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Alan Shatter Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland
Courts
Alan Shatter hits out at media coverage of judges' appointments
The justice minister said negative stories risk discouraging people from taking important public-sector positions.
9.47pm, 13 Oct 2011
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JUSTICE MINISTER ALAN Shatter has condemned media coverage of two judges recently appointed to the High Court, calling it “completely untrue and grossly unfair”.
In an unusual intervention, Minister Shatter criticised a story in the Irish Independent concerning the selection of Michael White and Kevin Cross to the court this week. He said there was an “obsessive focus” in the media on “undermining the reputation of decent people”, and suggested this was done for “the short-term benefit of a cheap headline”. The minister continued:
It seems that the decency, competence and integrity of individuals appointed to undertake onerous duties for the benefit of the State and its citizens, and the integrity of those who make such appointments, is to be consistently targeted and undermined by some sections of the media regardless of the facts or consequences of such targeting.
Mr Shatter said the two men had been appointed because of their skills and experience, citing the “competence and excellence” of circuit judge Michael White and the “impeccable credentials” of Kevin Cross SC.
He added that negative media coverage risks discouraging “well-qualified competent individuals” from taking positions in the public sector.
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@torpedo, their focus should not be on giving a few jobs, they should focus on continuation of their successful growth strategy, if they succeed jobs will follow.
They are obviously working in a very challenging environment and there is still some way to go before new jobs will emerge. A profit of less than 4% on sales suggest that further cost cutting will be needed to remain competitive.
Much of these profits have been made on the back of an illegal price-fixing cartel operating in the.concrete and cement industries. Ongoing legal actions taken by Framus Ltd and Goode Concrete serve to demonstrate the extent of the crippling stranglehold CRH have over many small businesses in this country. Compounding this is the negligence of the Competition Authority who steadfastly refuse to investigate the industry despite the severity of the allegations laid at the door of CRH. The term Regulatory Capture comes to mind here.
CRH operate a cartel with others in the cement, concrete and tarmac markets in Ireland. They have been selling concrete below average variable cost in the Dublin concrete market and abused their dominant position in their upstream cement and aggregates markets by doing so. This is illegal and criminal but they are being protected by the successive Governments due to a term called political and regulatory capture.
CRH has been found to have operated a price fixing cartel in Northern Ireland between 1985 and 1992. CRH was fined by the European Commission in 1994 for conducting a pan European cartel. In 2007 CRH was fined €530,000 for obstructing an antitrust investigation and destroying evidence. In 2009 CRH was fined €25 million for participation in a price fixing cartel in Poland.
CRH is doing monumental damage to the Irish economy by overcharging for cement and tarmac and using this money to subsidise a corporate eviction strategy which is costing the economy jobs.
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