Opinion Polls
Opinions are like arseholes. Everybody has one. These days every newspaper has a poll and from incomplete records, I count at least 137 published since government came to office in April 2011.
This was not always the case. The first poll conducted by an Irish political party was done by Brendan Halligan and Gallup for the Labour Party in 1969. MBRI began political polling in the 1970s before their now long standing partnership with the Irish Times in 1982.
Available data indicates that there were just 34 commissioned by the media in twenty one years between 1971 and 1992. Most of this occurred in the 80s or, saw EU and divorce votes bookended by abortion referendums. As far as who’s up-who’s down politics was concerned, polling was largely confined in the lead up to general elections themselves.
Today, polls form a central part of both media content and how politics is discussed. All parties conduct them privately. Newspapers rely heavily on the material not only dedicating several articles to the findings but writers reference the poll throughout each page, building a ‘truth’ with repetition in the mind of readers.
Polls are used to make new arguments and reinforce already held positions. Polls are used to dictate news cycles and set boundaries of what may be discussed.
The past few years have felt like saturation. A good portion of this can be explained by the convenience polling offers newsrooms under budgetary pressure. The hard work of news gathering is effectively outsourced. Without leaving the office, journalists are served exclusive information from which they can squeeze a few hundred words.
More concerning to my mind, is that there is no small connection between the tide of support ebbing away from establishment politics and the frequency with which we are now compelled to focus on these choices as the only show in town.
Take the bemusement and sensationalism that greeted water protests in the latter part of 2014. Opinion pages and airwaves were full of amateur anthropologists scratching their heads as if they had stumbled upon a lost Amazonian tribe. 'What is it these people want?’ the media wondered.
The anger and motivations were incomprehensible and this is the result when “politics” is ring-fenced as a game of swings and arrhythmic. Just think how opinion polls feed a narrative about 'stable government’ for example. This is bread and butter on which journalists and politicians can expound at length. Polls put them [and keep us] in safe and comfortable territory. Now take the other media narratives polls have produced over the last five years.
- Fianna Fáil support static and the pressure this put on that party’s leadership
- Horror and bewilderment that Sinn Féin support, while reaching a ceiling, had not went into decline on foot of continuous real and contrived outrages.
- The slow demise of the Labour Party
- The seemingly unshakable rise of Independents/Other
Acres of coverage was devoted to these stories based on little more than fluctuations within the margin of error. The water protests demonstrated that not only had all this polling left journalists completely unaware of public sentiment, but that the media by and large are unequipped to discuss and contextualise equally valid political activity that occurs outside the gates of Leinster House.
The reliance on polling creates and reinforces blind spots, leaving everyone’s understanding of 'politics’ all the more bereft.
Somewhat inconveniently for this view, it is polling itself that has been the most regular reminder of this disconnect. Jack Jones, the late founder of MBRI explained the following some years ago,
National polls represent an overall average for all parties, across all 42 constituencies, and when interpreting the figures it is necessary therefore to take account of the number of constituencies in which each party normally nominates candidates. For Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (and to some extent Labour), this means all 42, but in 1997 the PDs contested 27, and while the overall party average was 4.7 per cent, in the contested constituencies the figure was 7.3 per cent, which returned four seats. In other words, the national average for small parties is not particularly relevant, and each should be viewed in a different context from the larger parties which contest all or most constituencies.
While the above is true, this known unknown aspect has provided cover to ignore what is the biggest story in politics since 2008. The rise of The Others - more better understood as a rejection of established parties and processes - has dominated the last five years of Irish polling.
Greece, Spain, Labour UK and US presidential primaries have each given their own manifestation to this sentiment but mainstream Irish discussion has simply written it off as outside or 'anti’ politics. When pushed, it is simply dismissed as “anything from Clare Daly to Shane Ross”, itself a neat way to confine the whole of politics to Dáil seats, and examined no further.
Richard McAleavey over at Cunning Hired Knaves outlines the following
Seeing things this way leads to the highlighting of certain tendencies at the expense of others. For example, many people whose candidate or party of choice falls under the ‘Independents and Others’ grouping might complain, with justification, that their political priorities, the political content of what they are expressing by opting to vote for someone who falls under ‘Independents and Others’, is hidden from view. As a consequence, when it comes to public discussion of what is going on, our perspective is focused on what developments mean for the established state of things, rather than what different kinds of political thinking are expressed in the different voting pattern. Clearly ‘Independents and Others’ is a very bad place to end up if you’re going to talk about the different kinds of political thinking that might be expressed by people whose vote winds up in this grouping. But this is often where it both begins and ends, especially in mainstream discourse. Such votes then appear as a ‘protest vote’ or a vote against the major parties, an act that is purely reactive rather than conscious political expressions of this or that kind.
This demonstrates how reporting of polls can obscure more than they reveal but more than that, polls are more than a reflection of a space in time when used so often, sometimes unconsciously, to undergird established power or agendas.
In this respect, polling, and certainly the way in which it is analysed, has become a means to buttress a system of power facing a crisis of legitimacy.
On the more deliberate side of things we can look a few examples.
Writing in 2010, Denis O'Brien alluded to something he called “phone polls of questionable provenance” at the Sunday Independent. These polls stopped when he won full control of the paper but until then had allegedly been conducted by a mercurial entity called 'Quantum Research’. No one outside the Harris/Fanning editorial office ever found evidence that this company existed and it is widely regarded to be an in-house fabrication aimed a selling papers while pushing a myriad of editorial agendas.
Stephen Collins, political editor at the Irish Times has a habit of putting dubious spin on poll results to chime with government interests. Last year he led with claim that 'nearly 80% will pay the controversial water charge’. The result in fact said nearly 60% 'will never’ pay. Before that, in what rabble reported as “a manipulation of a survey question, a survey answer and finally the misreporting of both”, Collins waved his magic over results to align them favourably with government intentions on Direct Provision. From that same dataset, he claimed that voters favour tax cuts over over public services. The results said nothing of the sort.
That latter simplistic question is a regular in polling and just as often dismissed when the wrong result comes in. Ahead of budget 2012 a RedC poll found, 88% agreed with higher taxes on earnings over 100k. The Sunday Business Post who commissioned the poll got around this inconvenience by simply not bothering to report their own findings.
Their political editor Pat Leahy tweeted the following last week and repeated the assertion on television after the RTÉ leader’s debate.
We do not know what 'politicos’ move in Leahy’s circle but the scepticism should be no surprise given that politicians and media alike overwhelmingly push one preference.
A recent Sunday Business Post RedC article contained the following claim
Our pre-campaign polling over several months has identified the battle for floating voters as being between the desire for a stable economy versus a fairer society.
Did it really? A battle that no one would possibly dream up in their own?
The 'versus’ there is interesting, is it not? Tacit admission that the world is presented to us as a false and straight decision between stability and equality. Class division erased, neatly excluding the inconvenience that 'stability’ only ever means prosperity for some and that this 'stable economy’ as defined is in direct conflict with a fair society.
One of our most recent uses of opinion polling has been Clare Bynre Live on RTÉ Television and the addition of a “bespoke smartphone panel”. Here, you dear viewer, the voice of the public, are reduced to a statistic on screen, answering a loaded question that you were never asked.
Here’s our favourite question again!
RTÉ TV current affairs specialise in framing complex issues as a choice between two simplistic opposing views and this Clare Byrne Live polling is the latest in meaningless divide and conquer. Perhaps the only useful information to be gleaned so far was a poll last year that found more people supported water protesters breaking the law than had actually paid the charge. Not that anyone in studio noticed.
The big story of last year’s British election was the extent to which opinion polls failed to predict the eventual result. Labour, it turns out, didn’t stand a chance. Or so it seemed. Much of the polling beforehand took its cue from now evidentially dubious data and methods developed by Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative Party deputy chairman who after seeing his loyalty go unrewarded has since taken to publishing details about the Prime Minister humping a dead pig.
This article is a must read for anyone even vaguely interested in politics. In it Shaun Lawson weaves an intriguing and entirely credible story of how error and potentially worse, shaped that Westminster election. Lawson asks how such an obviously self-interested individual like Ashcrost became the most influential figure in British opinion polling, a process he keeps shrouded in secrecy, and wonders why more people are not asking the same.
Back home, opinion polling will continue to narrow political horizons while providing little enlightenment. Even when they do, what stares us in the face is often ignored. Take the question of abortion. A RedC poll conducted in the immediate days following news of Savita Halappanavar showed Fine Gael dropped six points from 34 to 28%.
This was perhaps one of the few real causal shifts in five years and to this day the party remains in the mid to high twenties. Curiously, many commentators dismiss this issue as a “distraction” and welcomed quote, “return to the real business” when legislation finally passed in 2013. That is, the real serious business that barely effects party support by a percent or two.
Polling on the issue itself shows those, so anti-choice inclined as to decide their vote on the issue are utterly marginal but, even as the election campaign continues, politicians continue to hide. Evidence perhaps that candidates are keenly aware that opinion polls do little to capture the complexity of hard political reality.
So to conclude, I conducted my own poll of sorts by asking a number of people for their opinion on opinion polls
Dr Adrian Kavanagh, a geographer at NUIM and popular opinion analysist.
Polls effectively can drive news cycles for the period immediately after they are taken and a consistent trend across a number of polls will generally feed into how certain parties get portrayed by the media
Dotski, who runs the excellent Irish Polling Report website
All Politics IS Local
Plywood creates a new hallway on my walk home. The modest shelter of this doorway had been home to a woman for what must have been the last year or so. Who knows where she has moved but this latest renovation makes its intention clear.
Just around the corner, in the shadow of Galway cathedral, there is regular evidence of persons sleeping rough beside the local FÁS office.
Last December as I waited for a bus in Eyre Square, Chris Rea was booming out of the Christmas market. Yards away, a dozen people lay in doorways with no home to drive home to. Your head naturally fills with all the sentimental visions of roaring fireplaces and crammed dinner tables surrounded by those who care for you. It is impossible to understand how people must feel.
Over 10,000 are on the housing list while the council spends €16,000 a month on emergency accommodation. Last summer, certain hotels were eager to kick families out the minute tourist season arrived. A dominant feature of the same market forces policy makers entrust with the solution.
Directly across the road from our new plywood hallway is Galway Hospital. In what must feel like a small step up from destitution, the elderly, infirm and misfortunate wait, wait and wait on trolleys. Everyone else is waiting years for an appointment.
Across town, the Blackrock Clinic have offered to pay landscaping costs on a roundabout opposite its entrance. Just before Christmas, a man drove straight into the middle and, after four days missing, was only discovered when a passenger on a doubledecker bus spotted his car crashed among overgrown bushes. The great recovery had not yet reached local authority maintenance of this, the main entrance to Galway city, so Blackrock Clinic have graciously offered share part of their 11% rise in healthcare profit toward a modicum a public service.
Back at our public hospital staff are under enormous pressure and despite their efforts, the bad news rolls in by the week. Overcrowding, labour shortage, spiralling costs, cancelled surgeries and all the headlines you will be familiar with at your own local centre of excellence. During this past government term Galway merits special distinction for making headlines around the world after Savita Halappanavar, a local dentist, too had to wait and wait before death. When the news broke that November morning I brought coffee to a solitary protester who made a dignified and defiant stand at the entrance throughout the day. We exchanged few words having few of comprehension but understood well enough. We will never forget Savita in Galway.
Another woman was buried just this week, having been found in Merlin Woods after a seven day search. She follows a young woman two weeks ago who was recovered from the docks having met the river the night before. The sound of the RNLI helicopter has become grimly familiar to everyone. Its drone heard all hours of the night and day.
“Tragic circumstances” have become so routine as to soften traditionally austere hearts. We have reached the point when burly pub security men sincerely bid you “safe home” as you pass their door into the night. They are very often the last ones to see people alive. The back of a bouncer’s head now a regular cameo on desperate grainy CCTV footage.
The decent generosity and cooperation of community in these agonising moments is unrecognisable from a world that leaves people feeling so isolated to begin with. It is difficult for me to reconcile the two.
Galway has always been a town of blow-ins and transients but behind the statistics we are familiar with, it is frightening to see how the place has been hollowed out. Publicans tell me how regular faces once lining the bar have vanished. Those who can leave are always making plans. Years have slipped by unnoticed and now many of your friends have become London people or Perth people. How did that happen?
That other great indicator of prosperity, heroin, while nothing new is making alarming in-roads in a way I cannot recall in my life time. Associated petty crime makes most of the headlines but you get the sense we are approaching a tipping point. We lost one friend this time last year.
Last week, a group of nine families from the Travelling community occupied the grounds of City Hall in protest. They had been moved from pillar to post over the last few months after their halting site, their home, became too much to bear next to a hazardous landfill on the city’s outskirts.
At a march last December, two African women spoke candidly of treatment that would make your skin crawl. They cannot so much walk down the street without being propositioned or abused from passing cars. Gender and race marks them as an easy target for men who I’m sure are explanatory friends, family and husbands.
Since the Paris attacks last year, the South Asian gentleman behind the counter in my corner shop started wearing an IRFU hat. I have no idea what religion he follows if any, but assume the shamrock crest on his head is an effort to make him that little less Other in the eyes of the ignorant.
Earlier in the year I listened to a woman from Nigeria speak about the “parallel life” her family endures in Direct Provision. The company profiting from this quiet barbarism are taking home six figures annually.
All politics is local or at least this is what we are told. Depending on the audience, politicians are busy making promises about the local or national interest. Local is very different things to each of us. A short walk around town is enough to see nothing but parallel lives and contradictions.
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Irish Financial Services - Pampered, Sluggish, Underperforming And Damaging Growth
Like Bobby Ewing back from the dead and out of the shower, our beloved “Irish Financial Services Centre” have now fully rebranded as “International Financial Services (in Ireland)” which, short of adopting the name “Dirtbag Comprador Running Dog Scum” is as honest a move we’ve seen on Dublin’s docklands in many years.
Fine Gael rugrat Simon Harris and the IDA were at today’s launch with the promise 10,000 new jobs.
Whether these are the same 10,000 new jobs Enda Kenny promised in July 2011, or November 2012, or July 2013, or February 2014, or July and December last year is anyone’s guess!
At the launch of a “new strategy” in 2011, Enda Kenny claimed there were already 33,000 directly employed in financial services and set his goal of 10,000 for 2016. Backed up by the finest minds in the industry no less.
At the launch of a similar wheeze last March, Harris put the figure at 35,000 and that number remains the very same a year later according to the new website which regrettably leaves government 8000 jobs short of their own target. Dear oh dear.
How reliable are these figures? Well, we do not know. Not even finance minister Michael Noonan does given that in 2013 he was forced to concede in the Dáil that his department keep no official record and are content to rely on whatever IBEC tell them.
IBEC of course sat on the shadowy IFSC Clearing House Group, itself since rebranded as the “Industry Advisory Committee” in effort to shake off some toxic associations resulting from the crash. Read Mark Malone for more on that.
The Clearing House Group was a committee of banks, the most senior civil servants and usual middlemen consultants operating under the Dept of Taoiseach. A committee so well connected, so deep on the inside, that the Illuminati had conspiracy theories about them.
It does beg the question though. Given financial services are, in policy terms, undoubtedly the most powerful sector in the country. To the extent that the “national interest” is made synonymous with their own.
Where “national sovereignty” will never be invoked so loudly as when in defence of the corporate tax regime or against a transaction tax. Where on his first outing as Taoiseach, Enda Kenny was keen to tell the funds industry that his “door is always open”.
With all this influence and unrivalled support, how is it that the IFSC has fallen so short of the government target? It really is a miserable showing by even the deluded standards of corporate Ireland
A report published by our dear friends in the IMF last year named Ireland as part of a club where reliance on financial services had “crossed a line” and become a drag on the real economy.
Apparently we are among “countries suffering from what they call “too much finance”, who use their financial resources less efficiently. They
allocate less and less to productive activities meaning that the
overall productivity growth in economies slows”.
That is to say, not only is the IFSC under preforming in its own right but has also potentially started to damage much prized growth itself. This coupled with the weight of bailouts and debt repayments means Irish finance really has a lot to answer for.
With ministers in their pocket and everything gifted on a plate. Perhaps the bankers have become complacent. Content to drift along, ignoring government targets safe in the knowledge there will be no sanction only reward. Indeed, evidence given at the Bank Inquiry last year, Ex-Financial Regulator Liam O'Reilly was happy to concede there are few rules and even less enforcement.
Or maybe the opposite is the case. Take this by Conor McCabe in 2012 which found that just seven people are director of 1284 “companies” supposedly operating in Dublin’s docklands. With that kind of ethic on display is any wonder other hopefuls are struggling to find a days work….
Maybe these 10,000 new jobs will materialise by the new target of 2020. Or maybe government promises, like financial services, are just a massive crock of shit.
The
Tánaiste out in a fucking boat for her flood photo op.
But hang on …the water is
only up to the photographer’s ankle.
She accuses people on the
dole of fraud…
The president has convened the Council of State to examine Fitzgerald and O'Riordan’s despicable International Protection Bill. Meeting is now adjourned so up to himself now whether or not it should be referred to the Supreme Court. I wouldn’t have too much confidence in the judges - not least considering the attitudes to asylum we are already well aware of - but the length of time involved could see the legislation scuppered in any case.
There is a depressing amount comment floating around along the lines of ‘why this and not x issue’ - a variant on 'looking after our own’, basically. While it is true that something like the liquidation of IBRC should have received far more scrutiny there should be no doubt that Michael D has made the right call here. Rather than going against every other policy that we don’t like in the hope of winning some sort of argument, this one has a chance of winning as there is a recognised body of work and law to support objections to government’s plans for refugees.
Another thing to remember is that the Council of State is meeting to discuss legislation that passed in a week when several senior Irish journalists insisted their was no important Dáil business. Pat Leahy, David Davin-Power and Mick Clifford by my count alone but the theme pervaded right through political coverage since November at least. All this speaks volumes about the standards and culture operating among those paid to report on Leinster House. Whatever way you look at 2015, refugees are the single biggest story of the year. But when it came to the Irish response our esteemed political correspondents were busy writing about Averil Power’s xmas calender.
Senators Taking The Piss
Senators using public funds to campaign for a Dáil seat should be
charged with theft.
It is straight abuse of their parliamentary expenses and Oireachtas resources.
Averil Power is catching some heat today for printing calenders to distribute in the Dublin Bay North constituency.
Unfortunately for the senator and her Diploma in Legal Studies from the Kings Inns, Article 18 of the Irish constitution states that she does not represent any of her 73,000 intended pen pals.
In the wake of Prime Time Investigates this month, politicians from all sides were falling over each other to insist they should not be vilified because of the actions of a tiny unrepresentative minority. The sort of fair mindedness they would never extend to say, the unemployed.
I mean, print & distribution of Averil Power’s calenders is going to cost you €2949. That’s nearly 16 weeks worth of jobseekers allowance if we’re counting. Three months rent in a city apartment perhaps. The tuition fee needed to enter an Irish university. All gone in Oireachtas expenses in the hope of electoral gain.
Take another example from earlier in the year.
This appeared on the front page a local newspaper in June. Catherine Noone is also struggling to understand her defined role as a legislator.
As a practising solicitor she might take a look at the Standards in Public Office Act 2001. Section 2.2.3 of the Code of Conduct for Office Holders refers to the fact that office holders “are
provided with facilities at public expense in order that public
business may be conducted effectively”. The section goes on to say that
“use of these facilities should be in accordance with this principle”. Section 2.2.3 further states that “official facilities should be used only for official purposes” and that “office
holders should ensure that their use of officially provided facilities
are designed to give the public value for money and to avoid any abuse
of the privileges which, undoubtedly, are attached to office”.
As a member elected to the Industrial and Commercial panel of Seanad Éireann she has no ‘constituents’ to “work for” in Dublin West. In her tweets we also got no straight answer as to whether or not this Senator is using expenses granted to her as a member of the Oireachtas to campaign for a seat in the Dáil.
For example, incumbent TDs are barred from using expenses, postage, printing, etc, for campaigns once Dáil is dissolved and rightly so. It makes complete sense that if you want to run for election, you pay for it yourself.
Senators are paid €1,262 per week. That’s €65,621 a year, still placing them with the ‘squeezed middle’ as defined by Michael Noonan. On top of this and among many other perks, they can claim up to fifteen grand in ‘Public Representation Allowance‘ despite not having any public to represent especially in any Dáil constituency.
Lorainne Higgins has been rejected by public vote in Local Elections, General Elections and European Elections. Every election she stood in basically. She sits in the Seanad as a Taoiseach’s nominee and carries on like she speaks for Galway East.
Another nominee, Hildegarde Naughton, rents an office down the road here despite not representing the constituency of Galway West. Here is a recent letter to her “constituents” that you paid for.
To complete the Galway trinity, Fidelma Healy Eames has mentioned Oranmore no less than 89 times during Seanad business despite failing to take a seat in every single general election since 2002. Quite a record.
However, Senator Noone’s claim that this practice is ‘commonplace’ gets to the heart of things. We can gnash teeth all we like about rural councillors looking for bribes but the behaviour of many Senators is institutionalised and perfectly acceptable robbery. The papers will have stopped talking about calenders and xmas cards by tomorrow but they would never scrutinise newspapers accepting publicly funded advertising payments from politicians.
However most of this is not about the money, or abuse of office or casual arrogance per say. Essentially it comes down this, senators by dint of being favoured by party HQ have enormous campaigning resources that are far from the reach of the rest of us.
There is absolutely nothing democratic about that.
Bombs and Bench Warrants
Yesterday afternoon gardaí arrested Clare Daly and Mick Wallace before transferring them prison. Both are now outside having spent longer in the back of squad car than behind bars.
This charming contraption is a United States Air Force KC-135 photographed in County Clare back in June of this year. A variant on this model has been used in every brutal war since Vietnam.
Difficult to imagine it is a benevolent presence in Ireland or the world.
Since 2001 Ireland has enthusiastically facilitated the CIA’s illegal programme of secret detention and extraordinary rendition. People who without trial passed through Shannon on their to way the torture chamber. A practice Obama was forced to apologise for just weeks after the Irish state jailed Margaretta D'arcy.
55,405 troops transited through Shannon on their way to war in 2014. That number was 39,613 at last count in September but sure to be increasing rapidly with recent events. Over 190 tonnes of US manufactured munitions passed through the airport en route to Afghanistan last year.
This much we know but there is much we do not.
Both deputies have quietly spent a lot of effort on parliamentary questions to ministers with little satisfactory response. Daly and Wallace did not jump the fence on a whim. The parliamentary process of accountability and transparency, of which even their critics claim to support, is deliberately, systematically and casually frustrated. So when Alan Shatter told them to bring him evidence, they decided to call his bluff.
In April both appeared in court for trespassing at Shannon. Two weeks ago, the Sunday Independent reported that warrants had been issued over non payment of fines.
Essentially, the police are obligated and quite willing to make nuisance for people so this charade played out all day yesterday for sweet fuck all.
Politically, military use of Shannon is not an issue anyone of influence wishes to discuss. Another of Ireland’s dirty secrets and authorities have always been eager to stress their compliance at the expense of our own citizens let alone those in conflict zones.
This is evident in media coverage that chooses to focus on Daly and Wallace personally, waste time with respectability politics while avoiding the issue entirely.
We are by now routinely told a disingenuous line about “lawmakers having an obligation to the law”. Can anyone tell me the last time government accepted a law from Clare Daly?
On no less than three occasions did government and their supporters sneer at her attempts to legislate for an issue most of them are too cowardly to discuss in public. Lawmakers indeed. Nor do we hear shrill demands that ministers with responsibility for Irish sovereign airspace or foreign relations are obliged to provide parliament with answers.
On RTÉ news, Úna O'Hagan interrupted Mick Wallace to insist military use of Irish airports “is an argument for another day” - despite this she found time to question Wallace about Leo Varadkar’s remarks on how these arrests should influence formation of the next government. Make of that what you will.
It is likely and intended that the substance of this matter will go away quietly. However much police and politicians may desire a long stretch for both deputies, making martyrs is not good politics, not least after previous cases embarrassed the regime badly.
Much of yesterday’s circus will rightly be seen as trivial but the stakes could not be higher. To their detractors, Daly & Wallace’s actions may be perceived as counter productive or vexatious but the fact is people are being bombed for less. That truth and Ireland’s collaboration is inescapable.
Speaking in custody yesterday, Mick Wallace said “it wont be as bad for me as it is for the people in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan".
On her release, Clare Daly said “we have a legal right and obligation to speak out and that’s what we have tried to do along with other activists in relation to the ongoing use of Shannon".
In a statement, ShannonWatch said
Mick Wallace and Clare Daly have been the two most successful opposition members in the current parliament. Their exposures of corruption, financial irregularities, abuses of police powers, and government mishandling of the business of governing has helped to precipitate the resignations of the Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner.
Government ministers have repeatedly misinformed parliament with regard to Ireland’s neutrality. They say that US military aircraft transiting through Shannon Airport are not engaged in military operations or involved in military exercises, and are not carrying any weapons, munitions or war materials. But this is simply not credible.
Preposterous as it may sound to some, these are admirable actions in a world where nightmare seems to be increasing daily.
What we have seen is two public representatives willing to face prison for people they will never meet in countries they are unlikely to visit. They are criticised and ridiculed by dozens of politicians who won’t so much as answer an email if you are not in their own constituency.
It will take much more than the next election but we too have a right and obligation to change that balance for good.
Pat McDonagh is to personally pocket €26 million by offloading part of his
property portfolio to his own business, Supermacs.
The restructuring was
“recommended by the accountants” he says.
So tax avoidance then.
According to this, Supermac’s Group presently holds €60 million in profit, a number of hotels and McDonagh personally owns a chain of 11 Oirish pubs in America.
This is the man who went to the High
Court in 2011 to drive down wages across the catering sector, which
already was and remains Ireland’s lowest paid. He led a group consisting of Burger King, Supermacs, Eddie Rockets, Subway,The Bagel Factory and Abrakebabra to challenge already meagre worker rights.
At the time, IMPACT
reported that 79% of restaurants inspected by National Employment Rights
Authority were failing to comply with laws governing minimum pay rates,
payment of wages and related employment protections.
The overwhelming
majority of workers in hospitality and catering and women &
migrants. Their weekly pay is less than half the national average. For instance, a study from MCRI found that among migrant workers employed in restaurants in Ireland.
- 53% earned less than the minimum hourly wage
- 45% worked 9 or more hours per day
- 44% did not get rest breaks
- 85% did not receive extra pay for Sunday work
- 85% did not receive overtime pay
- 48% did not receive bank holiday pay
- 34% did not receive their annual leave entitlements
- 51% did not receive a pay slip
- 84% did not receive a contract or terms of employment
- 89% stated that their employment rights are not displayed at work
- 15% reported an injury at work
These are the stark realities on which many Irish restaurant and hotel empires are built.
Pat McDonagh is regularly one of the Buddhas RTÉ seek out each budget day to
bless the public with some business wisdom. In 2012, he used his time on
national television to bemoan the “amount of state support single
mothers receive”. The prick.
Despite this and despite his success in
using the courts to demolish conditions for staff, within months, his
restaurants were and continue to replace paid work with subsidised
jobbridge internships. Fuck Pat McDonagh and fuck Supermacs.
The reason Beirut will never be reported like Paris is the very same reason
so so much Palestinian activism involves emphasizing their humanity. We
grow up with daily headlines of death and horror in the Middle East and Africa but
are only ever directed to empathize & identify when someone is
looking for your bank details.
Facebook offering French tricolours, rainbow flags, etc, is a problem.
It is
none of their business introducing this kind of service. Aside from
wrapping the flag around yourself hardly having a distinguished
history [Remember
too that they only introduced the rainbow filter *after* the SCOTUS
marriage ruling. That’s bandwagoning on success not solidarity in a
struggle.], a website like this compelling people to identify with symbols and
reducing complex issues of grief, politics, etc, into top-down gestures is bad.
It is understandable
people want to express support, users have their reasons and that’s cool
but Facebook Inc is already invasive enough without shaping &
homogenising reaction to such serious events. Thin end of a wedge.
Who is Tom Barry TD?
Who?
The lad drinking pints while the Dáil debated abortion legislation before deciding to harass a female colleague in the chamber of parliament.
Oh that gobshite. Did it on live television and all didn’t he
Indeed
Haven’t heard much from him. What’s he done now?
Talking rubbish about rent controls in today’s Daily Mail. Says he is being forced to sell his ten rental properties.
A landlord? I thought he claimed to be a real businessman.
Well there you go. Property speculation. Curiously though the Oireachtas Register of Member’s Interests only lists nine properties. Maybe he forgot to tell them about one.
He owns substantial agricultural land and is sitting on a site in Mallow. Five of the apartments are in one Cork building and he has four houses in another estate in Kerry.
He is the director of a management company in charge of the building where he owns those apartments. According to the companies office it made tidy profit on last year’s rents so, even discounting the fact that Labour failed to deliver anything meaningful on the issue, this is just posturing rather than something that was ever going harm his income. But then again he also a director of Absolute Property, a management, letting and sales company in Cork.
Letting agents. The lowest of all breeds. Parasites working for vultures.
The gombeen man lives on.
He’s been posturing before hasn’t he?
In 2013 he accused the Labour Party of wanting “a communist state” in Ireland.
The Labour Party?, hah!
Well, Ruairi Quinn was hoping to means test farmers with regard to their children’s third level grants. The idea was actually to reduce public involvement in the funding of education.
Isn’t that basically the opposite of communism?
Well there you go.
Anything else?
In the Dáil last week he claimed
That word is “racism” and it is used far too frequently. It stifles discussion. People have fears, but the “racism” ticket should not be pulled out each time someone disagrees with another. It ruins discussion and is unfair on both the Traveller and settled communities. If I had my way, that word would not be part of this discussion. We need a more frank and honest approach.
Happy to parade his ignorance in public then?
Not for the first time either. He was on Vincent Browne a few years ago puffing his chest about ‘entrepreneurs’, ‘risk takers’ and his own supposed business acumen.
Sounded like lad who would get fired off ‘The Apprentice’ on the first week.
He’s been in the Dáil for five years praising Joan Burton and jobbridge. Can’t speak highly enough of the scheme. Uses it frequently in his warehousing business.
Hang on? So this lad has a heap of farm land, several rental properties, directorship of a property management company, owns a warehousing business, collects a generous Dáil salary and expenses for himself but still uses unpaid labour! Not much of a “risk taker” then at all is he?
He uses jobsplus too, where employers can collect up to ten grand of taxpayer’s money for hiring someone.
Curiously, this business is not declared on the Oireachtas register either.
Will this chancer get re-elected?
Fine Gael took two Cork East seats in 2011. They don’t have a hope next time.
This will be last we hear of him so.
Most definitely.
So who is Tom Barry?
A complete clown, that’s who.
The hysterical “War on Christmas” articles get earlier every single year I tell you. Whatever happened to traditional values, huh?
Like the proverbial child on Christmas morning though I am looking forward to this year’s panic from the Iona Institute. FOX News are no doubt in the process of check their list twice so we can expect gashing of teeth on our side of the pond within the next few weeks. In the last few years Mr Quinn’s elves have blessed us with completely fabricated festive outrages such as
‘Christ disappearing from Christmas cards’,
'Row over Christmas tree in Brussels’,
’Child banned from handing out Christmas invites’
’Parliament bans Christmas choirs on its ground’
and perhaps most sinister of all…
’Christmas parties increasing demand for morning after pill’.