The Jemmy Hope – “As a people, we are excluded from any share in framing the laws by which we are governed. The higher ranks usurped the exclusive exercise of that privilege, as well as many other rights, by force, fraud, and fiction.”
The gangster, the super model and Bertie Ahern
“I’m a professional gambler…the more money I put on, the more money I won…99 and three quarter percent of the time if I’m betting on a thing with four legs it would be horses”.
– Drug dealer John Gilligan ‘explaining’ how he came into possessionof large amounts of cash to the High Court on July 15 2010.
“As is well-known publicly I am interested in horse racing and over the years I have placed bets on horse races. Over the years I have won various sums of money. Some of these would have been paid in sterling.”
– Bertie Ahern ‘explaining’ how he came into possession of amounts of sterling cash to the Mahon Tribunal on June 4 2008.
“15% of the people in the world don’t use banks…I don’t trust them…with the recession and the price of everything in this country, I think I have been proved right.”
– John Gilligan ‘explaining’ to the High Court on July 14 2010 why he didn’t have a bank account in which to deposit the hundreds of thousands
he ‘earned.’
“I had the cheques, I needed cash and I cashed cheques. There are thousands of people who do that. I mean ordinary people, Mr O’Neill, go into pubs and cash their wages cheque. It happens all the time. It is not extraordinary…There is nothing in the law or the Constitution that [says] you should, you know, follow the normal issues. Some people put their hair yellow. Some people wear rings in their nose, it’s not the normal thing.”
– Bertie Ahern ‘explaining’ to the Mahon Tribunal on December 20 2007 why he had no bank account between 1987 and 1993, a period during which he was Minister for Finance.
“I get gifts given to me all the time, at all hours of the night…Sometimes without notes. It is quite normal for me to receive gifts.”
– Naomi Campbell ‘explaining’ to the International War Crimes Tribunal August 5 2010 how she came into possession of a bag of ‘blood diamonds’ after a dinner
with brutal dictator Charles Taylor.
“They are a considerably important group of people and I spent the time with them through the respect for that and on other occasions they would have given me gifts…Let’s be frank about it. It was no big deal. It was no big deal.”
– Bertie Ahern ‘explaining’ to the Mahon Tribunal on September 14 2007 how he came into possession of a wad of cash after dinner with a group of property developers.
A chip off the old block…Dublin North’s Darragh O’Brien, 32, has become a media
regular, wheeled out to defend government policies such as the Anglo bail out and disability cutbacks.
O’Brien has a background in the local Fianna Fail organisation of former TDs GV Wright and Ray (Raphel) Burke. He also maintains familiar backers, among his declared donors in 2008 were several property developers among them Jerry Gannon (Gannon Homes), Flynn and O’Flaherty. Like many in Fianna Fail, family is also very important to O’Brien, when he obtained his Dail seat he handed his Fingal county council seat to his 27 year old brother Eoghan.
