Category Archives: Misc

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From top: Shot heifer at John Hoey’s fam in Co Monaghan Chris Lehane, a court-appointed trustee who takes control of the assets of bankrupts; interview with Mr Hoey on Cork’s 96fm Opinion Line

Further to revelations yesterday that five heifers were shot by members of the armed forces on Tuesday as part of a debt recovery exercise.

Via Irish Farmers Journal

The owner of the stock – farmer John Hoey from south Monaghan – told the Irish Farmers Journal that the army was called to shoot the animals after the debt collection service had struggled to load the five animals on to a truck.

The owners also allege that all other machinery from the farm had been removed. It is understood that the local Department of Agriculture vet had been made aware of the military exercise.

The Irish Farmers Journal understands that a long-standing protocol between the Department, An Garda Síochána and the army allows for intervention when there is a threat to public safety.

A fallen animal service was called to collect the dead animals but subsequently got stuck in the field they were in.

The Official Assignee in Bankruptcy, Chris Lehane, said in a statement that he had made the decision to have the cattle killed after failing to remove all the “wild and dangerous” animals from the farm with “experienced cattle assistants”.

“As Official Assignee I have a duty to recover value from assets of bankruptcy estates and it is clearly not in my interests to kill cattle, nor would I do it, without firstly having exhausted every other possible avenue open to me to resolve the problem.”

The Official Assignee in Bankruptcy is part of the Insolvency Service of Ireland, the independent statutory body tasked with monitoring situations in which people are unable to pay their debts.

‘I ran behind the last one as they riddled her with bullets’ – Farmer heartbroken by cow shooting (Irish Independent)

Yesterday: Animals

Meanwhile, Seaán O’Rourke spoke to both John Hoey and his partner Aisling McCardle this morning.

From the discussion with Aisling…

Seán O’Rourke: “What would you say to the point made by Chris Lehane, the Official Assignee, that he has a duty to recover the value of assets in bankruptcy estates and it’s clearly not in his interest to kill the cattle, nor would he do it without firstly exhausted every possible other avenue open to him to resolve the problem?”

Aisling McCardle: “He is very incorrect in what he’s saying because he didn’t exhaust every avenue. He never, in all his time, that we spoke to the Official Assignee he never said, ‘we’re coming to shoot the cattle because we can’t capture them, will you go out and take the cattle in’. Like, as Johnny has explained, if he goes out with a bucket of meal, he’d have those animals in, in ten minutes. So he didn’t exhaust every avenue, he wasn’t taking health and safety affairs into consideration for us because we were out in the middle of this the other morning. I mean, some of us could have got shot very easily and where would the health and safety have been then? He did not exhaust every avenue.”

O’Rourke: “Well I suppose they would have been very careful about it, you’re talking about professional marksmen here now. Professional markspeople. They’re very careful where they shoot now, wouldn’t they?”

McCardle: “Yeah, but they still didn’t shoot the animals appropriately. Like some, as I was walking back up the road after that animal had been shot down there, there was the three animals that had shot up there in the corner, they were heading back… The armed men was coming back over, through the meadow, to get into a van, to be taken away. They actually stood over the three animals that were on the ground, lying there ready and shot them two or three times more.”

Listen back here

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Last night.

Eoin Ó’Faogáin writes:

If you ever wondered why in the north inner-city people feel wary of the Gardai and how they behave, here’s an example.

Last night I was coming back from playing five-a-side with two friends. Car gets pulled over. Garda says can you pull in and leave the vehicle. Mate says ‘what for?’ Garda says ‘where are you going?’

Mate (above) says ‘on the way back from football and I’m going home to Sheriff Street. Why are you asking me to pull over?’ Guard says just get out please. Mate points out his constitutional rights.

Next thing two more gardai appear and tell him he’s being arrested. Mate asked, then I asked, ‘WHAT FOR?’ They refused to answer. Cuffed him, left his car in the middle of the road and then the gardai who were left with the car laughed about how they’d have to get a tow truck and bring it to Donabate “for a laugh”. Here’s a bit of it I got on video here.

We kept asking what he was being arrested for and garda who was left there says “why are you asking me, I haven’t “a clue.”.

Last two gardai got in their car with our mate’s car still in middle of road and shouted out  “enjoy your walk home boys”. WTF?

Previously: We Need To Talk About The Guards

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dan

From top: turf cutting in Connemara, 1960s by John Hinde; Dan Boyle

By 1995, 99% of Irish raised bogs had disappeared.

In the period since, more than one third of the remaining one per cent has been lost.

Dan Boyle writes:

A lost family photograph of ours evokes a particular memory for me. I was about four years of age standing next to my grandfather, who was standing next to his donkey, which had baskets on either side full of turf.

It looked for all the world like a John Hinde postcard depicting an over romanticised view of Ireland, which if it ever existed certainly doesn’t exist now. My grandfather would have cut turf by hand. That Ireland is certainly dead and gone.

Or at least it should be.

Raised bogs are only small proportion of the bogs that exist in Ireland, those chosen for protection a smaller number again.

Bearing in mind that it takes ten thousand years to create a bog, it is harrowing to learn that by 1995, 99% of Irish raised bogs had disappeared. In the period since, more than one third of the remaining one per cent has been lost.

It has been almost 30 years since an EU initiative on conservation has taken root in Ireland. The EU Habitats Directive was first proposed in 1988 being fully adopted in 1992.

In Ireland it wouldn’t be incorporated into Irish law until 1997 under legislation moved by now President, then Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins. This delay was followed by further delays in implementation.

Rural pressure groups argued that the Habitats Directive was being applied too stringently. Successive governments reacted to this pressure by stalling on implementing the legislation.

Slowly, too slowly, Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) began to be defined. However in typical indecisive Irish government action, derogations have been applied to many of these SACs since 1997.

Raised bogs are but a small component of the SACs that have been selected. Together their area is about 10,000 hectares.  This represents about 5% of the turf available for cutting. Other raised bogs have been given less stringent Natural Heritage Area (NHA) status.

A campaign centred around the ‘right’ of not applying the Habitats Directive to raised bogs gathered momentum.

Based on the precept that what always has been done should always be done, and the underlying unstated theme that everything that happens in rural Ireland is intrinsically right, the campaign demonised everyone who denied the right to continue to cut turf on raised bogs – The EU Commission, several Ministers for the Environment and later for Heritage, and more viciously officers of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).

The ugliness of the illegal turf cutting campaign is most particularly felt by NPWS officers, a small group of people who have had inadequate State support.

While some of the raised bogs are owned by those who are protesting against the SAC designation most bogs are on already publicly owned land where the turf cutters have had turbury rights – the right to cut turf on public land. A right extinguished once conservation is introduced.

In 2010 as then Minister for the Environment, John Gormley ended the derogation on many of the raised bog sites, alongside a phased timetable for ending all derogations.

As a Green Minister for the Environment he was already being demonised by the turf-cutting lobby. Ultimately this action has not been successful as the compensating factors – financial and relocation have been rebuffed by the turf cutting lobby.

The issue has been used skilfully and successfully by Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, and his successor Michael Fitzmaurice, to bring about their election to Dáil Éireann.

The name of the lobby promoting this campaign  – The Turf Cutters and Contractors Association – seems to be the most honest thing about them.

Supporting illegal turf cutting in micro terms causes environmental risks in the form of compromised drainage, and at a macro level removes the potential of untouched raised bogs operating as important carbon sinks, such support is incompatible with being an environmentalist.

Big Brother happens to be the good guy in this case. It is about heritage not greed.

What’s most surprising is the most reasoned sentiments on the issue that has been already been far too prolonged, have been made by the European Commission.

This is an issue where the cliché of ‘stop digging’ has a literal meaning.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

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Ferg writes:

I’ve been in exile in London for 3 years – and something weird happened Friday two weeks ago apres Brexit. Not a single joke in the office about potatoes.

I paid it no mind. A full week past – nothing. Not even a “to be sure to be sure”.

Anyone else experiencing this most unsettling phenomenon?

Anyone?

Pic: Realt.by

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From top: Mothers and babies at St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home, Navan Road, Dublin in the late 1960s.; Solicitor Rod Baker

You may recall how a Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes was launched last year.

Further to this…

Rod Baker, a consultant at Hogan Lovells, writes in the Solicitors Journal:

A team of lawyers from Hogan Lovells is assisting the Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA) and Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) in a project aimed at assisting people affected by the Mother and Baby Homes.

This assistance, which is provided on a pro bono basis, involves helping individuals prepare statements setting out their experiences, which can then be sent to the Commission of Investigation.

The long-term ambition is to create a database of evidence that will enable ARA and JFMR to make collective submissions to the commission based on the evidence gathered.

These submissions will relate not only to the findings the commission should make about what happened in the homes and how they operated within the state system, but also to the recommendations the commission should make to improve the status of, and information available to, adopted people.

For example, adopted people are not entitled to a copy of their birth certificate (a document that we might each think would be ours as of right) without first providing a statutory declaration that they will not try to contact their natural parents.

This project is known as Clann (the Irish word for family)…It is hoped that the Clann project will assist those affected by the Mother and Baby Homes, many of whom are elderly or vulnerable, to tell their stories.

We also hope that being able to provide the commission with evidence in an organised and comprehensive form will be of assistance to it in what ought to be the production of an exhaustive report exposing the detail of an uncomfortable chapter in Ireland’s history.

Helping Ireland’s unmarried mothers tell their stories (Solicitors Journal)

Hogan Lovells

H/T: Claire McGettrick

Previously: ‘Must Be Mounted On A Crucifix’

Pic by Margaret Moloney via ‘Fallen Women’ project by Emer Gillespie