General Irish politics discussion thread

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2024/0621/1455983-sipo-gp-contract/

Noticeable that the court found that the decision was inadequately reasoned rather than wrong.

"It added that "it may be that there was a concern about the entitlement of the Commission to gather evidence that may be found in the confidential discussions of the cabinet.

However the court found that "this was not stated by the Commission. Ultimately it is not for this court to fill in the blanks"."

Effectively the court appears to have found that the right decision was made for the wrong reasons. Hence, it rejected Murphy's other requests.

In my opinion,the court there has aaked SIPO to state why it saw fit not to investigate

That should be simple enough for them to do as the reasoning should be there as it is,just unpublished

The court is not taking a view,nor should it on Mr Murphys conspiracy theory re SIPO being biased or something if thats what he's suggesting

Do ya know he'll have another pointless greasy pole uphill battle on that score anyway given the DPP ruling on the case,more in his line to be looking after his constituents

Sort of; SIPO may well decide not to investigate again, this time providing adequate reasoning, but the courts have not just asked them why they saw fit not to investigate and instructed them to publish the justification, they've overturned their previous decision not to investigate altogether.

If the reasoning was there, but unpublished surely 1) that would've been brought up during the court case 2) they should've fecking published it?

SIPO have clearly fallen short of expectations, deflecting over to criticisms of Paul Murphy won't handwave that away.

That being said (and I think I was pretty clear in my initial comment) the courts absolutely haven't found anything amounting to gross impropriety from SIPO. It could well be a procedural issue and we'll be back to where we started in a few short weeks except this time with adequate reasoning.

Not scandal of the century by any means, but absolutely a, 'must do better' admonishing for SIPO.

Did you have your own trial and find him guilty?

Think whatever you like but the court has found SIPO have a case to answer.

No, the Paul Murphy involved here did not hold anyone captive nor organised a ‘mob attack’.

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Another who cannot bear the government or it’s institutions being scrutinised never mind held to account.

Play the insinuation game with somebody else maybe. Not interested tbh

Thats not a clear way of describing what the decidion was

If it was Mickey Mouse ,T.D for North louth southwest who stepped in as Taoiseach for a week while varadkar was having a lobotomy,who was not being investigated,the court,or this judge woukd also ask Sipo to provide its reasoning

The court has made a new precedent,that all SIPO decisions of whatever ilk now must come with published reasons

Its created a super FoI ,if you like

Consequence is simply to state its reasons which shouldn't be difficult and in my view should always be done

Their job on tgat score has been made easier by the DPP's decision in the matter which makes me question why Paul Murphy thinks he's won something?

He has done us some service alright with the legal precedent I mentioned alright but I don't think thats what he was looking for ?

With the 'separation of powers' I don't think the High Court should be involving itself in Oireachtas matters like this.

Certainly the only possible point it could adjudicate was a procedural point. It could/should not consider the substantive point.

But SIPO has always been required to give a reason for not investigating something. Hence the reason for the judicial review. Again, it's not a new procedural precent, it's something they've always been required to do under the legislation, but for some reason they didn't bother to do it.

It has to be remembered what happened here and some of the comment from within SIPO itself. The predictable shooting of the messenger (Murphy) should be ignored as this case could have been taken by anyone and should have been whatever your politics.

All of this was set out in records Sipo released under the Freedom of Information Act.

But Sipo redacted some of the files. It was only after an appeal to the Information Commissioner – an office held by Deering – that further disclosures were made showing McCarthy’s concern about the potential for Sipo facing “credibility” issues as a result of its response to the Varadkar case.

“Would our arguments be enough to satisfy a judge in a judicial review proceeding (whichever way we go)?” McCarthy asked as Sipo considered its stance.“A court order to reconsider rejection of a complaint would be appalling, and would compromise the credibility of any subsequent decision we made.

A court order to stop an inquiry would at least explain why we had no power to pursue a complaint in this matter.”

With Mr Justice O’Donnell’s ruling, that “appalling” prospect has now come to pass.This very bad for the standards commission, the body that is supposed to promote transparency and accountability in public life. That it relates to a decision concerning the actions of a taoiseach makes it all the worse.

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/06/21/high-court-sipo-decision-is-a-bad-outcome-for-leo-varadkar/

Have a good read of the RTE article and the judgement.

"It added that "it may be that there was a concern about the entitlement of the Commission to gather evidence that may be found in the confidential discussions of the cabinet.

However the court found that "this was not stated by the Commission. Ultimately it is not for this court to fill in the blanks"."

They practically gave SIPO the reasons in the judgement. If SIPO turn around and say something along those lines, the Court have said that is fine.

SIPO have said that the behaviour was ethical, the Court didn't disagree, just that SIPO should explain itself better.

As is usual, people are getting overexcited by something that isn't there.

The answer to which will further highlight how successive governments have seen to it that SIPO is under powered and hampered.