Last night on TV3’s Tonight With Vincent Browne, Senator Eamon Coughlan, of Fine Gael – who is running in next week’s Dublin West by-election following the resignation of Patrick Nulty – regaled those present and those watching with a story about a constituent he met while out canvassing.
Jay.
Kers.
H/T Luke McManus
Update:
Dublin this morning.
Jane Gallagher writes:
“An election farewell….”
Covers to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
Thanks Mick Crowley, Enda Cunningham and Nick Sutton
Oi.
This evening.
Monika writes:
“kids stealing some campaign posters, as seen from Dublin Bus…”
Pesky, anti-democratic, latchkey tykes.
[GSOC chairman Simon O’Brien (left) with Kieran Fitzgerald of GSOC and on his way to attending the Public Service Oversight and Petitions Committee in February, to answer questions about the GSOC bugging story which is now the subject of an inquiry]
After the GSOC bugging story appeared in The Sunday Times on February 9, written by John Mooney, Mr O’Brien was summoned to the then Justice Minister Alan Shatter’s office on February 10, to brief him on the matter. Following that meeting, Mr O’Brien released a statement apologising for not telling Mr Shatter about the investigation that GSOC had carried out by Verrimus. Verrimus had detected three security threats.
In his statement, he said: “We did not wish to point fingers unnecessarily and we did not believe that widespread reporting would be conducive to public confidence.”
Then, on February 12, Mr O’Brien appeared before the Public Service Oversight and Petitions Committee and told the committee:
I certainly suspect or potentially suspect we may have been under some form of surveillance. I have no information in my possession that any other ombudsman’s office has ever been under this type of surveillance.
Separately, in his investigation of Sgt Maurice McCabe’s dossier of claims of Garda misconduct, Sean Guerin, SC, referred to the role of GSOC in the recent Guerin Report.
In the introduction of his report, Mr Guerin said he received no documentation from GSOC. He said on the eve of the day his report was due he received a letter from Arthur Cox Solicitors, on behalf of GSOC, stating there were legal and practical issues with handing over, according to GSOC, “voluminous” relevant documentation.
Mr Guerin wrote:
“That has, unfortunately, been an obstacle to any assessment as part of this review of the adequacy of the investigations conducted by GSOC.”
In addition, in Chapter 18, Mr Guerin wrote:
“What is striking, however, is that in the one case in which it is clear that a GSOC investigation was pursued to a conclusion, the papers I have seen suggest that the approach adopted by GSOC was ultimately broadly similar to that of An Garda Siochana…While the independent investigative function that GSOC exercises is an important one in the public interest, it appears to be no guarantee of a disciplinary outcome.”
Further to these two matters, GSOC chairman Simon O’Brien spoke to Ivan Yates and Chris O’Donoghue on Newstalk Breakfast this morning.
Yates: “Over recent months, part of the allegation is that that you’re part of the problem, rather than you’re part of the solution, that you’re basically not a watchdog, you’re a poodle. Do you think the way you handled Martin Callinan – by having a cup of coffee with him – that the whole relationship was just too cosy?”
O’Brien: “Ah gee, look, Martin and I have a professional relationship, had a professional relationship, absolutely no problem sitting down with Martin and having a cup of coffee, I did that on a number of…on a regular basis. Just think about where we were within that – you know, there was a controversy flowing around us. Martin phoned me up and said, ‘Would you come over and we’ll have a chat about things…” I’ve got no problem with that, I’ve got no problem with that at all. As he has said, and as I have said in the past, there’s always been a healthy tension between the two agencies – that’s fine. But, I have to say to you I have no problem sitting down and having a cup of coffee with Martin Callinan.”
Yates: “How would you characterise that relationship with the Commissioner – was it too cosy, was it too submissive on your part?”Continue reading →
Depends.
Thanks Mary Harty
Screengrab of The Irish Times story on April 25, 2014, about Sabrina McMahon and her children
You may recall the story of Sabrina McMahon and her three children who spent a week living in her car in Tallaght last month.
Ms McMahon said she has been on the South Dublin Council’s housing waiting list for more than a year and she said that, while she has tried to to find private rented accommodation, she hasn’t been able to find a landlord who’ll accept rent allowance.
After her story emerged someone, who didn’t wish to be named, paid for her and her children to stay in a hotel for a month.
It later emerged that she had been living in a house in Athy, Co. Kildare but left after her and her partner broke up and the house had been vandalised.
Ms McMahon spoke with Niall Boylan on Classic Hits 4FM today and said she will be returning to her car next Friday, May 23, unless she finds alternative accommodation by then.
From the interview:
Niall Boylan: “How did you find yourself in this position in the first place?”
Sabrina McMahon: “It would be nine and a half years ago that I’m back in Dublin. I was in Athy for seven years, the house was broken into. I have all the paperwork, the paperwork from Guards, the pictures that the house had been taken over by junkies.”
Boylan: “What do you say to the newspapers that say that wasn’t the truth at all? That there was no burglary, that the house seemed to be fine…what do you say to that?”
McMahon: “I hadn’t even spoken to that paper. They came up and took a photo of the house and it looks perfect… Cllr Maire Devine, who has been dealing with me for the past two and a half years is trying to fight my case, she kept the paperwork for me and all the photographs, heroin that had been used beside my bed, the kids drawers that had been upended and all, the whole house was taken over. I had to climb over a window when I was made go up and collect my payments for a couple of months.”
Boylan: “Could the guards not get these people out of your house?”
McMahon: “No, they were just going in and out of the house as far as I know…the door was locked but they were able to get in to a little back window that was in the back of the house. I don’t know how they were doing it.”
Boylan: “When you went back to Tallaght, what was your situation then?”
McMahon: “I was staying in my mother’s; my father’s my sister’s, my friend’s…all over the place. And now next week were moving out of the hotel, even though the room is going to be free. I can’t see why they can’t put us up in that room when it’s going to be left vacant. I don’t know why they can’t continue paying for the room. There are 37 families down there in that hotel.”
Boylan: “You’ve been on the housing list for the past year or so and your problem is not that you can’t get a house in Dublin… but you want a house in Tallaght.”
McMahon:“[The council] told me to look for a one or two-bedroom anywhere. I’ve gone down to Inchicore, everywhere, somewhere I can get my kids to school in Tallaght cause that’s where they go to school…not one of them will take four people and they said they’d be over-crowded.”
Boylan: “You’ve told us if you don’t get something by next Friday you’re going to start living in your car again…”
McMahon: “That’s basically what I’m going to do.”
Boylan: “The criticism here is you have three young children. How are these kids going to go to school, how are they being fed, how are they being looked after when there is an option there of going back to Kildare…but that’s what you don’t want to do.”
McMahon: “Not after the house being broken into. I feel threatened down in Kildare, I’m isolated down in Kildare… the garda actually told me not to go back to the house, that they would try and catch the people and they never caught them…they had the backdoor key and they had barred me out of the front door.”
Boylan: “The other suggestion in the paper at the time was you had said your partner walked out on you, the papers suggested your partner had gone to jail.”
McMahon: “The paper said the right name but he was not a settled traveller, he didn’t do any bank robbery…no he wasn’t in jail… it was a totally different person they were talking about.”
Boylan: “Why Tallaght?”
McMahon: “Basically I’m 36 years old and I was born and raised in Tallaght.”
Boylan: “Could your family not help you in the interim?”
McMahon: “If I go back to any of my family I’m going to be put on their rent and I’m never going to be housed.”
Boylan: “What you want the council to do now is put you on the homeless list, not on the housing list?”
McMahon: “Yes, we’d probably be put in a hostel. Many families have to do that… I don’t get along with my family and at this stage, with three small kids. If there was anyone out there who would take me and my three small kids I’d gladly go with them.”
Boylan: “Would you not rather go back to the house and try and make a home out of it just until you get it sorted rather than having three very young children living in a car?”
McMahon: “Definitely not. The house was broken into. If you seen the pictures that I have you’d understand… my son would not go back to the house.”
Boylan: “But what do your kids think about living in a car?”
McMahon: “They’re happy with their mother. They have me and that’s all they’ll ever have for the rest of their lives… me.”
Listen to the interview in full here
Previously: Children On Board
On last night’s Tonight with Vincent Browne, Vincent was joined by journalists Yvonne Judge and Harry McGee to review the papers.
Bertie the parrot leads in today’s Star.
A Norwegian Blue, surely?
Watch in full here.
Previously: This Monkey’s Gone To Heaven
Sam writes:
Squatters, who did not want to be identified, sit outside a house on Barrow Street in Dublin 4 this afternoon in support of the people who have occupied a house that they say was owned by Nama and otherwise would be vacant. They say that if they are not left there to stay they would be homeless.
Anyone?
Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland
Ken Fallon writes:
I’ve a started a blog consisting of nothing else but Enda Kenny pointing. Any chance of a plug, lads? Please? Thank You!
