Nowadays, the expression ‘the luck of the Irish’ is thought to be a positive thing, associated with rainbows, leprechauns, four-leaf clovers and alike.
But it was not always so.
Once, it was meant almost as an insult, blaming ‘dumb luck’, as opposed to brains and hard work, for the success of Irish miners and gold diggers during the American gold rush.
Other times, it even meant misfortune (as opposed to good fortune) – and Ireland had its own share of bad periods, draughts, famines and similar incidents, without doubt.
In some situations, it’s hard to decide which of these versions is more fitting.
Take the case of Irish MEP Regina Doherty, for example.
With her blue eyes, stylish glasses and blonde hair, one would be tempted to claim that she looks like the embodiment of innocence.
The more so, would one know that she first studied at St. Mary’s Holy Faith Convent, then completed an Advanced Diploma in Corporate, White-Collar and Regulatory Crime, Law in King’s Inns (FYI, that’s Ireland’s oldest law school). By the way, she also has a post graduate micro-credential in innovative finances.
On radio and TV, she is said to come across as intelligent, feisty, and articulate. But, at the same time, she is known to be accident prone (Ms Doherty called one such incident a ‘stupid boob’, another quip that quickly became a meme) and, quote, ‘often too quick to shoot her mouth off’.
A master in self-promotion, but sometimes failing to meet the expectations she herself built.
Other times she might come off as ‘bending reality’ to fit her message, even in face of the obvious.
For example, when she tries to explain why she suddenly changed her mind on the issue of abortion or the compensation for victims of symphysiotomy.
Or when she tries to explain, why she had been caught breaking a special 60 km speed limit – merely a few months after she wrote extensively about the need for safe driving, ‘I believe that it has to be about changing our mindsets’. Then, of course, she failed to pay the €140 fine – until she didn’t end up in court for it, anyways.
She considers herself to be a ‘very lucky person’ and ‘not a bad person’. She also thinks that Ireland has a ‘good transparent system of holding politicians to account if failings occur’. Others strongly disagree.
Of course, nothing and nobody is perfect. Doherty and the institutions or companies she led neither, but one could say she’s at least aware of it, ‘yes there is fraud, and there is fraud in every system and every other country’.
Good to know.
It’s less promising, thought, that she commits such frauds, too, in spite of her awareness.
Loans, Innovative Book-Keeping and Debts
During her career, she alternated between the public and the private sector, occasionally mixing the two.
For example, when she gave an allowance of €2,150 for ‘secretarial assistance’ – to her own mother, making use of the annual vouched allowance system available for the ministers, that should be used to pay volunteers and smaller jobs. She defended the step by claiming that her mother has delivered several hundred hours’ worth of help during the years, and it was only ‘a convenient means to pay back’ for those services.
Before getting ‘promoted’ to minister of DEASP (that’s for Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection), she was a member of the parliament, and later became Government Chief Whip.
Luckily for her, parallel to her position in the parliament, she was also CEO of the family company, Enchanted Solutions Ltd. (selling IT hardware). Something she forgot to mention in her declaration of interests, admitting the error and correcting the mistake.
Though she supposedly has the relevant qualifications (see above), her company ceased trading in 2009 and got ultimately liquidated in 2011. With an accumulated debt of €286,000, a considerable amount of which didn’t exist in 2008. €60,000 of this was owed to the Revenue Commissioners. (Add to this a judgment registered against it by an English IT company in 2011, in the value of €10,000.)
Though Doherty claims that she ‘learned more from that short period than I ever learned … or the previous 20 years that I had working very successfully for other people’, and she claims that the failure of the company is used against her in a politically motivated smear-campaign, what she fails to mention is that the company went into liquidation due to management failures and alleged tax fraud.
In a special report dated August 2012, the company’s independent auditors established that it failed to keep proper books of accounts in 2010 (maybe in line with the innovative finances studies of Ms. Doherty) – a specific offence under Section 202 of the Companies Act.
Had the prosecutors pressed for charges, Doherty could have potentially faced serious penalties, including up to five years in jail and €10,000 in fines. She and her husband could also have been banned from being directors of any other companies.
Doherty also admitted that she took loans from the company totalling €37,360; an act she knew violated the regulations of the Companies Act, due to the fact that it was greater than 10 percent of the company’s net assets.
As Ms. Doherty reported the loans before the prosecutors could have acted, no harm was done. Doherty still insists that her former company was liquidated properly and in accordance with company law.
But either way, having led a bankrupted company isn’t necessarily considered a proof of her supposedly great leadership skills. She repeatedly refuses to respond to requests for comment whether her company had paid all of its debts, yet had the audacity to roast others about paying the bills for utilities (‘Irish Water bills won’t magically disappear’). – no wonder that it became a meme in no time.
On the other hand, unlawful payments seem to follow her wherever she goes – the luck of the Irish, right?
Taxing Time in Politics
During her time at the Cabinet table as Government Chief Whip, Ms Doherty received €15,829 as ‘allowance’, something she wasn’t entitled to, according to the Attorney General’s advice. She paid back the amount in weekly €140 instalments, so again, the ‘Exchequer was at no financial loss as a result’. She considered herself lucky that her salary as senior minister was €160,451 back then and could easily repay the unlawfully received amount.
Her ability to flexibly interpret tax regulations might have contributed to another scandal attached to her name.
In 2016, The Sunday Times reported that Ms Doherty gave a character reference for an accountant who was convicted of defrauding the Revenue Commissioners. She claimed that the man, Kenneth Shanny has gone through a very difficult period in his life, including his severe addiction, that ‘led to poor choices’, but has, since ‘turned his life around’.
Despite the man having been convicted of processing incorrect VAT returns for two clients with the intention of dividing the money recovered between them, Ms Doherty refused to apologise or to withdraw the reference. In fact, she proudly announced that she ‘would do it again’.
Her quick mouth has also caused problems right from the start of her career.
Still as Chief Whip, she falsely claimed that it would have been illegal for the Irish government to start discussions or negotiations about Brexit with the UK government. When, in fact she just tried to cover for her colleagues and the government, who failed to come up with a contingency plan for Brexit.
Another infamous slip-up of hers was when she clearly expressed support for ‘farmers and landowners’ in acts of civil disobedience, but tried to deny this later, claiming that her controversial statements were ‘only interpreted out of context’.
Or later, as a minister, she happened to utter the phrase ‘mandatory, but not compulsory’ (when talking about the Public Services Card that is used to access all welfare services). Something she regrets profoundly, trying to explain herself with ‘you don’t have to have a card, but what you do have to do is that if you get called in to verify who you are, who you say you are, then you have to come in and you do it, because if you don’t come in and you do it then we can’t be sure that you are who you say you are’.
Not quite sure that Doherty herself knows what she wanted to say with this.
But the most controversial of all was her spat with New York-based academic-slash-blogger Catherine Kelly.
Kelly v Doherty
Kelly wrote (among others) a detailed account of the liquidation of Enchanted Solutions, then another of Ms Doherty’s voting records, claiming that ‘Ms Doherty has voted consistently for legislation that mercilessly punishes her own constituents who have lost their homes, their jobs and their hopes. For instance, Ms Doherty … voted for Fine Gael housing and rental legislation that has largely benefited landlords while homelessness in her Meath constituency has skyrocketed’.
Ms Doherty filed a complaint against the blogger with the Garda Síochána (the national police and security service of Ireland), claiming that she was unfairly targeted as a result of ‘having exposed IRA sex abusers’.
Miraculously, Ms Kelly was stopped and cautioned by gardaí at Dublin Airport about her social media posts. She was told ‘not to tweet about Ms Doherty (because, quote, ‘she doesn’t like it’) or publish any material relevant to her again’ and was also made to sign a declaration (no further details are given about its content).
For many, including fellow politicians, it seemed that ‘Garda resources were used to try to shut down a critic of the Government. That’s the very definition of political policing’.
Of course, it might have been just a lucky turn of events for Ms Doherty. Or two overzealous gardai officers trying to defend their favourite politician.
Ms Doherty (via her spokeswoman) said that ‘if there is an investigation going on or enquiries being made by the gardai, it wouldn’t be appropriate for any comment’, then continuing to admit that a complaint has indeed been made to the gardaí.
Either way, then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar needed to intervene, claiming that the controversy surrounding an allegation of harassment was a private matter, not one of public policy. That, of course, didn’t stop the fun-loving folks on the internet from creating memes of the affair, also making fun of Ms Doherty’s frequent complaints of social media harassment.
Now, with the even wider audience that’ll come with her MEP status, she’ll have more time to do so, especially if her mouth remains as fast as it has always been and she keeps on interpreting regulations as those fit her.