Category Archives: Misc

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Yesterday.

During Leaders’ Questions, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin again raised the controversial sale of Project Eagle by Nama in Northern Ireland.

It followed Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams calling for a Commission of Investigation into the sale twice in the past two weeks.

Mr Martin said there are rumours that further arrests are on the way in relation to the sale – following the arrest in May of two men in Co. Down on suspicion of fraud offences, by the British National Crime Agency.

They’ve since been released on bail.

In response, Taoiseach Enda Kenny maintained that the sale was “was executed in a proper manner” – echoing his previous responses to Mr Adams.

From their exchange:

Micheál Martin: “The UK’s National Crime Agency is investigating this. There have been two arrests and there are rumours of more arrests on the way. It is being investigated in the United States. The Northern Ireland finance committee has had an inquiry. At the very least, NAMA should have attended that inquiry. It is the biggest sale since the agency was established and there are huge concerns about it. Yet we, in the Republic, seem to have adopted an attitude that there is nothing to see here, that everything is fine on this side of the equation.”

“I put it to the Taoiseach that at the time that PIMCO revealed that people were seeking fees, surely that was the time for the entire deal to be called off, for both NAMA and the Minister for Finance, who was alerted to it, to call a halt to that deal and say there were too many questions about it. It was something from which they should have pulled back. The Irish taxpayer lost out to an extraordinary degree but worst than that, the deal is tainted, of that there can be no question.”

An Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl: “Has the Deputy a question?”

Martin: “All of this could have been avoided if the Government had not decided to sell such large blocks of assets under NAMA and to force the pace in terms of accelerating the disposal of assets at steeper discounts than were necessary.”

Later

Enda Kenny: “On Deputy Martin’s point in respect of NAMA and Project Eagle, I want him to understand that, as I have said here on many occasions, I am informed that this loan sell was executed in a proper manner. Despite all the comments and allegations, there are no claims of wrongdoing against NAMA. That loan portfolio was sold following an open process to the highest bidder for what it was worth. NAMA paid no moneys to any party on this loan sale against whom allegations of wrongdoing are now being made. Anyone with evidence of wrongdoing needs to report it immediately to the proper authorities, as I am sure Deputy Martin will do if he has information in that regard.”

“The Government and NAMA take very seriously, and why should they not, any accusations of NAMA employees or former employees breaching the NAMA Act.”

Later

Martin: “A consistent thread in the Taoiseach’s replies to various people on this question during the last Dáil and this one is that there has been no wrongdoing on NAMA’s behalf.

Kenny: I said “No allegations of wrongdoing against NAMA”.

Martin: “The allegations are about the deal. That is the point but the Taoiseach keeps almost deliberately ignoring it. The allegations are about the entirety of the deal, its ethics and its rightness or wrongness. Surely, when people heard that there was up to €7 million in an offshore account, it raised eyebrows. Surely, the deal should have been called off when PIMCO alerted NAMA to elements of what was going on and when the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, was himself alerted to what was going on at that stage. There is no point in saying that everything on our side was fine and we have covered our backs, that all our paperwork is clear and clean in the Republic and in NAMA headquarters and the fact that others may have got up to all kinds of activity is of no concern to us.

Ó Fearghaíl: “I thank the Deputy.”

Martin: “That is what has come back to us in regard to this. It is the sense that has come from Ministers, the Taoiseach and NAMA in a very defensive mode. Instead of saying that if something is rotten in the state of Denmark in regard to this deal, it is in our interests to tackle and deal with it.

Ó Fearghaíl: “Thank you, Deputy.”

Martin: “Did it ever occur to the Taoiseach that we should have set up a commission of investigation when the National Crime Agency, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and others were pursuing this? The Taoiseach mentioned the Northern Assembly. There seems to be a sense of a connection and a nexus between politics and all of this in the North as well. That may emerge in the coming weeks.

Ó Fearghaíl: “Deputy, the time has elapsed. Thank you.”

Martin: “I put to the Taoiseach the question of whether he ever asked the Minister of Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, the question as to why the shutters were not pulled down on this deal when PIMCO gave its information to NAMA in regard to third parties.”

Kenny: “If Deputy Martin makes the case, the Government is in no way defensive about this issue. If there is something rotten, as the Deputy says, in the state of Denmark relative to this case, what he is saying is that the process by which this sale was completed was wrong, was not up to standard and was not in accordance with proper procedure. I am informed that the sale was conducted under proper conditions, that it was sold following an open process to the highest bidder for what it was worth.”

Martin: “Someone pocketed €7 million.”

Kenny: “Is that right or is it not right? That is what I am informed. If I am being misinformed here, if somebody has got evidence to that effect, I would certainly like to hear it. The Deputy makes the point that the sale should have been stopped. Where is the evidence that the process that was followed was not open—–”

Gerry Adams: “The €7 million.”

Kenny: “—–was not above board—–”

Martin: “The offshore account.”

Kenny: “—–and was not fair?”

Adams: “There are seven million reasons.”

Ó Fearghaíl: “One speaker, please.”

Martin: “The offshore account and the money paid in fixers’ fees.”

Ó Fearghaíl: “The Taoiseach to conclude.”

Kenny: “In the sale being concluded, the information that I am given, standing here in the position that I hold, is that this was conducted in a proper and open process, and was sold to the highest bidder for what it was worth….”

Meanwhile, last week…

And yesterday…

Previously: ‘Nama Has Done Nothing Wrong’

‘Nobody Had Presented Me With Evidence Of Wrongdoing By Nama’

Dáil transcript: Oireachtas.ie

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From top: Rainbow vigil, Barnardo’s Square, Dublin on Monday night; Anne Marie McNally

Can you preach intolerance of an entire demographic of people and then be truly sorry when they have been removed from the face of the earth?

Anne Marie McNally writes:

It was a terrorist attack. It was a hate crime. It was neither. It was the Federal Government’s fault. It was the club bouncers’ fault.

All actual opinions expressed, by media commentators of various shades, in the wake of the unspeakable tragedy in Orlando over the weekend which saw 49 people murdered, many others injured and the entire global LGBTQ community – and most other right-minded humans – devastated.

An intense narrative developed in the wake of the shooting and the revelation that the shooter had been of Afghan descent and had previous links to radicalised Islam groups. Clearly that meant it was a terror attack apparently.

The fact that the man’s own father claimed his son had been aggrieved by the sight of two men kissing and had previously displayed strong homophobic tendencies before murdering LGBTQ people in an LGBTQ space didn’t appear to matter to those who were determined to paint this as another example of jihadi terrorism perpetrated by those whose religion perhaps differs from yours.

It has since transpired that the man himself appears to have struggled with his sexuality delving in and out of the LGBTQ scene, perhaps struggling with a persuasion to something he had avowed to hate – yet another insidious consequence of the brutality of religious doctrine regarding sexuality.

The religion and terror radicalisation question is an issue for another day (though hopefully not another tragedy) but the issue for today is the seeming reluctance of so many in the public space to categorise the Orlando massacre as a hate crime because to do so would be to acknowledge the role that their beliefs may have played in such an event.

On Sunday, Twitter and other Social Media streams filled with lovely graphics and messages calling on us to #PrayforOrlando….but pray to whom?

The god who tells us that those in the LGBTQ community are misguided at best and sordid at worst?

Or would you rather I combined my prayers for the victims with incantations begging whatever God you believe in to absolve those victims of their apparent sins (that being their sexual persuasion) so that they may enter the kingdom of heaven or whatever other holy afterlife you believe in?

You see I’m confused. You can’t preach about intolerance, unacceptance and in many cases outright hatred of an entire demographic of people and then expect me to somehow believe you are truly sorry when you hear they have been removed from the face of the earth.

You either want me to disown these people, as they are, or you don’t.

And don’t give me some crap about you wanting to embrace them and make them see the light and the ‘error of their ways’ for loving who they love and living their life based on their own desires because that is almost more abhorrent than simply disowning them.

The horrific righteousness of that perspective is impossible for me to swallow and much more so as people have been brutally slaughtered because of their sexual preferences and a man, with easy access to a murder weapon, whose religion had thought him to hate himself for his own sexuality and to hate others who lived comfortably with their sexuality.

That hate, preached to him throughout his life, is what left 50 people dead on the floor of a nightclub where they had gone to enjoy life love and friendship.

If you have sat back and quietly allowed that hate, intolerance or unacceptance to go unchallenged in any religion that you are a member of then you are actively supporting an organisation that has facilitated the massacre we witnessed on Sunday.

I’m all for people finding solace in faith and I’m all for people believing in what they choose to believe in, but I’m not OK with what you choose to believe in being a catalyst for my friends, family and loved ones to be demeaned, degraded, disrespected and ultimately discarded.

We have to accept the correlation between the two and to not do so is not just ignorant it is dangerous.

Anne Marie McNally is a founding member of the Social Democrats. Follow Anne Marie on Twitter: @amomcnally

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A report by Paul Sweeney, of TASC, in December

Paul Sweeney writes:

The leak in [yesterday’s] Irish Times that the Taoiseach has written to Mr Juncker, President of the EU Commisson, on the need for greater investment in Ireland is welcome, but appears somewhat disingeneous.

His letter appears to quote the report published by TASC last December which ponted out that Ireland’s level of investment was at its lowest level ever and was the lowest in the Union.

Mr Kenny said investment in infrastructure in Ireland was at its “lowest level for many years, and also represents the lowest level of any member state at present” – the two points emphasised by TASC.

That Mr Kenny has now recognised this is welcome, but it was his government which set out the investment plan last autumn which proposed to cut investment even lower than the lowest level ever, from 1.8% of GDP in 2013 to 1.7% in 2016.

…So has Mr Kenny finally woken up to the need for greater direct public investment? For example, is he seeking permission from Europe to directly invest some of the banks’ proceeds in Ireland, instead of making the error of using them to accellerate repayment of the national debt?

It seems not. He appears to be looking for new ways of avoiding direct public investment and to increase private investment in public infrastructure. It seems he wants leeway to have more Public Private Partnerships, even though they cost more in the long run and take much longer to execute, than direct public funding.

“Mr Kenny said he felt sufficiently concerned about how Eurostat was classifying public-private partnerships – widely used to fund infrastructural projects – that he felt the need to ‘raise the matter at the highest political level’”, according to the Irish Times.

But he also said, “We are also acutely conscious of the constraints and obligations of the fiscal rules, and the need to broaden sources of investment as widely as possible within those constraints and obligations.”

Clearly using some of the bank proceeds for investment is not even being discussed. The flavour still is “broader sources of finance.”

Taoiseach appears to seek Increased Public Investment, as does OECD (TASC)

Kenny concerned by hazard posed from EU investment rules (Irish Times, June 13, 2016)

H/T: Rory Hearne

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Terry Dignan’s car insurance has risen from €470 to €886 in just four years. Let me advise Mr Dignan that this is not despite his being 13 years with the same insurer, but because of it.

From first-hand experience of writing premium calculation software for the motor and home insurance industry, I can assure him and all your readers that there’s an in-built “inertia penalty” for such customers.

As a general rule of thumb, if at renewal time a private motorist is obtaining fewer than five quotes – including at least one via a broker – then he or she is almost certainly throwing away money.

Coincidentally, I too have been driving for 25 years with no claims. The difference is that I’ve never used the same underwriter for more than three years in a row.

Mr Dignan is, of course, still right that the Government should take a close look at the industry.

R Scanlan,
Leopardstown,
Dublin 18.

FIGHT!

The cost of motor insurance (The Irish Times letters page)

Previously: ‘There Is A Cartel Of Insurance Underwriters’

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Previously: Not Going Away

Pic: Oireachtas.ie

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‘sup?

This afternoon.

Rubber-limbed Elaine McCague, of Loosysmokes,, actor Stephen Rea and fiddler Martin Hayes at the launch of the programme for the 2016 Kilkenny Arts Festival [August 5-14} comprising “ten days of artistic adventures in Ireland’s medieval city”.

As a centrepiece of the festival, Stephen will read Seamus Heaney’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book VI, with live soundscape by cellist Neil Martin, and also recite extracts from the poem in Dunmore Cave.

Virgil on the ridiculous.

Eh?

Suit yourselves.

Kilkenny Arts Festival

Leon Farrell/Rollingnews