Outrageous nepotism in Limerick

senor incognito

Village Magazine - Issue 8, December 2009 - January 2010:

Nepotism in Limerick

"Closer to home, Villager was amused to see John Fitzgerald, former City Manager in Dublin getting himself and the Limerick Regeneration Agency, headed by former Dublin City Housing Manager, Brendan Kenny, in hot water for indulging nepotism to the serious displeasure of Limerick City Manager, Tom Mackey.

Kenny employed his daughter on a large salary without bothering with anything as tedious as an inter- view process.

Claire Feeney, girlfriend of Southside Director, Brendan Hayden, was recruited on a salary of 90,000 without competitive interview. she had no third- level or other relevant qualification.

And Brian McElligott, son of Regeneration Agency Director, Liam McGelligott was recruited in Autumn 2007 without competitive interview. He had no third-level or other relevant qualification, thought the agency is now paying his way through a University of Limerick project-management course.

Fitzgerald noted that the Limerick Regeneration Agency didn't have to comply with normal public-sector norms.

Funny then that this is the same John Fitzgerald who so rigorously - including with the benefit of a fat legal opinion -hounded residents' representatives on the Grangegorman Development Agency (which he also chairs) to comply with normal company law. They were not to report back to the communities that chose them but to observe the niceties of company law - i.e. silence.

Fitzgerald reckons the Limerick agencies' boards are "not boards of governance". ..."

CiaranMT

Why are we only seeing this now, in a report from the end of last year? This whole Regeneration lark gets sketchier and sketchier.

touts

It just shows that no matter what quango is the main people who benefit are the civil servants working for it. When the IMF look at the request for over a billion there is no way they will hand money over to such an organisation to build new houses in Limerick city while thousands of houses lie empty in Ghost estates.

Gneez

wish I could have a 90,000 euro salary for sexxing people

Roadend

Gneez wrote: »

wish I could have a 90,000 euro salary for sexxing people

Get yourself up to Cathrine st. then

Kess73

CiaranMT wrote: »

Why are we only seeing this now, in a report from the end of last year? This whole Regeneration lark gets sketchier and sketchier.

I can remember Raiser putting up these details along with a details of other examples of wastes of money in the regeneration scheme months ago.

A few national papers picked up the story at the start of the year but local radio and the local press did not seem as keen to give the story anything other than a passing mention.

senor incognito

This is from the Phoenix magazine and posted elsewhere on boards.

Rosemary's Limerick Garden.

The Limerick post got on to an intriguing story recently about leafy Hillcrest Drive,off the Ennis Rd where residents complained that a house built in the back garden of a residence there had not complied with planning permission. But this simple planning story had more than one twist in it.

Angry residents complained that while none of them could get planning permission for minor alterations down the years, the owner of 24 Hillcrest Drive had built a new house in the back garden in a substantial alteration of the planning permission recieved. The residents also complained that their entreaties to local councillors had not resulted in any serious attention. However following complaints to Limerick City Council, the planning control office sent a warning letter to the owners of the property and this prompted an application for retention of the alterations. Which is where it got really interesting.

At a meeting of the council last March, Labour councillor Tom Shortt drew attention to the fact that the applicant was an employee of the council. Shortt also complained that the retention application was not listed on the council meeting agenda he had recieved and that the relevant documentation was missing. The Post described how the relevant pages were also missing from the agenda it supplied to its journalist covering the council meeting.

Then it emerged, as the local Post sleuths discovered, that the application had been made by Mary Fitzgerald, an employee in the rates department and before that the planning department.

More recently the Post returned to the story and reported that despite the dramatic new precedent set for the estate by the back garden edifice, An Bord Pleanala had upheld what the newspaper described as a contentious application. The board stated that the building would not seriously injure the local amentities and was not contrary to popular planning and sustainable development in the area.

This was despite the recommendation of the board's inspector, Conor McGrath, who had stated the opposite, namely that the proposed development would be out of character with the surrounding pattern of development, would result in over-development and was detrimental to the residential amenities of future residents.

Enraged residents complained to such authorities as Environmental Minister John Gormley, who replied that the issue was outside his remit, while there are plans for further protests.

Howeverwhile poor Rosemary was forced to respond to the Post's enquiries - she said that "the proper channels" had been used - the newspaper did not name the other resident of the property. Goldhawk can reveal that this is Pat Dowling, one of the council's three directors of services and deputy to the City manager, Tom Mackey. Dowling is married to Rosemary and lives with her at Hillcrest Drive. However, Ms Fitzgerald/Dowling was the sole applicant. Dowling just lives there with his spouse, Rosemary."

(from Phoenix magazine, Nov 5 2010 p.16 beyond the pale by 'Goldhawk'):

LK_Dave

i'm never surprised when it comes to council employees...a law onto themselves

L.T.P.

I'm rubbing my hands with glee at the thought of the Public Service being decimated, can't happen soon enough. I do feel sorry for nurses though, they get a raw deal.

Itsdacraic

L.T.P. wrote: »

I'm rubbing my hands with glee at the thought of the Public Service being decimated, can't happen soon enough. I do feel sorry for nurses though, they get a raw deal.

:rolleyes:

FFS, what an ignorant comment.

I'm no fan of the way the public service in Ireland is run, but to delight in thousands of hard working lower paid civil servants potentially losing their jobs is extremely crass.

senor incognito

But if people are to be sacked to save money, then surely the dismissal of unqualified relatives and obvious p*ss-takers is the ideal place to start?

Itsdacraic

senor incognito wrote: »

But if people are to be sacked to save money, then surely the removal of unqualified relatives and obvious p*ss-takers is the ideal place to start?

There is a big difference between rooting those out and "decimating" the public service.

L.T.P.

Itsdacraic wrote: »

:rolleyes:

FFS, what an ignorant comment.

I'm no fan of the way the public service in Ireland is run, but to delight in thousands of hard working lower paid civil servants potentially losing their jobs is extremely crass.

Hard-working? Are you actually serious?

Many civil servants have never worked a minutes overtime in their lives yet enjoy vastly superior wages and perks compared to the private sector.

I think the civil service needs to be completely rebuilt from the ground up.

senor incognito

Itsdacraic:

'Decimating' sounds like a massacre, and that is perhaps the sense in which it was used here, but: 'decimating' in it's original form means the removal of one tenth, so 10%.
I dont know for certain that 10% of employees in the Council or the Regeneration agency are either corrupt, incompetent or unqualified, but some certainly something's rotten in the state of Denmark.
If 10% were to lose their jobs, wouldn't it be worthwhile ensuring that this 10% contained as much corruption and incompetence as possible?

flutered

i have posted this before, a person applied for and recieved a council grant subject to the usual conditions, the compleated work was inspected and pass by a council official, who stated to the occupent, < i will send a report to my boss thet the work is up to standard and recomend payment, he in turn will recomend payment to another official, who in turn will ask anothe offical to forward the payment, a month and no payment the occupier contacted the last person on the list, who stated the they did not actually make the payment but sent the revelant details into the main office to another person who entered the details in a regester, then issued the cheque,> why in the name of efficency could not the inspector tell the person issueing the cheque make the payment as everything is in order.

senor incognito

Bureaucracy of any type can usually be held up and made to seem ridiculous, or at least against common sense. Very often bureaucratic systems evolve into ridiculous and baroque systems like the one you mention... but actually I didn't post these articles to highlight the fundamental inefficiency of systems: If anything I'm calling for yet another system.
If anything is to be learned from our country's current predicament it is that power should be regulated and we need to bring in actual accountability for those clearly guilty of operating without ethics. I don't know why, after these articles were published, all of the people concerned retained their jobs without so much as a single penalty.

A system that regulates these sort of scandals is what we need.

It's not enough to say 'Sure what do you expect, they're all a shower anyway'.

I expect people employed by the state to serve the country not to behave like this. Our current leadership may be morally bankrupt but that doesn't mean that we should all get to rip off everyone around us with impunity.

It's still wrong.