cabinet re shuffle

Spiritoftheseventies

Okay if you could remove one minister from his post who would be
For me its Dempsey. His handling of the Big Freeze crisis has been embarrassing. stories of the wrong grit being put on roads, no budget to repair roads etc.

Riskymove

Great reasons alright:pac:

bayviewclose wrote: »

stories of the wrong grit being put on roads

is he responsible for that?....no

no budget to repair roads etc.

actually what he said was that there was no "extra" money to give local authorities

there is a budget if €400million being allocated

Spiritoftheseventies

Riskymove wrote: »

Great reasons alright:pac:




is he responsible for that?....no




actually what he said was that there was no "extra" money to give local authorities

there is a budget if €400million being allocated

Buck stops with minister. Incredibly how people in housing estates were basically made prisoners in their own home because there was no one to grit the roads.

Riskymove

bayviewclose wrote: »

Buck stops with minister.

well thats the problem with the irish "blame the government" mentality again..

..btw i also think its the reason things never change, as long as LAs culpability is ignored so people can blame the national Government they will never change...why isn't the County/City Manager or the Director in charge of Roads of the relevant LAs held up to scrutiny at the moment ?

Sleepy

Would have to be the Tainaiste...

Spiritoftheseventies

Sleepy wrote: »

Would have to be the Tanaiste...

Trib did a piece last year on TD's most likely to lose their job and Hanafin's name came up. No matter what decision she makes is not going to be popular. Think she will take a hitting at the next election

Riskymove

Sleepy wrote: »

Would have to be the Tainaiste...

absolutely, Tanaiste and now hardly seen...though judging by profile of her boss???

Spiritoftheseventies

Riskymove wrote: »

well thats the problem with the irish "blame the government" mentality again..

..btw i also think its the reason things never change, as long as LAs culpability is ignored so people can blame the national Government they will never change...why isn't the County/City Manager or the Director in charge of Roads of the relevant LAs held up to scrutiny at the moment ?

Yes reminds me of Katrina in a way in terms of co-ordination (or lack of it) between the various bodies. Breach of Faith by Jed Horne an excellent read in terms of how authorities in america were incredibly slow in dealing with Katrina.
Think Dempsey should have shown more leadership here but it was very bad pr for him IMO>

Biggins

bayviewclose wrote: »

Okay if you could remove one minister from his HER post who would be.

Harney. Out the door, never to return.

Spiritoftheseventies

Biggins wrote: »

Harney. Out the door, never to return.

I think she has that job for life. probably because no one else wants it. But yeah the department is an absolute mess.

The_Minister

bayviewclose wrote: »

Buck stops with minister. Incredibly how people in housing estates were basically made prisoners in their own home because there was no one to grit the roads.

In fairness, you cannot reasonably expect a Minister to be prescient.
We didn't have the grit or manpower to clear the roads during the worst Winter in 60 years - a position which many other countries in Europe found themselves in, even those that would normally have to deal with large amounts of snow.

There are many reasons to bitch at the government, but not being able to predict the weather really isn't one of them.

View

bayviewclose wrote: »

Okay if you could remove one minister from his post who would be
For me its Dempsey. His handling of the Big Freeze crisis has been embarrassing. stories of the wrong grit being put on roads, no budget to repair roads etc.

Well, according to a piece in today's Irish Times, the Government's Emergency Planning procedure says that it is the Minister for the Environment - John Gormley - who is supposed to head up the response to situations such as this. If true, then Dempsey is the wrong Minister to blame.

That said, I am not sure what else a Minister is supposed to do. It is the local Councils job to deal with the roads. They should be capable of allocating budget for this and figuring out what grit they need to use. They shouldn't need a Minister to do it for them. After all, why stop at the Minister? Should we also blame Commission President Barosso for not turning up "to be seen to be there" during the bad weather?

Riskymove

View wrote: »

That said, I am not sure what else a Minister is supposed to do. It is the local Councils job to deal with the roads. They should be capable of allocating budget for this and figuring out what grit they need to use. They shouldn't need a Minister to do it for them. After all, why stop at the Minister? Should we also blame Commission President Barosso for not turning up "to be seen to be there" during the bad weather?

yes thats my point

LAs are tasked under law to prepare emergency plans, responsible for the roads etc

You want to have a central department like environment to co-ordinate issues at times, fine and thats what we have

Harney. Out the door, never to return

amazingly I had actually overlooked her as a cabinet member, just shows what that role has become in recent times, especially since PDs demise...it really is just political expediency to have an "Independent" Minister for Health

Biggins

Riskymove wrote: »

...amazingly I had actually overlooked her as a cabinet member, just shows what that role has become in recent times, especially since PDs demise...it really is just political expediency to have an "Independent" Minister for Health

She is just holding onto a TD seat that FF need to stay in government, she won't go, she won't be elected at the next election by the public anyway (she has said she won't run again and I've long suspected why). She is being kept sweet by FF who allow her to remain where she is, to suit their needs - and no one else wants her job now anyway (who really wants to take over a complete mess of a department!). Mr O'Reilly should he fill the position at the next election, is going to have a hell of a job sorting through her wreckage for years and years.

View

Riskymove wrote: »

You want to have a central department like environment to co-ordinate issues at times, fine and thats what we have

Actually, I don't agree that we necessarily need a central department to co-ordinate issues. It should be perfectly possible for county councils to co-ordinate issues amongst themselves either on an ad-hoc basis or with a "County Council Co-ordinating Body" should that be necessary. It is their responsibility to deliver a solution locally, therefore it should be their responsibility to figure out how to do this and/or how to co-ordinate themselves.

Spiritoftheseventies

View wrote: »

Actually, I don't agree that we necessarily need a central department to co-ordinate issues. It should be perfectly possible for county councils to co-ordinate issues amongst themselves either on an ad-hoc basis or with a "County Council Co-ordinating Body" should that be necessary. It is their responsibility to deliver a solution locally, therefore it should be their responsibility to figure out how to do this and/or how to co-ordinate themselves.

Yes but does Dempsey not have some sy on the budget for road repairs. We pay road tax therefore it should be set aside you would think for any repairs. Some horror stories this week of drivers going over pot holes and having the wheels absolutely wrecked in the process. Not to mention what impact it might have injury wise.

Spiritoftheseventies

Biggins wrote: »

She is just holding onto a TD seat that FF need to stay in government, she won't go, she won't be elected at the next election by the public anyway (she has said she won't run again and I've long suspected why). She is being kept sweet by FF who allow her to remain where she is, to suit their needs - and no one else wants her job now anyway (who really wants to take over a complete mess of a department!). Mr O'Reilly should he fill the position at the next election, is going to have a hell of a job sorting through her wreckage for years and years.

To give her some credit news just in is that it has been agreed to go ahead a cervical cancer vacine programme for first year students. 30,000 will receive the injection. its a start i suppose

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0115/vaccine.html

bmaxi

Biggins wrote: »

Harney. Out the door, never to return.

I heard Harney utter three words today,"value for money", that I didn't think existed in the FF vocabulary (yes I know she's only quasi FF, like it matters).
She was speaking about the decision to reintroduce the scheme to vaccinate young girls against cervical cancer, this after the price was reduced to €3m from €16m.
While this is a welcome departure it's a pity she and her colleagues couldn't have applied the same paramaters to, say, NAMA or the M50 tollbridge or myriad other things we've paid over the odds for.

View

bayviewclose wrote: »

Yes but does Dempsey not have some sy on the budget for road repairs. We pay road tax therefore it should be set aside you would think for any repairs. Some horror stories this week of drivers going over pot holes and having the wheels absolutely wrecked in the process. Not to mention what impact it might have injury wise.

Ideally, delivery of services such as road repairs should be local tasks and funds (i.e. taxes such as road tax) should be raised locally to pay for the delivery of such services with appropriate local responsibility for doing so.

In practise, I would suspect we have "muddied the waters" between local government and central government so badly that both leave it to the other to do, hence the resulting mess.

That said, if there is an Emergency Plan in place that says Gormley is the guy in charge, then blaming Dempsey is unreasonable for a lack of response during the Emergency. It might well be fair to blame him a month or two after the Emergency is over if there is a lack of post-Emergency follow up but that is a different issue.

HermitHorace

Why stop at 1??

Ideally, if we could gather most of them, along with the senior bank officials, along with the Trade Union leaders, along with most of the Seanad and various useless members of county councils and Yaris drivers and Ronan Keating and pile them onto Inisheer for a few years.

When they've learnt their lesson, we can move them onto Inishmaan and eventually onto Inishmore.

Then maybe back to the mainland.

What was the question again?

JonathanAnon

Brian Cowen - Taoiseach
Mary Coughlan - Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Brian Lenihan - Finance
Mary Harney - Health and Children
Noel Dempsey - Transport
Dermot Ahern - Justice, Equality and Law Reform
Micheál Martin - Foreign Affairs
Martin Cullen - Arts, Sport and Tourism
Éamon Ó Cuív - Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs
Mary Hanafin - Social and Family Affairs
Willie O'Dea - Defence
John Gormley - Environment, Heritage and Local Government
Eamon Ryan - Communications, Energy and Natural Resources
Brendan Smith - Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Batt O'Keeffe - Education and Science

My choices are highlighted. Should be gone at the last reshuffle.. Eamon O'Cuiv department should be disbanded. Mary Hanifan, Mary Harney, and Dermot Ahern (despite that stupid blasphemy law debacle) are the best performers. Cowan seems like a decent guy, but I cant think of a worse orator in Irish political history.

Seth Brundle

With regard for Dempsey being the cause of the issues with the snow etc. have a read of this...
Emergency effort lacked grit of clear leadership
The man who denied being minister for snow was in fact the minister for snow!

Seth Brundle

JonathanAnon wrote: »

Cowan seems like a decent guy, but I cant think of a worse orator in Irish political history.

a decent guy isn't enough to justify being |Taoiseach unfortunately.
His actions as Minister for Finance ensured that we are where we are now. Since taking the reins, he has done nothing that I can think of that has been of any use to the country!

994

bayviewclose wrote: »

Buck stops with minister. Incredibly how people in housing estates were basically made prisoners in their own home because there was no one to grit the roads.

Incredible how they couldn't get together to shovel their own roads

Spiritoftheseventies

See Jim McDaid may return to FF following the introduction of the vacination scheme for first year students

oppenheimer1

bmaxi wrote: »

I heard Harney utter three words today,"value for money", that I didn't think existed in the FF vocabulary (yes I know she's only quasi FF, like it matters).
She was speaking about the decision to reintroduce the scheme to vaccinate young girls against cervical cancer, this after the price was reduced to €3m from €16m.
While this is a welcome departure it's a pity she and her colleagues couldn't have applied the same paramaters to, say, NAMA or the M50 tollbridge or myriad other things we've paid over the odds for.

I think harney is doing a good job considering the circumstances she finds herself in - that being a workforce that refuses to accept change at a reasonable pace. The Irish healthcare system isn't that bad by the way, it is one of the best in the world, people really need to get some perspective. In a lot of cases we simply don't have the population to warrant specialised services here and it is more prudent economically to send people abroad. Its a heartless reality, but a reality all the same.

I also welcome the news that the cervical cancer vaccine is to be made available to young girls. They did well to get the price of the vaccine down to €3m. It was blatant profiteering by the pharmaceutical company, thinking it could charge what it liked because public opinion was on its side.

Spiritoftheseventies

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

I think harney is doing a good job considering the circumstances she finds herself in - that being a workforce that refuses to accept change at a reasonable pace. The Irish healthcare system isn't that bad by the way, it is one of the best in the world, people really need to get some perspective. In a lot of cases we simply don't have the population to warrant specialised services here and it is more prudent economically to send people abroad. Its a heartless reality, but a reality all the same.

I also welcome the news that the cervical cancer vaccine is to be made available to young girls. They did well to get the price of the vaccine down to €3m. It was blatant profiteering by the pharmaceutical company, thinking it could charge what it liked because public opinion was on its side.

You still have to wonder about the whole debacle about Post op beds which led to one mother having to go public after her young daughter was unable to get treatment for heart condition because there was no post op bed due to a number of reasons. The Cystic Fibrosis debacle was another dark spot on the ministers record.