Archive for the ‘Ireland’ Category
Extend Health and Safety Authority powers on social distancing in Irish Workplaces – The Bad Example of Keeling’s Company
Paul Murphy TD :
If you walk more than 2km from home you face a jail sentence.
Yet companies forcing workers to work shoulder to shoulder without PPE face no inspections, no enforcement, no fines.
The Health and Safety Authority must start investigating complaints of companies breaking the Covid-19 guidelines. They should start with Keelings.
The Irish Examiner Reports :
TDs have called for extended powers for the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) in order to ensure social distancing in work places.
There is currently no state agency which has the statutory authority to carry out workplace inspections to ensure that appropriate physical distancing measures to protect against the spread of Covid-19 are in place.
Confusion has arisen over who would monitor sites after Rise-People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy says he was “passed from Billy to Jack” while trying to ensure that fruit producer, Keeling’s workers in Co Wexford, who have been flown in to Ireland from other states in the EU for seasonal work, could adhere to guidelines for their own safety.
The HSA has said that currently it has no powers in overseeing the Covid-19 guidelines, despite Business Minister Heather Humphreys stating in the Dáil last week that she was “talking to her officials about it”.
Previously, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said the HSE would oversee such guidelines.
However, the HSE Environmental Unit has reportedly stated to Mr Murphy that it is not their role either.
Mr Murphy written to Minister Humphreys to urge the Government to reconsider the issue as a matter of urgency, as a number of worksites, including 35 “essential” public housing construction sites, have restarted work with government permission, while others expect restrictions on other construction and other workplaces will be loosened when the current run of guidelines runs out on May 5.
Some people may be surprised that a government headed by Fine Gael Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is unwilling to take action against the Keeling’s Company – an explanation can be found in this image :
Taoiseach Varadkar Campaigning With Owners of Keeling’s Fruit Picker Company in 2015
The Fine Gael Government was lobbied in February 2018 by Keeling’s Boss, the Chief Executive Caroline Keeling, who wants tax laws changed so that her family’s personal profits can be dramatically increased. Read the rest of this entry »
Keeling’s Fruit Pickers’ Company Places 579 Workers in CoVid-19 Danger – Irish State Authorities Dawdle While Disease Gallops Out of Control
- Paul Murphy TD (RISE) “Passed From Billy to Jack” Over Keeling’s Fruit Pickers’ Company’s Failure to Protect its Workers
- Keelings: Minister Humphreys must give HSA powers to protect workers’ health
- Advice from two Ministers: go to HSE, yet HSE says it “has no statutory role”
“I have been passed from Billy to Jack in trying to get someone to inspect Keelings to ensure their workers are safe. The HSA has said that they have no powers in overseeing the Covid-19 guidelines, although Minister Humphreys said in a reply to me that she’s talking to her officials about it. The Minister for Finance explicitly said that it is the HSE which oversees them. However, now the HSE has said it is not their role. I have written to Minister Humphreys to urge the government to to urgently address this by extending the powers of the HSA, so Keelings workers and others can be protected.”
Video of engagement with Minister Donohoe in Dáil on 16 April:
https://www.facebook.com/paulmurphytd/videos/277643093252182/.
Copy below of letter sent to Minister Heather Humphreys this morning:
Read the rest of this entry »Tarlach Mac Niallais Radio Broadcast from 1984 – Gay Liberation Politics, the Partition of Ireland, Fighting Against a Carnival of Reaction
Previous Readers of this blog know about the New York Death of Belfast Gay Liberation and Socialist Activist Tarlach Mac Niallais. Thanks to an old friend and comrade of Tarlach, Cathal Ó Ciorragáin, we can listen to a New York Radio Interview with Tarlach dated October 9 1984
The interview concludes with a ballad sung by Tarlach.
Reading Lenin in the light of the collapse of the SWP and the ISO – Independent Left – Conor Kostick
Conor Kostick, a supporter of the Irish Independent Left Organisation, offers an interesting analysis of the problems facing the radical left in Ireland and across the globe.
In 2013, not long after the British SWP went into dramatic convulsions over the way their party failed to support a young member in her allegation that a very much older and more senior member had raped her, I had reason to be in Chicago. While there I met up with the International Socialist Organisation (at the time a relatively successful example of a revolutionary party), gave a talk on Ireland’s revolutionary years and attended a dayschool of theirs on Lenin and the revolutionary party. The bookstall had copies of studies of Lenin by Lars Lih, Paul Le Blanc and Tony Cliff.
Anyone wanting to encourage the development of a revolutionary party has, of course, to form an opinion of Lenin. Before the ISO fell out with their British equivalents (i.e. the SWP), their approach to Lenin would have been profoundly if not exclusively shaped by the British SWP and in particular by the leading figure in that party, Tony Cliff. It interested me that the ISO had a wider outlook on the subject than was usual in the SWP and the enthusiasm of the bookstall organiser meant that I came away with a copy of Paul Le Blanc’s Lenin and the Revolutionary Party.
The cover of Paul Le Blanc’s Lenin and the Revolutionary Party
This book was first published in 1990 and I had never read it because having inhabited a rather closed-minded organization, I felt there was little that someone closely aligned to the politics of Ernest Mandel would have to say on the subject that would be useful. After all, as I was told and believed at the time, I had been guided in my understanding of Lenin by someone with vastly superior politics to those of Mandel: Tony Cliff. More than this, as an SWP organiser in the UK and then in Ireland I had always used Cliff’s Lenin: Building the Party as the essential text for explaining the theory behind SWP party-building methods to those members who I anticipated would go on to play leading roles in their branches and nationally.
— Read on independentleft.ie/reading-lenin/
I have not read the books Conor refers to. I have read (and re-read) a different book about Lenin, Marcel Liebman’s “Leninism Under Lenin” – which belongs to, broadly speaking, the Ernest Mandel tradition which Conor describes. 
The opening paragraph of this review might persuade readers that time spent reading Liebman on Lenin would not be wasted : Read the rest of this entry »
State Services Versus Insulting Charity
A good approach :
An example of Insulting Charity : https://www.rte.ie/news/uk/2020/0425/1134767-truly-amazing-99-year-old-revels-in-record-uk-no-1/
Examples of Resistance to British Military Barbarism in India : https://tomasoflatharta.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/acts-of-defiance-against-the-british-empire-rebels-struck-for-freedom-in-ireland-and-india-100-years-ago-connaught-rangers-mutiny-and-udham-singh-the-patient-assassin/
“What Use Is it to Teach People About the Evil of Overcrowding When Their Wages Will Not Permit Them A Decent House?” – James Connolly in 1915
James Connolly in 1915 ridicules “Medical Authorities” advice on combating a TB Epidemic – 105 Years Later, in 2020, Irish “Medical Authorities” Follow the Same Script. It is the same in most other countries.
The Chief Medical Officer has said the National Public Health Emergency Team has entered the weekend with a growing sense of concern about compliance with the strict travel restrictions and social distancing measures that been in place since 27 March.
Dr Tony Holohan said compliance with the restrictions over the next ten days was critical to the control of the coronavirus.
He said the sense of concern among his team has been growing over the last week as evidence of some slackening of adherence social restrictions materialised.
He said the situation remained that he would not currently recommend the restrictions be relaxed given the behaviour of the disease.
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0425/1134732-holohan-coronavirus-restrictions-compliance/
Notes on Misery and Mortality :
Read the rest of this entry »Private hospital deal will cost the Irish State €115 million per month – CoronaVirus: Confidential deal to take over private hospitals “expected to cost State €115m per month” – Irish Times Report
It looks like the Irish Government is paying far more money to private hospitals compared to the British Government.
Many of these hospitals are owned by Denis O’Brien & Larry Goodman who made their fortunes from sweetheart deals. In fact, some of these deals have ended up the subject of costly tribunals. But now we are told to just take them at their word that this is a not-for-profit deal? If it is, why does it seem to be so much more expensive than the deal struck by the NHS with private hospitals in the UK?
The government should publish today the full details of this deal, including a break down of the costs. The private hospitals should open their books, so we can see the real costs, rather than just pay them whatever they say.
Rather than lining the pockets of Denis O’Brien & Larry Goodman, what we really need is to bring these private hospitals permanently into the public system, to build a unified, single-tier National Health Service.
Open the books. – Source LetUsRise.ie
Paul Murphy TD has raised this matter in Dáil Éireann, and has followed up with a letter addressed to Acting Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe.
Read the rest of this entry »I wrote to the Minister of Finance on Monday requesting more information about the deal with the private hospitals. I still haven’t heard back. So far at least €90 million has been handed over. We need a break down of those costs published.
Green Politics or Gardening? Saoirse McHugh Versus Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan – FFFG plus Green-Gombeen Coalition Emerges
The Irish Green Party is entering a coalition government FFFGGG (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Greens and Gombeens). One prominent member, Saoirse McHugh from Achill Island in Mayo, disagrees. Something has got to give.
The Irish Times reports on Friday April 24 2020 :
Senior figures in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil believe they can progress to negotiations on a coalition government with the Green Party on the basis of the party’s 17 demands, published on Thursday.
The Greens confirmed that a challenging commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 7 per cent every year was the primary “red line” in its list of 17 demands to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
While Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil politely welcomed the Greens’ document and said they would study its contents before replying, senior figures in both parties who spoke on condition of anonymity believe they can now move towards forming a coalition. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/green-coalition-demands-doable-for-fianna-fáil-and-fine-gael-1.4236455
Do not overlook Team Gombeen in the new Irish Coalition Government.
Covid-19 restrictions Necessary – Irish Government’s Hesitation Showed Priority it Places in Profits over Lives
No Border News (NBN) No Borders News is publishing a series of interviews about Covid 19 in many different parts of the world.
Jessy Ní Cheallaigh answers NBN’s questions about the Coronavirus Epidemic in Ireland.
Please provide a brief biography for yourself and any links to resources or websites you would like included in your interview.
My name is Jessy Ní Cheallaigh. I’m a 22 year old woman living in Ireland. I’m a socialist activist and a final year student studying Communications through the language of Irish in NUIG, Galway City. I’m a member of RISE (Radical, Internationalist, Socialist, Environmentalist) a democratic socialist political group. https://www.letusrise.ie/
1. Briefly describe the state of the pandemic in your country or city. How many people are infected? How many have died? What do experts expect in the coming weeks in terms of how fast the contagion will spread.
At the current date (14/04/2020) the total number of confirmed cases in the Republic of Ireland is 10,647. Death toll has reached 365 as 31 more deaths were confirmed in the last 24 hours. In Northern Ireland, 76 new cases have been registered and 6 more people have died from the coronavirus. The tally in the North now stands at 118 deaths and 1,882 confirmed cases. 12,529 confirmed cases on the island with a death toll of 483. Overall Ireland has made a decent effort to flatten the curve as the spread is not as rapid as it is in other countries. The government announced that there has been a “very high level of compliance” with restrictions on non-essential travel over the bank holiday weekend. However there is still concern amongst experts over the “clusters” of the virus present in nursing homes around the country with very little healthy/qualified staff to help prevent spread. As of Saturday 11 April, there have been 6.5 deaths per 100,000 people in Ireland. These figures however are definitely not 100% accurate as there have been problems with testing in the lack of testing kits available/bought as well as the huge backlog in test results that have yet to be processed. When testing was first opened up it was under the understanding that anyone who suspected they had the virus could be tested, when large numbers of test were coming back negative they changed it so that the only people who were referred for testing were those who had two or more of the most common symptoms of the virus or those who were high at risk (immuno-compromised/underlying conditions etc.) This resulted in over 40,000 people being taken off the waiting list who then had to reapply. Lots of reports state that some of these people still haven’t received results and that was just under a month ago.
2. What practical measures has your national government taken to respond to the crisis? Have they acted responsibly or were they unprepared? Briefly describe measures your government is taking now to contain the virus and treat people infected with Covid-19. Is there a state of emergency, are schools closed, etc.?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 