Wednesday's Irish politics blog

Overheard in Leinster House

2008-06-26T12:52:00.002+01:00

A Fine Gael TD making a call on their mobile:

"Hello ... , can I get back that €20 I loaned you yesterday? I'm meeting someone for coffee."

No wonder Enda Kenny has been so critical of the Government this week. You know times are tough when even culchies earning upwards of €95,000 have to go around begging for change for a cuppa.

Lessons unlearned

2008-06-25T12:11:00.002+01:00

Oh dear. It seems the Government is still having trouble getting its head around the reasons for the referendum defeat.

Hurriedly added to today's Dáil schedule is a motion to approve an agreement between the EU and Australia on the exchange of passenger information. The first that most TDs had heard of this agreement, with all its implications for confidentiality and data retention, was when a briefing note was circulated around 6.00 last night. Clearly, that's not enough time to scrutinise the agreement in detail - and the usual procedure of allowing an Oireachtas committee to thrash it out won't apply either. Why not? Where's the urgency?

With an absolutely straight face, Brian Cowen told the Dáil it had to be approved in this way, because ... the Slovenians are concluding their presidency of the EU soon and are anxious to have this on their record. And we're the only member state that hasn't got around to approving it yet.

Can anyone seriously argue these days that the parliament's role is as anything more than a rubber stamp? Even Cowen seemed embarrassed about it.

Overheard at the RDS

2008-06-14T13:37:00.003+01:00

As tallies from the first few boxes started to make it clear the treaty was headed for a defeat, from an apparatchik attached to a certain anonymous Dublin city Fianna Fáil TD: "Looks like we'll be back here in a few months."

From the same anonymous Fianna Fáil TD speaking on his mobile phone a few minutes later: "Oh, it's about two-to-one in favour."

From a certain Irish Times pol-corr (hint: thinks she's a lot funnier than she actually is) as the final tallies came through: "The Irish people are stupid."

More as I remember them...

Sanity prevails

2008-05-20T23:32:00.006+01:00

After all the controversy of the past few months, in the end it wasn't even close. British MPs voted 304 to 233 against lowering the abortion limit to 24 weeks. Immediately prior to that they'd voted not to reduce it to 20 weeks, 16 weeks or 12, the last two of these not even mustering 100 ayes.

There were a number of reasons for this strong pro-choice showing. Because of recent evidence that medicine is making no progress in improving survival rates for babies born before 24 weeks. Because less than 1.5% of all abortions in Britain are carried out after 20 weeks - and when they are, the reason for the delay is nearly always more serious than abortion opponents like to suggest. And, of course, because the absence of an authoritarian religious tradition means that most British people are not brainwashed from an early age into thinking of the foetus as a fully independent little person with all the rights of the woman whose body it is wholly dependent on. Sometimes I think we're not only on a different island over here, but on another planet.

It's a shame that an amendment that would have extended abortion rights to the Six Counties was withdrawn. By the looks of things it might have had a chance of passing, over the disgraceful opposition of all four of the major parties in the Six, including my own. (Chris Gaskin has astutely if ungrammatically pointed out the hypocrisy of the unionist parties in objecting to this aspect of British rule, but the truth is that all of them are simply calling for the problem to be exported.) So last night's vote wasn't the opportunity it could have been to take a step forward, but at least it wasn't a step back - and with all the anti-choice hysteria we've heard lately that in itself feels like a small victory.

Well done to Louise and other women in Britain who put so much effort into this.

I know, I know...

2008-05-17T09:58:00.004+01:00

I've been terrible for updating this year. Apologies. Hopefully the normal order will be restored later in the summer, when life calms down a bit.

A quick thought for the moment. One of this blog's top bugbears, the Offences Against the State Act, is up for renewal next month. Previously the Green Party could always be counted on to oppose it (although they couldn't always be counted on to get all their TDs in for the vote). It was an admirable principled stance on an issue that had nothing to offer them electorally, and I was happy to give them credit for it.

Obviously this year will be different. They've lined up behind FF on every other issue, and there's no way they'll be let off the hook for this one. While I have some sympathy for the argument that compromise is necessary in a coalition - at least I've had to tell myself that every time I look to what's happening (or not) up north - it's notable that the Greens haven't really tended to make that argument, at least not in the Dáil chamber. Instead of acknowledging that they've had to do u-turns for the sake of their Cabinet seats, or even staying out of debates entirely and just showing up to hold their noses and vote on the Government side, they send their TDs in to argue why the Opposition is actually wrong to be taking this or that position at the present time. So I have to assume that when OASA comes up again they'll do the same. The only question is how they'll justify their reversal - gangland activity, I suppose, since it's hardly arguable that republicans or Islamic militants or anyone else with a political agenda poses any real threat at the moment. But we shall see.

If any Greens reading this have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Policing pokes up its ugly head again

2008-01-09T10:27:00.000Z

I see that Hugh Orde met an Assembly committee yesterday on the matter of the devolution of policing and justice powers. Orde said he sees no reason not to meet the May 2008 target date while unionists, predictably, insist that it won't happen until certain other conditions are met (including, shockeroonie, another pre-condition for republicans).

Sinn Féin's response is here, and one line is particularly noteworthy:

The devolution of Policing and Justice was a key element in the negotiations that led to the restoration of the political institutions.

What that translates to, of course, is "We secured our membership's approval on the basis of a reassurance that policing and justice would be devolved by May 2008 and we're going to have serious problems if that doesn't actually happen". There is no other way to read it, given that all and sundry on the unionist side were making it perfectly clear when St Andrews was agreed that they were not signing up to a hard-and-fast deadline.

In a way it reminds me of the old decommissioning debate. The GFA, remember, called for all parties to "use their influence" to achieve decommissioning within two years. SF said at the time that this wasn't a deadline. The IRA at the time said flat-out that they would decommission only when they were good and ready to. Nonetheless, unionists insisted it was a time-locked guarantee and sold it to their people as such. We all know the rest.

The only real question now is - when May 2008 comes and goes and there is still no devolution, will the governments do as they did with decommissioning, insist there actually was a deadline and turn against the side refusing to meet it? Or will they take a literal interpretation of St Andrews and accept the unionists' demands for further concessions? Precedent only points to one answer.

***

On another matter, the unionists are apparently unhappy at the suggestion that the British Government might admit that there was a war going on in the Six Counties.

Well, Chichester-Clark admitted it 36 years ago, what's the point of denying it now?

How many EU countries does it take to change a lightbulb?

2008-01-04T19:07:00.001Z

Apparently, all of them.

Green Party Minister for the Environment John Gormley discovered this today when he was told that his plans to ban incandescent lightbulbs might not go ahead - because they are not banned in the rest of the EU. According to RTÉ:

...under EU mutual recognition rules that govern the internal market, member states must allow the sale [of] any product that is legally for sale in another member state.

There are clearly some exceptions to this rule (cannabis and mifepristone come to mind), but the EU Commission seems to think that incandescent lightbulbs aren't one of them. So no ban unless Gormley can get every other member state to agree.

Whatever about the merits of the proposal, this rule strikes me as utterly mad and as confirmation of the unhealthy influence that business interests have over Brussels. It's also a warning signal about the loss of sovereignty that goes along with European integration. For all the Europhiles' insistence that we are not turning into a "United States of Europe", it's worth noting that a US state doesn't have to ask the permission of all 49 others before banning a product that it deems harmful.

Still, as I can't be arsed to research the regulation in detail, I'd very much welcome if someone wanted to explain to me exactly why it doesn't apply to mifepristone.

Latest news from abortion-free Ireland

2007-11-23T18:41:00.000Z

RTÉ has just carried the shocking news that women in Ireland are illegally ordering Mifepristone, the abortion pill, from an online site hosted outside the country.

At least, the news is shocking to RTÉ and to a doctor interviewed for the segment. Not shocking at all here in Wednesdayland, where it was predicted almost two years ago.

Apparently the authorities have contacted the site's owners informing them that the sale of mifepristone is illegal here. Which is, of course, precisely why the site exists. The owners have not responded yet, and probably won't. And there is virtually nothing the law can do about it - except, that is, to allow women to obtain the pill safely and legally from their GP. If we're not going to let that happen then we had better get used to the fact that women will find some other way to get it.

Incidentally, the site in question can be easily located with a Google search and one thing I can guarantee you is that plenty of Irish women who saw that RTÉ report will now be Googling desperately.

Why the Offences Against the State Act needs to go. Part 342

2007-11-16T17:57:00.000Z

Breaking news today:

Mark Doran, of Poacher's Lock, Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow, was convicted of membership of [the Real IRA]...the court was told that, during a search of Mr Doran's flat, gardaí had found military manuals, books and DVDs, raffle tickets used during a fundraiser for the families of IRA prisoners, and two bodhrans, one with a picture of a woman with a rifle and the other with signatures from several Port Laoise prisoners.

Delivering the court's judgment, Mr Justice Mc Menamin said that such material was "consistent only with significant paramilitary involvement".

'Innocent until proven republican' is still the law in this country, so it seems.

On another matter...

2007-11-15T18:07:00.000Z

... I don't know what the fuck is going on in the Six County Department of Education, but I would like to disassociate myself from it completely.

Sin é.

An dlí is an teanga

2007-11-15T13:54:00.000Z

An email found its way into my inbox this week, asking for my signature on a petition to oppose the Labour Party’s new Legal Practitioners Qualification Amendment Bill. The purpose of this bill is to remove the Irish language requirement for persons wishing to train as solicitors or barristers. According to the petition, the consequences of its enactment would be as follows:

1. That this bill will damage the status and usage of the Irish language generally, and especially damage the status of Irish in the legal system.
2. That it will be impossible for Irish speakers to obtain their rights in the courts of this country if this bill is passed.
3. That court cases and services in Irish should be offered in all Irish courts, in order to give equal rights to Irish speakers, rather than proposing to take away these rights.
4. That this bill will pose a threat to the Irish language under the Constitution, as our first official language. There will also be implications for the status of the Irish language in Europe, where Irish-speaking lawyers are in demand.
5. That this bill has implications for the coutnry's [sic] independence. If the requirement for an oral Irish exam for lawyers is abolished, our legal system will be able to slide back into the English legal system, as matters stood before 1921.

Let’s look at the background to this. Under the original act, which dates from 1929, and the Solicitors Act 1954, any person wishing to train as a solicitor or barrister in the state must pass Irish language examinations at an early stage of their training. The examinations are both oral and written and there are no exemptions (except for solicitors trained in other countries who wish to have their qualifications recognised here). The standard of Irish required to pass the exams is said to be fairly low for those training as solicitors, higher - although I'm not sure how much higher - for those training as barristers.

So how valid are the objections raised in the petition? I’m going to discount #5 straightaway because it is, frankly, ridiculous. I think #4 is a weak argument too. There are no proposals to remove Irish as the first official language, and it’s not clear what the ‘implications for the status of the Irish language in Europe’ would be. If Irish-speaking lawyers are in demand in Europe, then surely that demand itself would act as an incentive for prospective lawyers to learn Irish, with or without a requirement that they do so. (A similar argument can be made for #2, although I think there’s a more pertinent issue on that one, which I’ll come to later.)

#1 is based on a generalised view that Irish language requirements are an essential component in maintaining the status of Irish. I think it has to be said that the (de facto) status of Irish in this country is poor enough even with these requirements and if they are what we are counting on to save the language, we’re in big trouble. This is not an argument against compulsory Irish per se – I would still strongly support it for primary and secondary students, up to Leaving Cert level, albeit with a vastly reworked curriculum to ensure that they are actually learning the language and not memorising only the amount that they need to pass their exams. If we had that in place then perhaps the language would be used enough to create a real need for Irish speakers in a wide range of professions. But the current half-arsed situation, in which only a small minority of people will ever have to use the language after they finish school, seems to me to do as much harm as good to its status.

So that leaves us with 2 and 3. Leaving aside the former's hyperbole, I think these are the strongest arguments in favour of retaining the requirement. Irish is the first language of the state, and its speakers must have the right to use it to conduct their official business. But there’s a serious question as to whether the current law actually protects that right. As I noted earlier, the solicitors’ exams are, by all accounts, fairly easy – meaning you don’t have to speak Irish particularly well to pass them. Is a Gaeilgeoir who wants to conduct their legal business through the national language really protected by a system that admits persons with only a rudimentary knowledge of that language? Given the intricacies of the law, and the extreme degree of preciseness needed in drafting and responding to legal documents, wouldn’t any such person be sure to seek out a fluent Irish speaker rather than someone who’d just managed to pass a couple perfunctory exams? I have no idea how many fluent speakers there are in the legal profession; this category, unfortunately, was not included in the recent Census breakdown of Irish speakers by occupation. But if there are many, it’s obviously not because of the law - as the law does not require fluency - and so the law is unnecessary for this purpose. And if there are few, then the law is failing this purpose. So either way, the case really isn't made for its retention.

Now having said all this, I don’t like the Labour Party bill either. It would replace the compulsory Irish exam with a 'voluntary system of recognising competence in the Irish language' – so you get a little star by your name in the Golden Pages or something, I guess. This is not the way I would go about reforming the present system. I don’t think there should be no requirement for solicitors and barristers to have Irish – but the requirement should be meaningful, and should be implemented in such a way as to actually encourage and facilitate learning of the language, and of course to not form a barrier to access to the legal profession. The recently-introduced policy of the Garda Síochána seems to me to be a common-sense way to go about this: Irish is now a mandatory part of the training regime for those applicants who don’t already have it.

I’ll conclude by (re-)stating the obvious: this dilemma wouldn’t exist if the government cared enough to ensure that the language was taught properly in the schools in the first place, and to provide adequate Irish education for adults.

Republican revisionism and the GFA

2007-11-10T09:36:00.000Z

I've just been listening to Newstalk 106, where Des Dalton of Republican Sinn Féin was briefly interviewed on the subject of that party's Ard Fheis, to be held this weekend.

In the course of the interview it was put to Dalton that the people of Ireland, north and south, voted in favour of the Good Friday Agreement. Dalton denied that this was true: "The people of the 26 Counties didn't even get a chance to vote on the Stormont Agreement," he said.

This is an allegation the GFA's opponents have been levelling for years, and it baffles me. Did they not bother to read the text of the constitutional amendment they (presumably) voted against in 1998? The very first line of it reads:

The State may consent to be bound by the British-Irish Agreement done at Belfast on the 10th day of April, 1998, hereinafter called the Agreement.

You can't get much clearer than that. Obviously the most emotive part of the referendum, for most people in the 26, was the removal of Articles 2 and 3 but it's pure historical revisionism to claim - as RSF and the others constantly do - that that is all the southern electorate voted on.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of the GFA, but I really don't see any credible argument that its passage wasn't the will of the Irish people as expressed at the time.

2007-10-24T17:29:00.000+01:00

It’s reported today that the Common Travel Area between Britain and Ireland will officially come to an end in 2009.

I say “officially” because the Irish government has been unilaterally ignoring the agreement for some time now. I’ve noted this as a semi-regular traveller to Britain: it’s been years since I’ve encountered any kind of passport check upon arrival at an airport in that country, but there are always checks when I come home. So it seems the Brits are just bringing their policy in line with ours. Which is ironic, given our frequent trotting out of the excuse that we can’t do this or that because it might affect the CTA – an excuse that is usually bullshit, as in this instance, for example. In the Dáil today, the Taoiseach also confirmed my long-held suspicion that the CTA excuse previously offered for us not joining the Schengen open border arrangement was only a pretense:

…should we join Schengen, the answer is "no"

It’s also been confirmed that the new arrangements will not apply to the land border between the two jurisdictions. No surprises there. I don’t believe either government would have had the stomach for that. So what will probably happen instead is that border security will be beefed up at Stranraer and Troon (I gave up that Parkhead season book just in time!). No doubt, there will be more instances of Irish nationals being subjected to racist requirements that they write their names in English, something that would never occur to the British authorities to demand of Polish or Spanish passengers. But it's interesting to contemplate the psychological effect of moving the de facto border back to where it belongs.

The other ironic thing about this is that its announcement takes place the same week that the Irish government finally introduces legislation to outlaw human trafficking. As everyone in the migration field knows, but politicians stubbornly refuse to acknowledge, tightening border controls actually facilitates rather than hindering traffickers. It means that there are more people unable to avail of legal means of migration and having to resort to illegal means; a larger and more lucrative black market in forged documents, which in turn provides a greater incentive to criminals to get involved in the business, and often a greater debt for the victim to have to repay to their trafficker, meaning a longer time they are held in debt bondage. Western countries in recent years have tightened their borders considerably and at the same time, the trafficking rate has increased. This isn’t a coincidence.

Finally, I have to wonder what the effect will be on the immigrant women in this country who find themselves with unwanted pregnancies and now face yet another barrier to obtaining a safe and legal abortion. A recent report in The Lancet (summary available at that link; free registration required for the full article) proved what some of us would call the bleedin’ obvious: laws against abortion don’t prevent them but merely make them more dangerous. In this country, we’ve largely been shielded from the latter effect because of the safety valve of travel to England – but many immigrant women don’t have that option. There is already some evidence of illegal abortions among this population and the only reason there haven’t been more is that the Irish government has quietly granted re-entry visas to women who wish to travel for this purpose (I don’t have a link for that, but it's accepted by activists on both sides of the debate). When Britain starts checking the passports of everyone who goes there from here, these women will need to ensure they also have a British entry visa and I’m not sure how willing the Home Office will be to accommodate them. Some increase in the number of illegal abortions here seems inevitable – and the consequences of that could be dire.

****

I realise I’ve said more in this post than I previously had for the whole month. Apologies for my quietness of late, and thanks to those of you who still check in regularly. I can’t promise to keep up as often as I’d like to, particularly given what looks to be an increasing workload for me, but I will always do what I can.

Note to my northern comrades

2007-10-22T17:01:00.000+01:00

When the Assembly is having a debate on abortion, it would be a good idea to have at least one woman MLA speak.

Quick note on the Paul Quinn case

2007-10-22T06:45:00.000+01:00

As readers in Ireland will know by now, IRA members in South Armagh are being accused for the beating death of a young man near Castleblayney, County Monaghan.

On the killing itself, the comments of our local TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin are worth repeating:

Whatever circumstances are behind the attack there can be no justification for this type of violence. I strongly condemn the attack which took place in my own constituency and urge that anyone with information relating to the murder go to the gardaí immediately.

I would caution against a rush to judgement about the perpetrators. Just because the family believes republicans were involved doesn't mean they were. See my previous post on Joe Rafferty's murder, and remember also the case of Gareth O'Connor, for whose disappearance the IRA was widely blamed until it was revealed that he had been touting to the PSNI on his comrades in the Real IRA.

Whoever was responsible, though, it should be obvious that - after Paul Quinn's family - the last people who would have wanted anything like this to happen are Sinn Féin. Whereas some of our opponents, in the media and on other web forums, seem to be nearly wetting themselves with glee.

For the sake of everyone and everything involved, I hope this is resolved as quickly as it can be, and with a minimum of political point-scoring.

2007-09-28T11:17:00.000+01:00

Today's Times (subs required) reports that black taxi drivers are finding it difficult to pick up fares in Dublin and other areas. They say that passengers at ranks are going past them and getting into cabs with white drivers.

The National Taxi Drivers' Union president, Tommy Gorman, denies that racism is involved and suggests that people may have had previous experience with "coloured" drivers (what century are we in again?) not knowing where they were going.

Of course, this never happens with white Irish drivers. Oh no. I never had to give a white Irish taxi driver directions from Heuston Station to Dundrum. I never had to give a white Irish taxi driver directions from O'Connell Street to Phibsboro, for fuck's sake. Yes, Phibsboro. I never had a white Irish taxi driver get hopelessly lost trying to get me from Cabra to the Coolmine rail station. These incidents must all be figments of my imagination.

Gorman made his comments in the context of suggestions that white drivers should refuse to take these fares. He was defending the white drivers for failing to do so. That's understandable. He's a union leader, and the role of a union leader is to stand up for the union workers. But what he seems to be missing here is that he's the president of all the NTDU workers - including the black ones. He should be standing up for them, too, not suggesting these occurrences are their own fault.

The suggestion that taxi drivers should have to take a local knowledge test is a sensible one. If implemented, it would surely weed out most of those drivers (Irish and non-Irish, black, white or whatever) who don't know where they're going. But will it, as Gorman suggests, weed out those passengers who refuse to get into a cab with a black person driving it? Somehow, I don't think so.

What a difference a year makes … or maybe not

2007-09-27T16:43:00.000+01:00

I’d kind of forgotten all about this post. It was brought back to me when I had a look at my visitor stats and noticed someone with an ISP from Fianna Fáil headquarters doing a trawl for blog posts on ‘Bertiegate’. A little worried up at Mount Street, are we?

In retrospect, of course, I think I was a little easy on de Taoiseach. I’m still of the view that there isn’t – so far – hard evidence of anything beyond general sliminess and misjudgement. The inconsistencies that have arisen since then obviously strengthen the case against him, and darken the cloud over his head, to a degree that would embarrass most western leaders into stepping down. But again, this is Ireland we’re talking about, and Fianna Fáil. Even if Bertie goes – and don’t get me wrong, he should – the state is still going to be run by people to whom the going rate of a terraced house is money to be casually handed out to ‘friends’. And it’s still going to be run for those people, which to my mind is the real scandal.

I’ve been struck by this over the past couple days, with the news about Tuesday's Garda shooting in Dublin. That’s obviously a serious and newsworthy story but for God’s sake does nobody see the link between the greed that leads to that kind of behaviour, and the kind that results in fatcats having enormous sums of cash to distribute in ‘whiparounds’ for politicians, and the kind that results in stories like this one? What, apart from the social class of the participants, is the real difference? Thousands of people die in this country every year as a result of poverty, inequitable access to essential health care or other forms of government malfeasance which occur as a direct result of the privileging of the business class at the expense of everyone else - are their lives worth less than the relative handful of people killed by working class gangsters? I don’t think so.

The plain fact of the matter is that this state is controlled by people who have no regard for the law, no concern for anyone else’s well-being and no interest more pressing than stuffing their own pockets. It should hardly come as a surprise to them that some of the proles want in on the action, and are equally indifferent to the consequences of the means they have at their disposal.

Quick note on the unmarried fathers case

2007-09-11T17:44:00.000+01:00

Good news in this case. I haven't followed it closely, and I understand it's probably only a limited victory, but it is certainly a good decision - not just for the man in question and his children, but also for common sense.

I have a problem with a lot of the fathers' rights crowd. Too often their complaints about the Irish legal system descend into rants on feminism - as if the legislators and judges who came up with our family law were all mad women's libbers, rather than ultraconservative Catholics trying to discourage extramarital sex and believing that women should mind the kids, preferably while standing barefoot and pregnant [but only by their husband] in the kitchen.

But the underlying argument - that unmarried fathers in particular are grossly discriminated against in Irish law - is virtually undebatable. Today's decision may be only a small step toward reversing this ridiculous injustice, but it's a welcome one.

A little Friday brainteaser

2007-09-07T15:46:00.000+01:00

Which TD, from a government party, was spotted chatting away on his mobile while cycling down a busy city centre street today?

Latest news from the Land of the Welcomes

2007-08-31T16:07:00.000+01:00

Prime Time last night carried a report on EU citizens whose non-EU spouses are being threatened with deportation on the grounds that the couple did not live together in another EU state before moving to Ireland.

This is happening because of the government’s interpretation of a recent EU directive which, ironically, was intended to strengthen the family rights of EU citizens.

I have a friend who recently fell afoul of this law. David has been married to his wife (a citizen of one of the “old” EU states) for about eight years. They have lived in Ireland for most of that time, having previously lived in David’s native country. He entered the state legally, with his wife, and was granted residency as the spouse of an EU citizen. This permission had to be renewed annually, so every year, he and his wife would go to the Gardaí to verify that they were still married, and he would get a stamp for another year. He is now eligible for Irish citizenship and has filed an application, but the waiting list is very long and it could be 2009 before his application is approved.

So a couple months ago, when his stamp was due to expire, he and his wife went for what he had every reason to believe was just a formal appearance before the Gardaí for another year-long stamp. Except this time they wouldn’t give it to him. “The law has changed,” he was told, “and you no longer have any right to reside here.” Within a few short weeks he would become an illegal immigrant; his employer would be required by law to let him go, and a deportation order could issue at any time.

Fortunately, it hasn’t come to that for David. He has a few advantages that many others in his situation don’t have: his employer is fairly well connected, and David is a white, native English-speaking westerner (this isn’t supposed to make a difference, but I guarantee you that it does). In his case the authorities relented – at least for this year.

So why is the government all of a sudden deciding to make legal immigrants illegal? Their explanation is that they are cracking down on “sham marriages”. Right. And the only way a couple can prove that their marriage is not one of convenience is to demonstrate that they lived together in another EU country first? My arse.

What happened is this. The government’s solicitors are under instructions to scrutinise every immigration-related EU law in order to determine the most restrictive way it can be applied. In this case, the solicitors found that this new EU directive could be interpreted to say that family rights only had to be granted to couples that had previously lived in another EU state. That, of course, was never the EU’s intention, but no matter. The government saw a loophole and jumped through it like a circus horse. And then made up this nonsense that it was all about "sham marriages".

What angers me most about this is the utter disregard it shows for the human needs, let alone human rights, of the people affected. Not all of them will be deported, of course. With a little luck (and a cerebrally-functioning Supreme Court) maybe none of them will, apart from that small percentage who genuinely did marry for convenience. But they don’t know that. Try to imagine the fear that someone in this predicament must feel. Someone who has spent years in this country, entirely legally, playing by the rules, building a life here for themselves and their family. And then to have a threat like this dangled over their head.

It is a cruel and disgusting way to treat people who have done absolutely nothing wrong.

...let him wear his turban

2007-08-22T17:00:00.000+01:00

I actually struggled with this one a bit: at first glance, it appears to pit two of my most deeply held principles – pluralism and secularism – against each other. On the one hand I most certainly agree that Ireland should make reasonable accommodation to the cultural traditions of newcomers, and allowing male Sikhs (how many are there here? A thousand or so?) to wear their turban strikes me as eminently reasonable. There is no suggestion that it will interfere with their job performance in any way, or cause anyone else any harm or offence.

On the other hand, I am strongly sympathetic to the argument (as expressed in a couple letters in today's Times, subs required) that religion should be kept out of public life entirely. The state should not be involved in promulgating faith in general, or any faith in particular – and police officers, when on duty, are agents of the state. If a Catholic Garda wanted to wear a big fuck-off crucifix I wouldn’t be complaining if he or she was told to take it off.

But there’s a key difference there - and I’m not talking about the lack of an onus on Catholics to wear crucifixes, in the way that Sikh men feel they have to wear turbans. I think the crucial issue isn’t the beliefs themselves but the socioreligious context in which this dispute is taking place. The south of Ireland is, in most respects, and notwithstanding the undeniable (if far too slow) changes that have taken place over the past couple decades, still a country permeated with Catholicism. Our population is 90% Catholic. Our schools are 95% Catholic. Our elected representatives (on a parliamentary level, anyway) are about 97% Catholic. And this is still, unfortunately, reflected in many of the laws and policies that affect our daily lives – including the lives of those of us who want nothing to do with the Church and its teachings. To have Gardaí going around wearing crucifixes would just reinforce the essentially Catholic-theocratic basis on which this state is still to an unacceptable degree run. You can hardly say the same about a Sikh policeman in a turban.

Now the logical conclusion to this is that Sikhs and Catholics would have to be treated differently: the former given permission to openly display their religion, the latter prohibited. It’s not a position I’m entirely comfortable with, framed in those terms. But in a way, I think it boils down to the same question that has divided the US in recent years with regard to affirmative action, or the Six Counties on the 50-50 PSNI recruitment issue: is differential treatment acceptable to achieve equality of outcome? I have always felt that it is, at least under some circumstances. It’s all well and good for the law to say that everyone is equal and no distinction will be made but, in practice, in societies where the dominance of one category of people has been firmly entrenched, such a policy usually just ends up reinforcing the status quo.

The questions we need to ask here are what kind of Ireland do we want, and what policy will best help us achieve it. As I've stated, I want one that is pluralist and secular. Allowing your man to wear the turban would obviously promote the first of these; as for the second, it probably wouldn’t help, but I’m hard pressed to imagine how it would hurt, either. We aren't a secular state, and we aren't going to become one by limiting the rights of minorities to practice their religion. They are the wrong target for us 'aggressive secularists'. When we have a society where belief is genuinely a matter for the individual, and the state actually is no longer promulgating religion in general or any religion in particular, I'll revisit my views on this issue. But until then...

And what if it was a vaccine against prostate cancer?

2007-08-16T18:10:00.000+01:00

A member of a Government expert panel has criticised the delay in recommending whether a cervical cancer vaccine should be provided under a National Immunisation programme. link

OK, let's look at the facts.

Studies suggest that up to 75% of people may contract the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer, at some point during their reproductive years.

Ireland has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in Western Europe.

180 Irish women are diagnosed with this illness every year.

80 Irish women a year die from it.

In clinical trials, the vaccine was found to be 100% effective against the types of HPV linked to most cervical cancers. Link.

What about this is a tough call?

Aer Lingus: It's the electorate, stupid

2007-08-14T12:20:00.000+01:00

Fintan O’Toole annoys me as much as the next person, but when he gets it right does he ever get it right. His column in today’s Times (subs required) says exactly what I have been wanting to say since this Aer Lingus story first broke. Actually, it says exactly what I’ve been thinking since the election. Undoubtedly, it says what I’ll be thinking after the next election too, because in all likelihood the Irish voters will grumble and whinge for the next five years about what a shower of bastards we have in office and then on polling day they’ll go right back and put that shower in again. And then complain when they do the things that Irish politicians do. And so on, ad nauseum.

But we all know this; the question is what do we do about it. Usually the problem is identified as the peculiarly clientelist nature of (southern) Irish politics, and electoral reform is put forward as the solution: get rid of the dual mandate, for example, and TDs won’t have to focus so much on issues properly in the purview of councillors.

That hasn’t worked.

Increasingly the multi-seat constituency is coming under fire: TDs are competing with their party colleagues, the argument goes, and so there’s a great incentive for them to try to build up support from the voters through parish pump type stuff. I’m not convinced by this. For one thing, it doesn’t happen in the US, although the primary system there also means that candidates compete with party colleagues. Of course the party whip system doesn’t exist in the US so party colleagues can compete with each other on ideological grounds, something they can’t do here. But Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael can’t really be said to be competing on ideological grounds, either, so a system under which their candidates are competing with each other (and other parties) rather than first and foremost amongst themselves is hardly likely to eliminate the incentive for them to boost their support through constituency work.

Some of my own party colleagues are in favour of introducing some sort of list system, in which, for example, half the Dáil is elected in the current manner, while the other half is selected by party officials according to the percentage of vote that each party receives. Presumably, the ‘appointed’ TDs would not be bound to do constituency work, not having any constituency to be bound to. There’s merit in that argument, but I can’t help thinking that there is something fundamentally undemocratic about allowing them to be chosen by appointment rather than directly by the people. We complain about this in the Seanad (not that that stopped us … well I won’t go there for now) so I don’t really see how we can support it in the Dáil. The wild optimists also think that this system would increase the extent to which the electorate votes on ideological grounds, because they know they are not just voting for their candidate but for his or her entire party. Again, unconvincing. At the last election voters knew they were voting not just for their TD but for their government, and what did they do? Voted in the same shower of bastards they keep complaining about … again.

I’m not sure what the answer is, or whether it can be found through electoral reform at all. Clearly a cultural change is needed - Irish voters do need to stop thinking of their TD as their councillor, social worker, all-purpose-fixer-upper – but there’s no guarantee that would stop them electing the same old crooks time after time, anyway. I’m sure I don’t need to point to examples in other countries to demonstrate this. Whether it’s PR-STV, FPTP, party list, whatever, the bottom line is that nothing is going to change until the voters take it upon themselves to decide that they aren’t going to put up with it anymore.

And if you think that’s going to happen any time soon, I have a landing slot in Shannon to sell you.

Normal service resumes!

2007-08-10T10:11:00.000+01:00

I am back from my holidays, rested and ready to get back in the swing of things around here. Slowly, though. For now, just a brief comment on today's Irish Times report that an investigation into serious allegations of wrongdoing on the part of Quinn Direct insurance company, in cahoots with serving members of the Garda Síochána, has concluded that the smoking-gun document was forged.

This investigation was carried out by ... the Garda Síochána. What did anyone expect them to find?

Justice has been done.

2007-07-22T03:01:00.000+01:00

I'm on holiday at the moment but, predictably, I'm still checking the news from Ireland every day and as might be expected from this post I've particularly been following the Joe O'Reilly trial.

The verdict today was exactly what I'd expected, and hoped for.

Apparently there is some disquiet about it because of the nature of the evidence (circumstantial rather than physical/forensic). I think this is a misunderstanding of the law. Circumstantial evidence is every bit as valid in building a case against a defendant; it's easier to explain away, but the crucial thing is that the defence has to actually do so (explain it away, I mean) - and Joe O'Reilly's didn't.

The jury has to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt - not beyond any doubt. They have to find that it is reasonable to believe that somebody other than the defendant could have committed the crime. With the evidence that was presented, and with Joe O'Reilly's lack of any explanation of it, combined with the virtually incontrovertible proof that he lied about his whereabouts at the time of the murder, it would really take a stretch beyond "reasonable" to imagine that it wasn't him. "Theoretically possible", sure, but that's not the standard required. If it was, you'd hardly ever get a conviction for anything.

Anyway, I'm sure that now the trial's over we'll start hearing all the details that weren't allowed to be introduced in court and that should seal it for any remaining doubters.

RIP Rachel.