Noble Joe signs off with an alternative banking report

January 31, 2016

There were two banking reports floating around Leinster House last week. One was written by the Irish establishment, the other by an incorrigible rebel.

Article by Shane Ross, Irish Independent, Jan 31,2016

BT: See Full Report, link below. One of the most important report analysis of Ireland's economic crash.

WARHORSE: TD Joe Higgins explaining his decision not to sign off on the Banking Inquiry report. Photo: Sam Boal /Rollingnews.ie

The first, an expensive production with a glossy cover, was dull as ditch water inside. The second was precariously pinned together on the outside, but a controversial read written by one of only two dissenting voices on the inquiry team, Deputy Joe Higgins. Dump the official version.

Last Thursday, Higgins made his final speech in Dail Eireann. Typically, he did not flag it as such. He modestly took the opportunity to explain why he had jumped ship from the emptiest vessel ever launched in Leinster House.

Just before Joe spoke, another eloquent parliamentarian had said goodbye with an almighty swipe at some of his opponents.

Pat Rabbitte , former leader of the Labour Party - so derided by Higgins - allowed himself the luxury of a few rhetorical flourishes as he left the Chamber for the final time. He was clapped by his own party colleagues. Joe simply got on with the business, finished his 10-minute speech, picked up his papers and left.

The speech was vintage Higgins. When I entered the chamber, he was making the mother of all attacks on Independent News & Media. He was in full flight, fingering the media for fuelling the property boom. His Banking Inquiry report had related how this newspaper group had sponsored the Irish Property Awards every year until 2008. Worse still, the 2004 awards ceremony had been portrayed in its pages as "a glittering showcase of the cream of Ireland's property and development industries ... attended by a record 1,000 property professionals with several hundred disappointed".

In his Dail speech, he happily regaled us with the tale of how "in 2007 the 'Irish property deal of the year' award had gone to the Irish Glass Bottle site, which ended up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of euro while five of the seven award-winning developers were among the top 10 debtors to Anglo."

Higgins socked it to us, insisting that the Property Awards reflected "INM's generally obsequious coverage of developers, who were celebrated as gods with the Midas touch …"

Higgins displays political courage that other politicians would shun as suicidal.

When I phoned Higgins on Thursday night to congratulate him on his speech, he suggested that I would not want to print such criticism in this newspaper. Nor to mention that the Irish Times was actually "a player" in the property market by virtue of buying a website - myhome.ie - for €40m in 2006. Both newspaper groups, he maintained, had a strong vested interest in seeing the property market rocket.

Not for the first time in two decades of Higgins in the Dail, the old Trotskyite warhorse was right. And not for the first time in his life, Higgins was on his own. No other politician in Dail Eireann has the bottle to confront the media full frontal and excoriate them for a role in the biggest disaster ever to hit this state. Such a manoeuvre will not feature in Minister for Transport Paschal Donohoe's putative 'Guide to the path to the top in politics.'

It is well known that it was Higgins who insisted that the inquiry should summon the media as witnesses to account for their behaviour during the property boom. His colleagues on the inquiry were supposed to have felt doubts about questioning such powerful players. Higgins had a field day, courting political suicide as he interrogated newspaper editors and business commentators.

So it was no surprise that Higgins issued his own Banking Inquiry report. His reason for doing so was not grandstanding, nor the usual political hunger for attention. It was pure conviction. Higgins felt the foundations of the official report were flawed. He was on the money.

His explanation is consistent with his creed. He insists that the inquiry never asked the fundamental question: "why was a small cabal of bankers, bondholders and developers allowed to wield massive economic power in pursuit of private, corporate profit and in the process inflict incalculable economic and social destruction on society?" You do not need to be a Trot to agree with that, but you need bottle to ask it.

Higgins's report highlights how ordinary citizens were galled at how utterly immune the bankers and others were to any legal sanction because the whole system "had been legally rigged in their interests".

Nor does it take a hard Leftie to share this view, but nothing so citizen-friendly would ever have appeared in the tepid official version.

Joe Higgins will not be easily replaced. No other TD has evoked such respect as a conviction politician. Higgins's rhetoric may be out of tune with the modern world but his long record of uncompromising integrity is unparalleled.

Higgins lives the ideology. He gives half his Dail salary to the Socialist Party and other causes. He spent a month in prison for his beliefs after the anti-bin-tax campaign in 2003.

He does not easily mingle with other TDs, preferring the company of those who share his mission.

He is a workaholic, dedicated to the socialist cause. While he is totally unclubbable, he is meticulously polite and has displayed a sense of humour that has regularly left the Dail in stitches.

He has a great line in ridicule and irony. He deeply detests the soft Left, as he sees them as traitors to the socialist cause. His eyes often twinkle mischievously as he gauges reactions to his more provocative statements, yet he is respected by nearly every TD.

Last week a member of the Banking Inquiry told me that they had all built up a genuine liking for the socialist TD, despite their differences. "Joe is a very, very serious politician," he muttered - enviously.

Higgins has no respect for high office or its holders. When Mary McAleese rang to tell him that she was going to seek a second term, he responded to her Excellency that her office was "superfluous" and should be abolished. The President is reported to have been stunned by his reaction.

He is famous for his Dail jousts, causing convulsions when he told Taoiseach Bertie Ahern that his Dail answers were "like playing handball with a haystack". His famous speech about "Ansbacher Man", the tax evaders who walked away scot-free, was a classic.

So we are probably bidding goodbye to the finest parliamentarian of the last decade. Politics does not make people of Higgins's mettle any more.

Joe's dedication to his principles has even marked his departure. Higgins did not need to step down, as he would undoubtedly have been re-elected in his Dublin West stronghold.

But he genuinely wanted to make way for another generation of socialism. Fellow socialist Ruth Coppinger shares his home patch due to her by-election victory. Consequently, there is only room for one of them in a battle that includes Leo Varadkar and Joan Burton. So Higgins has selflessly stood aside to be her director of elections.

He insists that he will still be active but acknowledges the stress of the political life. And in a rare concession to his opponents, he admits that "politics is a dog's life, even for right-wing TDs."

His exit is a truly noble gesture. Joe Higgins, author of the alternative Banking Inquiry report, is living proof that nobility is not confined to aristocrats.

Joe Higgins' Alternative Banking Report. Click on illustration below for full report.

Irish Water was slain by Middle Ireland, not Paul Murphy

September 20, 2015

Article by Shane Ross

Did you pay your water charges? You did. You mug. Not to worry, you will get your money back.

Every water disaster has an upside. Here is one election promise they will not tell you about. It will not feature in the Budget. It will not appear in any party's manifesto but it is being whispered in the corridors of Leinster House. It will have all-party agreement. It will put money back into the pockets of the battered, law-abiding middle class.

You did not pay? You are carefree, cavalier and cunning. You know there is safety in numbers. The Irish Government is hardly poised to prosecute half its electorate just before an election. The battle is over. Civil disobedience has triumphed.

Some of those who have already paid up are looking ruefully at their respectable, middle-class neighbours. The neighbours - with two cars in the driveway and kids at private schools - are not paying their water charges. They see no point. They justify their refusal by citing the woes of Irish Water. They loathe the bonus culture, the waste, the daily litany of disasters dripping out of the Talbot Street headquarters. They deeply dislike Paul Murphy TD, his ilk and his antics, but they see a refusal to pay water charges as a gesture of defiance, a riposte to the constant crucifixions of the coping classes. They know they will never see the inside of a courtroom.

Others have even registered with Irish Water, but have not paid up. Non-payers, they are still snatching a quick €100 profit, a social welfare giveaway dressed up as a "conservation" grant - although they have conserved nothing. They will blow the gift from the State on a bottle of vintage wine or a joint of sirloin beef.

Recently some of those ducking the bills were beginning to wobble, until last week when the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) bolstered their resistance. Ireland's industrial relations troubleshooter made a monkey of itself. It restored bonuses to Irish Water staff. A few months ago, the bonuses were stopped after a public outcry. Last week, 29 of the top brass at Irish Water recouped €3,000 a year, while lower-grade staff received less. The LRC decision gave cover to the Government, to Irish Water itself, to the trade unions and to all those seeking a pretext for refusing to pay the charges.

The die was cast after the LRC decision. The non-compliant bourgeoisie no longer needed an excuse to revolt. Official Ireland, in the form of the LRC, had sponsored a deal accepting the hated bonus culture. Irish Water's days are numbered, slain not by Paul Murphy and his band, but by a middle-class rebellion. At the end of June, 810,000 households had refused to pay. The Government has been defeated. The end will come either through the jackboot or the white flag. It is Hobson's choice. All that remains is a decent funeral for water charges.

The Government will leave the surrender until after the election, stoutly maintaining the status quo until then. The debts of the defaulters will be forgiven by a new regime, simply because the money cannot be collected. Those who have paid will have to receive their money back. Those who have taken a "conservation grant" will never have to return their ill-gotten gains. The fiasco of Irish Water has many months to run.

What in the name of God is happening in the Irish madhouse? A state monopoly, a dysfunctional quango, has accepted a proposal from a state agency (the LRC), an unreformed quango, to restore 'performance' bonuses of €3,000 to its top staff. Backdated, to boot.

Today's Irish Water is bad enough but the LRC itself is a reminder of unhappier times. It is as deep rooted in the Irish establishment as the other state agencies. It is a legacy of the days of social partnership. It is a quango that is about to be merged with two other quangos, the National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) and the Equality Tribunal. It will morph into a monster.

The LRC's five-person board is past its sell-by date. The chair is occupied by Breege O'Donoghue, a long-standing political nominee. The remaining directors are nominated by either the bearded brethren or, even worse, by the impostors from the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC). The two most conservative forces in Ireland (IBEC and ICTU) are in the saddle at the LRC. Breege has been a director since 2003. ICTU nominee Peter McLoone was selected 15 years ago, as was IBEC'S social partnership relic, Brendan McGinty.

The two other nominees, ICTU's Fergus Whelan and IBEC's John Hennessy, have served a mere six years.

Social partnership quangos still flourish behind the parapet. Each LRC director pockets nearly €12,000 a year while chairperson Breege receives over twenty grand. Breege must have netted €250,000 over the years for this gentle gig.

Peter McLoone, who enjoyed the State's largesse as a director of FAS in its more extravagant days, has been forced to settle for less than €180,000. Refreshing the board is an unknown concept for this den of dinosaurs.

And the LRC is hardly a champion of corporate governance. The majority of its board has served far beyond the generally acceptable period. An arbiter over others, it is chronically late - for a second year - in producing its 2014 annual report. It was meant to be lodged in the Oireachtas Library before June 30.

We are waiting. Some of the information it eventually provides will be nearly two years out-of-date when it is released.

In Ireland, the sisterhood of quangos does not need to obey the rules.

Yet we are supposed to trust the LRC's judgments on such delicate matters as bonuses to employees of Ireland's latest industrial lunatic asylum.

The unions, some of whose members are beneficiaries of the bonuses, have bought into the deal.

The LRC is riddled with the politics of social partnership.

Below board level it employs 12 favoured outsiders as so-called Rights Commissioners on a basic €408 a day (over €100,000 a year annualised). Rights Commissioners are politically appointed following a recommendation from the social partners. Familiar names on the panel are veterans of the social partnership era. No interviews for these juicy posts were ever held. The department has promised that this will change!

Last week, when I asked the LRC for a biography of its board members, a senior employee was puzzled. They had nothing on file. Breege and Peter and Fergus and John and Brendan might as well be women from Mars or men from the moon.

Is this the body that we want sorting out our industrial relations spats? Perhaps it was technically right in its stance on Irish Water bonuses, but do we desire a board of social partnership fossils setting the standards for rows revolving around bonuses agreed behind closed doors?

Sometimes it is more appropriate to focus the spotlight on the judge rather than the protagonists in a dispute. All the vested interests in this latest Irish Water controversy are off the hook. Instead, we now need a victim impact statement on behalf of the Irish people.

Next month the LRC's merger with two other quangos will create a superquango called the Workplace Relations Commission.

It will boast a brand new board. Expect to see all the usual suspects re-appearing.

Water charges are doomed. No government can enforce payment of hundreds of thousands of outstanding bills. They will tough it out until the polls have closed. A few weeks later a "review" will grant an amnesty to those who have refused to pay. A little footnote in the press release will reveal that the mugs who ponied up for their water charges will receive a cheque in the post.

Article: Irish Independent Sept 20, 2015
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