Michael Smith

Dublin

Editor at Village Magazine

Editor, @VillageMagIre; likes dogs; doesn’t like cars. Personal account

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Articles

Corrupted Donegal planning: outgoing Minister Darragh O’Brien must ﬁnally intervene

Oct 9, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith |Habitats law |Rory Mulcahy |John A Masterson

Timeline of planning applications at once-wild Aghadachor, County Donegal, for a holiday resort, now tellingly marketed as “Donegal Boardwalk” The scam: how it happened that almost 200 acres on the wild t of Donegal is being debased into a sprawling housidyllic coas-ing estate, hotel and the usual leisure stuﬀ – in breach of Irish law, European Law, the ruling Donegal County Development Plan, elementary planning norms and the public interest.
2017, when the dam broke for religious schools

Oct 9, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith |Gemma O’Doherty |now. He |Garda Commissioner

John McCleanOn 15 November 2017, I received an email from Gemma O’Doherty, former features tor of the ediIrish Independentwho had run several popular stories in this magazine. She said she was “wondering if you might be interested in a piece about Terenure College and a sexual abuse scandal that has secretly marred the school for ﬁfty years…I am aware of a number of settlements made. I think this has the potential to be explosive”.
Jack Chambers, Minister for Finance

Oct 9, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith

s Ireland’Budget 2025, presented by Finance Minister Jack Chambers (33) on 1 October. Key components included tax cuts, social welfare increases, and signiﬁcant investments in housing and businesses, all aimed at supporting individuals and stimulating economic growth. The budget delivers on income tax changes by increasing the threshold for the higher 40% rate by €2,000 to €44,000 and cutting the Universal Social Charge (USC) from 4% to 3%.
Dereliction overhead: very practical solutions

Oct 9, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith |An Taisce

broken ﬁx it don’t replace it. is You live with little slopes in some ﬂoors, you don’t have to faithfully replace every piece of dilapidated cornicing. That should be the model. An example of my approach is No 5 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7, restored from dereliction 30 years ago and currently a houseshare with seven bedrooms, three shared large bathrooms with Victorian baths, shared living room and kitchen, and basement for storage.
Greenwashingourclimate and our future away

Oct 7, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith |Eamon Ryan

Many in the environmental sector have links to the Green Party so I felt the need to remind them of the failures of that party: “Some of the loose thinking is brought to us by the same people who actually allowed a clause in the reen PartyG’s (2011) Climate Bill that expressly said it would NOT be justiciable (because the AG, who turned out not to be their friend, told them to put it in)!”.
Hugh O’Brien: Another Prison Ofﬁcer abused by the Prison Services

Jul 8, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith

By Michael Smithptember 2023 In SeVillage documented the experience of Seán O’Brien, a Prison Ocer in Portlaoise in the 1980s, who stopped an IRA prisoner’s attempt to avoid extradition, after he was released from the prison in apparent breach of then-Taoiseach Charles Haughey’s plans; and who was rewarded not with a medal but with dismissal, collapsed mental health, and an extraordinary succession of, ongoing, frustrated attempts to expose the truth.
Panning Fanning - Village Magazine

Jul 8, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith

Panning FanningBy Michael SmithRossa Fanning was born in 1976, grew up in Leopardstown and went to Blackrock College. He attended University College Dublin where he served as Auditor of the fatulous UCD Law Society and graduated top of his class, obtaining First Class Honours both in his BCL degree in 1997 and a subsequent LL.M grounded in a thesis on tedious civil procedure.
Ireland is Full (of Irish men unfortunately)

Jul 7, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith

Ireland is Full (of Irish men unfortunately)Irish people aren’t as good as migrants at workingI’ve been looking for a handyman to ﬁx a number of longstanding and messy problems in my home in Dublin’s inner city. Plumbing, carpentry, tiling, shifting stuff around. The better tradesmen tend to take jobs on sites where they’re paid rates that reﬂect the economies their skills deliver at scale — shuttering, rooﬁng or tiling a hundred houses the same way, or whatever.
€75m spent on CEOs of commercial state companies in the last decade

Feb 28, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith |Conor O'Carroll

State companies whose CEO’s basic salary exceeded the cap at the time of introduction were encouraged to take voluntary pay cuts to bring them in line with the regulations. Companies such as An Post, the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) and Coillte complied, bringing their base salaries under the cap within a few years of its introduction. The base salary of the CEO of ESB, however, has had their salary rise since the pay cap, having received an exemption from the government.
Donegal County Council still at it, laughing in the face of national governance

Feb 25, 2024 | villagemagazine.ie | Michael Smith |Michaël Smith

42 February/March 2024February/March 202425Over 1,400 developments in Donegal have been constructed without planning permission since 2019 up to August of last yearBackground: corruption in DCC planning2013 Convie allegations in High Court’s now ten years since ItVillage published the exposé of dodgy planning in Donegal on the back of detailed allegations covering 20 alleged incidents from former Senior Executive Planner Gerard Convie.