This the first in a new series of posts we have been meaning to start since the inception of this blog. 

We believe Leaders’ questions to be the most important regular event in Irish politics, yet while it does receive live TV coverage by the national broadcaster, it happens on Wednesday at 12pm, thus guaranteeing that the vast majority of the popularity will be unable to watch,

Great lengths are taken to ensure that things like sporting events and other forms of entertainment are timed so we can be both watching and taking in the ads that go with them…yet when our political leaders are discussing key issues of the day, we have to rely on DVRs.

With these posts the hope is to take notes on the Leader’s questions as they happen, offering our own paraphrasing on the various contributions from the political figures and other panel members in the RTE studio.  It may take a few weeks to hone this format to exactly the way we want it so please bear with us.  Here goes…

Pre-game

Host – Sharon Ni Bheolain

Panel – Michael Lehane [RTE] and Elaine Loughlin [Irish Examiner]
Sean Sherlock TD [LAB] on video link

FPP – I only caught the final part of the pre-game where they were discussing the Eighth Amendment debate, with the general gist of the conversation suggesting that mostly due to legal concerns outlined by the Attorney General, there would be difficulties with a straight Yes/No referendum. I heard no opinion expressed to the contrary.

Questions begin

Micheal Martin – We need teachers and they need to be better paid [and with gender equality] so why has education department been so inept?

Leo Varadkar – Our teachers are grand, since my lot took over from your lot we’ve more teachers – here are some stats and besides, when you see less teachers it means economy is going well. We also

MM – You’re not answering my question, in fact you are giving dishonest, partisan responses. There has been complete inaction, please accept that there is a crisis that needs intervention.

LV – I’m partisan? YOU’RE partisan! Here’s some more stats.

Louise O’Reilly [SF] – Ill treatment and disregard for women, especially in provision on medical services like trans-vaginal mesh implants. I refer you to Prime Time last night. I have been raising this issue with Minister for Health. I have four specific questions on this issue…these are four crucial issues on women’s health can you at least acknowledge

LV – my sympathies and concerns go with any patients suffering, I didn’t see Prime Time, I didn’t know you were going to raise this issue so I haven’t been briefed. I’m not a doctor in this field so I would have to refer to to the proper experts. In other words, no.

LOR – I have been after the Minister on this, but he has still not been briefed. You should give a message to these women and to HSE that there is international evidence that this practice needs to be stopped.

LV – Again, I haven’t been briefed and if there have been legal cases I can’t get involved. I agree that HSE and Minister for Health should consider all relevant evidence.

Brendan Howlin – School buildings are in the hands of PPPs but in the case of one in Wexford [which is part of a group of schools under the same PPP] it is disrupting the running of the school despite assurances to the contrary. When will teaching begin in Wexford and the other sites in the school bundle?

LV – It’s a very important matter – it’s going to take us a couple of weeks because one of the partners has had issues to sort this out but we’re in a strong position and it will be sorted out. This has not arisen simply because it’s a PPP.

BH – The selling point for PPPs is that should one partner collapse, the remaining partners should sake responsibility. Why is there not a proactive move to make sure the agreed timeline is fulfilled? The govt cannot be passive.

LV – I can give that assurance – the Dept will be involved over the coming weeks. I even have a statement from the Dutch partner company so obviously we have to believe it.

Maureen O’Sullivan [IND] – Ireland needs to address tax justice as you’re off to Davos – you told European Parliament that we’re not a tax haven. Here’s some information that suggests otherwise – some clothing companies have filthy rich CEOs while their workers in Bangladesh are anything but….will the government look at the area of tax spillovers?

LV – I read the WEF report ahead of going to Davos…here are some good things they had to say about Ireland to put them on the record because it makes me look good. This year for the first time revenue commissioners from different countries will share information with each other. Companies cannot be ‘stateless’ and we have eliminated the ‘double Irish’.

MOS – The positive will be undermined unless we look at the negatives. Human rights must be protected as well as economic concerned. Instead of Double Irish we now have ‘single malt’. If we’re not careful we will appear on bad lists.

LV – We can’t focus on the negative, sure we’re grand. We can change our laws all we like but it’s not enough we have to work with OECD. The government is committed to tax sovereignty. Can I remind you that our low corporation tax has been a tremendous success.

Post game –

SNB pins the teacher crisis on Labour, challenges Sean Sherlock, he offers defence
Micheal Lehane – People are being lured away by private sector
Elaine Loughlin Irish Examiner – Dubai effect, Google effect
SS on schools – not enough for Taoiseach to say it’s going to ‘take a few weeks’
ML – Taoiseach is being vague on this
SNB on LOS questions – Is LQs the place to discuss these procedures?
EL – It’s not just one individual case it’s a widespread problem
SNB – we have thirty seconds left on tax injustice
SS – I want to say something on the women’s issue…Ireland is doing a lot better on tax transparency. But I’m cynical on Davos.

FPP COMMENT

For this first instalment of our feature I’d like to focus on the presentation rather than the substance.

I really don’t understand why RTÉ bothered to have a presence in the studio at all.  Before the LQs they spoke about the Eighth Amendment which was never even mentioned in the Dáil session then in the post-game segment they barely had enough time to go over the various topics discussed.  Sean Sherlock just about managed to spit out his party’s position but he was just parroting Howlin’s words while the two journalists offered little by way of analysis, deciding instead to inform us about the answers that Varadkar gave.

As far as I’m concerned, Leader’s Questions should be something everyone is talking about, every bit as much as sporting occasions, every bit as much as what Donald Trump said, every bit as much as the Great British Bake Off.  Sticking it an hour before lunch on Hump Day with reluctant coverage by RTÉ isn’t going to spark too many debates around the watercooler, that’s for sure.  JLP

#IANWAE

Week 7

Just a reminder of how last week ended for the President…we had the Sessions recusal :

Amid mounting calls for his resignation, Sessions told a press conference on Thursday that he decided not to participate in any investigations “related in any way to the campaign for president of the United States” after meeting with senior department officials.

Not looking good for one of El Trumpo’s top men!  Now if only there was something he could do to distract everyone’s attention?  How’s this series of tweets from Saturday morning…

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

Just out: The same Russian Ambassador that met Jeff Sessions visited the Obama White House 22 times, and 4 times last year alone.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

Is it legal for a sitting President to be “wire tapping” a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

Those tweets are presented in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.  So in the midst of effectively accusing his predecessor of treason, he also seems to suggest a sitting President meeting with a Russian ambassador is a bad thing and…leaving apparently the most important thing until last, he has a pop at Arnie.

According to CNN, he has done all he can to avoid presenting his evidence…

Six days after he accused his Oval Office predecessor of wiretapping him, President Donald Trump on Thursday again avoided questions about the charge, leaving his aides and allies still-struggling to explain his Saturday-morning broadside.

Also this week, Trump & the Republicans have been rolling out some revised policies…one that they originally got wrong, though even this one is being challenged…

Several US states have said they will move forward with legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s revised executive order that targets citizens of six Muslim-majority countries and refugees.

…and the other is one from Trump’s predecessor that the GOP repeatedly called a “disaster”…

…there’s little question that the outcome of the healthcare debate will play a major role in defining Trump’s first term in office, affecting his ability to deliver on other priorities such as a $1-trillion plan to rebuild public works, a multibillion-dollar border wall and a daunting challenge to rewrite the tax code.

Never mind what anyone tries to call the plan.  It’s Trumpcare.  Always, always, Trumpcare.

Meanwhile Trump’s Cabinet choice for Housing and Urban Developmen was doing this…

Ben Carson says slaves were “immigrants” who “had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

As always, Rachel Maddow isn’t swayed by distractions and is hot on the trail of connecting Trump to the Russians…

Signs of continuing Russia influence in US raise alarm

So we’re now officially halfway through his first 100 days.  These posts don’t seem like drying up for material any time soon.  Let’s finish this week’s edition with a laugh.  Here’s Saturday Night Live…

Click here for last week’s post

 

“Look, we’re being balanced and we’re covering today’s demonstration!”, implies the Irish Independent in this minimalist article.

Never mind the fact that they want you to believe there will only be 3,000 people there.

Never mind the fact that they highlight the delays to city centre, in other words – making the cost to downtown business folk more important than people’s right to show their frustration with government policy.

Some of the comments beneath the article…

So, is it about water, EU, Taxes, or whatever takes your fancy?

It must be so confusing being ‘agin’ everything – reality keeps getting in the way.

Best approach: when what you are saying makes no sense, just reduce it to a short slogan, and scream it louder. Drowns out all the facts nicely, but shows the march up as a large gathering with very low total IQ.

I bet some of them even think that water is already paid for. Even Paul Murphy agrees it is underfunded.

Where to go? Oh I’d love to tell these wasters where to go!!!

More pointless disruption.

IF YOU WANT REAL INFO ON THE PROTEST CLICK HERE

 

 

 

For me, the scariest thing about a Donald Trump rally isn’t so much the rhetoric he spouts, vile and hateful though it usually is.  What is truly frightening is that so many people listening to him actually cheer.

Well, here in Ireland we can rest assured that we don’t have a businessman whom a lot of people think can run the country?  Think again.

Now to be clear…this is NOT a post about the rights and wrongs of the strike currently threatened by workers at Dublin Bus…what we’re looking at here is how it is reported and how certain people react to them.

A trade dispute is between an employer and its workforce.  Therefore, there are two sides.  Yet whenever a strike is threatened in this country, particularly in the area of public services, the “watercooler” discussion invariably surrounds the inconvenience to said publin (which of course is understandable) though with the blame put squarely at the doorstep of the unions.

It is so bad that Michael O’Leary, boss of the 5th best low-cost airline in Europe, feels he can weigh in on the matter with a remarkably simple solution that clearly nobody else has thought of :

“We should be privatising all these useless public services that depend every year on big subsidies from the tax payer because frankly, the tax payer has better things to be spending the money on.”

Ah, the tax payer.  Clearly the person for whom Mr O’Leary toils morning, noon and night.  And look – he called them “useless”, that’s just something you or I would say!  He talks just like us!  Who cares if he never actually backs up his words?

Yet the response from his “man-crush brigade” is always the same.  This is just from one thread on Facebook :

Yippiekia! Gotta love Michael O’Leary

He’d turn this country around that’s for sure

the tail is wagging the dog now…50k+ because its a “responsible” job..next thing we’ll be paying kids in McDonalds 50k not to put glass into the burgers…

It’s always the unions at fault.  Now let’s be clear…I’m not saying they are perfect by any stretch.  But the way things are supposed to work is that the government works for the general public to resolve a dispute between two sides.

Instead, between the government, corporate class and the media, these disputes generally disintergrate into a standoff between public and private sector workers in general discourse.  A fire people like Mr O’Leary are more than happy to stoke.

One thing I will say for him…he is probably smart enough never to actually run for public office.