Irish Protestant mother and baby homes saw neglect

A child's teddy bear marks the spot where the unmarked graves of 40 children from a Protestant residential institution, Bethany House, were discovered in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.

Photo by: Photocall Ireland

We now we have a Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, established in February 2015, to find out exactly what happened to the thousands of vulnerable women and children who lived and died in 14 homes between 1922 and 1998.

We need an investigation because we don't know what happened to so many of them, of course. Irish society fell silent and looked the other way over the seven decades when these mothers and children were disappeared without a word of protest from most of us.

1998 is only 18 years ago, so all of this unfolded within the lifetimes of most people reading these words right now. It's staggering too think the last Magdalene Laundry  only closed its doors in 1996.

News of what happened to the inmates – that's what they were called – of the Catholic Mother and Baby homes has rightly made international headlines since the Tuam scandal, but the fate of Protestant mothers and babies has garnered fewer column inches, although the statistics are no less alarming.

It's estimated that more than 200 infants born at just one Protestant mother and baby home in Dublin were buried in unmarked graves. The children, born between 1922 and 1949, were born at Bethany Home, an evangelical institution for unmarried women and their children that fulfilled the same social role as its Catholic counterparts: stem the contamination, keep the women and their unwanted offspring away from prying eyes and public comment.

In 2010 at least 40 infants from the home were discovered to have been buried in unmarked graves in the nearby Mount Jerome cemetery. Researchers believe the actual figure is more than five times that because on average, one child died every three weeks at the Bethany Home.

It is hard to imagine another circumstance where that number of infant deaths would not have set off alarm bells and government enquiries, unless that child was born to a poor, vulnerable, unmarried woman – Ireland's unholy trinity, Catholic and Protestant alike.

The Bethany Home was located in the well-to-do suburb of Rathgar in South Dublin. It’s a leafy suburb filled, then and now, with tea shops and fine groceries. It's the last place you'd expect to hear alarming tales of neglect and cruelty.

The Bethany Home.

Former residents of Bethany told researchers that they were victims of physical abuse and neglect while child residents of the home, and this atmosphere accounted for the high infant mortality rate in the institution.

Archived government reports into the condition of the place show us the most pressing concerns of the men who compiled them. After one visit in August 1939 the Irish government's deputy chief medical adviser, Winslow Sterling Berry, concluded, “It is well recognized that a large number of illegitimate children are delicate and marasmic from their birth.”

Berry was more concerned with the admittance of Roman Catholics into a proselytizing Protestant institution than with the numbers of children dying there, the report shows, and by refusing to continue government funding, he forced this unwelcome practice to end. There was no concern for the dangerous condition of the children.

Believing that illegitimate children are inherently more delicate than those with the good fortune to be born under wedlock was a clever rationalization. If illegitimate children died in surprisingly high numbers it was their weak constitutions that were at fault, he concluded, not the society into which they were born. Case closed.

To this day there are thousands who would rather not pick over these old coals. They'd prefer to do what their parents did and just look the other way.

What good, they ask, will come of holding these sad days and ways up to the light again?

For years the Irish government agreed with them. It wasn't until 2014 that the government finally agreed to investigate the Bethany home.

Damning headline printed after discovery of 40 bodies.

Records show that most of the children were days, weeks or months old when they died. Others show clear evidence of neglect – one child reportedly died after crawling into a scalding pot of gruel. Many would later endure physical and sexual abuse after being illegally adopted.

Meanwhile, activist and former Bethany survivor Derek Leinster, now 74, has just won the right to take his case to the European Court at Strasbourg. “It is the biggest thing that we have ever done,” Leinster, a founder of the Bethany Survivors Group, told the press. Currently the group is battling for compensation from the Irish state, but Leinster wants the world to know that he has a bigger target.

“I want the few who are left to know they have justice,” he said.

It has taken him a lifetime and he still hasn't found it.

Chair O' Doherty

How chimps are dedicated followers of fashion

How chimps are dedicated followers of fashion: They love looking in the mirror and copying the latest trends - just like us

• Chimpanzees love fashion and also looking at themselves in the mirror 

• But the animals don't just use the mirrors to check their appearance

• They use them to examine areas they can't see, such as inside their mouths

Chimpanzees love the latest fad or craze every bit as much as humans do — even when it makes them look ridiculous.

At a sanctuary in Zambia, one female invented a fashion statement by sticking a long stalk of grass into her ear and leaving it there as she made her way around the family group, grooming each of the others in turn. It was a distinctive look, and soon other apes were adopting it.

The stalk serves no purpose. It doesn't do anything, but years later this group of chimps are still, uniquely, wearing grass in their ears.

And a female orangutan called Suma, at Osnabruck Zoo, Germany, during the Seventies, went even further: she would collect cabbage leaves, sift through them and choose one to press onto her head.

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Chimpanzees love looking at themselves in the mirror and are 'dedicated followers of fashion'

Then she'd inspect herself in the mirror, trying the leaf at different jaunty angles.

During a career of studying animal behaviour stretching back more than 40 years, I've often seen chimps riding a new trend. At the world's largest chimpanzee colony, in Royal Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem, Holland, a group I was studying came up with a game we called 'cooking'.

They'd dig a hole in the dirt, collect water by holding a bucket under a tap and pour the water into the hole. Then they'd sit around the hole poking the mud with a stick, as if stirring soup.

Sometimes there would be three or four holes on the go at the same time, keeping half the group busy.

And Wolfgang Kohler, who studied primate behaviour before World War II, witnessed chimps devising a new dance. They'd march in single file, stamping one foot down hard and stepping lightly with the other as they trotted around and around a post, while wagging their heads in time to the rhythm.

Like all fashion victims, chimps love mirrors. They use them not just to check their appearance, but to examine areas that they can't see, such as the inside of their mouths. Females always turn around to look at their own bottoms — something that males don't care about.

A lifetime of studying these astonishing animals has taught me that they are far more intelligent than most scientists realise.

They follow complex social rules, caring for each other, and understanding each other's viewpoints, even their emotions.

One ageing female at Arnhem was having trouble walking — so the younger females would go to the tap, collect a mouthful of water and then come back to dribble it into the old ape's open mouth.

Similar behaviour has been observed in the wild, by British primatologist Jane Goodall.

She described how one elderly animal, dubbed Madame Bee, had become too weak to climb trees. Bee would patiently wait at the bottom for her daughter to carry down armfuls of fruit, which the pair would then contentedly eat together.

What is most impressive here is not just how the young apes solved problems, but the fact that they perceived other apes had problems. The chimps were able to appreciate life from a different viewpoint — an ability scientists once believed was particular to humans.

Many researchers still refuse to let go of that belief.

I was at a symposium recently to discuss altruism, where a prominent child psychologist loudly told an audience: 'No ape will ever jump into a lake to save another!'

I had to point out that there are several reports of apes doing exactly this — even though they are not naturally able to swim.

Another psychologist, America's Michael Tomasella, has proclaimed that humans are the only creatures capable of working together to achieve their goals. His dictum is: 'It is inconceivable that you would ever see two chimpanzees carrying a log together.'

That's a striking statement, and one that just isn't true.

 mouths

At Royal Burgers' Zoo there were beech tree saplings in the chimp enclosure, protected by a circle of electrified wire. I have watched two chimps using long sticks as ladders, to get over the wire: one holds the stick, and the other scales it to reach the tender leaves without getting a shock.

At my office in Yerkes National Primate Research Centre, in Atlanta, Georgia, two adolescent females often try to spy on me by peering through my first-floor window.

Together, they roll an oil drum up to the building's wall, and one stands on the drum while the other climbs onto her shoulders. Then, in a synchronised movement, they bounce up and down, so that a cheeky chimpanzee face keeps popping up outside the window.

But the most extraordinary instance was the so-called Great Escape of Arnhem.

One night, after all the people had gone home, the chimps dragged a gigantic tree trunk, far too heavy for a single animal to move, to the perimeter wall and propped it up. Then 25 of them scrambled out of the enclosure — and raided the zoo restaurant.

Co-operation doesn't have to be so dramatic to be impressive. One day I was watching a female called Krom, who was trying to scoop water from a tyre hanging on a log.

Unfortunately, a row of other tyres were hanging beside it, and she couldn't lever up the one she wanted, to get her drink. For about ten minutes she wrestled with this, watched by her nephew Jakie, a smart seven-year-old.

He waited till Krom had given up, and then set patiently to work, dragging all the tyres off the log one by one. When he reached the last one, he carefully removed it so that no water was spilled, and carried it to Auntie Krom. She started to drink immediately.

You might think apes don't use social communication, that they have no way to say 'please' and 'thank you', 'hello' and 'goodbye'. But you'd be wrong.

I once trained a female chimp named Kuif to bottle-feed a baby she had adopted every few hours throughout the day and night. She was a natural nurse, and would remove the teat from the baby's mouth now and then to burp him.

When we called her inside for a feeding, Kuif would make a long detour, doing the rounds on the island to visit first the alpha male, then the alpha female and then her friends.

She'd give each one a kiss, before coming into the building — and if any of them were asleep, she'd wake them up for her goodbyes. Chimps also kiss as a greeting after separation, placing their lips gently on each other's mouth or shoulder. This resembles the human kiss of greeting.

Bonobos (once known as pygmy chimpanzees) go even further. When a zookeeper familiar with chimps once naively accepted a bonobo kiss, not knowing this species, he was taken aback by the amount of tongue that went into it!

If you're going to work with any ape, it is essential to know their behavioural codes — not just the rules of kissing, but their moods and emotions . . . and especially their tricks. One of my students came to his first encounter with chimps, against our advice, wearing a suit and tie. He insisted he was capable of dealing with these two juveniles, aged about four, because he had a lifetime's experience with dogs.

Chimpanzees, even though they look very cute when young, are ten times more cunning than dogs — and much stronger than humans.

When the student came staggering out of the test room, the two mischievous apes were still clinging to his legs. His jacket was in tatters, with both sleeves torn off. Luckily, the chimps didn't have time to discover that a tie can also be used as a noose.

One of the problems in studying chimps is that, because they are so clever, they get bored very easily. This means that in tests against monkeys, they often come off worse: their superior intelligence is actually a disadvantage.

Rhesus monkeys can perform the same simple experiment, such as identifying an object by its shape without seeing it, hundreds of times. Chimps lose interest after a dozen trials.

Their attention wanders. They pull at your clothes or try to grab you, they make faces, they bang on the windows, they jump up and down. Sometimes this behaviour proves irresistible and, rather unprofessionally, I have abandoned an experiment and joined in a game instead.

Chimpanzees enjoy laughing. I am well aware that it is crucial to avoid equating animal behaviour with human traits just because they look similar, but in this instance there is no better explanation.

When young apes are tickled, they make breathy sounds with a rhythm of inhaling and exhaling that sounds like the laughter of children. And just like children, they love being tickled even when, at the same time, they can't stand it.

I have often seen how they push away my tickling fingers and then come back begging for more, holding their breath while awaiting the next poke in the belly.

In the past our general attitude has been that we like chimpanzees to be quite like humans, but not too much. The anthropologist Desmond Morris told me that, when he was working at London Zoo in the Sixties, tea parties were still held regularly in the ape house.

Gathered on chairs around a table, the chimps had been trained to use cups, saucers and a teapot — no problem for these sophisticated, tool-using animals.

But over time, the apes' performance became too polished, which made the public feel uncomfortable. The chimps looked a little too like us. With the human ego under threat, something had to be done, and the apes were retrained to throw food around and drink from the teapot spout as soon as the keeper's back was turned.

OCTOPUSES ARE BRAINBOXES, TOO  

It's not only chimpanzees and bonobos that display amazing intelligence. Many creatures exhibit intellectual abilities that must be seen to be believed.

An octopus at one aquarium was fond of raw chicken eggs, breaking them open and sucking out the contents. One day, a keeper accidentally gave it a rotten egg. The octopus shot the smelly remains over the side of its tank — straight at the human who had supplied the egg. This was no accident.

Octopuses can certainly tell people apart. In a recognition test, one keeper gave an octopus scraps of food, while another poked it gently with a bristly stick. The octopus soon learned to recognise which human was its friend, even though both keepers were wearing identical blue overalls.

When it spotted its enemy, the octopus would recoil, squirting jets of ink into the water — a typical defence mechanism. But when the other keeper arrived, it would approach, without any display of fear or hostility.

This naughty behaviour was much more popular.

In fact, chimpanzees prefer a civilised life. At Burgers', I watched two infant apes rolling and scrapping on the ground, enjoying a game that soon got out of hand.

There was screaming and hair-pulling, and the two mothers, watching their little ones fight, didn't know what to do. Of course, either of them could have waded in and broken up the fight, but that would have made matters worse.

Mothers are never impartial, and it's not unusual to see a juvenile quarrel escalate into an adult fight. Instead of intervening, one of them went across to the old matriarch, Mama, to wake her from a snooze.

Swinging an arm in the direction of the fight, the younger female pointed out the problem. Mama needed only one glance to assess the situation, and took a step forward with a threatening grunt. That shut up the squabbling youngsters in an instant. Chimps are so clever that they can assess a new situation by spotting the things that are missing. This takes imagination and a powerful sense of reasoning.

For example, one morning at Burgers', while the chimps were still in their night quarters, we showed them a crate full of grapefruits. Then we carried it, under their watchful eyes, through the door to their outside enclosure.

When we brought the crate back, it was empty — and pandemonium broke out. As soon as they saw the grapefruits were gone, 25 apes burst out hooting and hollering and slapping each other on the back.

I have never seen animals so excited about absent food. They inferred that, since grapefruits can't just vanish, we'd left these treats outside for them in the enclosure.

That was the first and only time we carried out the experiment, so it's certain that the chimps weren't responding to experience or learning by trial and error. They had taken one look and seen exactly what was going on.

Another experiment, by Charlie Menzel at the Language Research Center in Atlanta, tested a similar type of intelligence.

Late one evening, he let a female chimp called Panzee watch while he hid a bag of her favourite M&M sweets in a bush, just outside her enclosure. The bag was tantalisingly out of reach, and Panzee could do nothing about it all night.

Next morning, when the caretakers arrived, she was waiting. Charlie guessed what would happen, knowing the caretakers were very sympathetic to the chimps and would take Panzee's behaviour seriously.

Using gestures and noises, such as panting, calling, beckoning and pointing, she directed the caretakers straight to where the sweets were hidden. As the humans got closer, Panzee vigorously bobbed her head up and down, as if saying: 'Yes! Yes!'

Charlie tried the experiment again, letting Panzee see him hide sweets in all kinds of places. The chimp never got muddled, and never directed the caretakers to an old stash. As the hiding places were moved further away, Panzee would point higher, to indicate a greater distance — just as humans would.

But for sheer brainpower, there's no beating a chimp called Ayumu at the Primate Research Institute, in Kyoto University, Japan. A young male, he has a memory capable of absorbing information at lightning speed and recalling it perfectly.

Sitting at a touchscreen computer, he watches numbers one to nine flash up and then vanish. Ayumu can reproduce the sequence every time — even if the numbers appear for just one-fifth of a second.

I tried, and the best I could do was five correct digits. Ayumu gets a perfect score 80 per cent of the time. No human can match that, even memory wizards capable of memorising the order of a shuffled pack of cards.

In contests, Ayumu always emerges as the 'chimpion', and now that he is being tested on an even larger sequence of numbers, flashed up even more rapidly, the limits of what he can do are still unknown.

I have my own reason to be grateful for chimpanzees' memories. It's many years since I left Arnhem and moved to America, but I still return every year to see my ape friends.

Some of the colony were there as youngsters 30 years ago, and when I arrive they quickly pick out my face amid the crowds and greet me with an excited hooting. It seems my face is special to them. And they are all very special to me.

By Frans De Waal

• Adapted from Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?, by Frans de Waal, (Granta Books, £14.99). © Frans De Waal 2016. To buy a copy for £11.25 (Offer valid until September 10), call 0844 571 0640 or visit mailbookshop.co.uk. P&P is free on orders over £15.

From poverty to orphanage; he emerged a great man

Allie Gorman got a rough start in early 1900s Brookyln.

Photo by: Charles Hale

My grandfather Allie Gorman often spoke of the Protectory or “the orphanage” where he spent time as a teen. It seems no one thought to ask, “If your father and stepmother were alive at the time, why were you in an orphanage?”

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Born in 1902 in lower Manhattan, near Battery Park, Alexander “Allie” Gorman grew up in Brooklyn. The child of an immigrant—his father was from County Monaghan, Ireland—Allie lived in poverty, survived epidemics, fire and an alcoholic, abusive father.

Death was a constant companion. When Allie was three years old his two-year-old sister, Lizzie, died of malnutrition; that same year his eight-year-old brother, George, died of spinal meningitis during a citywide epidemic, and three siblings died before they were a year old. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was four.

When Allie was six, he and his younger brother, Willie, were horribly burned in a fire. I remember watching my grandfather shave when I was a young boy and noticing the huge amorphous slab of skin that extended along the entire side of his body. I asked him what that was. “It’s a scar, Charles,” he said. “My brother Willie and I were playing with matches and Willie caught on fire. I tried to put the fire out. This is what happened.” Allie’s father, George, and his stepmother had left the two young boys alone for the day.

A few years ago I found an article in a 1908 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle, which described the fire and its aftermath. The words “blazing garments” and “little sufferers” summoned up vivid images of my grandfather’s wounds and moments I spent staring at them, imagining, as only a young boy could, the fright and horror of the fire. How had that fire shaped the way he viewed the world and how had it influenced his life? I was reminded of my father’s comment about his father-in-law: “Your grandfather Allie was the most fearless man I ever met.” How much of his fearlessness was borne of this incident; I could only guess.

Article about the fire from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

But the “Protectory,” and why my grandfather was there remained a mystery. I began researching the events of my grandfather’s life and learned that the Catholic Protectory was an institution organized on April 14, 1863, which worked with impoverished and abandoned children, many of them orphans, who were running wild through the New York slums. The children were taught discipline and structure. Academic and vocational courses, which trained children for various trades and prepared others for college, also helped build each child’s self-esteem.

I learned that the Christian Brothers ministered to the boys. I contacted the organization and they confirmed they had tended to the boys at the Protectory. They suggested I contact the Church of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, which has an extensive Family Research Center, to determine if the Protectory’s records were available. I called the church and they referred me to one of their local genealogical centers not far from my home. They had the records on microfilm; I found the Protectory my grandfather had talked about. The identification card was a revelation.

Allie Gorman's Protectory identification card

One hundred years after my grandfather’s stay at the Protectory, I knew the truth: The Protectory was not only an orphanage, but also a detention center for children who had violated the law. At the age of fourteen, Allie began a thirteen-month stay at the Protectory for stealing wood and assaulting a watchman.

Protectory record description of Allie's crime

My grandfather told stories of playing baseball and soccer at the Protectory; however, he also told stories that suggested cruelty bordering on sadistic. When my grandfather smiled I’d notice that he was missing a tooth. My mother told me why. One morning he was leaning over a sink, washing his face, when a Brother came up from behind him and grabbed his side. My grandfather, still suffering residual pain from the burns he had sustained in the fire, wheeled around and punched the Brother in his mouth. His punishment? According to my grandfather, they took him to the infirmary and pulled out one of his teeth: there was no Novocain, no painkiller.

Jimmy "The Shiv" DeStefano

Soon, I learned of others who were at the Protectory with my grandfather. One was John Henson, age 15, who was convicted of manslaughter. Henson poisoned a man with a pesticide used to kill rats. And then there were the so-called “colorful characters” who spent time at the Protectory with my grandfather: Jimmy “The Shiv” DeStefano, who would become a crony of the notorious gangster Al Capone and a member of The Five Points Gang, eventually landed in Sing Sing and became known as the Death House Barber. He gave men and one woman, Ruth Snyder, their final haircut before they were strapped into the electric chair.

The Catholic Protectory, Bronx, NY

Joe Valachi, who would become a convicted felon and infamous Mafia informant, was sent to the Protectory for hitting a teacher in the eye with a rock. Valachi was quoted in Peter Maas’ book The Valachi Papers. “As far as the brothers at the Protectory were concerned, some of them were okay and some were real bad. You wouldn’t believe what some of them were like with the young boys…I won’t go into that,” Valachi said.

Many of the era’s gangsters came from broken homes and spent a portion of their youth in reform schools similar to the Protectory. Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, who was raised at times by his sister and at times by anyone who would take him, found trouble at an early age, bouncing from one Catholic reform school to another. A ruthless killer and kidnapper, Coll was gunned down, gangland style, in a phone booth on West 23rd St. in Manhattan.

A lifetime of crime and imprisonment was often the fate of those who passed through the Protectory and other reform schools. As for my grandfather, he left the Protectory and joined the Merchant Marines; he traveled the world, returned and married my grandmother Florence.  They had five daughters, including my mother Dorothy.

He worked hard, first delivering coal, and then in his thirties he became a union representative. He met with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1940 to help settle a coal strike during a stretch of cold weather. A compassionate man, my grandfather told the mayor that the temporary shutdown of coal delivery was an “outrageous piece of cruelty.”

Newspaper clip about the coal strike

Grandpa Allie became a loving father and I could not have had a more loving grandfather. But what enabled my grandfather—the victim of a cruel childhood, poverty, an alcoholic father, his mother’s death when he was four, a horrific fire, the deaths of six siblings, thirteen months in reform school, and a variety of physical, verbal and emotional abuse—to lead a life filled with good deeds and healthy relationships, and to become a productive member of society, while others are left broken and isolated? Given a cruel childhood how does anyone function psychologically at a far greater level than his or her experience might predict?

I’m not sure I can answer those questions, but I do know I’ve learned that within my grandfather’s stories there exists a wellspring of knowledge that I can access: From his suffering I’ve learned compassion; from his struggles I’ve developed empathy; from his pain I draw strength. That is my grandfather’s legacy.

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By Charles R. Hale who was born, raised and educated in New York. He is a former partner of a NYC based consulting firm Hale, Borenstein Ltd. Charles, along with Niamh Hyland, is a cofounder of  Artists Without Walls, an organization purposed to inspire, uplift and unite people and communities of diverse cultures through the pursuit of artistic achievement. His film “Walls: We Are Not Forgotten,” about the life of singer Judy Collins, was presented at the 2012 Eugene O’Neill Award ceremony honoring Ms. Collins. In 2013 the City University of New York honored Charles for ”Outstanding Service to New York and Irish America.”

*Originally published in March 2015. 

No moral high ground in Apple mess of our making

Since the EU’s ruling on Apple’s €13bn in back-taxes was announced on Tuesday, the ramparts have been rushed, with all and sundry making definitive statements.

Almost immediately, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the EU was wrong. How could he know? He might say he disputes the findings, but he made a definitive declaration without approval from cabinet.

On Wednesday, Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, said that the Government should tell the EU where to go.

“Frankly, the Irish Government should turn around — they shouldn’t even appeal the decision — they should just write a letter to Europe and tell them politely to fuck off,” said Mr O’Leary.

This is the same EU that facilitated the rise of Ryanair by banning State aid for faltering airlines. Like everybody else, Micko wants it both ways.

The EU itself has been all over the shop. Initially, it said the €13bn was due to the Irish Exchequer, but then claimed other countries could share in the pay-out.

In the US, the treasury department had a pop at the EU.

“We believe that retroactive tax assessments by the commission are unfair, contrary to well-established legal principles, and call into question the rules of individual member states,” it said.

Yet much of the massive global corporate tax-avoidance is engineered by American companies, facilitated by domestic laws, and enacted by American politicians who receive money from those same companies.

The high moral ground is unoccupied on this matter. On RTÉ Radio yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave an impassioned defence of his company’s tax arrangements. He might well be correct about the legal position, and genuine about Apple’s commitment to this country, and Apple might not have broken any laws, but its position on tax avoidance is morally indefensible. Apple may be getting a raw deal on this issue, but some would see it as natural justice for paying a fraction of the tax that it should.

The EU’s competition commission has adopted the stance of policeman for the citizens, ensuring that big business pays its fair share. But what cared the EU for the citizens of this country a few years ago, when it decided that the debts for much of Europe’s banking crisis be borne by us? Would the EU be as forceful if this matter involved a multinational’s relationship with France or Germany?

The ruling could be interpreted as Brussels again using a small, peripheral country as a handy experiment in forging a new path. During the recession, that path involved beating a way out of a potentially ruinous financial crisis. Today, it signals the new dispensation, under the OECD, that is determined to go after corporate tax-avoidance.

Back home, credibility is also in short supply. Successive Irish governments have bent over backwards to facilitate foreign companies using Ireland as a base for tax-avoidance. Little ruses such as the ‘double Irish’ ensured that money could be funnelled through this State, filtering out the requirements to pay tax anywhere.

In 2004, then finance minister Charlie McCreevy went one further with legislation allowing foreign companies to set up headquarters, or holding companies, here.

Thousands of brass-plate operations were opened up, facilitating major tax-avoidance in other jurisdictions. The only real benefit to this country was fat fees for a platoon of lawyers and accountants to set everything up. In recent years, the facilitation of special-purpose vehicles for vulture funds to hoover up cheap property has continued the trend.

All of this has added to the perception that Ireland is a tax haven. Technically, it might not be, but the righteous indignation from Cabinet voices about potential reputational damage from the Apple ruling rings hollow. The damage has long been done, and any appeal won’t change that. The EU may not be correct in its ruling, but Ireland has lived dangerously for a long time in facilitating tax-avoidance.

Then, the opposition are mounting their high horses. Parties such as Sinn Féin want the State to bend to the EU’s agenda this time, a complete U-turn from the party’s position when the EU was one element of the Troika. Back then, Gerry Adams told the Troika to go home.

Different position this time, same empty populism.

Anybody suggesting we should take the €13bn has another impediment en route to the high moral ground. Even if the ruling is correct, this country has no right to the money.

If it represents tax that should have been paid, then it must go to the countries in which Apple made the profits that generated the tax. If Ireland facilitated Apple in avoiding tax in other jurisdictions, it should not be rewarded for doing so with money that rightly belongs to others.

Michael Clifford

Ashford Castle, the Abbey and Cong: An 800 year relationship of blood, sweat, tears and kisses

                                                            A view of Cong

William De Burke was a Norman invader who was born in 1160 and became the founder of the Burke/Burghos dynasty in Ireland and the conquerer of the Kingdom of Connacht without actually ruling there. Cathal O’ Connor, younger brother of Rory and the 2nd last High King of Ireland, kept him busy fighting to keep it that way, which saw De Burke’s title watered down later to Lord Of Connacht. At best, De Burke had a foothold in the West rather than a dynasty and managed at least to build a few fortresses about the place, and one of these was a fortress built in 1228 at what is now known as Ashford Castle today, right beside the village of Cong and its famous Abbey. These three places have been an appendage to each other throughout written history of what is known to us, then and now, and continues to be a positive and mutual dependancy of interrelated needs and wants of a benign commercial nature today, leaving out the blood and sweat of yesterday.

Cong Abbey was built in 623, by, you guessed it, Conobite Monks. Cong village grew up naturally around the Abbey afterwards and both fed off each other and the Lough Corrib and Lough Mask that coiled through them. The Abbey burned down in 1114 but the O’ Connor clan threw their weight and money about to rebuild it again over the next two decades. Unfortunately it was destroyed again and likewise the O’ Connor’s rebuilt it once more. In fact, the elder brother, Rory, lived the last 15 years of his life in the Abbey and was buried there in 1198.

                                                           Ashford Castle

The pesky De Burke was not too far away though and attacked the Abbey in 1203 and again it was rebuilt. In the winter between the end of 1205 and the beginning of 1206 William did the only decent thing in his life: he died at the age of forty five years old, and it may be agreed that at the very least it was a painful death as chronicled in this piece just after his demise: “William De Burke plundered Connacht, as well as churches and territories; but God and the saints took vengeance on him for that for he died of a singular disease, too shameful to be described.”  

Of course there was still the matter of the De Burke/Burghes clan descendants who still had that Ashford fortress that was built on the borders of the Abbey and that had cast a silhouette over it’s grounds and a greater shadow over the West of Ireland for almost the next 360 years. The bloody honeymoon was finally about to be over for the De Burke’s and a bloodier one was about to begin in the form of the British forces in 1589, not to liberate, but just enough to make a changing of the guard an English one. 

Cong Abbey

Over time, Ashford became a Castle rather than a fortress and passed through different private ownerships through the succeeding generations because of a pen rather than a sword until Benjamin Guinness purchased it in 1852 along with 26,000 acres. Ben also turned his hand to restoring Cong Abbey yet again and did. Finally in 1939, Ashford Castle was gifted back to the Irish Government from a grandson of Ben. 

Today, Ashford Castle is one of the finest hotels in the world and run by one of the best hotel dynasties in the world: the Tollman family. The only tears shed here these days are for the loss of a daughter to marriage and kisses for the son that they have gained at the many weddings ceremonies played out at the Castle every month and at it's cousin hotel, The Lodge, done the road on the same grounds. The Tollman's reign may very well last even longer than the De Burghos and their relationship with Cong and the Abbey is sure to flourish with it. 

'The scenery around Cong never alters with the passing of time unlike man who ages with the years.'  Oscar Wilde in 1878

Barry Clifford

We need a change of culture for An Garda Síochána, not a new code

Into the breach once more. Another process, another code, another forest of trees to be felled in the name of procedure. Above all, another journey into the dark heart of gobbledegook.

The Policing Authority has sent a call out to the general public for input into a new code of ethics for An Garda Síochána. This process began last April with the invitation for “preliminary views” on a code.

There followed a period of “research and consideration of the submissions received” which led to the development of a draft code.

Now the time has come to reach out and touch the public once more to finalise the code. Thus the journey to publication of a code of ethics will be completed by December 31, in time for the new year. Was it for this the Policing Authority was set up?

There is much within An Garda Síochána which requires addressing, but a code of ethics is most certainly not on that list. A lack of resources continues to dog the force. Efforts are afoot to address this, but there’s a lot of catching up to do.

The plight of new recruits has still not been fully addressed. Why should new gardaí be subjected to inferior pay levels than their colleagues, and deprived of the allowances that ensure they can for the first decade or so of service actually afford to maintain a basic standard of living?

There continues to be problems with organisation, particularly in the area of applying responsibility. A decade on from recommendations in the Morris Tribunal that superintendents “should physically review files of inspectors, sergeants and gardaí to show an interest in cases”, there is grave doubt as to whether this is being fully implemented.

Above all, the outcome of the revelations from the O’Higgins Commission and its report suggests that the negative aspects of garda culture continue to fester.

Some of these matters are beyond the remit of the Policing Authority, but there is still plenty to be going on with instead of engaging in a redundant exercise to establish a new code of ethics.

Not many people know this, but An Garda Síochána already has a code of ethics. It was brought in around 15 years ago when Pat Byrne was commissioner. The code was contained in a little booklet, which included on its second page a declaration of personal commitment, which left a slot for each officer to sign their names declaring that, “I do hereby adopt, accept and commit myself to this Garda Declaration of Professional Values and Ethical Standards.”

At the time there was a row with the Garda Representative Association over whether officers should be compelled to sign up, but that got sorted. The old code is full of the sort of basic common sense statements that apply not just to policing but nearly every walk of life.

For instance, under the heading “moral duty”, it is stated that: “Emphasising that in the performance of our public duties, every staff member of An Garda Síochána is obligated to adhere to and be guided by the ethical, legal and professional principles which are applicable to public policing.”

One would have thought that such a statement would be drilled into every new recruit on day one in Templemore, but there’s no harm in putting it down on paper.

Now turn to the new draft code, in this bright new era of policing. “I will be honest and always act with intergrity; I will pursue the whole truth in establishing and reporting facts in an honest and objective way; I will not commit any act of corruption and will have the courage to oppose and report all such acts.”

Essentially, the code is looking for a commitment not to break the law, which is fine and dandy, but is it really necessary?

Was this the kind of stuff that took six months to formulate before handing it over to the public to have their say on this journey to an ethical force?

In general, garda officers are as honest and harbour as much personal integrity as the average plumber, accountant, carpenter or journalist. Some within the force have higher standards, acutely conscious of the power that has been vested in them since their first day in the job.

A new code of ethics is going to do nothing to change that scenario one way or the other.

The problems within the force are cultural, and will only be addressed through a robust and enforced code of practice in which buck passing and the cover-up of incompetence or laziness is not tolerated.

In order to fulfil its obligation to draft a new code the authority would be much better served in simply replicating the old one with a few bells and whistles attached.

The code will make little difference to policing or the application of ethics and wasting time going through such a torturous process does little to enhance confidence in either the force of the authority.

The authority might be better served examining the detail of policing that does matter.

Following the publication of O’Higgins, the authority had what sounded like a robust meeting with the commissioner, Nóirín O’Sullivan, behind closed doors.

The tenor of the press statement following the meeting suggested that the authority was going to get properly stuck into its brief.

At the next public meeting, all had changed. The commissioner outlined the “journey” the force was on while her team introduced a series of process documents and various bits and bobs that was supposed to illustrate that the whole job was just oxo.

The priority for the authority should be to get past that gobbledegook and identify the real issues that need to be addressed.

A good starting point would be a series of excellent reports from the Garda Inspectorate. Get cracking on that and ethics will take care of itself.

Michael Clifford

Where does employment drift into exploitation?

LITTLE things provide clues as to the direction the country is going.

This week it was revealed that there are 2m people in work for the first time since 2009.

There was also positive news about immigration.

A total of 79,300 people of all nationalities moved into the country in the year to last April, up from 69,300 the previous year. Of the new arrivals, 21,000 represented Irish-born people returning home.

The figures demonstrate that a new day has well and truly dawned after the night of recession.

The Government, and Fine Gael in particular, can with some justification claim that policies it pursued are now bearing fruit.

And the growth is not confined to any one sector — such as construction — but occurring throughout the economy.

Similarly, the growth is not confined to Dublin, but can be seen across the main population centres of the State. Unemployment remains a reality for around 8% of the population but opportunities continue to open up.

There was further proof of this in the CAO offers which were made last Monday.

The courses associated with the economic recovery are in much higher demand. Architecture, engineering and other construction-related courses, along with business, are all attracting greater numbers.

Notwithstanding the rain clouds of Brexit gathering on the horizon, or the fragile nature of the world economy, there are reasons to cheerful. Not everything about the labour market, however is positive or welcome.

For one thing, the nature of employment has gone through some serious changes. It is now accepted in most quarters that the concept of a job for life is past its sell-by date.

“Flexibility” is the buzz word in the labour market, and making it easier for employers to hire and fire in the modern economy makes sense. But where does flexibility drift across the line into exploitation?

Some recent high-profile cases of changed work practices raise questions about the quality of employment for those who are at work. Recently, a high-tech delivery company attempted to change work practices which would see delivery drivers paid per delivery rather than by the hour.

The company, which operates in five Irish cities, attempted the new work practice on a pilot basis in parts of Britain, but pulled back in the face of major opposition, which came even from a Tory government.

Deliveroo was just the latest start-up tech company to attempt to change work practices which effectively force employees to operate as self-employed. This is, in effect, bogus self-employment and is prevalent right across the economy.

At home, a report from the think tank TASC in June outlined how this was a growing problem. In the area of construction alone, according to TASC, those classified as self-employed increased from 25% in 2006 to 38% today.

Last Monday 96FM’s Deirdre O’Shaughnessey reported on how the practice is now growing in the tech sector. The story concerned Cork-based firm Globetech, which employs 480 people in developing high-tech solutions for areas like processing parking tickets.

O’Shaughnessy interviewed “Marie” who has worked in the company for nearly four years on short-term contracts. She would like to be employed, but has been told that she must remain self-employed and work on that basis.

“When it started I didn’t know how long it would go on,” she said.

She attempted to have her situation regularised. Others doing her highly-skilled job in the company are treated as employees, yet she has remained on short-term contracts. “When I asked they said ‘no, I can’t have my contract reviewed’.”

(Globetech issued a statement in which it said that fewer than 10% of those working for the company are classified self-employed).

Marie is among the thousands coming to this country to work, but her predicament is not confined to those described as non-nationals. She is highly skilled and a mother who would like to settle down here.

Despite being officially self-employed, workers like Marie are effectively employees. A genuinely self-employed person would be free to offer their services to more than one entity, but that is not the case here.

To all intents and purposes, the classification of “self employed” is entirely bogus, but perfectly legal.

As solicitor John Boylan, who works in the area of employment law, points out: “Self-employed people pay their own tax, their own social insurance, they are not entitled to sick pay or to holiday pay and if the position doesn’t work out they cannot take any action for unfair dismissal.”

The self- employed person would also run into problems in qualifying for the job-seeker’s allowance in the event of not having a contract renewed.

What effect does this have?

On the employer’s side it saves on costs, including PRSI and pension contributions. For the employee it heightens job insecurity.

Also, crucially, it prevents the prospect of long-term planning, such as buying a home. Banks will not lend to somebody whose employment is so insecure.

That, in turn, has an effect on society at large. Preventing a considerable cohort of maturing people from putting down roots can only have an adverse impact on the character of communities.

The State is not blind to any of this but the worrying thing is its response.

The system of bogus self-employment ensures there is a loss to the exchequer of huge sums in employer PRSI contributions, from €20m in the construction industry to an estimated €80m across the economy.

Yet an employer can decide to classify an employee as a self-employed contractor by merely clicking an option in the Revenue’s online system.

The classification of whether a worker should be an employee or self-employed is called Scope and located in the Department of Social Protection. “

If a subsequent investigation deems that the categorisation was effectively bogus and the person should be reclassified as an employee, there is no penalty for the employer.

For some, the classification of self-employed suits perfectly and is appropriate.

The problem is the growing number that are being forced into that category. It represents a small but significant shift in wealth from labour to capital at a time when in equality is growing exponentially.

This, in turn, is being reflected across the world politically through disaffection with mainstream politics and flight to the extremes.

More jobs in the economy are welcome, but it’s time the Government began addressing the drift in employment practices that are unhealthy for society.

Small things show where the country is going, and it shouldn’t take much to correct an obvious wrong.

Michael Clifford