Paul Malpas

Following my blog and letter of 5 February entitled Barrier Free to Pierse & Fitzgibbon, Solicitors, Market Street, Listowel, Co. Kerry and agents for the National Roads Authority, I received a reply bang on the 19 February, as requested.  They said the error which made them think that I had not paid my €3 was entirely my fault.  I was supposed to have given my car registration number as 012874RN instead of the correct number 01RN2874.  It took them four months and lots of soul-searching to work that out, along with many a threat of fine and conviction aimed at me and it was only when I wrote to them looking forward to my day in court did they come up with this paltry excuse.

All this bother was for their mistake of thinking that I had not paid my €3.  When I then asked them for an apology, their letter said, because it was due to “an error on your part” (their bold italics) “neither this office nor our client will apologise for your mistake and furthermore, we will not be paying your costs”.  Obviously written by a person with little intelligence, no wit, and certainly no nose for business.  Somehow or other government agencies have to realise that they are dealing with people and not machines.  Not to long ago these drudges in agency offices were people and would not have liked this bullying system they have adopted but I suppose all institutions that nowadays deal with people have engendered this malaise towards their flock, the Catholic Church being one good example.

So I am admitting defeat, I cannot be arsed carrying on, the bullys have won the day, but perhaps I can suggest a little wheeze.  If my little supposed transgression can cause such mayhem to the system why does not everybody who pay  tolls do so with a little deliberate mistake in the transmission of their funds.  It would have a cataclysmic effect on that abysmal system and hopefully change it to the good.

For the last few days I have been necessarily entertaining some of my children and grandchildren over from Manchester and Dublin on the occasion of birthdays and half terms and I have noticed that my mind and hand do not work in conjunction after the third bottle of wine or the fifth pint of plain.  So my blog was an unfortunate casualty, but I am happy to be back on the abstemious track and really happy that mind and hand are back on the same orbit.  Just one last thought on the outpourings of this horrible man from Galway, Drennan is his name.  His words do not seem to come from a man of God but from some wretch of a politician or government official desperately trying to hang on in there.  Perhaps his boss, and now his only arbiter, the Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, can say or do something. He has at least grasped the nettle on the value of women.  See John Cooney’s article in the Independent of 23 February 2010.

Whereas the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, William Lee has the answer to all our woes and is recommending that we all take up the Stations of the Cross.  When will they get their heads round the problem and face up to the agony and anger of the abused and why should the abused show forgiveness as Father Eamon Conway of Limerick is suggesting when they are faced with this stoney-faced obfuscation of their position.

Does not your heart warm to see old friends return.  Take for example the report in the Independent newspaper about the National Roads Authority (NRA) who amongst other things collect the tolls from the barrier free tolling system on the M50 Motorway from their agents eFlow and Pierse and Fitzgibbon, Solicitors, Main St. Listowel, Co. Kerry.  The same NRA who you will recall are about to take me to court for having paid my toll on time.  Read my previous blogs, Hoping and Praying of13 December 2009, No Posts Today of 13 January 2010, Back On Track of 15 January 2010 and Old Monkey Face of 17 January 2010.

The NRA are having to pay approximately €50 million per annum to the private company National Toll Roads (NTR) as part of the agreement they came to with this astute company when the government took over this revenue link in 2008.  NTR was founded in 1978 by the Roche family and headed by Thomas Celestine Roche, himself of Roadstone fame, who died in 1999 with debts of £15 million and the reputation of being Ireland’s greatest entrpreneur.  It was NTR who according to the tribunals gave a £50,000 donation to Fianna Fail which was intercepted by the back pocket of Mr. Padraig Flynn’s trousers. which was also given another £8,000 in 1992. It was NTR who gave Mr. Liam Lawlor £74,000 for consultancy work on the East/West link of the M50 and also gave £10,000 to Mr George Redmond in 1986, to”hurry things along” on the same contract.  The same Mr. George Redmond, once Assistant Dublin City Manager, who was arrested at Dublin Airport with£300,000 in cash in his briefcase, having retired eight years previously from the above position which paid less than £20,000 per annum on his retirement.  It must have been a good retirement for him.

According to the NRA, NTR will earn between 1990 and 2010 a total of €1.5 billion, not a bad return when you think that for the last 12 years of this period NTR will do nothing but collect.  NRA Chief Executive Fred Barry nonchalantly says that he was not provided with any evidence of corruption in the awarding of the original contract but agrees that it has led to a “windfall situation”, while the Department of Transport says it is like “winning the lotto”.  Mr. Tommy Brougham, Labour ‘s transport spokesman, says it is a “grotesquely incompetant or corrupt agreement”

Prithee, I hear you ask, who signed the original contract to allow NTR this grossly fat cow of profit.  Why none other than Padraig Flynn, as Environmental Minister and Mr. George Redmond, Dublin’s Assistant City and County Manager,  The names are familiar, are they not?

The above tale shows to all the world that if your entreprenurial spirit is good enough to succeed at doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, then get thee to Ireland where there is money for old rope to be had and why presumably the NRA are chasing me with such determination for the €3 I have already paid them.