DDDA Governance and ARUP. More Docklands Developers Autocracy Rot?

What will N.Brennan do about Arup's cross-directorship with the Developers Autocracy?

A cosmetic resignation from DDDA or Ulster Bank does not suffice to disable the perception of an old-boy network nor the damage to international perceptions.

• N. O’Sullivan is a director of Arup.
• N. O’Sullivan is a director of the DDDA.
• Arup claims DDDA's glass bottle site is fit for humans.

How will N.Brennan educate the taxpayers about perceptions of DDDA credibiity or of Arup's "independence" now Arup is paid to pronounce on pollution at speculators' sites in Poolbeg?


Paid-for Arup Spin on €450 Million Ringsend Glass Bottle Site
Outstanding spin from Arup seems to claim the Ringsend Glass Bottle site lands are in “a satisfactory state” and that space created under(!) car-parking spaces and other services would “create a wide and ventilated physical barrier between polluted lands and the future habitable spaces of the new development“.

Unpaid Expert Opinion
Former EPA expert Malcolm Doak warned that 30 per cent methane gas levels exist on the lands and that “a significant gas risk still remains on-site”.

Paid-for Arup Spin on €350 Million Poolbeg Incinerator
Arup said the environmental impact statement found the Poolbeg waste-to-toxins incinerator would not significantly impact the environment and "no residual negative impacts are anticipated" from the construction or operation of the plant.

Unpaid Expert Opinion
Prof Staines, a medical doctor and academic, said it was "at best careless, and more realistically reckless, to proceed with a major development without considering methods of minimising harm and maximising benefits to the local community" and said the execution of a Health Impact Statement on such projects was common practice internationally.

In relation to the environmental impact statement, undertaken by Arup Consulting Engineers on behalf of the council, Prof Staines claimed that "in no case is there any serious consideration of the actual impacts of the estimated emissions on people in the local community or on human health".

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DDDDA has been a poster boy for rampant multi-dimensional conflicts-of-interest. Ex: Seanie and Lar at the Glass Bottle site.

DDDA's newest chairman, N.Brennan, is spun as a governance expert by advertising dependent newspapers. N.Brennan was appointed by Mr J Gormley in a closed-door recruitment process. N.Brennan was a director for Ulster bank when it financed Zoe Developments large Fabrizia site on Sandymount Strand (Zoe now has a negative net value of -€900,000,000, plus or minus an acre of occupied public footpath).

How can Arup not anticipate any negative impacts given operator Covanta's curious record?

The Seanie & Lar culture at DDDA-Anglo was the catalyst for the €490,000,000,000 banker bailout and the proving ground for NAMA's €90,000,000,000 developer bailout. Is there any pattern which shows the rampant multi-dimensional conflicts of interest at the €450,000,000 Glass Bottle site will not be repeated at NAMA?

• Both NAMA and DDDA combine closed-door autocratic control over planning permits.
• Both NAMA and DDDA have the same executive sponsors - the Galway Tent cartel.
• NAMA adds closed-door political distortion of property markets for the next 30 years (in violation of core EU Competition Principles).

See also: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0801/1224251858397.html

Poolbeg Incinerator Affair Complicit With Recklessness and Lacks Any Accountability?

“If the leaders of a society are not prepared to hold themselves accountable or there are not the institutions which are sufficiently independent to hold them accountable, then I think you have a very serious problem on your hands.”

Mr Fitzgerald.

The Irish Times - Saturday, March 6, 2010

 Is Poolbeg Incinerator Affair Complicit With Recklessness?

Is there a serious problem with the Poolbeg Planning process?  That underhand and predetermined process was rubber stamped by these politically controlled and possibly unaccountable institutions:

• Environmental Regulator EPA

• Planning Regulator Bord Pleanála

• Economic 'Institute' ESRI [DCC Massaged Spin on Incinerator Health Costs]

 

Here are a few questions on the apparently rigged Poolbeg Incinerator Hearings.  They attempt to emulate the views on business in Ireland as expressed by Niall Fitzgerald, former chairman & CEO of Unilever, chairman of Reuters.

• In order to pursue a consulting career in Ireland's waste industry is it necessary to compromise one's principles?

• Are the promoters of the proposed Poolbeg Incinerator aware of the health and financial risks that will be taken and are they thus “complicit with recklessness”? 

• Or are they unaware of what is going on and are thus failing to discharge their responsibilities as public servants?

Here are some pointers for your own research to answer these questions: 

The Ignored McKechnie Judgement




RPS Spin on Health




CBRE Spin on Property




Professor Dr Staines Health Study Request Ignored




Air Quality "Errors" by Expert DCC Consultant




Taxpayer Financial Intimidation by City Manager


Covanta Record of Pollution Violations


Bankster Politicians Jumping In Front of Parades


IGB Poolbeg: Dodgy DDDA & Reckless Anglo-Irish Bank


The Boomtown Rats

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“unless I was prepared to engage more directly with politicians . . . and at some point be ready to compromise on my own principles, that that would restrict my abilities to develop a business career in Ireland”.

  Mr Fitzgerald.

The Irish Times - Saturday, March 6, 2010

Mr Fitzgerald left Ireland in 1970 and went on to become chairman and chief executive of the giant conglomerate Unilever and chairman of the global media agency Reuters.

Top Irish businessman rails at 'intertwining with politics'

 FINTAN O'TOOLE   [Emphasis added in this blog posting]

ONE OF Ireland’s most successful businessmen, Niall Fitzgerald, has told The Irish Times he did not feel that he could have pursued a business career in Ireland without compromising his personal principles.

Mr Fitzgerald left Ireland in 1970 and went on to become chairman and chief executive of the giant conglomerate Unilever and chairman of the global media agency Reuters.

In an interview published today, Mr Fitzgerald suggests that “many people in domestic Irish business succeeded because they were intertwined with politics” and that “unless I was prepared to engage more directly with politicians . . . and at some point be ready to compromise on my own principles, that that would restrict my abilities to develop a business career in Ireland”.

Mr Fitzgerald is critical of what he calls the “claustrophobia” of Irish business. He says “that very intimacy, the knowledge that you can take one small envelope and write all the names that matter on the back of it” militated against independent jjudgment and high ethical standards, contributing to the current crisis in the Irish economy.

Recalling a dinner last summer with friends who had served on the boards of Irish banks, Mr Fitzgerald (himself a director of Bank of Ireland during the 1990s) says he posed a question: Were they aware of the risks that were being taken and thus “complicit with the recklessness”? Or were they unaware of what was going on and thus failing to discharge their responsibilities as directors? The question, he says, prompted a “very ferocious conversation”.

Mr Fitzgerald is also critical of the argument that banks must continue to pay very high salaries to retain senior managers. “You mean, these terribly valuable people who either didn’t understand the risks they were running or understood them and continued anyway without thought for the consequences? You know what? I could do without those valuable people.”

He also criticises high-level business people and bankers who are going into exile in tax havens such as Switzerland. He is, he says, “deeply sad” that some seem obsessed with “how you avoid at almost any cost to yourself and your family being a supportive member of the wider society in which you live”.

Mr Fitzgerald expresses concerns about the ability of those in positions of power to take responsibility for what has happened. “If the leaders of a society are not prepared to hold themselves accountable or there are not the institutions which are sufficiently independent to hold them accountable, then I think you have a very serious problem on your hands.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0306/1224265713249.html?via=mr

Covanta's Link To Ireland's Galway Tent Cabal?

MKC-connected Harney Denied Health Baseline Study for Poolbeg Area, Facilitating MKC-Connected Covanta Incinerator. 

 

MKC seems to have links to The Galway Tent's PDs, neither of which has really gone away.  Any such link directly places Covanta in the Galway Tent, the institution which created the bankruptcy of Ireland.  Uninformed Health Minister Harney refuses suitable health science as called for by informed Dr Staines at the Bord Pleanala charade (Charade?  See CRAI judicial settlement against DCC on unlawfully withheld information and McKechnie on unlawful information distortion by DCC).

Covanta in Ireland is a client of MKC Communications.   Apparently MKC places spin dressed up as journalism in the supine Irish media.  One of the rags used is billionaire Murdoch's Sunday Times, a once credible newspaper now in the Sun and Fox News camp.

It seems MKC represents private-for-profit USA health care companies in Ireland.  The USA has the worst health care in the developed world with 100 million people in daily fear of falling ill.

Minister Harney is Ireland's health minister.  She promotes private-for-profit health care in Ireland. Minister Harney's recent partner is/was Mr Geoghegan who is reported to have conveniently resigned from MKC (see blog-comment below).  

Manipulating suitable Quango's Minister Harney has refused a baseline health study for Dublin, thus ensuring the public is not fully informed on the impact of the proposed Poolbeg Incinerator.  More importantly for MKC's client the lack of the study helps to reduce any remaining liability for any health harm inflicted on Dublin by the proposed incinerator.  Most of that liability is taken care of in the secret Poolbeg contract signed off by DCC behind closed doors.  

Private for-profit health care companies stand to profit greatly from hundreds of prematurely ill people made ill by particle pollution.  The best thing is nobody can prove the cause because the Galway Tent has ensured science is buried.

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http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009/07/25/legal-challenge-to-attempt-to-cut-payments-to-pharmacists/

1. jim Says:
   July 28th, 2009 at 10:37 pm @ Ted..”  In January 2006, Brian Geoghegan resigned from IBEC and took up a position as Chairman of MRPA Kinman. According to the company, which re-branded as MKC Communications in mid 2008 and from which Geoghegan resigned as chairman in October last, it is a consultancy firm that prides itself on its access to government for lobbying purposes. It is led by former PD spokesman, Ray Gordon, and former party press officer and policy director Stephen O’ Byrnes. It counts among its government and commercial clients the Health Information and Quality Authority, a body which was set up by Minister Harney to implement the sort of reforms which Brian Geoghegan was anxious to see - and which his wife is now responsible for implementing”
   

Ringsend Health Impact Big Lies?

Ringsend Health Impact Big Lies?

Even an expert using the required diplomatic language says work from DCC is "inadequate" and even "derisory".

Many people, but certainly not all, would conclude that DCC has apparently produced another Big Lie. This is a Big Lie with the potential to be used by DCC-DDDA's well-funded PR agency or by the Marketing Communication departments of foreign Waste-To-Toxins corporations to spread disinformation about your health or your early death. With the Big Lie established literally on a European Beachhead, the Big Lie can then be re-purposed worldwide including in China.
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Below are Key Sentences from The human health impact of the proposed municipal waste incinerator at Ringsend: a critique of the health assessment in the EIS submitted with the planning application.

Dr. Anthony Staines,
Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology,
Dept. of Public Health Medicine,
University College Dublin,

The whole document is here:
http://fiasco.ie/incinerator/resources/Critique_of_Health_Assessment_in_EIS_-_Dr_Anthony_Staines.pdf

Key Sentences
The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) contains several sections addressing health issues. The main discussion is in Chapter 13 'Impact on Human Beings'.

• The process use to carry out this piece of work is unclear, and no specific justification or rationale is given for it.

• In no case is there any serious consideration of the actual impacts of the estimated emissions on people in the local community or on human health.

• It is at best careless, and more realistically reckless, to proceed with a major development without considering methods of minimising harm and maximising benefits to the localcommunity from the development.

• Overall the human health assessment of the EIS seems very inadequate.

• The section on the most important issue of 'Cumulative impacts and Interactions' is almost derisory – four pages in total, one table, one page of contents, one blank page and about one hundred words.

A final issue is the scientific evidence for health effects on populations adjacent to municipal incinerators. Prof. Schrenk, who is a most distinguished toxicologist ... [text omitted, Click here for full text] ...

• [Prof. Schrenk]'s review contains some questionable interpretations of the existing literature, and shows a very common misunderstanding of the principles and limitations of epidemiology.

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Galwaytent Footnote:
EU Toxicology standards setting seems to be dominated by the German Chemical Industry. BASF (fka IG Farben) apparently openly has contracts with 235 politicians.