How your party can respond to the big General Election 2016 campaign issues.

All the possibilities at your fingertips.

(Delete as appropriate)

Dan Boyle (above) writes:

When elected our party will…

1. On the Economy:

a) Keep the recovery going
b) Bring an end to Austerity
c) Achieve a fair society

2. On Taxation we will bring an end to the hated:

a) Universal Social Charge
b) Local Property Tax
c) )Water Charges
d) Carbon Tax
e) Corporation Tax

3. On Law and Order/Peace and Security/Restorative Justice we will:

a) Close more Garda stations
b) End the Special Criminal Court
c) Establish a Citizens Militia trained to use bullhorns and armed with appropriate protest slogans.

4. On The Environment we will make Ireland fossil fuel free from:

a) 2030
b) 2050
c) 2100
d) Burn Baby Burn

5. On Health we will:

a) Continue to blame the HSE
b) Make trollies more comfortable
c) Make illness illegal
d) Do what we did in the six counties

6. On Transport we will:

a) Roll our more bypasses and motorways in the constituencies of Government Ministers
b) Blacken the windows of all buses to save users the embarrassment of others thinking they have no cars
C) Have Ryanair operate the Government Jet

7. On Education we will:

a) Give every citizen a degree
b) Issue every student with a laptop. Broadband will follow during the lifetime of the following government.
c) Make sure everyone gets teached properly

8. On Political Reform we will:

a) Do nothing
b) Think about it
c) Do something cosmetic
d) Are you mad?

9. On Europe we will:

a) Agree with the UK
b) Agree with Germany
c) Agree with Greece

10. On Immigration we will:

a) Welcome all as we’ve been welcomed elsewhere
b) Take some in but leave them in limbo once they’re here
c) Say they’re all here to take our jobs and rip off our welfare system

11. On Childcare we will:

a) Have your babies for you
b) Institute one year paid paternity leave to be paid at the rate of Jobseeker’s Allowance
c) Make Child Benefit payable to the fifth and any subsequent child only

12. On Social Welfare we will:

a) Root out all fraud, except tax fraud, or any activity undertaken by Tipperary based TDs
b) Standardise all payments to Romanian rates
c) Call anyone in need a scrounger

13. On the Eighth Amendment we will:

a) Do nothing
b) Repeal
c) Replace
d) Oh holy Mother of God

14. On Arts and Culture we say

a) There’s too much of it
b) There’s not enough of it
c) We have just enough of it
d) You’d miss Charlie Haughey

15. On Drugs we say:

a) Legalise
b) Lock up anyone who uses any substance, except alcohol or tobacco of course
c) Yes please
d) No thank you

16. On Government Formation it can be:

a) Anyone but Fine Gael
b) Anyone but Sinn Féin
c) Anyone but Fianna Fáil
d) Let Michael O’Leary run the country

*Disclaimer – Don’t expect any of this to be followed up on

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

From top: The ‘fair tax town’ of Crickhowell, South Wales; Dan Boyle

Robin Hood,  the Double Irish and level playing fields.

Let’s talk about tax.

Dan Boyle writes:

Last week my itinerary took me to a picturesque small town/large village, Crickhowell, in south eastern part of Wales. Going around this country I get to see many pretty villages. I had come to Crickhowell to learn about its recent brush with notoriety.

Local businesses had come together to examine how collectively they could become a legal entity to avoid paying Corporation Tax, as multi national corporations have succeeded in doing for decades.

It is an idea simple in its inception yet so brilliant in its potential. This self styled Fair Tax Town can, and I believe will, become a beacon for a wider Fair Tax movement.

As someone Irish witnessing this phenomenon I can’t help but to admit some slight feelings of ambivalence.

Over the years, at Green meetings in Europe, I had always argued that Ireland needs to be considered a special case. An island nation at the periphery of Europe, a creative corporate tax policy was our attempt to counter the competitive disadvantage of not being part of the European land mass, in having lower distribution costs by being closer to the largest population centres.

And I believed it. In the way that many of us come to believe in the myth of Irish exceptionalism.

Being a World leader in the practice of tax tourism, Ireland could create a short cut in manufacturing national wealth figures that held as little depth as the paper on which they were written.

Many corporations now have Ireland as their mailing address. Their presence isn’t without some advantages. Access to certain industries have become fast tracked, new skills and technologies have been acquired in larger numbers.

And yet there could have been, and may yet be, a better type of industrial policy for Ireland. One that takes longer to bear fruit in terms of tax receipts but would be more sustainable, more rooted in our infrastructure, more capable of withstanding the whims of the global economy.

Here’s an idea. Let’s use the taxation system to develop a distinction between the types of corporations that exist from those who physically make things to those trade in services. Exempt those who make things. They build up our manufacturing capacity. Tax service industries who by their nature are ephemeral.

This is where a Robin Hood Tax could come into play. Designed as a tax on financial transactions, it could just as easily be applied to trade in intellectual properties. Of course it would need to be international in its application.

The OECD is at present engaged in an exercise seeking to bring about a level playing field in relation to corporation tax. It’s a fruitless exercise. The mobility of capital makes it impossible to secure the tax liability of multi national corporations. Their liability can only be enforced through an international mechanism.

In phasing out out the Double Irish tax loophole, Ireland is starting slowly to move away from its reputation as a tax tourism locale. Our reputation could be better improved if we were to contribute to an honest international debate on fair tax.

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

From top: Statue of Aneurin Bevan in Cardiff, Wales: Dan Boyle

The author, in Wales working with the Green Party, sees much in common with Ireland.

Dan Boyle writes:

My Busman’s holiday from Irish politics now sees me among our Celtic cousins immersing myself in Welsh politics.

It’s not without its compensations. Some of the scenery here is astounding. The lure of the novel is keeping me occupied as well as entertained. And to be honest, other than willing a successful election for The Greens there, there is little I will miss in the farce I expect the upcoming Irish election to be.

Not there is lot of difference in the politics of either place. The Welsh Assembly, The Senedd, is frustrating in its limitations. It has no taxation raising powers, and limited access to the welfare budget. The Welsh government seems to face every way on energy, with decisions on nuclear power kept clearly from its table.

But it is the major political chamber for its three million people. Being there at least gives the opportunity to help influence, for the better, the lives of Welsh people and their future well being.

It’s the last major political chamber on these islands not to have an elected Green presence. My job, working with others, is to try to bring that about. It is a difficult but not impossible task.

The most recent opinion polls have the Wales Green Party receiving 4% national support, the same level as the Liberal Democrats. Seats could be won at this level although we would need to be seeking another percentage point or more to be sure.

The party configuration is obviously different to Ireland. Also the parties here are far more distinct from each other. In Wales we have the added participation of Plaid Cymru, a party that thankfully is nothing like Sinn Féin.

One area where the Welsh should be given great credit on is the care and attention that has allowed the Welsh language be a living language. Their approach and its effect has been far better than we have managed in Ireland.

Another institution in which the Welsh take pride is the NHS. It was brought into being by Nye Bevan, whose statue stands proudly in the centre of Cardiff. The NHS is not without problems, many it seems caused by private enterprise tinkering with it. Despite these difficulties I believe the NHS is a model we in Ireland should aspire to.

The electoral contest here is between the jaded traditional parties (Labour has been in government here since 1999) and lowest common denominator ‘new’ parties like UKIP. Finding space in these tired arguments is proving difficult. I particularly despise the Little Englander attitudes of UKIP.

In contrast to the Irish media which tends to be embedded, the Welsh media seems merely apathetic. For us this is a challenge to try and increase our visibility in ever creative ways.

We are not without electoral assets. Our leader is young and a Welsh speaker. We have a variety of committed and energetic candidates. Our issues are closely associated with us, with other parties not seen as being in any way sincere.

This is a dragon I fully intend to enjoy chasing.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

From top: Environment Minister Alan Kelly (centre) with FAI chief executiveJohn Delaney (right) and his partner Emma English at Mr Kelly’s 40th birthday party; Dan Boyle

On foot of John Delaney’s endorsement of Alan Kelly the author argues it would be better if everyone in the public sphere declared their allegiances and inclinations.

Dan Boyle writes:

I wouldn’t be a fan of John Delaney. There are things he has done well, others he hasn’t. I would consider him to be grossly overpaid, but if he has convinced his employers he’s worth that then more power to him.

In canvassing with, and encouraging people to vote for Alan Kelly, I would say his judgement is questionable. However his right to publicly state political opinion, as a citizen, should be unquestioned.

In Ireland we live with this myth that those associated with NGOs, charities, arts organisations and sporting bodies are and should be apolitical.

This is a nonsense. Every person is political and every piece of human activity is political. The dance we practice that these people should not be avowedly political is also a nonsense. This is the Irish hypocrisy.

Maintaining this pretence sees the creation of a false politics often within these organisations themselves. A politics that is often more vicious than anything found in Leinster House.

As long as you are not avowedly political you can be nakedly so. There are caveats of course. If you are in or close to the mainstream, many blind eyes can be turned to pseudo near direct involvement with politics.

Those in this milieu can slip between the voluntary and the party political with consummate ease. I could reference Fergus Finlay, Frank Flannery or Angela Kerins, as those names speak for themselves. Those who espouse less than traditional viewpoints constantly end up being lectured on the necessity of strict impartiality.

Take the trade unions and their representatives. It’s taken for granted that they speak on behalf of the Labour Party, despite the fact that a majority of their members do not vote for that party.

Environmental NGOs take the other position. While their objectives are practically symmetrical with those of The Green Party, these organisations tie themselves up in knots to ensure that they don’t deal with The Greens in any favourable way.

Both these approaches are wrong.

It would be better if everyone in the public sphere declared their allegiances and inclinations. Knowing such biases they could be checked if they were ever seen to act on them. The likelihood is that having known what their opinions are they would overcompensate and would want to be seen in act in an opposite direction.

I wouldn’t be advocating a US approach where everyone from judges to dog catchers are linked to a political affiliation, although that could be said of our judges too.

Maybe we introduce a protocol where our citizens when brought before a court could choose a judge depending on what political party they had been appointed by? The only obvious caveat is the words or actions of anyone in the public sphere should not compromise their work or the work of the public body they represent.

John Delaney may not have anything interesting to say, but he like any one of us should not be restricted in what he can say.

Someone has to make the case for Alan Kelly.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party Td. His column appears here her every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

From top: Model of the incinerator planned for Cork Harbour; Dan Boyle

Plans for a toxic waste incinerator in Cork Harbour have resurfaced.

Will common sense now go up in smoke?

Dan Boyle writes:

It was fifteen years ago, almost to the day. A local reporter had tipped me off. A Belgian company was holding a press conference to announce their intention to construct not one, but two, incinerators in Cork Harbour. I invited myself.

The announcement had been carefully choreographed. It had been an open secret that senior officials in the Department of the Environment had been pushing incineration as a ‘convenient’ method of waste disposal. Consultants were appointed to come up with right answers, through the usual means of presenting contention as fact and doctoring the necessary figures.

The decision making process was turned arseways to produce a desired result. This would see the granting of an EPA licence before Bord Pleanala would decide if the proposed site was suitable for the suggested plant and buildings.

The director of the EPA, herself an IBEC appointment, declared herself in favour of incineration even as her organisation had yet to adjudicate on a licence. This was all part of the Department’s Yes Yes strategy.

However, in a rare show of independence, Bord Pleanala couldn’t give permission to a site with an inadequate road network that was prone to flooding.

There we thought it would lay. What I tried to do in the Oireachtas was to economically undermine incineration, to factor in its real environmental costs. Those pushing incineration didn’t seem to give damn about economics.

That fine public servant, John Tierney, when Dublin City Manager signed a contract for a Dublin incinerator days before John Gormley became Minister for the Environment.

Included in the contract was a clause that obliged the Irish taxpayer to pay the incinerator company whenever the Dublin local authorities did not present enough waste to burn.

Green objections to incinerators have never been about Nimbyism. We never wanted incinerators in anyone’s back yard. It’s a combustion process that adds to CO2. It undermines the need to recycle waste.

It’s a cocktail technology where different materials are mixed in quantities creating uncertainty as to what its potential by products are. It doesn’t get rid of waste, it merely puts it into other forms like fly ash and air pollution.

In government we drafted legislation which sought to introduce an incineration levy, that was to parallel an already existing landfill levy. The bill was published and was being considered when the government fell.

In his first act as Minister Phil Hogan took the bill, but removed the levy.

The viability of incineration increased hugely. Indaver, the Belgian company, last Monday announced its intention to resubmit its Cork application. It has reason to be even more confident that it will be successful this time.

The current Director General of the EPA is the person previously who presented the environmental case for Indaver at previous EPA and Bord Pleanala hearings.

When it comes the policy and decision making in Ireland it’s a very very small World.

Dan Boyle is former Green Party Td. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

From top: Lynton Crosby, seen by many as the man behind the Conservative’s 2015 UK General Election victory; Dan Boyle.

The divisive tactics of a newly-knighted Tory strategist will be implemented by Fine Gael this General Election.

Be afraid.

Dan Boyle writes:

While economic and social equality are concepts that seem ever distant in modern Ireland, I suppose we can be somewhat grateful that we’ve never developed an Honours system. Maybe it’s that collective hubris we share of never letting anyone get above themselves.

Our near neighbours have never had such qualms. While there are many in their society who gain worthy recognition for selfless activity, it is hard to avoid the impression that most awards are not given for services to the nation or to the body public, but to confirm and then entrench status within the system.

One of the major recipients in the UK’s New Year’s Honours list is an Australian political consultant, Lynton Crosby. It is debatable whether his achievement, in helping to elect the Conservative Party to government, is in any way in the best interest of UK. What is less debatable is that his honour is a reward from those who now have a stronger hand on the levers of power.

I mention this because the template that Lynton Crosby has successfully devised, is one that Fine Gael is intent on utilising for the coming Irish general election.

It’s also not unlike the methods being used by Donald Trump, albeit with less cartoon like intensity, in his attempt to win the Republican Party nomination for the US presidency.

It’s a method of political campaigning that ignores any attempt to persuade positively on the basis of policies, values or beliefs, but instead seeks to inculcate an exaggerated fear of an alternative or the alternative.

While recognising that politics and elections are more about sentiment than logic, is it too much to hope that informed debate might sometime be its basis?

I ask myself this question, and I ask it loudly, because I currently find myself in a situation of being a Lynton Crosby of sorts. On a much smaller scale of course. It’s not with the intent of electing a government, but to seek to have elected at least one person to be an alternative voice on a political body, that would help inform ongoing public debate.

One of the criticisms of the Green movement internationally, has been that it is made up of manic doomsayers and apocalypse hopefuls. It’s a narrative we’ve allowed be imposed on us.

We [Greens] didn’t invent this pretext. We’ve tried, with only limited success, to communicate what has seemed obvious to us – that how we deal or not with environmental issues has consequences for society and for the economy. I’ve always felt that a better analogy was of the boy pointing out that The Emperor was naked.

Politically this makes you no more popular. There may always be a reluctance in challenging the status quo. There will certainly be a reluctance of letting go of well cherished myths.

All of this is a convoluted way of saying that political success is more likely to occur when we create a fear of others, rather than confront the fears we have of what we are doing ourselves and to ourselves.

Becoming aware of this is as much an honour as anyone needs.

Dan Boyle is former Green Party TD. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

(Daily Telegraph)

From top: Sean Barrett, Joan Burton, Enda Kenny, Michael Martin at the lighting of the Oireachtas Christmas tree; Dan Boyle

2015. The year in review.

By Dan Boyle.

January – The Greek people go to their ballot boxes for the first of two general elections this year, interspersed with a referendum, to decide which of their political representatives would have the right to impose public expenditure cuts in the name of anti austerity.

February – Members of the commentariat are stunned into confusion when The Taoiseach recounts a story about meeting a member of the general public, that happens to be true.

March – In Washington at the White House, during this year’s forelock tugging ceremony, The Taoiseach presents President Obama with a bowl of medicinal shamrock.

April – At a press conference Michéal Martin displays a newly grown beard where he announces “We haven’t gone away you know!,”.

May – In an unexpected development, after a surprising election in the UK, a government is formed by UKIP in coalition with The Greens. Both parties have to make compromises. UKIP drops its objection to wind turbines, just as long as they are all white.

June – The Minister for the Environment, aware of the need to free the right kind of land for the right kind of development, issues a directive to all local authorities to make all cemeteries multi storey.

July – Fianna Fáil make a collective approach to the Kardashian family for assistance to meet its female candidate quota.

August – Accusations of political policing reach new heights when Paul Murphy TD is refused a licence to legally operate a bull horn. Gardaí claimed he had exceeded his previously allocated allowance for decibels.

September – The Taoiseach orders 24/7 army patrols at heritage sites at Newgrange and Cashel on foot of a decision by Bank of Ireland to locate ATM cash machines there.

October – Eamon Gilmore publishes a book detailing his role in ending wars in Vietnam, the Sudan and the War of Dun Laoghaire succession.

November – The Taoiseach delivers an erudite speech at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris. Delegates are taken with his theme “Climate Change is terrible. Someone should do something about it.”

December – Sinn Féin reveal an unpublished section of the Good Friday Agreement, where the British and Irish governments accepted that former IRA operatives should be allowed to engage in continued low level criminality as a cold turkey exercise, to wean them from their previous addiction to violence.

In 2016 we get to stress what real Irishness is all about. If we’re lucky we might even get to hold a referendum.

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

Smaller apartment sizes?

The solution of tiny minds.

Dan Boyle writes:

One of the best known and more popular songs of the vast repertoire of the late folk singer, Pete Seeger, was the tune ‘Little Boxes’.

It was written and sung deliberately in a children’s nursery rhyme style, as if to confirm the intellect level of those involved in the planning and construction of sub-standard housing, those whose stupidity the song was challenging.

“Little Boxes on the hill side
Little Boxes made of ticky tacky
Little Boxes on the hill side
And they all look just the same….”

I imagine Alan Kelly singing along to this tune, in that irony free way of his, while in his ministerial crèche at the Customs House. ‘Let them sleep upright’ could become his new cavalier catchphrase.

The audacity of being opposed to shoe box living while re-introducing shoe box apartments back to our housing stock. Maybe Alan Kelly believes what he’s saying. If he does he’s a bigger fool than most of us already believe he is.

The Construction Industry Federation must not believe their luck – To so soon again be given the opportunity to practice their unique form of economic, social and environmental vandalism.

Their lobbying claimed that building new apartment units was not ‘profitable enough’. Note the use of the word ‘enough’ revealing more than it should. The muted acceptance that profits could be made in making human/humane accommodation, just not the right type of gain.

It’s as if the last decade had never happened. We’re now firmly back in the era of squeeze them in, build them cheaply and build them quickly. The era that served us so well.

Maybe I’m being curmudgeonly? I could be focussing on the wrong type of nostalgia. How could I be forgetting those wonderful student parties of my youth. Those daily re-enactments of the ship berth scene from the Marx Brothers ‘A Night At The Opera’; or Graham Norton’s caravan in ‘Father Ted’, or even Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ video.

Maybe I’m overburdening this piece with too many cultural references? I’m fairly sure that Alan Kelly is practically devoid of culture. Other than, of course, the nod and wink culture he seems to be willing back into prominence.

That nod and wink culture, which prior to the introduction of ‘Riverdance’, had seen some of the most deft choreography this country has produced.

There remain some soft shoe, soft sell, geniuses who deserve further public exposure in our cultural firmament. Cllr. Hughie McElvaney from Monaghan is himself one such stylist, especially after his performance on the recent RTE Investigates programme ‘Strictly Fund Dancing’.

If I’m not being curmudgeonly I’m probably being churlish. Any fair minded commentator would recognise how this well timed, well thought intervention by the Minister, clearly illustrates how effective the Labour Party has been in stemming the undue influence of wealthy interest groups on our body politic.

An experience the party, with Alan Kelly at its fore, can put to even better effect as part of the next government.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

From top: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (second left), UNFCCC’s Christiana Figueres (left), French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and President of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21), and President François Hollande of France (right); Dan Boyle

Why are Greens more optimistic about the adoption of the Paris climate agreement than the cumulative failures that have come before?

Dan Boyle explains:

It was almost like they had taken the ball away. They reached an agreement? After the mess that was Copenhagen, six years ago, that hardly seemed likely.

It was a process that has been somewhat embellished. Less of an agreement than an understanding. A meeting of minds if not yet a meeting of interests.

Unlike treaties on trade, like the WTO or TTIP, the language used in climate agreements is far less definite. The ‘shall’ and ‘will ensure’ provisions of trade treaties are mirrored by phrases like ‘may’ and ‘will endeavour to’ that are meant to anchor climate agreements.

Climate documents are more coy about what they are trying to achieve. The final documents from Paris makes no reference to oil or to fossil fuels or to efforts to decarbonise. They do however contain many references to renewable energy and you can’t have one without being without the other.

Paris is a voluntary agreement. There are no fines or sanctions that can be imposed for non compliance. And yet environmentalists, hoping against hope, believe for once progress has been made.

The promises are vague, the consequences of failing to adhere to them are weak. What we do have is a confirmation that a long time scientific reality is fast becoming a political reality.

The electoral cycle has also been kind. Environmental neanderthals in Australia and Canada were deposed making way for somewhat more enlightened representatives. In the US, President Obama seems committed to making progress in this area as part of his legacy. The lack of a formal adoption procedure may help. With a presidential election looming it removes the opportunity of The Republicans to pour their ignorance over the agreement.

Ireland has been passive in this process. The pathetic pleadings of The Taoiseach and the Minister for the Environment means that the country is poorly positioned to take advantage of the post carbon economy that now has to result.

The vacuity of what has been written will be open to many interpretations. There will foot dragging, policy incoherence, obfuscation and outright lies. The environmental movement faces its greatest ever challenge in campaigning for the spirit of the Paris agreement to be followed.

Knowing the hard job that still needs to be done, while realising the many opt outs that exist for those who still to deny, why are Greens more optimistic about this process than the cumulative failures that have come before?

It’s because for the first time the governments of the World seem to be collectively facing the same direction. There is an acceptance and an admission of the problem that exists. A recognition that actions are needed. There is even a realisation that without radical changes the actions necessary will prove difficult.

And yet it is all cloaked in Augustinian equivocation. Make us pure Lord but not yet. At best the Paris Agreement can be described as the time the governments of the World chose to hit the snooze button instead of trying to turn off the alarm.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

From top: ‘Whiner In Chief’ Monaghan councillor Hugh McElvaney; Dan Boyle

Tackling local government corruption is easier said than done.

Dan Boyle writes:

There were many reasons why The Greens wanted to be in government in 2007. High on the list was to try to do something about political corruption, especially at local government level.

Many of us had had a decade or so experience on our respective local councils. Each of us had knowledge of one or two councillors who just smelled dirty. They wore their being sly, smug and sinister as a badge of pride.

They gloried in their petty corruption. They were the experts in maximising expenses, in seeking to go to any ‘conferences’ anywhere. At these events they would sign in their attendance, not attend the seminar, maybe play a round a golf, but more likely return home.

They kept rum company. Builders and developers seem to take an unnatural interest in council meetings. The corridors were frequented by those engaged in close headed, whispered, conversations.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were the parties that seemed happiest to count these these councillors in their number. This was their Praetorian Guard.

Their devotion to their party gave them the right, they felt, to behave how they liked in public office. The ever loyal party vote would elect them time after time, without questions ever having to be asked. Politics was about tribe, rarely about a better society.

Led by the experience of those of their ilk in Leinster House, many of these sadly all too stereotypical councillors thought this council lark a great laugh. Money for nothing and your (stone) chips for free. Buoyed by this sense of entitlement they felt nothing would ever change. For the most of the time nothing did.

On becoming Minister for the Environment and Local Government, John Gormley immediately made himself a hate figure with these self(ish) made men. Spending on conferences, codified as training, was capped per member. It certainly wasn’t a strategy to elect future Green senators.

He acted upon public complaints on how local authorities were, but more certainly were not delivering services, particularly in relation to their planning departments. He initiated six separate inquiries into differently identified local authorities.

The nature of the wrongdoing varied from failing to provide public information, ignoring public processes altogether, to tolerating built structures bearing no resemblance to the granted public permission.

He encountered many layers of resistance. Firstly from senior officials within his department who didn’t want any inquiries. Negative findings might reveal that as regulators of local government they had been negligent.

The second line of resistance was from city and county managers. Not really accountable to the department or to their elected members, many managers resisted ministerial interference into their bailiwicks. They should be, they believed, the sole arbiters of what was ethical in local government. The blind eye had always served them well.

Then there was the mudguard of the revolution, the members of those councils whose feigned outrage was raised to an art form.

Whiner in chief was Cllr Hugh McElvaney. Monaghan Council had form. John Gormley had already rejected their County Plan, which had zoned many more housing units than they had people. For these councils the ultimate cash crop had become cash.

But what of those inquiries. They still haven’t seen the light of day. Curious that.

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