You think they don’t discuss before they make the next move? Of course they do.
It’s an enforcement matter, the time for discussion was at compliance time
I do hope for everybody’s sake that @artfoley’s Public Services card carries the word “rapist” on it
People need to be forewarned
You’re right on paper but something is causing a wait, as I said, they are discussing in the background.
Is it a case that when the Data Commissioner issued their findings that the DEASP has a certain amount of time to make the changes and then after that time has expired then the Data Commissioner starts the enforcement proceedings? So at the moment we have the DEASP telling the Data Commissioner to fuck off and the Data Commissioner is just waiting for the expiry date for compliance to pass before they start.
time expired ages ago. it was a 6 week period iirc
i work in regulatory compliance and if i’d issued the findings that the DPC had and then heard the comments of the ministers (directors) and then seen the carry on of the departments (companies) during the improvement period, then id be moving to prosecution immediately after the 6 weeks as there doesnt appear to be any intention of compliance and therefore no reason for discussion.
i would’ve had enough discussion before issuing the compliance letter.
Time for the DPC to get the finger out then and start proceedings. It would be a nice Christmas for Regina.
As for Regina I think she is playing down the clock till the election.
Is Helen far off retirement I wonder?
shed be a good bit off id imagine. i think shes late 40s iirc
Shes a fresh looking late 40s.
That and the fact he was a shameless gangster.
Ya, that has always been a real turn off for the Irish electorate
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That’s a high % of why people voted for him if anything
Forgive my french, but why didn’t he fucking resign before the by-election?
Also means that he now cannot be investigated over his expenses. The fucker is walking off into the sunset pissing himself laughing.
december 1 2019, 12:01am, the sunday times
Justine McCarthy: Becoming a TD is not a licence to print money
No wonder trust in the Dail is low, given the shoddy and cynical behaviour
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Ahouse of parliament ought to be a beacon of fraternity and propriety but, ever more, a stench of contempt for the people of this state emanates from Leinster House. The cynicism within its walls is boundless. “Do what I say, not what I do” is the prevailing credo.
TDs on salaries that exceed the price of a house in parts of Donegal fob in to rack up an attendance day — and then vanish. Some routinely vote for each other to save colleagues the tedium of having to walk to their seats in the chamber and press their own buttons. At committees, you see members arriving just in time to ask a question and leaving as soon as it is answered — or not answered.
Now we hear about an Oireachtas printing machine that has cost about €1.8m because the roof of the building had to be raised to accommodate it. While this Paddy-the-Irishman acquisition was not the doing of politicians, the purpose of the monster machine is to print mountains of newsletters, fliers, circulars and personalised headed paper for the country’s 158 TDs and 60 senators. Members of the Dail’s public accounts committee (PAC) have expressed astonishment at the exorbitant cost of the monster printing machine, but nobody is questioning why the citizens are expected to pay for this environment-damaging deluge of paper when the clock is ticking down to apocalypse for our planet. You have to wonder how sincere are our politicians when they passionately condemn the burning of the Amazonian rainforests before loading their car boots with free-of-charge election literature.
Because the spotlight has been trained on the leprechaun economics of the printer, two of the most cynical episodes in Irish politics last week passed virtually unremarked. On Monday, Leo Varadkar escorted his party’s by-election candidate Verona Murphy on a sneaky canvass in Wexford. Murphy had retreated for cover the previous week after claiming that Isis is infiltrating immigrants and radicalising three-year-old children.
In the Dail, the taoiseach had dissociated himself from her comments and, in a reference to his own mixed-race genes, said he had more experience of racism than other politicians. Yet he stood shoulder to shoulder with Murphy on Monday, leading journalists in a cat-and-mouse hunt after Fine Gael’s press office had refused to tell the media where the taoiseach was canvassing. Varadkar attempted simultaneously to be seen supporting his candidate locally while eluding national notice. The farce had echoes of Isabel Allende’s novel City of the Beasts, in which the People of the Mist can choose to whom they make themselves visible.
Irish society is at a fragile juncture, with increasingly emboldened ultranationalists clamouring to shut the country’s frontiers to immigrants of colour. Playing cat and mouse may have been a fun challenge for Varadkar and the pursuing journalists, but it is a dangerous game when the head of government demonstrates ambivalence on a deeply divisive and potentially culture-changing issue.
Inside Leinster House, politicians say they fear other election candidates will follow the example of Murphy and, before her, Peter Casey’s attack on Travellers in last year’s presidential election. But few of them — with such notable exceptions as Solidarity’s Ruth Coppinger — have bothered challenging Noel Grealish’s disinformation in the Dail chamber about immigrants from Nigeria. Many of the same politicians who privately tell you they are alarmed by what Grealish said still chummily greet him in the corridors of power.
By doing what he did on Monday, Varadkar has surrendered much of his moral authority to confront xenophobic outpourings by other politicians. The pity is that, despite allowing party-political exigency to overrule his instincts, the taoiseach appears to be personally devoid of racism and, as such, had the potential to be a guiding influence in the corrosive debate that has begun.
Last week’s other cynical episode was the announcement by Dara Murphy, a Fine Gael TD for Cork North-Central, that he is resigning his Dail seat to become deputy head of staff with Mariya Gabriel, the incoming EU commissioner for innovation, research, culture, education and youth. His salary of between €172,000 and €195,000 will be augmented by travel expenses, a daily subsistence allowance, a household allowance and an installation allowance.
Where to begin with this shoddy saga? You may remember Murphy from when he was a junior minister for European affairs and two gardai drove him from Cork to Dublin to catch a flight to Brussels. He later apologised “if”, he said, people felt it was a misuse of garda resources.
When Varadkar became taoiseach in June 2017, he did not reappoint Murphy as a junior minister and the latter subsequently got a job as the campaign director for the European People’s Party (EPP), Fine Gael’s EU parliament grouping. Epecon, a company Murphy set up to handle his EPP payments, had €60,000 cash in hand by June 2018. His full payments for directing the group’s parliamentary elections this year have yet to be disclosed.
Throughout the two years he was working in Brussels, Murphy remained a TD. Despite being the Dail’s worst attender, and not having spoken in the chamber for nearly 24 months, he managed to clock in for the required minimum number of days to qualify for €51,600 expenses each year, in addition to his €94,000 salary. Most of the days he clocked in for were Mondays and Fridays, when the Dail does not sit.
This type of cynical carry-on is guaranteed to alienate people from the democratic process. Varadkar and his finance minister, Paschal Donohoe, are forever excoriating left-wing politicians and urging that the centre must hold, but nothing is as sure to cause voter anger and apathy as politicians appearing to work the system with impunity. For them to complain about low electoral turnouts is like umbrella manufacturers complaining about the rain. What did they expect?
Politicians frequently give out about social-welfare spongers, council tenants not paying their rent, and fake insurance claimants. When Varadkar was the minister for social protection, he ran an advertising campaign against welfare miscreants. Yet he has nothing to say about Murphy’s glaringly cynical conduct. He effectively had Maria Bailey removed from next year’s election ticket after the TD started a personal injuries claim for falling off a nightclub swing. Yet Alan Farrell, another Fine Gael TD, escaped a party penalty after winning only €2,500 in a €15,000 car insurance claim. The judge said his injuries were “very minor”.
As long as low standards go unpunished in Leinster House, its denizens do not have the right to lecture the rest of us. If they don’t respect our primary democratic institution, why should the citizens respect it? The centre cannot hold indefinitely if those who reside there keep tearing lumps out of it.
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New Politics
New old politics.
Will FF have anything to say on this??? Oh they probably will - but will they do anything about it? No. Not a hope.
It’s a grand old country all the same…
Cue @Tim_Riggins comparing Ireland to Uzbekistan and telling us we live in paradise in comparison.