Simon Coveney’s Ministerial clearances of rural Ireland may prove to be more effective than his historic predecessors’. Not only will he remove the peasantry, he’ll clear out the land as well.

In an unexpected move that undercuts the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the Minister for Agriculture has required that hill farmers in disadvantaged areas must have double the old minimum stocking rate for sheep or face exclusion from payments. The EU has called for a move away from paying per head of animal as this encouraged overgrazing. Grant payments represented over 70% of national farm income in 2011.

Coming late in 2011 and governing payment through 2013, Coveney’s intention is to eliminate the ‘unproductive’ hill farmer. Horses have been excluded from stocking calculations as well. ‘This is not about telling farmers that if they do not increase their stocking rate they will not receive a payment, because farmers would simply increase their stocking rates’, he told the Dáil recently.

‘Some people who simply maintain land to get a disadvantaged areas payment and do the bare minimum with regard to keeping stock for the minimum amount of time will lose their payments, and this is the right approach when we have a reduced amount of money to spend. We must prioritise active and real farmers.’

In November 2011 Teagasc, the Government’s farm advisory service, announced that the number of ‘unviable’ farms has increased from less than a third to more than 40% from 2007 to 2010.

For ‘active and real farmers’, however, read agri-business – and insurance companies planting non-native trees that require high levels of fertilisation and receive both establishment grants and 15 or 20 years of ‘premiums’. Until 2007, EU support covered 75% of the bill, but Ireland’s stubborn refusal to change our forestry policy meant that we could not meet the minimum environmental standards. To make up the lost EU grant is costing us €42m a year in ‘premia’ payments – and growing.

By comparison, Coveney’s de facto change will cut the annual funding required under the Disadvantaged Scheme from €220m to €190, saving €30m. And it will hit the poorest hardest. For some, this will be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Rising fuel costs, property taxes, potential water and septic tank charges combined with this lose of income will push families into ‘negative income’ – if they are not already there.

Coveney is a scion of the Cork Merchant Princes. His brother, Patrick, holds an Oxford Doctorate in Management Studies and is under attack as chief executive of Greencore Group plc, the giant Irish food group, for his 2011 pay packet of €1.4m. Applying the business model to agriculture excludes ‘external’ environmental and social costs. ‘Biodiversity’ was estimated by the Department of the Environment in 2008 to be worth a minimum of €2.6 billion per annum to the Irish economy. This is ‘natural capital’ and is the foundation upon which our agriculture, forestry, fisheries and tourism sector depend, sustaining clean water, productive soil and clean air.

The price of the loss of biodiversity through agricultural intensification is only part of what is missing from the ‘business plans’ that determine small farms are ‘unviable’ and should be abandoned rather than supported. There is also the human biodiversity – the social cost of emigration, putting pressure on rural structures like schools and village shops in what becomes a self-fulfilling cycle of abandonment.

The Minister has set high targets for all farming sectors in his 2020 Plan. He speaks of ‘sustainable intensification’. He even went as far as to suggest that a return to the higher density stocking rates of sheep in these areas would be an environmental benefit, claiming ‘many mountainous areas are being under-grazed, which is doing as much damage as over-grazing.’ What does that mean?

It means that not only is Coveney clearing out the hill farmers, he is clearing out the hills as well. Wide spread protests over the last two years have been made about the ‘scrub removal’ in rural areas – the use of mechanical diggers to clear away areas that have gone ‘wild’ – as well as indiscriminate and uncontrolled wildfires as ‘land management’ to try and keep land ‘available for grazing’.

The Department told farmers that complaints from Eastern Europe – where area aid payments were docked for not keeping land ‘open’ after areal photography – were forcing their hand. A 2010 ‘health check’ of the Single Payment Scheme resulted in a new insistence that farmers include only “utilisable areas” for payment.

This meant that hedgerows which grew more than a metre into a field, overgrown tracks and previously abandoned plots were subject to ‘scrub removal’. While scrub removal can be argued as an appropriate management tool for maintaining lowland agriculturally productive land, it is environmentally devastating in the hills.

Many of these farmers were only part time during the boom, traditionally working off farm in construction. The ability of farming units to remain viable has already been seriously reduced by the economic downturn as farmers’ options in terms of finding alternative work have drastically reduced. Now, ironically armed with massive redundant earth moving equipment and the skills to obliterate anything, the community is alive with men trying to maximising the areas qualifying for grants. And it is not just the wildlife that is going – our built heritage is going with it.

As the traditional connection between the land owner and the land is eroded through intensification and expansion, the loss of archaeological monuments has been shocking. In the decade between 1990 and 2000, the Heritage Council estimated 10% of our national monuments were lost. In certain areas, ‘land clearance’ has resulted in the loss of more than 80% of the ring forts, a trend that Teagasc, the farm advisory body, warned in 2006 ‘is due to increase in the coming decade’.

An eminently sensible proposal is that the areas which had been overgrown and were reverting to scrub should be funded under the forestry programme. This was entirely ignored by the recent Forest Service Review Group and The Land And Forest Fires Working Group – probably because of embedded civil service rivalries between forestry and agriculture – and agriculture’s massive clout.

Scrub is a precursor of our native forestry and accounts for 15% of the national forestry inventory in certain counties. 20% of a forestry plantation can be scrub and still qualify for payment. Scrub can contain many native species, – hawthorn, blackthorn, gorse, juniper, bramble, roses, willows, small birches, stunted hazel, holly and oak. It provides unique feeding and shelter to bird and wildlife. Stone chats, wrens, thrushes, song thrushes and migrants such as whitethroats are specialists in this type of habitat. Its support offers the potential to allow for woodland regeneration on hillsides, river banks and bog margins. No fertilisation or drainage is required. Tourism, biodiversity, soils, water and carbon sequestration all benefit by reversion to scrub.

Simply moving the land that is reverting to its natural flora and fauna from Area Aid and funding it through forestry would remove the economic gain in ‘cleaning up’ these disadvantaged areas.

And there would be no reason to burn the mountains, a practice fuelled by inflexible administration. Wildfires destroyed 1,600 hectares of forestry last year – up from 1,200 hectares in 2010 – with an estimated value of €7.5m – not including the cost of fighting the blazes. Aside from the obvious biodiversity loss, these intense wildfires can lead to the sterilisation and erosion of the thin soils and have devastated many parts of rural Ireland over the last two years, putting lives at risk and tying up increasingly scarce emergency equipment and personnel.

The 2002 European Court of Justice Judgment against Ireland for overgrazing seems to have been forgotten. At the time, scientists said some areas would only recover ‘in geological time’. Ten years later Coveney seems intent on leaving a biodiversity wasteland – and once again forcing the emigration of the last small farmers that keep the hills alive.

With Germany reluctant to allow debt write-downs least of all by Ireland it’s interesting, as Patrick Guinness notes in a comment on Constantin Gurdgiev’s recent article, how little attention has focused on Ireland’s signature on a 1953 bailout for Germany.

The London Agreement on German External Debts between the Federal Republic of Germany on one part and  Belgium, Canada, France, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Pakistan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Union of South Africa, the UK, the USA, and Yugoslavia among others. The Agreement comprehended a number of different types of debt from before and after the second World War. Some of them arose directly out of the efforts to finance the reparations system, while others reflect extensive lending, mostly by US investors, to German firms and governments.

In the London Agreement, the (Western) German government under Chancellor Adenauer undertook to repay the external debts incurred by German government between 1919-1945

The total under negotiation was 16 billion marks of debts from the 1920s which had defaulted in the 1930s, but which Germany decided to repay to restore its reputation. This money was owed to government and private banks in the U.S., France and Britain. Another 16 billion marks represented postwar loans by the U.S. Under the London Debts Agreement of 1953, the repayable amount was reduced by 50% to about 15 billion marks and prolonged over 30 years, and in the  context of a fast-growing German economy was of minor impact.

The agreement significantly contributed to the growth of its post-war industry and  allowed Germany to enter international economic institutions such as Gatt, the IMF and the  World Bank

Germany finally cleared its First World War debt by repaying nearly €80 million in October 2010. The reparations were set by the Allied victors  as compensation and punishment for the 1914-18 war.

The reparations were set at the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, by the Allied victors – mostly Britain, France and America. Most of the money was intended to go to Belgium and France, whose land, towns and villages were devastated by the war, and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging it.

The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226billion Reichsmarks which was later reduced to 132 billion.

Mr. Michael Smith
Editor
Village Magazine
Ormond Quay Publishing
6 Ormond Quay Upper
Dublin 7

12th December 2011

Re: Article in Village Magazine – October November 2011 issue

Dear Mr. Smith,

I am writing to you in respect of an article published on Page 17 of the most recent publication of the Village Magazine (issue No.15). This article was entitled “Denis O’Brien, a complicated career and dubious ethics”.

I am a staunch supporter of the right to freedom of expression. However, this right is subject to certain necessary standards in terms of fairness, accuracy and balance. The right to one’s good name and reputation is equally as important as the right to right to freedom of expression.

The sole comment offered to the reader in relation to Esat Telecom Group Plc. is that I “became a Portuguese resident and avoided £55m in taxes otherwise due”. This is not accurate. I was a resident of Portugal prior to the sale of the Esat Telecom Group.

The reference to my resignations from positions with Bank of Ireland, Norkom and other entities infers that there was a story behind this decision. The simple fact of the matter is that my own business commitments were such that I felt unable to give the time and commitment to external non executive positions.

However, it is when your publication came to describe the opinions of the Moriarty Tribunal that the inaccuracies were most evident. You described the Moriarty Tribunal as “a Judicial Tribunal”. This is a completely inaccurate description. I am surprised that you, a qualified barrister, made such an obvious error. Tribunals of Inquiry such as the Moriarty Tribunal form no part whatsoever of the administration of justice in lreland. They simply are not part of the legal process. The Supreme Court has delivered judgment after judgment (see the Murphy case and Bovale Developments by way of example) where they have been at pains to clarify this misconception. Although the Chairman of the Moriarty Tribunal was a High Court Judge, he most certainly did not sit in this capacity. The standards of proof and evidence applicable in the Irish Court process were jettisoned by modern day Irish Tribunals. It is for this reason that the opinions of Tribunals of Inquiry (and they are simply that- opinions) are deemed “wholly devoid of legal consequence” and “sterile of legal effect”.

With regard to the Tribunal’s opinions in respect of the second mobile phone licence process, it is a matter of fact that not a single witness gave evidence before the Tribunal in ten years of public sittings that Michael Lowry interfered with or acted improperly in respect of the licence process. Evidence was given to the Tribunal by (amongst others) seventeen respected and senior Civil Servants, five Government Ministers, one former Taoiseach, two senior officials from the Office of the Attorney General, one Senior Counsel to the Irish State and one senior official from the European Commission. Every one of these witnesses testified unequivocally that they had no knowledge of any interference in the licence process on the part of Michael Lowry.

This is to say nothing of the evidence given to the Tribunal by Professor Michael Andersen of Andersen Management International; the consultants who designed and conducted the licence process. (I attach a copy of the full statement of Professor Andersen as opposed to the redacted version made public by the Tribunal)

The article goes on to address opinions made by the Tribunal in respect of ”payments” (it incorrectly refers to the Tribunal having “found”; the Tribunal did not make findings of fact but rather issued opinions).

For the record, I made no payments to Michael Lowry, nor did I support any loan related to him. It was proven without question that Michael Lowry did not receive a single cent out of any of the transactions referenced by the Tribunal in its final report. Those are the facts. That was the evidence. The Tribunal’s report was concerned with neither facts nor evidence.

I take very serious objection to the use of the word “corruption” in the context of my involvement in the licence process. This Moriarty Tribunal (very deliberately) made no reference whatsoever of corruption in any aspect relating to me when it came to publishing its report.

Your article later goes on to refer to evidence given to the Moriarty Tribunal by Mr. Barry Maloney. The simple fact is that if this supposed conversation between us from late 1996 was such an issue for Mr. Maloney, then he should have immediately brought it to the attention of the Esat Digifone Board and the company’s Solicitors. He did neither.

As regards Sam Smyth, Today FM has gone on record (through then CEO, Willie O’Reilly) on the reasons for Sam Smyth’s departure from Today FM. The reasons were entirely operational ones and related to falling listenership figures. The decision to terminate Sam Smyth’s relationship with Today FM was taken by Today FM management. I was not involved.

I have written to you in the hope that you will consider the matters that I have raised and perhaps promote more fairness, accuracy and balance when dealing with such matters in future.

Yours sincerely,
[signed]
DENIS O’BRIEN

Denis O’Brien is one of Ireland’s leading entrepreneurs with investments in international telecoms, radio, media, property, aircraft leasing, golf and other leisure interests. He founded the Esat Telecom Group plc and built it throughout the 1990s until its sale to British Telecom plc for €2.4 billion. He became a Portuguese resident and avoided £55m in taxes otherwise due. He also founded Communicorp Group which he owns outright to manage a portfolio of media and broadcasting-related companies in Ireland and eight other European countries. These include 98FM, Newstalk, Today FM, Highland Radio, Spin 1038 and Spin South West. He has a €600m stake (around 22%) in INM which owns the Evening Herald, Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Sunday World and the Irish Daily Star, as well as 14 regional titles, two free newspapers, and a magazine.

He founded Digicel in 2001 when the company launched a GSM cellular phone service in the Caribbean. Digicel has extended its operations to 32 markets with over 11 million subscribers in the Caribbean, Central America and Pacific regions. In the year to March 2011, revenues at Digicel were up 27% to $2.23bn. In 2010 O’Brien netted $693 million from the sale of his Digicel Pacific Limited (DPL) business to the Digicel group.

In 2005, O’Brien became Deputy Governor of the revered Bank of Ireland. Simultaneously, he moved his residence from Portugal to Malta, for tax avoidance reasons. He resigned from the position of Deputy Governor Bank of Ireland, and also as a member of the Bank’s ‘court’, in 2006. O’Brien also resigned from the Norkom Group and from the UCD Smurfit School of Business. O’Brien is a member of the Bilderberg group.

O’Brien part-funded the wages of Irish soccer manager, Giovanni Trapattoni. He is Chairman of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Judging Panel, having previously been a recipient of the award. In 2010, he was named Goodwill Ambassador for the city of Port-au-Prince in recognition of his efforts to rebuild Haiti and attract foreign direct investment. The Guardian recently ran a piece headlined “How an Irish telecoms tycoon became earthquake-devastated Haiti’s only hope of salvation”, which detailed how Port au Prince’s iconic Iron Market will shortly reopen “all down to Denis O’Brien”.

He is the Chairman and Co-Founder of Frontline, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders which “works to ensure that the standards set out in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted in 1998, are known, respected and adhered to worldwide”.

In 2000, Denis O’Brien established The Iris O’Brien Foundation, named after his mother, to identify and assist projects in Ireland and internationally which aim to alleviate disadvantaged communities. The foundation has broad aims, including promoting human rights, helping people affected by disasters, helping people with a mental or physical handicap, advancing education and supporting the arts. The foundation has spent nearly €15.4m on charitable works.

O’Brien has links with Unicef, the Special Olympics, and Camara, which sends computers to developing countries. He has also funded multicultural awards and awards run by Social Entrepreneurs Ireland. He serves on the US Board of Concern Worldwide. He once donated £250,000 he had been awarded in libel damages to Amnesty International for which he sometimes hosts (not always uncontroversial) lunches. He was Chairman of the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games when the games were held in Ireland. In 2011, he provided money for the Presidential campaign of Mary Davis who had been CEO of the Special Olympics at that time.

He has an honorary doctorate from UCD and is a mate of former US President, Bill Clinton. Indeed, he flew him to the recent Dublin Castle beano in his jet, and later paid the tab for a late-nighter in the Unicorn restaurant with Clinton, the strangely ever-present Séamus Heaney and 22 others. If you mention your charitable cause to Denis O’ Brien he is likely to give you his personal phone number. In short he is a dynamic and successful businessman and a hero to charities. Presumably on the back of this, he was a high-profile guest at events for Queen Elizabeth II, with whom he was oft-photographed earlier this year and at the two Irish Global Economic Forum conferences, whose invitees were suggested by the Department of Foreign Affairs (though this did not stop some protestations from Éamon Gilmore’s Labour Party), held in the last year or so.

Last March, a judicial tribunal found that a former minister for communications, Michael Lowry, “secured the winning” of the 1995 mobile phone licence competition for Denis O’Brien’s Esat Digifone. The tribunal also found that O’Brien made two payments to Lowry, in 1996 and 1999, totalling approximately £500,000, and supported a loan of Stg£420,000 given to Lowry in 1999. In his 2,348-page report, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty found that the payments from O’Brien were “demonstrably referable to the acts and conduct of Mr Lowry” during the licence process, acts which benefited Esat Digifone. In effect O’Brien was trading in influence or ‘legal corruption’.

His former mate, Barry Maloney, absented himself from the recent Irish Global Economic Forum, writing
to the Taoiseach and Tánaiste informing them that he could not attend the event because Mr O’Brien would be a participant, despite the criticisms of him made in the final report from the Moriarty Tribunal. Maloney had given evidence to the tribunal that in 1996 he had a discussion while jogging with O’Brien concerning payments that Maloney, as chief executive of Esat Digifone, was obliged to sanction. O’Brien remarked that he himself had to make two payments of £100,000, one of which was to then Fine Gael minister, now Independent TD, Michael Lowry. This, he said, was a joke.

What was not a joke, however, was the termination of Sam Smyth’s contract with O’Brien-owned
Today FM. Smyth was the best-informed commentator on the Moriarty Tribunal and drew legal proceedings from both Lowry and O’Brien for his troubles.

The point, for these purposes, about Denis O’Brien is that, if you believe that not paying taxes and not paying money to Ministers to get favourable decisions on multi-billion-Euro deals, is unethical, then much of his money is not morally his. It is too easy to garner plaudits for philanthropy on the back of donations of cash, some of which is not ethically yours to give. This country has been brought to its knees by a treasonous golden business circle of which O’Brien is a member. But try telling that to the people who send out invitations on behalf of Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach.

Councillor’s property stake and vote to be investigated
MARY MINIHAN, writing in the Irish Times
THE STANDARDS in Public Office Commission is to investigate alleged contraventions of the ethical framework for the local government service by Labour Dublin city councillor Oisín Quinn.
The complaint against Mr Quinn relates to his participation in votes on the draft Dublin City Council’s development plan while he had an interest in a property in the city. The property, which Mr Quinn has declared in his annual declaration of interests, is 84-93 Lower Mount Street, the majority of which is occupied by the Revenue Commissioners. Mr Quinn continues to have a one-sixth interest in the property.
A public sitting of the commission will be held next Monday to investigate the complaint submitted by Michael Smith, editor of Village magazine and formerly of An Taisce, and Independent councillor Cieran Perry. They wrote to the commission on November 23rd, 2010.
According to the commission, the investigation will take place under the Ethics in Public Office Acts 1995 and 2001 (the Ethics Acts) and part 15 of the Local Government Act 2001. Mr Quinn said the same complaint had previously been made to the council’s ethics registrar and had been rejected.
“I believe I behaved with exemplary care and transparency,” Mr Quinn, a nephew of Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn, said.
“I believe I followed not just the letter but also the spirit of the ethical framework. I took advice by asking the city manager, senior city planners and the city law agent for their view and, importantly, I followed their advice and did it transparently by putting it on the record at the start of the meeting.”
The complaint from Mr Smith and Mr Perry states Mr Quinn had an interest in the “substantial and valuable” property and acknowledges that he has disclosed this to the council in writing as required.
The complainants argue that Mr Quinn should have refrained from voting on matters relating to the development plan.
They argue that he breached the ethics provisions of the Local Government Act 2001 and the associated code of conduct for councillors on a number of grounds, one of which was “through his speaking persuasively to, and voting for, other resolutions in . . . July 2010 which would have allowed increases in heights across the inner city including for his own property on Lower Mount Street”.
The complaint continues: “His disclosure before the 2010 meeting was not accompanied by his leaving the chamber and refraining from voting.”
The council’s ethics registrar previously told Mr Smith and Mr Perry: “I am satisfied that there has been no breach of the ethics framework contained in the Local Government Act 2001 and the code of conduct for councillors.”

Here are the problems, as I see it:

1) Mary Minihan uses comments from only one side of the story. I would have been unwilling to give her a quote, as there is a quasi-judicial hearing imminent and it is unedifying, and inappropriate and unfair (at least while Oisín Quinn remained silent) for us as complainants to comment. I wonder what guidelines the Irish Times has on this.

2) The article not only uses comments from only one side, it is also one-sided in outlining the respective cases. It is unbalanced and it makes multiple mistakes all of which, not uncoincidentally, are to our detriment, not Cllr Quinn’s.

For example:
A) Balance
a) the article tendentiously quotes six of Oisín Quinn’s arguments and only three of ours, one of which is essentially a repeat though an inaccurate one and b) it suggestively finishes up with a quote from an apparently independent source supporting the first (key?) argument Oisín Quinn makes in the article.
B) Inaccuracies in reporting central details of our case
a) Mary Minihan does not state our best case, part of which is that Cllr Quinn improperly proposed changes in height in ‘Dublin 2 minus the Georgian area’ – a far smaller area than the ‘inner city’ and therefore far more blatantly to his financial advancement and b) she comprehensively mis-states our case – we did not argue that he ‘should not have voted on matters relating to the development plan’ merely on height standards that affected his property (I’m going to ask the Irish Times to correct this – we’ll see how I get on [see below]);
C) Inaccuracies in reporting central thrust of our case
Mary Minihan entirely fails to understand our case which is that if you make a declaration you (obviously!) withdraw: there are no brownie points under ethics legislation for declaring a relevant interest and then voting – it’s quite simple;
D) Apparent unawareness of current status of complaint
Finally, she emphasises not just once but twice the hasty, and obviously not independent, view of the ‘ethics registrar’ who works as a senior official in the local authority whose officials had advised Oisín Quinn to make a declaration and then stay to vote. She never mentions that SIPO, which looked at the ethics registrar’s opinion, considered our complaint for over a year, delegated an inspector to follow up the complaint and then took an official decision to pursue it. Cieran Perry and I will probably take no further role in this case. The essential case we made will now be presented on behalf of SIPO by its senior counsel, not by us. This matter is more relevant than the matter she mentions twice, regarding the current status of our complaint. You’d think from her article that our case could be borderline frivolous or vexatious.

In short, Mary Minihan quotes comments from Cllr Quinn but not from us, quotes twice as many arguments for his case as for ours, does not state our best case, mis-states the rest of our case, and fails to recognise the status of our case.

Now I am not saying there are not two sides to this argument. Indeed this article I am writing is not about the substance of our cases, but rather merely about the fairness of the reporting. I am saying that only one side of this case has been put, or put coherently, by Mary Minihan. Not ours.

All in all it seems to expose systemic weaknesses in political reporting of contentious quasi-judicial matters by the Irish Times. Often, once they’ve got it wrong the Irish Times’ political team repeat their mistakes serially until the matter finally disappears off their radar. Expect to find chunks of this unfair article in future pieces [note: most of it duly appeared some weeks later in a Breaking News feature].

Michael Smith is editor of Village Magazine but writes in his personal capacity

We need to move quickly from the headline figure to a hard-minded sector-by-sector approach.

The new climate agreement reached in Durban is bitterly disappointing for its lack of ambition, revealing a world held back by the continued foot-dragging of the United States. But at least the Durban deal contains a pledge that all the major polluters will put in place legally binding measures to reduce climate change emissions over the next three years.

The EU already has binding measures in place, and under them, Ireland must cut emissions 20 per cent by 2020. Indeed, Minister Phil Hogan told the Durban negotiations that the Irish Government “is prioritising the climate agenda to ensure that we realise our 2020 climate ambitions and position ourselves on a pathway to a low carbon economy”.

EU law does not specify how that 20 per cent cut will apply in Ireland, but the reality is that we must move very quickly to translate our headline figure into real action in all the key sectors. Agriculture, transport, buildings, waste management and domestic fuel use are central to this effort.

Agriculture and transport between them account for around half of Ireland’s emissions. Agriculture alone accounts for 30% and increased by 0.2% in 2010. The government’s current agricultural policy is set out in Food Harvest 2020. This strategy document envisages a 50% increase in milk output by 2020. Clearly, it will be impossible to reduce or even contain emissions from agriculture if the number of dairy cows increases rapidly over the next 8 years.

There are other goals we can adopt in agriculture. There are strong arguments to increase the income of farm families by adding value on the farm – rather than focusing on the volume of goods produced. In this way there is scope to increase farm revenue without damaging our environment and the longer term prospects for food production. Concentrating on massive hikes in production – as Food Harvest 2020 does – is no guarantee of higher income.

Countries such as Austria are following a different vision to Ireland’s, working to minimise input costs (such as electricity and diesel), adding value at farm level using direct sales, and encouraging multi-product farming. At the centre of this approach is reconnecting farms and local economies, and the first steps in how this strategy could be applied in Ireland have already been documented.* Work is also slow in Ireland in terms of implementing feedmix changes and the use of biomass, and a greater focus here would deliver progress.

More sustainable transport and better agriculture policy are linked, if indirectly. Nothing damages local producers more than massive out-of-town hyper-markets served by vast expanses of free parking. Sadly, much of the floorspace in these stores tends to be given over to non-Irish produce, or products with limited country-of-origin information.

In 2009 the Government pledged to introduce minimum car parking charges at retail centres, much like the plastic bag levy. It won’t be a popular idea at the beginning – but it does offer long term dividends. Flagged in the Smarter Travel policy document two years ago, the idea would be to collect 20 to 25 cents for every 2 or 3 hours of parking at major retail outlets where parking is currently free. Again the vision is simple, to nudge us to leave the car behind if we can. If we can’t, the charge is not prohibitive – and it does provide much-needed revenue for public transport alternatives so that we can wean ourselves off our over-reliance on imported oil in the medium to long term.

A step-wise approach should be adopted, introducing the levy first at large retail centres which have more than, say, 40 parking spaces available for free. Some revenue would need to go to back the retailer in the initially period to pay for installing the car park charging system, but over time the money would be sent to local government to provide sustainable transport.

All of our cities are struggling to secure funds for bike-sharing. Dublin has ambitious plans to deliver a 9-fold increase in its programme, but lacks the money. Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford are all finding it very tough to even start bike-sharing programmes. In rural areas local authorities must do far more to deliver sustainable transport. At the very least councils need to finance structures so that vetted volunteers can offer lifts to people living in isolated areas, and pave the way for county-wide services over time.

When it comes to cutting emissions from the use of energy in new homes, offices and other premises, we should, within a short few years, only construct new buildings that generate as much energy as is required for their occupation – i.e. carbon-neutral buildings.

For the most part, however, Ireland’s work is in retro-fitting existing buildings, with a document published by the Institute of International and European Affairs in September (“Thinking Deeper: Financing Options for Home Retrofit”) pointing the way in this regard. Minister Hogan controls Ireland’s stock of social housing and can lead the way in this area.

Turning to waste management, EU policy has been shifting for some time, but moved decisively in September 2011. From 2020 only material which cannot be recycled should be incinerated according to the European Commission’s “Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe”, a new policy that also applies to incineration with energy recovery. Incineration causes far more climate-altering emissions than recycling.

The most effective policy step to ensure recyclables are in fact recycled is to have incinerator levies. Critically, incinerator levies will help to ensure Ireland does not start burning recyclables only to be forced into a costly switch in direction in 8 years time. The Minister will need to change course here but the cost of not doing so is simply too high.

Applying a levy at the rate recommended by the ESRI (and there are strong arguments that this level is too low), waste fed into an incinerator would be charged at €10 per tonne. There is also no sense in having the ash that comes out of incinerators exempt from the landfill levy. For every 4 tonnes incinerated there is roughly 1 tonne of bottom ash which should, in 2012, be levied at the landfill rate of €65 per tonne. Over the course of 2012 the Carranstown incinerator in County Meath is expected to burn 200,000 tonnes of waste. Unless incinerator levies are introduced for next year, €5.25 million will be turned away from near-empty State coffers over the coming 12 months.

Coal and peat are the most polluting fuels. The failure to apply the carbon levy to both is likely to prove contrary to European competition law – and it means that the carbon levy isn’t really about minimising carbon, but is just another revenue-raising tool. Coal and peat need to be brought within the carbon levy from mid 2012 onwards. This will also give a much-needed boost to the wood sector in Ireland. Much of our private forest stock needs to be thinned out (to allow the rest of the timber to mature properly), and applying the carbon levy to the most polluting fuels will deliver job creation right across this sector well into the medium and long term.

The truth is that no sector can be indulged when it comes to emissions reductions. The recent review completed by Minister Hogan’s own department was downbeat about Ireland meeting its climate obligations under EU law. An attempt to give any sector a ‘free pass’ on emissions would compound the pressure on all other sectors. Cutting climate change emissions requires a hard-minded approach across all policy areas – and soon.

Minister Hogan has deferred legislation on climate change in favour of policy reform – but whether there is in fact commitment regarding policy measures remains to be seen. Certainly, come Ireland’s Presidency of the EU on 1 Jan 2013, Minister Hogan will have not have credibility unless it is clear – sector-by-sector – how Ireland will meet its 2020 commitment.

*Sage, Re-imagining the Irish foodscape, Irish Geography, 2010.

Irish doctors over-prescribe anti-depressants, writes Éibhir Mulqueen

One of Ireland’s most recognisable actor exports, Gabriel Byrne, is now famous in the US for a role whose function has just registered in his home country. For the last three years, Byrne has played Dr Paul Weston, a well-to-do psychotherapist in New York featured in intense, often harrowing, half-hour programmes in the HBO hit-TV series In Treatment. His Irish-American character reads the Irish Times and drinks Barry’s Tea, and Dr Weston has his own ‘miserable Irish Catholic childhood’ to reveal, as the series unfolds.
Back home, as a nation, we have made little of psychotherapy, a form of treatment that is, according to Byrne himself, not so different from confession – a search for reassurance. Psychotherapy can be defined as the relief of distress by a therapist trained in a particular method. A more well-known cultural reference for Irish audiences is Dr Melfi from the Sopranos whose treatment of Tony formed the basis for the series’ plot.
With the changes in community structures, the alienation that seems to come with the modern condition, and the disappearance of confession, there is plenty of scope for some kind of ‘reassurance’ to be re-introduced in Irish life. As in the rest of the western world, even where counselling and different forms of psychotherapy are accepted, the gap is being filled by pills.
How big is this gap, this space where people get dragged down by their unhappiness, where they are unhappy but don’t know why? The World Health Organisation says that one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or  neurological disorders at some point. Such a high figure is contested but there are even greater claims being made: in September the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology stated that more than a third of Europe’s population suffers from a mental disorder annually, with conditions including insomnia and dementia.
A 2005 survey in the US found an estimated lifetime rate of 51% for a mental illness and one in New Zealand claimed more than 50% of people had suffered from an anxiety disorder at least once by the age of 32. Such figures have led to accusations of the medicalisation of normality and what Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad, has called “the imperialising tendency of the mental health sector”. The issue can become self-perpetuating. If you are primed to think an unhappiness problem is a mental issue, you will present yourself to a GP with it.
The phenomenon has been a boon to pharmaceutical companies, which stand accused of finding new conditions, like social phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder, for which their products can be prescribed. Glaxosmithkline states its anti-depressant, Seroxat, is also a treatment for “anxiety disorders” in adults. According to Irish-born psychiatrist, David Healy, professor of Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University and author of such books as the Antidepressant Era, there has been a subtle change in the use of terms for what he believes are new, fashionable treatments. The term ‘anxiety disorder’ implies a condition whose treatment is more about drugs, whereas what are also called phobias imply a behaviour that can be treated by therapy, he contends.
Depression was all but unknown half a century ago, Prof Healy has pointed out, and “the idea that there might be a depression that drugs could treat had in one sense to be invented as had the idea of an anti-depressant”.
According to support group Aware, 400,000 people in Ireland experience depression at any one time. But the Lundbeck Mental Health Barometer 2011 puts the figure much lower, saying the condition is “experienced by four percent of the population (180,000) directly at some stage”.
Meeting the undoubted demand are Seroxat and Prozac, drugs which replaced Valium in the nineties as preferred anti-depressants, and which are part of a new generation of medication known as SSRIs (selected serotonin re-uptake inhibitors). Prescribed for depression, they have also been dogged by controversy since they were first stocked in pharmacies.
After raising concerns about the links between Prozac and increased suicide risk, Prof Healy eventually earned himself a New York Times profile as a maverick campaigner against his profession’s overselling of drugs, as he sees it. One drug company described the intrusion as “the Healy problem”. 
However, a long, international campaign on the possible dangers of taking SSRIs has resulted in wider recognition of their limitations. In 2006, the Irish Medicines Board updated anti-depressant product information, warning of the possible increase in suicidal thoughts during treatment, especially among children and young adults.
Prof Healy also warns that so-called “direct-to-consumer advertising” by pharmaceutical companies has given the patient the message that the pill is the solution. “In the face of company marketing, and with the advent of the Internet, clinical judgment has been eroded. Patients going on the internet or faced with drug company materials now all too easily find that they meet criteria for a disorder and there is often nothing or no-one to tell them this is not equivalent to having the disorder,” Healy states.
This phenomenon became marked in the UK where it was discovered in a Norwich Union Healthcare survey which questioned 250 GPs and 1,300 parents about teenage mental health. A third of parents surveyed were pressurising GPs to prescribe Prozac for their children  even if they were just unhappy, while 60% said they had to prescribe such drugs because local services were so poor.
In Ireland local services, such as traditionally existed, are being pulled back in the face of economic recession, leaving GPs with few options and built-in patient expectations that a pill should be prescribed. Prescribing psychiatric drugs for want of an alternative was recognised by the Joint Committee on Health and Children in 2006: “the patient presenting with symptoms expects some tangible form of treatment and the practitioner feels under pressure to respond… It is in the absence of a full range of counselling and psychotherapy services that many medicines, intended for moderate to severe psychiatric disorders, are prescribed for minor symptoms leading in some cases to severe adverse reactions”, it stated.
However, psychiatrists and, increasingly, GPs are recognising the merits of counselling, provided by well-trained therapists. The Royal College of Psychiatrists points out there are many different sorts of psychotherapy, “some of which are very effective for people with mild-to-moderate depression”, while the College of Psychiatry of Ireland notes that for many mental-health problems, a GP can refer the patient to a mental-health team, “such as a clinical psychologist, occupational therapist, psychotherapist or specialist counsellor”.
Nevertheless, the College points out that about three percent of Irish adults are currently using anti-depressants, a figure that translates into approximately 100,000 people, more than enough to fill Croke Park. Private prescriptions aside, the HSE spend on anti-depressants has ballooned in recent years. In 2009, on the GMS scheme, it spent €60 million on 2.2 million prescriptions for nine different anti-depressants, most of which are SSRIs. There were 135,000 prescriptions for fluoxetine, commonly sold as Prozac, and 110,000 prescriptions for paroxetine (Seroxat), which, together, cost €5.5 million.
There is no doubt that anti-depressants can be effective. Prof Healy prescribes them in his clinical practice. The College of Psychiatry of Ireland states that they “are effective in the treatment of depression and thus lead to a reduction in suicidal thoughts. The effective treatment of depression is an important means of reducing suicide rates”.
And it is at this extreme end of the scale that it is most obvious that Ireland has a mental-health problem. A total of 9,630 people presented to hospital emergency departments after deliberately harming themselves last year, a 27% increase for men and a 7% increase for women since 2007.
Over-medicalising swells drug company profits, plays into the expectations of the patient and gives GPs and psychiatrists a quieter life. But it is wasteful and it may often be ineffective. Last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that found anti-depressant drugs, while useful in cases of severe depression, are generally no better than a placebo for most patients presenting as mild to moderate cases.
To have 100,000 adults and €60 million of HSE funds being spent on more than two million prescriptions for depression annually suggests that many such cases fall into the mild to moderate category. Overhauling mental health treatment with an effective, holistic approach has been proposed.
The government’s Vision for Change mental-health policy (2006) recommends a multi-disciplinary model and an urgent review of GPs’ mental-health training, noting the contemporary “predominance of drug treatments” for patients and “the limited opportunities for discussion and resolution of their problems through counselling and psychotherapy”.

Gary Fitzgerald on how and why the public interest has been hijacked.

From 1995 until 2007 Ireland experienced one of the largest asset-price bubbles in the history of the world. We are now living with the fallout: negative equity and huge personal indebtedness. Recently there have been growing calls for a personal-debt forgiveness-scheme. However, the decisions taken by the Irish State in response to the end of the property bubble make it very unlikely that any such scheme will be implemented.
When the bubble burst in 2007, the first part of the Irish economic system to feel the pressure was the banks. Almost every bank in the State had loaned large sums of money to developers, secured on land. As long as land kept going up in value then everything was fine. But once the inevitable happened and land fell in value almost every Irish bank either became insolvent or flirted with insolvency. The government’s response was to save the banks at all costs. It may be that this was as a result of an order from the European Central Bank (ECB), but the decision was taken by the government. The bank guarantee of 2008 turned private banking debt into public debt. It tied the banks and the State together.
Following quickly after the guarantee came the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA). NAMA was to take distressed property loans of the major developers off the banks’ balance books at a discount and work those loans out over time. For example, let’s suppose that Mr Builder owed Bank of Ireland €100 million. NAMA bought that loan from the bank at a discount of 70% – and then stepped in to the shoes of the bank. The bank got €30 million in cash and had to make provision for €70 million in bad debts. NAMA was then supposed to recover as much of the €100 million as possible from the developer. The impression was given in 2009 that NAMA would be aggressive in pursuing this money. But now NAMA acknowledges that it will only look for the discounted value of the loan. In other words it has finally, in the teeth of earlier protestations from Brian Lenihan, become clear that Mr Builder has had his €100 million loan reduced to €30 million.
Why then can a similar scheme not be put in place for people with smaller debts to the bank? If some of the richest citizens in the State can have taxpayers’ money used to reduce their debt, why not the ordinary citizen? The answer is simple, because the State cannot afford to do both. Back in 2008 and 2009 it was clear that the banks faced two problems. The first was bad debts on loans to developers. As a result NAMA bought €72 billion worth of loans for €30 billion. The banks booked a €42 billion loss and many had to be recapitalised by the taxpayer as a result. The second was bad debts on loans to ordinary borrowers. According to the Central Bank personal debt in Ireland is over €390 billion, of which mortgages account for just over €109 billion.
Both of these problems were clearly identified by the banks, politicians and the media. Yet the government chose to save the banks and developers at enormous cost. Now even if there was a political will to introduce a personal-debt forgiveness-scheme, the money is not there to do it. Once the banks start writing down personal debt to any significant level, they become insolvent again. This would require a further injection of capital by the State, resulting in higher taxes and cuts in public expenditure. With the State on the brink of insolvency itself, it is simply not in a position to do this.
Is there another way that the State can assist those in debt? Debt can be eliminated in one of three ways. Either it can be forgiven, or it can be paid back, or inflation can reduce the real cost of the debt. Since we are members of the Euro, we don’t have the economic tools available to control our inflation rate. In any case government policy is to drive costs and prices down to make Ireland more competitive. This “internal devaluation” will worsen the problem of personal indebtedness, making it harder for those struggling to pay down debts incurred during the boom.
Neither the banks nor the State can afford debt-forgiveness. Government policy is to deflate the economy and individual borrowers can’t repay the debt. What then does the future hold? What are the consequences of the State’s decision to protect the banks and developers and ignore the plight of the ordinary citizen? There is no simple answer to this, but it is clear that the future is bleak. Without personal debt-forgiveness there will be a large section of society who will feel betrayed by the State, who will have no incentive to participate in the State and who will have no economic future in the State. This may lead to a level of social disunity that Western Europe has not witnessed since the late 1920s. The acts of the Fianna Fail/Green coalition and now the Fine Gael/Labour coalition are nothing more than a betrayal of the ordinary citizen and the consequences could be terrible.

In the ongoing turf wars, Ming the Mendacious and his followers were struck what may be a fatal blow last month. Minister for the Environment Big Phil Hogan told his Fine Gael Councillors at a meeting in Sligo that “the bogs are gone”. No way, he explained, was Ireland going to expose itself to daily fines of €27,000. “How would the Troika like that?” Pandering to the rabble, he meant, would stop.
The Merciless One and his populist followers had been staging mass meetings across the midlands, inflaming hatred of the environment, the Government, and Brussels over the ‘bog evictions’. Behind the scenes, they have been planning ‘flash mobs’ for the cutting season next year to challenge any efforts to deny them ‘their rights’ – going as far as claiming that the protected bogs were their “Gaza Strip – we are the Palestinians”.
Ming told the TV cameras “This is the equivalent of the state saying they’re going to take your kids off you and give them to a lunatic”. His supporters cheered in the background as he concluded “They’re not getting my bog any more than they’re getting my children”.

Exposed face at Ming’s ‘closed’ Cloonchambers bog. The stick measures 2 metres. The machines eat into the ‘cake’ for ‘domestic use’ by 2 to 4 metres a year.

Michael D Higgins, who signed the Habitats Directive in 1997 elegantly side-stepped the pressure when a crowd descended on a fundraiser: ‘I retain an interest, of course, in this matter and if I was to be able to be of assistance would hope to do so; however, as you will appreciate, I have my hands full at the present time!” Nevertheless, he is reported to be absent from the hustings in Roscommon and East Galway.
But in Europe pressure to preserve a habitat ‘epitomic of the Irish landscape and rural culture’ and the Report featured in the last Village Magazine of the wide-spread devastation perpetrated in 2011 finally triggered action.
Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik called in Kerry-born Minister Jimmy Deenihan and in an hour-long session made it very clear that Ireland would indeed face an eye-watering daily fine if the turf-cutting didn’t stop. He also made it clear that Ireland was not being singled out and that Malta – wild birds, and Sweden – wolves, were going to find themselves with daily fines unless they enforced the Habitats Directive, and controlled their citizens as well.
Minister Hogan’s Sligo pronouncement followed Potočnik’s intervention. New European Communities (Birds and Natural Habitats) Regulations were then signed into force by Minister Deenihan on 21 September. No Press Release was issued.
An outraged Ming failed to raise the new Regulations under the Dail’s Order of Business. “They can search your house”, he squealed, omitting to mention that they had to apply to the District Court for a Warrant, just as for every other Search Warrant issued in Ireland.
Fuming about ‘duplicitous behaviour’, the representatives of the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association walked out of the September meeting of the Peatlands Council, established to mediate the Turf Wars. “We were told we wouldn’t be interfered with”, they complained.
The new legislation allows An Garda Síochana, under the Minister’s direction, to enter on the bogs with “vehicles, equipment, and materials as may be appropriate for that purpose”. It also allows the Minister to apply to the Courts to issue a “restoration warrant” to require that “the owner, occupier or user of the land or the person who carried out the activity” restore the land.
More devastatingly for Mick Fitzsimons, the leading turf-cutting Contractor and their vocal spokesman, before deciding to seek a restoration warrant “the Minister shall consult with the Environmental Protection Agency regarding liabilities that may arise under the Environmental Liability Directive”.
Commercial turf cutters – even when cutting for ‘domestic’ clients – could find themselves facing large bills for restoring the protected sites they have damaged.
Meanwhile, the National Parks and Wildlife Service – which is in part to blame for the crisis because of its pusillanimous behaviour during Peatlands Council meetings – continues to drag its heels.
It is refusing to stop the damage caused by the continuing drainage of the remaining bogs by blocking the drains until ‘further studies’ are undertaken.
The nail in the coffin, however, may be the EPA’s just-released Report: ‘Boglands: Sustainable Management of peatlands in Ireland’. As a contributor on the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association Facebook page said – ‘were [sic] stuffed, if the EPA get there way all bogs not just the SAC bogs will come under the protection of the EPA’.
Perhaps.

On the 12th of October the European Commission flashed a green light at two of the possible six Balkan candidate countries hoping to become our newest EU neighbours.
It may have passed the Irish by (Ireland has no embassies in these states) but, as the Presidential candidates slugged it out again on TV, the results of the ‘Progress Reports’ for the aspiring EU member-states were announced in Brussels.
For the remaining countries of Former Yugoslavia, plus Albania, these Progress Reports are the equivalent of the school report for the year gone by.
Slovenia is already in, as part of the last round of candidate countries, and Croatia just got approval. This year’s ‘winners’ were Serbia and Montenegro, the former being recommended for Candidate Status – without a date for opening of negotiations – and the latter being recommended for a date to actually open the Negotiations; the penultimate step to Accession.
Drive-by: Belgrade graffiti of former Bosnian-Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, saluting

For Serbia the political heavy-lifting that was required to deliver wanted war criminals Mladić and Hadžić to the Hague Tribunal all but guaranteed a shoo in.
Never mind that in the intervening period there has been open conflict, leading to deaths, on the Kosovo border.
Or that Serbian politicians including the President and the Minister of Foreign Affairs – who was recently given a much-deserved grilling by an Oireachtas Committee – have regularly been active in the Majority Serb part of Bosnia, in a manner which is at best unhelpful, if not actually destabilising for the very survival of the Bosnian state.
Or that in mid September President Boris Tadić said that a Gay Pride parade was being prohibited in Belgrade “to protect LGBT persons” -though one had been held and well protected last year, when Serbia was badly in need of some political gesture to burnish its ‘European values’ in the absence of the hotly-demanded arrests of Messrs Mladić and Hadžić.
Montenegro was, less than a year ago, given a check-list of seven criteria which had to be met, High on the agenda were rooting out high-level corruption; freedom of expression; and independence of the media.
The current Progress report for Montenegro almost glows about the advances that have been achieved, but surprisingly fails to mention a video tape which recently surfaced showing a state official from the national intelligence agency and the ex-Prime-Minister Milo Đukanović’s head of security, fraternising at a wedding with some of the most notorious drug mafia figures from the region.
Or the continuing low-level state intimidation of NGO watchdogs, or the on going – and unsolved – attacks against journalists and media.
Perhaps most significantly of all the Progress report lauds the arrest of a Montenegrin Municipal Mayor and his colleagues for charges of “High Level” corruption, without making any reference to the fact that ‘every dog on the street’ down Montenegro way knows that this case had more to do with former Prime minister Đukanović neutralising an internal political rival than with a new-found thirst for tackling high-level corruption.
But the Commission is a funny old beast and the very title of its yearly review “Progress Report” has a quasi-communistic “Five-year plan” feel about it. Having lumbered themselves with a reporting mechanism that always looks on the bright side of life, this year’s report necessarily – in the current dire climate – needed to deliver some good news somewhere on the European radar to avoid “enlargement fatigue” if nothing else.
The problem for the EC bureaucrats was that amongst the ranks of those who might “Progress” we had Macedonia hampered by an almost certain Greek veto over a name dispute; Albania, whose opposition had the temerity to question election results and boycott Parliament; Bosnia, whose political system is in a terminal spiral as the EU has taken its eye off the ball and Kosovo…well that’s another story. This has left Serbia and Montenegro as the only possible candidates for progress.
No doubt realpolitik drives much of this but what message is the Commission sending to countries in the Balkans when Serbia – the architect of ethnic cleansing in the region, and Montenegro – arguably one of the most corrupt countries in the region, alone are moving forward in the EU accession stakes?

Garret Tankosić-Kelly lives in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and has worked in the region for 15 years.