Greyhound board kept juicy bits well away from dogs in the street

It might seem a safer bet for Bord na gCon employees to get sacked rather than put their money on something the trainer swears can tear around the track in record time.

As well as legal costs, the State’s greyhound board has apparently paid out better than the tote to former officials who have walked away, or been asked to walk away, with about €2 million.

The latest is former chief executive Aidan Tynan with whom the board reached a settlement when he was sacked after giving Sports Minister John O’Donoghue a few tips about the way chairman Paschal Taggart ran the board.

Taggart - who I presumed until now to be a deceased Scottish detective - is very much alive and runs the multi-million euro industry in his own inimitable style.

He hasn’t too much time for bureaucracy and wasn’t one for burdening the public with too much information, such as dope tests that proved positive.

Meanwhile, the control committee which monitors doping safeguards in the industry hasn’t been burdened either with the minutes of their own meetings for the past three years. That committee, chaired by Mr Taggart, investigates doping allegations and while its business is noted, the minutes are not circulated to members.

Mt Taggart is so dedicated to the greyhound industry - which has received €70 million in State aid - that he felt it was better for everybody if it was not revealed that two trainers had been fined €1,000 for giving dogs a dose of something called EPO, which didn’t exactly hinder their performances.

The obligation to publish the facts of the drug abuse - and it was also established practice - was something that didn’t bother the chairman.

Apparently he chose simply to ignore it in the interests of the industry.

That’s where Aidan Tynan and himself parted company, although Mr Taggart said it had nothing to do with a letter the former chief executive sent to the minister.

Maybe not, but the minister consequently ordered not so much a stewards’ inquiry as a ministerial one to be conducted by Tim Dalton, a former secretary-general of the Department of Justice.

Mr Taggart remains unrepentant, saying the controversy was a ‘storm in a teacup’ - which sounds like the name of a dog.

He is expected to explain the form at a press conference at Shelbourne Park tomorrow.

Maybe he should become the boss of the Small Business Association. Almost half of their members think they will have to increase prices this year because, apparently, they feel that the going is tough as a result of rising costs blamed largely on the State.

With the year hardly started, a nationwide Chambers Ireland/Irish Examiner SME Business Confidence Survey revealed that 44% of them intend increasing prices this year.

The firms surveyed were mostly in wholesale, retail and catering, as well as in the business services, real estate, renting and manufacturing sectors.

And despite the fact that half of them intend to squeeze their customers, the SMEs are quite perky about the next 12 months.

They - or at least most of them - expect higher sales, and with customers paying more the turnover should prove very healthy.

They’re not exactly emerging from a depression, although you would imagine that the immediate future holds nothing but doom and gloom for some of them.

Nothing could be further from the truth as they obviously expect strong sales growth.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but the survey blamed rising wage costs, among other factors, for their woes in the same week that the ICTU agreed to enter discussions on a new national pay agreement.

Unfortunately, the workers cannot simply impose their demands on employers in the same way that firms can put up their prices. There is absolutely nothing to prevent prices from being increased on a whim, as we know to our cost.

The place is not called the Rip-off Republic for nothing.

There seems to be quite a few pessimists in the ranks of the SMEs because while the Department of Finance forecasts a growth of almost 5% for the economy this year, only one-third of the companies expect the general business environment to be favourable in 2006.

Strangely enough, 54% of them increased turnover last year and even more (59%) are forecasting better sales this year.

ANOTHER depressing item I read during the week struck me as remarkable, as in odd. The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) expressed concern that a number of parents might be prosecuted for allowing their children to beg.

Under the 2001 Children’s Act, parents who do so can be fined up to €317 for a first offence and €635 for a second.

The most recent figures from the gardaí show that 21 parents were prosecuted for allowing their children to beg in 2004. There were two convictions; one case was dismissed and 18 are pending.

Apart from the fact that the ISPCC exists to safeguard children and their welfare, the organisation appears to exonerate what is an abuse of children in this instance on the basis that the family is poverty-stricken or that it is ingrained in the family that children go out and beg.

It must be said that since the Leanbh service started in 1997, the incidence of child-begging has fallen dramatically. There were 2,900 sightings of child beggars reported that year, compared to 785 in 2004/’05.

Most of the sightings were in Dublin and involved the same 20 or 30 children.

Leanbh found that nearly all the child beggars are from the Roma and Traveller communities.

There is no reason why children should be sent out to beg on the streets of this country to support their families, and there is no reason why parents who allow it to happen should get away with it.

It is a form of abuse against those children which those parents accept as the norm.

The ISPCC’s Leanbh service manager, Mary Nicholson, this week said they did not want to see parents prosecuted, if at all possible.

“We want to try and look at other more positive alternatives that are going to help the child and the family,” she said.

What exactly are the alternatives that would stop these heartless people from using a very small child, in many cases a baby, as a prop to get sympathy from passers-by to dip into their pockets?

We have all seen it. A woman sits on the pavement in all kinds of weather with a small baby in her arms, or in a buggy, wrapped in clothing against the elements and mutters something importunately, accompanied by a hang-dog look of desperation.

And it’s always a woman who is with the youngster, never a man.

Not quite the same problem referred to by the ISPCC, but it is there.