Ken Foxe
@kenfoxe
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Writer. Open to collaborations. Transparency activist. Ko-fi: https://t.co/4FGJCtsuHz [email protected]. 3ma: 3DYXH959 š¬ā
Joined May 2010
Two of my short stories have been put forward for consideration for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. This one, a dystopian take on one of the worldās great cycling races: And this story in 7th Circle Pyrite āThe Falling Peopleā.
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Unpopular opinion but I actually thought the Taoiseach has been fine on the Late Late. People would be complaining more if it sounded as if he had it all learned off. I think itās ok not to know every single detail of a roadmap that has to change by the day #LateLateShow.
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They couldnāt even trial the closure of some of the side gates of the Phoenix Park š.
š®šŖā»ļø Ireland is going to become a leader on #ClimateAction. With net-zero emissions by 2050 and a 51% reduction in carbon by 2030, Ireland is tackling this challenge head-on. #IPCC
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If you feel the Phoenix Park was really busy over the weekend, it's worth noting that probably a few hundred thousand people live within 5km of the park. Each of these lines is around five kilometres in length for perspective:
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Croke Park is about as well served as anywhere by public transport with train, Luas, and bus nearby. Itās walking distance to many multi-storey car parks. What people are really complaining about is not being let dump their car five mins walk away & not pay for the privilege.
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I don't think I will ever get my head around people whinging about Met Ćireann weather warnings. If you're not interested, then ignore them. If you are, they're useful guidance. And if your livelihood heavily depends on weather - transport, agriculture - they're vital.
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Some people were incredibly selfish before Covid-19; they remain incredibly selfish now. Do yourself a favour & ignore Tenerife/dentists & remember that on the 3 occasions Irish people were asked to flatten infection curve, the overwhelming majority of people did what was asked.
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If you're finding it hard to get your head around NPHET projections, why don't you just look at daily case numbers in the UK, divide by around 13, look at our respective vaccination levels, and take your head out of the sand.
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The absolute beginner's guide to using Freedom of Information in Ireland: written for members of the public & journalists that have never used it. Feedback welcome:
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We lose one of the most important voices on the impact of Covid-19 on our health services but at least we still have all the people who told us NPHET needed to be disbanded or put in their place to impart their latest wisdom
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A breakdown of the Office of Public Works' ā¬335,000 bill for a bike shed at Leinster House. Plus the refusal to release any of the scoping documents from the costly project for "security reasons.".
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I prefer to reflect on a political system that canāt find a place for someone like Saoirse McHugh but has room for a tax cheat, people happy to stoke racism for votes, and āwell-known nameā candidates who until a party came calling had never engaged in national politics.
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Itās very hard not to feel angry about this entirely preventable third wave . and for what, a couple of weeks worth of business. NPHET told us what was coming but sadly many people will now suffer because others thought they knew better.
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Fine Gael at the end of a very rough month . phew, thankfully that seems to be over! . oh crap, here comes John Bruton.
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This is the thing with cars. It doesnāt matter that entire country is built around them; doesnāt matter how much room you provide for them; itās never enough and theyāll just keep taking more. You see it in every city, town, and village in Ireland every hour of every day:.
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There are people calling for creation of an Irish DOGE. I have, of course, never once heard them call for strengthening of the FOI laws that up to now have been most responsible for bringing govt waste to light. Itās just more bullsh** culture war crap appropriated from the U.S.
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The only thing to say about this tweet is I never want to hear another Fine Gael representative talk about the coarsening of politics, or negative campaigning in future. This is indefensible & I hope someone in the party is brave enough to acknowledge it:
šØWARNINGšØ. Itās vital that you vote @GeogheganCllr to keep a Fine Gael seat in Dublin Bay South. Less than one-hour to go!. #DublinBaySouth #DBS21 #dbsbyelection
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The most absurd part of this bogus āfree speechā debate is the idea that Dublin Pride is the powerful one as opposed to the broadcaster with multiple TV and radio stations, the most read news website in the state, and a ā¬300+ million annual budget. Makes perfect sense all right.
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Thread: An Oireachtas staff member had to change the route they walked to their office because a TD on their floor never wore a mask. ļæ½ļæ½It is especially difficult when the individual is an elected member of the DĆ”il and the prospect of confronting him ā¦ is an intimidating one.ā
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I don't believe Dept of Foreign Affairs should simply be allowed shut down FOI requests relating to the Katherine Zappone appointment by publishing redacted records & thus closing off the right of a requester to appeal. So I've sought internal review of that decision today
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Don't worry Ciara Kelly . our memories go back a little further than this morning:
āI thought it was a slap in the face to frontline workersā Ciara reacts to the weekend's lockdown protest. @NTBreakfast
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In Ireland, weāre not keeping records because the situation is evolving too quickly and sure what would you need them for anyway. In New Zealand . .
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The soil on the graves not set . yet here they are again, the very same people who told us there was no choice but to open up in late November & early December. Back, undaunted, telling us why theyāre right this time.
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Itās astonishing to me (it shouldnāt be at this stage) that at a time when the 7-day case number is 2,100, an average 50 people a day are dying, ICU system is all but maxed out, 6k healthcare workers out sick . there are already people agitating for quicker reopening.
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Will this be a new permanent feature of the justice system in Ireland where the Minister for Justice offers running commentary on ongoing garda investigations, and basically pre-empts the outcome of that inquiry?
"Absolutely not" responds Minister @HHumphreysFG when asked if Leo Varadkar should step aside from cabinet while Garda probe is underway into leaking investigation. #rtepolitics #rteone #rtetwip.
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Over next few days, I'm going to periodically tweet some of the craziest loopholes in expenses system for TDs & Senators. Public mood is currently rising to address this. If the pressure eases at all, they will do nothing. This system badly needs to be made fit for purpose.
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Everybody gets to choose the language they use. They can politely disagree & try to explain what drives their thinking. Or, they can use language that is designed to humiliate, and for retribution. We saw an example of that tonight; and it won't be quickly forgotten.
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How dare OPW put any restrictions on car access to the Phoenix Park?. Apart from the multiple nearby bus routes, the mainline train station, the Luas, the cycle lanes, the park footpaths . how on earth are people supposed to get to Dublin Zoo?. There's just no other options.
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Lots of talk of ārevisionismā & āhindsightā today. It is bullsh**. All the evidence is in the NPHET letters, online & here on social media. Itās a political tactic, just like turning the blame back on individuals. This was not some lone voices of caution; it was a crescendo.
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My request for details of expenditure on the ā¬490,000 OPW 'Great Wall' was made in early October. There was no response as obligated after 20 working days so I had to seek internal review. There was no response to that either so I was forced to appeal the case to the
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There is an awful lot to be said for having somebody so fundamentally compassionate and decent as your head of state #LateLateShow.
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Just in case you think we are exaggerating when we tell you just how broken Freedom of Information is in Ireland. I give you . a redaction of the name of Minister for Children Roderic O'Gorman from records released by his own department.
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GardaĆ have been through a lot of scandals over the past couple of decades but I don't recall a time when there was such widespread unease about policing decisions, particularly around kid gloves for far right, perceived inability to tackle street violence, set against the robust.
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If somebody presents themselves as an authority on any topic in the public sphere, the idea that they should not be challenged or questioned when they post misinformation, unsupported statements, or misunderstand data is absolutely incomprehensible to me.
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I've rarely, if ever, heard Irish people I know complain about "cultural appropriation". It's the exact opposite most of the time whereby people who take up hurling, Irish music, or, the Irish language are very often celebrated for showing an interest:
Morgan Bullock is an African-American Irish dancer from Richmond, Virginia. After a TikTok video of her lightning-footed jigs went viral, she was accused of "cultural appropriation". Then she got a call from Riverdance. š
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As far as I can tell, the OPW has not yet answered a single FOI request on the ā¬335,000 bike shelter or the ā¬1.4 million security hut. They know that if requesters appeal, they can delay them even longer. Are they planning to push them out until after the general election?
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The person who can never admit they were wrong is a poor person to have in authority. The inability to see youāve called something wrong means your decision making is always distorted. Thereās never any shame in making a mistake; only the inability to admit it to yourself.
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Recalling the time the Fianna FĆ”il government - in which Micheal Martin was minister - contacted RTĆ to berate them about a follow-up on this story I broke in the Sunday Tribune. RTĆ pulled the story from later bulletins, and apologised . chilling!.
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For me, the Clifden golf event brings to mind Saoirse McHughās remarks which highlighted the awful deficit in Irish electoral politics & the value of activism. I think itās fair to wonder why any young Irish person would currently aspire to be a member of the Oireachtas.
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Some personal news: for the next 18 months, Iām going to be working with @thejournal_ie on a really innovative community-driven investigative journalism project. More details to come in the spring.
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It is utterly absurd not naming the secondary school that is to be closed due to #coronavirus. There is patient āconfidentialityā and then there is treating citizens like idiots while expecting (at least) several hundred directly affected people to observe this confidentiality.
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This story from @IrishMailSunday deserves to be shared far and wide, and every politician complicit in the policy questioned relentlessly about why they feel this served the public interest:
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Perks for ex-Taoisigh including secretarial support, use of state cars + VIP airport services were scrapped in 2012 by then Taoiseach Enda Kenny. Five years later, they were reintroduced by Leo Varadkar. So far this year, they've cost almost ā¬100,000.
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Itās quite intriguing to see the leadership vacuum in Ireland being filled by Michael D Higgins. I think Irish people are crying out for a voice like this which has become increasingly absent from government:
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Westmeath County Council were ordered to release unredacted records relating to a failed land deal with TD Robert Troy. They had four weeks to appeal or else send @RightToKnowIE the documents. That deadline has expired. They haven't released the records.
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The one thing you can take from today is that when we @RightToKnowIE told you how broken the FOI system is, we were not exaggerating. It is treated with contempt by multiple public bodies who see it as a nuisance that has to be managed.
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A list of questions provided to Taoiseach Simon Harris ahead of his pre-election appearance on the 2 Johnnies podcast. "Who's harder to deal with, the kids or the Healy-Raes?". "Do you still do housework?". Department of the Taoiseach originally claimed no such document existed.
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You'd notice around Dublin that some of the pedestrian lights - changed to make the city slightly less motor-centric - have been switched back to car-mode. Very important that people sitting down in warm vehicles take back precedence over pedestrians & kids standing in the cold.
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You'd think a guy involved in the government's purchase of farmland in North Dublin for a "grossly excessive" ā¬30 million (which now has an estimated value of ā¬6.5 million) might sit this one out. But that presumably was a different Michael McDowell:.
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No offence but if you're saying that your town will suffer "infrastructural pressures" from housing thirteen extra people . you are talking a word I am too polite to use here:
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There are quite a few people in the Oireachtas, and especially the Seanad, who need to reflect and reflect hard on what they've been leaning into over the past couple of years (and some even more recently than that).
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I had to pay ā¬30 for the privilege of finding out this list of questions did in fact exist. That was the fee for internal review after being told there were no records (when it was quite evident there had to be). Neatly sums up how Freedom of Information works in Ireland.
A list of questions provided to Taoiseach Simon Harris ahead of his pre-election appearance on the 2 Johnnies podcast. "Who's harder to deal with, the kids or the Healy-Raes?". "Do you still do housework?". Department of the Taoiseach originally claimed no such document existed.
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Just in case you were under any illusions about the "Free" part of FOI in Ireland . I personally paid out ā¬1,280 in fees for internal reviews, and search & retrieval last year. In many of these cases, the decisions were overturned. Refund for being right? Not a hope!.
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Chairman of OPW promised FOIs on the ā¬335,000 bike shed and ā¬1.4 million security hut would be dealt with āexpeditiouslyā. Not one has been answered. Most are weeks overdue. We need to know if political pressure has been applied to delay all of them until after the election.
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The idea that TDs or Senators were laughing at & verbally abusing staff tasked with keeping them safe during the pandemic is quite simply sickening. Seems like voters should know who those people are so they can decide if they should retain their seats:.
Thread: An Oireachtas staff member had to change the route they walked to their office because a TD on their floor never wore a mask. āIt is especially difficult when the individual is an elected member of the DĆ”il and the prospect of confronting him ā¦ is an intimidating one.ā
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It's taken some level of genius to turn something that might have been good i.e. a bonus for frontline workers into something truly awful and now seems likely to cause division, bad feelings, bitterness, and resurrect the public sector/private sector divide again.
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Want to know how much former Taoisigh, Ministers, and Presidents are paid in pension by the Dept of Finance??? Tough, you can't anymore. That's the latest decision by the Information Commissioner overturning a decade of transparency around publication of political pensions:
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There just seems something deeply anti-democratic about having the two leaders from the confidence and supply coalition in a head to head debate while excluding the actual opposition parties weāve had these past years #TonightVMTV #GE20.
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If a new government minister feels things like this are going to be their priority, then this is what they can expect. So that we can see what really happened behind the tweet .
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I wonder why the Office of Public Works decided to release the ā¬1.5 million cost of the security hut at Leinster House. Email sent yesterday to follow up on an FOI that has not yet been answered.
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Ah, so the text messages have been deleted from the phone ā¦ I find I often have to do that to free up space on my Nokia 3310 so I can play Snake and not lose the high scores:
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Earlier today, I had to wear a mask while queueing in a shop . this reminds me of the time that somebody took a bus from Montgomery to the impoverished townships of South Africa, and ended up becoming a victim of Hitler. Now, elect me to the DƔil please so I can tell everybody.
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The most secretive public body in Ireland strikes again. The furtive IDA is spending tens of thousands of euros in taxpayer money because it does not want to be subject to even the most basic levels of transparency. This is the second High Court case they've taken against FOI.
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Terrific article from @Independent_ie. They should set a little reminder and make sure they rerun it - or something very similar to it - every six months in perpetuity:
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Just out of curiosity, who do you actually have good relations with?
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When I got this, I assumed it was a mistake. But no, the Dept of Finance is looking for ā¬400 in FOI fees to release a LIST of submissions prepared for their minister for Budget '25. Not the submissions themselves. A list of them. ā¬400!. Maybe they're saving for a bike shed.
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The lives saved in the second wave here are directly attributable to the intervention of NPHET, who at the time faced very strong criticism and significant attacks on their credibility. Itās important to take a pause and recognise how right they were:.
There's been a big difference between the Republic of Ireland and the UK for COVID-19 deaths for the first and second waves. COVID deaths in Ireland in the first wave followed a similar trajectory to the UK; since October they have diverged significantly.
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In the fullness of time, we'll almost certainly have some kind of public inquiry into how we managed Covid-19 here. We know there were times we did well; and times that we didn't. My own view is that the role of media will have to be a major part of that reckoning.
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Irish embassy credit cards were used to pay congestion charge fines in London, to buy Ā£2,100 worth of handmade chocolates, to pay an Airbnb bill for a Paris apartment of ā¬3,800, and for tens of thousands in hotel costs. Our latest set of records at:.
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Understandable people feel there was contrast in approach by gardaĆ. What needs to be factored in is one of the groups could be easily reasoned with. The other group was there for a circus, hoping for a flash point & that would be even more high risk
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Very mysterious why we are getting such an expensive govt with extra state car/drivers, an extra aide-de-camp, loads of extra special advisers & possibly an extra "super junior" salary given economic outlook. More than a touch of last days of Rome about it
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Note to scammers ringing people's homes saying they're from well-known telecom/broadband provider saying they want to help improve service. Everyone in Ireland knows this is a scam because these companies would never dream of ringing customers to see if they were satisfied ;-).
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My new improved beginner's guide to Freedom of Information. Now includes contact addresses for all government departments, county councils & various other public bodies. If you use the guide & find it helpful, please support me in keeping it up to date:
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This āblame the peopleā narrative was absolutely predictable & an inevitability. Remember these are the same āpeopleā who in November had brought Ireland to lowest Covid rate in EU and drove infection to near zero in May. The failure here was, categorically, one of leadership:.
@deniscoakley11 Oh, I am critical of them for not following NPHET advice. Don't want anybody to be any doubt about that. The only thing that matters at this stage is that they take responsibility for their decisions & don't try to shift blame back to the public come January.
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No they donāt. They have absolutely nothing in common with the stimulus plan. The answer was staring them in the face to reduce the payment to ā¬11k and pay it to all three. Cost neutral and wouldāve dealt with public anger:
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If you're not able to compete with a social protection benefit of ā¬350-per-week in (high cost of living) Ireland, then maybe it's the mirror you need to be looking at . and not accusing other people of preferring unemployment: .
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Asking for a friend: Iāve just made very public comments suggesting that four very identifiable people, all respected senior employees of the state, have basically fabricated the most horrendous things imaginable about their place of work. Should I be hiring a solicitor?.
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When I filed this Freedom of Information request on the Leinster House bike shelter back on 17 July, I don't think anybody could have anticipated the outcome. If you'd like to learn how to make your own requests for public records, find out how at:.
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What eventually happens on Capel St will tell us everything we need to know about Dublin City Council priorities. A long-neglected street in north city centre with buzz of open-air dining & drinking or right back to multiple lanes of fume-belching cars & vans going nowhere fast.
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The idea that a nice 15-minute stroll through a beautiful park to go for a few hours walk around Dublin Zoo is an insurmountable barrier to access tells you all you need to know when people say āwe must have better public transport before ever restricting carsā. Probably the ā¦.
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Would much prefer if the name of that incredibly professional garda was trending instead, though no doubt she just wanted to do her job without any attention. Very sad to see dedicated public servants getting abuse for putting themselves on front line for the rest of us.
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Two Fianna FĆ”il ministers signed off on a ā¬190,000 annual salary with company car for the chief executive of Horse Racing Ireland even though starting salary set for the role had been just ā¬137,356. Full set of records on the negotiations available at:.
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That "subversion of the constitution" line is one of the most ridiculous petulant statements I've ever heard. Like something you would hear from the sovereign Ireland brigade as they're being ejected from a licensed premises.
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Horrible divisive rubbish, punching down on people most of whom earn a fraction of what he does and don't have access to a vast pot of entirely unvouched expenses. If he has actual evidence of this, produce it. If not, apologise:
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Letter from Leo Varadkar to Attorney General saying it was time for Minister Paschal Donohoe to be put back in charge of ethics legislation and standards in public office. Both Varadkar and Donohoe have been investigated by SIPO in recent times in relation to leaking a
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The decision to reopen all but one of the gates in the Phoenix Park to car traffic is a backward step. Why we couldn't at least have left it until end of the summer, it's hard to know. We need to find out more about how this decision was arrived at. And so find out more we will:
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Well done ASTI. Good leadership and a decision made with public health as the absolute priority. What more can you say about the govt decision that led us here except that it is part of a desperately worrying pattern.
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Virtually every important story youāve read over past 20 years has started life in a newspaper. If we let real journalism die, it wonāt return. You can already see in your Facebook feed & WhatsApp account how the vacuum will be filled. Support a newspaper:
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One thing you can always say for NPHET is they put their own personal reputations on the line & speak in public. A lot more than can be said for these āsenior civil servantsā & āsources close to X ministerā who have lots of criticism to whisper but very few ideas #primetime.
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This is not correct. Salaries of secretaries general & CEOs of public bodies have never been treated the same as other civil servants. Even in public limited companies, there is transparency over pay & conditions of the boss.
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I used to come on Twitter because I found useful information, insight, and opinion plentiful. Now I mostly see a coarsening, a whole host of people acting in bad faith, witch-hunts, and pile-ons. Itās become a desperately depressing medium and worse again, we know where it leads.
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Should opinion or analysis pieces written by people in the lobbying or PR industry come with a declaration of whether one (or more) of their clients has an interest in the subject matter under discussion?. Seems like it would be a lot more transparent for readers to know that.
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One thing I'm particularly looking forward to on the weekend radio shows is a range of people who would find it hard to reboot a crashed computer giving us their freshly-minted thoughts on the HSE ransomware attack ;-).
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