Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA)

March 12, 2009 by Infowars Ireland

BRENDAN HALLIGAN’S MANY HATS

The Phoenix, January 30, 2009

halligan

IN these straitened economic times and with demands for public service cutbacks reaching fever pitch, one has to admire the cosy financial set-up that Brendan Halligan’s Institute for International & European Affairs (IIEA) has created to buttress its position.

Repeated demands for scrutiny of the institute’s finances are always met with a blank silence, which is unsurprising given the lucrative and secretive arrangement set in place some years ago by Halligan, the IIEA’s chairperson. But following the institute’s refusal recently to respond to Goldhawk’s request for details of its funding Independent TD Finian McGrath, demanded answers in a series of parliamentary questions to all fifteen government departments that have been funding the institute for nearly 20 years.

Back in the early nineties, Halligan persuaded every government department to become corporate members of the institute, in most cases donating an annual sum of £1,000 each to the Halligan’s think-tank. Inflationary pressures would account only partially for the 500% circa increase in this stipend by 2008 as the answers to McGrath’s questions indicate. According to twelve of the departments that responded to McGrath, each now donates an annual sum of €6.000 to the IIEA. The only allusion to money made on the institute’s website is made under the heading ‘Finances and Legal Status’, where it is stated that the IIEA is a “registered independent charity (ie, it pays no taxes) and is independent of all political, economic and social interests”.

Interestingly, the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, then under the ministerial stewardship of the late Seamus Brennan, last January decided — in a dangerous precedent — not to renew membership “as part of an effort to reduce the department’s administrative costs”. However, the Department of Foreign Affairs more than compensated for this shortsighted, bureaucratic decision by donating €32,626 (over five times the corporate membership) to the institute in 2007. This was made up of €3,000 under the Communicating Europe Initiative and €23,626 for consolidated versions of the Lisbon Treaty. McGrath’s question about how much “taxpayers’ money” was given to the IIEA was in the context of “the lead-up to the second referendum”. Last April, the institute was reported as saying that it could not take sides in the Lisbon Treaty referendum as it was a charitable organisation, ie, it could not use taxpayers’ money to push its decidedly pro-Lisbon agenda.

In 2006, the Institute was in receipt of €823,741 with a large proportion coming from either government departments or taxpayer funded employment schemes. Then there are the plethora of tax funded government entities such as the Higher Education Authority, the local Government Management Services Board, the NESC and dozens of other taxpayer-funded organisations. Just why the DPP, the Attorney General and the Office of the Houses of the Oireachtas should be funding Halligan’s super quango is beyond Goldhawk. And subscribers to the VHI may be equally curious to know why it is listed as an ongoing contributor to the institute.

Since the Lisbon defeat, the institute has been busy preparing arguments in favour of a) a second referendum and b) the need for a YES vote this time round. In a lengthy tome sent to all Oireachtas members and hundreds of other decision makers (157 pages costing €20 a copy, courtesy of the taxpayer), the institute warns of catastrophe should Ireland fail to ratify the Lisbon Treaty next time round. If the government did not decide to seek ratification, the document argues, “the damage would be irreparable” for Europe itself, while the implications for Ireland “range from the disastrous to the catastrophic”. If the electorate votes NO a second time, then Ireland might have to leave the EU; Irish farmers would lose out on CAP funding; we would lose all regional and any other EU funding; we might have to leave the euro currency and all foreign investment would be threatened — among other disasters.

Halligan (72) has spread his wings in recent years. The former Labour Party general secretary who, ironically, led the campaign against Irish entry to the Common Market in 1972, was policy co-ordinator for the Labour Party under Pat Rabbitte and he recently delivered a speech to the party faithful on how Labour stood aside in elections to the First Dail. But his u-turns on Europe are matched by his recent conversion to an environmental philosophy.

For decades, Halligan has earned a considerable income from his lobbying activities on behalf of cigarette companies — within the EU. He received due recognition from his peer group in the Federation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers (CECCM), which body’s minutes noted in the mid-nineties that it had succeeded in forming “an effective coalition between employers and trade unions in Ireland which had averted legislation in the workplace”. Now, Halligan is a shareholder and nonexecutive director of Mainstream Renewable Power, which last autumn began raising €200m in investment and in which Halligan took a stake of over half a million euro. In the Autumn of 2007, just as health minister Mary Harney was preparing a health initiative to ban tobacco products being displayed in shops, Green energy minister Eamon Ryan appointed Halligan chair of Sustainable Energy Ireland.

Two months ago, Halligan told the Oireachtas sub-committee on Ireland’s Future in the EU that the Lisbon Treaty was designed to address the 21st century issue of climate change. The year before, he told the Labour Party conference that climate change was the “greatest challenge for socialists”.