The Irish Times Swallows Press Releases?

The Irish Times Swallows DCC-DDDA Press Releases?

The Irish Times now actively participates in generating disinformation, apparently.

EPA Hearing
On the last day of the EPA Oral Hearing the Irish Times reporter seems to have swallowed a whole DCC-DDDA press release. Harassment of a highly-credible witness by DCC-DDDA's legal team was not reported by the Irish Times. Reporting on a submission on World Health Organisation air quality standards - WHO standards far in advance of Brussels standards - was actively rejected by the reporter: 'Health is not my job' (paraphrase).

July 8, 2008
On July 8, 2008 another Irish Times 'reporter' printed more text characteristic of DCC-DDDA press releases. The 'reporters' tune is that when evidence is lacking there is no proof of damage (Sellafield, mobile phones, EMI). Therefore the cause for concern can be dismissed and the public are idiots. That's the Tobacco Industry defence as spun by DCC-DDDA on behalf of a foreign company with a record of lawbreaking. Has The Irish Times swallowed that Big Lie?

Newspapers worldwide are under immense pressure from the web. The Irish Times is heavily dependent on DCC-DDDA advertising and on Galway Tent advertising. By apparently swallowing press releases The Irish Times has severely damaged its reputation.

Irish Times Omission

In July 2008, The Irish Independent

• reported on secret meetings between Environment Minister Gormley and the Rathcoole Incinerator promotors.

Mr Gormley has since shut down his blog, 'for maintainance'; Covanta is attempting to build TWO incinerators around Dublin at Rathcoole and at Poolbeg, using different names.

The Irish Independent reported

• the Incinerator company (Covanta-Energy-Answers) was represented by the former 10-Year Director of EPA-Ireland.

In other countries this revolving door between the industry and the policeman of the industry is apparently illegal -Canada, USA, UK.

The Irish Times has not reported these facts to the public, apparently.

If the Irish Times does indeed swallow press releases, is this consistent with The Big Lie strategy apparently used by DCC-DDDA?

Green leader in 'secret' meetings over second incinerator

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/green-leader-in-secret-meetings-over-second-incinerator-for-city-1426003.html

Click title for direct link to Irish Independent article

Green Leader in 'secret' meetings over second incinerator for city

GREEN ministers John Gormley and Eamon Ryan held 'secret' meetings with representatives of a US company seeking to build another incinerator in Dublin.

The Energy Answers company's proposed €200m facility off the N7 motorway in Rathcoole, Co Dublin, would compete with the planned Poolbeg incinerator in Mr Gormley's own constituency.

Locals expressed fears that Mr Gormley would prefer to have the Rathcoole facility running so the Poolbeg incinerator would not be needed.

Fine Gael Senator Frances Fitzgerald questioned yesterday why Mr Gormley and Mr Ryan were meeting "secretly" with people who were "in favour of incineration".

"The Green policy seems to have changed entirely on the matter -- not that long ago the then Deputy John Gormley was staunchly opposing an incinerator in his own constituency," she said.

However, a spokesman for Mr Gormley said the meeting was purely for the purposes of learning about the project.

"The department does not give any sort of blessing to any specific development because the department and the minister is absolutely precluded from involvement in the planning process," he added.

Mr Gormley was strongly opposed to incineration and committed to making recycling the "cornerstone" of waste policy, he said.

Details of the meetings came to light in response to a parliamentary question by Ms Fitzgerald and Green Party TD Paul Gogarty, who attended protest meetings against the proposed Rathcoole incinerator in their Dublin Mid-West constituency.

Mr Gormley met Anne Butler, an environmental consultant hired by Energy Answers (An alias for Covanta-Poolbeg? -Blog Text Insert-), last July. Previously, she was director of the Environmental Protection Agency for 10 years and president of the Institute of Engineers for one year.

Mr Ryan met the company in January but said this was essentially a "listening exercise".

Energy Answers was able to bypass traditional planning procedures after An Bord Pleanala ruled, last December, that its project was a strategic infrastructural development. It is awaiting a Bord Pleanala hearing as opposition grows in Rathcoole.

Rathcoole Community Council spokesman Sean Reid said 400 people had attended a meeting last month in protest at the incinerator plans. His group previously warned that Mr Gormley might want the Rathcoole incinerator built before the Poolbeg incinerator.

"People can't help wondering and possibly there would be an element of people putting two and two together. But the indications were given by representatives of his party that Mr Gormley is not (in favour of the incinerator)," he said.

Mr Reid said his group had evidence from US experts that it was possible to recycle up to 80pc of waste -- and landfill the rest -- rather than rely on incineration.

"We don't feel that incineration is the best method of disposing of waste," he said.

Indoors

Energy Answers has said the facility, described as a 'Resource Recovery Project', would operate to the highest environmental standards, with all waste operations occurring indoors. (Except when they don't. Covanta has a recent record of unlawfully exceeding Dioxin limits at all its incinerators in the highly polluted state of New Jersey. When known as Ogden, Covanta was cited by the US legal system for 6,000 violations in just two years. -Blog Text Insert-).

A spokeswoman confirmed Ms Butler met Mr Gormley on behalf of the company but said this had been purely to inform him about the project.

The company has secured an undertaking from the Department of Defence that it will not object to the incinerator, which would be sited less than five kilometres from the Air Corps' Baldonnell Aerodrome.

-End of Irish Independent article (text corrected, July 14, 2008)

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For a paper owned by Billionaires it seems the Irish Independent actually does inform the people. Surprisingly, for a paper owned by a "trust" it seems the Irish Times has slipped back to its past imperial role where it did not necessarily work on behalf of the peasant people.

Is EPA-Ireland Inside The Galway Tent?

Is EPA-Ireland Inside The Galway Tent?

Environment Minister Mr Gormley ("secretly" says the Indo) met Anne Butler, an environmental consultant hired by Energy Answers/Covanta.

Previously, she was Director of the Environmental Protection Agency for 10 years and president of the Institute of Engineers for one year.

(Butler was hired by Energy-Answers-Covanta in July 2007)

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/green-leader-in-secret-meetings-over-second-incinerator-for-city-1426003.html
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/12/07/story257079427.asp


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Anne Butler.
An Earner.

DIT:
Currently working as an environmental consultant, she was on the board of the EPA for ten years, and headed up the EPA’s waste division which for the first time regulated waste facilities in Ireland at a time of great change.

http://www.dit.ie/DIT/news/2005/anne-butler.html

-----------------------------------
CRH:
Anne Butler joined the EPA when it was set up in 1993 and left last April (2003). She said she was working as a consultant for CRH at a "strategic" and "high level".

CRH subsidiary Roadstone Dublin was drawn into the illegal dumping controversy in Wicklow when hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste were found on CRH lands at Blessington.
The company is in talks with Wicklow County Council and must apply to the EPA for a licence to clean up the site.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/12/07/story257079427.asp
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Which stinks more?

• DCC-DDDA's politicially managed Sewage Factory at Poolbeg
  

or the

• Revolving Doors between "consulting" businesses and waste-to-toxics companies HQ'ed offshore and EPA-Ireland and Bord Pleanala?

1. An ex-Indaver employee is with EPA-Ireland.
2. July 2007/8: Energy Answers/Covanta hired an ex-Ten-Year-EPA-Ireland Director.
3. April 2008: Covanta hired a senior ex-EPA-USA employee.
4. Taoiseach Ahern appointed his friends to the management levels of DDDA and Dublin Port Company.
   
5. Currently an ex-employee of RPS is on the executive board of Ireland's An Bord Pleanala. This board apparently uses political science to override its knowledgeable and honest inspectors (Cork, Meath, Poolbeg).

DCC has spent 19 million Euro of taxpayer money on "consultants" to promote Waste-To-Toxics incineration. DCC's chief pro-incinerator business consultant is RPS, apparently focused on certain planning matters and legal tick-boxes. RPS is also involved with the Poolbeg Sewage factory (under a different name on the site signage) and also apparently with Shell in Mayo.

The stink over five years from the Poolbeg Sewage factory and the unexplained new payment of €36 million is the prime example of the capabilities of DCC-DDDA. This is the smell of the outcomes of political management. Incinerators do not smell. And like tobacco-industry best-available-excuses you can not prove they compromise your health.

Guns don't kill, Incinerators do.
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More:
http://galwaytent.blogspot.com/2008/04/incinerator-revolving-doors-at-epa-abp.html

Fresh plans for a €350m development overlooking Sandymount strand in Dublin 4, have been submitted by Liam Carroll's Fabrizia Developments. The plans differ substantially from the previous plans for a 30-storey tower and mainly commercial development which Fabrizia submitted for the former AIB sports grounds in Rinsgend.

Lochlann Quinn

When he is not acting as AIB chairman, Quinn works for Glen Dimplex, one of the country's largest private companies. It owns the Morphy Richards, Belling and Dimplex electrical brands. Quinn's 26 per cent of the company has made him bags of money.

But one of the conditions on which Quinn agreed to give an interview to The Sunday Business Post was that he would not discuss his private investments. He would prefer not to talk about his private business, he said, as it's hard to remain private in this country, and also because he will be returning full-time to the private sector when he leaves AIB.

A brother of former Labour leader Ruairi Quinn, the Glen Dimplex man owns half of the Merrion, Dublin's five-star hotel. He has also invested in Patrick Guilbaud's award-winning restaurant, which is now located next to the hotel. His 118-acre French vineyard in Bordeaux, Chateau de Fieuzal, which he bought last year for €45 million, supplies wine to his hotel.

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http://www.smurfitschool.ie/aboutsmurfit/advisoryboards/ireland/lochlannquinn/

Lochlann Quinn

Former Deputy Chairman and Finance Director of Glen Dimplex

Educated at Blackrock College and UCD, Lochlann Quinn qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1966. He joined Arthur Andersen & Co. in London and, in 1969, he returned to Dublin to head up their audit practice in Ireland until 1980.

In 1980, he joined Glen Dimplex - a small, privately-owned Irish company - as Deputy Chairman and Finance Director. He was one of two shareholders – he has recently sold his interest. The company now has annual sales of $1.3 billion and employs 8,000 people in Europe and Canada.

Mr Quinn’s private business interests include: a hotel in Dublin; commercial properties in Dublin, London and Brussels; and a vineyard in Bordeaux.

He is Chairman of the National Gallery of Ireland and of the ESB, and a former Director of AIB Bank (1995-96) and Chairman (1997-2003), and former Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (1990-2000).

He graduated from University College Dublin (BComm 1962).

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Ex-bank boss Lochlann Quinn to chair the ESB

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/exbank-boss--lochlann-quinn-to-chair-the-esb-1231840.html

By Ailish O'Hora

Wednesday November 28 2007

The Government has appointed former AIB chairman Lochlann Quinn as chairman of the ESB with effect from January 22 next year.

Mr Quinn will have a five-year term.

Commenting on the appointment Energy Minister Eamon Ryan said: "I am very pleased that Lochlann Quinn will be bringing his unparalleled experience in the business and energy wo

rld to the ESB board." Mr Quinn is a former chairman and director of Allied Irish Banks. He was deputy chairman of Glen Dimplex and is chairman of the National Gallery of Ireland.

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http://www.politics.ie/view

topic.php?p=415627
The Labour Party is to add Cllr Oisín Quinn to its General Election ticket in Dún Laoghaire, according to The Irish Times.
Quinn, nephew of former Finance Minister and current Dublin South East TD & candidate Ruairi Quinn, has been a Dublin City Councillor since the 2004 Local Elections, where he came second in the Rathmines ward poll to his party colleague, Cllr Mary Freehill, with two thirds of a quota.
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Former PA tells of 'shame at summary dismissal'

A former personal assistant to businessman Lochlann Quinn said yesterday she was devastated, humiliated and shamed by her "sudden and unexpected redundancy". Jane O'Byrne, Dundrum, Dublin, has taken a case of unfair dismissal against Mr Quinn, deputy chairman of Glen Dimplex and former AIB chairman.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2006/0427/

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Ringsend
http://www.ddda.ie/files/publications/docs/20071023044821_ar2004.0002.pdf
During the year, Fabrizia Ltd lodged revised
proposals for planning permission on the
former AIB sports grounds in Ringsend. The
¤350 million development proposal includes
some 780 apartments, 21,804m2 of office
space and 2,600m2 of retail.