Cassandra Voices

Author: danieleidini

  • The Brick Wall: Access to Justice

    I’m living in cloud cuckoo land
    And this just feels like
    Spinning plates
    Radiohead, Like Spinning Plates, Amnesiac 2001.

    Ten years on from the Irish Banking Crisis and the subsequent taxpayer funded bailouts, how are we faring in term of regulating the financial sector?

    In view of the possibility of another property bubble, it is surely vital to ensure appropriate access to justice, especially for those with limited resources.

    Prior to the Crash, banks through their own internal regulatory mechanisms – including risk management and third party auditing firms – were, essentially, allowed to regulate their own affairs, which unfortunately permitted a lax regime.

    On a rare occasion that a risk manager signalled grave breaches of conduct to the Central Bank of Ireland – as in the case of whistle-blower Jonathan Sugarman – he was largely ignored. And, even though thanks to his revelations we know a great deal more than we would otherwise about widespread banking mis-conducts, Sugarman subsequently had his professional and personal life destroyed. That message is surely not lost on colleagues intending to pursue a similar course.

    Back then, inadequate regulatory frameworks allowed underestimation of risk and outright profiteering in the banking sector. Yet there are reasons to believe that, despite the successes boasted of by the regulators, thousands of people are still being failed by the State.

    Despite concerns being raised in February, 2021 by Sinn Fein deputy Pearse Doherty that “2,865 complaints to the Financial Ombudsman remain unsolved for over 12 months” very little attention has been paid in the media to enduring dysfunctions in consumer protection frameworks, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of consumers of financial services.

    Regulatory Capture

    Regulators come in two types: smart and dumb. The latter are more likely to make mistakes, and the market will learn about mistakes when firms squawk.
    Ernesto Dal Bó in the Oxford review of economic policy, Vol.22, NO.2

    Could this be a subtle example of so-called ‘regulatory capture’, which is said to occur when a particular industry holds an excessive level of influence over a statutory agency designed  to monitor and regulate it?

    Ernesto Dal Bó offers two interpretation of the phrase:

    According to the broad interpretation, regulatory capture is the process through which special interests affect state intervention in any of its forms, which can include areas as diverse as the setting of taxes, the choice of foreign or monetary policy, or the legislation affecting R&D.

    According to the narrow interpretation, regulatory capture is specifically the process through which regulated monopolies end up manipulating the state agencies that are supposed to control them.

    Either of these descriptions could easily be used to describe successive Irish government’s cosy relationship with foreign multinationals. Witness how in 2016 then Taoiseach Enda Kenny unashamedly set out Ireland’s stall as ‘the best small country to do business in’. Attracting financial service companies to a friendly, relatively unregulated, environment appears to remain high on the government’s agenda.

    But insofar as this is a legitimate goal, the way it is achieved, for example, by perpetuating dysfunctions in regulatory mechanisms, have grave consequences for the public at large, especially in terms of access to justice.

    Ombudsman

    One mechanism to provide access to justice is embodied in the role of the Ombudsman.

    This word come from Sweden where its first use is recorded in the 19th century. Meaning “Commission Man”, it involved oversight over the abuse of power by public administration. The position evolved with changing times and industries, to become globally adopted, assuming the part of an impartial mediator between individual complainants and large, well-resourced organizations.

    To give a simple example with a bit more context: what if you have a complaint against the misbehaviour of a credit institution with which you have a resulting outstanding debt?

    In Ireland, anyone in such a predicament can avail first of internal complaint procedures within the credit/insurance/pension providers. If this proves futile, as often seems to be the case, you can either go to the Financial Services and Pension Ombudsman (FSPO), or for the better-resourced, proceed directly to the courts.

    The FSPO was established in order to provide “an impartial, accessible, and responsive complaint resolution service that delivers fair, transparent and timely outcomes for all our customers, and enhances the financial services and pension environment.”

    It’s role is crucial in ensuring basic standards of consumer protection especially in a sector such as financial services, which bears significant responsibility for a dysfunctional property market

    This article is not disputing that the Office has fullfilled aspects of it’s responsabilities to date, and recognises the challanges of the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Office’s results are well presented in their annual digests of decisions, and were compellingly illustrated by the current Head of the FSPO, Ger Deering, in his Opening Statement to the Oireachtas Petitions Committee the 25th May 2021.

    What we are interrogating is why a large number of complaints, seem to have been closed in preliminary scrutiny on a narrow, legal interpretation of the Act. It is also unclear whether the FSPO is sufficiently staffed and organized to make use of the necessary banking knowledge in order to fulfil all its statutory duties.

    Boasting Figures

    Ben Hoey, an experienced ex-banker who founded Quartech services, a mortgage mis-selling advisory firm, has been assisting individuals with the filings of such complaints and has made us aware of some of the challenges encountered.

    Having submitted over fifty complaints over the last two year to the FSPO, as well as two FOI requests in June 2021 and most recently a judicial review, he also raises serious concerns over the ability of FSPO to carry out its duties.

    In an Opening Statement to the Oireachtas Petitions Committee, Mr Deering boasted: “In 2020, I am happy to report that, despite the challenges of the pandemic and remote working, we closed 6,193 complaints, an increase of 35% on 2019.”

    But thanks to Hoey’s FOI requests, we now know that 2,110 of these cases never entered the dispute resolution or investigation processes.

    Those numbers also slightly differ from the ones found in the annual report of 2020, and are presented in a way suggesting that 1,401 cases were actually sorted within a very short time frame.

    There are, undoubtedly, cases that were legitimately rejected as indicated in the Act. But in order to gain more detailed explanations for preliminary decisions, made in the first registration and assessment phase, the FOI requested documentation and records in relation to reasons for closure. Unfortunately, in this case the answer was ‘no records exist.’

    This is just the first stage of the complaint; the staff needs to interpret the Act and establish if the newly arrived complaint falls within the FSPO jurisdiction.

    It relies on training and guidance materials, which have also been released, and from this we see that when issues of jurisdiction arise, there is an over-reliance on the legal profession and a marked absence of the necessary banking expertise.

    In general, we know that if a complainant does not accept the preliminary rejection, and responds in writing, he or she receives a letter issued by the legal department. But in order to interpret and respond to this one would likely require legal advice.

    This doesn’t come cheap as the FSPO is well aware, since it spent €1.8m (46% of staff costs) on “Legal Fees” according to their 2020 accounts. By comparison the equivalent UK body filed no such expenses. Recall that the role of an Ombudsman is to be an impartial mediator between individual complainant and large, well-resourced organizations.

    Some of Ben Hoey’s clients received letters up to twenty-two pages long, containing dense legal terminology, supporting FSPO arguments not to investigate; rather than a professional financial analysis of the issue in question.

    Others have seen their complaints dragged out for years, stuck in the earliest phase of the “statutory complaints procedure”; which was established in order ‘to afford complainants an informal, expeditious and independent mechanism for the resolution of complaints.’

    From the point of view of some complainants, it feels as if the process of adjudication has been designed to keep their case out of the FSPO jurisdiction, thus keeping the number of cases that the Office investigates to a minimum.

    When the Financial and Pension Ombudsman positions were merged into their current form in 2018, the new organisation should have been structured, and staffed, to handle a increasing number of annual complaints. It appear from the latest annual report that this has been achieved, but when we get into the granular detail, we see that up to a third of these may have been inadequately handled.

    Given that a significant percentage of such disputes are in relation to mortgages and to a dysfunctional housing market, we can surely appreciate the importance of such an institution.

    The stigma attached to debt is a deep scar that afflicts many in an apparently prosperous country. Given that a level of responsibility lies with the lending industry, we should expect the Department of Finance to ensure that the relevant agencies such as the CBI and the FSPO that protect such individuals are adequately resourced.

    Yet the total count of full time employees of the FSPO is just 85 as of the end of 2021. That amounts to roughly twenty staff per million inhabitants in Ireland. By comparison, its counterpart in the UK employs double that with 3,000 staff, or approximately forty-four per million.

    A Stairway to Heaven

    Since Ger Deering was recently nominated by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath, to become Ombudsman and Information Commissioner, we expect that the position of Head of the FSPO will soon become vacant.

    We now have access to another FOI request providing insights into the recruitment of Ger Deering to the office in 2015/16, at a point when the Financial Services Ombudsman FSO and Pension Ombudsman were still separate bodies.

    A series of interviews were carried out with eight candidates on February 17-18, 2015 for the first round, and on February, 27, 2015 there were final interviews with the remaining three candidates, the “Board Members Guidelines” resembling a basic template for corporate hiring.

    All of the interviewers had impressive CV’s and expertise, including Mr John Hogan, then Head of Banking Policy for the Department of Finance and recently appointed as Secretary General.

    Revealingly, Hogan contributed to the “The Keane” Report on Residential Mortgage Arrears, which was criticised by Deputy Luke “Ming“ Flanaghan in 2011. The Report rules out the introduction of any scheme involving blanket debt forgiveness.

    Notably, the majority of complaints received by the FSPO pertained to financial and banking issues.  One would expect that any individual considered for that role – with powers to make legally binding decisions – would have extensive experience within the banking sector.

    By analogy, if one looks at the skills required of managers and other positions with supervisory roles, employed in the banking and insurance sectors that are imposed by the EU Single Supervisory Mechanism, we find clear guidelines in regard to required banking knowledge or one can even look up the job description for an FSPO Case Manager in PTSB.

    Yet in the advertised job description for The Financial and Pension Ombudsman we see theoretical banking or financial knowledge being “desirable” instead of “essential”, nor is there an examination process, beyond a standard interview.

    This is not to question Ger Deering’s managerial skills, nor his ability to adapt and learn, but when the job requires him to lead an oversight body over the banking, insurance and pension industries, his work experience is not what one would expect for the appointment.

    We know that the Office contains some banking expertise thanks to the qualifications of less senior staff, who have to deal with an enormous workload. But an appointment process for the top job focused on legal and managerial skills may perpetuate the current imbalance between the private and public sectors.

    In the forthcoming recruitment process for a position such as the FSPO, it is surely in the interest of the Department of Finance to appoint a person with more than generic managerial skills, and for some form of competitive examination to occur. Otherwise, it will be difficult to convince an increasingly sceptical Irish public that the government is genuinely intent on levelling the playing field between ordinary citizens and “too big to fail” corporations.

    Shared Responsibility

    One might say that appointing an ex-banker to the position creates a dangerous revolving door between banks and regulators, and is itself a recipe for regulatory capture. That argument is right to a point, but does not take into account that the necessary banking expertise might be found outside the banking industry itself, such as in auditing and accountancy firms; or by casting the net internationally to guarantee a greater degree of separation between the regulator and the regulated, especially in a small country such as Ireland.

    And, insofar as it is important to have sound legal advice, it is important that this is not set out in such a way as to intimidate complainants, and that the Office receives the same level of financial consultancy as the banks themselves.

    When we talk about consumer protection in the financial industry, we are really talking about the level field that the government promises, in relation to an industry administering one of the most powerful means of control, which is the complex socio-psychological phenomenon of debt.

    While some are celebrating that ‘The Boom is Back’, a significant proportion of the population is still struggling to overcome the effects that the previous boom and subsequent financial collapse actually brought; and, as in the period of austerity, the burden of bad choices is still carried almost exclusively by the most vulnerable and least resourced.

  • “Nuances”: Fellipe Lopes in Conversation

    “Nuances” is a work in progress by South American documentary maker Fellipe Lopes. Since May 2021, Lopes has been on the ground in some of the most notorious refugee camps in Europe, on the Greek island of Lesvos (Lesbos), just off the coast of Turkey.

    “Nuances” seeks to understand the ‘refugee crisis’ from the perspective of asylum seekers and refugees, and their relationship with humanitarian workers and volunteers living and working on the island. Lopes is soon to finish the interviews and the recording of the documentary. Until now, Lopes has been working voluntarily, at his own expense. He has now started a Kickstarter to crowdsource €7,000 for the next stage of the project, including post production and distribution.

    Last month, Lopes was nominated for the Irish Red Cross Humanitarian Awards for Journalism Excellence. In the same month, Cassandra Voices journalist Daniele Idini had the chance to catch up with the documentary maker.

    Fellipe Lopes by Daniele Idini

    Daniele Idini (DI): How long have you been in Lesvos now and what’s the situation like?

    Fellipe Lopes (FL): So I have been in Lesvos for the last six months and working on this documentary since I arrived. This documentary is a collection of interviews with asylum seekers, refugees, migrants explaining the challenges they are facing. It seems like they basically have only one option when it comes to work, which is basically to work as an interpreter. And this is not something that makes all the migrants and refugees happy because they are revisiting all the trauma through other people’s experience.

    DI: So basically, you are saying this work is, in a way, necessary for the camp’s operation, but is, in a way, preventing migrants from escaping the camp’s system,.

    FL: Exactly. These migrants are well suited to this kind of work, because they often speak the necessary languages – it might be Farsi, or Arabic, Lingala or French. They also can understand the struggles other refugees have been through, having experienced similar things themselves. On the other hand, however, they have ended up working in the humanitarian sector when they actually need humanitarian support.

    This is one of the topics covered in the documentary. Another issue, is the kind of social and legal challenges humanitarian workers are facing here. It’s about the authorities. The role of the police force and the army in regards to upholding the right of media coverage.

    The documentary is set with the island of Lesvos, and its capital Myteline, in the background. But the documentary centres on the stories that happen inside the camp, stories that happens outside of the camp, and the reasons and motivations for those asylum seekers coming to Greece. And as well, we have a really interesting part of the documentary that examines the pushback happening here in the Aegean Sea, which divides Turkey and Greece.

    We have a lawyer who’s been working around issues related to pushbacks for the last five years. We also have a German journalist who’s been covering all the pushbacks as well for the last three years. Obviously, the situation in Lesbos is so dynamic and things are changing rapidly. It’s been really challenging for me to keep up with this story. Things have moved so fast, and that’s maybe the reason I’m still here, and will stay a little bit longer, because these are stories that are developing.

    The dynamics in the camps are changing, which is new. They call this the new camp, which is where they’re trying to reduce the number of asylum seekers. Since the fire that happened last year, the government promised to build a new camp. But this never happened, basically because the local community are against new camps in the area. As a result, the temporary camps have become the de facto new camp.

    DI: So your documentary also tackles the relationship between the refugee camps and the local community?

    FL: Yes. I spoke with locals. Some are understanding of the necessity for a new camp. With that said, whether there is a new one or not, there are still 3,000 migrants on the island awaiting resolution of their cases. – building a new camp won’t solve the problem. they need to be processed

    Obviously, the freedom of these people is highly restricted.

    In the end, everything goes back to the camp. It isn’t a liveable reality. There are no schools in the camp and there’s only precarious legal and medical support.

    Last week, a woman passed away inside of the camp, for example. This is the reality that is happening in Lesvos. And everybody expects another massive wave of asylum seekers coming to Greece due to the situation in Afghanistan. Less and less will reach the Greek shore, however, because of the increased activity of the Greek coastguard and the European Frontex.

    Demonstration in support to Afghanistan.

    DI: Why should the general public support the making of this documentary?

    FL: It’s an overview of a situation that’s happening in Europe; it’s happening in Greece, through Greek laws, through the Greek system. But there are comparable problems in terms of the pushback between Bosnia and Croatia. The same thing is happening between Belarus and Poland. The same thing is happening in the Mediterranean Sea, between Libya and Italy, in Libya itself, and in Spain.

    This documentary shows that there is still a massive flood of refugees coming to Europe and obviously the policies in place are not facilitating those asylum seekers to claim asylum in Greece. This documentary is set in Lesvos, but it records something that is happening throughout Europe’s borders.

    People keep using this term a ‘refugee crisis’. This is a mistake. More than a refugee crisis, there is a policy crisis.

    What we’re witnessing is a series of legal decisions that are impacting the lives of those who are exercising a right to apply for asylum in Europe. These people are not criminals. The Geneva Convention guarantees them a right to apply for asylum. But this right is not being upheld properly. People are waiting one, two, three, or even over five years to have their claims processed.

    Interview edited for brevity and clarity by Ben Pantrey.

  • Interview: Father Peter McVerry

    Father Peter McVerry has been working with homeless people for over forty years. When he started there were about a thousand homeless in Ireland. Now, there are officially about eight thousand, with many others unofficially so. Last week, Daniele Idini caught up with the legendary social justice campaigner.

    Daniele Idini (DI): You have seen different types of crises related to housing in Ireland, but what are the constants?

    Fr McVerry (McV): What has been constant over the forty years is the attitude of decision makers to those who are homeless. When I started, the big issue was fourteen and fifteen year old kids living on the streets. When I opened my first hostel for those kids, the attitude was that these kids who kept running away from home were bad kids, and the solution was to call the police, pick them up and bring them back home again. The idea that there was huge abuse and violence and neglect hadn’t registered yet. So, the attitude was that we shouldn’t be reaching out and helping these kids. They’re just bad kids. Then the problem shifted to young adults with drug problems and again – the same attitude. Well, these are people that started using drugs. It was their fault. So, we shouldn’t really have too much sympathy for them. Then the issue became homeless families, and again, there’s a stigma attached to being homeless, and that stigma is accepted by some decision makers. What has been constant is this negative stigma that is attached to homeless people, and affects some decision makers’ thinking.

    DI: Where do you think this stigma comes from?

    McV: It permeates the whole of society. The only homeless people who are visible are the ones who are sleeping on the street and begging, and who generally do have a drug problem. This leads to a perception among the public that homeless people must have a problem, and that’s why they’re homeless. But the vast majority of homeless people don’t have a drink or a drug problem. The vast majority becoming homeless today are being evicted from the private rented sector, either because they can’t pay the rents, or because the landlord says they’re selling the flat.

    DI: Can we draw a connection between this and the economic policies that have been implemented in the last few decades?

    McV: Well, at an immediate level, when families become homeless, having been evicted from the private rented sector, there is no social housing to move into. In 1975, this country built 8,500 council houses. In 1985, and we were in a recession in the 80s, we still built 6,900 council houses. By contrast, in 2015 this country built seventy-five council houses. So the immediate effect is that there is no housing for those families to move into. They have only got one problem and it’s not drugs and it’s not drink. They don’t have enough money to be able to go out and afford alternative accommodation. 

    Now, why did that happen? It happened because of an ideology. The ideology that the private sector is supposed to solve all our problems. And so, low income families were pushed into the private rented sector, which no longer can cope. But it was that ideology. We’ve privatized everything. We’ve privatized childcare, and that’s in a bit of a mess at the moment. We’ve privatized care for the elderly. Most private nursing homes are privately run. We have privatized much of the health system and now we have privatized the housing system and it simply doesn’t work.

    The private market might build lots and lots and lots of houses, but only for people who can afford them. They’re in the business of making a profit. They’re not going to build housing for low income families. And so it’s the State that has to do that. The State has been very reluctant, over the last twenty years or so, to invest in social housing, and therefore they’re pushed people into the private rented sector. That wouldn’t be too bad, if we didn’t have a crisis in the private market where there aren’t even enough houses for people who can afford to buy them. It is estimated that we need between thirty-five and fifty thousand new houses every year just to keep up with the increase in population. Yet we’re only building in the region of twenty to twenty-five thousand. So there are lots of people who could buy a house, but can’t find a house to buy, and they’re being pushed into the private rented sector. So, everybody is being pushed into the private rented sector, and it can’t cope. Rents are going through the roof.

    DI: In Ireland, we still have relatively high home-ownership, but, especially after the crisis, there’s a rush into the new model of renting for life. This is a bit of a paradox, however, in terms of a neoliberal ideology which aims at protecting the right to private property; yet, in Ireland, owning private property has become out of reach for a significant percentage of the population. 

    McV: Absolutely, yes. So over the last twenty years, the State has failed in its responsibility to build social housing, pushing people into the private rented sector. They had to create a culture for that to happen. The State did two things. First of all, it looked at the continent. It looked at the rest of Europe and said: Well, most people rent. So, any progressive democracy and an economy which is growing must have a lot more people renting. The mistake there is that the rental market in the rest of Europe is totally different from the rental market in Ireland. Most rental markets in Europe are highly regulated: prices and rents are controlled, and you can become a lifelong tenant. Here, you can’t. You get a tenancy for maybe twelve months, or at most four or five years. You’re living with high insecurity, and the rents are increasingly way beyond your means. It’s a totally different rental market to the rest of Europe. But if you read the last government’s housing strategy, there is so much ideology in it trying to persuade us that the rental market is the way we have to go. The rental market has all of these advantages, and it is the only way for a progressive economy to go.

    DI: According to a recent Irish time article Ireland has the 10th highest rate of vacant homes in the world, with 183,312 homes classified as vacant. We have a society that does not regard it’s housing stock as a basic national infrastructure like ports, rail network, airports or the electricity grid.  

    How might the public become more aware of the benefits of a more distributed housing stock?

    McV: Well, I think the public are well aware of the empty homes that exist in every town and village. Ireland is blighted by empty properties lying derelict, often being used for antisocial or drug using young people. But there is very little political will to go after those properties. There is a lot of work involved in trying to identify the owners of some of those properties and trying to sort out any legal problems that may exist with relation to that. But we ought to be promoting compulsory purchase orders on properties that are left idle for longer than one or two years. It is a scandal. 1830,000, you mentioned. One of the issues was the Fair Deal Scheme, where if you go into a nursing home, the value of your home will be taken by the State when you die. Eighty percent of the value of your home will be taken by the State when you die to pay for your care in the nursing home. That meant that people in nursing homes couldn’t rent out the empty house they had been living in, even though they’re never going to go back to it.

    They can’t rent it out because most of the rent would be simply taken up by the nursing home to pay for their care. So, you had empty houses there that couldn’t be used. You had empty houses where we couldn’t find out who the owner was. 

    The government did make a couple of schemes such as a Repair and Leasing Scheme where the owner can benefit from a grant of, I think it’s now €60,000 to bring the empty building back into use and then lease it to the State for a period of up to twenty years. And there was a Buy and Renew Scheme where the State could buy the property and then repair it. But there was very little uptake of those two schemes. So yeah the amount of empty properties is a scandal.

    DI: What other measures would you suggest should be put in place to deal with the situation?

    McV: There are two problems at the moment. One is housing those people who are waiting for social housing. There’s an even more urgent problem, and that is preventing more and more people from coming into homelessness and needing housing. That’s the more urgent problem, and that can be solved overnight. 

    During the pandemic, there was a ban on evictions and there was a ban on a rent increase and the number of homeless people and families dropped by almost two thousand. We should extend that to a ban on rent increases and a ban on evictions for at least three years in order to try and get a grip on the problem. The counterargument will be that it’s against the right to private property. But I don’t buy that argument. I don’t think the Supreme Court would uphold that argument.

    So the solution involves passing a law banning evictions and rent increases and sending it to the President to sign. The President can send it to the Supreme Court and fast track a decision. Let’s do that. Let’s find out if it’s against the Constitution. If it is, you bring in a constitutional referendum on the right to housing and make that right at least place level with the right to private property, because every argument we present to try and address the housing-homeless crisis comes up against the argument that it is against the right to private property in the Constitution. Now, that right to private property was established in the 1930s at a time when Communism was expanding around the globe. And one of the tenets of communism was that you could not own private property. So, the idea behind it was to prevent Ireland ever having a Communist government. But now it’s being used to prevent Irish people getting their own home, which is absolutely absurd.

    DI: Isn’t it a paradox that a good percentage of the population does not have access to private property because we have to defend the right to private property?

    McV: Yeah, it is a total paradox. The Catholic Church, for example, supports the right to private property, but what is meant by that is that everybody should have access to private property because that’s our little security. That’s their little fallback if things go wrong. But the right to private property has been hijacked by the wealthy to hold on to what they have already acquired. And that was never, never the intention, certainly of the Catholic Church in supporting private property.

    DI: Is there space here for a discussion of morality? Is it morally right to continue pursuing economic policies which, as experience is showing, are causing unnecessary pain and suffering to a growing percentage of the population? How do indicators such as GDP relate to the percentage of homelessness? 

    McV: Firstly, GDP is a very ineffective criterion for the wealth of a country. Every time there’s a car accident, the GDP goes up because the cost of repairing the car and the cost of treating the victims all adds to GDP. And the more serious the car accident, the further GDP goes up. So, GDP is not a reflection of the wellbeing of a society. We can never agree on what is moral. If you own a big house in a nice area with a nice car what is moral is your right to protect those assets. But if you’re homeless on the street, your concept of morality is going to be very, very different. So, I don’t think we’ll ever agree on what is moral. This is a political question. This only way it is going to be solved is politically. We have to ask the question: who benefits from rising rents and rising house prices? The answer is three groups.

    One, the banks. The banks benefit because as house prices go up, they can lend more and more money out as mortgages and make more profit. And if they repossess a house, they will get more money for that house. They have an interest in a house and rent goes up. 

    Second, the big international investment funds. They also have an interest in rents going up. And indeed, many of them are leaving some of their properties empty rather than reducing the rents to what people can afford. 

    Third, the Landlords.

    But who doesn’t benefit? Almost all Irish people don’t benefit from rising house prices and rising rents. For most people it is a huge disadvantage. 

    The second question we have to ask is which side is the government on? The government is on the side of the banks, the big international investment funds, which they attracted in with extraordinary tax concessions, and it’s on the side of landlords. 

    In one episode Simon Coveney brought in a rent cap of four percent. Where did that four percent come from? Simon Coveney wanted to bring in a rent cap in line with inflation, which was hovering around zero at that time. The big international investment funds held a number of meetings with the Minister for Finance and told him that four percent was the minimum they would accept if he wanted them to continue being involved in this country. 

    So four percent it was, and since then the rents have gone up far more than that. In those five years, the rents have potentially gone up by twenty percent. At the same time the HAP payment which you received from the government if you’re on a low income hasn’t gone up in those five years. So now the rents are on average twenty percent higher than they were when the payment was introduced, and lots of people are having to pay top ups to the landlords. Anything between €125 and €200 is what I’m coming across. And you have a single person on social welfare who’s getting €204 or €205 a week, and they have one week in a month where they have to pay €200 to a landlord as a top up because the HAP payment hasn’t increased sufficiently. 

    People on low incomes are just being screwed, screwed by landlords, screwed by investment funds, screwed by banks, and the government is on their side, not on the side of renters or people paying a mortgage who are struggling to try and keep their heads above the water.

    DI: The inability of successive governments in dealing with this issue is more and more being perceived by the public as the result of either State corruption or pure negligence. 

    McV: I wouldn’t call it either of those. We have had conservative governments. Conservative governments are on the side of those who own capital because it’s the capital that develops the economy. So they’re on the side of capital, of the capital owners, which are the banks, and the large investment funds. And they don’t want to do anything which would frighten any of those away, anything which would make Ireland a less attractive place for them to operate. So I think there’s a conservative mindset which I totally disagree with. It’s not a mindset I would put down to malice or corruption or anything like that. I would put it down to what I would consider a very, very mistaken perspective on what’s happening in the country.

    For example, in Germany they have passed a rent freeze for the next five years on rental properties, and in Berlin, they introduced a referendum to take back from the big international investment funds all the apartments and buildings that they had built. Now, it probably won’t pass, but that’s the sort of thinking we need to do. That sort of thinking is totally absent in Ireland.

    The people who make the decisions here are doing very well. They’re on good salaries. They live in nice houses and nice parts of the town. Their children are going to third level education and in a few years time they’ll live in a nice house in a nice part of town. So they have a different perspective from somebody who’s struggling to pay the rent. They don’t understand somebody who is struggling to pay the rent. They say they do, but they don’t. For them the housing problem the problem of people on low incomes struggling to pay rents and mortgages. That’s a problem in a file on their desk. It’s not a personal problem for them, and it’s not a problem anybody they know is facing. 

    So for them it’s more theoretical. For me it’s real. It’s real because I’m meeting them every day and I’m frustrated and I’m angry. I want to see somebody with a passion for dealing with this. I want to see a decision maker who has a passion for dealing with this, who’s angry about what’s happening and who’s prepared to put their neck on the line. That’s what I want to see. I don’t see it at the moment.

    DI: And as we are coming slowly out of a pandemic, what lessons can be drawn in regard to emergency accommodation and homelessness? 

    McV: The pandemic actually had one positive feature for homeless people. They were able to get accommodation because a lot of Airbnbs came back into use as private residential accommodation. And because there was a pandemic, you didn’t have queues of people outside wanting to view them. So landlords were ringing us and saying, You have anybody that needs a place? And they knew we wouldn’t put in somebody who was going to wreck the place. They knew we would support that person. And if difficulties arose, we’d have to step in. So it was a Win-Win for everybody. 

    Now is the time to regulate and demand that Airbnb’s get planning permission and to regulate, inspect and ensure that those planning permission and regulations are enforced. That would bring a lot of Airbnb’s back into private residential properties and would be a big addition in helping the housing crisis. It could be a condition that anybody who wants to advertise their property on one of the sites, like Airbnb, must produce evidence of planning permission. That would get rid of a lot of Airbnbs and bring them back into residential use.

    DI: With tourism opening up again have you noticed any effects on homeless people, who were housed in hotels and hostels during the pandemic, and are now, again having to rely on shelters?

    McV: That’s already happening. The lease is now up on a number of hotels that were taken over as accommodation for homeless people, and they have been returned to the owners to be used as hotels. And it’s a real pity because homeless people love the hotels. You have your own en suite room. And now some of them are getting thrown back into hostile situations, and it’s very depressing for them. So yes, that was a feature of the pandemic that’s now disappearing. And it won’t come back.

    One option is to buy those hotels, buy them back, buy them from the owners and use them as accommodation for families and that, but that’s very expensive. They’re not going to do that. 

    One of my ideas for homeless hostels is that everybody should have their own room. Homeless hostels are often unsafe. Many people get assaulted. People’s belongings get robbed. I’m arguing that every homeless person should have their own room all the time that provides security and safety for their belongings. 

    That’s expensive, and they’re not going to do it. It’s much cheaper to get a house and put four people into a room with bunk beds than to provide four separate spaces for homeless people. So, they’re not going to invest the money in that. But to my mind, what we offer to homeless people sends a message to them, and the message is, this is how society values you. This is what society thinks you’re worth. So when you cram them into rooms and bunk beds, some rooms without even a window in it, they’re getting the message. And that message is very negative. But that is the message that many of our decision makers don’t mind giving to homeless people because that’s the attitude that they’re coming from. This is good enough for them. I heard one person ringing up the free phone number to try and get a bed for the night, and he was offered a bed in a hostel. And he said, I can’t go to that hostel. It’s full of drugs. I don’t use drugs. And the answer I overheard was “beggars can’t be choosers.” And that’s the attitude I think that many people have towards homeless people.

    It is an attitude that has political ramifications. Why else would we have reduced our building of social housing? Whenever the state tries to build social housing, you’re going to have huge objections from all the neighbours. And the local councillors who have to approve of social housing in that area are looking to the next election. And if they are alienating the people in the area where the social housing is going to be built, they are not going to approve that social housing for fear that they will lose out in the next election. So, we have this attitude that anybody in social housing is undesirable. Anybody in social housing is a problem, has a problem and therefore we don’t want to be anywhere near them. And the political system has to go along with that because of our democracy.

    With editorial from Ben Pantrey.

    Featured Image by Gareth Curtis

  • Housing: A Banker Speaks Out

    It is often said the current Irish housing crisis is mainly the result of a lack of supply of new houses; a supply that slowed down and never really fully recovered following the burst of the property bubble in 2008.

    Developers lament a lack of initiative in governments past and present; housing plans replace one another, at least in their facades. The latest example is the Fianna Fail Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien’s Housing for All replacing, or rather refining Rebuilding Ireland introduced under Fine Gael’s Eoghan Murphy – all while multiple cranes never really stopped crowning Dublin’s skyline.

    The spin is that this lack of supply, in turn, generates scarcity, which translates into higher prices.

    Thus far, the solution we have been served is to create a tax-friendly environment: a de-facto tax haven, to attract reliable (and well-resourced) institutional landlords and investment funds – commonly referred to as Vulture or Cuckoo Funds – to accelerate badly needed developments, besides keeping the Irish banking system afloat.

    Apparently, such entities are best placed to pursue ambitious housing schemes, and the management and maintenance of as much of the national housing stock as possible. And supposedly, as in the Housing for All plan, it is the market that is best equipped to understand and deliver the population’s needs, down to every neighbourhood and community.

    Unfortunately, however, the nature of this demand, might not be guided by the community’s needs, but the obligation of a certain profit margin for a financial instrument; held in a pension fund – perhaps owned by a kindly grandmother somewhere else in the world – while enriching the asset managers of these private equity juggernauts.

    What actually gets built, and at what price, is increasingly under the control of entities that hardly take into account the repercussions for society at large. In some cases they simply up sticks to gnaw on bones elsewhere. The Cuckoos have been here for a long time, locking in the spread between ever increasing rents and the financial costs.

    The influence of the banking and financial sector over the delivery of housing has become ever more evident. Thus, the quagmire of basic supply and demand arguments have little or no bearing on how a complex infrastructure such as housing is managed.

    It is within the banking sector, and regulations set by the ECB and Irish Central Bank that a substantial proportion of the residential properties of this country are held, packaged and repackaged, and sold in bundles to foreign investment funds in a process called securitization.

    For most people, despite the shocking revelations arising out the 2008-09 Crash, the inner workings of those dynamic sytems remain out of reach. We therefore find it necessary to look for guideance from someone who really understands the relationship between the current housing crisis, and the financial markets underpinning this.

    Ben Hoey has worked in commercial and investment banking for the past thirty years. After leaving Ireland in the 1980s, he went on to become CFO of Merrill Lynch International:, CFO of Bank of Ireland Capital markets in the wake of the 2008-09 crisis, and managing director of Kennedy Wilson Europe until 2015. Then, as he likes to put it, he failed to retire.

    He is now in the process of setting up his own Fintech business, aimed at creating a Rent to Buy structure.

    It was while analysing a distressed home loans portfolio on behalf of the Not-for-Profit organisation called Right2Homes, that he awoke to the full scale of banking misconduct, and mis-selling of the mortgages in the first place.

    Hoey contends that up to one-hundred-and=fifty-thousand mortgages may have been affected, including some currently in the Courts for repossession hearings, and others that have already been repossessed by banks and Vulture Funds.

    He is now taking approximately one hundred test cases of misconduct and mis-selling of mortgages before the Financial Services Ombudsman: and that seems to represent just the tip of the iceberg.

    Today, Irish interest rates remain, intentionally, the highest in the EU in order to increase bank profitability. This allows the Vulture Funds to purchase swathes of property and maximise their returns. Nowhere else in Europe offers such attractive rates, and hence Ireland is plagued by the funds, who see us as easy picking. Distressed mortgage holders are simply the low hanging fruit.

    How can we explain why an entire generation is paying the highest mortgage rates in the Eurozone, or being forced to rent at at more than double the rate compared to ten years ago? Extreme commodification of residential assets lies at the heart of this.

    Image: ©Daniele Idini

    Ben Hoey: It’s all about cash flow. Property, as an investment, is valued based on its ability to generate cash. Cash is king, and that’s why these Vultures, even the Cuckoo Funds, can access so much low cost leverage. No one has a hope against them. That’s what’s wrong with the world. Capital markets are so cheap now that they can buy anything. And if you think that the current government policies and Central Bank policies is putting free cash into the system, you need to recognise that free cash doesn’t go to you or I. Free cash flows to the banks to make sure they are solvent and healthy. And it’s the banks that make the fortune out of the free cash from quantitative easing.

    Cassandra Voices: What would be the average rate that Vulture Funds will buy loans for? Is there an average or is it dependent on the amount of NPLs versus performing loans if it’s a mixed package, for instance?

    Ben Hoey: No, it will never be mixed. Even when Nationwide Building Society was sold off, it was broken into different portfolios of loans depending on the ability of the debtor to pay. For simplicity, there was the complete deadwood, ‘haven’t heard from them in years‘; to the guy struggling; missing every couple of months; to the performing ones [the loans that were regularly being paid off]. So even within the Non Performing world, they split them into different categories and then they’re priced accordingly per portfolio.

    In 2018/19, the average pricing for Irish bank’s non-performing residential home loans was circa 65 cents on the dollar. And that’s per portfolio. Nothing is ever priced per loan because it’s all priced on the cashflow of the portfolio. Cash flow primarily generates what price they’re prepared to pay for the portfolio in total. Then, once they work out that, they apportion the price back across the portfolio for tax and regulatory reasons. Other factors such as equity in the home, negative equity, etc. do play a role, but they don’t care much about the price per loan, as each loan position will be managed individually and the portfolio will be managed and funded in its entirety; the objective being to maximise the cash flow on every loan.

    Image: ©Daniele Idini

    Cassandra Voices: The narrative supporting the presence of Vultures Fund in Ireland is that their investment is a necessary precondition for a stable banking market, and consequently construction industry. Why are we still seeing massive sell-offs of loan portfolios to Vulture Funds? Are the banks still in a sort of intensive care unit and in need of continuous injections of capital, as in the wake of the Crisis?

    Ben Hoey: I don’t think so. The banks are generally a cash cow. But what happened in 2009 is that there was a liquidity crisis as international investors and depositors withdrew their cash from the Irish banking system. NAMA was formed to solve that liquidity crisis in the banks. Most of the developer loans, which were completely dead in the water (with no cash flow), which were extensive relative to the rest of the banking market, were transferred to NAMA and again cheap, very cheap bonds were issued to support the purchase. All of those bonds were issued to the banks that transferred their loans. They effectively swapped their bad developer loans for low cost NAMA bonds which greatly improved their liquidity and capital position, as they could use those bonds to generate cash or liquidity in the market. NAMA was vital to addressing the liquidity issue in Irish Banking at the time.

    The interesting thing is that actually they didn’t start getting the residential loans off their books until about 2016, 2017 and 2018. So, there was clearly no rush as the liquidity crisis passed. The main reason that the banks in Ireland started to sell the residential loans was that the European Central Bank said: “guys, we are worried about the next crisis and you’re still living in the current crisis. So get your residential non-performing loans down below a certain percentage of your balance sheet.”

    It was typically seven percent on residential NPLs dropping to around five percent. So the Irish banks, faced with severe imposed capital costs, were strongly encouraged to sell their portfolios to hit these ratios. The European Central Bank brought in horrendous capital hits like a 100% reduction of your capital if you didn’t get below that level. So, for example, if you had a €100 million loan portfolio and you had provided say €60 million against it, your exposure to future losses was only 40, the ECB was saying: “if you don’t get below that ratio, then an ever increasing amount will be deducted from your capital, greatly limiting your ability to undertake new business.”

    We need a strong banking system which is ready for the next crisis. So after NAMA, there does not appear to have been a liquidity crisis for the Irish banks and, by their very nature, liquidity crises need to be solved immediately, as they are not like property and health service crises, which seemingly can go on for decades.

    In 2008-2009 the Irish government stepped in and did the craziest thing ever, which was to guarantee €400 billion of customer deposits, because all the international deposits were leaving the Irish banking system literally by the second. And they actually started to realize that, oh, my God, we have a bank account too that needs to be funded – and, they know, it’s going to run out of cash soon. And that was the problem. Nothing to do with lack of profitability. It was lack of cash or liquidity as it is better known in the industry.

    Cassandra Voices: So it was the withdrawal by investors, essentially a withdrawal of money by other banks or investors?

    Ben Hoey: By all the deposit base. Ok, not so much the Irish people, because they had access to the deposit guarantee scheme already. There was some stories of customers moving their cash to Switzerland and they all lost their shirts on the exchange rate. But no, in the main, it was the big institutional money that would have always chased the higher yielding banks. So, the Irish banks would have been paying a greater rate because they were less safe, because of country risk, etc. So as soon as those institutions got scared, they just pulled the cash out and the short term money markets closed to the banks. All right. And then that’s when the ECB had to allow Irish banks to start printing bonds. So they printed money. They issued bonds. But it was to save the banking system. Yeah, I think that was the bottom. Remember, you can only have a liquidity crisis over a short, very short, period. The liquidity crisis is a week or two weeks where – I always have to remind people – the truth is hard to establish, as each bank fights for survival and many assumptions have to be made by chief executives. It’s a very, very awkward position to be in.

    Cassandra Voices: Isn’t it the job of bankers to project a level of confidence that might exceed the reality of the picture?

    Ben Hoey:  The chief executive always has to take the optimistic view. Then, you know, you look at the Irish regulator at the time. He looked at that crisis. I don’t know where he got his information from. He came out and said that the Irish banks are well capitalised to weather the storm. So there was a man who wasn’t even a chief executive talking up the banking system in order to give it a chance of survival. I think a month later it was all over. But to have no liquidity is what kills a bank, not lack of profit, as the accounting rules are focused on the long-term profitability of the banking system.

    Image: ©Daniele Idini

    Cassandra Voices: But what happened to Iceland in your view? Did they do the right thing  when they more or less let their banks fail.

    Ben Hoey: They had no choice. There was no EU there to support them. You know what partially got us into the problem was joining the EU: the euro and cheap money coming into an economy that was used to expensive money. People thought, “I can service a million euros worth of tracker mortgage for six bob a week.” And so when we went into the crisis, the ECB helped us out. We are part of the euro. We couldn’t be brought down. But Iceland had no backstop. They were on their own. It was a common belief that the guarantee by the Irish Government of €400 billion of bank liabilities was stupid, but the markets ignored it. Do I think NAMA was a good thing. Yes, I think it saved the liquidity of the Irish banks.

    It’s after that period, after 2010, there was a tremendous opportunity for Irish banks to rebuild and innovate. And they didn’t. They just sank back in and took the cheap money and did the same thing day in and day out. And then they screwed their own customers, beat the shit out of them, treated everyone the same. Talked about moral hazard and how certain members of our community overborrowed and made a mess of it. I hope society never forgives them, but some people move on. So in answer to your previous question, after the liquidity crisis was solved they didn’t need to sell their NPLs, they wanted to sell them. They didn’t need the cash. In fact, the banks were overcapitalised in my view and wanted to repay capital.

    Cassandra Voices: So if the banks, after 2010, were not in need of cash, but they were forced by the ECB to sell most of their distressed loans nonetheless, why didn’t they consider more ethical solutions that would have protected family homes for example? Instead of selling to the American, Canadian or other international funds?

    Ben Hoey: Two reasons. Execution risk and moral hazard. The moral hazard in this case is: banks say we can’t give a discount to someone even though they might deserve it, or we may have lent them too much cash. We can’t restructure the loan fairly and write off some debt as their neighbours will want a debt write off too. You can argue all day as to whether that’s right or wrong, but that’s the moral hazard argument. So they have to sell to someone who would be seen to be not so fair. And there’s a lot of hassle and maybe a bit of shame. Moral hazard helps to embed that shame in people. So that’s the moral hazard,.

    Then there’s execution risk. If you consider, at the end of the day, you have a bank official charged with selling several billion euros worth of loans. So you have a small number of ambitious well paid people who want to continue to be successful. So do they sell to Brian Reilly and his not-for-profit initiative, who’s never done anything like this before, who appears to have the funding, but it’s never been executed? Or do I just give it to Cerberus, who will walk in the door with the cheque immediately?

    You know, the head of Lone Star, the richest Irishman in the world, John Grayken, visited some of the Irish banks selling assets, which is akin to Warren Buffett popping in for a chat; that’s powerful messaging to Irish bank officials who need a guaranteed sale. They are big talkers; you tell me the cheque you want and I’ll write it now. That’s execution risk. There’s no executive risks with the likes of Lone Star or Cerberus.

    Cassandra Voices: What do they ultimately want out of all of this if, at the end of the day, they’re buying something that’s not performing? The cash flow really isn’t there. Do they want the properties? What do they want out of this?

    Ben Hoey: The normal model was they would price the portfolio on the current cash flows and then, after the purchase, they would improve those cashflows or liquidate some loans, i.e. repossess. And, in certain cases, they do deals for guys to walk away. So, say the property was worth €100,000 for simplicity sake, and they gave the guy twenty grand to walk away. God knows what they bought the loan for, but they ask themselves: “is this the maximum cash we can get here?” So €100,000 sale price, minus the 20k that they gave them to walk away. That’s generated €80k today, and the today is very important. That would have fed into the model. So it’s all about maximizing the cash flow.

    When they couldn’t maximize the cash flow because the Irish courts didn’t cooperate, they minimized the cash outgoing. So, originally when you buy a non-performing loan book that actually has a bit of cash flow, you don’t use all your own money to buy it. You go to a London bank and they give you what’s called a loan on loan. So they lend you money, and probably at one and a half percent, up to 60 percent loan to value, secured on the loans you bought. So that’s really cheap. But your own equity needs are say, nine percent unlevered.

    After a while you think this is not going anywhere. I’ll just put the whole lot into securitization vehicle and then issue triple-A notes up to a high percentage, paying out 80 basis points. So, they drive down their funding costs, which again enhances the cash flow. Net cash flow.

    Yeah. It’s all about cash. Show me the cash. The trouble is that they couldn’t do deals with Irish people because there was so few who had any cash and had no access to cash. And the Courts wouldn’t allow them to repossess.

    Cassandra Voices: And what has all of this to do with the Housing Crisis? How does this affect supply and demand on the Irish housing market?

    Ben Hoey: You said “there’s no supply.” So how do you know that? Supply of what to who? No one has defined how many affordable and social houses our society can afford. We don’t actually know what supply we’re trying to meet. And, you know, like all journeys, if you start in the wrong place, you have no hope of getting to where you want.

    The pension fund, the Vultures, are just one mechanism of delivery. But who are we trying to supply to? The family paying a bit of tax, probably earning up to €80,000? They should be able to buy a home or rent it affordably. We’re not trying to supply housing to a German pension fund. They don’t need housing. They need profit.

    Cassandra Voices: But a larger section of society in Ireland actually needs housing. And instead, what you are saying is that we are supplying Vulture and Cuckoo Fund profits, through the delivery of housing for their needs, and not the Irish people?

    Ben Hoey: Can you imagine if Apple said they were going to build a new phone with special features and they were going to sell it to a German pension fund so they could sell it on to our citizens? That’s exactly what we’re doing here. We’re saying we’re building these houses for German and U.S. pension funds because they’re the only ones that can afford them. We put a profiteer in the middle – a middle man. And that’s what happens when you commodify an infrastructure, a key infrastructure like housing.

    Image: ©Daniele Idini

    Cassandra Voices: Is this by design where we are now in terms of housing?

    Ben Hoey: This is inevitable when you make something a tradable commodity. You’ve turned homes into an investment class. There’s no rules anymore. The cheapest money will get the deal. And that’s the fundamental issue.

    What would happen if the Vultures took the airport over and were charging everyone €300 a head to get through? It wouldn’t happen because it’s so obviously wrong. But so is just about everything obviously wrong with the family home market. And you can see the effects. You go to Dublin, North Docks and South Docks; There are thousands of beautiful apartments, worth €600,000 to a million sitting empty because the German and U.S. pension funds want that type of housing, as they were told there’s loads of wealthy young people living in the city. How’s that worked out? Again, their money is so cheap that they can leave those apartments empty, and wait for rents to recover.

    There’s no crisis for them, even though their flats are empty. We’ve actually allowed a particular type of Vulture investor to dictate the supply of family homes to the Irish market.

    Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, we started building stuff all over the country where it wasn’t needed. We’ve learned from our mistakes, but we’re building the wrong sort of property in the right place: and this kills me as a capitalist to say it but… stop treating family homes as a commodity that can be traded. It will make the cost of labour very expensive and the country very unproductive.

    Image: ©Daniele Idini

    Cassandra Voices: Would it be possible to gradually stop treating the residential property market as a tradable commodity?

    Ben Hoey: No, I think you have to go back to basics and look at the complete supply chain: who ultimately is the rightful owner? Is it the individual, the government, or is it a commercial operation? And then you’ve got to put the right structure in place. And the funding naturally comes. Everyone looks out to different models such as the Austrian model etc. And they do work, but you can’t just pick and choose bits of them. You’ve got to look at the whole structure, holistically.

    Cassandra Voices: Ultimately it comes down to a vision of the society that we want to live in. And in order to define this we need a political environment that is willing to build an economic system that takes into account the needs of the population at large, and as you said is willing to define, in the first place, what those needs actually are. In the case of the Irish housing markets, the problem doesn’t seem to to be about access to financial resources, but again, who has access to it.

    Ben Hoey: When I was listening to you there, I was thinking about how we got rid of the British landlords in the past, who took the land with the backing of military power. And we’ve replaced them with, private equity, the Vultures who have employed not military power, but their cheap money. If only you knew the pain they go through before they decide to buy or to build. If you watch that pain, that risk mitigation, you realize how naive we are. The governments says build, build, build. But the clever money agonizes before it decides what to do. The Vultures know exactly what they want. But we don’t. So we end up being picked off.

  • Interview: Belfast on the Twelfth

    In interview with Daniele Idini, photographer Graham Martin reveals he was drawn to cover the Twelfth in Northern Ireland after developing an interest in geopolitical events while living in Brazil. Before his trip North he expected trouble, but encountered a surprisingly welcoming atmosphere, even in hardcore Loyalist areas, although much of the iconography remains disconcerting to any visitor from the South.

    Daniele Idini: Are you a regular visitor to Northern Ireland?

    Graham Martin: No not really, and that’s part of why I wanted to go with a camera. As you know, photography is a great tool for attempting to explain things to others, but also to yourself. It’s a great way of coming to terms with things, understanding things and I, like many in the South am aware of all the stigmas attached to the North. Having been born in the 1980s I do remember going up with my parents as a kid and although already relatively peaceful, there was still a physical border and I can remember passing through the checkpoints, seeing the walls and turrets without fully understanding what it all meant. Since then, any visit I made up there and over the border was for a shopping trip or for touring the Giants Causeway and Antrim coastline. My initial impression crossing the border was how good the quality of the roads were compared to the South, the red letterboxes, or the Union Jack painted on the curbs. Later, when I had a cell phone, there was the network switching over; it always felt slightly surreal. It was only in later years, when I started to orientate my photography more towards photojournalism that I started taking an interest in geopolitical events. Mostly abroad at first (I really began to take photography seriously when I emigrated to live In São Paulo, Brazil from 2012 to 2016), but then, you start to become curious about your own backyard; which you mainly ignore at first, because it always seems like it’s something that you want to get away from. So, for me, this recent trip was the first time I went up looking at it in a new light, and that was because of photography.

    A child adds to the pyre before the Eleventh Night bonfire at Mountview Street estate off the Crumlin Road

    Daniele Idini: In a previous article, which included interviews with a number of influential actors, we reported on rising tensions. We encountered a delicate situation, with a multitude of factors are at play. A combination of a Covid-19-related crisis; the effect of Brexit negotiations on the Good Friday Agreement, which was implemented in the context of the UK being a part of the European Union. What did you expect to happen on the Twelfth this year, and did it transpire?

    Graham Martin: I genuinely thought it could go either way. There was all this talk of it potentially being heated, and I did reach out to some contacts who are originally from the North, and from the Protestant community, to ask advice on where would be interesting for me to go to see the parades and what bonfires would be accessible to outsiders. They gave their advice and warned that it looks like it’s going to be quite a heated Twelfth this year, because of everything that is going on at the moment. The advice I received was generally like “So, you know, keep your distance, keep your accent down, be sharp, keep your wits about you”, that kind of thing. When you get that kind of advice from people who are from there and who know the place, that colours your perspective and perception of things. I still went with an open mind, but like with everything, whenever there’s a lot of discussion, build-up and anticipation, quite often it doesn’t quite end up amounting to much at all, which ended up kind of being the case. There were some contentious bonfires built close to peace walls and talk of the PSNI forcibly removing some, which ultimately they didn’t.

    Smoke rising in the Sandy Row area on July 10th indicates a pyre has been set alight a night early perhaps by Nationalists saboteurs…

    Some of the bonfires were set alight the night before and I think there was one youngster, of maybe fourteen years-of-age, who got badly burned, which is a separate issue, but that was kind of the extent of any major incidents or outbursts and I actually felt warmly welcomed there. Any kind of feeling of apprehension was ultimately my own based on preconceptions. I arrived there with my guard up and found that there was no real need for that. I could walk around freely, could photograph in any neighborhood, could approach and talk to people on the streets. Even on the Shankill, which is notoriously Loyalist, I was taking pictures of people openly and they would want me to send them to them by email.

    Orangemen march down the Shankill Road on July 12th.

    There was a little bit of bemusement and surprise when they realised that I was from the South, but perhaps they respected that. So I got comments like “fair play to you” . You could say that that general calm I experienced was very much a planned thing, in light of everything in the news and I think there was a marked intention to keep things civil and peaceful.

    Spectators at the Sandy Row bonfire on July 12th night.

    On seeing my camera one guy at the bonfire on Sandy Row came up to me  and said, “don’t go making this look like something it’s not. Nobody’s fighting here. Everybody’s happy. You know, everybody’s peaceful. There’s going to be no violence here. Don’t go back reporting something that it isn’t, like the papers tend to do.” They notice that this big night of the year for them is always marked with negative press, with criticism, and I think there was an intention overall to show people that the Twelfth could pass off peacefully, and there was going to be no tension.

    Orangemen march down the Shankill Road on July 12th.

    Daniele Idini: We can say then that there was an effort to keep the tension to a minimum. Yet, as I see from your pictures, there were some controversial messages and flag burning. What do these provocations, if we can call them this, really mean in this context?

    Graham Martin: Every year the same flags and slogans are burnt on the fires. The Irish tricolour is burnt. You have effigies of Bobby Sands burnt, the gay flag, the Palestinian flag. You have pro-Israel graffiti around on the walls, which is just as provocative. It seems paradoxical that they identify themselves with Israel as a kind of a small nation that has the right to be in that particular territory. It’s just very confusing to see the Tricolor and the Palestine flag up in flames, and yet the people are warmly welcoming. They’re quite civil in person, but at the same time you see graffiti around stating K.A.T. (“Kill All Taigs”). Taigs is what they call Catholic nationalists, the Irish. You’re walking around meeting people, photographing people, and to your left, there’s K.A.T. graffiti, to your right, there’s a big, multi-storey bonfire with your nation’s flag on!

    Bonfire Pyres on July 10th ready for The Eleventh Night celebrations at Sandy Row, Shore Road, Tigers Bay and Donegal Pass.

    They’re demonstrating that they hate you and at the same time, they’re willing to open up and talk to you and shake your hands, so what’s the true feeling there? It’s very jarring. On the other side, when you walk through Catholic neighbourhoods like Ardoyne, not too far from the Shankill, in peace time, although IRA murals still exist, most of the more aggressive ones have been decommissioned. Many now are promoting sports and social community activities, environmental issues, and there are little or no flags. The odd tricolor maybe, but when you cross over onto the Shankill the murals feel more aggressive, more provocative. You’ve got those kind (such as the U.V.F murals and graffiti) up around the Shore Road, that would make you weary to enter into such areas. I walked up to one pyre as it was being built, the one that commenting on the Irish News (see image in grid “Fuck the Irish News”)* and there were a few guys hanging around finalising it’s construction. They basically told me to get the fuck out of there, so not such an open vibe. That’s the thing though; they put up these things, huge pyres with large signs and slogans that are clearly intended to seek attention, but then if you go and try and document it, you’re quickly warned to get the fuck out, so it’s quite challenging .

    A line of PSNI Land Rover Tangis approach passing a conflagration in the Sandy Row area.

    Daniele Idini: I guess it would depend on who is the intended audience for these displays. Some might include the press, but some, might be predominately intended for the community itself, and the aversion toward media is actually part of the message.

    Graham Martin: Essentially, you know, you’re seeing slogans that are saying ‘Kill Catholics’. It’s beyond provocation. They can say it’s their culture and “let us let us have our night”, but there has also been homophobic and other racist graffiti on the Protestant side, denouncing the Black Lives Matter campaign for example. There a lot of topical issues that they are intentionally taking a side on. So this seems to me like a statement and not just aimed at their own community. There are paralells with the global push to a more Populist, right-wing ideology, you’ve seen pre-Brexit with Nigel Farage, and with ethnic nationalism in the U.K.

    Spectator at the Sandy Row bonfire on the Twelfth.

    Daniele Idini: The discontent in Loyalist communities, still focused on the Partition question, now seems to be directed equally towards Westminster. There’s a feeling of betrayal aimed at the likes of Boris Johnson, a Conservative. It has created an identity crisis, wherein there’s a feeling of abandonment from the rest of the United Kingdom; which brings a sense of fragility.

    Graham Martin: It’s been building for years, I suppose. You’re talking about communities there that are really marginalised, under-developed and it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see why they would be jumping on that kind of thing, and out of frustration picking on the Black Lives Matter campaign, Climate Change, or adopting the anti-masks / anti-vax campaigning. It’s really masquerading as something else. It’s a kind of rhetoric that it’s normalised that it doesn’t even get questioned anymore. The burning of flags, for example, could be seen as a form of hate crime, yet it’s completely normalised and permitted. Also, the bonfires aren’t regulated at all. There’s nobody in an official capacity to make sure they’re safe. If one falls over, which happens from time to time, it’s the size of a building falling, and on fire, It’s kind of surreal that it’s allowed to proceed as it does.

    Rex Bar, a well-known UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force, a loyalist paramilitary group) meeting place on on the Shankill Road, July 12th.

    Daniele Idini: I guess there is a level of negotiation going on with the authorities to try to keep the tensions to a minimum. To go back to the wider issues, Northern Ireland finds itself for the first time facing the possibility of a United Ireland that is being seen as not too remote of an option, and the result of Brexit’s negotiations is perceived by some as incompatible with the Good Friday agreement. It could be a treacherous path to save a peace treaty.

    Graham Martin: There needs to be good faith and efforts from both sides, and a period where controversies aren’t dug up from the past. The difficult thing for sure is that the Troubles are within living memory for many people still; it’s not ancient history. And it’s going to take a long time for people to forgive and forget. Now it’s the Sea Border that’s causing fresh tension, and the announcement of the Statute of Limitations on investigation into the Bloody Sunday Massacre. Who knows what it will be next. It seems like it’s such a consistently fractious and volatile situation.

    ‘Summer of ’69’ mural on Hopewell Avenue in the Loyalist Shankill Road area, referencing the August 1969 violence which helped spark the Troubles.

    And it’s not about religion, of course, but the symbolism of the churches, and the ephemera surrounding the divided beliefs remains ever present in the murals, tattoos, and the wearing of either the Catholic Celtic or Protestant Rangers football shirts. I think it’s harmful to be carrying that around as a constant reminder of superficial dividing lines between communities. But I don’t think young people are really identifying with their own faith any more, or their religion they’re born into quite as much as they used to. I think there’s a move away from labelling people based on their beliefs. That might sound naively optimistic, but I think that’s going to help things there. People can inform themselves better with the Internet and the global exchange of information, and question ingrained fears or hatred of their neighbours. You’ve seen how such a turnaround can happen in Southern Ireland over the last twenty years, where the power of the Church has waned, and all positives that have come out of that with marriage equality and Repeal the 8th. That is happening in the North also: an easing of hardline traditions which are loaded with sectarianism. And I think it’s going to hopefully have positive knock-on effects in time.

    Graham Martin’s work is available below:

    www.grahammartinphotography.com

    https://www.instagram.com/graham.martin.photo/?hl=en

  • Does Ireland still have a Problem with Whistleblowing?

    Over the past few years, a broad consensus has emerged that in Ireland providing adequate protections for whistleblowing, and whistleblowers, is a lot more difficult to achieve in practice than in theory.

    In many fields, extreme real life consequences for a brave decision to go public with revelations of wrongdoing have been apparent. The protections currently in place do not shield individuals from repercussions in one’s personal and family life, or career. We are talking about losing a job, harassment, unwanted public exposure, grave false allegations and framing, protracted legal challenges, financial difficulties to name but a few. All too often, such individuals are dismissed as ‘rats’. There follow death threats and even the potential for imprisonment. At any level such a decision is a life-changing event. In many cases it is traumatic.

    There are many examples: Garda John Wilson and Maurice McCabe’s ordeals are well recounted in a RTE in a documentary. Back in 2017, banking whistleblower Jonathan Sugarman testified to the Oireachtas that: “Official Ireland has absolutely and completely destroyed the lives of every single whistleblower who has come forward, from whatever walk of life they’ve come.” 

    Many others have come forward to expose misconduct they witness emanating from so-called ‘official Ireland,’ a term that broadly signifies the nexus of the Irish ruling class’s power, across the public and private sector. It is fair to say, as sources have revealed, that there were, and possibly are, many more people who feel unable to go down the whistleblowing path.

    Notwithstanding the Protected Disclosures Act 2014, the law should better regulate whistleblower disclosures and their protection, and encourage people to step forward when they witness wrongdoing.

    Even now in 2021, after much debate and revelations, and with Irish whistleblowing legislation being under the process of amendment in compliance with the EU Directive 2019/1937, it is alleged that a culture of ostracizing whistleblowers persists in the civil service, Garda, as well financial and other corporate institutions.

    If the legislation is there to protect individuals, why then, are some, or many unwilling to proceed? Why is it that after long pondering, and perhaps after seeking confidential advice from a lawyer or union, they find themselves unable to proceed with a disclosure?

    And what can the whistleblower expect to endure after making the brave decision? More to the point, does the proposed new legislation offer adequate protect form the extensive tentacles of ‘official Ireland’?

    I posed these questions to human rights barrister David Langwallner, who was asked by Sinn Féin to help draft a private member’s bill which they propose to introduce to Dáil Éireann by July 31st, 2021.

    Daneiel Idini (DI): David, can I ask you what’s happening these days with regard to whistleblowing in Ireland?

    David Langwallner (DL): What happened was and I’ve got to be a bit circumspect about this. I was approached by a former client of mine who’s a whistleblower, and that client indicated that the Oireachtas was about to introduce, in compliance with EU law, a newly amended protected disclosure legislation to pass in 2021. There is an existing Protected Disclosures Act 2014. But certain deficiencies were pointed out to me by the Sinn Fein party. I had a meeting with them, they’ve asked me to draft a private member’s bill that they propose to introduce by July 31th 2021, first because of perceived and actual deficiencies in the existing whistleblowing bill.

    DI: How long have you been dealing with the issue of whistleblowing concerning Ireland?

    DL: I have represented whistleblowers [in the inquiry into a bank inquiry.] I continue to represent Garda whistleblowers and corporate whistleblowers. I lectured for one semester whistleblowing, at Middlesex University and I have gathered extensive materials.

    DI: You have also written two articles, one in the Village magazine and one in broadsheets on the pitfalls of whistleblowing. And tell me what exactly is wrong with Ireland’s handling of whistleblowing.

    DL: I think a number of things. The first thing is that the new proposed act is seeking to introduce private whistleblower regulation. The real problem in Ireland is state corruption. So you need regulation for whistleblowing and provisions that deal with whistleblowers in the Police; whistleblowers in the Department of Civil Service; whistleblowers within the structure of inquiries; whistleblowers within the structure of the public health system; and indeed the prison service and the present bill does not address that fully.

    DI: Is that because of the fact the whistleblower is forced to refer to the top of the organization that he is trying to blow the whistle on?

    DL: So that is that deficiency, I suppose. But the other deficiencies, documents, and literature suggest that there is no point in having a structure where a whistleblower is subject to the necessity to follow internal procedures before they (feel safe) to go externally.

    The reason for this is that when internal procedures are usually invoked, there’s the risk that bullies, submission, demonization, can ostracize the whistleblower.

    The first recipients of the disclosure are usually the very people who want cover-up in the first place. And in a culture like Ireland’s one, there are very few independent people who take this seriously.

    So a whistleblower has to do a job. He has to be able to circumvent the internal processes and procedures of the corporate or public organization that they’re in.

    And that means a whistleblower has to be allowed to go outside that organization, to the press, for example. But the difficulty that we face in this Irish media context though, is that there is very little investigative press, anymore, who are not controlled by the established parties. The same parties are concealing all the levels of misconduct and wrongdoing.

    DI: So can you tell me in a nutshell in a few minutes exactly what the current legislation covers and if it tackles this “Culture” of antagonism towards whistleblowing?

    DL: Well, the current legislation covers things like criminal wrongdoing, corruption, bad financial administration, miscarriages of justice. It’s extensive to that extent. But the problem is that it doesn’t matter how extensive the coverage is in terms of protection If the culture is not receptive to whistleblowing.

    So, the person I represented to the inquiry into whistleblowing and audit the second day of the case,(the first effective third case,) the police got wind of this and they threatened the breach of the Official Secrets Act. So to intimidate to not go ahead. So even if you’ve got a culture of bullying, harassment, and intimidation, you could also, at the same time have, like the Soviets, a fabulous constitution that protected every right under the sun but it was utterly meaningless in practical terms.

    You could have a whistle-blowing statute that protects everything, but not when organizations such as the Department of Justice, Police, corrupt politicians get involved. I think what we need to do is create a more receptive culture. It means creating an independent ombudsman, allowing for external reportage.

    DI: Can you give me an example of what is the path that he has to follow to effectively become a whistleblower and therefore denounce what he saw?

    DL: Well say, for example, a senior police officer who sees that the police are actively framing people for child sex abuse, for example. The process of complaint in that particular context is that the police officer in question would have to make an internal complaint within the police. And those at the top police force were part of corruption.

    DI: Are you saying that there should be more protections for someone who makes the disclosure directly to an external, independent first recipient. Someone or a body that is not in the organization involved by the whistleblower disclosures?

    DL: There can be no barrier, statutorily, to someone going to an external body or agency or the press, having to have exhausted internal procedures. As they have to go through the hoops of internal procedures, those procedures would try to demonize and diminish them and have a vested interest.

    So you have to go first internally, and then go to an ombudsman, before you go to the press or external body.

    I think in conjunction with the whistleblower allegation, we need to build in a procedure where the whistleblower is almost immediately protected, and that I mean that there must be a party to go to that can give them a income structure if there were suspended from work, so that they don’t have to interact with people who are blowing the whistle on the workplace. The lack of such support is inherent in our culture of compliance, which is so amazing.

    For the purpose of clarification, I had further conversations with David on the last points touched on in the above interview as to the psychological impact that a whistleblower faces. If not properly addressed with, for example, access to therapeutic psychological support, as well as other forms of protection, even more stigmatization may be the result.

    I also discussed with him, as well as with other sources, that currently wish to remain anonymous, the procedures for disclosure that are in place for whistleblowers to use. It’s pretty obvious that internal procedures of disclosures, in some cases, can be painful as well as inefficient for all the reasons discussed above. But are alternatives offered, for example the Garda Ombudsman with regard to complaints about Gardai, allowing for the full protection available under the Act? And is the compensation scheme adequate, or should this include aggravated and exemplary damages?

    Should the protections, and possible compensation, also include redress to family members of whistleblowers, who might have suffered the consequence of this “culture”.

    We will continue to ask these and other questions, but in the meantime, there remains one important question for me to ask which is: has Ireland got any better for whistleblowing, after years of revelations, media coverage, and resignations; or are things pretty much as they always were, if not worse?

  • Mandatory Hotel Quarantine Alienates Immigrant Communities

    Never before have I felt so far from my country of origin as when I heard that Italy would be added to the list of countries from which arrivals are mandated to enter a hotel quarantine for twelve days on arrival in Ireland. Now any trip to my family will cost almost two grand, and that’s before accounting for the flights and numerous tests.

    That’s quite a spike in price compared to the few hundred euro I needed prior to April 15th. In pure economic terms, it further diminishes the purchasing power of a particular section of immigrants, as well as Irish citizens living abroad; even if only for a particular item, such as the opportunity to visit loved ones occasionally, and to return for a short stay in case of an emergency.

    For many of us, living from pay cheque to pay cheque, the inflated price of the hotel stay is a serious impediment to reaching one’s country of origin; and that’s without considering the dread we feel about spending almost two weeks under hotel arrest, without even access to a kitchen. I wonder how healthy it is to eat takeaway food for twelve days in a row?

    One may argue that the measure is a proportionate response to a public health emergency and that the right to travel abroad does not come before the right of a country to remain Covid free. But this ignores whether we test negative on arrival and show no symptoms and, more broadly, the rights of European citizens living in another member state.

    Under Article 45 of the charter of the fundamental rights of the European Union, as citizens we enjoy a right to freedom of movement. Every citizen of the Union has the right to move and reside freely within each member states’ territory. There has to be a very compelling (and proportionate) reason for this right to be withdrawn.

    The time for extreme restrictions on the right to travel was March 2020, when some member states including Denmark and Poland temporarily closed their borders. But at this stage any restrictions surely should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and not applied indiscriminately. Ireland isn’t exactly Covid-free New Zealand at this stage, and the Irish government is not aiming for a Covid-free status. What’s more the number of exceptions – including for politicians, and elite athletes in all likelihood – demonstrates the law is being applied unfairly.

    As for the variants of concern, well 90% of experts say that Covid-19 will become endemic, and so we will never be able to travel freely again if that argument is applied to international travel.

    I wonder if this is another aspect of our pre-Covid life that we have to reluctantly accept has disappeared – in order to protect the weak and vulnerable? Or so it is argued. Even if that means uselessly undermining the rights of immigrants living in Ireland now confronted with draconian barriers to movement.

    One can understand – confronting the pressure the pandemic has put on healthcare capacity all over the world – why authorities might consider any means possible to stop the spread. But even working from that assumption, it is really difficult to find justification for mandatory hotel quarantine if an individual tests negative on departure and after five days on arrival, for example.

    In any case, regardless of its arguable necessity, this measure’s immediate effect is to further alienate foreign communities living in Ireland and, I suspect, Irish ex-pats abroad, even though the data shows that foreign travel has had a miniscule effect – just one percent of cases according to Leo Varadkar in January – on the spread of the disease.

    Regarding the Irish media’s coverage of this issue, it is disturbing that sympathy seems to be reserved for Irish citizens returning home to loved ones, but silence on how this will affect other EU citizens, and non-EU nationals. It sends out a clear message about how much the political and media establishment value foreign workers living in this country who cannot vote in national elections.

    The effect is to place a prohibitive price tag on returning to countries of origin for communities that are already massively economically disadvantaged by the pandemic; not to mention the housing crisis, and more generally, a widening inequality that too many in the political establishment of this country seem to accept as “the way things are.”

    Now this political establishment has no shame in implementing Populist measures, which seem aimed at gathering political support from a terrorized audience that dreams of a ZeroCovid approach, after being treated to a partially informed debate for months.

    It is a curious paradox that the internationalist establishment left in Ireland has no objection to sealed borders, and the effect this will have on immigrant minorities, many of whom are living on the margins of society.

    Often, the most useless measures to tackle a problem reveal where the real problem lies. In this instance, the cynical alienation shown by NPHET and politicians in proposing and implementing such policies that have major impacts on communities with whom they normally have no contact, apart from well-orchestrated photo ops with appropriately smiling immigrants.

    The question now becomes: for how long will this policy of internment last?

  • Anti-Lockdown Demo in Dublin

  • Musician of the Month: Gemma Dunleavy

     

    Singin’ Songs and Stories

     

    My name is Gemma Dunleavy and I’m a yapper. I’d talk the handle off a cup. I also write and play music. I see myself as a storyteller first, then a musician. It’s where I feel my true gift is, my natural comfort is in meandering through my memories, picking out the best details to paint the clearest picture in the heads of those listening.

    I’m from Sheriff Street in Dublin 1. My whole family grew up there and I still live there now. Like any inner city community there’s the good and the bad. The flats had problems with drugs and crime being rampant during the ‘90s. The heroin epidemic tore through the area and claimed the lives of many young, unemployed, and vulnerable people that were left to rot by the system. The skeletons of that epidemic still haunt us today. There were many effects of this: lives were lost, families destroyed, crime in the area rose, and the resulting social stigma from outside the community. The most important side effect was something different: resilience. People had nothing else but each other, no other options but to push through and that’s what we did and continue to do up to this day. Our community is rich in spirit, hope, and support. We have some of the best talent: athletes (boxer Pierce O’Leary), writers and artists (see ADUANTES by poet Michelle Byrne and painter Tara Kearns – playwright Sean O’Casey lived here too), and a string of musicians and directors hailing from our area (Luke Kelly and others). I’m extremely proud of where I’m from and my desire to preserve our community and protect it from aggressive redevelopment will never diminish.

    I learned the value of a good story from a young age – I grew up in between my two nannies and their friends talking around the sitting room table. They would talk about living in the tenements and their memories there, describe the poor conditions and tragedies with a smile on their faces, and a gleam in their eyes, as if they were chatting about green meadows and clear skies. They spoke with such fondness you could almost feel the warmth from their bodies. They were proud women with strong roots and they made me proud to be from Sheriff Street. I loved their sense of togetherness, the laughs, and the community. Growing up with them meant growing up in a community, being raised by a community of people – something that’s not so common anymore. Through telling my own story I saw parallels between myself and them, finding comforts in things that from the outside might sound jarring. I had an aha! moment where in some strange way I was in my own version of their tenements. Their voices saying “We had nothing but we had it all” made sense.

    I delved into my memories to tell five of the most important stories I had. Each story was from a different perspective based on a stereotype I grew up around. I dressed each one in chords and melody – and I had the help of the gritty voices that shaped my childhood. I tied it all together under the name of Up De Flats. For the concept I created five characters based on friends, family, neighbours, and myself. I would step into each of these characters and tell their story for each song. Before any of this became music, I gave each character a name and I’m going to take a moment to introduce you to these characters whose names haven’t yet stepped outside of my head (until now): 

    Chantelle is a seventeen-year-old from Sheriff Street. She goes out with Dayo, a fella who is a couple years her senior. He’s mysterious. People never quite know what he’s up to exactly but it’s probably not good. He’s not shy of a police chase, but he never gets caught. Chantelle knows his moves but he protects and respects her and their nights cruising down the Boundary Wall in the car where they can forget about everyone else are enough to show her he’s for her only. The boys on the street respect him and all the girls fancy him – he has street cred, making him feel all the more desirable to Chantelle. Edel is a desperate mother whose son has fallen victim to the heroin epidemic. “He’ll never change, but I made him this way” she wails as she describes him as a beautiful setting sun while watching him fade away from the devastating effects of drugs.

    Paulie is a young man who’s grown up in the flats with his single mother and six siblings. Being the eldest, he was often left to raise his siblings as alcoholism took over his mother after his father’s death by suicide. He spent his later teenage years in detention centres and has only ever earned money through drugs and robberies. Now out of prison, his past means he will always be looking over his shoulder – but he will never let anyone in because in his eyes, the pain he has suffered is enough of a weapon to wipe anyone out. And if it was necessary that’s what he would do. He has a stern look – no one would dare cross him – but he would die for his siblings, and grandmother whose voice he hears at night when he’s alone and scared telling him, “It’s alright, son. I’m here”.

    Kelly is a young single mother tired of the cyclical patterns of working class life. Her three kids, and the housing crisis, make it hard for her to ever get on her feet. She longs to be able to escape to a better life but is locked in the social welfare system. When times get hard she’s plagued by memories of her brother’s face who she lost to suicide. With pride as high as the sky, she’ll never let anyone know how she’s feeling, coming off as a fun-loving, strong mother who sometimes gets tired, but never gets low.

    The last story is a love letter to my community and the only one that is fully from my own perspective. I was a young girl who had to move away to pursue her career and in doing that I realised that everything that people search all over the world for had always been on my doorstep: a sense of purpose. I reminisced about the soundtrack of the summer getting played by the police sirens and the blue lights flashing through my window at night being something that calmed me down.

    Making this release was a tough – yet cathartic – journey to go on, down the dark and dreary, soft and warm lanes of my memory. At times it was hard, revisiting certain memories, but I felt privileged to finally understand and be able to articulate my frustration at the classist discrimination and prejudice that effects working class areas in Dublin. There was a fire burning inside me to give a voice to the other side of the traits these stereotypes were often demonised for. Behind the anger, the frustration, the addiction, and the crime was a common denominator: pain. I wanted to give a voice to that pain to show all our flaws and beauty, vulnerability, and rawness. I wanted to strip back all our layers because I know no hearts like the hearts I’ve grown up around in my community. I wanted to reveal our characters in a space where we weren’t going to be demonised.

    I had no idea when I began shaping these stories that they would become my debut EP, but four months later, the stories have been listened to thousands of times, falling on many different ears. Something I’m so, so grateful for. For years, the media and authorities slandered us and we had no voice. But now, people are finally listening.

     

     

    For more about Gemma’s work see:

    Bandcamp: http://gemmadunleavy.bandcamp.com/album/up-de-flats

    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gemmadunleavymusic/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gemmadunleavy_/?hl=en

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/gemmadunleavy1

    Spotify:

     

     

     

  • Italy: Thankfully it is Summer

    Photographer Daniele Idini travelled from North to South of Italy and discovered a country in severe economic crisis desperate to resume the good life.

    On July 8th I landed in Malpensa (Milan) on a half-empty Ryanair flight from Dublin. It is the largest airport in Italy, located about forty kilometres from the city of Milan.

    I’ve known this airport since its inception, having grown up just two kilometres away. Over the past few years, while living abroad, more often than not it has been the first destination on my visits home. I was not surprised to see it so empty considering the circumstances, but still, I cannot deny the unease I felt walking along its silent corridors.

    On a Ryanair flight

    At the passport control there was a table in the middle of the exit corridor filled with mandatory forms that all passengers are obliged to fill in. These certify that you are currently not under a mandatory quarantine due to Covid19, and ask for reasons for your travel.

    After a temperature scan, a border guard asked where I was flying from.

    “Dublin,” I replied.

    “And before that?” he replied.

    “Dublin” I asserted

    “Ok move along,” he said.

    And that was that.

    Milan, Malpensa Airport, July 2020

    Across Italy face masks are mandatory in all indoor public spaces, as well as some outdoor locations where social distancing is difficult to practice such as outdoor markets, busy city centres and the like. Compliance is generally high throughout the country, with many wearing them even where it is not mandated, but clearly in the north – in the regions that have borne the brunt of the pandemic – compliance is more evident.

    Tuesday’s market in Arona, northern Italy on July 2020.

    Wearing a mask – which is compulsory in many parts of the world at this stage – is widely regarded as a symbol of solidarity or just to communicate that you care. In Italy it is often to be seen hanging off a person’s chin, or only covering the mouth but not the nose. It is commonly worn above the elbow, ready for use when the need arises. It is hard to see how it is really providing much protection against contagion, apart from in clinical settings where it is worn by trained professionals.

    Rome bus, on July 2020.

    The widespread message is that if you care you wear one as much as you can. Alas, if you care you cannot have close contact with your grandparents either, even after months of living at a distance.

    Morning in Bologna, on July 2020.

    On the Road

    After spending time in the north I moved south towards the mezzogiorno, driving all the way to the tip of Italy from where I took a ferry to Sicily, stopping briefly along the route in Bologna, Orvieto, Naples, Pizzo Calabro and on the way back in Rome.

    While crossing the Strait of Messina, Southern Italy, on July 2020.

    The pictures that are featured in this article are nothing more than snapshots, offering a view of the ripples on the surface of a new reality, in which we are all involved, in some way or another, in trying to come to terms with.

    While crossing the Strait of Messina, Southern Italy, on July 2020.

    A few hours is obviously insufficient to grasp the actual situation in each place: definitely not in a country like Italy where variety and internal differences are determining characteristics. Nor is it easy to convey how the many people facing different realities that I encountered are coping in different ways with the obvious trauma of a very strict lockdown, and the unprecedented economic uncertainty that lies head.

    Vicolungo Outlet Village, Piedmont, Northern Italy, on July 2020.
    Monthly Market in the small town of Giarratana, Southern Sicily, on July 2020.

    Nonetheless, I noticed common traits running through both north and south, region by region. One thing was definitely apparent: in addition to the collective trauma and the aftermath of the lockdown, I found a country struggling to cope, on the one hand with a lack of clarity about the present and the experience of the last few months; and on the other an absolute inability to forecast anything any longer. Our hard won, mainly technologically induced ability to predict the future, has gone out the window at every level of society, of our economy, and right down to the basic level of our lives.

    Infinity Café, Bologna, on July 2020.

    How many employees should one medium-sized factory rehire after the lockdown to recover? What will the demand be for certain local products over the next few months? Will tourism recover next year, or ever? What about Christmas this year? How long will the redundancy package last for, and when will the actual payment arrive.

    Bologna’s city center, on July 2020.

    The majority of laid-off workers I spoke to, or know, by the month of July had only just received the emergency payment for the months of March or April. How long are personal savings supposed to last in those households that are lucky enough to hold them? What about the hundreds of thousands that are working in the so-called black economy for which no safety net exists at all? They are now dependent on what savings they have, if any; meanwhile charities are overwhelmed by requests for help, as loan sharks circle.

    Rome, on July 2020.

    The impossibility of forecasting demand stretches into a future strewn with unforeseeable and seemingly insurmountable challenges. This disproportionately affects (as always) small and medium-sized businesses, which live under the constant threat of another lockdown; an eventuality that many fear will be the final nail in their coffins.

    Street market of Porta Portese in Rome, on July 2020.

    The resultant anxiety and irrational behaviours seem like withdrawal symptoms from our contemporary addiction to predictability. The whole ‘Surveillance Capitalist System’, of which Italy can be considered a fully paid up member is precisely built on this. Economic activities rely on the forecasting of natural phenomenon and human behaviours. The delusion lies in believing the two are not linked. The more random Nature seems be to, the less rational the human reaction to it is.

    Bologna,on July 2020.

    The Mechanic

    Along the trail a mechanic repaired my faulty tyre. While doing so, he was more than happy to give a brief account of his experience of the lockdown.

    For the months of March, April and parts of May his repair shop was forced to close altogether. State support was supposed to be €600 per month, but only two months of payments arrived, and after a considerable delay. State-backed loans for small businesses were difficult to obtain due to a misunderstanding between banks and the government about eligibility criteria and missing procedures. It is July, and the monthly electricity bill for the shop remains at €300 per month.

    It would be interesting to find out the number of businesses that have already folded across Italy, especially with tourism at a small fraction of its usual level, with international tourists in particular staying at home.

    Souvenir shop in the small town of Scicli, southern Sicily, on July 2020.

    According to another source, it is increasingly common to close down businesses at least on paper, but for them to continue trading to make ends meet. The choice between punishment for tax evasion and actual survival has been effectively settled for many, across numerous sectors.

    Café in Arona, northern Italy, on July 2020.

    The distance between Rome’s national politics and what is happening on the ground is greater than ever. The paradox here lies in the fact that that social/political gap has increased at a time where the central state has usurped powers from local authorities to implement the nationwide lockdown.

    Morning in Orvieto, center of Italy, on July 2020.

    We can now certainly expect cash-rich mafioisi to expand into the legitimate economy by bailing out ailing businesses. Serious discounts are available, and they will also earn loyalty from many communities that feel abandoned by the State. This issue requires serious investigation, as the Italian State cannot afford to be undermined any further.

    Grand Hotel et des Iles Borromees closed for business in Stresa, Northern Italy, on July 2020.

    The collapsed tourism sector is the de-facto lifeblood of the economy in many if not most rural areas across Italy, where not much else goes on during the off season. The rediscovery of Italian locations by Italian holiday makers is insufficient for the current system to survive. We seem to be witnessing the end of mass tourism as we know it, at least for the foreseeable future, but I haven’t heard much discussion about the economic alternatives for these areas.

    While crossing the Strait of Messina with a view of a Caronte & Tourist ferry, the main private navigation company operating in the Strait, Southern Italy, on July 2020.

    The crowds of people that come out at night in Naples, Rome and that are flooding into popular seaside resorts are an expression of a desire for the restrictions to come an end. I sense the calculus of risk versus safety has shifted decisively for many towards a willingness to take more risks. Even the economic decision for many families to spend a few days on vacation despite their real financial uncertainties is a sign that there is real hope of an imminent recovery.

    Saturday Night in Pizzo Calabro, on July 2020.

    But the truth is that mixed government messaging that shift between doomsday scenarios saying ‘Be Careful or we will go into lockdown again,’ alternating with ‘Everything will be fine,’  is creating an increasingly divisive society. Already alt-right political parties like La Liga led by Matteo Salvini or Brothers of Italy led by Giorgia Meloni are taking advantage of the divisions. The opposition are frantically attempting to come up with alternative solutions amid the usual propaganda touchstones of immigration and unemployment.

    Salvini’s traces in Bologna, on July 2020.

    What is not being said is that the current government is dealing with this particular situation with the bureaucratic, legal and health infrastructures that were undermined as result of decades of mismanagement and corruption, which members of that same political class in power are responsible for and in some cases complicit, having occupied key decision-making positions in previous administrations, both locally and in Rome, over the previous decades.

    On the banks of the River Tevere overlooking the Aventino’s hill, Rome, on July 2020.

    The erosion of the middle class and ever-widening wealth inequality was not caused by this pandemic. The massive defunding of the public health system, followed by privatisations was a process that was more pronounced in Lombardy and Piedmont. It so happens that these two regions were disproportionately hit by Covid-19. This is the bitter fruit of economic policies that emerged in the early days of Berlusconi’s twenty year dominance, and which were accelerated by the dysfunctional political class that emerged in this culture.

    Bologna, on the July 2020.

    Maybe, that is the reason why no significant discussions are taking place around possible reforms of the public health care system so the threat of another lockdown hangs overhead. Again, especially in Lombardy and Piedmont.

    Tuesday’s market in Arona, northern Italy on July 2020.

    Sadly, another lockdown could be the only antidote to the possible overwhelming of ICUs in a system that stopped hiring staff after retirements over the past ten years,  and therefore lack not only physical infrastructures but especially well trained personnel to confront the possibility of a spike in infections.

    Thankfully it is still summer.