Eamon Gilmore will have one less Christmas card to write now – but if Labour took its MEPs seriously, this may never have happened, writes Nessa Childers’ former parliamentary assistant Ciara Galvin.
The Committee on Standards and Privileges said the illegitimate expenses claims by MacShane were worth £12,900 (€16,070) but that he had since repaid the amount in full.
Netanyahu’s government is the most stable Israel has had in years – but he faces pressure on domestic issues including the high cost of living and Palestine.
A FEW WEEKS before the Indonesian parliament introduces laws banning pornography, the country’s parliament was disrupted for fifteen minutes when hackers put hardcore porn on public displays in the chamber and lobby.
The touch-screen displays – which are linked to the parliament’s website and are used by members and journalists to follow the chamber’s agenda – showed porn videos after hackers broke into the website and uploaded the illict material.
The images were displayed for fifteen minutes before officials managed to switch the machines off, though not before the images had caused considerable grievance amongst several press hacks and politicians alike.
“It’s not a funny incident,” Roy Suryo, a Democratic Party member, told the Jakarta Globe. “Someone must be held responsible for it.” Meanwhile the house speaker, Rarzuki Alie, said the legislature would probably file a police complaint.
The material displayed on the screens came from a site that is banned in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
A senior parliamentary staffer confirmed that the material had been uploaded by a user gaining access through FTP to the parliament’s website.
Separately, legislators from the provincial council of West Java discovered that public computers in the council building had been used to access porn sites.
The event has become a focal point for the government’s pledges to ban all “undesirable” content from being viewed within the country.
AT A HIGH-profile US Senate meeting, technology giant Apple was accused of using Ireland as a ‘tax haven’.
The multinational firm, which employs 4,000 people in Ireland, reportedly avoided paying €34 billion in US taxes by negotiating a tax rate of less than 2 per cent with the Irish government – significantly lower than that nation’s 12.5 per cent statutory rate.
The Senate heard that American children are losing out on education because Apple is transferring profits to Irish subsidiaries.
However, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny has denied that Ireland is a tax haven and rejected claims that authorities had negotiated deals with multi-national companies.
So, today we want to know, what do you think? Should Ireland be tougher on multi-national companies when it comes to tax?
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