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THE GARDA COMMISSIONER Martin Callinan has resigned in a surprise move which follows months of controversy surrounding his handling of a number of issues within the force.
Callinan’s resignation has come amid increasing political pressure to withdraw remarks in which he described the actions of two garda whistleblowers as “disgusting”.
His departure comes without an apology to the two whistleblowers or a withdrawal of the remark. He has not yet commented on the reasons for stepping down.
Callinan had attempted to clarify his comments, made at the Public Accounts Committee in January, but this did little to ease pressure on him.
However, the ‘disgusting’ remark was not the only cloud hanging over Callinan. Here are six reasons why he may well have decided to step down today.
1. The political pressure
Five Labour Cabinet ministers and, significantly, Transport Minister Leo Varadkar have all said in the last week that Callinan should withdraw the ‘disgusting’ remark – a significant ramping up of the political pressure on the Commissioner after months of opposition TDs calling for him to go.
While TDs on the backbenches is one thing, the views of government ministers carry some weight and while none of them, at least publicly, were calling for him to step down, the fact there was a clear desire from one party in the coalition for him to withdraw the remarks meant that unless Callinan did so, there was going to be a big problem.
2. His relationship with Alan Shatter
It is well known that Callinan was close to Shatter but was he too close? That was the question many observers had been asking in recent months, particularly when it emerged that Callinan had given the Justice Minister information about independent TD Mick Wallace that the minister then used on RTÉ’s Prime Time.
Shatter extended Callinan’s term in office in 2012, expressing full confidence in the work and reforms he was carrying out (more of which below), but the lingering questions about the minister being too close and perhaps not critical enough of Callinan had a big impact on the public perception of their relationship.
3. Penalty points just wouldn’t go away
Callinan had to deal with a variety of issues in recent months, but penalty points was one that just wouldn’t go away. There were various offshoots from the issue itself – principally the relationship with and handling of the whistleblowers.
But leaving those aside the fact there are clear differences between an internal garda report into the cancellation of penalty points and those carried out by the Comptroller & Auditor General and the Garda Inspectorate left questions.
Callinan insisted that systems had been improved in the fixed charge processing system and the Garda Inspectorate expressed confidence that recommendations in its damning report would be implemented in full. But with a report by the Garda Ombudsman into the penalty points issue looming, it was set to remain on the agenda in the coming weeks.
4. The relationship with GSOC was poor
The relationship between the gardaí and its watchdog should not be a good one, it should be somewhat adversarial, but it should not be as toxic as it had become. So much so, the Garda Ombudsman felt compelled to make a point of stating that gardaí were not cooperating in investigations and handing over documentation in a prompt manner.
The alleged surveillance/bugging of the Garda Ombudsman – which both GSOC and the gardaí insist publicly showed no clear indication of garda involvement – had left questions that are currently being dealt with by a retired High Court judge whose report will no doubt dominate the news agenda when it is published and could raise more issues for Callinan.
5. Legacy issues
There are claims gardaí mishandled a number of serious cases involving abduction, assault and murder that are being looked at by a senior barrister. That report will no doubt raise more issues for the organisation.
In addition, the handling of the convicted drug dealer Kieran Boylan as a garda informant was the subject of a critical report from the Garda Ombudsman which examined accusations of collusion between gardaí and Boylan in the movement and supply of drugs. This raised more questions which remain unanswered.
Then there was the report of the Smithwick Tribunal into the murder of two RUC officers by the IRA after they had left Dundalk Garda Station in 1989. Callinan was horrified and accepted the Smithwick findings in full, but the report itself was scathing of “some misguided sense of loyalty” within the gardaí at the time.
6. He was due to retire anyway
In November 2012, Shatter extended Callinan’s term in office by two years – he had been due to retire when he turned 60 in August 2013 – which would have taken him up to August 2015, but there were indications that he may have decided to call it a day this August.
Announcing the extension at the time, Shatter noted: “At a time of such significant organisational reform, I believe that it is desirable that there should be continuity in Garda leadership, and I am delighted that Martin has agreed to this extension. His leadership over this period, during which there will be further challenges to be met, will be invaluable.”
It will be Callinan’s successor who will now faces those challenges.
All images: Photocall Ireland
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Pay your taxes apple. €13 billion . Plus interest. Hundreds of billions cash reserves because you pay little or no tax anywhere. One thing is certain apple employees pay a lot of tax . Tax to the hilt by this government.
The companies under investigation by the EU – AOE and ASI – have employees in only one country – Ireland. So if the Irish employees are generating the profits then maybe they should be taxable in Ireland. So apple don’t mind that the employees get taxed to the hilt as long as they get the sweet heart deals.
Good to see he left cheering on an EU supranational tax audit. I presume when he same commission tells us to pay water charges, that you’ll be still happy to comply.
Jason. If it’s cheering that a multi billion corporations has been shown to be not paying correct taxes and had a sweetheart deal while ordinary taxpayers have been taxed to the hilt . Then I will cheer. If the tax is owed , the tax is owed . It’s a lot different than water charges. It’s illegal state aid, sweetheart deals. Facilitating a company pay no tax anywhere. You on the other , give yourself a clap on the back because you think it’s the same as water charges. How sweet
Haha . Jason. Your gas. Didn’t the government already agree with the commission on water. They said have to do as the commission recommended. Now the commission has ruled on something and its bad commission. No pleasing some people. Tax the little people with a water charge Ireland. Yes Europe, straight away. Collect €13 billion in tax and interest owed to Ireland from apple. No Europe we don’t want it. We are going to vigorous appeal this. See the difference Jason
In 2011 apple through 2 companies based in Ireland earned 16 billion in profits. After the “exemption” they got from the revenue commissioners they paid 12.5% on only 50 million of the 16 billion. Apparently legal at the time under Irish law but definitely not moral and doesn’t put apple in the biggest taxpayer bracket by any stretch of the imagination. The 15.5 billion.that they didn’t pay tax in in Ireland was accredited to companies that are not actually registered in any country so to date they haven’t played one penny of tax on that money.
Any chance of a fact check into this claim?
Apple will fight tooth and nail to pay their tax bill here in Ireland so long as there is a legal right to remit all their offshore cash into any country including the US without any threat to double taxation. Even with punitive rates of interest & charges, It’d still be below the US basic rate. They will have to bring this out of an EU court ruling which America will not respect and into an international arbitration court whose ruling on tax are signed up to by all the relevant countries. I don’t think the US will accept them paying us billions, they want their cut as soon as Apple moves the cash home.
Stephen Todd, if your asking about my “claim” about the 16 billion and the 50 million. You should direct your question to the financial editor with news talk 106 who I was quoting after listening to him on the Pat Kenny show this morning. In fact as the journal is owned by the same company (I think) maybe they can fact check it for us?
How is it not moral? Do you think they earned 16Bn in profits in Ireland? No, they were made from their worldwide operations. The fault here lies with OECD Transfer Pricing rules, IFRS/US GAAP accounting policies and national tax codes. The profits repatriated to this entity were moved out of every country in the world without hiding a thing from them… People acting like the 13Bn was taken from our health service or made people homeless are populist fools unwilling to invest the time and energy to understand the operations of modern multinationals.
It wasn’t their worldwide operations under investigation do , was it ?. Wasn’t it just AOE and ASI that was under investigation. they only – have employees in only one country – Ireland. So if the Irish employees are generating the profits then maybe they should be taxable in Ireland. The sweetheart deal allowed Apple to shift up to two-thirds of its global profits through a handful of Irish-registered companies that routinely paid less than 1% tax.
Appearing before a US Senate hearing on tax, Apple’s head of tax policy Phillip Bullock confirmed that two Irish subsidiaries – Apple Operations Europe and Apple Sales International – paid approximately 2% in tax.
When asked about its reasons for operating in Ireland, CEO Tim Cook said that the company had received a “tax incentive arrangement” as part of its decision to establish here in 1980.
Straight from the horse’s mouth.
Tax incentive, think we now know what he meant.
The European Commission’s investigation found that Ireland reached an illegal arrangement with Apple that allowed the company to pay almost zero tax on its European profits for more than 10 years. The tax breaks cut the company’s effective corporate tax rate on its European profits from 1 percent in 2003 to just 0.0005 percent in 2014, according to the EU report.
the eu bond holders must be happy we wont c a penny of it. ff fg yet again selling the irish citizen out when will people ever learn.they can appeal with their own money not ours.
Tim Cook by saying that is a liar and a thief for not paying his fair share of taxes.
If it weren’t for Apple wed have thousands more Irish people without work or having to emigrate.
Maybe , but maybe the presence of companies like Apple and Microsoft is part of the reason we don’t have our own Ericson or Nokia
You don’t know that Patrick.
Correct Emily! I have been saying the same for years!! Ireland is way too heavily dependent on Foreign investment. It’s Tim we got up off our backsides and invested in ourselves! I get sick of hearing how young and well educated your population is. It seems we are in awe of American companies and will do almost anything to bribe them into setting up over here. Sure it looks good and they do create jobs, but when you co sided all the grants and perks they’re offered, you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it. Indigenous companies aren’t getting treated as well, which automatically creates unfair competition. All it’ll take for the foreign companies to up sticks is the offer of a better deal elsewhere. Ask anyone who worked in the printing trade about the multi nationals they used to work for! Ask them where these companies took their jobs to!
is that the same Nokia that failed to respond tot the smart phone market and ended up being taken over by Microsoft and now as disappeared as a main stream brand.Also Finland was over reliant on Nokia and their economy has stagnated after the fall of Nokia https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/whats-happening-to-finland-economy/
Not the best example
Each of those “jobs” cost 2.6 million in lost taxes Patrick, how many jobs would have been created by this money?
Emily, Nokia was built out of the finnish rubber company diversifying, while Ericsson was built on the back of private Swedish banks investing in Telecoms. or banks are institutionally dodgy and would never invest, while we have no worthwhile natural resource to build upon. We need to create an environment for scientific and biotech startups to do anything, but these shady deals and the dependency on the IDA and Irish banks means we can never have successful indigenous industry since Smurfit sold up. btw: Ericsson is the largest software developer in Ireland as nearly all of the tech companies have little to no ITC or development work. They also don’t need a sweetheart deal to employ Irish people, or divert their EMEA profits through us. just saying.
So we’re all in favour of abolishing corporation tax entirely, then? That will set a level playing field between indigenous businesses and FDI. And more to the point, it will really really annoy our EU overlords.
There’s a long Q of Investment houses and EI waiting to provide the seed capital to fund bright ideas for new scalable business from budding Irish entrepreneurs.
More could be done at school and University level in Ireland to inspire those creative kids with the bright ideas for new products, services, particularly involving IT / eCommerce.
Ireland needs one of the big Global IT guns to sponsor a competition – something similar to Aer Lingus’s Young Scientist of the Year – to find Ireland’s Young Inventor / Entrepreneur of the Year.
I’ll write to Apple’s HQ on this when I find the address.
This is the EU’s attempt at tax harmonisation through the back door. Without the benefit of a low corporation tax, what good is Ireland to multinationals? Almost anyone in Benelux or Scandinavia can speak English as well as anyone in Ireland and they have bigger economies. And if the UK dropped their corporation tax as part of Brexit, they could just move to London. The British are already encouraging Apple to do so.
That’s not even considering the trade war with the US this could start. They’ve already promised to consider countervailing duties in retaliation.
Another self-inflicted wound by the EU on its descent into protectionist irrelevancy.
Who is going to invest in the UK now with Brexit? As for moving to the continent with higher corp tax, stronger labour and union laws and more business bureaucracy? It’s not just tax and Apple and other FDI knows this. Why demand for a more efficient gov to work in when your corp tax is less than1%. All the EU has to do is insure tax is paid on the sales if each state and we’re in a mess. It’s not even as if we’re a big net contributor and our crazy yet rational gnp/GDP figures have come home to roost.
Stephen, Societé Generale have declared, post-Brexit, that they are retaining their HQ in London…albeit moving from the City to Canary Wharf. Move will be completed by 2019.
Tales of the death of the UK are vastly overstated and do not bear scrutiny.
They have some necks to defend themselves.this arrogance needs to be knocked out of the lot of them.respect the people,or piss off.
Finally the whistle has been blown on one of the biggest tax scams and avoidence ripoffs in corporate history.These guys make Bernie Madoff look like a franscian friar on a charity round in Naples. And only in Ireland could the denials and delusions continue after the guilty verdict.What a fcuk up of a Banana Republic.
Sure yer man with the dodgy Garlic nearly paid more tax on his Apples,
Than Apples taxes altogether.
Tax wise it is now. Let’s dump EU and merge with FB.
Where’s the AAA idiot to tell us about imaginary money
Look lads the European overlords have made a specific ruling against tax haven ireland and apple. The Irish government have been instructed to recoup 13000million in unpaid taxes. Now the Irish government has form for doing as instructed by Europe. Eg the non burning of bondholders the non recapitalisation of our banks and the implementation of water metering and charges. I don’t see any chance of non compliance with this directive said no one ever
Benny, in this case the EU are on our side (the people). This is an obvious dodgy deal and Ireland was caught out – it wasn’t necessary to gain such a small stipend in terms of jobs (even though every job is welcome) at the loss of integrity and transparency. The non burning off junior bondholders was entirely the wrong decision, and it was one that Noonan and fg were happy to capitulated on, to the point of being behind it. Let’s just say that if Noonan is being discussed, it is never for the benefit of the Irish people.
Don’t be silly. The EU are on the side of big countries like France, which wish they could get Apple to set up there. They don’t give two hoots about the people. They preach competition between businesses, but panic when they see competition between countries.
Ben, France would be happy to see some of their own companies set-up there.
Last week, Societé Generale…one the their big banks…announced that by 2019 they would move their HQ from City of London to Canary Wharf, London. And, yes, that was long post-Brexit.
Would Apple et al choose to move out of the EU, but not back to America? Who knows what the future holds. Exciting and uncertain times ahead.
@Ben, while I understand your paranoia of the EU based on our dealings with the ECB, this case was coming for a long time, and it was clearly based on both EU and Irish competition laws being ignored. To allay any bias, you should know that France have been accused of illegal state aid 24 times this year, and Germany 33 times. Ireland has only been up twice (mainly Credit Union stabilization). The commissioner in this case, coming from a small country herself, is only analyzing and presenting the rules based on the evidence before her. Ireland’s response was that the deals struck with Apple were above board (they are still secret, except for the jobs bribe) and they met with global tax laws (they didn’t as they allowed all of the profits to go to a stateless shelf company). And still we are going to pursue this appeal with little or no evidence apart from ignorance and the lack of a paper trail.
For all their bad points, the EU could and should be a protection for all it’s citizens against the real enemy of our own politicians.
At the end of the day, that is not our money, never was, never will be. Their Irish taxes were paid, the rest was swindled from the USA, UK, France, Germany etc. This report was only round one, in the end it’ll end up in the US treasury, with the headache and cost of retrieving it being lumped onto us as a punishment for facilitating the scheme. The main battle is at US/EU level about their own corporate taxation rules, Apple etc. operate in grey areas of smaller but connected economies to maximise gain. The big players want it all back, so don’t start planning on any new schools or hospital beds with that money. If Ireland were to make a grab for it, it would be stealing their money, they would stop us or hit us back hard. Never a Noonan fan, but he’s right to be careful and slow the ball down.
it was never about us claiming the money. it’s about our country being prostituted out to multinationals for a few thousand jobs, and a small top up on our revenue. Noonan’s job isn’t too “slow it down”, but to ensure that the mislaid revenue ends up fairly where it belongs – either in the US, or else distributed in the EU countries that generate this profit. unfortunately, he and his team are dangerously incompetent in admitting their mistakes, and will both lose the tax income from apple and suffer fines from both the EU and the US for tax evasion.
Ye whats a few thousand jobs? The Googles, Facebooks, Intels, HP, Apples, IBMs, and take your pick of all the Medical Device Companies; what will happen to our science and engineering graduates when the big boys junp ship and setup shop somewhere else? The MedTech sector alone employs 29 thousand people in this country and some of the biggest companies in the business are here. Its not just a few thousand jobs really.
The few thousand was only for Apple – Intel, HP and IBM have a physical presence here that adds value to the companies. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple generally don’t and their employees are mainly foreign nationals in the marketing, sales and localisation area that could be located anywhere.
The Medtech companies have already started to withdraw the value add (Wyeth, Pfizer etc shutting down their fabrication plants), and have remained here for the tax washing function. The Allergen merger should also have sent off HUGE alarm bells in terms of our hosting of companies who actually make a long term investment as Pfizer has done for 40 years, vs what MNOs think when planning to host in Ireland. Either way, it’s a tiny fraction compared to the number jobs generated by our SMEs that don’t receive any of these state aids/sweetheart deals.
Nationalise Apple!
And fair play Journal for not publishing this article before lunch, otherwise I wouldn’t have been up out of the leaba to be able to comment on it
So what happens if all the multinationals pull out of ireland over the next decade or so because they no longer have the tax breaks in place, what happens to the est.200,000 people employed by these companies in good paying jobs, not to mention the companies around the country who supply all these multinationals,what happens to those people and there family’s.
This ruling has no bearing on any other multinationals. It was only 2 subsidiaries of apple that was investigated due to the special deal they had here. That is why it was investigated. Only apple was under investigation
Let’s hope it stops with
I can only tell you what is being reported. It was apple in Ireland. Different companies in different countries have been investigated over the years . Apple here only. You would imagine it would have been more if they suspected a problem with other. multinationals .
LITTLEONE, or maybe….pick off a big one first and then go after the rest? The EU is not in a war and so can afford to pick it’s battles.
Problem is, the rest might decide to remove themselves from the field before the battle is called. Could Apple operate in New Zealand, or Australia or………….? Quite possibly, following some calculated inconvenience.
I’m not suggesting it will happen, but no-one has ever gone up against these big beasts before, AFAIK. The rules of engagement might be somewhat different than those we currently understand.
Apple: You can have taxes or you can have jobs, but you can’t have both – Read at Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-eu-tax-ruling-profound-harmful-effect-investment-job-creation-2016-8?&platform=bi-androidapp
Tim Cook is a theving liar.
Apple should be made pay.. plus all interest. Who ever set up that deal in the first place should be jailed. If anyone owes a cent in property tax the revenue would chase you to the end of the planet to get it. Why should there be a special deal for Apple. Pay up .
Sounds like a Win-Win for Republic of Ireland Limited.
I mean, it gets to keep 6,000 Apple jobs and potentially gets a whopping lump sum and more annual taxes from them.
It also gets to put an arm around Apple’s shoulder while blaming the Germans and other killjoys.
What’s not to like?
Newsflash. Corporations don’t pay taxes. They simply pass these costs on to consumers (that’s you and me).
There’s a fundamental point here that people are missing, and it hit me as i listened to the Noonan.
The culprit here is the US tax authorities, not the Irish tax authorities. Apple held that cash tax free in Ireland because if it repatriated it to the US, it would have to pay 35% tax. Equally, it was not Irelands to tax because the economic activity that generated it was not in Ireland. Ireland agreed with Apple that they should only pay tax on their activity in Ireland, which obviously relates to a much smaller amount of profit. So the money became stuck in no-mans land, as a result of high US taxes and Apples decisions, nothing to do with Ireland. That’s the reason the effective tax rate was as low as 0.005%, but she is wrong to say there was a tax liability in Ireland. After all the Apple device in your pocket was designed and developed in California, manufactured in China and sold around the world.
…this is the same EU that had no governance of its own financial, and who haven’t had an auditor sign off its budgets in over a decade? And they “rule” a windfall tax that they will sequester for themselves? And we listen to these numpties? You couldn’t make it up….
Arrogance of the tax cheats is breathtaking any wonder when Enda visited Apple before election
Bull according to the EU ones? Germany has a slot for Apple and was RTE news making fun out of apple with terms like appeal and a chunk out of apple etc…
I suppose Germany has their eye on apple now?
have your say