Labour party failed to deliver on its election promises as retailers continue to go under
THE PARTY HAS BROKEN ITS ELECTION PLEDGE TO DEAL WITH UPWARD-ONLY RENT REVIEWS.
But as with so many of the stunts that political parties tend to pull in the run-up to election day, any embarrassment that Mr Rabbitte’s stop off at Korky’s shoe store on Dublin’s Grafton Street might cause him later on could be justified once Labour got its hands on the reins of power.
Oh how we laughed back then at the sight of Pat’s red face and double chin pouring out over the collar of his shirt as he tried on a pair of sturdy boots, while his party colleague Ciaran Lynch took care of the more serious business of delivering Labour’s promise to abolish upward-only rent reviews (UORRs) for all commercial leases once theirparty made it into government.
Two years on and with Labour safely ensconced with Fine Gael in a numerically unassailable coalition, that promise – like so many other commitments given in both parties’ election manifestos – has evaporated.
So who’s laughing now? Certainly the owner of Korky’s, John Corcoran, isn’t, given how after years of leading the fight against UORRs on behalf of retailers and other businesses, he found himself forced to close the same Grafton Street store Rabbitte had so shamelessly exploited for his election campaign stunt, or run the risk of bringing down the rest of his business with it.
Not that Corcoran is alone in his plight. Thanks to the disgraceful failure of the Government to tackle the issue of UORRs since coming into power, hundreds of retailers across the capital, and the country, have quite literally shut up shop in the past two years after buckling under the weight of boom-era rents.
Indeed, one doesn’t have to go very far from where Korky’s used to be on Grafton Street to find the shutters down on several other businesses. And while not all of them may have been forced to close as a result of excessive rents, there is no doubt that the basic cost of doing business on what is supposed to be Ireland’s most exclusive shopping street played a major role in the decision.
Take the short walk from Grafton Street to nearby Dawson Street and you’ll find the shutters are down on businesses that not so long ago had all the appearance of being permanent fixtures within Dublin’s retail offering.
Among the street’s victims of high rents and the recession generally are David Marshall’s flagship hairdressing salon, Waterstones book store, the Game store and the iconic Apollo Gallery. Carluccio’s restaurant, meanwhile, came perilously close to succumbing to the same fate until its owners forced their landlords to the table by closing their doors for a week when they failed to secure a rent reduction. Thankfully, their negotiations worked and their rent was dropped. The hugely popular Italian eatery remains trading to this day.
It would be nice to be able to say the Carluccio’s survival story has been replicated outside of Dawson Street and outside the capital. But it hasn’t.
Other examples of businesses, both in and outside Dublin’s city centre, which have fallen victim to the curse of sky-high rents that they can’t get out of are the Irish fashion chain Pamela Scott and former Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Niall O’Farrell’s Blacktie menswear chain that went into liquidation.
In an ironic twist, those businesses whose landlords’ premises have come under the effective control of Nama stand more of a chance of survival, given the capacity of the agency to reduce rents where a failure to do so might threaten their viability.
Last year for example, Nama approved 212 applications for rent reductions. But while such concessions might have been welcomed by the businesses who received them, those struggling to pay rents to landlords whose premises aren’t controlled by Nama would argue that they have been put at a competitive disadvantage as a result.
Thanks to the Government’s insistence on sticking rigidly to the advice of Attorney General Maire Whelan, that a retrospective abolition of upward-only rent reviews would be constitutionally unsound, any business looking for reduction from their landlord will find themselves in an unwinnable battle.
Ah, the Constitution. It’s a great fallback position for politicians who find themselves in the all-too-familiar position for them of the cornered rat.
Given the long-standing and close association of Whelan with the Labour Party, would it not have been an idea for the junior coalition partner to have sought her advice on the constitutionality of their pre-election promise to abolish upward-only rent reviews before Pat Rabbitte and Ciaran Lynch engaged in their campaign stunt at Korky’s shoe store?
But, then again, why would they have done that? After all, as Rabbitte admitted only recently, election promises aren’t necessarily meant to be kept.
Asked by RTE’s Sean O’Rourke on The Week in Politics if Labour had made a promise to protect child benefit during the election campaign which it had now failed to keep, he said: “Isn’t that what you tend to do during elections?”
Not that retailers and other businesses groaning under the weight of high rents are the only ones with a gripe about upward-only rent reviews
Indeed only last month, swashbuckling Nama developer Johnny Ronan was heard complaining bitterly in the High Court about efforts by the Medical Council to use amending legislation, introduced by former justice minister Dermot Ahern in 2009, which banned upward-only rent reviews into the future, to – as he saw it – ‘renege’ on a multi-million euro lease deal on its Fitzwilliam Square headquarters which he said had been struck in March 2008.
Addressing the court on the Medical Council’s attempt to have its rent reduced from €820,000 to €390,000 a year, Ronan said: “That’s going to cost me €8.6m. They are now of course trying to use a technicality to get out of it. That’s not the deal. It’s wrong – very, very wrong. It’s unfair, what they are doing. I think it’s unethical, actually.”
Government made a mess of property tax exemptions says Labour Minister Sean Sherlock
A Labour Minister has admitted that the Government made “a mess” of how the property tax exemptions were handled.
Junior minister Sean Sherlock (above pic right) also took a sideswipe at Environment Minister Phil Hogan above left, who was accused of hiding behind Labour ministers last week after it was announced large numbers of ghost estates are eligible for the property tax.
The number of ghost estate exemptions for the property tax was well down on those for the controversial €100 household charge, and this was defended by Labour ministers Pat Rabbitte and Jan O Sullivan because Mr Hogan was in Brussels.
Mr Sherlock told RTE’s ‘The Week in Politics’ the line minister must be “out in front about it” and said a “mess has been made about how
Property tax farce does not inspire much confidence with Irish people
If the Irish authorities show the same inefficiency while collecting the new local property tax.
Why should we believe that they will spend it effectively? That is one conclusion to be drawn from our revelations in today’s newspaper about a 15-year-old girl receiving a local property tax bill for a house where her parents pay the mortgage.
Perhaps the most dispiriting thing about the revelation is that we had been warned in advance that such things would happen. No less a person than the head of the Revenue Commissioners, Josephine Feehily, told us weeks ago there would be foul-ups.
Ms Feehily predicted that dead people would be sent local property tax demand letters and bills that were the responsibility of landlords would go to tenants. She did not specify children getting a bill among her predictions.
It was tactically wise of Josephine Feehily to get her ‘retaliation in first’. But it is not good enough.
The decent people of middle Ireland are being squeezed beyond the limit.
The least they deserve in this process is not to be made a complete mockery of?
MEANWHILE:
One third of Irish people do not intend to pay property tax – Red C poll shows
Almost one third of Irish people in a new survey say they do not intend to pay the property tax.
According to a Red C poll in this morning’s Sunday Business Post, 29% of those eligible for the tax say they do not plan to pay it.
Two thirds of the 1,000 people surveyed said they regarded the property tax as “unfair”.
Meanwhile, there was good news for the Government in the poll – it showed support for the coalition has remained steady.
Support for Labour is up one point to 13%, while Fine Gael remains unchanged at 28%.
Fianna Fáil is in second position on 24% while Sinn Féin is on 14%.
Independents and others have 21% support.
Youth website SpunOut.ie defends sex advice material
Fine Gael TD criticised ‘inappropriate’ material on HSE-funded Spunout.ie
The youth organisation SpunOut.ie has defended itself after a Fine Gael TD accused it of publishing inappropriate sex education content on its website.
Fine Gael TD Michelle Mulherin was quoted by a Sunday newspaper criticising the organisation, which receives €124,000 in State funding a year, for publishing tips on threesomes. She said this was “incredibly regressive” and would raise it with Minister for Health James Reilly, according to the Sunday Independent.
In a statement, the charity said: “Young people are having sex whether the Sunday Independent or Deputy Michelle Mulherin like it or not. Some of them are having sex with more than one person, and sometimes with more than one person at the one time.”
It said it was widely accepted that sex education in Irish schools was poor and inconsistent, and that education needed to begin early.
“Spunout.ie exists to provide balanced, reliable and responsible information for 16 to 25 year olds only. The age of consent in Northern Ireland is 16. SpunOut.ie is an all-island charity,” it stated.
“All too often, older generations avoid having conversations with their young people about difficult subjects. This is particularly true in relation to sex. Parents feel uncomfortable talking to their children about it and teachers are afraid to raise the subject in the classroom. An adult’s discomfort does not negate a young person’s right to information.”
The Iona Institute, a religious advocacy group, said public funding for Spunout.ie should be suspended because of the group’s “radically pro-choice philosophy, its promotion of an extremely permissive approach to sexual behaviour among teenagers, and because of the way in which the role of parents in the lives of their teenage children is almost completely sidelined” on the site.
How does DNA testing work and help us?
DNA TESTING IS A POWERFUL TOOL FOR IDENTIFICATION AND HAS MANY PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS.
Common uses include:
- Parental testing – to establish if someone is the biological parent of a child
- Forensic testing – to help identify suspects or victims in a criminal investigation
- Gene therapy – to test parents or foetuses for genetic conditions or birth defects
What is DNA?
At the heart of DNA testing is the molecule DNA. It carries our genetic code and determines traits from eye colour to aspects of our personalities.
Every cell in our bodies – from heart to skin, blood to bone – contains a complete set of our DNA.
WHAT IS THE DNA TEST LOOKING FOR?
99.9% of the DNA from two people will be identical. The 0.1% of DNA code sequences that vary from person to person are what make us unique.
These sequences are called genetic markers, and are the part of the code that forensic scientists use when doing a DNA test.
Identical twins are the only people who have identical genetic markers.
However, the more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that some of their genetic markers will be similar.
The key to DNA testing is knowing where to look in the billions of letters of genetic code to find the genetic markers that will identify the important similarities or differences between people.
HOW DOES THE DNA TEST WORK?
Parental, forensic and genetic testing look for similarities in the genetic markers between two biological samples.
Because all cells in the body contain exactly the same DNA, samples can be taken from almost anywhere in the body, including skin, hair follicles, blood and other bodily fluids.
A forensic scientist might be asked to compare DNA from skin cells found underneath the fingernails of an attack victim, with the DNA from a blood sample taken from a potential suspect.
First of all, the DNA is isolated from the cells and millions of copies are made, using a method called ‘polymerase chain reaction’, or PCR.
PCR uses a naturally occurring enzyme to copy a specific stretch of DNA over and over again. Having lots of DNA makes the genetic code easier to analyse.
The DNA molecules are then split at particular locations to separate them into known ‘chunks’ and the code at those specific points is analysed to create a DNA fingerprint. The fingerprints from the two different samples are then compared to see if they match.
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