Make up your mind where the nasty smell is really coming from
They rarely go to prison.
We all knew that it’s easier for somebody to end up in jail for social welfare fraud than for evading taxes. But it was confirmed this week during the former government minister’s appearance in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court where he was convicted of two tax offences.
Sentencing was deferred, but he is looking at a possible maximum of five years in the slammer and/or, a fine of €12,700. Most people wouldn’t begrudge him both.
Ray Burke paid over €1.3 million in settlement of his outstanding taxes, and is now fully tax compliant, which probably prompted his defence barrister Patrick Hunt SC to describe his client as a man “of good character.”
It remains to be seen whether Judge Desmond Hogan is impressed with that reference, but it’s not as glowing as that of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s a few years ago that he was “an honourable man hounded out of office.”
Mr Hunt also said something which we know to be definitely true: most people convicted of tax-related offences do not receive custodial sentences.
Interestingly, I didn’t read anywhere that his lordship disabused him of that notion, although the prosecuting counsel did refer to a recent case where somebody was sentenced to two years for similar offences. And anyway that was reduced to six months by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
Ray Burke pleaded guilty last July to knowingly or wilfully furnishing incorrect information by failing to declare an income of £91,980 during the Government’s 1993 tax amnesty. Ditto about incorrect information to the Inspector of Taxes. By failing to declare income of £24,038 on or after December 15, 1993, his total undeclared income came to £116,038.
Obviously, Mr Hunt has to do his best for his client, but it was a bit disingenuous of him when pleading mitigation to describe Ray Burke as “only a Dáil pensioner.”
He is not a retired Dáil porter or cleaner, otherwise he wouldn’t have pensions in the region of €80,000 annually. He has them because he was a Dáil deputy who went on to serve in senior ministerial posts such as in Justice and Foreign Affairs.
He was given positions of immense trust and responsibility but ended up rubbing shoulders with sex offenders, drug pushers and burglars in a court of law. That he did so was of his own making and his own greed. It’s an affront to most other Dáil pensioners to include him in their ranks.
Greed is also something which bank customers are all too familiar with, and they did not need a report from the Competition Authority to tell them that.
Not that you will find the word greed in the damning report which was published this week. Neither will you find any suggestion in it that greed going to end.
Apart from about 40 recommendations to get the banks to clean up their act, the Competition Authority is absolutely powerless to do anything about it. Personal customers and businesses are being ripped off because of the lack of competition as a few of the big banks dictate rates and charges.
On the same day as the report was published, there was the announcement that the Danish group, Danske was taking over the NIB and the Northern Bank. Hopefully, it will inject a measure of common sense into the financial sector here.
It took the arrival of the Bank of Scotland about five years ago to give customers a viable and reasonable alternative to the cartel that had existed, and that still largely does.
Between them, the AIB - that pillar of probity - and the Bank of Ireland control 70% of the personal current account market, so it’s not surprising that they couldn’t give tuppence about competition. Because it’s to much hassle to switch from one bank to another, customers put up with the shortcomings they encounter with their present bank, but that could change in the not too distant future.
YOU would have been forgiven for checking the date on Wednesday’s Irish Examiner having seen a headline on page one which read: “Boy suspended from school for breaking wind.”
It was like a spoof you might read on April 1, but it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. Incredibly, it actually happened in Coláiste Eoin, a VEC school in Co Cork, when a 13-year-old boy just could not contain himself.
Even though it’s frowned on in polite society, we all do it, but in this case it was accompanied by an admirable sense of honour by the perpetrator.
The explosion happened at a time when, for one reason or another, there was no teacher in the classroom. In other words, no witness from officialdom. Soon afterwards the principal put his nose around the door to check on the class and probably wished he hadn’t.
That nose was met by something most foul, lingering evidence of a noxious gaseous outbreak.
Whether the classroom was quite small or the offending emission quite inordinate I don’t know but I suspect it was the latter.
He enquired as to what it was and in fairness to Dane Ring he immediately, if rather sheepishly one imagines, admitted to letting off the weapon of mass distraction.
It was no mean feat - the admission, I mean, not the emission - for the young lad to own up in front of the principal and his classmates that he was responsible for the extra-curricular activity, although the lads behind him must have had a whiff of suspicion. He could have left the entire class under a cloud of suspicion, but he did not.
But did Dane Ring get a pat on the head for his honesty and admonished never to inflict such odium on the class again? He did not. Instead he was suspended for two days for his honesty.
This ludicrous lesson will stay with him for the rest of his life. In fact, it’s something that will remain with his classmates for a long time to come.
There was no comment from the principal when asked for one by a reporter from this newspaper. If young Ring had not done the honourable thing, I wonder would the entire class have been suspended. This episode was offensive for more reasons than one, but Dane Ring emerged smelling like roses.
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