Sep 20
On Tuesday, the Oireachtas website changed how it operates, effectively shutting down KildareStreet.com. Simon McGarr outlines the issues here. I send an email to the Oireachtas yesterday, containing several questions as follows: Can you supply me with a statement re operation of Oireachtas debates website, and recent changes to the site which have apparently rendered …
Jul 16
Back in March 2012, I sent a Freedom of Information request to FÁS and the Department of Social Protection (DSP) seeking two items: (1) Records maintained by FÁS relating to the number of jobbridge positions accepted by participants, how many jobbridge programmes have been completed, and relating to what happened afterwards to participants. (2) Records …
Jun 30
Yesterday, I received a Freedom of Information file containing (part of) the Jobbridge database. Showing it to a friend, I ran a trivial search: Who sought the greatest number of jobbridgers? Three organisations requested 30 “interns”. For now, I can only tell you one of them. Step forward, Citizenship Division, Department of Justice and Equality. …
Feb 06
A barman, a TV repairman, four trade union officials, five solicitors, a salesman, a stockbroker, a publican, a post office clerk, two postmasters, a political advisor, four political party officials, an operations manager, a plant hire company owner, a painter/decorator, a newsagent, a management consultant, a fisherman, a FAS community employment scheme supervisor, fourteen farmers, …
Dec 07
It’s been bothering me for a while, but until tonight I never bothered to do any research on it. Here’s Brian Lenihan’s version of it, as paraphrased by The Journal earlier today: “The Finance Minister said Ireland’s taxation system was no longer “fit for purpose”, saying that the upper 8% of taxpayers accounted for 60% …
Nov 18
I spent Tuesday at Hacks & Hackers Hack. Organised by Scraperwiki, and sponsored by the Guardian Open Platform, NUJ Dublin Freelance Branch and Innovation Dublin, HH&H was a one day exercise uniting Hacks (journalists) and Hackers (computer coders) to extract data from public databases. Since the introduction of safety camera zones has been in the …
