While the State Visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the official visit of President Obama to Ireland this month will generate Garda overtime, data published in respect of the past five years show a reduction in overtime.
| 2005 | €77,683,097 |
| 2006 | €102,653,111 |
| 2007 | €135,386,904 |
| 2008 | €112,476,173 |
| 2009 | €77,812,239 |
| 2010 | €76,596,828 |
The Head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Brady stated on 2 January 2009 that the mandate of the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) had his full support and that the Board intended to obtain the support of his fellow bishops’, in writing, to implement policy agreed by the Bishops’ Conference. He also stated, unequivocally, that the welfare of children is a Gospel value. He recognised that verifiable and accountable structures, based on best practice, are critically important to safeguarding children and sustaining public confidence in the Church.
The most important initiative of the NBSC in 2009 was to undertake an audit of child safeguarding practices in all dioceses. That was to have been completed by the end of 2009 and the benefit of risk mitigation that would be reasonably expected to ensue from this should have been well rooted by early 2010.
But it took all of 2009 for the bishops’ to merely agree the objectives of these reviews and by April 2010 two dioceses, Clonfert and Ossory, did not even have a single parish safeguarding representative in place in the 66 parishes administered by these dioceses.
The 2011 annual report of the NBSC contains the appalling disclosure that the conduct of the review of dioceses has been systematically thwarted by what are described as ‘unresolved (and unspecified) data protection issues’ which fundamentally stymies the mandate of this Board – notwithstanding that the NBSC has comprehensive data protection procedures which comply with all statutory obligations . The bishops’ response is therefore self-serving, egregious, outrageous and indefensible.
The Statement issued on 11 May by the Bishops’ Conference reduces the audit review, that was set in the context of a Gospel value in January 2009, to being a generic and inchoate ‘important area of challenge that has yet to be completely resolved’. The 2011 Annual Report indicates that any information gleaned in the audit will only be disclosed to the public with the consent of the head of the relevant authority. The authoritarian muzzle to be applied to this process after a protracted delay to date will now supplement the reporting deficits of 2010 whereby the number of sexual abuse episodes disclosed far exceeded those previously communicated to the NBSC by a factor of 300%. The Chief Executive of the Board described the impact of inaccurate reporting as ‘problematic’. It actually corrupts the basic integrity of a monitoring process.
The behaviour of the bishops continues to be lamentably typical of the leadership that has reduced the Catholic Church in Ireland to a toxic cocktail based on a blend of double entendre and mental reservations. The impact of the NBSC, which has earned public trust and estimable esteem, is being reduced to that of a posse of passive plane-spotters, who monitor international best practice elsewhere, but are faced with impossible inertia and cultural impediments in introducing best practice into Ireland - based on adequate reference points and candour. Change never occurs in a leadership vacuum but decay and curmudgeonly connivance thrives in such circumstances.
The ‘full support’ of a credible leader means that the leader can be relied on to deliver an outcome within an agreed timeframe, particularly with respect to a primary objective, especially when the scale of reported sexual abuse continues to be as alarmingly high as it is.
Brady has failed to ensure that these reviews are promptly facilitated with the same blind, thoughtless, stubborn intransigence that you chose not to report the Brendan Smyth saga to the civil authorities for 19 years until it was independently exposed by a television journalist.
The Chairman of the NBSC has drawn attention to inherent weaknesses in area such as institutional management and governance. You and your pathetic colleagues have chosen to recruit a partisan lawyer rather than ensure that this Board swiftly obtains the statistics and other pertinent data to safeguard the children of Ireland. It is not good enough to publish claptrap about ‘continuing to work with the Board’ when it is abundantly clear that you will use concocted legal excuses to avoid doing so.
Thus impasse ought to be a resigning issue not just for Brady – but for each bishop whose talents, energy, outlook and disposition are incapable of leading change or inspiring public confidence.
The investigation of allegations in the Diocese of Cloyne commenced with a review of two cases in 2008 but the Report of the Commission of Investigation subsequently examined allegations against 19 priests in that relatively small diocese of 46 parishes. None of these are likely to have emerged into the public domain if such a blanket embargo existed.
Public confidence in the proposed audit of safeguarding practices by the Board will not be enhanced if the findings are to be muzzled by the Church authorities. Tardiness with respect to critical communications neither serve the interests of children, the Church or the Catholic community as a whole.
Micheál Martin has given Fianna Fáil councillors free rein to vote as they wish with respect to the selection of candidates to contest the Presidential election.
But such a disposition towards something as important as the next presidential election, the first in 14 years is pathetic and self-serving. The Presidency is an office that has performed so flawlessly and is so deeply esteemed that the least Fianna Fáil could have done is to set out the qualities, ideals, and characteristics that Martin believes are a prerequisite for a credible candidate before declaring that their councillors have a free vote.
Those characteristics ought to include, for example, personal stature, evidence of a capacity to safeguard the dignity of the Office while capably promoting our national reputation with a style, elegance, energy and impact that is commendable; skills in social leadership and an ability to relate to all facets of society in Ireland and elsewhere; a thorough understanding of the Constitutional position of the Presidency and a perspective on how the Presidency could be further developed to build on the legacy accomplished.
The choosing of candidates for this election is therefore not a similar exercise to that of a bull-run, where a cohort of the sartorially challenged and politically spontaneous presenting themselves as independent candidates for Dáil Éireann or Seanad Éireann with an alternative outlook on the universe that is adapted and scripted by them on the hoof.
Several individuals have indicated a desire to seek a nomination to contest the presidential election but none of them have really spelled why they are sufficiently distinguished and accomplished to prompt the electorate to vote for them.
Finally, the Office of President has become something of a family enterprise with the President’s family, especially the spouse, playing a crucial role in the success of a presidential term. None of the prospective candidates have indicated if they have any back-up of this nature to support what has become a very complex and personally demanding role requiring an incumbent of exceptional talent and ability.
Fianna Fáil would need to extend their commitment to the process of qualifying candidates beyond a desire to be in the winners enclosure next November, whether the winner is, or is not, a Fianna Fáil devotee.
Shortly after Tom Elliott became leader of the Ulster Unionist Party last September he declared that he would not attend GAA matches. I felt that this simplistic, ham-fisted declaration was short-sighted and naïve on his part and it certainly didn’t deliver extra votes last week. Attendance at the odd match and engagement with the GAA would have allowed him to demonstrate that there would be an expansive and innovative dimension to the character of his leadership; that the future he sought to foster would not be impaled by inertia, or diminished by the closed mind-set of a political hermit.
Despite the painstaking pace of vote counting last week, both the outcome of the Assembly election and the conduct of leading politicians, especially in the course of the past year, indicates that they are capable of making gestures and statements that move the political narrative forward in a manner that reflects the sentiment and disposition of the electorate.
Mr Elliott’s outburst in Omagh about the Irish flag being ‘foreign’ betrays a fundamental ignorance of the symbolism of the flag – which is to recognise the different traditions on the island of Ireland and, by implication, the Constitutional safeguards afforded to those traditions. The Irish flag is therefore not a foreign symbol in the Anglo-Irish context because it recognises the cardinal principle of personal choice with respect to the definition of the nation.
I share his agitation when any national flag is displayed disrespectfully or where protocol is disregarded. A national flag is not a piece of carnival bunting intended to propagate narrow vested interests.
However, the interests of society are also not well served when a political leader uses condescending shibboleths, such as the descriptor ‘scum’, because these simply pander to vacuous subversive vanity that is not connected to elected politics. The political mainstream should function at a higher level of sophistication and that means that Mr Elliott will need to have one footprint in the promising future, aligned with those who have something positive to contribute to society, if the Ulster Unionists are to be an integral and effective part of that process.
The Journal of Legal Analysis, a Harvard publication, in its Winter 2009 issue, published a transnational comparison of the salaries of High Court judges in 28 OECD jurisdictions - Mexico and Switzerland being the omissions. Chile, Estonia, Israel, Slovenia are not included as they joined the OECD last year.
| Rank | Country | Salary US$ | Salary € |
| 2004-05 | 2004-05 | ||
| 1 | United Kingdom | 331,738 | €224,147 |
| 2 | Ireland | 248,678 | €168,026 |
| 3 | Australia | 241,498 | €163,174 |
| 4 | New Zealand | 211,900 | €143,176 |
| 5 | United States | 203,000 | €137,162 |
| 6 | France | 198,201 | €133,920 |
| 7 | Japan | 172,346 | €116,450 |
| 8 | Canada | 166,800 | €112,703 |
| 9 | Iceland | 156,250 | €105,574 |
| 10 | Luxembourg | 141,606 | €95,680 |
| 11 | Netherlands | 137,500 | €92,905 |
| 12 | Spain | 135,686 | €91,680 |
| 13 | Finland | 131,250 | €88,682 |
| 14 | Austria | 125,225 | €84,611 |
| 15 | Belgium | 117,073 | €79,103 |
| 16 | Denmark | 115,568 | €78,086 |
| 17 | Sweden | 110,520 | €74,676 |
| 18 | Germany | 108,098 | €73,039 |
| 19 | Portugal | 96,979 | €65,526 |
| 20 | Norway | 94,000 | €63,514 |
| 21 | Greece | 70,500 | €47,635 |
| 22 | Italy | 58,245 | €39,355 |
| 23 | Poland | 46,521 | €31,433 |
| 24 | Hungary | 43,033 | €29,076 |
| 25 | Czech Republic | 37,464 | €25,314 |
| 26 | Turkey | 33,948 | €22,938 |
| 27 | Korea | 33,600 | €22,703 |
| 28 | Slovak Republic | 11,856 | €8,011 |
The data relates to 2004/2005 and showed Ireland’s judges to be the second highest paid, next to their British counterparts.
Between 2004/2005 and 2011 the salary of a British High Court judge increased by 11.1% from £155,404 to £172,753 (€196,310)
The salary of an Irish High Court judge increased during this six-year period by 36.6% from €184,889 to €252,720 – the probability now being that Irish judges are the highest paid in the world.
This development a surge in interest by those wishing to become judges. During the 2004-09 period the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board advertised for a total of 51 vacancies in the Supreme, High, Circuit and District Courts, There were 1,916 applicants.
Apart from the High Court, there are other features of the Irish judicial reward system which gives Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, plenty of grounds to conduct a Constitutional Referendum to reform judges pay and not to capitulate on their reported request that the tax burden on pension funds in excess of €2.3 million.
The Irish Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, exists to define our nation, defend its institutions and not to provide privileged refuges for the well-connected to escape their civic obligations and contribution to social solidarity, especially at a time of unprecedented crisis and widespread severe hardship.
Public Sector Pension Levy
It was reported by the Revenue Commissioners at the end of 2010 that 22 of the nation’s 147 judges failed to make a voluntary contribution to the Revenue Commissioners last year in lieu of this levy and that the cumulative payments of those judges who did make a voluntary contribution amounted to €1,246,787. If all of them had met the statutory obligations that public sector workers are obliged to honour the Exchequer could have received €2,374,180 from the judiciary last year.
Despite the leadership endeavours of the Chief Justice and the President of the High Court, there is effectively a deficit in Exchequer receipts of €1,358,915 that someone else must compensate – the scale of which would require the pension levy of over 5,400 public sector workers earning €20,000 per annum.
The defence based on Article 35.5 of The Constitution that ‘the remuneration of a judge shall not be reduced during his continuance in office’ has never been tested so the underlying decision is therefore based on political and administrative considerations. This levy is a deduction from gross earnings of public sector workers. It is not a reduction in gross earnings.
Has the levy been applied to judges appointed after the Financial Emergency measures in the Public Interest Act 2009 became law on the 20th December that year?
Remuneration
Our 147 judges were paid €27,759,194 in 2009. That included a State pension of €72,983 paid to the Chief Justice in respect of service in another Constitutional Office – that of Attorney General from March 1987 to September 1991.
Their counterparts in Great Britain and Northern Ireland are paid 24% less. This difference costs that Irish Exchequer €5,343,770 - which equates to 67% of the total receipts from pension-related deductions on public service remuneration last year in your own Department. Why is Ireland borrowing from the IMF/EU/HM Treasury to pay this premium so that our judges continue to be the highest paid in the world?
It is perfectly reasonable to compare pay rates in Ireland with those in the neighbouring Common Law jurisdiction because, unlike France and Germany, judges in the UK are recruited from the ranks of experienced lawyers, some of who earn more than £500,000 per year at the Bar but populate the ranks of the 140-strong High Court bench at a salary of £172,753, 27% less than the 36-member Irish High Court. The British rates are also broadly comparable to those prevailing in Australia and Canada. Furthermore, the same arguments with respect to work-load and complexity, impact and sensitivity of decisions, court craft and out-of-court administration, management and leadership responsibilities apply in all of these jurisdictions.
Public Sector Pay Reductions / 2010
The Irish Exchequer is losing €2,485,924 as a consequence of the judiciary being exempted from the reductions imposed on the public service from 1 January 2010. I have read that judges are also exempted from PRSI. If this is the case, the loss to the insolvent Social Insurance Fund is €1,107,488. The combined impact of this loss would pay the annual wages at minimum tariff of over 200 workers.
Has the reduction and pension levy been imposed on all judges appointed since 1 January 2010?
Pay Parity
The salary of the Chief Justice exceeded that of the Taoiseach from the foundation of the State until 1968 when pay parity was established on the grounds that the Head of the Judiciary and the Head of the Executive would enjoy similar remuneration. The differential between the pay of Enda Kenny and the Chief Justice is now 54%. If the arguments for pay parity were solid when rates were rising by 110%, which was the case between 2000 and 2009, how do you intend to choreograph the restoration of this long-standing relationship when the Constitutional impediment has not been tested and judges have responded to the national financial crisis with blinding self-interest?
Flat-Rate Expenses
At present, judges receive unvouched, non-pensionable and non-taxable expense allowances the cumulative annual value of which is €508,856. It seems to me that these are also not ‘remuneration’ within the definition of Article 35.5 of Bunreacht na hÉireann. Did you Department impose the 8% reduction (amounting to €40,708) that applied to all qualifying public service workers since 1 January 2010?
Government car and Garda Driver(s)
The State is to continue to provide the Chief Justice with a Garda driven car at an average annual cost of €280,000 to commute to the outer suburbs.
The total cost of the four official cars used by the British Ministry of Justice in the year ended 31 March 2010 was £320,429 (€368,309), or €92,077 per vehicle and €47,600 is attributable to the use of the British Government’s Green Car Service by all judges.
The total cost of operating two official cars at the Northern Ireland Office in the year ended 31 march 2010 was under €90,000.
Official car usage in Britain is restricted to official business and from home to office journeys within a reasonable distance, on the understanding that users would normally be bearing classified documents on which they would be working, - as well as security and other relevant considerations.
UCD economist Colm McCarthy published a review of the Irish commercial State companies this week as a prelude to the Government considering their possible sale. The media have been commenting on the high level level of pay at the top of these organisations. The average employee remuneration in all of them is €54,600 but I thought it would be interesting to set out the the average pay in each of them and the multiple of that average which the chief executive receives. The data relates to 2009.
| Entity | CEO Remuneration in 2009 € | Average Employee Remuneration in 2009 € | Multiple of employee average received by CEO |
| CIE | 251,160 | 49,100 | 5.1 |
| ESB | 752,568 | 75,500 | 9.9 |
| Bord Gais | 394,000 | 67,300 | 5.8 |
| EirGrid | 407,000 | 83,400 | 4.8 |
| Bord na Móna | 392,000 | 44,800 | 8.7 |
| Coilte | 417,000 | 54,267 | 7.6 |
| Dublin Airport Authority | 568,100 | 49,300 | 11.5 |
| Irish Aviation Authority | 324,000 | 95,600 | 3.3 |
| Dublin Port | 317,000 | 67,900 | 4.6 |
| RTÉ | 326,000 | 59,700 | 5.4 |
| An Post | 500,000 | 43,300 | 11.5 |
The Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, announced in his Budget speech last December that ‘there should be a maximum salary rate of €250,000 in the public sector and that the position of the Minister for Finance as a shareholder or the statutory shareholder can be used to enforce the objective of the maximum salary within a reasonable timeframe’.
Lenihan’s ‘capacity to enforce’ was not apparent when the former managing director when he demanded the resignation of the former managing director of AIB just weeks earlier and he departed having pocketed benefits worth €3 million after one year in that role
When the Covered Institutions Remuneration Oversight Committee reported to the Finance Minister in February 2009 they stated that ‘pension arrangements for senior executives in banks should be at least broadly similar to those applicable to the generality of the staff of the institution’ This Report also recognised that the top management of banks make little or no contribution for their pensions and recommended an appropriate balance between personal employee contributions and the employer contributions and the extent to which they employee contribution may need to be increased needed to be immediately reviewed
Why did the Department of Finance tolerate an agreement nine months later, in November 2009, to facilitate the payment to Colm Doherty, the former managing director of AIB, a cash payment of €2 million in lieu of a contribution to his pension? Given the trading results for 2010 and the overall circumstances of AIB, how is it possible, for this nationalised bank, to fully discharge such extravagant payments to a departing managing director - while thousands of AIB employees are facing the loss of their jobs and great uncertainty about their termination packages?
During his 1-year tenure from mid November 2009 AIB lost €10.2 billion and total assets decreased from €174 billion on 31 December 2009 to €145 billion at the end of last year. It was obliged to take a 54% haircut on the €18 billion of property loans taken over by the State. It lost its listing on the Irish and London Stock Exchanges and a taxpayer investment of €7 billion means that with 92% of the equity owned by the State it is effectively nationalised. Its shares now trade on the Enterprise Securities Market alongside the mom and pop operation.
Loans outstanding are €94 billion, of which €56.8 billion are either in residential mortgages or property and construction and almost 30% of them are wither vulnerable, impaired or under scrutiny. Customer accounts have dropped from €84 billion to €63 billion in a year and the Irish banks are generally unable to tap funding markets.
Outgoing Irish TD’s from the last Dáil received more than €13 million in pension lump sums and termination payments and on top of these outgoing TD’s aged 50 and over will receive more than €4 million annually in pension payments. Seven ministers of state shared close to €250,000 in severance payments, including three who were returned to the Dáil – (McGuinness €25,276, Browne €24,952 and Micheál Kitt, now Leas Ceann Comhairle €25,276)
Former US Presidents
Former Presidents of the United States have only qualified for a pension since 1958. The current value of a former President’s pension is €138,366 and it is aligned to the salary of the Head of an Executive Department (e.g. Cabinet Secretary / Secretary of State, Secretary of Commerce etc.)
Former Presidents retiring before 1958 often pursued various occupations in retirement and received no federal assistance. The industrialist, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who created US Steel announced a plan in 1912 to offer $25,000 annual pensions to former Presidents but many Members of Congress considered it inappropriate that such a pension should be provided by a private citizen. Legislation was passed to create a presidential pension but it was not enacted until 1955 when the 33rd President, Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), experienced financial limitations in recruiting an office staff.
Today, transition funding is available to former Presidents and Vice Presidents for seven months to facilitate their return to private life. These funds are used to provide suitable office space, staff remuneration, communication services, printing and postage associated with the transition.
The maximum annual rate of remuneration for an individual staff member of a former President cannot exceed the pay of a Level II appointee to the Executive Schedule (e.g. Deputy Secretary of a Federal Government department) and the current rate is just under €120,000. A former President supplements staff remuneration costs with private funds.
A total of €2.6 million is provided for former Presidents, their offices and Presidents widow in the 2010 Budget. This comprises €360,000 for Jimmy Carter, €576,000 for George Bush Snr, €756,000 for Bill Clinton, €907,000 for George H W Bush. The sum of €9 is provided for postage used by widows.
The aforementioned sum covers pension compensation, office rental, travel supplies and equipment.
State Funeral
United States Presidents are also entitled to other benefits. These include a State Funeral at the request of the surviving family. The sitting President officially announces the death of a former President and commander-in-chief by presidential proclamation and offers the nation’s condolences to the former President’s immediate family. Suitable honours are rendered by units of the armed forces under orders from the Secretary of Defence and the Secretary of the Army as his personal representative. In turn, the Secretary of the Army delegates to the Commanding Officer of the US Military District of Washington the overall authority for planning and implementing funeral arrangements for former Presidents. Each living former President has also prepared a formal funeral request which is kept by the MDW. There is a long standing tradition that an officer escorts the immediate family of a deceased military member until burial and the in case of former President’s that duty falls on the commanding general of the Military District of Washington.
Each branch of the armed forces provides personnel and support to a State funeral and, as a former commander-in-chief, each former President is entitled to be buried in the National Cemetery at Arlington Virginia.
Congress honours a former President by allowing his coffin lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda for a State ceremony followed by public viewing of the closed coffin.
Medical Expenses
Former Presidents and their spouses, widows and minor children are entitled to treatment in military hospitals.
Secret Service Protection
The Secret Service provides lifetime protection for former Presidents who entered office before 1 January 1997. Surviving spouses receive lifetime protection until remarriage. Those entering office after 1 January 1997 and their spouses receive protection for 10 years. Protection for the spouse ends upon divorce or remarriage. The widow of a President receives protection for a year following the death of a President. Temporary protection can be authorised at any time. Protection for a former President’s children is available to them until they reach 16 years of age, or for a period not exceeding ten years, whichever occurs first.
Presidential Libraries
With the exception of Richard Nixon, every former President since Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), the 31st President, has had a presidential library managed by the National Archives and Records Administration established in his name.
The process of establishing a presidential library may begin with the establishment of a presidential library foundation – a private organization under the leadership of friends of the President. This usually enjoys tax exempt status and is allowed to receive donations and contributions which are used to purchase a site and construct a library building, that is deeded to the US Government. The Archivist deposits the President’s official records and papers in it and assumes management of the library.
The new Irish Government tell us that substantial savings will be made on Official Cars from 16 June 2011 and on ministerial air transport.
The total cost of providing official transport to 27 Irish Office Holders in 2009 was €31,946,650. This includes €7,500,000 for 27 Garda-driven cars; the two aircraft assigned to ministerial use and four helicopters.
Last month Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice, Equality & Defence announced new arrangements for ministerial transport in place of the prevailing arrangements which consisted of 27 vehicles and 54 Garda drivers.
The new arrangement will mean that only the President, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste the Chief Justice, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Minister for Justice, Equality & Defence will continue to be provided with Garda transport and drivers for security reasons. The fleet of 27 vehicles will be reduced to 7. Cabinet ministers will be required to provide their own cars but will the professional drivers they recruit will be paid by the State. Former Taoisigh will not longer qualify official cars on a full-time basis.
The Garda Office Holders Fleet cost €7.5 million to operate in 2010. The average cost of a Garda-driven official vehicle at almost €280,000 per annum is high. The average cost to the State of a vehicle provided by an Office Holder but driven by a professional driver paid by the State is €120,200. The estimated savings would therefore be €4 million per annum to this budget but the cost of the drivers will remain with the Garda Siochaná.
That maybe the case with respect to direct cost of operating the Office Holders fleet. But the 44 Gardaí who are being transferred from official driving duties will, naturally, remain on the State payroll. They will presumably lose the additional allowance of €17,936 payable to this category of driver – a total saving of €394,592.
The cost of fuel for these vehicles was €183,493; the cost of maintenance was €147,339 and the cost of depreciation was €541,045 in 2009. The salary costs associated with this fleet was €4.2 million in 2009, or average annual earnings per driver was well north of €77,778. The top rate for a Garda in 2009 was €48,695 and those on the ministerial pool qualified for an additional allowance of 40% of basic pay (€17,936) per annum making a grand personal total of €66,631.
This ia an awful lot of money, especially considering that 17 of the 27 users of these vehicles in 2009 were domiciled in Dublin. That cost can also be seen in the context of the Garda Training College in Templemore being effectively mothballed to save the cost of paying recruits. The number of retired members has, incidentally, increased from under 6,000 in 2007 to an estimated 9,750 retirees in 2011.
No vehicles have been added to the Office Holders fleet since 2008 when €509,765 was spent on new cars. 14 of the 27 cars have travelled over 200,000 kilometres and two of them have broke the 300,000 kilometre barrier.
Ministerial Air Transport
Apart from ground transport the cost to the Aer Corps of providing air transport to Office Holder in 2009 was €24.44 million (€17.39 M for the Gulfstream IV and €7.05 M for the Learjet 45). The average direct cost of the Gulfstream IV – maintenance, fuel, support, catering, cleaning and airport handling costs is €4,050 while the remaining costs – mainly depreciation and personnel bring the average total hourly cost of this aircraft per hour to €7,890. The comparable hourly costs for the Learjet 45 are €1,270 and €2,950.
There are also four helicopters available for ministers’ use at a total cost per hour ranging from €1,590 to €3,130 – depending on model.
Comparison with British Government Car Fleet
The British Government operated 78 vehicles in the year ended 31 March 2010 at a total cost of €7,744,889, or slightly less than an average cost of €100,000 per vehicle. The four vehicles used by the Cabinet Office, for example cost a total of €417,000, or €104,250 per vehicle and that particular fleet includes several Jaguar and Land Rover models. The Northern Ireland Office operates two official vehicles at a total cost in 2009/10 of €329,000, or an average of €164,480 per vehicle – that is €120,000 less than the Irish counterpart.
Britain’s Government Car & Despatch Agency employs 177 persons on the official government fleet. The Director of the Government fleet is paid an annual salary of €62,849 - €15,000 less than the typical salary of a Garda driver assigned to an Irish Office Holder. The average staffing cost of individuals assigned to the Government fleet is €59,275.
Conclusion
The foregoing illustrates how much Irish costs are out of line with comparators elsewhere.
The EU and the IMF are reported to be ‘deeply unimpressed’ at the disparity with counterparts elsewhere.
The salary structures at NTMA remained a deep and profound secret since it was established 21 years ago until details were disclosed to the Public Accounts Committee on 7 January 2011 - after exhaustive probing. No less than six secretaries-general of the Department of Finance tolerated this secrecy despite it conflicting with their own Code of Practice for the Governance of State Bodies.
These revealed that:
The grading and pay rates of the Civil Service Regulations Act 1956 may not apply to NTMA but the National Treasury Management Act 1990 does not confer any privileges with respect to secrecy or derogations from the norms of public accountability.
The salaries of the chief officers of those institutions providing the resources to bailout Ireland are: President of the IMF €320,275; President of the EU Commission €293,064; President of the ECB €367,863; Permanent Secretary of HM Treasury €207,000.
Is it any wonder they are ‘deeply unimpressed’?
Two contrasting perspectives have been offered on Irish banking regulation in the past week. A Blueprint for Ireland’s Recovery was the culmination of several months dialogue among 17 ‘Influential Persons’ that included several former board members of AIB and Bank of Ireland prior to the onset of the September 2008 financial crisis and the massive commitment of resources to bailout these banks. They argue that what Ireland needs is ‘an appropriate and proportionate regulatory environment’ but ‘we’ must ensure that ‘over regulation is not a deterrent to foreign direct investment’.
The Moriarty Tribunal Report published on 22 March makes recommendations with respect to banking regulation. It states that most of the information upon which the Central Bank, as regulator, should have acted was available to the Bank, or ought, on reasonable enquiry, to have been available to it when it supervised Guinness & Mahon.
The Moriarty Tribunal investigated Guinness & Mahon in connection with off-shore subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands from 1976 to 1982. It was concerned with Central Bank’s concern that Guinness & Mahon was operating a tax avoidance scheme that was tantamount to facilitating tax evasion. Following special investigation by the Revenue Commissioners, prompted by the Tribunal investigation, the Ansbacher scandal subsequently yielded a cumulative €107.3 million in tax and penalty payments from 139 taxpayers by the end of 2009.
Moriarty states that the reason the Central Bank did not act was a culture ‘characterised by a marked degree of unwarranted institutional and regulatory timidity on its part and by a high degree of unacceptable commercial defiance’, on the part of those subject to regulation. Allied to these considerations and underlying these attitudes and approaches was the conviction and culture of all concerned that the attachment of publicity to improper banking behaviour , or the generation of controversy in respect of banking practices and banking standards in Ireland, might lead to the undermining of the Irish banking system. It was not that the Central Bank at the time lacked any requisite power to enable it to suppress the shamelessly improper operation of the Ansbacher accounts, but rather that it failed to use its ample regulatory powers.
The function of the regulator is the ‘regulate’ and the balance had swung toward under rather than over regulation. Strong action, not amounting to over regulation, on the part of the regulators, should be valued as a key element rather than a retardant, in the promotion of a healthy financial sector. It is extremely difficult to frame recommendations where what is proposed is a change of attitudes on the part of the relevant authorities and indeed in the overall commercial culture in which those authorities are bound to act. As recent events have shown, regulation if the key to the survival of the banking sector, so vital to the national economy
A culture where forthright regulation is valued, not merely at a time of financial stringency, but at a time when it might be thought to be an unnecessary brake on commercial activity. Such a change can of attitude can best be encouraged by increased vigilance on the part of elected representatives. These issues were addressed in the Tribunals first report published in December 2006 – but without apparent consequence, according to Moriarty.
So 17 self-righteous messiahs, many of whom clung with a vice-like grip to the skirt hems of the Haughey, Ahern and Cowen administrations, have formed themselves into a rump to ‘advise’ the new Government on creating jobs, reforming the public sector, rebuilding international confidence and re-engineering the banking system. Economic salvation can be achieved, they argue in A Blueprint for Ireland’s Recovery, through manufacturing, tourism, agriculture, life sciences and ICT.
No vested interest, apart from their own, is ignored to flatter their dreams and aspirations. Is it not inspiring to observe individuals’, some of quite moderate ability, but who were cute and wily enough in taking care of their personal interests, to earn humongous sums, from the public purse in many instances, to focus their ‘advice’ on the mutilation of the public sector and the ‘reform’ of the welfare system? Does this blueprint also mean that tax exiles are now purporting to advise on economic recovery?
‘To restore confidence and Ireland’s reputation, an investor relations strategy should be developed to attract overseas investment. Among the targets suggested, is that 20% of FDI should be sourced in South East Asia by 2015’. Are they aware of Horizon 2020, of did they see no reference in it when they regularly read the The Beano, The Dandy and The Hotspur?
The amount of consumer credit outstanding in Ireland at the end of January 2011 was €18,609 million which has declined from €23,711 million a year earlier. Of this €2,722 million (15%) is attributable to personal credit cards held by 2,068,000 personal credit card holders.
Among those with current credit card/store card debts the amount owed varies considerably. One-fifth of households with such debt owe less than €571, a further fifth owe between €571 and €1,400, while 10% of these households owe more than €5,700 on their credit card. Approximately 56% of Irish households had a credit card in 2008 compared to 26.1% in 1995.
According to a recently published by the ESRI study ‘Financial Exclusion and Over-indebtedness in Irish Households’, 20% of Irish households in 2008 did not have a bank current account – that is over 290,000 households. 31% of households do not have any form of credit so the €18,609 million is actually spread among 1,008,000 households the average debt burden with an average burden per household of €18,440 (excluding mortgage debt)
This number without a bank account includes 36% of those ‘at risk of poverty’ and 60% of those ‘living in consistently poor households’. The preference for dealing exclusively in cash is most prevalent among those in the older age group, those with no educational qualifications and those in the bottom income quartile.
The survey also found in the case of households did not have any form of credit. 63% of these did not need to borrow; 22% did not have credit because they could not repay debt; 7% borrowed from family or friends and did not need commercial debt and a further 7% believed that they would not be granted a loan.
Deposits held by Irish households in January 2011 amounted to €93,957 million representing 56% of total Irish private sector deposits.
Last Saturday I spent a pleasant few hours with fellow hill walkers strolling along the 14KM stretch along the banks of the River Dodder. The controversial topic of Bank of Ireland bonus payments got an airing. These men and women of the world walking with me were aghast at what emerged in a Department of Finance Report on the matter as this Bank gave the Irish public the V sign.
A parliamentary question sought information in November 2010 on bonus payments to staff made by banks since the commencement of the Irish Government guarantee in September 2008. The Bank of Ireland advised the Department of Finance that “no performance-related bonuses were paid with respect to the financial year to March 2009 and December 2009”.
The statement added “a small number of people at middle management level received payments which reflected either guarantees which were agreed on their joining the Group or deferred payments where the historic performance criteria had been achieved and the payment was deferred over several years. For commercial reasons Bank of Ireland do not disclose the amount of such payments. The Bank advises that it had not legal discretion in these matters”
The loss at Bank of Ireland for the 9 months ended 31 December 2009 had risen to €1,813 million compared to €23 million for the year ended 31 March 2008. Impairment charges in this period reached €4,055 million compared to €1,435 in the year ended 31 March 2009. The Irish Government was forced to invest €3.5 billion in preference stock so as to bolster its capital base.
It transpired that the information provided by Bank of Ireland was incorrect and that bonus and quasi bonus payments from September 2008 to December 2010 amounted to a staggering €66.37 million – all linked to performance.
A patina of legal legitimacy is not an indication that any transaction is ethical, moral or affordable.
The hill walkers are utterly mesmerised that Bank of Ireland could be so utterly undermined in the Bank by duplicity, betrayal, self-serving slovenliness and skulduggery. These characteristics are evident not just in grotesque scale of bonus payments, which the Bank (and the public) cannot afford and untruthful answers to parliamentary questions, but there is now also evidence of incomplete and misleading information in the due diligence process prior to the public subscription for shares, in the attempted enhancement of the Group Chief Executives pension terms last year and the tardiness by the Bank in relation to the subsequent impeded and delayed investigation into the November 2010 misrepresentations to Dáil Éireann.
The text of the letter from Richie Boucher to Dublin City Council planning authorities read:
“Dear Sir
Re Jurys / Berkeley Court Site
I refer to the above and write to confirm my strong support for this landmark proposal which I believe will significantly benefit the City of Dublin and its citizens through helping enhance the concept of a living city and providing buildings of significant architectural merit befitting Ireland of the 21st century. Yours faithfully, Richie Boucher, Chief Executive Retail Financial Services Ireland.”
Dublin City Council granted partial permission for the Ballsbridge development but it disallowed Dunne’s application to build a 37-floor skyscraper.
When Ireland became enveloped in an unprecedented financial crisis in 2008 it became clear that it had failed the test of prudent financial management,, which in turn, can provide a greater capacity to manage unanticipated outcomes.
Budgetary processes lacked coherence and ministerial accountability to the Oireachtas was weak throughout the previous decade. A lack of transparency was characterised by the absence of adequate information and analysis from the Department of Finance for the purpose of public debate and consultation.
An independent Review, published on 1 March, of the effectiveness of the 542-person Department of Finance is highly critical and portrays a Department as buckling under the reckless dominance and feckless political incompetence of Finance Ministers’ McCreevy and Cowen and Bertie Ahern Government. The Review also cites the invasiveness of political agendas including the PD-FF coalition Programmes for Government and the diabolical social partnerships which allowed lobbyists and their chaplain run riot with their unsustainable wage demands.
The Review covers the period this Department was in the charge of Secretaries-General , Hurley (March 2000 to March 2002 who subsequently became Governor of the Central Bank ), Considine (March 2002 to June 2006, now a public interest director of Bank of Ireland) and Doyle (June 2006 to January 2010), who ought to have demonstrated stronger leadership and done more to avoid the collapse of the Irish economy.
The currency devaluation of 1992 and the emergence of the Single European Market enabled Ireland surge ahead economically; experience strong investment and export growth until 2000. Thereafter a property boom took hold powered by low interest rates and cheap credit, much of it sourced outside Ireland. When the property bubble inflated in 2003 in some years more than 80% of annual incremental credit growth went to fund house purchase, construction and property speculation.
The property bubble collapsed in mid 2007 and Government revenue fell by 21% by 2009 but spending on social welfare soared as unemployment grew rapidly. In 2009 the deficit was 14.4% of GDP and last year this rose to 32% of GDP after taking account of emergency assistance to Irish banks.
The Review focused on:
The Department’s advice on the risk of pro-cyclical policy
Their repose to the overheating of the property sector
The nature of the Department’s advice on the vulnerability of the Irish tax system to an economic downturn.
The Review states that the Department of Finance
While officials provided oral advice to the Government on Budgetary Policy in June of each year on the risks of a pro-cyclical fiscal stance the advice was not heeded and spending provisions in the subsequent December Budget in 2001, 2006, 2006 and 2007 was especially higher. This poor budgetary process obscured ministerial and Government accountability to the Oireachtas. Spending marched to the beat of a political drum and the sabre rattling of the so-called social partners.
The review recommends
The Department of Finance must now remake itself through changes in structure, professional capacity and internal working methods. There has also to be a more outward-looking attitude.
The essential role of Ireland’s Road Safety Authority is the advocacy of public compliance insofar as it relates to road safety, so I was surprised to discover some shortcomings with respect to compliance by the Authority itself
The Authority’s 2009 Annual Report is based on accounts that are unsigned by the chief executive and chief financial officer and are unaudited. There is not a single note to elaborate on the contents of the accounts, or to reflect compliance in all material respects with the Code of Practice for the Governance of State Bodies.
The Annual Report identified one board member as Chairman of the Internal Audit Committee. There is no information to indicate what qualifies him to take on this role, nor is there any indication who the other member of the Internal Audit Committee are; if there is a member of the staff of the Department of Transport on that Committee; how many meetings were convened in 2009 and what they have to say to taxpayers.
The Chairman of the Remuneration Committee has been a member of the Court of Bank of Ireland since 2005. That is an institution that is intimately familiar with finer the dynamics of remuneration. They have paid themselves in the region of €47 million since 2005.
The Annual Report neglects to identify the membership of the Remuneration Committee; nor does it disclose the details of the chief executive’s remuneration and board members’ expenses, as required by the Code promulgated by the Department of Finance.
When it appeared last November that the Roma beggars who sit on their arse on the streets of Dublin were more au fait with the arrival of the IMF in Ireland than the Minister for Transport was prepared to admit, a taxpayer would be forgiven for concluding that former Minister Dempsey’s understanding of codes, accounts and governance issues might be compromised by an inability, on his part, to differentiate between a balance sheet and a bingo card.
Ireland is about to embark on the PBE (post-Beverly era) after next Friday’s general election and a new generation of politicians are more likely to emerge who will trim their flaming red eyebrows from time to time. An opportunity for the Road Safety Authority to synchronise with this change, show leadership and creativity could lie in how it reports to its stakeholders.
The membership of the Authority, for example, is currently defined by a set of names that presumably tally with those on corresponding birth certificates and utility bills and photographs which confirm gender and if there is a proclivity to smile. But, with the exception of Gay Byrne with whom the public are most familiar and whom they trust, these details convey no information to describe what credentials the other members have to advocate road safety as set out in S14 (4) of the Act and their capacity to contribute to the orderly governance of the Authority to a standard more desirable than that which prevailed at FÁS or Dublin Docklands Development Authority over the past several years.
Taxpayers, with their financial partners in the IMF, ECB and HM Treasury pay Authority membership fees and require more information about these individuals than might be typically forthcoming from a cohort of masked members of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940’s.
The mission of the Road Safety Authority as ‘simple’. Fast food stalls at a farmers market have a ‘simple’ mission. The mission of the Authority to be relatively complex, far reaching and sophisticated, as it seeks to fundamentally change stubborn and embedded social habits. The catastrophic distress caused by delinquent banks is of such viral and venal gravity as to prompt the desirability of research to establish the significance of the correlation between instances of suicide involving single vehicle collisions and financial distress attributable to Ireland’s delinquent banks.
A culture of fossilised inertia based on ‘twill do’ and ‘shure, what’s wrong with it’ no longer pleases a very restless, agitated and wounded society.
Media report sthat Enda Kenny is under pressure over the Fine Gael Irish language plan in the TG 4 debate (17 February) should more properly prompt the language advocates to question their own competence to nourish the language and the enduring legacy of their efforts and vision.
Our 80-year legacy of compulsory Irish teaching in schools has produced 1.6 million people who claim to have a familiarity with the language, according to the 2006 census. But that legacy is incapable of securing a thriving future for Irish. The objective of the recently inaugurated Irish language policy is to nourish the more spontaneous and widespread speaking of Irish on a daily basis by 250,000 people within 20 years. Progress towards this target will depend on personal preference, curiosity, passion and conviction, nor compulsion.
Any viable policy with respect to Irish must first discern which factors underlie changes in personal tastes, habits and preferences.
Our society, for example, embraced refused recycling, a disinclination to smoke cigarettes and a massive preference for wine at the expense of beer over the past decade, totally on a voluntary, or optional basis.
Compulsion, politicians promises, hare-brained policies and millions of euro poured into sterile vested interests will not, on their own, be the powerful catalyst to inspire the necessary passion for the Irish language to thrive. There is no substitute for a genuine affection for the language itself.
Ireland’s Department of Finance has published the 2011 Revised Estimates Volume which complements the details contained in the 2011 Budget. The following is a summary of the Estimates for this year:
Gross Estimates
(including expenditure from the Social Insurance Fund and the National Training Fund)
| 2010 | 2011 | Change % | |
| Current Expenditure | 54,266,425 | 52,826,910 | -2.7% |
| Capital Expenditure | 6,269,216 | 4,676,500 | -25.4% |
| TOTAL | €60,535,641 | €57,503,410 | -5% |
Net Estimates
| 2010 | 2011 | Change % | |
| Current Expenditure | 40,600,479 | 41,710,547 | 2.7% |
| Capital Expenditure | 5,918,136 | 4,341,072 | -26.6% |
| TOTAL | €46,518,615 | €46,051,619 | -1% |
Significant Changes from 2007 to 2011
The United States Secret Service has been in existence since 1865 and has an annual budget broadly similar to that of FÁS - $1.57 million and a staff of 3.200 personnel. It has two functions – ‘criminal investigation’ and ‘protection’. Almost $800 million of this is spent directly on protection.
The catalyst for setting up the US SS was a need to combat currency counterfeiting. This had become a real problem throughout the Civil War when between ⅓ and ½ of all US currency in circulation was counterfeit and this continued to be its only function until 1894 when it function evolved to include protection and the investigation of the Ku Klux Klan and counter-espionage during World War I.
The US SS today investigates counterfeiting and financial crimes involving identity theft, credit card fraud, counterfeiting, computer-based fraud and attacks on the US financial, banking and telecommunications infrastructure. The protection mission covers the President, Vice President, former Presidents and candidates for President, visiting dignitaries and the families of the Head of State and Vice President.
The protection role began in 1894 with the protection of President Grover Cleveland on a part-time basis. President McKinley received protection during the Spanish-American War and there were three agents present when he was assassinated in Buffalo. The transfer of several agents in 1908 to the Department of Justice served as the foundation team in the establishment of the FBI. A 1917 Act made it a crime to threaten a President. The White House Police force was created in 1922 to secure and patrol the Executive Mansion. The protection of the President role was further enhanced in the 1950’s and in 1965 this was upgraded to include ‘permanent protection’. Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Jacqui Kennedy and her children were protected for two years and now Presidents and their spouse are protected for the duration of their lives and, in the case of their children – until they are 16 years old. Diplomatic missions now come within the remit of the US SS.
President Woodrow Wilson introduced the espionage mandate in 1915 and in 1948 the US SS was directed to investigate crimes against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, federal land banks, and various farm loan associations. Nowadays it investigates a wide range of crimes against financial institutions, telemarketing and identity theft used in committing these crimes.
The post 11 September 2001 environment in the US has extended the US SS mandate to cover terrorist financing and financial crimes, including money laundering, counterfeiting and other offences that threaten the integrity of the banking and financial systems.
Presidential safety is an enduring concern that began in 1861 with fears for the safety of Abraham Lincoln on his journey from Illinois to his inauguration in Washington DC. More recently, there have been security breaches at White House dinners in November 2009 when two gate-crashers were discovered.
Ten Presidents have been victims of direct assault by assassins with four resulting in death. But only one death has occurred since the US SS began protecting Presidents in 1906.
The direct assault on Presidents protected by the Secret Service included:
| Date | President | Location | Assailant |
| 1 Nov 1950 | Harry S Truman | Washington DC | Oscar Collazo and Griseillo Torressola, advocates of Puerto Rican independence. |
| 22 Nov 1963 | John F Kennedy | Dallas TX | Lee Harvey Oswald |
| 5 Sep 1975 | Gerald Ford | Sacramento CA | Lynette Alice Fromme |
| 22 Sep 1975 | Gerald Ford | San Francisco CA | Sara Jane Moore |
| 30 Mar 1981 | Ronald Reagan | Washington DC | John Hinkley Jr |
| 29 Oct 1994 | Bill Clinton | Washington DC | Francesco Duran |
| 10 May 2005 | George Bush | Tiblisi, Georgia | Vladimir Arutyunian |
It was reported in the Irish Independent on February 12th that the National Consumer Agency is ‘actively pursuing’ a complaint from the National Union of Journalists and the Sunday Tribune with respect to the publication of a bogus ‘Sunday Tribune’ cover on the Irish Mail on Sunday issue of February 6th. It was also reported that Associated Newspapers could face legal action under the Consumer Protection Act 2007.
The National Consumer Agency in Ireland was set up in 2007. It has a budget of €6.1 million and 42 staff. Its chief executive, Ann Fitzgerald, is paid €186,190. Fitzgerald is a former Director of Consumer Affairs. Its board includes
The United States Department of Commerce was set up in 1903. It has a budget of $6.5 billion and has a staff of 38,000. Its chief executive, Gary Locke, is paid €146,760. Locke was a two-term Governor of Washington and is the first Chinese-American to hold Cabinet rank.
The purpose of the National Consumer Agency is to ‘defend consumer interests’ and ‘embed a consumer culture’ in Ireland. Forceful advocacy, targeted research, consumer information, education and awareness programmes are the prime tools of this Agency.
Writing as a taxpayer, why is the State should become involved in a case that a multinational company of the size of Independent News & Media Plc could quite easily pursue on its own account, should it choose to do so?
It seems to me that the State has become the bearer of all risk making many of the nation’s lawyers fat, smug and unseemly prosperous while those who ought to be risk bearers can exploit the moral hazard opportunities that arise when another party pays the bills and carries the can.
The State hasn’t lifted a finger to implement the recommendations of the Competition Authority to liberate the archaic legal services sector. The absolute and total capitulation of authority by the Government to Members’ of Tribunals to determine Tribunal lawyers’ fees exposes our buffeted, put-upon nation to an estimated liability of €366 million, whenever the Tribunals finally conclude, which is as difficult to define in advance as is the date of the Islamic New Year. While that fact remains uncertain and ambiguous there was no such ambiguity when the Moriarty Tribunal paid three senior counsel €2,500 per day for 304 days in 2008, notwithstanding that the Tribunal sat in public session for an average of 20 days in the last three years.
This scale of expenditure by taxpayers on Tribunals is sufficient to pay for the parking of 200 cars belonging to members of the Bar Council in the short-term car park at Dublin Airport for 100 years, but that taxpayers are not receiving any return for their money.
The death took place last Sunday, 5th February ,of a man Ireland owes a great deal of gratitude to. Ken Olsen, was one of the two founders of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). His company became the second-largest computer company in the United States by inventing small but powerful computers, called minicomputers.
The Digital facility in Galway was the pioneering emblem of industrial development of its time until it closed in February 1993, with the loss of 780 jobs, having been in Galway for the previous 22 years.
Digital had been the economic fulcrum of Galway and the west of Ireland. It trained many of those who were to lead IDA client companies that subsequently came to our shores. It was at the cutting edge of human resource development and was most pro-active in fostering relations with Ireland’s universities. Many post-graduate students gleaned their first insight into a modern industrial facility at that site, where people were treated as a vital resource and great care was taken to integrate excellent talent into all facets of the business. Team working and innovation were hallmarks of DEC in Galway. It is ironic that the vacuum created by the loss of DEC in Galway was filled by another very progressive Massachusetts corporation, Boston Scientific.
Ken Olsen was 84 years old when died. He launched Digital in 1957 when he was 31 years old in a derelict wool mill in Maynard Massachusetts, north-west of Boston with $70,000 in venture capital and loans of $2 million. He, his partner, Harlan Anderson, and his brother Stanley Olsen were the company’s only employees in the early days.
But they created a new generation of the computer industry and at one time DEC was valued in excess of €11 billion and employed 140,000 people worldwide.
Digital achieved its breakthrough by offering a smaller, less- expensive and more user friendly alternative, known as PDP and VAX series, to the bulky IBM System 370 mainframes that dominated the computer industry.
Mainframes were usually run by specially-trained operators based in ultra clean rooms and were off-limits to everyone else. Users typically handed over their computing tasks to specialists, then waited for minutes or hours for the results. The old fashioned computers of the 1960’s co-existed with the telex, the telegram and a pint of Double Diamond!
But the minicomputers developed by Digital were cheap enough for businesses to be less cost conscious. They were also more powerful and companies could buy several and let the all interested employees use the computers directly.
Digital and Wang Laboratories from Lowell Massachusetts (which was based in Limerick for many years), along with their spinoffs, were widely credited with playing a large role in the ‘Massachusetts Miracle’, along the perimeter of Route 128 which circumnavigated Boston in the 1980s.
Despite his abundant prosperity, Ken Olsen resembled a hands-on engineer rather than a billionaire, preferring thick-soled work boots and driving an old Ford Falcon because he admired its design and found it easy to maintain.
Under his leadership, Digital endured financial hazards. It flourished in the mid-1980s and Fortune magazine published a cover story profile on Ken Olsen in 1986, calling him “arguably the most successful entrepreneur in the history of American business.’’
Allowing for inflation, Fortune said, Digital was bigger than Ford Motor Co. at the death of its founder, Henry Ford, and also larger than US Steel when Andrew Carnegie sold his company or Standard Oil when John D. Rockefeller retired.
Digital was second to IBM in the computer industry, though it was less than one-sixth of IBM’s size and 14 years younger.
Digital’s fortunes slumped when it was slow to enter the burgeoning personal computer market and its Apple Mackintosh counterpart. Digital had missed the tide of opportunity. Olsen resigned as president in 1992 and resigned from the board subsequently, cutting ties with the company. Digital was acquired by Compaq in 1998.
Ken Olsen regularly attended the Paulist Fathers Park Street church in Boston, as I did myself on many Sundays. He was a native of Bridgeport Connecticut. He started studying electrical engineering in the US Navy, which he joined in 1944, and continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT, he received a bachelor’s degree in 1950 and a master’sin 1952, in electrical engineering.
Afterward, he worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory until he launched Digital, getting seed money from the early venture capital firm American Research and Development Corp. That firm was founded in 1946 by a former Dean of the Harvard Business School and a former President of MIT. While Digital changed the computer industry it was this venture capital investment that redefined that business. The financial backers did not want the word computer in the company’s name, so Olsen settled on Digital Equipment Corp., or DEC.
The company had sales of $94,000 in its first year. Times are difficult in Ireland now but in 1971 they were in many ways worse. But Ken Olsen whose arrival in Ireland coincided with the demise of another great economic pioneer, Seán Lemass was a massive force for a change in our fortunes and self-belief. He taught us the meaning of the slogan ‘Oh yes, we can’.
Prisoners in Ireland have a right to be registered in the political constituency where they would normally live if they were not in prison. However, they have no right to be given physical access to a ballot box by temporary release or a postal vote or any other way.
If they happen to be on parole, or temporary release, at the time of an election, they are free to vote where you are registered.
Prisoners rights if thye are on remand are the same as if you were a convicted prisoner.
The Electoral (Amendment) Act 2006 provides procedures that enable prisoners to vote by post. If in prison, a prisoner can register for a postal vote in the area that you would otherwise be living in. If they are already registered to vote in that area and wish to be able to vote from prison then a prisoner should fill out a form called Form RFG. If a prisoner is not already on the register then he, or she, should complete Form RFA4 as well.
United Kingdom
The European Court of Human Rights found in 2005 that the UK’s current ban on all serving prisoners from voting contravenes Article 3 of Protocol No 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In June 2010 the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers expressed ‘profound regret’ that the ban had not been lifted in time for the 2010 general election.
The Committee of Ministers said that it would draw up a resolution for action if the UK Government failed to give prisoners the right to vote in time for the elections to the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2011.
On 20 December 2010 Mark Harper MP, the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, announced that offenders sentenced to a custodial sentence of less than four years will be given the right to vote in UK Westminster Parliamentary and European Parliament elections, unless the judge considered this inappropriate when making the sentence.
It is hard to see this as anything other than empty, vacuous, meaningless, political posturing! The horse has bolted and the stable door is off its hinges. Those with massive ambitions to renegotiate have no leverage.
The bailout deal was not negotiated in the first instance. Those whose interests were threatened arrived in the country, walked the streets, sniffed the air, took the Government by the scruff of the neck and told them that they were no longer in control of the economic stewardship of Ireland. The interest rate was prescribed unilaterally, as were the ongoing detailed quarterly reporting and compliance arrangements. That in a nutshell is how Ireland has been humiliated and joined the line of other can’t cope, won’t cope headless-chicken nations – where ministers abandon their roles abruptly and for no rational or coherent reason.
Apart from the bail-out proposition, over 80% of national debt is due to foreigners. Those foreign interests together with the IMF, ECB, EU and HM Treasury have the Irish authorities under the heel of their jackboot and they have no option but to be as compliant as a prisoner seeking goodwill in return for good behaviour.
The relationship the Irish Government has with these stakeholders is going to provide a salutary lesson in the concept of moral hazard and how its consequences cannot be always shuffled and finessed into the ether, as has been the case for too long within the country.
What the electorate will take a particular interest in is the capacity of the alternative government to bring about change in spheres over which they ought to have some control and leverage – for example, the gigantic scale of fees paid for professional advice and the ancient restricted structures that facilitate these charges; the cost of running the NTMA and its foster children and the transparency of these entities being specimens of how a government and their senior civil servants could demonstrate that their bargaining power and focus is not totally exhausted.
When the Fingleton 2008 ‘€1 million pre-contracted bonus’ has been redeemed the Government will have shown negotiating form. When bankers appear in the criminal courts the country will have demonstrated a sense of resolve and can begin to lay claim to be taken seriously. But blather at the onset of a general election campaign is just that.
