pocket to divvy out for the inflated rent or the inflated car tax or medical expense, remind yourself that this is the price you agreed to pay in return for not bothering to cast your vote; or the price you agreed to pay for trading your vote for some small personal favour.

Everything has a cost, including an unused vote. Not voting is also a vote. Vote. Badger others to vote. Take your vote seriously. You can be certain that the neo-liberal politicians in government do.

An Election

By the way, the Fine Gael candidate, James Geoghegan, being put forward for the Dublin Bay South by-election to be held this year, to fill the seat vacated by Eoghan Murphy, who is taking a corporate job, (with friends he made while in government?), says that he wants to be a voice for the generation locked out of the housing market.

In a press briefing, Geoghegan, a barrister, mentioned only home ownership (for those with a handy half million to spare) but not social housing. So, expect more of the neo-liberal same should he get elected. The election will be either in July or October of this year.

Geoghegan emerged as the Fine Gael candidate after former TD Kate O’Connell was dropped, claiming that her nomination was “effectively blocked” by the party. Geoghegan claims that she chose not to run.

Finally. The HSE was still using Windows 7, which Microsoft stopped supporting in January 2020. This is what happens when you starve out a public service in order to bolster an argument for privatisation.

Eamonn Kelly is a freelance Writer and Playwright.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

Pic: Sauvignon Blanc

Eamonn Kelly’s criticism of JobPath he says lured in the ‘trolls’ and ‘shills’

I don’t always read the comments below my articles. Like a school inspector I turn up occasionally, unannounced. I’m often shocked by the insulting remarks some of the anonymous trolls post. Occasionally, I’m almost equally shocked by complimentary remarks. It can be a mood-altering experience. In general, your wiser to minimise contact with the output of online trolls, because many of them have nothing good to say about anything.

Trolling is a kind of digital bear-baiting and has become a wildly popular blood-sport these days, played by teams of players with no identities against tall poppy contributors to various digital news sites.

I mention this now only because I scanned the comments of a recent article and found that one of the trolls who attached themselves to my articles and made it their business to pooh-pooh everything I ever said, apparently in an effort to quell the generally leftist views expressed in my articles, showed his hand a bit on the article concerning Leo Varadkar’s “end of the queue” ultimatum to people feeling iffy about taking the Astra-Zeneca vaccine.

The comment by this troll had the effect not only of stopping in its tracks the emerging discussion below that article, but also had the effect of misrepresenting both the article in question and my earlier articles on JobPath.

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but it was the resurrection of JobPath that I found odd, because I haven’t written about JobPath in well over a year or more. I doubt I’ve even mentioned it in that time. Clearly this anonymous person had some kind of JobPath agenda.

Why JobPath?

I began writing for Broadsheet as result of the bullying and intimidation I saw taking place in the JobPath “service”, as they like to call it, after the welfare services normally delivered by public service bodies were privatised to two British companies, each with bad reputations at home, each with corporate backgrounds in private prison services.

The irony that this was taking place in the centenary year ’16 was embarrassingly striking. I was amazed that the mainstream media barely noticed this glaring historical/cultural anomaly.

“Lads, I’ve a great idea for the centenary of the rebellion. Let’s hire two private British companies specialising in prison services and set them loose on welfare recipients.”

There was a good response to those articles, because a lot of people, particularly arts practitioners, were having similar negative experiences with JobPath. Explaining your artistic tendencies to your family and yourself is difficult enough. Explaining them to a corporate body with a bounty on your head is very 1984. The service was later discredited and shown to be ineffective in its aims, succeeding only in turning a profit for the private companies contracted by the DEASP.

The pandemic pretty much obliterated the whole thing as an issue, but it is likely that payments are continuing to be made by the DEASP to the private companies as per their private contractual agreement.

Political Trolls

On closer examination this particular troll who had brought up JobPath was different than just your common or garden troll, derived as many of them tend to be from the pre-digital Irish-begrudger model, now armed with laptops and “handles” instead of names.

This troll had a particular political bias. I looked up his comments beneath other Broadsheet articles, by myself and by other writers. He doesn’t appear to socialise the way many of the anonymous Broadsheet commenters do. He only turns up when people are expressing leftist or progressive views, which seem to rile him the way daylight riles vampires.

Basically, he’s a quintessential sniper with a right-wing bias posing as a troll to avail of trollish anonymity in the hope, I guess, of somehow controlling narratives that muss up his ideology.

But on whose behalf is he anonymously trolling leftist views? Is he a shill for one of the government parties, pushing a privatisation of public services agenda? Does he work for one of the JobPath private companies?

JobPath Again

It’s clear that JobPath will be up and running again as soon as the pandemic is under control, and I guess the way is being paved for that as great economic minds draw up their plans for a whole new try at austerity. Clearly, for some, they didn’t do it properly the last time. There were far too many survivors.

Given the current youth unemployment rate, few could argue with even the most kack-handed job creation attempts. But really, is JobPath the answer?

JobPath didn’t just fail, it failed spectacularly, with a 3-7% success rate, depending on who you believe. In any other business a 93-97% failure rate would raise more eyebrows than a conference of sceptics. But with JobPath that kind of failure is apparently just fine with the men in suits. Give the JobPath companies more money and the benefit of the doubt, they say. Let them fail better while they find their feet.

Willie O’Dea of Fianna Fáil once described JobPath as “sinister”. Naturally he was hedging his political bets a bit on the terrible off-chance that Fianna Fail might do the unthinkable and go into government with Fine Gael. At the same time, others were describing the “service” as a system of coercion and private profiteering, with profits generated through the commodification of society’s most vulnerable people.

Anonymous political shills posing as everyday trolls, actively mispresenting the views of critics of JobPath, simply reinforce the idea that JobPath may indeed be a sinister operation.

Eamonn Kelly is a freelance Writer and Playwright.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

RollingNews

From top: Taoiseach Micheál Martin (left) and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar; Eamonn Kelly

Leo Varadkar’s and Simon Coveney’s threat to deprive people of vaccination if they refuse the Astra Zeneca vaccine has raised some interesting questions which no one can seem to answer.

Firstly, unvaccinated people are a potential health risk to the wider community. So, by refusing to vaccinate some if they choose not to opt for the blood clotting risk – and remember, Denmark has completely dropped Astra Zeneca for that very reason – the FG politicians are basically holding the entire community to ransom to force a targeted cohort – the over-60s – into taking what is actually the cheapest vaccine option.

For The Plebs

Of the available vaccines, the Astra-Zeneca appears to be the budget variety. The yellow pack vaccine. It is cheap and easy to store. It is unlikely, though this is not proven, that people of say a better class, would actually take this stuff. But it’s ideal for the plebs and is the cornerstone of the UK’s efforts to control the spread of the virus. Sure, you might lose a few plebs in the process, but what’s a lost pleb between high-born notables?

However, Soren Brostrom of the Danish Health agency told a news conference that results of investigations into the Astra-Zeneca vaccine “showed real and serious side-effects.”

That was Wednesday April 14. What did the Irish government do? Did they rush to protect the public from these real and serious side-effects? Of course not. The following day the two Fine Gael head honchos, Varadkar and Coveney, issued a general threat to the over-60s to take their budget medicine or get no medicine at all.

The over 60s are coincidentally the same cohort of people whose pensions Fine Gael have been targeting for so long now as “unaffordable” in Ireland’s generous multi-national tax haven.

And what happened to the my-body my-choice idea so central to claims of gender equality? Does that not apply on a medicine with a proven health risk? Does it not apply to over-60s? Is it only a feminist and LGBT thing? Can Fine Gael simply dictate that fundamental right out of existence on a whim?

Telling It Like It Isn’t

I watched RTÉ news to see how they might handle this story. The short answer is, they didn’t. They mentioned it, twice, in headlines, and David McCullough even gave it a raised eyebrow which, in fairness, is hardly investigative journalism. They mentioned the tánaiste twice in the course of the show, and didn’t mention the taoiseach at all. Eventually, way down the play list, they put the question to Paul Reid of the HSE who swallowed lumpily on a few occasions as he managed to wriggle out of giving an opinion on the matter.

RTÉ have a cute way of dealing with news items that can’t be avoided but have to be mentioned anyway. The Irish Times does something similar. It’s like a magician’s trick, you simply slide away from the story into another story. The Irish Times tends to slide from stories that make Fine Gael look bad into somehow criticising Sinn Féin.

But RTÉ have a different set of subjects to slide into which could be generally described as trendy right-on subjects such as gender and racial equality and people doing something positive. These get everyone looking the other way while the magic happens.

Watching it is like being cheated with the same cheap trick time and time again in the unspoken understanding that you will pretend not to notice in order to be agreeable.

I waited until Prime Time where at least the presenter got the problem, the take it or leave it attitude, but Stephen Donnelly simply couldn’t see what the fuss was about. And no one, neither politicians or journalists, could apparently see that by refusing to vaccinate unless the person accepted Astra-Zeneca unconditionally, that this neglect could have an adverse effect on the wider community.

Budget Threats

Stephen Donnelly said that the decision to vaccinate over-60s with the Astra Zeneca vaccine is based on best current medical advice. But he should have been more specific by saying, best advice as it pertains to Ireland. In Denmark, clearly, best medical advice is to avoid the Astra Zeneca vaccine.

Neither was there any problem seen by Donnelly with the spectacle of a pair of privileged right-wing politicians essentially dictating an ultimatum to a section of the public. The fact that none of the politicians could see a problem in this is actually a major problem.

From the people who brought you low wages, privatisation, no housing, deprivation of public services and blame, they now offer a direct authoritarian dictate to either take your medicine or walk.

At least the mask is finally off.

The Real Taoiseach

By the way it now seems certain that Micheál Martin, taoiseach, doesn’t actually exist, but is merely a clever Fine Gael hologram used as an occasional decoy to distract the public from the activities of Leo Varadkar, tánaiste, who is actually the real taoiseach, operating under an assumed title and groomed by the RTÉ news department, which is really a cover for Varadkar’s private public relations unit.

Eamonn Kelly is a freelance Writer and Playwright.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

RollingNews

From top: The Irish Times clock; Eamonn Kelly

“Quote Mining: a situation in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.” Wikipedia

In Britain the BBC was considered by many to be the one grounded reliable source of news. Other sources had obvious agendas, but it was said that the BBC was the greatest example of the ideal of journalistic objectivity, reporting the facts in as unbiased a manner as is humanly possible. That was the story anyway.

During the World Cup in Russia BBC’s opening sequence to each match episode climaxed on an animated camera plunging into the Moscow metro and coming to rest on a man on a bench who looked remarkably like Jeremy Corbyn, the then Labour leader. The subliminal implications were clear. Corbyn spends his leisure time hanging out underground in Moscow.

The Irish media landscape is like a small brother of the British one. Many people turn to British news sources for a more detailed look at the news of the day, whether Beeb or Murdoch, because even these are more like reliable news sources than the watered-down news you often get in Ireland, ever careful not to offend.

Quiet Please

It was said for a long time that the apparent gag placed on Irish journalists, preventing them from asking difficult questions, was due to unusually stringent libel laws.

But the suspicion was always there for some, that Irish journalists in the main were more public relations professionals, pragmatically concerned for the most part with protecting their own careers in the small and incestuous Irish professional world of business, politics and media where seemingly everyone is on first name terms, if not actually inter-married.

Irish politicians naturally got used to this kid glove journalism and even now they are forever complaining about the so-called barbarians of social media holding them to account on poor performance on such issues as homelessness, the pandemic, mad rents, historical abuse inquiries, tragedies of privatisation and so on.

But even in this relatively polite media landscape, there was one news source that was sometimes regarded in much the same way as the BBC was regarded in Britain, and this was the Irish Times, the so-called paper of record; a news source that proudly promoted the ideals of objective journalism unsullied by political bias or cronyism.

But like the BBC, the Irish Times seems now to represent not so much the objective truth as such, as it represents a narrative that suits a certain clientele. Where the BBC seems Tory at root, the Irish Times seems Fine Gael at root: the paper not of record, but of the property owners, the landlords; the business, political and professional classes.

But news sources are politically biased, and always have been. It would be naïve to think that the Irish Times or the BBC are totally objective. The best you can hope for is that an ideal exists within the heart of a news organisation to aspire to objectivity and journalistic ideals.

Composing Deceptions

In the most recent Village magazine there is an article about a story run by the Irish Times in December 2020 when Pat Leahy, an Irish Times journalist, wrote that inequality was falling in Ireland.

This article’s claim was cited a week later in the Seanad by Senator Buttimer of FG as a “fact”. This “fact” was supported in Leahy’s article by a direct quote from a 2020 report by TASC, the think tank for action on social change.

But the quote chosen by Pat Leahy was only a partial quote, according to Village, giving the impression that the TASC report had found that inequality in Ireland was falling, when the report suggested that inequality was actually rising.

Brendan Ogle of Unite the Union wrote an article in response, pointing out this anomaly, but Village reports that the Irish Times refused to print his piece dismissing the article as being “too long”. Irish Times editors are apparently only in the business now of shortening long quotes, not long stories.

Quote Mining

The reversal of meaning achieved by Pat Leahy in his article is unlikely to have been an editorial accident. And since this reversal of meaning was achieved by the omission of the rest of the quote, as shown by Village, the resulting “fact”, which was then eagerly picked up and disseminated by a Fine Gael senator, makes the entire exercise seem like an odd departure from the ethos of journalistic objectivity that the Irish Times is said to represent.

Eamonn Kelly is a freelance Writer and Playwright.

Out Of Time (Village)

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

RollingNews

From top: Tanaiste Leo Varadkar (left) and former Minister for Justice and Equality Charlie Flanagan; Eamonn Kelly

There was a story in the Indo after Christmas about councillors working from home but still claiming mileage expenses. Presumably they’re putting in strong mileage trundling in their pyjamas from the kettle to the laptop.

The point is though, that if the story is true – and I’ve no reason to doubt it, it appears after all in the anointed mainstream press – is that in order for such claims to go through they must be processed by a bureaucracy, whose agents must surely be aware that the claimants are working from home.

If this is the case it makes the whole thing seem like an official scam to siphon off public funds under a false pretext.

However, the defence claims that there is an allowance of mileage which can be claimed without receipts and that this is the money that the story is referring to. I can see how that might be the case. There is often that spectacle of departments being allotted a budget and finding themselves with surplus near the end of the budgetary period leaving them with the option of either using it or losing it.

But it doesn’t read well in a news context which also carries stories of underpaid medical staff and three homeless people dying in the last nine days, among the usual stories of want and neglect. In that context the claimed mileage story screams perks, mismanagement and waste.

Flexibility

In a sense it’s just another example really of “flexible” Irish laws. The comedian Dara O’Brien described this flexibility in a three-step application of the law. There are things that are “Fine”, there are things that are “Kind of okay”, and then there’s “Ah, now you’re tearing the hole out of it.”

The mileage claims for stay-at-home officials on Zoom calls seems to belong in the tearing the hole out of it category. But the situation also begs the question, Do Ireland’s flexible laws become even more flexible the further up you move on the social scale? It certainly often seems that way.

A few weeks ago The Examiner published a story saying that “several public officials, including Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, are to be investigated for allegedly failing to protect a whistle-blower, now retired prison officer Noel McGree, after he made a protected disclosure.”

The Examiner story is necessarily technical in its description of the unfolding story, opening with, “The Public Accounts Committee has agreed to recommend to justice minister Helen McEntee that she launch an external investigation into the standards of financial account-keeping at the Irish Prison Service.”  The story continuing in that relatively bloodless manner.

But over on the Echo Chamber Podcast on the website Tortoise Hack, the presenters Tony Groves and Martin McMahon spoke directly to Noel McGree and the human aspect of the story came out in all its shuddering glory.

Shooting the Messenger

Apparently, McGree felt encouraged by Leo Varadkar’s attitude towards whistle-blowers in comments Varadkar made following the Maurice McCabe affair.

But when McGree acted on what the Examiner describes as “issues surrounding catering procurement within the Prison Service” and an allegation that the Irish Prison Service (IPS) had been “penalising or discriminating against whistle-blowers…” the then Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan sent McGree’s complaint directly back to IPS management, the people McGree was complaining about.

The situation became even more complicated when McGree then sent the complaint direct to then taoiseach Varadkar, the very man who’d spoken up for whistle-blowers, along with a complaint against Charlie Flanagan for having sent the initial report back to the IPS, making McGree a target.

So, what did Taoiseach Varadkar do when contacted by an actual whistle-blower? According to McGree on the Echo-chamber podcast, the then taoiseach sent his file, a “protected disclosure” back to the IPS, and the complaint against Charlie Flanagan to Charlie Flanagan, allegedly breaking confidentiality and failing to protect a whistle-blower.

Noel McGree claims he was subsequently forced into early retirement, from where he watched with interest as the Dáil gathered to vote on a no-confidence bill against Tánaiste Leo Varadkar on the question of the sharing of confidential documents, the very act that had cost Noel McGree his position and had caused such trouble and heartache to his family.

He watched with a sinking heart as the Dáil voted confidence in the Tanáiste, desperately papering over the cracks of an increasingly creaky crony system, sanctioning at government level a system of “flexibility” that serves some and makes collateral damage of others.

Whistle-Blowers

But Ireland has a profound problem with whistle-blowers anyway, and there is little public sympathy for them. The very idea of a whistle-blower, given Ireland’s largely unexamined post-colonial trauma, is complicated by the implicit suggestion that someone reporting to the authorities is by definition a “snitch” or “informer”.

This is very dodgy territory for Irish people to get their heads around. So whistle-blowers tend to be regarded with suspicion and are more likely to end up being the losers in situations of Irish legal “flexibility”.

Politically, it is wiser in such a system, to condemn the whistle-blower. Otherwise, you have to condemn the system of “flexibility” that produced the whistle-blower. This is arguably the same dilemma that the shaky coalition government had to contend with in the Varadkar no-confidence vote.

There is a kind of shared experience among whistle-blowers. They appear to act when their own moral standards are expected to be “modified”, let’s say, to facilitate a desired legal “flexibility” by management.

In other words, they find themselves placed in a position to become complicit in what they perceive as illegal activity – and in what is often actually illegal activity – leaving the whistle-blower no option but to report on the situation, with all the risks that this entails. This dilemma is typical of many whistle-blowers in the Irish context, a place where honesty is often not the best policy.

Councillors claiming mileage for sitting at their home computers may be more than some weird bureaucratic quirk, an isolated incident of tearing the hole out of it. It may be a fractal of a wider system of institutionalised “flexibility” that appears to be punitively tight at the lower end of the social scale and extremely relaxed at the top.

Eamonn Kelly is a freelance Writer and Playwright.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

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