Some amount of jealousy and begrudgery in Eire over these top up payments. Its no different to the current lot breaking the cap on special advisors. At least the board of the CRC were doing the state some service, the guy advising Inda couldn’t even get Mandela’s name right ffs.
I’ve just read the above. Two things struck me.
-Special Olympiakos, you’re a fucking cunt of the worst kind.
-The ironing of your moniker is superb.
Anyway, let’s get back on track.
A long-standing Fianna Fáil councillor in Co Kildare has resigned from the party after financial irregularities were discovered at a voluntary housing association of which he was a director.
Mark Dalton[/URL] from Athy was first elected to [URL=‘http://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_organisation=Kildare%20County%20Council&article=true’]Kildare County Council in 1994 and has also been the full-time parliamentary assistant to Fianna Fáil TD and party chief whip Seán Ó Fearghaíl. It is understood he will also vacate the council seat.
Mr Dalton had been treasurer and director of the Cill Urnaí voluntary housing association in Co Kildare which owns and provides housing on a voluntary basis in the south of the county. The association owns 16 units and leases some 12 more.
In late September, the association’s bankers AIB contacted Mr Ó Fearghaíl, who is also a director of the association, to query a number of transactions and payments that had been made from the association’s bank account. This prompted an examination of the accounts and the irregularities were uncovered.
As a result, the association contacted the offices of the Director of Corporate Enforcement and the Garda Síochána, both of which have now initiated inquiries.
The association is preparing statements for both agencies. A source last night described the overall shortfall in the housing association “as substantial”.
[SIZE=3]Close friend[/SIZE]
Mr Dalton has been a close friend and political associate of Mr Ó Fearghaíl for more than 30 years and is a respected figure in the local community in Athy. He had served as chair of the local GAA club and community council and had been a member of the representative body of municipal councils.
As of earlier this month, Mr Dalton is no longer employed by Mr Ó Fearghaíl as his parliamentary assistant. Contacted yesterday Mr Ó Fearghaíl said the development had come as a terrible shock and a blow to Fianna Fáil in the area and himself. He said that Mr Dalton had been an exceedingly hard-working councillor and had carried out work for the disadvantaged.
Mr Ó Fearghaíl said he was saddened by the turn of events.
He confirmed that reports were being prepared by the housing association for the Garda Síochána and for the Director of Corporate Enforcement.
He said that both AIB and the association’s auditors were assisting with piecing together the relevant information. The Fianna Fáil organisation in the county has held a number of crisis meetings since the irregularities were uncovered.
Mr Dalton was not contactable for comment yesterday.
The times are mad for FF bashing this week.
Fianna Fáil gathers tomorrow night for its annual Cáirde Fáil dinner in one of Dublin’s largest banqueting rooms. It is the party’s annual social celebration. In the ordinary course there would be much to celebrate. Rumours of the party’s demise have been shown to have been exaggerated and it gathers just months after surprisingly successful local elections.
There will also, however, be some sense of frustration in the room. The party faithful will wonder and chat about why they can’t seem to break out of their current becalmed circumstance.
The party survives, and indeed is the largest party in local government, but it is very shrunken. Even in local councils the Fianna Fáil blocs are a shadow of their former selves. Fianna Fáil did not exist in the last presidential election; it has not existed in Dáil representation from Dublin since May 2011.
To those benchmarks of decline must be added the inability of the once legendary Fianna Fáil machine to win byelections, even in opposition to an increasingly unpopular government.
The recent Roscommon-South Leitrim contest was an ideal opening. The party had a personable candidate in a rural constituency where Fine Gael was weakened by Denis Naughten’s breakaway and where Sinn Féin was relatively weak but it lost out to a newly emerging Independent from outside the constituency.
Fianna Fáil’s overall strategy seems to have been to presume that once the Government hit bumps the Fianna Fáil voters who “lent” their support to Fine Gael and Labour in 2011 would revert to Fianna Fáil. The byelections have shown that not to be the case.
[SIZE=3]Government leeway[/SIZE]
Now the economy has gone and made things even more politically difficult for Fianna Fáil by recovering at a surprising rate. Growth has given the Government leeway. In the newly arrived era of recovery politics Fianna Fáil is finding it difficult to decide which way to turn. The launch of its alternative budget last week was wrapped in the vocabulary of prudence and responsibility. It sounds, at least at this stage, as overcompensation for the showtime era. It is a risky stance in the current political marketplace of adjusted expectations where populist opposition to water and other charges is more appealing to the electorate.
Some within Fianna Fáil would like to see the party claim its share of the credit for the recovery: to tout the fact that the last Fianna Fáil-Green government took two-thirds of the corrective steps necessary to restore the public finances.
Others argue, not unreasonably, that this might be counterproductive, not only because so many of the electorate have been and continue to be hurt by the austerity policies, but also because so many voters are not minded, or yet minded, to move from blaming the party for the recession. For now Fianna Fáil must stand by while the current Government claims all the credit for the recovery.
[SIZE=3]Public popularity[/SIZE]
The Fianna Fáil faithful who will gather tomorrow night will come to praise their leader even though they must now realise that he has brought the party to a plateau in public popularity. Over the past three and a half years Fianna Fáil has edged up from the 17 per cent floor of the 2011 election to the mid-20s, only to occasionally fall back again, most recently to 20 per cent in last week’s Irish Times/MRBI poll.
Given the Balkanisation of our party system even this slight improvement might be enough to double Fianna Fáil seats in the next general election, but no more than that.Micheál Martin’s work rate in the constituencies has been impressive, most recently in Roscommon-South Leitrim, and he can more than hold his own in parliamentary and media debate. However, it seems he cannot get the party real traction with the electorate. By reason of his membership of previous Fianna Fáil administrations Martin is restricted in his capacity to reinvent or reposition the party. He would be gone as leader if there were any obvious successor who could guarantee improving fortunes. There is no such person in the current parliamentary party.
The reality is that the members of the parliamentary party have no vested interest in seeing the party grow in the next election. They do instinctively want to see their party do better but it is not a compelling necessity for them.
As Ivan Yates has recently reminded us, the first commandment of politics is “deputy mind your own seat”. All of the current Fianna Fáil TDs (except Michael McGrath and Martin himself), having survived or first won in 2011, are now sole Fianna Fáil incumbents in their constituencies. Each of them is almost certain of re-election in 2015 or 2016 provided they don’t allow themselves to be displaced by a stronger running mate.
[QUOTE=“Juhniallio, post: 1032689, member: 53”]The times are mad for FF bashing this week.
Fianna Fáil gathers tomorrow night for its annual Cáirde Fáil dinner in one of Dublin’s largest banqueting rooms. It is the party’s annual social celebration. In the ordinary course there would be much to celebrate. Rumours of the party’s demise have been shown to have been exaggerated and it gathers just months after surprisingly successful local elections.
There will also, however, be some sense of frustration in the room. The party faithful will wonder and chat about why they can’t seem to break out of their current becalmed circumstance.
The party survives, and indeed is the largest party in local government, but it is very shrunken. Even in local councils the Fianna Fáil blocs are a shadow of their former selves. Fianna Fáil did not exist in the last presidential election; it has not existed in Dáil representation from Dublin since May 2011.
To those benchmarks of decline must be added the inability of the once legendary Fianna Fáil machine to win byelections, even in opposition to an increasingly unpopular government.
The recent Roscommon-South Leitrim contest was an ideal opening. The party had a personable candidate in a rural constituency where Fine Gael was weakened by Denis Naughten’s breakaway and where Sinn Féin was relatively weak but it lost out to a newly emerging Independent from outside the constituency.
Fianna Fáil’s overall strategy seems to have been to presume that once the Government hit bumps the Fianna Fáil voters who “lent” their support to Fine Gael and Labour in 2011 would revert to Fianna Fáil. The byelections have shown that not to be the case.
[SIZE=3]Government leeway[/SIZE]
Now the economy has gone and made things even more politically difficult for Fianna Fáil by recovering at a surprising rate. Growth has given the Government leeway. In the newly arrived era of recovery politics Fianna Fáil is finding it difficult to decide which way to turn. The launch of its alternative budget last week was wrapped in the vocabulary of prudence and responsibility. It sounds, at least at this stage, as overcompensation for the showtime era. It is a risky stance in the current political marketplace of adjusted expectations where populist opposition to water and other charges is more appealing to the electorate.
Some within Fianna Fáil would like to see the party claim its share of the credit for the recovery: to tout the fact that the last Fianna Fáil-Green government took two-thirds of the corrective steps necessary to restore the public finances.
Others argue, not unreasonably, that this might be counterproductive, not only because so many of the electorate have been and continue to be hurt by the austerity policies, but also because so many voters are not minded, or yet minded, to move from blaming the party for the recession. For now Fianna Fáil must stand by while the current Government claims all the credit for the recovery.
[SIZE=3]Public popularity[/SIZE]
The Fianna Fáil faithful who will gather tomorrow night will come to praise their leader even though they must now realise that he has brought the party to a plateau in public popularity. Over the past three and a half years Fianna Fáil has edged up from the 17 per cent floor of the 2011 election to the mid-20s, only to occasionally fall back again, most recently to 20 per cent in last week’s Irish Times/MRBI poll.
Given the Balkanisation of our party system even this slight improvement might be enough to double Fianna Fáil seats in the next general election, but no more than that.Micheál Martin’s work rate in the constituencies has been impressive, most recently in Roscommon-South Leitrim, and he can more than hold his own in parliamentary and media debate. However, it seems he cannot get the party real traction with the electorate. By reason of his membership of previous Fianna Fáil administrations Martin is restricted in his capacity to reinvent or reposition the party. He would be gone as leader if there were any obvious successor who could guarantee improving fortunes. There is no such person in the current parliamentary party.
The reality is that the members of the parliamentary party have no vested interest in seeing the party grow in the next election. They do instinctively want to see their party do better but it is not a compelling necessity for them.
As Ivan Yates has recently reminded us, the first commandment of politics is “deputy mind your own seat”. All of the current Fianna Fáil TDs (except Michael McGrath and Martin himself), having survived or first won in 2011, are now sole Fianna Fáil incumbents in their constituencies. Each of them is almost certain of re-election in 2015 or 2016 provided they don’t allow themselves to be displaced by a stronger running mate.[/QUOTE]
Noel Whelan, who wrote that article is as pro FF as you could get.
The times has had a few opinion pieces on them this week.
thats a lovely looking pen
The republican party.
1 Like
She says it would be impossible to control the border and then calls for it to be introduced.
Fucking genius.
“It is impossible for the EU to monitor our 500 km border with the vast labyrinth of 300 crossings, more than in Norway or Switzerland.”
300 known crossings.
They’re the pro life party now 
Fianna Fail are malleable
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The hard border pro life republican party.
One from the archives.
The state papers are always a good read for some old school FF chicanery. I was reading an article in the times at the weekend which alluded to Ray Burke’s actions as minister for Communications and around the radio licensing scandal. The department had recommended the licenses be given by an independent body, it had been drawn up and ok’d by the AG. The legislation was then altered on the way to the printers by ‘persons unknown’ and the dail got presented with a version in which Burke had power as minister to give a license to whomever he saw fit. Oliver Barry’s Century got the license and Barry gave Burke €35grand in cash for…election expenses.
It subsequently came out in a tribunal that Burke had presented the company with a written guarantee months beforehand that they would be granted access to RTE’s assets for a much reduced fee (mast etc) which were crucial in securing the money from the banks for the venture in the first place…
Superb FFáilery right there.
3 Likes
An unmerciful cunt.