Enda Kenny missing as protesters march in Castlebar & Dublin against Austerity and home help cuts
Young people wear masks on the anti-austerity march through the centre of Dublin yesterday.
Up to 400 people protested raucously today against what they described as “inhuman cuts” in the home-help sector in the Taoiseach’s hometown, Castlebar.
The noise level reached a crescendo outside Mr Kenny’s constituency office in Tucker Street where there was prolonged chanting of slogans such as “Come on Enda, Give us a Break, all you do is Take, Take Take” and “No ifs, no buts, no home help cuts”.
Neither the Taoiseach or any of his staff were in the office at the time and the march from Chapel Street to Market Square continued after Siptu organiser Annette Carpenter, via a megaphone, had roundly condemned both Mr Kenny and Minister for Health Dr James Reilly.
“Reilly…Out, Out, Out”, the crowd chanted, and there were chants of “Shame on You” after Ms Carpenter said the Taoiseach had refused to meet the home help lobby group as requested.
Campaigners from six counties, Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon and Galway converged on Castlebar for yesterday’s rally.
Many of those marching carried placards and wore their county GAA colours.
Protester Margaret Sheeran, a home help from the Charlestown area, told a harrowing story about an elderly man found dead in her area some weeks home help visits had been cut.
“The doctor said he had been dead a good while before he was found,” Ms Sheeran continued. “Is that we want in our day and age? Everyone is entitled to a bit of dignity. In some cases, elderly people are visits lasting three quarters of an hour or half an hour or, some cases, only fifteen minutes.
“The patients themselves expect you to stay longer. They can’t understand you walking away.”
And about 10,000 people took part in an anti-austerity protest through the streets of Dublin today, according to a Garda spokeswoman. Organisers put the figure at twice that number, however.
Marchers began to assemble around the Garden of Remembrance from midday.
The demonstrators were led by a young woman wearing a white mask and riding a dark horse with a banner reading “No to austerity” draped around it. Road closures were in place in Dublin city centre as the march made its way from Parnell Square, through O’Connell Street, onto d’Olier Street, before returning onto O’Connell Street, where speeches took place outside the GPO.
How other countries that are Catholic in Europe deal with abortion
No other subject provokes such intense debate here as abortion, as we have witnessed in recent days following the Savita Halappanavar (pictured above) tragedy. But how do other predominately Catholic countries in Europe deal with this divisive issue?
In Poland, where 87pc of the population classify themselves as Catholics, it’s legal to have an abortion when the woman’s life or health is endangered by the pregnancy, when the pregnancy is a result of a criminal act such as rape or when the foetus is seriously malformed.
Indeed, despite its Catholic stance, in 1932 Poland became the first country in Europe to allow terminations when the pregnancy resulted from a criminal act.
Under communism, abortions were easily accessible. The Christian Science Monitor reported that in 1981 Poland recorded about 230,000 legal abortions.
Today influential pro-life lobby groups, church authorities and right-wing political parties are calling for abortion in Poland to be banned altogether.
MPS in the nation’s Parliament are working on a bill which will further restrict terminations in Poland but Pro-choice groups say any such measure will lead to an escalation in back-street abortions.
Officially, only 538 legal abortions were carried out in Poland in 2010, but unofficial statistics from the Federation for Women and Family Planning estimate the number is close to 100,000 annually.
While Polish laws on abortion may sound liberal, in practice they can be anything but. Just last month the European Court of Human Rights condemned Poland for the inhumane and degrading treatment of a 14-year-old rape victim whom the authorities tried to stop having an abortion.
In Italy, where 87.8pc of the population say they are Catholics, the law is completely at odds with the church itself.
Since 1978 women are allowed terminate a pregnancy on demand during the first 90 days.
Abortions are legal if they are carried out for health, economic or social reasons, including the circumstances under which conception occurred.
The procedure can be carried out free-of-charge in public hospitals and termination in the second trimester is permitted if the mother’s life or health is at risk.
In some cases the terminations are carried out just yards from the border with the Vatican City.
Interestingly, the majority of physicians and other healthcare professionals in Italy invoke a ‘conscience clause’ allowing them to be exempted on moral and religious grounds from the actions they carry out in theatre.
By doing this they remove the threat of excommunication.
Spain too, with its 94pc Catholic population, has liberal laws on abortion. In 2006 the country’s then-socialist government changed the law, allowing any woman to get an abortion up until 14 weeks.
The Socialist prime minister at the time, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, also legalised gay marriage and let same-sex couples adopt children. Now ruling conservatives want to restrict the right to terminations, though the electorate appears to be split on the issue.
If the ruling right-wing Popular party gets its way, Spain will join Ireland in prohibiting abortion where the foetus is malformed.
Malta is the most similar country to Ireland in Europe in terms of its lack of clarity on the abortion issue. It too is a hub of Catholicism with 98pc of the island’s people considering themselves as such.
And, like Ireland, it traditionally has shied away from giving clear legal direction on when terminations can and can’t be allowed.
While the law states abortion is illegal under any and all circumstances, they have been carried out when the life of the mother has been threatened without any charge being brought by the police.
In Savita Halappanavar’s home country of India over 2.5million abortions have been reported so far this year though the number of ‘unreported’ abortions is expected to bring the total for 2012 to 11 million.
Under law enacted in 1971, abortions can be granted if there is a danger to the woman’s physical or mental health, if the baby will be handicapped or malformed or if the conception occurred as a result of rape.
Additionally, terminations are allowed for unmarried girls under the age of 18 with the consent of a guardian.
In 1994 a law was passed criminalising gender-selective abortions in India but in reality little has been done to stamp out the practice.
Boys are preferred because they do not require the enormous dowry payments that bankrupt many poor families when their daughters marry.
Also it’s believed that women have a low earning potential and so they will be a drain on the family’s income rather than a contributor to it.
Prenatal tests, including ultrasound scanning, solely to determine the sex of the foetus, continues there with the abortion of female foetuses still a serious problem in parts of the country.
A study in the British medical journal The Lancet estimated that four to 12 million selective abortions of girls have occurred in India in the past three decades.
Opposition parties in Dail call for James Reilly to resign as Minister for Health
Is this what Irish Government parliamentary meetings will look like in the future with no James Reilly at the table?
Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil have today repeated their calls for the Minister for Health, James Reilly, to resign from his position.
Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on Public Expenditure and Reform, Mary Lou McDonald, said today that it was clear to her that Dr Reilly should not be the Minister for Health.
She said the Sinn Féin party did not have any confidence in him, and he was presiding over “shambles after shambles” in the department.
Deputy McDonald said the minister did not work in a manner that was open and transparent, and should go.
She said the latest information released under the Freedom of Information, which showed the minister had been making changes to a list of primary care centre sites almost right upon until they were announced, was evidence of “stroke politics”.
Fianna Fáil’s spokesperson on Transport, Tourism and Sport, Timmy Dooley, said Minister Reilly had bungled the entire operation of the Department of Health and the HSE.
Deputy Dooley said it was necessary now for James Reilly to hand back his seal and resign from office.
The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin, said that Minister Reilly had his support in carrying out what was a very difficult job at the Department of Health.
He said Minister Reilly had inherited a dysfunctional HSE and was trying to put “shape and make” on that, so that it would be more accountable and focused.
Defrauding banks like State Street are the enemy of decent people like you and I
The list of crimes grows longer but Minister Michael Noonan still talks of ‘exceptional cases
Here’s the story of how one of the biggest banks in the world allegedly stole money from you and me. This wasn’t a misunderstanding. It wasn’t that someone hit the wrong key on a calculator. It’s not like some money accidentally fell off a desk and into someone’s briefcase.
“We are dealing here with fraud,” John Corrigan, head of the National Treasury Management Agency, told an Oireachtas committee last week. He added: “Fraud, for it to be successful, has to have internal collusion.”
The story begins in 2010, when the NTMA, which on our behalf manages the accumulated savings of the State, needed to sell off a huge tranche of shares. Why? Well, they needed €10bn to give away. Why? Well, that’s been government policy since 2008. Whatever the bankers need, the bankers get.
And fine, upstanding and exceedingly well-paid chaps at AIB and Bank of Ireland needed 10 billion, so the government said, “Are you sure that’s enough?” or words to that effect.
The NTMA decided to raise the money by selling off €10bn worth of shares, held in the National Pension Reserve Fund. This is a fund that contained the fruits of years of hard work by you and me and everyone else. Money put aside for future use.
The NTMA hired outside experts to do the job. A team from the London offices of State Street were contracted to sell the shares. State Street is an American bank, founded in the 18th Century. It’s one of the biggest in the world, employing about 30,000 people across the globe, including 2,000 in Ireland.
Now, it appears that when you’re dealing in billions it’s easy to fail to see the odd few million going astray. The NTMA didn’t spot the missing millions. Of course, someone in State Street realised what happened and called the cops and reported a multi-million theft from Irish citizens. Right? Well, not exactly. Someone within State Street seems to have acted, but no one called the cops. Not a word was said. Not to the cops. Not to the UK regulators. Not to the NTMA. Not to the Irish Government.
Then, in September 2011, certain unrelated irregularities came to light and the British authorities said tut-tut and began poking around. At which point, State Street said, “Eh, there was also this Irish thing, I suppose we ought to mention that”. Or words to that effect. No need to worry, mind you. The two or three senior chaps allegedly involved had already quietly left the bank.
That might have been the end of it. Then, someone in the financial media inquired why these State Street chaps had moved on – and a hint of the story came out. The NTMA saw the media report and asked State Street if everything was alright. At which point State Street let out a long sigh and reimbursed the NTMA for “overcharging”.
They reportedly did the same for such companies as the Royal Mail and Sainsbury. It seems the NTMA wasn’t the only outfit to whose money things have happened that were “not consistent with our contractual agreements”, as State Street so carefully put it.
Mr Corrigan of the NTMA put it somewhat more bluntly, to an Oireachtas committee last week: “Let us be clear, what we are dealing with here is fraudulent in nature.”
The Attorney General of Massachusetts is investigating suspicions that State Street did something similar there. As is the AG of Illinois. And California and Arkansas are already suing State Street. Last year, the bank paid $12m to Washington state, in an out-of-court settlement.
Now, I’m no banker. I couldn’t tell a bond from a debenture. But I do know my James Bond. And, in the words of Mr Goldfinger, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”
It has been plain for a long time, long before the economic crisis, that the banks are stateless entities with greed their sole motivation. Repeatedly, sovereign states have come under attack by powerful banking interests, seeking to advance their own interests at the expense of citizens.
We see that in the tax frauds here, through the Eighties and Nineties, and in the recent Libor scandal in London, in which bankers dealing with hundreds of trillions of dollars manipulated interest rates to their own advantage. These greed machines enrich themselves from the public purse. This has been done legally, through transfers of private debt to the public books. And through the siphoning off of enormous salaries and pensions, completely out of proportion to the social value of the bankers’ work.
It’s sometimes done through “overcharging” and through tax fraud.
Unfortunately, the default reaction of our political leaders, here and across the EU, is one of deference to the point of collaboration. Knowing what the bankers had done to place the public welfare in hazard, the late Brian Lenihan said his priority was to “restore our banks to their former glory”. The political classes and their cheerleaders supported that aim.
If I steal a loaf of bread or nick your wallet I’ll face jail or a fine – certainly I’ll be dragged into court. If I’m a banker and I “overcharge” you, not to worry – when caught, just pay back the money allegedly defrauded and all’s forgiven.
Here’s Michael Noonan, responding to the State Street scandal. “I understand that everything that was misappropriated has been repaid, so that there is no loss to the State, that’s my priority”.
Fair enough. But I can’t hand back the loaf of bread or your wallet and walk away. And when – from the Eighties onward – the Irish State signalled to the bankers that there was no moral hazard to their actions, that no fraud or “misappropriation” would result in criminal charges, it told them there would be no comeback, whatever they did.
The NTMA have notified the Garda about this – good luck with that.
Our political leaders’ duty doesn’t stop at getting the money back. They have a duty to use any means, including the law, to fight back against any enemy within or without the State, when that enemy acts at the citizens’ expense.
This is just the bones of the story, pieced together from Mr Corrigan’s remarks, from a Comptroller and Auditor General’s report and from media reports here and abroad. Too much remains hidden. For instance, whose account did the millions go into?
“The case is entirely exceptional and very surprising,” said Mr Noonan. In truth, it’s neither. There’s a pattern, and it indicates consistent enemy action. It has what the police call “all the hallmarks”. That’s what they say when they’re dealing with gang crime or terrorism – but gangs and terrorists aren’t the only enemies of the State.
Moral hazard? Guess who’s still looking after €900m of our hard-earned money? Yep, State Street.
NASA has unprecedented view of Mars dust storm
These images of Mars released by NASA in 2001 show a dust storm similar to one developing now. At left is the planet in natural color, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The one on the right shows how a global dust storm engulfed Mars with the onset of Martian spring.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and two planet-based explorers are tracking a massive dust storm, offering scientists an opportunity to study the planet’s weather like none they’ve had before.
The regional dust storm was first spotted on Nov. 10 in the Red Planet’s southern hemisphere. Though the storm is considered only “regional,” it’s big enough that it has lowered air pressure on either side of the planet and increased temperatures on the opposite pole by changing the atmosphere’s circulation.
Scientists are waiting to see whether it will develop into a “dust haze” that will engulf the entire planet.
“For the first time since the Viking missions of the 1970s, we are studying a regional dust storm both from orbit and with a weather station on the surface,” said Rich Zurek, chief Mars scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge in a news statement Wednesday.
The storm has come within 900 miles of Mars rover Opportunity, which landed on the planet in 2004 and depends on the sun for energy. On the other side of the planet is Curiosity, the 1-ton, nuclear-powered mobile laboratory that landed earlier this year.
If the dust storm expands, the two rovers combined with the Reconnaissance Orbiter should give scientists an unprecedented view.
“One thing we want to learn is why do some Martian dust storms get to this size and stop growing, while others this size keep growing and go global,” Zurek said.
Between Nov. 10 and Nov. 16, the region around the dust storm heated up by about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists say. The dust is absorbing sunlight instead of reflecting it, lifting dust above the planet surface and pushing the storm wider.
If the dust engulfs Mars, it could reduce Opportunity’s energy supply. Curiosity’s power would not be affected. Photos from its cameras could be hazy, however, not unlike its first images after it landed on the planet in the summer.
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