Denis O'Brien's Actavo expands into the United States

Actavo Chairman and CEO Sean Corkery said the expansion is 'a logical next step for us at this time'

Denis O'Brien's engineering company Actavo, formerly called SiteServ, has expanded into the United States.

The Irish firm has bought a key division of Atlantic Engineering Group for an undisclosed price.

The deal gives Actavo operations in the US states of Georgia, Texas, Missouri, and Colorado.

The US division acquired by Actavo has 120 staff.

The Irish company already has operations in the UK, Ireland, the Caribbean and Kazakhstan.

SiteServ was sold to an O'Brien-controlled company, Millington, by State-owned IBRC at a loss of €105m in 2012.

The deal attracted significant controversy and is being examined by Commission of Investigation into IBRC along with a series of other loan sales.

A subsidiary of SiteServ won a contract to install Irish Water meters.

Welcoming the announcement, Chairman and CEO of Actavo Sean Corkery said: "The US is an important, dynamic market for us - we see strong demand in North America for the telecommunications solutions we can now offer.

"This is a logical next step for us at this time and takes Actavo into new areas, both geographically and in terms of our customer proposition," he added.

Actavo has operations in over 100 locations internationally, with a global workforce of 5,000 providing network, in-home, industrial, hire and sales, building and event solutions to companies.

Original article RTE News March 20, 2016

Eddie Hobbs looks at Ireland’s powerful, unelected forces who control decision-making

The message in this article hits the nail right on the head.  Democracy in Ireland partially exists every few years at election time when politicians and media make a little fuss and somehow cajole you into believing their myths.  What they do not tell you or you don't seem to get is that you really do not have any power.  Real power only exist in what Mr Hobbs calls 'Deep State'.

It is surprising that this article comes from the pen of Eddie Hobbs who is an Irish financial advisor, a television presenter, an author.  He is a member of Renua, what could be described as a very right wing party.   That being said we will take the truth wherever we can find it and perhaps it takes an insider to know the goings on of the establishment.  However, the answer to the problem will take a bit more than what Mr Hobbs suggests.

Article by Eddie Hobbs, March 18, 2016

Eddie Hobbs looks at Ireland’s powerful, unelected forces who control decision-making, upholding the status quo, and protecting their own interests at the expense of the general public, social progress, and the effective functioning of democracy

VIEWERS of the American political TV drama, House of Cards will be unsurprised by the risk of misallocation of scarce resources caused by excessive access and privilege afforded to powerful groups that comprise the Deep State — it is the stuff of human behaviour, the silent hand of soft power.

America’s Depression leader, President Roosevelt, didn’t mince his words alerting US citizens that “behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people”.

President Eisenhower’s broadcast when departing his office in 1961 named part of the Deep State: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex”.

Speaking truth to power isn’t easy, neither is it rewarding in a country like Ireland whose own version of its Deep State appears entrenched and immune from a political system that remains mired in the shoe leather of constituency clientelism, selecting every few years those best at playing the local game to the national chamber in the uncertain hope that the long-term national interest will be served.

In truth, it matters not to the Irish Deep State who controls the Dáil chamber, so long as sufficient power rests outside it to allow the organism to fulfil its primary purpose, which is to survive and thrive.

The Irish Deep State is a nexus of relationships comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, bank executives, public trade union brass, top accountancy firms, multinational corporations, IBEC, agencies like RTÉ, regulators and quangos and is defended by an outer circle of those most dependent on it.

You certainly won’t hear about it on the State broadcaster nor among the panels stuffed with net takers, university lecturers for the most part, who find it hard to accept their role in a Deep State which stood by while the worst parts of the last depression were privatised, namely the job losses and emigration that devastated the indigenous Irish economy and emaciated its private working poor and most indebted.

You won’t hear President Higgins name it and neither, sadly, are you likely to hear it in a media nervous of a litigious billionaire, nor among Ireland’s conventional political classes who live in perpetual fear of upsetting it. But it’s there in plain sight, just follow the money, power and privileges:

• Despite causing social devastation, the surviving bank officer class leaned over the shoulders of Government and ensured that the Insolvency Act maintained the chronic imbalance between creditor and debtor, ensnaring tens of thousands of Irish workers in open-ended stress while many of the most powerful got write-downs and, some, salaries.
• Trade unions which ought to be principally fighting for the weakest and most vulnerable to exploitation by pernicious private sector employers, crossed to the Deep State lured by gains from ‘Benchmarking’ for which no notes exist, in deals linking their personal remuneration to the top echelons of the Civil Service and which are a multiple of those of ordinary workers.

In the last round, the drawbridge was pulled up, with open pricing against new teachers, for example. It’s why (and, despite constant demonisation) I’ve consistently named public sector trade unions, a price-fixing cartel.

• Despite linking the dismantling of the last remnants of protectionism in the professions to the conditions of Ireland’s controversial bailout, the legal profession escaped the fulsome reforms that accompanied the removal of protective barriers in all others.

There is to be no fall in Ireland’s very high legal costs, leaving barriers for many consumers elevated. FOI requests reveal evidence of official lobbying by the Bar Council and Law Society but there will be no trace of the impact of the galvanised efforts of its most powerful members.

• Irish society is within two decades of a chronic social crisis characterised by retirement apartheid as most of the private workforce face retirement poverty. The unfunded pension debt in the social insurance scheme is €324 billion but remains unspoken among the political class because to do so means grasping the nettle of the €100bn in the public sector scheme debt, the reform of which would most threaten the top echelons including long-serving senior politicians whose retirement benefits run into several millions and rank as the largest asset on their balance sheet.
• No clearer example exists of the Deep State than the manner through which the early retirement scheme was fattened with benefits during the worst hours of Ireland’s depression and then immunised from taxation on its biggest pensions by ensuring the economic cost was understated and matched by free life cover to pay off Revenue debt on premature death for anyone unfortunate to be caught. Meanwhile over €2bn was appropriated from private pensions, by threatening the guardians, pension trustees, with daily fines of €380 for any delays.
• Adjusting for its youthful population, Ireland’s spending on health relative to GNP is among the highest in Europe, with some of the worst outcomes. It’s not just about money. Eleven years after forming the HSE, it still has no centralised HR system or digitised patient files and over 50 different invoice systems — who’d stand to lose?

Bending to internal interests, the Government allowed the HSE a second outing to compress the huge National Children’s Hospital into the wrong location, the latest at St James expected to cost over €800m for which the Irish people could get both a children’s and a maternity hospital co-locating at the vast green field Connolly Hospital site, off the M50.

• The 31st Dáil elected on the promise of reform, delivered the largest state agency since the HSE, with no efficiencies and conceived in a room comprising 33 local councils, trade union chiefs and the Minister for the Environment, a meeting without notes, the template for which was set by Benchmarking.

Irish Water is a shambles, rejected by the Irish people whose ownership of water, like all natural resources, was alienated in the 1937 Constitution by de Valera when he took ownership of it to the State and prevented the Irish people from challenging its guardianship through their courts which is why there are protests on the streets.

• The attitude, especially to whistleblowers, those within the gardaí, exposed the cultural reflex in favour of secrecy and protection, behind which the Deep State gets its work done. The opposite is a culture of openness, engagement, accountability and a strongly independent, free-thinking press.

These, among many other reasons, are why I deem Irish democracy to be captive both externally, by EU rules and a credit market for highly indebted countries and, internally. It is evidently weak and chatter about breakthroughs driven by arithmetic following the general election lacks credibility.

Government of the Irish people, by the Irish people, for the Irish people, cannot properly exist, outside of short general election windows, without a polar shift in power, pushing down to local government and communities, empowering Dáil committees and replacing Punch and Judy politics with collegiate engagement and open debate, that depoliticises budget setting in particular.

The answer to balancing Deep State power is deep access, transparency, and accountability. Government in the sunshine, led by a fully modernised public sector energised by fresh leaders running teams driven by performance and not dampened by the secrecy, obduracy and conservativeness of an Edwardian legacy, where longevity and not merit is most treasured.

Meanwhile, to take the posturing, opinion and guesswork out of social progress, it ought to be measured at grassroots across a range of outcomes like literacy, education, health, crime detection and equality. These measures of social impacts could feed into a single annual measurement of social progress so that we do not stumble forward venerating GDP, praying for its trickle down, but instead utilise our best experts to depoliticise the debate by scientifically reporting to the Irish people how well or otherwise we are translating economic activity into a range of social outcomes.

An annual Social Progress Index can inform healthy debate about how tax transfers ought to be best weighted, using left of centre or right of centre policies — whatever works best.

Eddie Hobbs is a financial advisor.
Original article Irish Examiner, March 18, 2016

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Fianna Fáil will chase anyone who has not paid water charges -Anti Austerity Alliance responds

It was reported by Niall O'Connor in the Irish Independent on March 18 that 'Over half a million households refusing to pay their water bills face having the charges deducted from their salaries or social welfare payments under a plan being devised by Fianna Fáil.'

Barry Cowen TD Fianna Fail.  Photo Tom Burke

The Irish Independent did not name a source other than 'a senior party source'.  The article went one

Non-payers will be pursued by a new, slimmed-down authority which the party says will be set up to replace Irish Water, the Irish Independent understands.

The confirmation that Fianna Fáil, like Fine Gael, intends to pursue those boycotting the charges removes another stumbling block to the two parties striking a coalition deal.

Having been accused of several flip-flops on the issue of water charges to date, Fianna Fáil is now adamant that bills issued must be honoured.

"You can't have one half of the country paying, and the other half refusing. We will address the issue of non-payment before we move to suspend charges," a senior party source told the Irish Independent.

Although consideration has been given to the introduction of tax credits for households who have already paid their bills, Fianna Fáil strategists now say dodgers will be pursued through the form of attachment orders.

This will happen under legislation introduced by Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald last year, which allows State bodies like Irish Water to pursue debtors for bills of up to €5,000.

Read more: Fianna Fáil will chase anyone who has not paid water charges

 

Paul Murphy TD Anti-Austerity Alliance responds March 18 2016

Fianna Fail’s threats to deduct water charges is‘unworkable’ – legislation for deductions is only effective when debt reaches €500, however, if bills are scrapped debt will never reach €500.

Massive increases in non-payment will make ‘empty threats’ of FF plan.

Pursuing non-payers would mean hundreds of thousands of court cases.

The Anti-Austerity Alliance has responded to a reported plan by Fianna Fail to force payment of the water charges saying it is an ‘empty threat’ as non-payment has sky-rocketed and would be ‘unworkable’ because the legislation which they propose to use is only effective once a debt reaches €500.

Mick Barry TD said “Fianna Fail’s plan to try pursue people for payment of the water charges continues their back-tracking on their election promises and would be impossible for them to implement. The previous government’s threats and plans to deduct payment from non-payers was unworkable, the Fianna Fail plan is even more unworkable.

“Legally the legislation [Civil Debt Procedures Bill] which would be used to get attachment orders for deductions can only be used when the debt owed reaches €500, however, under Fianna Fail’s plan if they scrapped Irish Water and stopped issuing bills, people’s debt would never reach €500. So their whole plan is legally unworkable, before they even attempt to try to bring hundreds of thousands of people to court.”

Paul Murphy TD said “Since the General Election, non-payment of the water charges which stood at 50% has sky-rocketed. This makes any plan to pursue non-payers empty threats. These threats are part of a rear-guard action by them to try to hold back the flood of people cancelling direct debits and joining the boycott. We would encourage people to join the boycott, this will increases the pressure massively on all parties, but particularly Fianna Fail, while they are negotiating to form a government to not only scrap the charges but to refund people who have paid the charge."

Ruth Coppinger TD said “The election sent a clear message to all the political parties that people reject water charges. They should be abolished immediately, and people should be refunded. No government will be able to break the water charges boycott now.

“People need to increase the pressure on Fianna Fail to force them to commit to abolish Irish Water and stop these threats to non-payers. The plan to abolish Irish Water and have a new body chase up non-payment will be impossible to work out. We should now increase the pressure with the boycott and force the abolition of the charges and to scarp the bills.”

Update today March 18 - Conflicting statements

Barry Cowen on Uplands 103 radio

Fianna Fáil’s Environment Spokesperson Barry Cowen says no decisions have been made on the issue of unpaid water bills.

The Irish Independent reports today that the party will pursue those who fail to pay their water bills if in Government and that more than half a million householders face having payments deducted from their salaries or social welfare by a new slimmed down authority replacing Irish Water.

Offaly Deputy Cowen, who is part of the Fianna Fáil negotiation team meeting with other parties and independents, had told Midlands 103 that no discussions have taken place on unpaid bills.

He also says their position on charges is unchanged from the election manifesto which proposes abolishing water charges and Irish Water.

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