Irish Dáil Noise vs Irish Simon Harris Signal

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At the very moment I sit down to write this piece our elected representatives are in Dáil Eireann talking passionately about Niall Collins FF TD and a piece of land. This firestorm is another “expose” from The Ditch about alleged corruption amongst our political class. I often wonder what Charlie Haughey, Ray Burke and Pee Flynn would make of what passes for a crook nowadays. Not much I suspect other than to bless themselves.

I am not going to tarry long on this lay-by other than to point out that this story is another example of Irish political and media noise, and as far as I can ascertain, much ado about nothing, in the grander scheme of current Irish things. In other words, our elites are having a Chomsky moment and we must watch the whole farce play out in real-time on the taxpayers dime.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum ”

Suffice to say, both sides of the political aisle seem happy to engage with each other ferociously on this micro Collins topic. Meanwhile, back in the real world, our double-jobbing Justice Minister, Simon Harris was giving a speech to the Garda Representative Association yesterday. He used the occasion to rail against privacy rights. During the course of this talk he made some explosive comments about people’s right privacy. The minister told the conference that he was “ at the end of my tether” because of objections to body cams for Gardaí voiced by people “ behind desks” complaining about the right to privacy. Harris further expanded by saying that the “right to privacy” is “terribly important” - But, crucially elaborated, and said, so too are Garda safety rights or to quote “your [gardaí] right to safety”. He says it’s time for “proper rational conversation” about the use of cameras - “we cannot continue to have abstract, academic” discussions on it.

Now, let me summarize the above paragraph in simple terms. A citizen’s rights are important but not as important as the state’s right to seize them. Of course, the old “safety” chestnut is utilized once more as the impenetrable defence argument. I am reminded of a conversation I had recently with a friend about the dramatic fall in the watch-ability of most Gaelic football matches over the last 10 years due to over-reliance on hand-passing. A sport that now celebrates athletes not artists. He attributes much of the deterioration to an over-educated and over-trained coaching class and the explosion of jobs in the healthy and safety industry in Ireland. A society that has decided that the goal of successful existence is to eliminate all risk. We do have some pretty wild conservations admittedly.

However, this idea, the one promoting a need to steal your rights in order to protect you is no fantasy and is straight out of the pandemic playbook. In addition, the tone of Harris’ comments are glaringly awful. It is obvious that Harris is only interested in conversing with people who agree with him and not some “academic “ types who are actually conversant with the legalities of casually infringing on the rights of Irish citizens. Increasingly he, and others, seem annoyed about having to even go through the motions of pretending to care about our right to our rights. This seemed abundantly clear to me, at any rate, in his comments to the GRA.

There is a kicker at the end of this piece of signal though. I was in petrol station when I caught this story on a news bulletin yesterday evening. I filed it away along with a mental note to myself to investigate further. My first port of call was Gov.ie to see if they had published a copy of his speech to the GRA. Lo and behold - they had. But here’s the kicker - all of the above privacy comments that he made have somehow magically been stripped from the official record of the speech. Kinda interesting don’t you think?

Click here for Harris speech to the GRA.

While I was nosing around on this government website I came across an announcement that is related to what we are talking about here in a way. The announcement of a new district court judge. Let’s take a look at the official blurb.

“ At its meeting today, the government agreed to nominate Ms Shalom Binchy, Solicitor, as an Ordinary Judge of the District Court.

The District Court vacancy arose following the retirement of Judge Brian J. Sheridan on 22 March 2023 “

The government has taken the necessary steps to formally advise President Higgins of the nomination in accordance with constitutional practice.

Some of you may remember that earlier in the year, Harris promised that an additional 20-25 district court judges would be added to the roster to cope with caseloads. Now, although this isn’t the announcement of an additional new judge into the system, but merely a replacement, it gives an early indicator as to what path the state are walking on the type of new judges entering the system. A quick name search of Binchy brought me to an The Irish Legal News article from the summer of 2020.

A solicitor who criticized An Garda Síochána for forcing solicitors to break public health guidelines to advise clients in custody has said the force is starting to address the issue.

Solicitor Shalom Binchy shared the findings of her firm’s recent survey of solicitors on Friday in a webinar exploring experiences with gardaí during the COVID-19 crisis.

She shared her own “extremely stressful” experience of attending a Garda station to advise a client, in which she brought her own mask and gloves but could not avoid coming within “two inches” from some gardaí, “never mind two metres”.

In some Garda stations, solicitors have reported that social distancing is not being practised, PPE is not being used or provided, and confidentiality is being compromised.

June 15th 2020 Full Article click here

Hmmmm….Quite the addition to the judicial system.

So, in summation, on the one hand we have a Dáil chamber up in arms over an alleged irregularity over the sale of a site and then on the other we have the Justice minister casually attacking privacy rights in public while the state starts filling judicial positions with people who not alone didn’t question the legal rationality of the pandemic era restrictions and measures but actively questioned if they were being enforced strongly enough.

Irish Noise vs Irish Signal.

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