As the Irish economic crisis enters a new phase, bodies such as the LRC are being put under increased pressure. The mounting contradiction of forcing ordinary working and unemployed people to cover the extraordinary debts accumulated by the wealthy is continuing to cause crisis after crisis for the government. And the LRC has been key to greasing the wheels of this scandalous expropriation.

Even more insidiously, many of the members of the Commission play multiple roles, including as parties to high-profile disputes. The actions of the LRC then take on a much more political complexion and it is worth looking more closely at exactly who is on the Commission and how they got there.

The inescapable fact is that the Labour Relations Commission consists of  Fianna Fáil hacks, failed union and government officials seeing out their golden years, employer hawks, old hands at the partnership game, capped by a Chair with links to child labour and sweatshops.

The Labour Relations Commission

At ground level the Employment Rights Officers of the LRC do a reasonably good job in ensuring employment legislation (such as it is) is enforced. The LRC is also tasked with heading off industrial conflict through negotiation and conciliation. When the going gets rough and there is a threat of industrial action, cue Kieran Mulvey, CEO of the LRC, to hold talks and try to defuse the situation.

In times of political and economic instability bodies such as the LRC play a critical role not only through their day-to-day work, but also at an executive level. In particular, the following take on an added significance:

• public intervention in high profile cases
• non-intervention in high profile cases
• decisions on resource allocation within the Commission
• issuing press statements
• interviews, speeches etc

Here the views of Mulvey and the whole Commission become much more important. For example, when the former government tore up all agreements with the public sector unions in 2009, the LRC could have intervened in a way that would have made it impossible for the government to continue in the manner in which it did.

ICTU Huffing and Puffing

Rather we had the LRC “intervene” to break down the trade unions’ resistance. The outcome of this LRC “intervention” was that the unions were split: public sector versus private sector, management/cronies unions versus frontline workers, teachers versus everyone else, third level TUI members versus second level TUI members, IFUT versus the rest.

The final stage of this unwholesome spectacle was when the government and the Teachers’ Union of Ireland failed to agree a document for the implementation of the Croke Park deal to be put to union members.

In steps the LRC, offering a document so odious that the TUI went through the charade of putting to a vote a document they didn’t agree with. This allowed union General Secretary Peter McMenamin to simultaneously distance himself from and promulgate the deal. The combination of public threats of redundancies and a split union executive brow-beat the union membership into acceptance.

In all of this, the LRC acted as the frontline assault on the demonstrably weak union leadership. In contrast, one can consider the refusal of the LRC to intervene in the attacks on the Irish Locomotive Drivers Association a decade ago, as recounted in Brendan Ogle’s book “Off the Rails“. In this case, the ILDA were unhappy with social partnership and the union shenanigans around vote rigging, but the  LRC certainly felt no compunction to intervene, despite repeated requests.

The Commission

The LRC consists of

• Ms Breege O’Donoghue (Chair) – business executive
• Kieran Mulvey (CEO)
• Peter McLoone – trade union, IMPACT
• Fergus Whelan – trade union, ICTU
• Brendan McGinty – employers body IBEC
• Gerard Barry – former HSE exectutive
• John Hennesy – multinational CEO
• Iarla Duffy – small business owner.

From the start the Commission is unbalanced: unions are only represented by  two (McLoone and Whelan) or three if you count Mulvey, while employers are represented by five: McGinty, Barry, Hennessy, Duffy and the Chair. On closer examination what we have is a mix of Fianna Fáilers, failed union officials and the most right-wing business interests the country can scrape up.

To make matters worse, the Chair is managing director of a company that has been shown on a number of recent occasions to exploit sweatshop and child labour around the world. Let’s have a look at each one of them in turn.

Kieran Mulvey

Hand-Wringer-in-Chief

In certain company, Mulvey likes to trumpet his trade union background, having been a former General Secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland and Irish Federation of University Teachers. This allows him to masquerade as the workers friend while he pursues the government’s agenda.

As one of the main brokers of the Croke Park deal, he skillfully ensured that the union side was fatally split into its usual warring factions, whittling down resistance to a few isolated pockets. Then he feels he can pop up in the media chastising public sector workers, fret about avoiding “strikes and demonstrations” at all costs, continually trying to “breathe life into the social partnership process“. And, of course, for public consumption, there’s the token hand-wringing about Anglo pay increases.

What he trumpets less is that in 1989 he sought a nomination for Fianna Fáil in the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown constituency. Indeed, in his role in the LRC he has always been the recipient of high praise from FF headquarters.

To be fair to Mulvey, he could well share ICTU President David Begg’s view that the Irish do not accept social democracy, and that strikes and demonstrations will only bring the fascists out onto the streets in numbers.  Perhaps as a member of the left-wing of  the Irish right-wing, like his old buddy Begg, he comes into contact with fascists more frequently than most, and such fears are well-founded. Or perhaps it’s just self-serving nonsense to cover their compromised position and lack of vision.

Not that we should feel too  sorry for the likes of Begg and Mulvey. Over the years, both have managed to feather their political nests with membership on a number of boards, most recently for Mulvey as Chair of the Irish Sports Council. He has recently made recent pronouncements about reforming the industrial relations apparatus, perhaps a hint that he is jumping ship into retirement and more of these type of appointments.

Peter McLoone

Failed Union Leader

Peter McLoone is the former general secretary of the trade union IMPACT, who also chaired the Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. This latter body played a vital, if tawdry, role in the collapse of the trade unions in the public sector following the financial crisis of 2008.

In his role as chief union negotiator of the Croke Park Agreement, he essentially delivered the terms of surrender for the public sector unions and subsequently ensured that the terms were accepted by his own side. How is it possible for someone like McLoone to both sit on the Commission and take such an active role in an on-going dispute being mediated by the LRC?

Despite his venerable status in what one must admit is not the most militant of unions, McLoone still took some heat, including the tabling of a motion of no confidence at a Special Congress. The fact that he was chair of Fás at the time of the recent scandals hasn’t helped his public image either.

His successor at IMPACT, Shay Cody has recently had a road-to-Damascus conversion about McLoone’s era of social partnership, admitting “Over time, we became too deeply embedded in the system. We ended up endorsing Government policies that we had no influence on or . . . understanding of.” Needless to say, given the one-trick nature of trade union ponies, Cody’s solution is more social partnership.

In any event, McLoone’s retirement has taken him somewhat out of the limelight and he has now been put out to grass on bodies such as the LRC.

Fergus Whelan

Playing Robin to McLoone’s Batman on the LRC is the Industrial Officer – Private Sector for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Fergus Whelan. Also a key figure in the partnership days of the trade unions he sat on the Council of the National Centre for Partnership and Performance. Thus he was at the ideological driving seat of the brave new world of partnership.

As has been discussed in an earlier post, this malaise led to modest cost-of-living increases for ordinary workers at a time of rampant inflation, while lining the pockets of union officials and massaging the inflated egos of union bosses. Of course, for mid-level union officials the bounty wasn’t usually quite so colossal as the €4 million of the SIPTU skills scandal, but partnership certainly paved the way for many of them onto state boards.

Whelan has been on a few boards down the years, and is now on the Pensions Board, which at  €8,400 a year is not exactly reeling it in. Presumably the looting of the Irish Pensions Reserve Fund was beyond the remit of such a poorly remunerated board.

Signing the cheques in the SIPTU Scandal

Gerard Barry

Another  being put out to pasture on the LRC is Gerard Barry, former head of the Health Services Executive Employers’ Agency. As the government side of partnership, Barry was heavily involved in the HSE National Partnership Forum. Included on the union side of that quango was Matt Merrigan and Jack Kelly.

These two SIPTU officials were the centre of the SIPTU scandal in which the HSE paid over €4 million into their bank account to be splurged on foreign trips to exotic locations for selected union and government officials (and their wives). The HSE was pilloried in the Public Accounts Committee for disgorging such a large amount of money without proper controls. And who exactly signed off on this money? Gerard Barry.

Barry’s retirement afforded the HSE the opportunity to abolish the Employers Agency and perhaps his replacement Sean Mcrath in vowing “to ignore the well-trodden but laborious path to the Labour Court and the Labour Relations Commission” is keen to avoid meeting his predecessor in his role as Commission member.

Brendan McGinty

IBEC hatchet-man

Known to any regular news watcher, Brendan McGinty is the director of industrial relations of the employers’ body IBEC. Not surprisingly he has an aggressive stance towards low-paid workers, opposing the reversal of the minimum wage cut, counselling the government to ignore the Joint Labour Committee Review of wage-setting mechanisms, railing against mandatory union recognition and condemning anyone even threatening strike action.

Despite being  a member of the Commission, McGinty obviously has an a la carte view of the state’s industrial relations mechanisms – counselling engagement with the LRC on the one hand and chatising the JLC on the other. It is also highly problematic that he actively and publicly attacks specific workers, for example at Aer Lingus, at a time when the Commission on which he sits is actively involved in these disputes.

But the rightwing press should be careful about heaping praise on McGinty for his “toughness” – equated these days with the ability to unflinchingly inflict pain on others. After all, he also played his part in the Partnership fiasco through his membership of the National Centre for Partnership and Performance. Given that they’re both on the LRC and the NCPP, McGinty and ICTU’s Fergus Whelan must have had plenty of time to iron out any differences they might have.

John Hennessy

Wanna buy a phone?

Managing Director for Ericsson Ireland, Hennesy has been climbing the greasy pole of political appointments of late. Appointed to the LRC by Fianna Fáil Minister for Labour Affairs, Dara Calleary, Fianna Fáil also recently landed him the Chair of the Higher Education Authority. While he knows nothing of education, he immediately set off on an orgy of self-publicity by attacking the liberal arts for holding their nose at business and then proceeded to hold his nose at the very notion of tenure.

Such grand-standing may have earned him the fawning regard of Irish Times journalist Louise Holden, but wasn’t generally well-received. Perhaps Holden is trying to ingratiate her way into the consultancy game, thus following in the footsteps of John Walshe of the Irish Independent. Walshe is now a well-paid consultant to Minister of Education, Ruairi Quinn, and Hennessy was seen hanging off the Minister’s shoulder at a recent Dublin press conference. Giving Holden the benefit of the doubt, we can probably put it down to the generally poor quality of Irish journalism.

Iarla Duffy

Fianna Fail hack

Iarla Duffy was appointed to the LRC in 2009 by Fianna Fáil Minister for Labour Affairs, Dara Calleary. In Killinaskully-like manner,  Duffy, a businessman from Castlebar Co. Mayo, operated a car rental business at Knock Airport. He now seems to spend his time populating the boards of various Mayo-based interests. Needless to say this is exactly Dara Calleary’s constituency.

Why he was chosen or even wants to be on the LRC is a matter of conjecture. Given the distance between Castlebar and Dublin and the mileage being paid for travel, one would hope that his contribution to the LRC is rather substantial. Also with the controversy surrounding mileage (ask former Senator Ivor Callelly or WIT President Kieran Byrne) it is dangerous today to be an RPM (relentless pursuer of mileage).

Matters become somewhat clearer when it is noted that Duffy ran twice for Fianna Fáil in Mayo, once in 1998 and once in 2004, failing to get elected on both occasions. In fact, even the redoubtable Beverly Cooper Flynn, long broken away from the official Fianna Fail fold, warmly welcomed his appointment. Could Duffy actually heal the internal wounds of Fianna Fáil in Castlebar? Who cares.

Breege O’Donoghue

Frilly out front, sweatshop round the back

And then we come to the Chair, one of the secretive ‘gang of four’ who run the €2bn clothes retailer Primark – trading in Ireland as Penny’s. Far from the goings-on in sweatshops, Breege O’Donoghue is concerned with aggressively expanding into Spain by selling clothes that are, eh, cheaper than their competitors.

O’Donoghue, head of PR, likes to put a homely face on the company, blubbering that “Family values are very important.” Most of the neighbours at her swanky Dublin 4 mansion probably don’t shop in Penny’s – despite the Sligo-family-business routine. She has always been smiled upon by Fianna Fáil, for example, being appointed to the Task Force on Public Sector Reform.

In 2006 Primark was the subject of controversy over the use of sweat-shop labour in such far-away places as India and Bangladesh. Subcontractors were fired, ethical trading initiatives devised and still in 2008 undercover BBC reporters exposed child labour in three of India’s garment factories sub-contracted by Primark.

To make matters worse, in 2009 another UK supplier was forced to remove its branding from Primark stores following a journalists investigation into the use of illegal immigrants paid half the minimum wage.

While she may well be a fine person, that the Director of a company exposed  for sweatshop and child labour should Chair the primary body overseeing Irish labour issues is a travesty and it is only tolerated because it is not widely enough appreciated.

Conclusion

Protester with Breege O'Donoghue mask

The inescapable fact is that the Labour Relations Commission, a key part of “the most sophisticated industrial relations machinery in the world”, consists of Fianna Fáil hacks, failed union and government officials seeing out their golden years, employer hawks, old hands at the partnership game, capped by a Chair with links to child labour and sweatshops.

We can always hope that this noxious blend of the malign and the ineffectual veers more towards the latter than the former. The problems it exposes in the unions, the government and the employers are deep and difficult to address. In a later post we will take up the perennial question: what is to be done?

The left wing of the right wing wrings its hands

“These are scary times.” Thus blogged Prof. Ferdinand von Prondzynski just over a year ago during his tenure as President of DCU. And while the good professor has since moved on to pastures hopefully greener (as Vice-Chancellor of Robert Gordon University in Scotland), the tumultuous state into which Irish third level education was then descending has, if anything, become ever more tumultuous.

Aside from the continuing furore over academic standards which had originally gotten FvP into a flap, the sector has since had to deal with a series of rolling crises, none of which have found any resolution. In this post we document these eruptions, the internal power struggles gripping the sector and the corporate executive culture that has left the upper echelons bare-arsed in a chill political wind.

Putting this together with the scandals that have rocked the sector and the unrelenting pillorying by the likes of Independent News and Media, the medium term effects for the country’s education system will be dire. The seamless policy transition from FF/Green to FG/Labour and the continued spineless response of the representatives  of the academic staff will ensure:

• dramatically increased costs for students
• sharply declining educational standards
• no new courses offered for years to come
• annihilation of third level lecturing as a viable career choice
• abolition of tenure
• significant erosion of academic freedom

The common denominator in these developments has been a corporate takeover of third level education. This has had a corrosive effect: laying waste to educational standards, feeding excesses in the upper echelons, misdirecting funding, lowering the standing of education in society and undermining the educational ethos within the institutions. We will attempt to draw out these aspects of what is an on-going fiasco in an important strand in Irish society.

Corporate Culture Condemned

On May 5th of 2009, an opinion piece in the Irish Times entitled “Grey philistines taking over our universities” by Prof. Tom Garvin sent shock waves through education circles. Not only was this an incendiary piece attacking the “medics masquerading as businessmen and practitioners of non-subjects such as ‘management’ and ‘teaching and learning’” who had gained control of Irish universities, but it was penned by a highly regarded political scientist who knew exactly what he was talking about.

And who could argue with him? The list of the 100 best-paid in Irish education makes for sober reading. Vice presidents pulling down a tidy quarter of a million euro plus expenses, bureaucrats packing the top levels of pay, it is hard to spot a true academic in the list. Of course, the salaries have gone down from previous years and now, for example, UCD’s Vice-President for Research Des Fitzgerald has to make do with €263,602, down from €409,000 in 2009. Poor lamb.

And then there’s the lifestyle that has to be maintained by these self-styled CEO’s. NUI Galway racked up €108,000 of tax-payers money on private jets. While this, along with a further €77,000 of “inappropriate expenses”, was billed to Science Foundation Ireland for research, when it came out, SFI were having none of it and demanded the money back. The presence of current NUIG President Jim Browne and then-President Iognaid O’Muircheartaigh on one of the flights only added to the unsavoriness of the whole affair.

Because we're worth it

Not to be outdone, UCD’s President Hugh Brady’s taste for five-star accommodation, lavish dinners in exclusive restaurants, golf at the K Club and business class flights around the world set the tax-payer back in excess of €100,000. Meantime Don Barry, UL’s President, felt it necessary to use €1.1 million of university money to build an extravagant residence for himself, while UCC President Michael Murphy’s numerous trips abroad netted him €75,000 in tax-free expenses.

To cap it all off, the Irish Universities Association, a talking shop for the seven Presidents which has no statutory authority, had its budget increased from €3 million to €5 million. What precisely the IUA actually does with all of this money is a mystery and will remain so, since, as a private organisation (albeit funded by the taxpayer), it is exempt from Freedom of Information requests that might cast some light on its workings.

Worth every million

The Institutes of Technology Get in on the Act

Meanwhile, the IoT’s Presidents suffer from similar delusions of adequacy. At Waterford IT, the president “Professor” (despite there being no such grade within the IoT’s) Kieran Byrne found himself in hot water when, on foot of a local TUI branch Freedom of Information request, it transpired he had seen fit to spend €157,050 on his office and boardroom in a brand new building.

Subsequent poking around led to the revelations of an orgy of €6.7 million spending, including €141,517 on taxis. His response, that he had actually saved the college money since mileage rates would have been even more expensive, only generated further outrage.

The WIT-less "Professor"

The timing couldn’t have been worse for the self-styled professor, as his reappointment was just about to be ratified by the institute’s governing body – a formality under normal circumstances. With pressure mounting from all sides, the board got cold feet and decided to look elsewhere for a new president. Current indications are that the ever-bullish Byrne may seek redress in the courts and so this sordid story may be far from over.

Caviar for them, crumbs for us

With all of this extravagance, one would be forgiven  for thinking that the third level sector is weathering the state’s current financial difficulties. Nothing could be further from the truth. With combined accumulated debts of €30 million, Irish Universities are floundering. The institutes of technology are in a similar situation. What’s more, as Irish universities have plunged in recent world rankings and no IT has managed to attain the vaunted university status, all excuses for this profligate CEO behaviour have evaporated.

Faced with sharply contracting finances in the face of rapidly expanding demand, the various presidents have found themselves incapable of doing anything other than drag the sector further into disrepute. Promoted through a system that favours the insider, times have now changed and the education CEO’s have had to watch powerless as a succession of public revelations have caught them off-side time and time again.

UCD President Hugh Brady’s mauling at the Public Accounts Committee is one of the most striking examples of how times have changed. Here we have the doyen of the education CEOs, the “Michael O’Leary of Irish education”, being savaged in public by his political overlords. Tepid interventions by some of the other presidents present did nothing to disperse the fire.

Ned Costello: Get this guy out of here before he shoots us all in the foot

Pressed to say how many hours university lecturers actually teach, the best that IUA honcho Ned Costello could muster was to attack the IoT’s, claiming that the 18 hours lecturing per week required there– three times that in the universities – has become a floor to which “people work down”. Such nonsense only served to mire proceedings in deeper doo-doo.

Also in the firing line was UL’s Don Barry, called upon to explain how his university could be paying no less than three presidents salaries at the same time. Initially, trying to cover up who the beneficiaries of such largesse were by referring to them as persons A, B and C, Barry was forced under fire to admit “I am C”. His muttered aside about returning to Limerick “if I survive this meeting” speaks volumes about the unusual pressure the presidents were being put under.

In all of this, the presidents’ nemesis has emerged in the form of the Higher Education Authority’s Tom Boland. A career bureaucrat, he is famous in the sector for insisting that during meetings he always has a line of sight with a clock as he counts down the minutes until he can get out the door. His spat with Brady centred on “illegal” payments to senior staff, to the tune of €1.6 million, made without HEA approval. As Brady disputed the HEA’s contention that it never sanctioned these payments, Boland retorted “What part of ‘no’, does UCD not understand?” eliciting gasps from those present at the PAC.

The Higher Eejits Authority

Over the last decade the HEA has accumulated power on a grand scale, taking over numerous functions formerly carried out by the Department of Education. Boland’s two big sticks are the Employment Control Framework and the full-cost workload model being applied to third level. The former has halted all hiring in the public service in general, while the latter is the typical managerial hocus-pocus trying to compare education to pressing number plates.

Would you buy a phone from this man?

Just to remove any doubt that the government has a clue about higher education, the appointment of John Hennessy, the former chairman of Ericsson (Ireland), as chair of the HEA was a perfect choice. Here is someone with little or no understanding of higher education, steeped in the corporate mindset, launched into the driving seat of government control on the largely autonomous system that is third level education.

Of course, rather than take issue with the excesses of the university CEO’s and their corporate managerialism, with which he no doubt identifies, Hennessy took no time to launch a blistering attack on the humanities, chastising academics who, as he saw it, “hold their nose” at the idea of working with industry. If he had a whit of sense he might have asked himself what it is that Ireland has a huge international reputation for. The answer is not the world-class scientists we produce, of which there are precious few, but rather  our writers, poets and artists, whether they hold their noses or not.

But no, continuing with his tirade a short while later, we had the unedifying spectacle of the chair of the HEA attacking the very notion of tenure. Some crumbs of comfort were afforded the humanities when he went on to say that students should experience arts and humanities subjects in their first year of college. After that, presumably, they can focus on the important things in life, such as turning a buck for multinational telecoms companies.

Strategies for Failure

The Employment Control Framework is the classic strategy of failure for those in charge who have no idea what they oversee. Rather than identify and prioritize what it is that is being done best, by halting all hiring and using retirement as a way to reduce numbers, the ECF is an entirely random, and hence chaotic, depletion of human resources.

The results are predictable. The loss of key personnel goes unaddressed and so the quality of service declines. Moreover, faced with acute shortages, the institutions have returned to huge dependence on part-time labour to meet legal obligations, further eroding control on quality or resource allocation.

This situation is exacerbated by part-time legislation which means that after a fourth year an employee is entitled to a contract of indefinite duration. Rather than give tenure by this back door method, institutions have adopted a policy of churning part-time employees, a highly dubious strategy that will land them in the labour court.

Another strategy to get around the ECF has been to introduce fixed term contracts for lecturers – 9 month, 1 year, 2 year, 7 year – you name it. Not only is this of dubious legality, it is raising hackles across the sector as it is undermining the very notion of tenure. Only time will tell what the ultimate results are from these disastrous policies, but it is clear that quality of education is not even getting a look in.

Standards? What Standards?

And quality of education, or more precisely, its decline, is a very real concern. As has now been well-documented, even before the financial crisis, the Irish education system at both second and third level has seen a dramatic lowering of standards.

During 1994-2010, a time of massive expansion, institutions completely failed to maintain academic standards. The result has been weaker and weaker students entering the system and leaving with higher and higher awards. For example, during this period the Irish educational system saw a marked increase in the number of higher awards at both second and third level

• 2nd Level: the ten most popular subjects, at higher level the rate of A grades increased by an average of 144% and B grades by 52%
•  IoTs: for Honours Degrees there was a 52% increase in the rate of first class award
• Universities: the proportion of first class degrees increased by over 75%

These dramatic changes have been caused by a multiplicity of factors. Institutions, led by their corporate CEO’s, have prioritized growth over standards, regulatory bodies have been completely captured by the bodies they were supposed to regulate and lecturers have been put under intolerable pressure to push students through the system regardless of standards.

A large part of this has been driven under the “the student is the customer” rubric, where the corporate consumer model is being imposed on the educational sector. The rejoinder that “the customer is always right” spells the death of any chance of maintaining academic standards.

Once again, Tom Garvin’s Irish Times piece is extremely prescient: non-subjects such as “teaching and learning” have indeed been embraced by the CEO’s as the way forward. This has led to the evisceration of technical content from many courses, a nod-them-through culture around assessments and, ultimately, the production of thousands of worthless qualifications.

It is ironic, then, that it was complaints about the poor quality of graduates from Irish corporations that triggered the spasm of bad press in March 2009 that so upset Baron Prondzynski. After all, was it not FvP himself who poo-pooed the very notion of declining standards a year earlier, claiming “If there were serious drops in standards at university level, we would be hearing from employers about the declining standards of graduates.” That chicken certainly came home to roost with a vengeance.

The financial crisis has exacerbated this already deplorable situation. Harried lecturers are being forced to take on more and more teaching, reducing their ability to maintain any kind of standards. It has also brought almost all course development to a halt. The third level sector now faces a decade of curricular stagnation as resources are diverted towards a 15% increase in student numbers coupled to a 6% decrease in staffing.

Increased dependence on non-permanent workers and attacks on tenure are also undermining the professionalism required to stand up to institutional pressures to inflate grades. In addition, the HEA has just introduced plans to fine institutions for every student that drops out, putting yet more pressure on them to drag under-performing students through the system.

To Cheat or not to Cheat?

To make matters even worse, today’s students have a range of options to force colleges to increase their award levels. First up are the student evaluations being introduced under the corporate modernisation agenda – proven internationally to inflate grades. Then there are the student appeals system and complaints procedure, all of which serve to force lecturers to be more lenient on their “customers”. The IT Tralee, Cork IT and GMIT scandals discussed below are cases where these mechanisms were successfully exploited.

Further along the scale of dubiousness are the for-profit online companies that write students assignments for them. These are now flooding the Irish market, offering to write assignments, projects, even theses, for students willing to cough up the money. Take writemyassignments.com, a Wicklow-based company set up by graduates from that paragon of virtue, the Smurfit School of  Business. They offer assignments tailored to dozens of named courses in Irish institutions, including UCD, TCD, NUI Maynooth and a number of IoT’s, and judging by their facebook page, business is booming.

Or how about the free online document corrupter – a student uploads an unfinished word document of some assignment they have yet to turn in, and this tool modifies it so that it cannot be opened. The student then sends the corrupted file to the lecturer in order to buy themselves some extra time. Ingenious!

Government Policy on the Ropes

What of government policy in all of this mess? To describe it as chaotic would be charitable. Over successive governments, policy has been directed almost entirely by political expediency. Minister of Education and Science, Mary Coughlan, infamous for confusing Einstein’s theory of relativity with Darwin’s theory of evolution at a smart economy launch, is a case in point.

Should have read "The Smart Economy for Dummies"

“Demoted” from Tanaiste to Minister of Education and Science, Coughlan never got a grip on what it was she was supposed to be doing. She set about looking after her own political patch in a frantic effort to save her seat in Donegal. In the face of disastrous national financial circumstances she managed to lavish €8 million on a dubious land deal for her constituency institution, Letterkenny IT. The fact that former Fianna Fail Councillor Terry McEniff and former town council clerk Peter Coyle owned some of the land only added to the sleaze factor.

And then, while the Vocational Education Committees were being amalgamated across the country in a bid to slash costs, what was the only one not amalgamated? Donegal VEC. Or when the Institutes of Technology were being forced to announce mergers, which was the only one that stayed outside the fold? Letterkenny IT. Instead, they would be developing “links” to MaGee Campus of the University of Ulster in Derry. Not only would this exempt the institute from merger-mania, but they could soak up any cross-border funding on offer.

Ultimately all of this did her no good as she was swept out of the Dail at the last election. However, at a time of deep crisis in education, never has government policy been so driven by the peccadilloes of a failed politician. Little wonder then that Coughlan was given a less-than-rapturous reception at the TUI conference in Ennis last year. If justice had been done, “jostling” would have been the least of her worries.

It takes three to quango

Bad and all as Coughlan was, Government policy has been equally bad no matter who it is in charge. Take for example the case of the Higher Education and Training Awards Council. Tasked with overseeing standards in the IoT’s and private colleges, it has a miserable track record, producing voluminous documents on the subject while being totally incapable to even police, let alone enforce, its guidelines.

HETAC has acted like a fire-fighter who turns up hours after the building has burnt down. Whether it’s the scandal at Cork IT where 200 students with marks as low as 9% had their results set aside, or  the scandal of the failing students at IT Tralee who were allowed to continue regardless, or the scandal of the plagiarizing students in Galway-Mayo IT who were allowed to graduate, HETAC  has been relegated to sifting through the charred remains. Given its composition of the usual triumvirate of union, business and bureaucratic hacks, perhaps this is not surprising.

And yet, government policy towards HETAC has been confused, to say the least. It has been abolished no less than three times in as many years. First, it was announced by Brian Lenihan in October 2008 that it was to be abolished and replaced. Nothing happened until March 2010 when the grade inflation furore led Minister for Education Batt O’Keefe to announce, once again, that it was to be abolished. Finally, we have the FG/Labour Programme for Government announcing for a third time that it is to be abolished. To date, nothing has happened, and HETAC staggers along in a zombie-like state of semi-existence.

HETAC: Now you see us, now you see us,...er... now you see us

Or take the National University of Ireland. This overarching structure for five of the universities has been in existence since the foundation of the state. In a shock announcement in January 2010 , Minister of Education Batt O’Keefe declared that the NUI was to be abolished. What possible savings this could generate, or what NUI would be replaced by, was anyone’s guess. But lo-and-behold, within 15 months, it was announced that the NUI was not to be abolished after all.

Even when it comes to research, the underpinning of the much-touted “smart economy”, government policy has been slapdash. The principal agency for science research funding, SFI, has been left without a Director General for almost a year. Moreover, the governments’ move to impose paycuts on European funded Marie-Curie Fellowship holders has jeopardized €10 million of EU funding.

Merger-Mania Sweeps the Institutes of Technology

And then there is the unseemly scramble to merge the 13 IoT’s in some shape or form. Conventional wisdom is that there are just too many of them spread around the country – wisdom that was echoed in the Hunt Report which was supposed to set out a national strategic for higher education. What a merger might actually mean, or what savings would be generated is anyone’s guess. But merge they must.

Back in 2008, Dundalk IT jumped the gun and tried to sneak under DCU’s wing, but DCU got cold feet and nothing came of it. At the time, DCU had to resist fierce pressure from Minister Dermot Ahern (in whose constituency Dk IT resides) who was trying to stick one in the eye of cabinet colleague Martin Cullen who was agitating for Waterford IT to be made a university.

To be fair to FvP, the DCU President developed a considerable track record of resisting pressure from political hacks trying to get into the education racket. At the same time as the Dundalk overtures, he was also resisting fierce pressure to accredit the Gaiety School of Acting, whose Director, Patrick Sutton, was Bertie Ahern’s speech coach and “mate”.

But now, things are different. With the geographic spread (from Letterkenny to Cork to Dundalk), outside of Dublin it’s anybody’s guess as to who should be merging with who. This has thrown the sector into turmoil as allegiances are being formed and sundered at a rate of knots. The magic number of full-time students is 10,000, above which the “merged” institutions are promised to be redesignated as Technological Universities.

Waterford IT, still smarting that it is not a university already, is in a bit of a bind.   Just under the 10,000 threshold, it needs a small institute to merge with. Geographically, Carlow IT is closest, but there is so much bad blood between the managements at these institutions that this is a non-runner. Next closest is Cork IT, but since this is of comparable size, battles over resources in a future merged institution would be pretty ugly.

Enter IT Tralee into the picture. While merging with Cork IT might make sense, somehow the triumvirate of Tralee, Waterford and Cork has emerged as the merger of choice of the IT presidents. What this means for students, staff or courses at these institutes is anyone’s guess.

Limerick IT, an obvious choice to merge with Tralee given the long-developed links through the government-funded Shannon Consortium, was therefore left hanging out to dry. Not to worry, sure didn’t LIT’s Registrar, Ruaidhrí Neavyn, move on to be president of Carlow IT! Problem solved: we have the Trans-Ireland Higher Education Alliance of Limerick IT/Tipperary Institute/Carlow IT, a franken-merger if ever there were one!

But then, in the middle of all of the jostling, the IT Tralee President Michael Carmody announced that he was jumping ship – to take up the presidency of rival Galway-Mayo IT! This sudden move was precipitated by the unexpected retirement of Marion Coy – president of GMIT and a permanent fixture of education quangos for the last decade, including the one that drew up the Hunt Report. The move caused consternation in Tralee, with concerns expressed over both the timing and implications.

Meanwhile, the much touted move of DIT, costing €1.5 billion, to Grangegorman appears to have been long-fingered, complicated by the proposed merger with Dun Laoghaire IADT, Tallaght IT and Blanchardstown IT. While the move is still set to go ahead, doubts remain.

Looking at the IoT presidents populating the ranks of the top 100 salaries in education, one must ask the question: are they really being paid upwards of €150,000 to run around like headless chickens?

Sold Out High and Low

Amidst all of this turmoil, what of the staff representatives organisations? In the universities this is the Irish Federation of University Teachers and SIPTU, while in the IoT’s it is the Teachers’ Union of Ireland. Here the story is not much different from  the rest of the public sector: weak leadership talking tough but capitulating time after time, officials deeply compromised by years of “partnership” and rear guard actions against militant activists attempting to rally members opposed to pension cuts, pay-cuts and savage attacks on terms and conditions of employment.

Any other government threats you'd like to pass on to your members, Peter?

In the TUI, the general secretary, Peter McMenamin, having surrounded himself on the national executive with sycophants and cowards, is staggering to retirement at the end of this year. Years of experience has taught him well how to manipulate his divided union (a majority of whom are second level teachers) to follow government policy.

Having rejected the Croke Park deal in May 2010, it took just one year for McMenamin and Co. to swing the TUI around by a combination of bureaucratic maneuvers, divide and conquer tactics and veiled (and not so veiled) threats.

The low point of these shenanigans was a Morning Ireland interview in which the General Secretary virtually became a government spokesman, threatening 300 redundancies of apprenticeship lecturers should the union not give in. This followed immediately upon a Special Delegate Conference at which McMenamin and President-cum-capitulator-in-chief Bernie Ruane were mauled for their spinelessness.

With the union deeply divided between second level (where little is set to change) and third level (where huge changes are being demanded) the threats and maneuvering of union officials delivered and the turn around was completed. Mind you it must be cold comfort to the likes of McMenamin and Ruane as their pillorying in the right-wing press over their trips abroad and exorbidant salaries has continued unabated. Some people are just so ungrateful.

Ironically, this has left IFUT and SIPTU’s education branch, hardly paragons of militancy, as the sole unions outside of the Croke Park fold. In IFUT the general secretary Mike Jennings has been taking a leaf out of McMenamin’s book. Having rejected the deal by a 2-to-1 majority a year ago, the union is once again to ballot on some new “clarifications” to the deal. Despite having recommended rejection of Croke Park first time round, the union’s executive is now back on message and recommending acceptance. What a difference a year makes.

New Grassroots Organising Emerges

The seismic shifts in third level education in the last few years has also seen an emergence of new voices within the sector. What with the swingeing paycuts, ham-fisted government policy, scandalous behaviour of the various presidents and a traitorous leadership in control of the unions, ordinary lecturers have been forming new grassroots alliances in an attempt to save the sector from complete disarray.

A network of academics opposed to attacks on tenure and academic freedom, including many of the nations leading intellectuals, has been formed and is becoming a force to be reckoned with within the sector. Spearheaded by former DIT lecturer Paddy Healy, the group has had high profile interactions with the university authorities during the “clarifications” period over the last year. While it remains to be seen how this will effect the ultimate outcome of this period of turmoil, the amount of information being circulated, as well as the level of engagement, has increased dramatically.

Within the IoT sector, the TUI remains deeply divided by union policy towards the government. Union activists are smarting at the shameful manner in which the union officials and executive have led the general membership into the cul-de-sac of the Croke Park. As the economic situation continues to deteriorate and pressure mounts for further pay cuts on public servants, we can expect a resurgence of militancy within the TUI which, coupled with other public sector unions, could finally see the likes of Begg and O’Connor at ICTU given the boot.

Whether these forces can gather in time to stop Irish education from falling off a cliff, remains to be seen.

Area of activity in which placement is offered: The person will be involved in everyday shop duties which include customer service, stocking, ordering products, sales, tiding etc. Participants will gain experience in: following procedures correctly, such as using a till, cutting and slicing machines, baking fresh breads and rolls, team work, knowledge of different foods. Person specification: Flexibility to do different tasks, ability to be friendly and polite, even when tired, or under pressure, friendly, have good math skills, organised, reliable and trustworthy.

Please Note: This is a work placement programme and does not offer a salary

A Seismic Change

In the previous election in May 2007, Ireland demonstrated its continuing historic adherence to conservative right-wing politics. Three parties of the right, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats mopped up a grand total of 71.6% of the first preference vote and garnered 131 of the 166 seats in the Dail.

In last Friday’s election,  with all the seats now filled, the parties of the right, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail (PD having imploded since 2007),  saw their total first preference vote dropping to 53.5% and their combined seats dropping from 131 to 96.

Game Over?

Forget about the shift from Fianna Fail to Fine Gael. That’s just changing the franchise from Spar to Centra with business going on as before. What’s really interesting is the scale of decline in the vote of the right wing parties.

Over 7 in 10 voters backing them in 2007; down now to little over half the electorate.  A total loss of 35 seats. And there’s more. The Green Party, which shamefully colluded in the most destructive and right-wing phase of governance that Ireland has ever endured, was wiped out. Not a single seat remains.

Agreed, the majority in Ireland retain the conservative and status-quo clinging perspective that they always had, but that majority is now very slim in comparison with the past. To understand where we are at, we must understand where we have come from and so quickly. Nearly 72% voting  for parties of the right less than four years ago, now down to 53.5%. That is a seismic change. A great many of the Irish people are not ostriches.

To the Left

The biggest gainer on the left is the Labour Party. It saw its share of first preferences virtually double from 10% in 2007 to 19.4% last Friday and its seats jump from 20 to 37 making it the second biggest party in Dail Eireann.

Did it gain from its mealy mouthed hesitancy to upset the comfortable, tax- phobic classes, its failure to fight for public services, to protect the vulnerable and from its eagerness to compromise with the right?  Arguably not. The striking success of parties and independents not seeking to hide their left wing principles under a bushel would suggest that Labour might have done even better if it had been true to its name and traditions.

Sinn Fein increased its seats in Dail Eireann from 4 to 14. The Socialist Party captured 2 seats as did People Before Profit. Without considering Independents, that amounts to an increase of 14 seats firmly on the left of the Labour Party.  Labour might have stood to gain many of those if it were not so compromised by it’s dalliance with the right.

Independents Day

The increase in Independents in the new Dail, however one classifies them on the left-right spectrum, can only be interpreted as a rejection of the old status quo.  In 2007 we elected 5 Independents. Last Friday we elected 15.

Mick Wallace poster (from irishelection literature. wordpress.com)

Many of those such as Seamus Healy, Maureen O’Sullivan, Thomas Pringle, John Halligan, Catherine Murphy, Finian McGrath,  Mick Wallace, Luke ’Ming’ Flanagan and Stephen Donnelly are either firmly on the left or distinctly disaffected with the right wing consensus and concerned about its impact on Irish society. Even Tom Fleming, a former Fianna Fail member, has publicly voiced his concerns about the direction Irish society has been taking and its impact on the vulnerable.

While cynicism is understandable about former Fianna Fail representatives, Mattie Mc Grath, another escapee from the fold and a small time business man, may as he claims  be genuinely disaffected by the ‘protect the rich at all costs’ policies of the last Government. Free of party clutches he could be found to have a social conscience.

That leaves Shane Ross, Michael Lowry, Noel Grealish and Michael Healy Rae. No difficulty in knowing where former Fine Gaeler  and big business man, Lowry stands – he is a fully paid up member of the right consensus and with an unadulterated track record to prove it. Former PD leader Grealish has the self-same, if not so illustrious, political track record as Lowry. Recent posturing to the contrary will fool no one.  Michael Healy Rae, son of Jackie, can be assumed to have inherited more than the seat. The Healy Raes are big business owners and that is where their loyalties lie when the smoke screen of affected rural guff is penetrated. Jackie supported every appalling decision of the outgoing administration. There is no reason at all to imagine that Michael is any whit different. Still, pigs might fly and, given time, he will have the chance to prove us right or wrong.

Former stockbroker and SINDO business editor, Shane Ross is firmly on the right. There is nothing at all to suggest he cares about equity in society. He does care however about corruption and cronyism and about the rot within the party political system.  No friend of the left or the little guy, he is no friend of the status quo either.

Only three of the elected independents seem wedded to the past. In aggregate, the avalanche of independents entering the new Dail is far more a sign of disaffection with the status quo than any comfort to Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in their efforts to perpetuate the ancien  regime.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

What then of the new Government? Will it reflect the narrow majority, which would appear to have voted to follow the old path or will it give expression to the desire of everyone else for serious change? Right now this all depends on the Labour Party which is firmly wedged between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the right-wing status quo in the form of Fine Gael and in the form of Labour’s own hunger for power, which it can only win by compromising its raison de etre. In preparation for just such an eventuality it has already travelled well down that route casting its electoral pitch at just a bit less of what Fine Gael is having (see this piece by Vincent Browne).

Fine Gael wants to kill the public service. Labour is happy to just maim it. Fine Gael wants to do the bidding of the IMF, the ECB and the international financiers. Labour wants to do their bidding but drag its feet a little. The hard place is the new dimension for Labour and leaves it without its traditional scope for retreat and recovery after being squashed against the rock. It takes the form of Sinn Fein, the Socialist Party, People Before Profit and a bunch of unyielding Independents. Mick Wallace has already urged Labour to stay out of government and to instead lead a new left alliance in the Dail.

Every Labour sell out will now be pounced on. There will be no respite and no defence in or out of the Dail except by adherence to firm principles of the left. Labour must make the wealthy pay, protect the vulnerable, increase progressive taxation and shift the emphasis from private to public expenditure. In coalition with Fine Gael it must punch way above its weight or face being gobbled up by the opposition at the next election. It must learn the lesson the Green’s couldn’t grasp and be ready to walk out of government when its principles are under threat.

This election saw the destruction of Fianna Fail and the Greens. Only Labour can save itself from a similar fate in the next election. Its price for that must be exacted from Fine Gael. In the past, disaffected Labour voters had nowhere to turn to but the right. Now they will have a very credible set of left alternatives. If they leave , they will not return. There will be no recovery for Labour.  Its next 1997 will be a one-way street.

Debt Default Looms Large

Of course the great elephant is still in the room. The insupportable debt burden looms over all. No political party can hope to survive in the longer term while wedded to the fantasy that Ireland can repay the gigantic banking debts.

Fine Gael is blind to this truth. It is suffused with far too servile a psychology. Labour must make it face up to the inevitable. The Government must go to Europe and make it clear that default is inescapable. Any other option means heaping misery upon misery on the Irish people to no avail whatsoever.

Default will inevitably come sooner or later. Either Labour bites that bullet very soon or it will go down in flames. The scary thing is that if it doesn’t bite the bullet quickly it may well take the lot of us down with it.

These online clinics are provided by the People’s Economy network which provides economic advice about realistic solutions to Ireland’s crisis.

Mary Fitzgibbon says that the international financiers who recklessly gambled their money on runaway banks must bear their own losses. We must act immediately to separate the private bank debt from the sovereign debt of Ireland. We can then start the economic recovery and create jobs and better public services.

A Stark Choice: Bank Default or Sovereign Default?

David McWilliams explained at last Friday’s webinar that “the sovereign default is a disaster but the bank default is simply reinstating the rules of capitalism. If the ECB were to behave like good Europeans what they would realise is that there is a long game here and you shouldn’t penalise the Irish people for the gambling debts of Deutsche Bank and some of the other German banks who lent to the Irish banks.”

Replay the People’s Economy Webinar Here:

Would a Banking Debt Default Leave us with No Money?

Mary Fitzgibbon: Both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael repeat the mantra that we ran out of money and that a banking debt default would leave us with no money to pay public servants such as teachers, nurses and gardai. How can we counter this propaganda?

David McWilliams: This is complete and utter nonsense. If we separated the bank debt from the sovereign debt our debt to GDP ratio falls to 73%. This is the debt to GDP ratio which is the crucial figure because it’s your ability to pay which is lower than France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium and of course Greece and Portugal.

So we could go back to the markets very quickly. You would organise a bridging loan with the IMF because that’s what the IMF does and I think the IMF is actually more on our side than the EU or the the ECB seem to be at the moment. You organise a bridging loan with the IMF and that ties you over for three or four months and you then go back to the markets with a much cleaner balance sheet and get ready to raise money.

Then, obviously you have to have a fiscal adjustment that is credible and you have to have a policy that says that over the next we are going to do this and this and the markets have to believe you…so it is propaganda Mary and we would get financed elsewhere but we have to go out and actively seek it.

Are Deposits Safe in an Irish Bank?

Liam Denn: Considering the carnage of the last few years and how quickly things changed, what’s to say our deposits will be safe? Is it not the case in Argentina that deposits were ruined?

David McWilliams: I don’t trust the Irish banks with anything and as a consequence of that I don’t believe that my deposits would be safe in an Irish bank so I don’t believe that your deposits are completely safe in an Irish bank.

The reason I don’t believe it is because it’s hard to take seriously the utterances and the promises of these guys who have lied to us about everything.

You’re right that in Argentina the depositers were ruined and of course I will get completely attacked now for even discussing this but it’s a bit like do you remember during the house price scam when people like me said that house prices were far too high and they’d fall – we were accused of talking down the economy and the very utterance of actually suggesting there was a problem meant that the house prices would become self fulfilling.

I think that ultimately the truth is much more important than the spin and it’s hard to trust the Irish banks at this stage.

I'll see your 30,000 and raise you 10,000

Mary Fitzgibbon (Independent Kerry North/West Limerick) has challenged Fine Gael Deputy Jimmy Deenihan to be honest about his plan for public service job cuts in his constituency.

Deenihan (an FG front bencher) has claimed that if he gets into government he would cut 12,000 less public service jobs than the 30,000 that is already targeted in the Fine Gael manifesto.

He gave the commitment during a Radio Kerry debate with the other election candidates in Kerry North/West Limerick. He was responding to Mary Fitzgibbon who challenged him about precisely how many public service posts in Kerry/Limerick that Fine Gael would cut.

Deenihan claimed that the Fine Gael manifesto “mentioned 30,000 but 12,000 are gone already so there would be only 18,000 redundancies”. However, the clear policy in the Fine Gael manifesto policy is to cut an additional 30,000 public servants on top of the 12,000 that were already removed up to 2010.

Deputy Richard Bruton (FG Enterprise Spokesman) has repeatedly confirmed that the Fine Gael plan is to cut 30,000 additional posts. However, Deenihan continues to contradict his front bench colleague with his renegade claim of 18,000 redundancies and refuses to specify where the public service job cuts will be in Kerry North/West Limerick.

Deenihan is misleading his constituents about the Fine Gael plan for the public service. He is on the front bench and he knows full well that Fine Gael want another 30,000 public service redundancies on top of the 12,000 that Fianna Fail already cut. It’s time for Jimmy to be honest about the Fine Gael manifesto and for him to identify what jobs will be lost in Kerry.

A total loss of a 42,000 posts under Fine Gael would decimate public services and would see at least 1,000 jobs go in Kerry North/West Limerick including nurses, gardai, teachers and other public servants. It would  have a devastating effect on the local economy in a region where employment is so scarce.