I am sure you will agree with me that it has been a most extraordinary week where the spotlight was put on RTÉ, the Government’s propaganda unit, imploding in slow motion.
History Rhymes
I wrote last week that we are currently viewing the equivalent of the news of Eamon Casey and Michael Cleary fathering children that triggered the Catholic Church in Ireland being knocked of its pedestal.
As it was for the Catholic Church when news first filtered out about Annie Murphy and Phyllis Hamilton, it was the only the beginning of the end of the church’s iron fist control over almost every aspect of how we lived our lives, for RTÉ too, Tubridy and Forbes is only the beginning, worse is awaiting exposure.
History will show that RTÉ’s control over us peaked during lockdown.
How can we ever forget the daily propaganda dished out to us by Tubridy, Byrne, Duffy et al.
RTÉ provided Tony Holohan with a personal platform that terrorised people daily into complying with state diktats that originated outside the country.
Such was the level of brainwashing, he came to be worshipped as a national hero.
As women like Vicky Phelan were dying slow agonising deaths, his past history in the Department of Health was airbrushed out of existence by the state broadcaster.
Among the findings of today’s Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll are that trust in RTÉ following the events of the past 10 days has declined sharply, with 55pc saying they trust RTÉ less, while a further 35pc said they never trusted the station.
That’s absolutely brilliant news ahead of much worse scandals to emerge that will bring trust in the station closer to zero.
The power of the government to use the station to control us has evaporated.
Pillars of State
In a functioning democracy there’s 4 pillars:
1.Executive (Cabinet) 2.Legislature (Dail and Seanad) 3.Judiciary (Courts) and 4.Media
The function of the media is to hold the other three powers to account and highlight failures to uphold the law.
The problem with RTÉ is that it has a reasonable record in holding citizens and non statutory bodies like religious-run institutions to account, but it has a woeful bad record in recent years in holding officers of the state and state bodies like Tusla to account.
It’s this failure that has lead to near anarchy in our judicial system that has been highlighted by New Media platforms in recent days.
Because we are protecting ourselves from more threats of libel and defamation claims, we can only point you in the general direction of where you will find evidence of claims of corruption that rocks our democracy to its very foundations.
The Irish Inquiry
On Thursday night Stephen Kerr, The Irish Inquiry posted a video to Twitter and Facebook in which he displays documents including an alleged falsified court order that was used to unlawfully evict the McGann family from their home in Strokestown on 11 December 2018.
An agent for KBC bank (which has since exited the country) engaged ex British soldiers to enter the Republic and carry out the eviction without a license to do so.
The McGann family, their friends, (including myself) and their supporters that I have spoken to, say that RTÉ has presented them in the worst possible light in the four and a half years since the eviction. No attempt was ever made to get their side of the story.
A formal complaint was made on Friday to the Gardai in relation to a forged court order and other matters relating to court documents and a pulse number has been issued.
A failure by the Gardai to investigate this matter and the DPP to prosecute promptly will have dire consequences for homeowners, landowners and property owners in this state because it exposes us to the possible risk of Gardai, judges and the court service working together again to carry out unlawful evictions. The McGann case is not an isolated incident.
Plans to highlight collusion between the courts and lending institutions to evict homeowners unlawfully are at an advanced stage and I am reliably informed that we haven’t long more to learn the extent of the problem.
I have witnessed firsthand the pain, trauma and upset endured by Geraldine, David and Anthony McGann and their many, many supporters including retired Garda Kevin Taylor and Colm Granahan who both served lengthy jail sentences 2020/2021 over their refusal to abide by what they believe to be corrupted court orders.
Their struggle is testimony to the the fact that there’s still Irish people prepared to put their lives on the line in the cause of justice and truth.
Integrity Ireland
On Wednesday Dr Stephen Manning was handed down a three month jail sentence at a court held in Clifden for allegedly speaking rudely to a Garda.
It was an appeal hearing where Stephen challenged a District Court conviction that he physically assaulted a court clerk.
The judge finally conceded that the video evidence presented by Stephen contradicted the evidence given by the clerk and a garda in sworn affidavits and he dismissed the district court conviction.
As Stephen was leaving a Garda stepped forward and said Stephen verbally assaulted her six years ago whereupon the presiding judge convicted Stephen and sentenced him to three months in prison to begin immediately, in spite of the fact that he was accompanied in court by his son who has special needs.
Stephen was released from prison the following morning and he did a live broadcast on his Facebook platform, ‘Integrity Ireland’ yesterday evening that makes for absolutely riveting listening involving claims of garda, Tusla, judges and court service collusion over two decades.
Interestingly, Stephen lives in Mayo and the McGann’s live in Roscommon. Their cases involve entirely different issues but some of the same characters pop up in both cases.
Seamus Maye
Seamus Maye has waged a 27 year battle through the courts against corporate anti -competitive practices that resulted in him being put out of his very successful quarry and concrete business.
In a three page comprehensive exposé published yesterday in the latest edition of Village Magazine, he documents in minute detail how the courts have failed to prosecute CRH for anti-competitive practices.
It’s an Irish company that has grown into a transnational corporation with a global reach that has allowed it to become one of the world’s largest players in the concrete industry.
Seamus cites a multitude of prosecutions with hefty fines across the world from the US to Poland for anti-competitive practices but never in Ireland where it appears to have the protection of the courts, possibly because of the fact that Seamus found himself unknowingly prosecuting his case in front of judges who didn’t declare their shareholding in CRH.
Seamus’s account is a must read for anyone interested in informing themselves about how corrupted politicians, the Court Service and judges collude to protect corporate bodies and put small and medium sized enterprises out of business.
Seamus is a founder member of and current chair of the International Small Business Alliance. I first got to know Seamus in 2016 when we worked together in the Stop Ceta Alliance.
I have witnessed firsthand the toll that Seamus’s fight for justice has had on him and his family. I’m in awe of his tenacity and determination to keep up the fight to hold corporate bodies to account.
I spoke to Seamus last night. He described a number of attempts by RTÉ to expose what’s going on in the courts in relation to his case but the plug was pulled by the upper echelons of the station just before going to air.
“If RTÉ was doing its job holding the Judiciary and other state bodies to account it would not be in the mess it’s in now,” he told me.
I am grateful to have this opportunity to join the dots on what has been an eventful week to create a picture of the rot that’s at the heart of our body politic.
Last night as I was beginning to feel weighed down by the extent of the corruption and fearful for the future, a dear friend who has been on this planet more than a decade longer than my three score plus years, said to me that what’s happening now has gone on since the foundation of the state.
The only difference is that it’s no longer hiding in plain sight, it’s being brought out into the open and exposed via New Media platforms committed to holding power to account, like this one.
The fact that you are reading this to the end shows your commitment to truth and justice. Please share it with those who are thirsting for change. We have a duty to our children and our grandchildren to create a better world.
Anna Kavanagh is Co-founder M-Compass Media