# Minister Martin Cullen's pension



## Slash (9 Mar 2010)

Yes, it's another thread about TD pay and benefits.

Martin Cullen will receive a severance payment of nearly €80,000 (per today's Irish Independent):

PLUS a salary of nearly €200,000 for the remainder of 2010, and nearly 100K for 2011;

PLUS a combined TD and Minister pension of €106,000 FOR LIFE! (per Vincent Brown last night)

Everyone is entitled to a decent pension, but this sort of thing is making fools of us all. MC has only been a TD since 1987.

Then again, when you dedicate yourself to the work of the constituency, with absolutely no thought for your own benefit, you deserve to be recognised as a true patriot. A leader. A role model.

According to some political commentators, the real agenda behind MC's resignation is not ill health, but that it affords MC the opportunity to pursue certain newspapers for damages for alleged libel in relation to the "Monica Leech Matter". This is something that he would be unlikely to do as a sitting TD. ML was awarded nearly 2 million in damages (still under appeal by the newspapers), and MC reckons he is entitled to some of that action too. Watch this space.


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## Purple (9 Mar 2010)

I don’t have much time for Martin Cullen, I think he’s out of his depth some of the time and just too much of a FF hack most of the time. However, I was listening to Joe Duffy (while driving to Limerick) the day the Monica Leech story was being discussed and I pulled over and called the radio station. It was the first and only time I have ever done so. 
The conversation was about how much she was being paid, as if it was all into her pocket. I said to the researcher/receptionist that what was being said was grossly unfair and, for example, did the payments to Ms Leech include her own travel and accommodation expenses. Did it cover payments to other service providers/advisors that she was subcontracting. Did it cover the cost of work done by others within her office/organisation?

I have no idea what the answers to the above are but what Joe Duffy did that day was outrageous, and the courts agreed. He made no attempt to find out the full story and present the facts. Martin Cullen is a public figure and he was very publically and very unfairly humiliated.


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## StevieC (9 Mar 2010)

Regardless of what many think of Martin Cullen, I feel a lot of sympathy for Monica Leech. The newspapers nearly destroyed that womans life, they should be made pay for their reckless journalism. I wouldnt blame Cullen if he went after them too.


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## Deiseblue (9 Mar 2010)

Whilst having no time for Minister Cullen and his party I think it should be pointed out that he broke his neck in a car crash some years back and spent a considerable time in hospital thereafter and to see him struggle recently on tv and on the streets of Waterford is painful to watch.
To suggest that he is more concerned with pursuing the Monica Leech agenda is ill informed.


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## Complainer (9 Mar 2010)

I propose that Cullen's pension is paid to him by way of eVoting machines. Give him all €54 million worth of the machines he ordered, and let him sell them off to generate his pension.


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## Purple (9 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> I propose that Cullen's pension is paid to him by way of eVoting machines. Give him all €54 million worth of the machines he ordered, and let him sell them off to generate his pension.



Lol


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## DrMoriarty (9 Mar 2010)

Deiseblue said:


> ...he broke his neck in a car crash some years back.


The sound of breaking brass could be heard for miles, I'm told.


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## Complainer (9 Mar 2010)

This proves one thing beyond doubt - voodoo works. Now where's that Biffo doll?


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## johnd (9 Mar 2010)

Martin Cullen should not be entitled to any pension untill he is 65 and then only one pension. His salary should stop as soon as he retires and why in God's name he is been paid for next year too?  No wonder people are so keen to get elected! Let him live on his savings until he is 65 if need be just llike ordinary Joe Soaps


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## chlipps (9 Mar 2010)

great that he has decided to retire as he has done nothing for a number of years.. hopefully a few of the others will follow soon as opposed to snoozing in the back benches 

we can complain all we want on here.. but at end of the day these ministers setup these nest eggs and will never reduce or abolish them.


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## S.L.F (11 Mar 2010)

DrMoriarty said:


> The sound of breaking brass could be heard for miles, I'm told.


 
Almost choked on my coffee after reading that...


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## Green (11 Mar 2010)

Purple said:


> Martin Cullen is a public figure and he was very publically and very unfairly humiliated.


 

I agree but if the contract that Monica Leech was openly advertised then the outcome could have been different.


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## WarrenBuffet (11 Mar 2010)

God almighty but ye sound like some pack of whingers........give the man a break. Like or loathe his political abilities there is no need to dance on his grave......

How effective are ye all in your job? For all any of us know ye could all be a pack of wasters sitting at your desks writing anonymous nasty posts.  

The bile in Ireland is frightening at times


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## DerKaiser (11 Mar 2010)

Slash said:


> Yes, it's another thread about TD pay and benefits.
> 
> Martin Cullen will receive a severance payment of nearly €80,000 (per today's Irish Independent):
> 
> ...



It's unfair to single out Martin Cullen, if people feel that strongly about it they should start a thread listing the benefits enjoyed by TDs and lets decide whether they're reasonable or not.  

There's far too many personalised attacks these days.  What started with the bankers, extended to the civil service and can now be applied to anyone. It's a horrible aspect of the post tiger era.  The point can be equally well made by looking at the cold facts of the appropriateness of remuneration levels for TDs and minsters.  Slinging mud at TDs, Civil Servants, etc in addition to this is unnecessary. 

As for the E-voting fiasco, the fiasco for me is that people are so quick to knock the idea. The fiasco was not addressing the shortcomings of the system.  Unfortunately the luddites got their way and it will be decades before it is tried again.

We should have e-voting.


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## Complainer (11 Mar 2010)

DerKaiser said:


> As for the E-voting fiasco, the fiasco for me is that people are so quick to knock the idea. The fiasco was not addressing the shortcomings of the system.  Unfortunately the luddites got their way and it will be decades before it is tried again.


The 'luddites who got their way' include many people and organisations who know quite a bit about implementing information systems. The 'luddites' (including the Irish Computer Society, experienced IT professionals, leading IT academics) could see that;
1) There was no business case?
2) The chosen system was completely flawed in many aspects of its design, but particularly in the absence of a verifiable audit trail.


DerKaiser said:


> We should have e-voting.


Why? What benefit(s) will result from e-voting?


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## WarrenBuffet (12 Mar 2010)

The Irish Computer Society - that much respected, recognised and lauded institute.


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## Complainer (12 Mar 2010)

WarrenBuffet said:


> The Irish Computer Society - that much respected, recognised and lauded institute.


I'm starting to think that Warren is actually the bould Martin himself come back to haunt us. This is one of Martin's classic tactics - when he runs out of arguments (which generally doesn't take very long), he moves to attacking the man, not the ball.

So Warren, is that really your best shot - a vague, generalised slur against the Irish Computer Society with no evidence and no relevance to the issue in hand?

Or do you actually want to engage on the detail of the eVoting debate?


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## DerKaiser (12 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> Why? What benefit(s) will result from e-voting?


Quicker and more accurate results? Why do use computers for anything?

I think it a shame we just gave up on the idea because the wrong system was chosen.

Any proper IT project is subject to testing and will not be abandoned after the first batch of tests highlight problems


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## Complainer (12 Mar 2010)

DerKaiser said:


> Quicker and more accurate results? Why do use computers for anything?


OK - let's look into this further.

Quicker - So you reckon it is worth a state investment of €50m approx to have results on a Friday night instead of a Saturday night? What is the difference? Why is 'quicker' important here?

More accurate - What problems do we have with the accuracy of the current system (where every vote is counted in public scrutiny, with a pile of people checking the work of the counters)?




DerKaiser said:


> I think it a shame we just gave up on the idea because the wrong system  was chosen.


That's not what happened. It is not a case of 'the wrong system'. What happened here is that there was no business case or rationale for the project. There was no project governance. The system was tested, but the test results (specifically the results of the end-to-end tests) were not published, until FOI requests were made years later. The full results of the trials in the 2002 general election (including the huge gap between the number of votes cast and the number of votes counted) was not published until FOI requests were made years later. When the gaping holes in the project started coming into the public domain (Dec 2003), the Minister rushed through the purchase of the hardware, costing the state about €50m.


DerKaiser said:


> Any proper IT project is subject to testing and will not be abandoned  after the first batch of tests highlight problems


There are times when the right thing to do is to abandon a project. It takes more guts to stand up and say 'this is wrong' than to rumble on with a project that has no business case. This was a solution looking for a problem, a 'toys for boys' project. It cost the state €50m, and Minister Cullen is responsible.


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## Purple (12 Mar 2010)

I have to say I agree 100% with Complainer on this.


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## Sunny (12 Mar 2010)

So do I. Not as if we are a massive Country of 100 million people. 

Minister Cullen was a waste of space as Minister. Can't think of one achievement that he can stand over. Did nothing in transport. Did nothing in Sport and Tourism. Did nothing in social affairs and did nothing in environment and local government.  Sorry about his health but not sorry he has gone.


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## johnd (12 Mar 2010)

Sunny said:


> So do I. Not as if we are a massive Country of 100 million people.
> 
> Minister Cullen was a waste of space as Minister. Can't think of one achievement that he can stand over. Did nothing in transport. Did nothing in Sport and Tourism. Did nothing in social affairs and did nothing in environment and local government.  Sorry about his health but not sorry he has gone.



Agreee 100%


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## ashambles (12 Mar 2010)

I think it's Pat Leahy in his book "Showtime" where there's an interesting take on what happened here. (One of the recent barrage of politcal/recession books anyway.) 

The government had got to a point where they'd done tests, were ready to put in the order for the machines, but it was becoming clear there were politically more and more reasons to not go ahead. Internationally limitations of e-voting were becoming clearer as more countries were investigating their use. 

Now what normally happens in a case like this is are delaying tactics, reports asked for, commissions launched, then a quiet shelving until the appropriate juncture. 

However what happened according to the book was the senior civil servants went ahead and signed the contracts - as was planned but without consulting the minister - who would have kicked in the delaying tactics.

Now the civil servants involved were doing their job, however the minister was allegedly annoyed since there'd be an expectation that at the levels of staff involved they'd be aware of political sensitivities and would have expected to have been made aware he was about to be backed into a corner. 

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In defense of e-voting potentially it could save money (if you assume every security and other issue was resolved) as you'd have no need to pay staff to count votes. Also had Ireland managed to do it right and more importantly develop the technology itself we potentially could have had a new mini-industry reselling the technology to other governments.


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## Complainer (12 Mar 2010)

ashambles said:


> The government had got to a point where they'd done tests, were ready to put in the order for the machines, but it was becoming clear there were politically more and more reasons to not go ahead. Internationally limitations of e-voting were becoming clearer as more countries were investigating their use.


This wasn't a case of playing politics. It was a case of it being clear that the chosen system was just not going to work, and any purchase was going to be a waste of money.



ashambles said:


> However what happened according to the book was the senior civil  servants went ahead and signed the contracts - as was planned but  without consulting the minister - who would have kicked in the delaying  tactics.
> 
> Now the civil servants involved were doing their job, however the  minister was allegedly annoyed since there'd be an expectation that at  the levels of staff involved they'd be aware of political sensitivities  and would have expected to have been made aware he was about to be  backed into a corner.


It is up to the Minister (like any Director of any organisation) to ensure that appropriate procedures and limits were in place about who gets to sign contracts and place orders. 

And even if the contract were signed without his direct involvement, he could have had the guts/brains to back out/cancel/negotiate out of the contract immediately, and incur a minimum penalty instead of incurring the huge waste that followed.


ashambles said:


> In defense of e-voting potentially it could save money (if you assume  every security and other issue was resolved) as you'd have no need to  pay staff to count votes.


Not true. You need a control mechanism to ensure that only people who have been checked in at the register get to vote. So you need (as was the case with Nedap machines) one person for each machine to enable it for each voter. This additional manpower (7,000 man-days) exceeds the manpower required for the count.


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## DB74 (12 Mar 2010)

I always thought Noel Dempsey was responsible for the e-voting machines.

That's why Meath was one of 3 constituencies which used the machines in the 2002 General Election.


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## DerKaiser (12 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> Quicker - So you reckon it is worth a state investment of €50m approx to have results on a Friday night instead of a Saturday night? What is the difference? Why is 'quicker' important here?
> 
> More accurate - What problems do we have with the accuracy of the current system (where every vote is counted in public scrutiny, with a pile of people checking the work of the counters)?


 
I'll agree it's not worth €50m.

I still believe the right thing would be that everyone's vote should be capable of being recorded electronically with an appropriate audit trail established. 

But I'd have no problem waiting until it's cost efficient.  Maybe that will never happen due to the infrequency of elections and the speed at which technoolgy becomes obsolete


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## Firefly (12 Mar 2010)

+1 Complainer...if it ain't broke..


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## Complainer (13 Mar 2010)

DB74 said:


> I always thought Noel Dempsey was responsible for the e-voting machines.
> 
> That's why Meath was one of 3 constituencies which used the machines in the 2002 General Election.


Dempsey initiated the project and ran the pilots in 2002. So the failures in publishing the full results of the initial tests and the pilots falls to him.

He then moved from Environment to Transport, so Cullen picked up the ball, and ran ahead, spending €50m of our money on a pile of junk.



DerKaiser said:


> I'll agree it's not worth €50m.
> 
> I still believe the right thing would be that everyone's vote should be capable of being recorded electronically with an appropriate audit trail established.


But this still brings us back to the 'why?' question.


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## DerKaiser (14 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> But this still brings us back to the 'why?' question.



Efficiency, it's pretty cool what you can do in a few seconds with a computer compared to what takes hours for hundreds of people to do.


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## Complainer (15 Mar 2010)

DerKaiser said:


> Efficiency, it's pretty cool what you can do in a few seconds with a computer compared to what takes hours for hundreds of people to do.


But it is not more effecient. The saving on manpower for the count is outweighed by the extra manpower needed to control access to the machines during voting.

And as for 'cool', that brings us back to the 'toys for boys' arguement - hardly a good reason for state investment.


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## DerKaiser (15 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> But it is not more effecient. The saving on manpower for the count is outweighed by the extra manpower needed to control access to the machines during voting.



I don't know what system you have in mind.  I'm sure there's efficient ways it could be done e.g. pin numbers or bar codes.

There's no way you can say we cannot design an efficient electronic voting system.  

It's one thing to say we have not been able to implement one but it's a bit dogmatic to rule out the possibility of a cheap reliable electronic voting system ever being implemented.


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## Complainer (15 Mar 2010)

But it's not dogmatic to say 'we should have eVoting' when you have no clear vision of how this is going to work and what (if any) benefits would arise?

Come on man - give us the business case first, then come to your conclusion.


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## DerKaiser (15 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> But it's not dogmatic to say 'we should have eVoting' when you have no clear vision of how this is going to work and what (if any) benefits would arise?
> 
> Come on man - give us the business case first, then come to your conclusion.



Why are you trying to bait me?  You want me to design a system myself?  I've  already overcome one of the problems you've preconceived by limiting access based on barcodes (I'm no techie).

Electronically recorded votes could cut out the type of errors we regularly see in certain piles of votes being placed in the wrong place.

The use of sampling in distributing surplus is not satisfactory.

I'm pretty young but I can remember one instance of recounts swinging 3 different ways.

If you think that we'll never beat the pencil and paper that's your opinion.  

I'm pretty convinced, however, the current obstacles of cost, audit trail, etc are well capable of being overcome


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## Complainer (15 Mar 2010)

DerKaiser said:


> I've  already overcome one of the problems you've preconceived by limiting access based on barcodes (I'm no techie).


I've no idea what you're proposing here. Please explain it in non-technical terms. What is the barcode for? Who issues it? Who uses it? What does it identify?


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## DerKaiser (15 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> I've no idea what you're proposing here. Please explain it in non-technical terms. What is the barcode for? Who issues it? Who uses it? What does it identify?



A unique pin or barcode could be used to ensure each person can only vote once. Polling cards could be issued with it.  It is used for concert tickets, etc.

I've already said I'm not designing a system here.  And I know you will keep antagonising me because of this.

Like I said you can believe what you want in terms of what can be achieved in the future.

Here's some reading for you, I have no further comment other than my genuine surprise that people think the notion of e-voting is preposterous

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting


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## Complainer (15 Mar 2010)

DerKaiser said:


> A unique pin or barcode could be used to ensure each person can only vote once. Polling cards could be issued with it.  It is used for concert tickets, etc.
> 
> I've already said I'm not designing a system here.  And I know you will keep antagonising me because of this.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the wikipedia link. Having spent quite a lot of time researching this issue over the past 10 years, I didn't really learn a lot new from it.

So let's get back to the barcode proposal. I'm still now clear on how this is supposed to work. Is this intended to replace the current checks against the electoral register that occur at the polling station? If so, there are a number of problems with this. 

First of all, it is trivial to copy a barcode or a PIN. Ticketmaster don't worry about letting the first ticketholder to arrive in, and blocking anyone else who comes along with the same barcode. But that's not really an option for voting. It would also require something like 20,000 voting machines (compared to the 7,000 that Minister Cullen bought for us), so you have a huge extra cost to handle. But the main problem, is that this breaks the anonymous basis of our voting system. With your barcode or PIN, you have now provided a direct link between the voter and their vote. Not clever.

Just to be clear, I've never suggested that eVoting can't work. What I've said is that there is no business case for implementing eVoting in Ireland.


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## DerKaiser (15 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> Just to be clear, I've never suggested that eVoting can't work. What I've said is that there is no business case for implementing eVoting in Ireland.



We must be at odds with each other then.

I agreed about 6 posts back there didn't appear to be a business case at the moment based on the €50m cost of the machines.

You replied to this by asking me why I believed e-voting would be desirable and I've engaged with you on this basis.


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## Complainer (15 Mar 2010)

DerKaiser said:


> You replied to this by asking me why I believed e-voting would be desirable and I've engaged with you on this basis.


Indeed, and I've been pointing out the gaping holes in your touching aspiration for 'efficiency' - the gains are just not there.


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## DerKaiser (15 Mar 2010)

Complainer said:


> Indeed, and I've been pointing out the gaping holes in your touching aspiration for 'efficiency' - the gains are just not there.



You're doing it again.  

You asked me what merit I saw in e-voting having accepted it wasn't cost efficient at the moment.  

I gave a number of reasons which you have not disputed.

If an efficient means of e-voting cannot be achieved why has there been so much research and work into it across the world?

My guess is that some country (probably one with a much larger population where the business case is much more compelling) will eventually develop a really clever system which could be efficiently adopted here and I don't apologise for keeping an open mind on this.


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## Complainer (15 Mar 2010)

Saying 'we should have eVoting' is not 'keeping an open mind'. It is the exact opposite of an open mind.


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## S.L.F (16 Mar 2010)

Purple said:


> I have to say I agree 100% with Complainer on this.


 
Good grief has hell frozen over...


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