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EARLIER THIS MONTH, Fianna Fáil TD Margaret Murphy O’Mahony accused her fellow Cork South-West deputy, Fine Gael’s Jim Daly, of proposing to ‘scrap’ the free travel pass.
Is that true?
(Send your FactCheck requests to factcheck@thejournal.ie, tweet @TJ_FactCheck, or send us a DM).
Claim: Jim Daly proposed getting rid of the free travel pass
What was said:
You can listen to excerpts, and watch a breakdown of the basic facts, in a video below, but here are key statements by Jim Daly, from two radio interviews earlier this month.
On RTE Radio One’s Today With Seán O’Rourke, on 20 January, Daly had this exchange with the host, during a conversation about the purported €6 million gap in Bus Eireann funding:
JD: One issue – and I would differ from my party on this, somewhat, I think Leo Varadkar has already said he won’t entertain it, any kind of contribution from those on travel passes.
But there could be anything up to a million people in Ireland with a free travel pass. If they were contributing €6 per annum per pass, that’s your €6 million wiped out.
Now that’s making very simple sums of it, but I do think that there’s a lot of people…
SOR: Are you proposing something here now?
JD: Yeah I am, I am yeah.
You can listen to the full exchange here (starts 1 hr 39 mins).
Later that day, a press release on behalf of Fianna Fáil’s Margaret Murphy O’Mahony stated:
Cork South West TD Margaret Murphy O’Mahony has said that today’s comments by Deputy Jim Daly where he says that he favours the scrapping of the Free Travel Pass demonstrate the true nature of his Fine Gael party.
Three days later (last Monday), Daly went on C103′s Cork Today programme, and said the following:
There has to be an introduction of some sort of an administrative fee to the tune of €6 per year.
He added:
…Anybody above €50,000 a year pension, I think should be making a contribution to the bus pass.
And he also indicated that to avoid “cutting services to rural Ireland” in the form of the Expressway service, he would favour “considering some sort of an administration fee in the region of €6 per annum for maybe three quarters of the free passes”.
You can listen to the interview in full here.
In response to FactCheck, Fianna Fáil cited Jim Daly’s comments on Today With Seán O’Rourke, and argued:
By its very nature, applying any charge to a ‘Free’ scheme means it no longer remains free, and therefore the Free Travel Pass is scrapped and replaced by a contributory scheme.
In evaluating this, we need to be very careful in examining what exactly Jim Daly said in those two interviews.
When specifically asked by O’Rourke if he was making a proposal, Daly replied that he was. This is very strong evidence in favour of Margaret Murphy O’Mahony’s claim that Jim Daly favours scrapping the free travel pass.
This is another strong articulation by Jim Daly of support for a fee, but does not stipulate whether all recipients would be subject to the fee, under his proposal.
This is significantly less definitive than his previous remarks.
Firstly, it makes the introduction of the charge contingent on a scenario where its purpose was to avoid losing Expressway.
Secondly, it does not apply to all recipients – only the number required to yield the €6 million necessary to fill the gap in Bus Eireann funding.
Confusingly, Daly prefaced these remarks by saying he was restating what he had said on Today With Seán O’Rourke, three days earlier.
But that is not what he said on Today With Seán O’Rourke, when he was in fact more definitive in his proposal to introduce a charge for all free travel pass holders.
Jim Daly did state, on two different occasions, that he supported introducing a charge for recipients of the free travel pass, and that he was making a proposal (not merely stating that a certain approach was possible).
But in the second interview, he also moderated his remarks – making the charge contingent, and limiting it to, in his words, three quarters of recipients, not all of them.
However, Margaret Murphy O’Mahony’s press release, which contains the claim we are examining, was written and published before the second interview.
We must therefore evaluate it based on the remarks Jim Daly had made at that time.
For this reason, we rate her claim TRUE.
But it is crucial to note that since her claim was made, Jim Daly has moderated his proposal somewhat, and in a way that is salient to the question of whether he “favours scrapping” the free travel pass.
While introducing a charge for most recipients would certainly radically change the nature of the scheme, it would also retain the absence of a charge for some recipients.
Add to this the contingent nature of Daly’s proposal in the second interview (if a charge were necessary to avoid the shutting down of Expressway), and it becomes difficult to claim that he supports, in an unambiguous way, getting rid of the free travel pass.
This is the first time we’ve fact-checked a claim by Margaret Murphy O’Mahony. In future, you’ll be able to find her FactCheck File here.
TheJournal.ie’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here.
For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here.
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An awful lot of confusion in this article between trafficking and prostitution. I think pretty much everyone is against trafficking but the likes of Ruhama deliberately state figures to make it out like a huge proportion of these women are doing it against their will which is absolutely not the case. The Gardai have much more important things to work on so just legalise this and get on with it.
@The Guru: there was a book out last year called “Slave”, it’s a true story about a Romanian girl kidnapped and trafficked here for prostitution. It’s a chilling read and I definitely wouldn’t say it’s not worth the guards time
@Brian Masterson: Except of course that the guards rarely ‘rescue’ anyone. The focus is on charging women with the ‘crime’ of working together.
The purpose of the 2017 law wasn’t to combat coercive trafficking (which was already illegal anyway). It was to disrupt and endanger sex workers in the hope they would go away. Frances Fitzgerald even stated in the Dail at the time that an increased risk of violence might act as a deterrent to women doing sex work.
Amnesty, the world health organisation and sex workers themselves called for decriminalisation. They were deliberately ignored.
@The Guru: “legalise” we could set up a course in FAS for any young people who would like to work in this “industry”. Cop on to yourself.
@The Guru: suggesting women choose prostitution willingly is gross and could only be done by a man. Imagine poverty so bad that having sex with some auld lad looks better than starving. There may not be a gang forcing her but she still has no real choice. Let’s also not forget there are many young men caught in this as well, as old Ireland still likes boys of a tender age. Put yourself there, make yourself that person, what would it take for you to choose to stay in a room and have sex put on you every half hour with a different person. Choice? No Mr Guru, slavery!
@Pip: Of course some women and men choose to do it. What planet do you live on? Sex can be a commodity as much as a litre of milk is. Legalisation enables people who view sex differently to you sell or buy it in a controlled and safe environment. Just banning it or criminalizing people doesn’t make it go away. I’m sure youve watched pornography? Nothing wrong with that either.
@Pip: Trust me, women in desperate poverty with no way out DEFINITELY choose to sell sex rather than run out of ways to survive – what on earth gives you the idea that they wouldn’t? Or that they should be stopped and forced to starve instead?
@The Guru: I was going over Ruhama’s new site last night. I have opposed them actively since 1989 but even I was genuinely STUNNED by the extent to which they have just made things up, with no resemblance to reality, to justify their position.
Their own user group HATES them:
https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/investigate-ruhama-s-public-funding
Yet still they are funded from the public purse.
If sex work is a problem, from any perspective you will NEVER identify the root of the problem, let alone solve it, with 100 proof bogus…
Ruhama do not even know WHAT services sex workers actually need and benefit from because they never stop lying about them long enough to learn the facts.
@Gaye D: “forced to starve” are you talking about ireland?
@Gaye D: Ruhama a religious fruit cakes, unfortunately they still have power over government policy even when we can see the hypocrisy and oppressive ways of the church in this country now and want nothing to do with it…..so why are the government still listening to religious nutballs when we don’t?
@Seamus Mac: Yes I am…what on earth do you think happens to people when they run out of the means to survive?
@Peter Hughes: I have been thnking about this in the past few days, in the light of the absolute baloney on their website, as well as the way nobody is willing to stand up and cry halt on their unlawful treatment of me (one minister has been aware all along and just averted his eyes, two are aware now – this is not ambiguous stuff, it very serious indeed, and the only response is a cover up waiting to happen https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/when-ruhama-went-too-far/ – what else are they used to getting away with?) and I am arriving at the conclusion that it is not the squalid little issue exploitation cottage industry of Ruhama that actually calls the shots – they must be answerable to a higher authority that has the clout to make sure they can pretty much get away with anything – I am not sure what form that takes though, maybe still the big religious orders?
@Seamus Mac: If only Fas had a course for enlightenment of ignoramuses like you
@Pip: Hi Pip, Woman here & a recently retired sex worker. Sorry to break it to you but many people willingly choose sex work and for many different reasons, the only common factor being the need to earn money.
I’ve done menial jobs for a pittance and hated every minute. Sex work was the right choice for me and I’m far from alone in that. Sex in itself isn’t the problem – it’s the societal stigma, the unwanted police attention & the very much unrequired attention from those with a ‘saviour’ complex trying to ‘rescue’ us, many of whom have their own ulterior motives.
Decriminalising a transaction between consenting adults doesn’t create ‘slavery’ Pip. See decriminalised New Zealand & Australia for further details and stop trying to tell us what sex workers think.
@Pip: The situation you outline, where a person is put in a room and forced to have sex every half hour, is what the gardai should be allowed to focus on. Instead the gardai are focusing on persons having mostly consensual sex, 3 or 4 times a day, a few days a week, often with regular repeat customers. Between appointments these sexworkers do all the normal things that people with money in their pockets do.
The coercion in most sexworkers lives are economic factors, rent, food, clothes, education and holidays.
Most sexworkers in Ireland earn good money, into their own pockets, and have more freedom to take a day off than the average garda, self employed or paye worker.
@roderick: would this be a preferred career for your son/daughter? Ill await your answer with bated breath. Only an ignoramus would think that prostitution & enlightenment were comparable.
@Gaye D: starve to death in ireland? The social welfare weekly payment would be enough to feed you unless you are spending it on something else.
@Peter Hughes: can you provide a link to prove the correlation between religious belief & mental illness?
@Seamus Mac: I’m interested as to why you think you should be choosing your adult offspring’s career? If they decided to do sex work, wouldn’t you rather they did so in a safe and legal environment?
@Seamus Mac: That is not always the case even in Ireland – remember only about 0.04% of the population sell sex and not all of those are desperate survival workers.
Unfortunately it is well possible for a few people to fall between the stools, because of other factors, I live every day of my live that I wasn’t selling sex in fear of it, right to this day…
…in the UK the situation is a lot worse.
@Eleanor The Great: You definitely offer an interesting perspective in this chain. I admit to knowing nothing about the industry beyond watching Billie Pipers show on tv a few years ago. I’m troubled by stories of those being coerced into doing sex work but when I hear of anything being prohibited I just think that prohibition has never worked. I think people who know very little (like me) should sit back on this one and let the more knowledgeable amongst us handle this. I am curious though Eleanor as to which countries model best approaches the perfect solution in your eyes.
@Seamus Mac: “can you provide a link to prove the correlation between religious belief & mental illness?”
Start here:
Siddle, R., Haddock, G., Tarrier, N. and Faragher, E.B., 2002. Religious delusions in patients admitted to hospital with schizophrenia. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 37(3), pp.130-138.
Anderson-Schmidt, H., Gade, K., Malzahn, D., Papiol, S., Budde, M., Heilbronner, U., Reich-Erkelenz, D., Adorjan, K., Kalman, J.L., Senner, F. and Comes, A.L., 2019. The influence of religious activity and polygenic schizophrenia risk on religious delusions in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia research.
Cook, C.C., 2015. Religious psychopathology: The prevalence of religious content of delusions and hallucinations in mental disorder. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 61(4), pp.404-425.
@Sean: Well Sean, sex work is a subject of which most people know little or nothing, yet everyone has an opinion, so I respect your admission.
To answer your question, no Model is or ever could be perfect, but the one favoured by sex workers is decriminalisation, as currently pertains in New Zealand and parts of Australia. Consenting adult transactions are decriminalised, while under age sex and coercive trafficking remain illegal. NZ have had this model since 2003. Amnesty amongst others, recommended it for Ireland, but apparently the Magdalene based Ruhama & the great minds of the DUP knew otherwise.
@Eleanor The Great: Full decriminalisation *IS* the only true “equality model”. That. way sex workers get full equality with every other person who’s honest living and the market it derives from are decriminalised.
Nothing in this world will ever be perfect, but we owe it to one another to be fair and just. The “Nordic model” is neither.
@Eleanor The Great: Thanks I’ll read up on those and educate myself. I find that we live in an opinion-first society to some extent where people decide what their strong opinion is on a particular topic or even a current legal case whilst only having a very loose grasp of the facts and all the different perspectives involved.
@Pip: On more than one occasion while traveling from Bucharest to Dublin I overheard young women boasting to each other about their exploits here, making jokes and so on. One particularly example comes to mind, one time I was flying via Frankfurt and the ladies in question must have assumed there were no Romanian speaking passengers left during the second segment of their trip. One of them was telling a story about a younger friend who COULDN’T WAIT to graduate from high school, turn 18 and join them. And don’t think they were doing it in order to put food on the table for a family of 7 somewhere in rural Romania either… but for shopping trips to Dubai in order to buy expensive jewelry and clothes.
I’m not judging anyone… but this is one of many examples that must be placed against the common view that these women are victims.
@Brian Masterson: Regardless of how true and horrific that story is, it’s still just one example! Sure, it’s “good” material for newspapers, books, talk shows and even movies, but it tends to ignore most of the evidence. Have a look at the main Irish escort website. The vast majority of escorts hail from 2-3 countries, all in EU. Those ladies don’t need a visa or even a passport to come here, and Dublin is only a few hours and 50-100 euro away.
The days when these women had to sell their souls or risk an uncertain fate in order to escape the Eastern block are long gone. I’m surprised in this day and age Ruhama still gets any airplay with this sort of nonsense.
@The Guru: get on with what?
Pimping? Sex Buying? That is what legalising prostitution means and it leads to more and more trafficking.
Germany : leading destination for human trafficking for prostitution
The Netherlands: leading destination for human trafficking for prostitution
Sweden: traffickers intercepted by police telling each other not to bother.
It’s all very well for you to say legalise it, who is going to protect the women and girls who are fed to this monster. You?
Ha
@David On Tour:
Why don’t you stay on your punters forums where you can make your inane and falacious claims to like-minded men who rate women as slaves and slabs of meat?
@Gaye D: haven’t you just lost a court case for lying about and harassing a former sex worker ?
Does anyone know exactly where this is? Asking for a friend
@Stephen Blood: thanks I will let my friend know. He is only a little fella and goes every where with me
@John Horan: If you’re asking about where the “highest concentration of sex workers in Europe” is, as Garrett MacNamee from TheJournal.ie falsely reports, then it is certainly not in Ireland.
He writes in this piece about 50 odd sex workers being in the one place, when in at least 3 other European cities that number would be many times that. If you want to know where they are, Google is your friend.
Indeed a very confused article. The law does not state that sex workers won’t be prosecuted. Two women were recently jailed merely for working together and many others are arrested for doing so.
Ruhama and the ICI were well aware this would be a consequence of the new law and supported it anyway.
@David On Tour: Also looks like the new law brought in in 2017 has had zero impact.
@David On Tour: Maybe they are all in Santry because they have been driven out of Naas and Newbridge?
This is probably down to Ruhama calling for another pogrom on sex workers – most oppressors do that, find a way to punish those they oppress every time they manage to strike a blow for freedom.
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/when-ruhama-went-too-far/
There are a massive amount of apartments in santry woods. And several hundred more being built. Itll be like its neighbour a mini Ballymun soon enough. Sad.
@Bwian Nowlan: Absolutely nothing like Ballymun I know the area well, see if you can rent a room there and come back to me its very expensive. Ballymun even after they knocked the flats still has absolute hellhole housing estates….like Northwood would you give me a break lol.
@Bwian Nowlan: 2,200EUR p/m Ballymun? There’s no social housing in Santry
Just like with weed, cracking down on sex workers will only endanger the people working in it, increase crime in the underworld and waste gardai time. Should be legalised, taxed and regulated. its the individuals choice and business what they consent to behind close doors. there is very limited gardai resources under this austerity government and tying them up here reduces the tackling of violent crime
@Matthew O’Kane: and sorry to spoil the image lads but this photo above could be a terrified op coming back from collecting their pension for the lack of garda stations….
@Matthew O’Kane: Your mention of being taxed caused me to do some easy research. The article says 1,000 in total. Judging by the prices advertised I’d guess they easily average at least a grand a day. That’s 365 million a year cash sloshing around untaxed. Such vast sums of money has to attract organized crime.
Probably great for the apartment block owners of this world too, to make a market for their apartment rates that these people can afford. Will the likes of big apartment block owners ever be accused of money laundering I wonder? How clean are they in all this if the density is such as to be obvious to ordinary renters?
@Matthew O’Kane:
The state as pimp? Women will never consent to having their abuse state sanctioned and taxed. Look at Germany. 44 registered for state ‘benefits and obligations’.
“Alexa – Show me my account balance and the route to Santry please”
The boys in blue have always enjoyed free benefits from these ladies.It is traditional for the activities of these ladies to dovetail neatly with the boys in blue who love a freebie and turn a blind eye.
What is very anyoning about Ireland is only in the 2000s we caught up with world but not the modern world, But the early boom times of the them.
We could of learn from this and stoped all the problems before they rise by look at countries.
We need to make this industry legal, have sexual release workers union, all places that provide must have security based on current security laws. And be license.
All saff bust be photographed and finger print taken. This could be done by the state or by one of the current charities.
It will be kept on data base , there is a finger print readers you can get for doing checks on the field.
Charities and Garda can do spot checks with soical services to ensure workers are wanting to be and been treated right.
Having it illegal will never help children or adults , who are locked up and abuse every minute of every day. And when cant go on are left to die burried somewhere.
Then another round will be kidnapped. Drugged and rape cause people think having it illegal is better just cause they can’t see means it not happing.
@Life is short enjoy it: There are even more anonymous biometrics than fingerprints available now and they could be stored in the licence card rather than the central system to meet data protection requirements.
There is literally no way to regulate the use of business premises without full decriminalisation.
@Bwian Nowlan: it’s worse than ballymun it’s a kip we’re do u think the drug dealers come from it ain’t ballymun it’s there mini North wood they use ballymun to sell drugs using kids , sex workers, roman gypsies begging.
@Sineadjane35: We all said that when they wanted to build it but they would not listen to us. What would we know.
@Sineadjane35: I know northwood well and its a nice area, you are talking out your pipe if you think its anywhere near as bad as Ballymun…..Ballymun is full of nutters you would have some balls driving around parts at night let alone walking….
Love this bit:
“The organisation has also advocated for many years for the repealing of the offence for soliciting for prostitution to give the clear social message that no person should be criminalised for their own exploitation.”
Firstly, NOBODY has managed to figure out yet if soliciting is still criminalised, but more harshly, under the Public Order Act 1994.
Secondly, what it the point in letting survival sex workers solicit to their heart’s content if you have laws that prevent them from being able to earn the money they need?
NEVER, since they opened in 1989 have Ruhama acknowledged the simple fact that the majority of people who sell sex do so for the money, and the vast majority of “coercion” is simply economic.
This little paradigm shift will not stand up, like all the others. Ruhama hard sell the idea of those who sell sexual access and services being somehow less than other human being in terms of their right to autonomy, income and even survival. What other group of people have ever been deemed as expendable enough to silence, misrepresent at will and sacrifice to a fad ideology in any civilised society?
@sineadjane35 that’s the biggest load of nonsense I’ve ever read. Its a kip cause they are building new apartments? Seriously? Drug dealers live in nearly every suburb in Dublin. Never seen any Roman gypsies begging.
@John Culhane: eh…*it’s *because
@SFNutters: Alright Grandad, that’s how people under 60 type.
@John Culhane: A lot of the apartments there werebought to let. There is no community as such there. So thats why they are based there, they can rent easily
@Gary Kearney: You show me an apartment complex in Dublin where there is a sense of community. I own an apartment up there after the third attempt and after being out bid 3 times. If your renting it aint cheap either. Its extremely safe and very well maintained with great amenities. Hookers and drug dealers makes it sounds if they are hanging about the street corners, I can assure you that isn’t the case
@Tuot tuot: eh…I am commenting on spelling not typing. Typing is the action of touching keyboard keys or screen ‘buttons’.
A frèe advert for the sex trade
@Kevin O’Hara: Let me add that most sex workers are just a percentage of a family in their spare time and tend to behave the same way at work in all public areas…chances are you can’t even spot them.
@SFNutters *get a life
There’s an extra charge for tackling.
Hehe..
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