The Ditch

22/08/2023

SIPO is investigating electronic payments to Leo Varadkar and his explanation as to why he hasn’t publicly declared them in his annual declaration of donations. The ethics commission is also asking the taoiseach if people he claimed to have made donations on behalf of others have registered with SIPO, as is legally required.

These payments exceed €600 – the maximum sum TDs can receive from individual donors without publicly declaring. The Ditch reported last week that SIPO has asked the taoiseach why he didn’t declare a 2018 donation from Rossa Fanning, with Varadkar claiming the attorney-general had been reimbursed for at least part of the payment – which would bring it below the publicly declarable threshold.

It has now emerged SIPO is enquiring whether Varadkar is aware if the people he claimed to have made donations and were later reimbursed by others – legally known as intermediaries – have adhered to legal requirements for such donations. “Can you further confirm that the obligations on an intermediary… have been followed in each case?” wrote SIPO to Varadkar this May, asking him to “provide a detailed explanation”.

SIPO is investigating electronic payments to Leo Varadkar and his explanation as to why he hasn’t declared them.

17/08/2023

SIPO has opened an inquiry into undeclared donations received by taoiseach Leo Varadkar after it emerged he misled the commission during a 2019 probe.

The state ethics commission was forced to write to Varadkar again this week after he ignored correspondence it sent three months earlier seeking answers on undeclared donations – which include a payment from attorney-general Rossa Fanning.

Another two of the donations are from PR company Edelman. SIPO told the taoiseach this week that Edelman has contradicted Varadkar’s explanation as to why he didn’t declare its 2018 and 2022 donations, which both exceeded the legal limit of €1,000.

Leo Varadkar misled SIPO during a 2019 probe. A fresh inquiry has begun.

15/08/2023

Ex-taoiseach Enda Kenny, ex-jobs minister Richard Bruton and ex-tánaiste Eamon Gilmore took credit for almost 100 bogus jobs – which were to supposedly be delivered by a controversial, discontinued IDA scheme – in one 2013 announcement.

The Fine Gael-Labour government that came to power in 2011 and that would, three years later, run an ill-advised reelection campaign that implored voters to “keep the recovery going”, had intensified the post-crash austerity of the previous Fianna Fáil-led coalition. Announcements of jobs, which may or may not be delivered, became a feature of government’s PR campaign during these years of austerity.

With these particular jobs, RTÉ, Newstalk, the Irish Times and Silicon Republic were among the outlets that provided uncritical coverage of the jobs that never materialised.

Enda Kenny, Richard Bruton and Eamon Gilmore took credit for almost 100 bogus jobs in one 2013 announcement.

11/08/2023

The IDA attempted to block the release of the number of jobs created by a much-touted government scheme and tried to argue that publishing the figures would hurt the state.

The organisation twice refused to release the details but the Information Commissioner ruled against the IDA and has released the figures to The Ditch – which will report on just how successful the scheme was in the coming weeks.

During the appeals process the IDA tried to introduce new grounds for blocking access to the records, saying that releasing the number of jobs would harm the state’s interests.

The IDA tried to argue that publishing the number of jobs created by a government scheme would hurt the state.

08/08/2023

Housing minister Darragh O’Brien won’t explain why his ministerial mileage claim for August 2022 isn’t supported by his official diary.

Though O’Brien claimed for more than 2,800 kilometres, his diary suggests he drove less than half that – just 1,000 kilometres.

Housing minister Darragh O’Brien won’t explain why his ministerial mileage claim for August 2022 isn’t supported by his official diary.

28/07/2023

Fianna Fáil minister of state Niall Collins claimed he drove more than 2,000 kilometres for ministerial work in August 2020 – with the country five months into the Covid-19 pandemic and the Dáil on its summer break.

This is the third unusually high driving expenses claim submitted by Collins and reported by The Ditch, as well as the third claim the Limerick County TD refuses to address.

His party colleague and fellow junior minister Thomas Byrne has insisted his 1,800-kilometre for the same month is correct, while arts minister Catherine Martin has repaid €1,140 she said she claimed mistakenly.

The country was five months into the Covid-19 pandemic and the Dáil was on its summer break.

25/07/2023

Fianna Fáil junior minister Thomas Byrne has insisted one of his mileage claims is correct – despite his diary only accounting for a fraction of what he claimed.

Though the minister of state at the Department of Tourism told The Ditch his August 2020 mileage claim is “in accordance” with his ministerial work that month, he claimed for almost 1,800 kilometres while his diary suggests he drove just 300 kilometres.

He declined to comment further on the trips he took that came to this total.

Fianna Fáil junior minister Thomas Byrne has insisted one of his mileage claims is correct – despite his diary only accounting for a fraction of what he claimed.

20/07/2023

An international working group, in a report that highlights the importance of western technology to Vladimir Putin’s military, has identified Irish parts in Russian weapons used in the invasion of Ukraine.

The Ditch – in March 2022 – reported that Timoney Technology had supplied parts for armoured vehicles deployed by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. The Meath-based company, in 2012, had announced a deal with a Russian automotive company part-owned by both the Russian state and a personal friend of Putin.

Timoney Technology has now been named in a report published earlier this month by a Stanford University-backed international working group.

An international working group has identified Irish parts in Russian weapons used in the invasion of Ukraine.

19/07/2023

Having claimed to have driven more than 8,000 kilometres in three months when the Dáil wasn’t sitting, Fianna Fáil junior minister Seán Fleming has denied submitting inaccurate ministerial driving expenses claims.

He won’t however explain why his ministerial diary accounts for less than 1,000 of these claimed kilometres. One of these months is August 2020 – when government had introduced special lockdown restrictions for Fleming’s home county of Laois – and the minister of state at the Department of Foreign Affairs claimed for 2,358 kilometres.

Seán Fleming won’t however explain why his ministerial diary accounts for less than 1,000 of these claimed kilometres.

17/07/2023

Fianna Fáil minister of state Niall Collins is refusing to address a second unusually high driving expenses claim – where he said he drove almost 3,000 kilometres in a month when the Dáil wasn’t sitting and his diary suggests just 170 kilometres of driving for ministerial work.

A spokesperson for arts minister Catherine Martin on Friday, after being questioned by The Ditch, said the Green Party deputy leader had repaid €1,140 in wrongly claimed expenses. This claim was also for August when the Dáil was in recess and wasn’t corroborated by her ministerial diary.

Though Martin addressed the inaccurate claim and said it had been “rectified”, Collins has refused to address his August 2022 claim and now his August 2021 claim – neither of which are backed up by his official diary.

He said he drove almost 3,000 kilometres in a month when the Dáil wasn’t sitting and his diary suggests just 170 kilometres of driving.

14/07/2023

Green party minister arts minister Catherine Martin says her unusually high, tax-free, ministerial driving expenses claim for August 2021, a month when the Dáil wasn’t sitting and her diary showed only a handful of ministerial engagements, has been "rectified".

Martin’s ministerial diary for the month suggests just less than 200 kilometres of driving while her mileage claim was for almost 4,500 kilometres.

Her party leader and environment minister, Eamon Ryan, didn’t claim any ministerial mileage expenses in the same period.
Though Martin claimed more than €2,300 for ministerial driving expenses for August 2021 alone, all but seven days in her diary for the month had no entries for events or meetings related to her office.

When questioned by The Ditch, a spokesperson in Martin's department said this was down to "an administrative error", which has now "been rectified".

It remains unclear whether the incorrectly claimed expenses have been repaid.

Arts minister Catherine Martin says the matter has "been rectified" after being questioned by The Ditch.

12/07/2023

Fianna Fáil junior minister Niall Collins won’t explain his inordinately high, tax-free, ministerial driving expenses claim for August 2022 – when the Dáil was in recess and his diary showed few ministerial engagements.

For Collins’s claim for the month to accurately reflect the ministerial work he carried out, he would’ve had to have driven more than twice as much as the average taxi driver in Ireland. His total claim of more than €20,000 last year suggests the same.

While his ministerial diary for August accounts for just over 900 kilometres of driving – he claimed for more than 6,000 kilometres’ worth. The diaries of at least two of Collins’s ministerial colleagues match what they received in expenses.

Niall Collins won’t explain his inordinately high driving expenses claim for August 2022 – when the Dáil was in recess.

06/07/2023

The businessman who sold the HSE more than €3 million of unusable hand sanitiser during the Covid-19 pandemic made a profit of at least €1.4 million on the deal.

The HSE paid €3.3 million for the sanitiser that was unlawful to distribute on the Irish market, as reported by The Ditch in September 2021, and it had been put straight into storage on delivery.

It has now emerged that the sanitiser cost just €450,000 and that, when shipping costs had been taken into account and a third-party funder had been paid, the businessman stood to earn a minimum of €1.4 million.

The businessman, when seeking funding from the third party, wrote, “The HSE are desperate for stock.”

The businessman who sold the HSE more than €3 million of unusable hand sanitiser made at least €1.4 million.

05/07/2023

I’d thought that Sinn Féin had toned down the rhetoric that led to its unexpected 2020 electoral success. The party no longer talked about fighting rentier capitalism. It seemed to avoid all mention of the IRA. I wanted to see if party members spoke differently, in the pages of Sinn Féin’s magazine, among themselves.

They did.

Writing of his time in Long Kesh, Sinn Féin MLA Pat Sheehan, once a former hunger striker and now a multi-property landlord, said he has “always been, and still remain(s), proud to have been a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army and to have taken up arms to resist the oppressive and malign British occupation of our land”.

The incongruence between the powerful symbolism of the hunger strikers and the material reality of Sheehan extracting rent from tenants seemed to epitomise the modern mainstream republican movement, which on one hand invokes revolutionary imagery and on the other works to uphold the status quo.

I wish the party posed this much of a threat to the social order. It doesn’t.

29/06/2023

In recognition of the most decent man in Ireland and his repeated attacks on independent media, The Ditch is naming a bursary in his honour.

We're accepting submissions for the inaugural Micheál Martin Press Freedom Bursary – with a total fund of €3,500.

In recognition of the most decent man in Ireland, The Ditch is naming a bursary in his honour.

28/06/2023

Fianna Fáil minister of state Niall Collins is to be called as a witness in a High Court case – in which he will be asked to account for his alleged intervention in a planning dispute because of a senior party official’s involvement.

A successful objector to a proposed Galway hotel and apartment development is being sued by the developer and a co-defendant in the case has written to Collins outlining his plans to call the Limerick County TD as a witness.

Fianna Fáil minister of state Niall Collins is to be called as witness in a High Court case – in which he will be asked to account for his alleged intervention in a planning dispute because of a senior party official’s involvement.

23/06/2023

A Fine Gael senator's rental property isn't registered with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB).

Landlord Emer Currie didn’t register the tenancy despite senior politicians being caught out over the past year for similar failures. Her tenants will be unable to claim the rental tax credit until she registers the tenancy – a government initiative promoted by her party. “We want to put more money in your pocket – and one of the ways we are doing that is through the rent tax credit,” reads Fine Gael's website.

Her tenants will be unable to claim the rental tax credit until she registers the tenancy.

21/06/2023

Twenty years ago then taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Dáil that after the 11 September attacks, “The world had entered into a new and dangerous era,” saying the idea, popular among British and American liberals after the end of the Cold War, “that we had reached the end of history proved to be seriously premature.”

There was an absurdity for Ahern to take Francis Fukuyama’s theory about the end of ideology (and therefore history), with liberalism the apotheosis of all its antecedents, and apply it to Ireland, a country that because of its history of colonisation hadn’t yet legally existed for 100 years. There was also an adopted melodrama to Ahern’s speech of this “new and dangerous era”, an Americentric appropriation of a fight that needn’t concern Ireland – it’s not like Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and the others took their hijacked planes and flew them into Liberty Hall and Croke Park.

Ahern made his speech the day the United States illegally invaded Iraq. Ireland’s response, he said, to this new era would be mundane: government had decided to continue to allow the US military to use Shannon Airport.

The shade of grey Ahern’s government had Ireland occupy was to play a “vital” role in accommodating illegal rendition flights and the facilitation of torture.

16/06/2023

Agriculture minister Charlie McConalogue was among a group of directors who resigned from the board of a Donegal radio station days after it received a letter from a state body alleging serious financial fraud.

Inishowen Community Radio (ICRfm) in a six-year spell received more than €800,000 in public funding from Pobal. After repeated allegations of fraud Pobal in 2011 carried out an audit of the company and discovered in one year alone that around €20,000 had been misappropriated.

Fianna Fáil TD McConalogue served as a director of the company from January 2010, the year after he was first elected to Donegal County Council, to late 2011, the year he was elected to the Dáil.

Charlie McConalogue resigned from a Donegal radio station days after allegations of financial fraud.

14/06/2023

A Social Democrats Dublin city councillor has been letting a converted home gym as a granny flat despite not having planning permission to do so.

Tara Deacy has been letting the two-bed granny flat since at least 2018 for €1,450 a month.

Dublin City Council in 2008 gave Deacy planning permission to construct a 51 square metre home gym and storage building at the rear of her home in Crumlin. She later decided to convert the building into a rental property but didn’t seek planning permission, which contravenes the 2000 Planning and Development Act.

A Social Democrats Dublin City councillor has been letting a converted home gym as a granny flat despite not having planning permission to do so.

13/06/2023

Fianna Fáil TD Niamh Smyth asked Cavan County Council to have unemployed people on a government placement carry out work on a site bought by her husband. Smyth was cathaoirleach of the council at the time.

Other councillors at the meeting agreed that people taking part in the state's Gateway Programme – which aimed to “boost” unemployed people’s “motivation and confidence” – should work on the entrance to a site on which Smyth’s family home was built.
The home was built on lakeside land despite being zoned for recreational use for the local community.

Smyth’s husband received planning permission for the 2,750 square foot home in 2016 despite the planner’s report noting that the laneway to the site was “saturated with water and was not accessible”.

They were taking part in the state's Gateway Programme – which aimed to “boost” unemployed people’s “motivation and confidence”

07/06/2023

Fianna Fáil TD Niamh Smyth has repeatedly failed to declare her interest in a property she twice claimed to own in planning applications.

The Cavan–Monaghan TD previously secured €350,000 in state aid – which was later withdrawn – from a Fianna Fáil minister for the property through an entity that does not appear to have ever existed.

Smyth, a former county councillor, has never declared an interest in the property in her annual ethics returns since becoming a TD in 2016. It’s a criminal offence under ethics legislation for councillors to fail to declare their property interests.

Niamh Smyth has repeatedly failed to declare her interest in a property she twice claimed to own.

02/06/2023

Comment: Much to say about winning and losing, the subject of two of my footballing memories, and how it harms children. Little to say last month about Nicola Gallagher and the abuse she survived from a good GAA man.

In a Facebook post she said, describing 24 years of domestic violence she endured while married to ex-Derry manager Rory Gallagher, “Maybe it's what footballers do.” Not every male footballer grows up to be like Rory Gallagher, but there’s a culture that both permits and excuses this kind of behaviour in the GAA, particularly if your team, as was the case with Gallagher, is winning. It’s a culture that, at the very least, doesn’t like talking about what actually matters.

We’re supposed to believe that no one knew about the kind of man Rory Gallagher is. After the allegations against him became truly public, the Derry county board refused to do two things: they wouldn’t comment on when they became aware of the accusations nor would they clarify what Gallagher meant when he initially said he was “stepping back” (rather than stepping down) from his duties with the team. Let’s wait and see, the board seems to have thought.

The GAA should recognise the parts of its culture that cause actual harm.

01/06/2023

Comment: I don’t believe the judiciary is above criticism. I never have. It probably isn't scrutinised enough and often benefits from the unhealthy deference to authority so prevalent across the Irish establishment.

Things aren’t so simple for senior civil servants. It gets messy when high-level state appointees get into the business of criticising the people responsible for keeping the state in check. They know this. The recently appointed chairperson of An Bord Pleanála (ABP), Oonagh Buckley, knows this. She knew it when she fired an unfounded attack at the two High Court judges who have provided the only means of redress for all the people affected by the years-long scandal engulfing ABP.

Buckley has dispensed with even the pretence of bringing about change to a discredited state body.

31/05/2023

Fianna Fáil has refused to say if it accepted a €600,000 gift recently left to it in the will of a deceased independent election candidate.

Ex-taoiseach and former Fianna Fáil party leader Bertie Ahern has also refused to comment on a separate €50,000 gift left to him by the same man who died in 2019.

William DJ Gorman signed the 2010 will in the office of celebrity lawyer Gerald Kean who also declined to comment on a €60,000 gift left to him and his daughter.

Fianna Fáil has refused to say if it accepted a €600,000 gift recently left to it in the will of a deceased independent election candidate.

30/05/2023

The owner of Iceland stores in Ireland – whose workers late last week wrote to management saying they hadn’t been paid – is refusing to take responsibility for ongoing mistreatment of employees, using a range of opaque structures in an attempt to hide his ownership.

Though last week Naieem Maniar claimed to one unpaid employee, “Just be very clear – I am not your employer,” yesterday one worker who’d gone on strike had her contract terminated with a letter signed by a company secretary and HR director of one of Maniar’s many companies.

Formerly the owner of Iceland’s Irish franchise through his company ACCHL before running into financial difficulties, Maniar has been repeatedly pursued in the High Court and has a list of adverse judgments against him. It is understood several tradespeople are currently chasing him over unpaid debts.

The owner of Iceland stores in Ireland is refusing to take responsibility for ongoing mistreatment of employees.

26/05/2023

Since her appointment to An Bord Pleanála (ABP), chairperson Oonagh Buckley has only voted in four planning cases – one of which was a twice-refused strategic housing development in north Dublin.

Buckley has participated in just more than one percent of cases decided by the board since her appointment in January this year. Her predecessor Dave Walsh voted in over 15 percent of cases during his tenure according to statistics released by ABP.

One of which was a twice-refused strategic housing development in north Dublin.

24/05/2023

One of Ireland’s largest property developers has claimed state planning policy is the biggest obstacle to building homes – despite boasting in its annual report that it’s sitting on successful planning applications for more than double its usual output.

Glenveagh, which claimed revenue of €649 million in 2022, has also in the last two years sold at least three sites – with planning permission included – in deals worth more than €100 million.

It also claims state planning policy is the biggest obstacle to building homes.

23/05/2023

Health minister Stephen Donnelly has been driving his family car even though its motor tax expired in September 2022.

It's a criminal offence to drive a vehicle without valid motor tax, with a garda spokesperson telling The Ditch, “It is illegal to drive an untaxed vehicle.” Gardaí have powers under the Road Traffic Act 1994 to detain a vehicle being driven in a public place if it hasn’t been taxed for two months or more. “Garda members do have permission to seize a vehicle,” confirmed the spokesperson.

Donnelly was seen driving the vehicle on a public road in Kilcoole, county Wicklow last Friday evening despite it not having motor tax for almost eight months.

Health minister Stephen Donnelly has been driving his family car even though its motor tax expired in September 2022.

18/05/2023

An Bord Pleanála (ABP) chairperson Oonagh Buckley has refused to say if she stands over a controversial remark she made about two High Court judges last month.

Buckley took aim at the judiciary during the committee hearing just minutes after she apologised for criticising planning law expert Fred Logue.

“We also have two very activist judges working on the planning lists and they are making very far-reaching decisions,” said Buckley at a sitting of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on April 27.

The term “activist judge” is often used pejoratively to describe members of the judiciary who decide cases based on their own personal views rather than the law and constitution. In recent times US Republicans increasingly use the term when criticising judges whom they consider too liberal.

The Bord Pleanála chairperson has refused to say if she stands over a controversial remark she made about two High Court judges last month.

16/05/2023

Micheál Martin seems to believe The Ditch is a uniquely political media outlet, unlike, for example, the Irish Times or Newstalk. But he’s wrong. National media outlets are highly political organisations, which forge political allegiances and seek to influence the political decisions of the electorate. They just aren’t honest about it.

Martin’s comments, and well as Fianna Fáil Senator Malcolm Byrne’s recent complaint to the Standards In Public Office Commission that the Ditch is a “political platform”, are cynical and brazen attacks on the free press.

Right wing assumptions about politics are so taken for granted that they are not even regarded as political.

15/05/2023

Fianna Fáil senator Malcolm Byrne has made a complaint to SIPO concerning The Ditch.

Our response in full.

15/05/2023

An Bord Pleanála (ABP) hasn’t had a key policy for conflicts of interest for at least seven weeks – despite all the controversies the authority has been mired in for the last year.

Board members haven’t been required to declare their relevant interests in a file restrictions list. This means that board members are potentially being allocated case files where they have a conflict of interest, such as connections with previous employers or where developments are proposed in their own neighbourhoods.

An Bord Pleanála hasn’t had a key policy for conflicts of interest for at least seven weeks.

13/05/2023

How bathetic that where once a true Irish revolutionary, in James Connolly, said, “Our demands most moderate are: we only want the earth,” Ireland’s far right, whose leaders claim revolutionary status, seem happy to, rather than seize the world for themselves, just stop it progressing.

With its celebrations of the burning of proposed refugee centres and its affirmation of biological determinism over free will, it’s a nihilistic rather than emancipatory movement. Connolly’s articulation of his demands self-consciously acknowledged the scale of his vision; the Irish far right and their fellow travellers, with their ‘Ireland for the Irish’ – without suggestion of what that country would look like beyond the birth certificates of its citizens – show how meek at heart they are.
To put in terms they’ll understand: these people are profoundly, spiritually, cucked.

The protests the movement is involved in typically typically take place in working class (in the liberal sense) areas. I reject the condescension with which these communities are treated, communities that returned among the highest Yes votes in Ireland’s same-sex marriage and abortion referenda, communities that came together to defeat the regressive proposed Irish water charges. To hear even ostensibly sympathetic political leaders and commentators describe these places, you’d think they comprise amorphous and unreasonable emotion rather than actual people.

When people from these communities articulate and act on racist sentiments, it’s every bit as conscious and deliberate as when the good people of Dún Laoghaire and Dalkey voted to strip foreigners’ children of their citizenship rights in 2004. Like their counterparts in south Dublin suburbs, these people have been subjected to the same establishment media and led by the same establishment politicians, all of whom have done their utmost to divide working class (in the true sense) people.
We make our own history, after all, even if we don’t make it as we please.

But we have choices, just like Bob Hilliard had the choice of fighting for the Spanish Republic or Eoin O’Duffy’s Irish Brigades. Like James Connolly had the choice of fighting for the earth for all or setting it alight.

Virgilio Fernández del Real, at almost 100 years old, knew how to deal with fascists.

12/05/2023

PR consultant Tim Ryan, a 25-year IPAV veteran, told Davitt he was resigning from the council “with immediate effect” following a meeting with the CEO the day before.

Ryan raised the issue of Davitt’s salary – which IPAV hasn’t disclosed.

“By the way, what salary are you on? It never appears in the annual report. Bizarre!” wrote the former council member in his letter.

Key management compensation at IPAV was €244,709 in 2022. It is not made clear in the accounts if this figure relates only to CEO Pat Davitt’s annual salary or includes other staff.

Two members of the IPAV governing council have resigned in the past few months.