#Shatter: “…the prologue should have had a Greek chorus chanting the Government’s promises…”

As my old friend RG Gregory says in a forthcoming book of his, in Greek times Tragedy recorded the consequences of “humanity’s struggle to outface the gods’. Alan Shatter has been one of the more capable ministers in the Republic’s government, although therein may lie the seeds of his own downfall. Eoghan Harris lays out a plot line sifted out of recapitulations throughout the last two weeks: Shattergate is best seen as a Greek tragedy which has not yet reached …

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This is why Alan Shatter is in really BIG trouble…

The role of any Justice Minister in any jurisdiction is by definition a thankless task, but I think this from John Burns of the Sunday Times is well worth sharing… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

O’Loan: “I wouldn’t be an Ombudsman if I had no power to investigate chief officers…”

So Nuala O’Loan speaking on the current controversy managed to significantly cut through the hysterical noise in Dublin and bear in on the signal. All of Dan Keenan’s piece is worth reading (not least for the right of the GSOC to determine the levels of threat to its own security), but this is the money shot: “In running an office like this you have to work with the Government but I do know that the last time I was there, …

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GSOC: If it wasn’t An Garda Siochana who was responsible, who was? And was it criminal?

So, in the south there’s a big row. [Another one? – Ed] Yes. This time it is over the alleged infiltration of the Garda Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) office’s wifi system. Reports are thin on what actually happened, all the GSOC says on the matter is that there were ‘three technical and electronic anomalies’ when a check was run by a English tech specialist firm last September. There are suspicions that someone was trying to hack into the wifi system, but …

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