Regulator says Irish Water should not proceed with metering

Commission for Energy Regulation also proposes financial incentives for homeowners

by Sarah Bardon

So far 58% of households have had meters put in place but several hundred thousand properties remain to be linked

Irish Water should stop installing water meters in homes, the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) has declared, warning that the cost of completion will cripple efforts to improve water quality and supply.

In a submission to an Oireachtas committee which is investigating options, the CER – Ireland’s water regulator – said finishing the programme was not a priority.

So far 58 per cent of households have had meters put in place – the installation efforts have been strongly opposed in some places – but several hundred thousand properties remain to be linked. No money has been put in Irish Water’s 2017/18 capital budget to finish the work.

“If a decision was taken to complete further metering then either significant additional funding would have to be made available or a significant level of necessary capital expenditure would have to be deferred from other priorities for water investment for the time period 2017-2018,” the CER.

CER also proposes that householders should be given the option of installing a meter which would entitle them to a tax rebate if they use less water than the average. Grants should be given to people who invest in water-saving measures, while it also proposes that the installation of meters in new houses and estates should be mandatory.

Expert commission

The regulator made the submission to the newly-established Oireachtas committee examining the future of water charges. The committee was established last year to consider a report by an expert commission.

This commission proposed water be funded by general taxation and each household be given an average allowance to be determined by the CER.

The regulator says it will consult publicly before deciding on allowances and and penalties for excessive usage.

In a separate submission, Irish Water said €13 billion must be invested in Ireland’s water and waste-water services to ensure safe drinking water and proper sewage treatment.

Irish Water said it does not believe water services should be funded wholly or largely through the Exchequer since this would put investment in competition with public spending demands. It said guaranteed funding was needed.

“Shortfall in funding tends to disproportionately affect the performance of the system since fixed costs [staff, chemicals, and energy] must be met, so that any shortfalls have a direct and rapid impact on the condition of the assets and the operation of the service.”

Legislation

If funding is to come from general taxation then legislation will be needed to ensure that income is guaranteed. The utility has required additional funding from the Exchequer since water charges were suspended.

Irish Water confirmed that €714 million would be needed this year – the annual €475 million subvention plus €239 million replacement revenue in lieu of previous domestic billable income.

The Oireachtas committee will meet Thursday to hear from Irish Water, the CER and officials from the Department of Housing.

Source: Irish Times, Jan 11 2017

Fintan O’Toole: Irish banks have got away with major fraud

Gardaí have yet to investigate how thousands were tricked into switching mortgages

by Fintan O'Toole

‘The governor of the Central Bank Philip Lane told the Oireachtas Finance Committee that it must wait and see what enforcement action will be taken against individuals in the banks. But we’ve waited at least six years and seen nothing.’ Photograph: Eric Luke

June 13th, 2013. Matthew Elderfield, the financial regulator who was brought in to restore some credibility to the Irish banking system after the great debacle, is at the end of his three years in Ireland.

He is making his final appearance before the Public Accounts Committee, and he wants to issue a warning.

“We must”, he says, “be wary of suffering amnesia when it comes to the financial crisis.”

He signals the onset of the smug belief that the banking system is now fixed for good.

“As a supervisor one is almost always playing catch-up with the industry, and it is dangerous to think one will get to a point when one can rest on one’s laurels … It is also especially important to be vigilant against backsliding.”

Then, as a very deliberate parting shot, Elderfield talks about impunity, the way the Irish legal system lets white collar criminals, including bankers, away with so much.

“If the committee would not mind a small digression about accountability for individuals … There is an open issue about how effective the system is, if I can call it that – that is, ourselves, the Garda and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement – and about being able to ensure individual accountability through the enforcement and sanctions process.

“We have taken a lot of enforcement cases against firms – we have been very successful in that, I think, in terms of raising standards there – for systems and controls lapses, for misselling and for overcharging, but it is much harder to take cases against individuals … A reflection I have is that white-collar crime seems to be an area in which the system is just not operating well in terms of being able to tackle that. It is too protracted.

“The deterrent value of taking actions against firms is good, but the deterrent value of taking actions against individuals is much better.”

Tracker mortgages

Now fast forward to December 20th, 2016, and a meeting of the Oireachtas Finance Committee. Philip Lane, the relatively new governor of the Central Bank, is giving evidence.

One of the things he is asked about is the appalling scandal in which the banks deceived at least 15,000 of their customers into moving from tracker mortgages to considerably higher interest rates, often at dreadful personal as well as financial cost.

It is clear that this defrauding of customers was systematic and deliberate. It operated in 15 banks – essentially the entire Irish system – and so far as we know there is not one case of a “mistake” favouring the customer.

It raises in the starkest way exactly what Elderfield was talking about: individual accountability for misselling and overcharging.

Interestingly, Lane told the committee that the Central Bank would “take all necessary action to hold regulated firms and individuals to account for failures in regard to tracker mortgages” – “failures” and “individuals” being the interesting words.

In the first place there were no failures: the bankers succeeded in doing what they set out to do, which was to deceive their customers and take their money.

As for holding individuals to account, it sounds promising.

Until we remember that the Central Bank knew about much of this crookery going all the way back to 2010 when Bank of Ireland admitted fleecing 2,100 customers.

Deception

The Criminal Law (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001 says: “A person who dishonestly, with the intention of making a gain for himself or herself or another, or of causing loss to another by any deception induces another to do or refrain from doing an act, is guilty of an offence.”

This offence is punishable by a fine and/or up to five years in prison. I can’t find the clause that says the law applies to misselling a second-hand car but not a mortgage.

We know that at least 15,000 people were deceived by bankers, and that they suffered considerable loss as a result. About 100 families lost their homes.

Over the lifetime of these mortgages the amount involved in this attempted bank heist was at least €500 million.

Yet in the six years since the Central Bank discovered this systematic deception we have no evidence of the Central Bank calling in the Garda to investigate what seems, on the face of it, to be multiple and organised crimes.

Legal consequences

Who devised this system-wide scheme? Lane thinks it a coincidence that all the banks did the same thing.

“I am pretty sure they know that the legal consequences of cartel-like behaviour would be devastating for them. I see no evidence of that kind of cartel-like behaviour.”

How does he know that when there has been no criminal investigation?

Who issued the instructions? Who ordered staff to keep schtum when customers were crying on the phone? And will any of these people be prosecuted?

Lane told the committee that it must wait and see what enforcement action will be taken against individuals in the banks.

But we’ve waited at least six years and seen nothing.

And there are words we have not read or heard: law, crime, police. Until we do it is hard to believe that the culture that led to the crash has not survived its consequences.

Source: Irish Times, Jan 3, 2017

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Truckload of Aran knitwear leaves Ireland for Belarus

Fruits of of Inis Oírr’s year-long charity ‘knitathon’ are bound for Minsk orphanage

Aran knitwear has graced the catwalks of Milan, Paris and New York but a very special truckload is making its way this week to an orphanage just outside Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

For almost a year, residents of the smallest of the Aran Islands, from aged 90 right down to the four-year-old girls and boys of Inis Oírr’s naíonra, or kindergarten, have taken out their bioráin cniotála (knitting needles) to knit scarves, gloves, sweaters, hats and socks for the charity initiative.

Last week the final stitch was made and the needles were put down. Some 400 items were laid out like a large multicoloured tapestry for people to admire at Scoil Náisiúnta Chaomháin .

They were delivered to the Monastery, Ennistymon last Sunday where Brother Liam O’Meara, a stalwart of the “Burren for Belarus” project which helps young victims of the Chernobyl disaster, had arranged to transport them across Europe to the orphanage.

The aim is to have the children wearing a little piece of Inis Oírr on Christmas Day. The clothing serves a real need in a city where temperatures can drop to minus 20 degrees.

Clicking needles

The “Inis Oírr for Belarus” project was the idea of the island’s public health nurse, Bairbre Uí­ Chualáin. “My sister in law, Elizabeth Feeney, is involved in charity work for Brother Liam. I had seen and admired the work,” she says.

“My own work puts me in touch with most of the people on Inis Oírr so I suggested to them on each call: why not knit garments for the orphans?”

There was a 90 per cent take-up, according to Bairbre. Instead of relaxing in front of the sitting room TV after tea, balls of wool were thrown on the floor and the clatter of clicking needles began filling the island’s homesteads.

Among those taking part were knitters of serious pedigree: the women of Comhar na nAosach (the association of seniors). All the schools on the island joined the effort too as did the pre-school. The children got to know how to do the plain stitch while their tutors or parents looked after the purl and the crossover.

Source: Irish Times Dec 22 2016

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Chernobyl children arrive: ‘Christmas wouldn’t be the same without them’

A group of 39 children from Chernobyl have arrived at Dublin Airport with Adi Roche’s Chernobyl Children International group to spend the Christmas holidays in Ireland, thirty years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Video: Bryan O'Brien

Heralded by cries of delight, cheers and tears, and serenaded with seasonal songs , the latest group of children from Belarus and Ukraine were welcomed to Ireland on Wednesday by their host families and Chernobyl Children International.

Thirty-nine children with special needs from the area affected by the fallout of the 1986 nuclear disaster, together with six carers, were led by Santa Claus, and charity founder Adi Roche, into the Dublin Airport arrivals hall to a raucous reception.

To those waiting on loved ones arriving for Christmas, there is a sign on the sliding door that separates the baggage collection area from the arrivals hall. “The best Christmas present ever is about to walk through these doors,” it says.

And when the children arrived, it was not at all clear who was more excited, them or their host families.

“Christmas wouldn’t be the same without Igor,” said Marie Cox from Mayo, shortly before rushing forward to embrace the 16-year-old in a wheelchair, smothering him with the motherly love she has given him for the past eight years during his twice yearly visits to Ireland.

“He is part of our family now,” said Marie. “We just love him so much at this stage. He’s our fifth son.”

Abandoned as a baby

Igor Shadkov, who is from Belarus and has multiple physical and mental disabilities, was abandoned as a baby and left to the Vesnova Children’s Mental Asylum, a Soviet-era institution at Gomel near the Belarus-Ukraine border long since modernised.

The limitations of his life beyond his various birth conditions were painfully obvious when he first came to the Coxes.

“He had never been out of the orphanage,” recalls Marie. “He’d never experienced wind, he’d never felt rain on his face. He hadn’t seen the stars and he’d never slept in his own room.”

Since then, he has had his own space in their Castlebar home, including his own box filled with toys and familiar gadgets that are there for him, every Christmas and summer.

His face lit up in the airport when he saw his Irish mother.

For Eileen Morrisey from Kilkenny, Vassili Lyskovets, aged 25, is her “superstar”, always smiling and “another brother to Orla”, her daughter.

Eileen’s friend Carmel Everard, also from Kilkenny, plays host to 12-year-old Ivan who comes from Khoniki on the Ukraine-Belarus border. It was one of the areas worst affected by the fallout. Ivan has just one kidney and struggles on a poor diet back home.

Greeting and hugging

“He’s eating and drinking everything that’s bad out there,” said Carmel, “and so we try to feed him well. Within two days, there’s an improvement in his skin pallor.”

The families surged forward, greeting and hugging the delighted arrivals as the eight-strong choir of students from Bimm, the British and Irish Modern Music institute, Dublin, gave it their all.

Source: Irish Times Dec 22 2016