FG TD's Wife Goes Indy?

Anne Breen, the wife of Clare TD Pat Breen, is reportedly running in the local elections as an independent. Check out the front page of the Clare Champion (hint: it's in the middle of the puff piece headlined 'hospital campaigner joins election race). 

Strange stuff: a domestic squabble, a selection convention dispute, or something slightly stranger? You'll know when I do.

Update: it seems a simple case of over-represenation: the would-be Cllr. Anne Breen seemingly found little room on a ticket with sitting cllr. Oliver Garry and former party big beast Madeleine Taylor-Quinn. Embarking on a political solo run, however, may not be the best thing for Pat Breen - unless, of course she wins. In that case, all will be forgiven.

Update 2: A poster on politics.ie claims that Anne and Pat Breen are in fact estranged - which makes the situation even more delicate...

No Neat Trick

The Indo today has the unsurprising news that plenty of developers are simply not paying up on development levies and other charges to local authorities. Add to that people who can't afford to pay waste charges, plus businesses struggling to pay water charges and you have a €271m black hole. One builder in Monaghan owes the local authority€813,000 in unpaid development levies.

Development levies were one of the neatest tricks during the boomtime: rather than setting aside a fifth of a development as social and affordable housing (nominally a legal requirement) a builder could instead make a cash payment to the local authority. Hey presto - the developer can market their complex to snobs who don't like 'social and affordable' types and keep the price up, the local authority gets a fat wad of cash to spend on anything infrastructure-related, and the people who need social and affordable housing may get a hand. By 2006, it emerged that the one-off development levies accounted for 13.6 per cent of local authority budgets. 

In other words, local authorities across the country were spending money that just isn't there anymore. Now, it's revealed, not all of the money was actually stumped up. The Indo reports that debt collection agencies have been engaged to chase up the builders but, chances are, a good chunk of those fellahs are not insolvent. This mess is the next public sector finance time bomb.

How Did He Do It?

An interesting piece in the Indo today reveals that Michael Martin's brother, Cllr Sean Martin, sent out a few press releases on local issues from a Department of Foreign Affairs email address. Cllr Martin has no connection to the Department, but somehow had access to its email system.

Opposition politicians have kicked up demanding a full investigation, and rightly so. If the Minister for Foreign Affairs is in the business of letting relatives and friends use his Department's email system, then the security of this (highly sensitive) area of the Government is compromised. It's not the breathtaking arrogance of this that ticks me off - it's the fact that they've played fast and loose with the integrity of our foreign policy.

Jimmy Harte Censors Politics.ie

Poor Cllr Harte - some people just don't get the internet. Following some (presumably unkind) comments from two frequent posters on politics.ie, Harte got in touch with site's owner, David Cochrane. Cochrane stuck up the following notice:

David Cochrane:
As a result, effective immediately, all visitors and users of Politics.ie are asked not to discuss or mention Cllr Jimmy Harte, nor is any coverage anywhere of his election campaign allowed to be discussed or promoted.As of tomorrow his name will be a banned word on Politics.ie and all references furthermore to him will be removed.


Of course, this means that many people, who didn't know or care what 'Mccafferty cat' and 'polito123' had to say about the Donegal Pol, are now intensely interested. And Jimmy looks like a fool for trying to censor the internet. Cochrane is too smart not to know this so, rather than capitulation to an odious bully, I'd like to see his notice as a fine act of passive agsression.

Would-be FG Councillor Backs Down

So a squalid little saga - which featured local election hopeful Naja Regan taking her own party (FG) to the High Court - has been resolved. In a brief recap, Naja Regan (daughter of high profile Senator Eugene Regan) was miffed when the powers that be stymied her efforts to get on the local election ticket in the Dun Laoghaire Ward, instead decreeing that the party's three sitting councillors should go forward. (Fine Gael's HQ may have been particularly heavy-handed because Regan's Monkstown Branch contains almost 200 members, who seem to turn out for selection conventions - and little else - with remarkable enthusiasm.)


So, Naja did the natural thing for a young law graduate: sued their asses off. Well, not quite. The case was due to be heard today but, this afternoon, the following statement went out from the Party's press office:

The matter regarding Naja Regan and Fine Gael Executive Council has been resolved. The Fine Gael Executive Council will now ratify the three candidates as selected by Convention to contest the upcoming local election forthwith in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown.


Suffice to say I'll be toddling along to the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown's AGM tonight to see what gives.

*UPDATE: Very little by way of fireworks on this issue tonight (is it just me or are all local party get-togethers really tedious?) but a few oblique references from the politicians. One nutter on the floor laid into the Dun Laoghaire councillors and said he won't vote for the party this year, but was slapped down (in an oratorical sense) by veteran councillor Dónal Marren. Then Naja stood up, said she supported the councillors in their bid for re-election, and sat down to huge applause. Altogether much too dignified for my tastes - a bit of digging is in order to see what made Team Regan back down.