Mahon Tribunal Berty Ahern Liar Liar
The Mahon Tribunal will describe Bertie Ahern’s evidence to it as a tissue of lies, half-truths and out right perjury. The three judge inquiry will dedicate a complete volume of its findings to Mr Ahern’s evidence, former Taoiseach Mr Ahern had told the Mahon Tribunal that a number of corrupt payments he had received were ‘gifts’ from ‘friends’, however, his explanations beggar belief.
Corruption and poor judgement has been the hallmark of Bertie Ahern’s political legacy with former Fianna Fail Ministers such as John O Donoghue having been exposed for spending hundreds of thousands of tax payers’ money on a lavish expense trail for he and his wife, including 900 Euro per night hotel rooms, while children were being turned away from Temple Street children’s Hospital due to lack of funding.
Bertie Ahern presented a tissue of lies and half-truths to the Mahon Tribunal in order to conceal the reality of a number of corrupt payments that he had received, in fine Fianna Fail tradition Bertie Ahern followed his mentor Charlie Haughey in benefiting from his political position. Indeed as far back as ten-years ago Bertie Ahern gave the green light to Fianna Fail bagmen to begin investing in property in the decaying Dorset Street/Eccles Street area of north Dublin (Mr Ahern’s constituency) as that would be the site for a new state of the art children’s hospital. Fianna Fail bagmen even sat on the non-executive board of directors of Temple Street Children’s Hospital so that lobbying could be done from within, some consultants even having construction work carried out on their own private properties by Fianna Fail bagmen.
Now the new coalition Government has been left with no choice but to build the Children’s hospital on the Eccles Street/Dorset Street site as so much money has already been spent on that Fianna Fail project, known locally as the ‘Bertie Pan’ as Bertie never got to build his Bertie Bowl (sports stadium). This area has been built up over the past ten-years by Fianna Fail bagmen with Café bars, Hotels and student apartments in anticipation of the new hospital and its anticipated thousands of workers. These Fianna Fail bagmen had insider knowledge of the hospital plans from the start and when former Health Minister, Mary Harney began to look at another location for the hospital she was firmly put in her place by her Fianna Fail masters.
Berty Ahern told the Mahon Tribunal that a payment of eight-thousand-pounds sterling that he had received while on a junket to Manchester in the 1990s was an auld dig out from friends as he was having ‘girl trouble’. In 1993 Berty said he got another auld dig out worth 22,500 Euros and this dig out had been organised by his solicitor Mr Gerry Brennan (RIP). However, the dig outs would not stop there and in the Beaumont House Pub another whip around took place and Berty pocketed a substantial sum for his personal use. Some of the people named by Berty Ahern as personal friend who gave him and auld dig out have denied his version of events and have stated that the monies they paid were ‘political’ donations that were paid to Berty following approaches from Fianna Fail henchmen.
One of the men named to the Mahon Tribunal by Berty Ahern, Padraic O’Connor managing director of NCB stockbrokers in 1993, has stated unequivocally that he was never a friend of Berty Ahern and that monies paid to Berty Ahern were as a result of an unorthodox approach from Fianna Fail bagman Des Richardson at that time.
Berty Ahern continues to live the high life being paid for after dinner speeches and enjoying days at the races with his celebrity off-springs, however, Berty is about to be fully exposed as one of the most corrupt politicians of the 20/21st Century in Ireland and will see Berty hang in the Hall of Fame with his mentor Charlie Haughey.
HEALTH CUTS “hurt the old, the sick and the handicapped”, said the infamous Fianna Fáil slogan in 1987. And now we’re facing another batch, which will result in the closure of up to 4,000 public nursing-home beds, the imposition of a €50 annual levy on medical cards and new charges for home help.
The Department of Health has been forensically examining every budget line for further cuts in an already ramshackle health service. Yet at the same time, it plans to forge ahead with the proposed children’s hospital on the Dublin Mater site at an acknowledged cost of €650 million, and probably a lot more.
While other extravagant, boom-era boondoggle schemes such as Metro North are being cancelled, the hospital is to proceed. Indeed, Minister for Health Dr James Reilly’s recent statement that enabling works would start next year and construction in 2013 blithely assumed An Bord Pleanála approval for this contentious project.
The Government’s decision to proceed is all the more surprising given that former hospital development board chairman Philip Lynch – forced to resign more than a year ago after he queried the suitability of the site – branded the location as “a political decision, a northside job. I’ve no doubt in the world about it”.
The decision was made with unseemly haste in June 2006 “behind closed doors and signed off as government policy by the cabinet without any participation from the public, child health professionals or our elected representatives”, as Dr Roisín Healy, of the New Children’s Hospital Alliance, told An Bord Pleanála’s recent oral hearing.
The alliance opposes the Mater site on the grounds of patient care, inadequate access, physical layout and lack of space for expansion. And looking at the plans for this incredible hulk, it is hard not to conclude that the Mater must be the wrong site, especially given its sensitive location in Dublin’s northside Georgian core.
“Should an infant require an intensive care bed after a complex surgical procedure in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, they would be transferred in their incubator to the new world-class paediatric intensive-care unit [ICU] across the corridor from the theatre suite,” says Dr Catherine Nix, an anaesthetics registrar at the hospital.
The same journey in the proposed hospital would involve at least two trips in one of its 25 lifts “because the emergency department will be on level zero, radiology on level one, the [operating] theatres on level three, the ICU on level four and the five ward levels are on levels 10 to 14 respectively”, she says.
This is obviously not ideal.
Yet the new hospital would not be a stand-alone facility. Even after it was fully operational, a third of all day patients, outpatients and accident-and-emergency cases would be dealt with at Tallaght hospital, in a facility yet to be built. And up to 300 of Tallaght’s patients a month would be transferred to the Mater by ambulance.
“We have potentially produced a service configuration that will have patients from outside Dublin with complex diseases requiring tertiary care having to access the city centre for services, while Dublin patients with less complex secondary-care needs will be travelling to the periphery of the city,” said retired paediatrician Dr Finn Breathnach.
This amounts to bilocation, even if the much-vaunted “co-location” with a major adult teaching hospital is achieved. But St James’s Hospital would also have fulfilled this requirement. And because its site is four times larger than the Mater, there would also be room for lateral expansion, which the children’s hospital in Eccles Street will not have.
That’s because a new maternity hospital (to replace the Rotunda) is planned right next door to it – in pursuit of the highly idealised “trilocation” of children’s, maternity and adult services. Quite what would happen then to the Rotunda, which has provided an unbroken service to mothers and babies since 1745, is unclear.
Building upwards would be the only option for the Mater children’s hospital, adding more floors to an already tall – 16 storeys at nearly 74m (240ft) – thereby increasing the reliance on lifts. The flagship Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, which opened in June 2009, is stretched to deal with its waiting lists.
Alternatives simply haven’t been examined, such as an affordable (€110 million) plan to expand Our Lady’s in Crumlin, where clinical space has been increased by 46 per cent over the past decade, according to Dr Breathnach. And the fate of this fine children’s hospital – the third largest in these islands – is also an open question.
Excavating the four-level basement car park for the new hospital in Eccles Street would require constant movements of trucks to shift spoil off the site. Moreover, with Metro North not proceeding, most of those availing of its services will arrive by car on congested city streets.
All of these issues are additional to the principal argument against the project – its enormous scale relative to the surrounding area and the Dublin skyline. Just because €31 million has already been racked up should not mean that it cannot be cancelled – at least €150 million was spent on Metro North before it was “deferred”.
Surely the children’s hospital has not escaped scrutiny by the EU-ECB-IMF troika? If our paymasters are content with it going ahead, they are complicitly approving the swingeing health cuts now being planned.
An Bord Pleanála would be doing the old, the sick and the disabled – not to mention taxpayers – a big favour by refusing permission.
