Tens of millions of euro and nearly eight years later, the legality of the conduct of both the Moriarty and the Planning Tribunals have been challenged by a Supreme Court judgment. The Court has found unconstitutional the denial of documents to a witness, described as 'amazing' a procedure adopted by it and raised doubts about the lawfulness of Tribunals' private 'information gathering'. By Vincent Browne
The scale of administrative and political incompetence revealed by this residential charges scandal is almost unbelievable, even in the context of a long tradition here of such incompetence. That for a period of 28 years, a legal and financial time bomb could be ticking away at the centre of one of our most eminent Departments of State and nothing done to defuse it during all that time, is staggering.
On Monday 18 November 2002 Ivor Callely, the Minister for State at the Department of Health with special responsibility for old people's issues, spoke at the launch of a report on what was called "Elder Abuse". He said it was a "momentous" day for the older people of the country. They were being given a blueprint to deal with "the scourge" of elder abuse. He said abuse could come in many ways, physical, psychological and financial.
The Irish Independent opinion poll's apparent endorsement of Sinn Féin, following a week of relentless negative publicity for the party, is less a testament to its integrity, its policies and its electoral strategies than it is an indictment of the political establishment.
The report of the Independent Monitoring Commission is an irrelevance. An irrelevance even if any independent credibility could be attached to its findings. On Thursday (10 February) it concluded the IRA was responsible for a series of robberies, including the Northern Bank robbery on 10 December and that senior Sinn Féin people, by which it means Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness, approved of these robberies in advance.
Conjecture and hypothesis presented as fact in a column by Kevin Myers alleging garda involvement in the murder of a judge, his wife and two RUC officers, Vincent Browne reports
The refusal of The Irish Times to apologise for the publication of the stigmatisation of children and parents and the disingenuous retraction by Kevin Myers prolongs trauma for the newspaper. By Vincent Browne
Serious questions raised about the Special Criminal Court. By Vincent Browne
The veniality of Martin Cullen is evident from the outset of the report by the former chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, Dermot Quigley, on the Monica Leech controversy. It states "from the start of his tenure (as a junior Minister in the Office of Public Works) he wanted the work of OPW around the country to be more widely publicised... This need became more urgent in the context of major (OPW) projects in Waterford" (Cullen's constituency).
When Bertie Ahern appointed Ray Burke Minister for Foreign Affairs on 26 June, 1997, he certainly knew the following facts: