Tag Archives: Irish Times Letters

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Fine Gael TD and junior minister Damien English launching the party’s Investing in the Early Years Plan in the CHQ Building, Dublin before the election in February

I was somewhat surprised to learn that Fintan O’Toole takes his policy views from US talk radio (I would have thought he was more a Guardian reader myself) but that probably explains why his view on foreign direct investment and Ireland’s industrial policy is so out of touch with reality.

The taxation of multinationals is based on the source principle. Countries tax the profits from operations located in their countries. Although some of the world’s largest companies have operations in Ireland, we can only tax them on the profit they generate from their activities in Ireland. This we do.

The issue being debated in the US at the moment, however, relates to a loophole in the US tax code which allows “deferral” of corporate income taxes, and allows US multinationals to delay certain tax payments until the profits are transferred to US-incorporated entities in their corporate structure.

Some companies (not surprisingly) are trying to defer payment for ever. We aren’t the problem. The US tax code is.

Indeed, the US treasury secretary has written to the European Commission stating that while the US does not collect the tax until repatriation, the US system of deferral “does not give EU member states the legal right to tax this income”.

Ireland’s 12½ per cent corporation tax rate is a key part of our offering to multinationals but it is not the only reason they come here.

We offer access to EU markets, a well-educated and a highly skilled workforce. Winning the war for talent is critical to our future success.

That is why my work as Minister of State for Skills, Research and Innovation was focused on making sure we continued to foster and develop Ireland’s talent pool through a new innovation strategy and a new skills strategy.

I look forward to hearing Fintan explain the real facts of the matter to Rush Limbaugh or the good folks who listen to the News from Lake Wobegon.

Damien English TD
Minister of State for Skills,
Research and Innovation,
Leinster House, Dublin 2.

Ireland, taxation and multinationals (Irish Times letters page)

Related: Fintan O’Toole: US taxpayers growing tired of Ireland’s one big idea (Irish Times)

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

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‘Communication consultant’ James Morrissey

[Media analyst] Colum Kenny’s article “Paddy not getting full story due to media constraints” is most interesting. Is this Prof Colum Kenny of the Department of Communications at DCU quoting his colleague “Dr Roddy Flynn of DCU” in relation to media issues?

For clarity, I am a communications consultant to clients, including Denis O’Brien.

Mr O’Brien does not control Independent News & Media, nor is he a director.

Neither is he chairman of Communicorp, as incorrectly stated by Colum Kenny.

During my years in journalism, and since, I do not recall Colum ever getting exercised about media ownership when he was a very regular columnist at the Sunday Independent and at a time when INM’s share of the media market was considerably greater than it is today.

A pity Colum didn’t give Paddy the full story.

Jame Morrissey,
Dublin 4.

Any excuse

Meanwhile…

Ireland’s political parties have been urged by the National Union of Journalists to tackle the thorny issue of media ownership and control in the country.

The NUJ renewed a call for the establishment of a commission on the future of the media, arguing that cross-party co-operation should form part of the current negotiations on the formation of a new government….

Roy Greenslade,The Guardian

Colum Kenny: Paddy not getting full story due to media constraints (Irish Times letters page)

NUJ calls for commission to investigate media ownership in Ireland (The Guardian)

Previously: Red Everywhere

Morrissey And Mar’

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Dave and Fred from our Marriage Referendum pets series last year

With regard to Lara Marlowe and Karlin Lillington’s “The real debate: canines or felines?” (February 6th), it is a popular misconception that cats are more intelligent than dogs; in fact the reverse is true. The concept of intelligence is all but impossible to define, but most would consider the capacity for relationship to be an indicator of some kind of mental competency.

Dogs, which were first domesticated around 15,000 years, are pack animals and evolved to live as part of often complex social hierarchies. Cats, first domesticated around 12,000 years ago with the onset of the agricultural revolution, evolved as solitary creatures. The latter came to live in proximity to humans thanks to their interest in the rats that congregated around early-agricultural grain stores. As such, they never actually wanted to be close to humans per se.

The “panting, tail-wagging excitement” Lara Marlowe cites is actually indicative of dogs’ more complex psychology, while the “mystery” and “intelligence” of cats derives from the fact their mental capacities are relatively limited. It is not that cats are aloof; they are simply incapable of love, and what is often mistaken for sophistication is in in reality a zombie-like vacuity. Cats are rather like furry goldfish.

Luke Holland,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.

FIGHT!

Cats and dogs – the real debate (Irish Times)

times

Enda Kenny finally emerges to review the storm crisis that has been ongoing for over a month. When he does so, he and his friends share a joke as one unfurls an umbrella printed with the words “I love rain” (January 1st). There are many who do not love the rain, many for whom the floods of the last number of weeks have caused personal devastation and economic misery.

Cake, anyone?

Paul Kelly,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.

Responding to flooding crisis (Irish Times letters page)

Meanwhile…

Said Enda by the floods in Athlone
As the people there cried out ‘ochón’
Mayor Tom with your brolly
In this season of jolly,
To the haterz just say… ‘póg mo thón’

Mícheal Ó Diarmada

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For the 43 days that are going to be in it.

The Rugby World Cup will be on our screens very shortly, with 48 games live! I have to say that I’m not looking forward to it. I love sport. I watch anything from hurling to horse racing but rugby leaves me cold. It takes three minutes from the set-up of a scrum, which invariably falls down a couple of times, to the eventual appearance of the ball, which is then kicked up to Row Z in the stands.
We then have to suffer the television panel, where the words “players”, “lads”, or “men” will never be used. It will be “guys” all the way. But it is listening to every pub expert talking about Ireland’s success or failure “at the breakdown” that will push me over the edge. I wish our nation all the best in the upcoming games but this “guy” will not be looking for a front seat “at the breakdown”.

Pat Burke Walsh,
Ballymoney,
Co. Wexford

Ruck!

The Scrum Of The Earth? (Irish Times Letters)

Meanwhile…

paddypower

Angry arb asks:

Worst money back special ever From Paddypower?

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The Priory Hall apartment complex in Donaghmede, north Dublin

In the Irish Times editorial (Building regulations: Politics over planning, August 17) the proposed exemption of one-off houses from the requirements of the Building Regulations is referred to as a “bonus to the one-off houses . . sucking the life out of towns and villages”.

Recent experience in Ireland has demonstrated that the problems of defective housing go well beyond this. The cost to the State of repairing Priory Hall and of the pyrite remediation scheme runs to tens of millions.

One of the disappointing aspects of the recent report on the regulations was the failure to consider why professional fees for building site inspections can be so much more expensive here than in the UK, where inspection of a one-off house typically costs less than £500 (€700).

Instead, it was decided to exempt one-off houses from the regulations altogether. One-off houses are not inherently lower-risk; the report itself notes that “small houses carry big risks”, for example in relation to radon, subsidence and septic tanks.

The result will be that houses will be built without any inspections, with potentially disastrous consequences for owners, future purchasers, and the public purse. Defects are often impossible for purchasers to see when deciding to buy. This is why inspection in the course of construction is mandatory in other countries.

It beggars belief that we would now choose to exempt new houses from inspections, given the misery that poorly-built housing has brought to so many.

Deirdre Ní Fhloinn,
School of Law,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.

FIGHT!

Why we need Building Regulations (Irish Times letters page)

Laura Hutton/Rollingnews.ie

form

The following is a confession: On July 8th, 2015 at 9.46am, I registered with Irish Water and spent the rest of the day feeling anxious and conflicted.

There was more at stake than the incentive of a €100 conservation grant, which in any case I had missed out on.

By registering with Irish Water I became complicit in a system of resource management that I do not trust to protect and uphold water as a collective good.

Since I am now complicit in what I disagree with, what is to be my redress? And am I alone? The writer Simone Weil reminds me that “If we know in what way society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter scale . . . we must have formed a conception of equilibrium and be ever ready to change sides like justice, ‘that fugitive from the camp of conquerors’.”

I have realised that what is at stake is a deeper understanding of what we, as a collective of strangers and friends living on an island at the edge of Europe, hold in common as a collective good and of shared value to each of us.

Water is one such collective good. It seems clear to me that, in Ireland, how we think about, look after and provide access to this collective good is in a state of crisis.

It seems clear that water needs constitutional protection. Perhaps this would help to add weight to the “lighter scale”. – Is mise le meas,

JESSICA FOLEY

North Strand Road,

Dublin 3.

Irish water and registering dissent (Irish Times letters page)

Previously: Left To Their Own Devices

Pic: Irish Water

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Communications Minister Alex White

Theseuswhatnow?

From the Irish Times letters page…

“I don’t understand why Minister for Communications Alex White is so averse to legislation to clean up past media ownership deals that are strangling freedom of speech (“McDowell ‘chancing his arm’, says Minister”). In the past Mr White has vigorously defended openness. But he is guardian of an industry where Denis O’Brien has been allowed a controlling interest in media from Antrim to Kerry, in print and on the airwaves.”

“Diversity is obviously necessary in media ownership. But both the Competition Authority and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland have been remiss in protecting the public interest on this issue. Why? It seems to me that corporate power speaks loudest in the ears of each of these bodies.”

“Mr White believes “constitutional property rights” prevent retrospective legislation. But the nursing home charges in 2004 were installed under a retrospective law. Neither the Supreme Court nor his own Government have done anything to reverse that situation. The constitution forbids retrospective criminal legislation, but is silent on such retrospective civil legislation as this.”

“Sadly I fear Mr White gets to the heart of the issue when he also cites “labyrinthine commercial issues”. It’s my guess that, at the heart of that labyrinth is a Denis O’Brien, still awaiting his Theseus.
RONAN BRADY,
Dublin 7.”

Diversity of media ownership (Irish Times)

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 Skellig Michael island, Co Kerry, July 2014

 So we can afford to give a hugely wealthy film production company free use of a State asset, namely an Air Corps helicopter, for the filming of Star Wars on Skellig Michael (“Star Wars given free use of Defence Forces resources”).

The usual justification for such Government largesse is that it will attract tourists to Ireland. To see what?

Well, not the outstanding ethnographic collection of the National Museum for example, as it can’t afford to display it, nor the closed George Bernard Shaw Museum, and probably not the archives of the Jewish Museum for much longer, and most definitely not a Rubens at Russborough House.

It is time for the Minister for the Arts Heather Humphreys to start typing some invoices and fully realise the value of our cultural capital, as I am sure Disney’s accountants do.

Erica Devine
Sandycove,
Co Dublin.

FIGHT!

Previously: Darth Looks

Pic: Sheila Larkin