It’s a quiet Bank Holiday Monday morning so there’s a wide divergence on the front-pages  – but the spotlight is still on the shoddy and the underhand.
The Front Pages
“ Hundreds of court, Garda interpreters have no qualification†– Irish Times
“Half opt for ‘no record’ Dail, Senate expenses†– Irish Independent
“Over 800 patients in ‘outdated’ psychiatric facilities†– Irish Examiner
The lead in the Irish Times outlines the sometimes shoddy standards at work in translation and interpreting services employed by the Court Service and the Garda.
Kate Waterhouse, currently studying for her PhD candidate in social work and social policy at Trinity College Dublin, is conducting research on the level of service provided for people with limited or no English by the justice service.
She told the paper, “I was shocked at the way interpreting was taking place in many cases. It was clear in some cases that nothing was being interpreted.â€
The courts have spent €10m on translation and interpreting services over the past three years, apparently. Nice work if you can get it, particularly as you might not have to possess the brain cells necessary to explain the word ‘ambiguity’, as two Polish interpreters failed to do in October 2007. It’s a tough one, though, is ambiguity.
Meanwhile, the Irish Examiner goes with some Freedom of Information, er, information. Nineteen psychiatric hospitals were described as “outmoded, outdated and grossly unsuitable†in a 2008 report; advanced closure plans for 13 of those were pledged by John Moloney, the Minister for Mental Health, last January; but just six of those have anything down in writing, with a significant level of expenditure required before any of the institutions can be shut down.
In the interim, 800 patients remain housed in “grossly unsuitable†conditions, including eight who have been held in one secure unit for more than ten years.
There’s a hint of more shoddy behaviour in the Irish Independent, which reveals that half of TDs and senators have opted for lower, flat-rate expenses. The benefit? No need for expenses and no threat of being audited.
Surely every cent of public money spent by the thieves in public office should be accounted for? No amount of resignations are good enough. It’s time for the lot of them to go. An overhaul on a root-branch-trunk-leaf-and-bud basis is required if the public is ever to have faith in their public servants again.
