Paschal Donohoe expenses controversy

Yes yes, you are completely blinkered towards blatant cronyism. Old school, fair play. No harm in it. Point taken.

So the journalist Roman Shortall, who broke the planning issue story about Damian English, has been ordered to vacate his home due to €50,000 in unpaid rent.

High moral ground etc........

Be fine if it were in isolation. However I’ve reached the limit with these frauds now.

I don’t care about the election posters- everyone of them has cronies that help them. It’s the appointment of this same pal to a state board that bothers me the most

2 state boards with large budgets.

I agree, not really to bothered about the fellas hanging up the election posters, I always thought they were paid or were family. It is the appointment to the boards that is the real issue here and it will be this and not the hanging of posters that will cause the most grief for the minister. The FG acolytes amongst will try to trivialize it and make it about the fellas climbing lampposts but it will become more about the appointments.

Which one with Zappone...I can think of a few...her being handed a role with zero advertisement of it...or her really dodgy mileage claims while in office (she took a more indirect to claim tonnes of extra money)...

Seem to have a hit a bit of nerve, immune to conspiracy, What are you talking about? There is no conspiracy, Donohue didn't follow the proper procedure for the donation during the election and then furthermore to compound that he appointed this person to boards. That is not a conspiracy that is what he has done. There is nothing disengenuous about my post at all, and it is true that the FG acolytes will try spin it and we have seen it on here that this is nothing and maybe it would be nothing if it was just a mistake about handling the donation, even though you would expect a senior politician and then the current finance minister to be able to handle the donation correctly but then it comes out that Donohue appointed this guy to a number of boards as well. There is no conspiracy, the only thing on display here is FG arrogance that they are above rules and not answerable to anyone.

True. They seem to be trying to shut down any discussion of it. "He was wrong. He resigned. Lets move on" seems to be the attitude.

I think we need further details of how a person in mortgage arrears was given special responsibility for policy in the area as part of his junior minister role.

Well, I understand your point but Damien English was not a Minister when he went into arrears with his mortgage.

The point is that we don't know how DE got into arrears.

Mr Stone was directly appointed to the LDA by then Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy who is a former Fine Gael colleague of Paschal Donohoe. Other members of the LDA board are appointed through the Public Appointment Services system.

For the other appointment in his own constituency (Chair of the NEIC Programme Implementation Board), Paschal gave a list of 'suitable' candidates to the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny (FG).

See and is this sort of behaviour that causes the problems that Donohue is facing now. Why wasn't Mr Stone appointed through the Public Appointments Service System? In fact why do politicians keep getting themselves into messes like this when they can just send their nomination to a body like the Public Appointments Service System and then if that person is appointed no questions can be asked. This is similar to the appointment of Woulfe by McEntee another appointment by a nod and a wink.