Complaint regarding RTÉ article on EU Contribution and their response (Sept 2023)

Irish Freedom Party President Hermann Kelly wrote to RTE recently highlighting a discrepancy in the figures they were reporting for Ireland’s contribution to the European Union’s coffers. Here is his letter and RTE’s response is below.

Dear Sir

In an article online entitled:

Government resisting EU ‘grab’ of corporate sector profits (Updated / Friday, 15 Sep 2023 20:00) by Tony Connolly (reference: 1)

It states in paragraph 7: “According to one calculation, if the mechanism were approved, Ireland’s annual contribution to the EU budget could increase by €1.5 billion from the current amount of €2.6 billion” and again under subhead “Alarm at idea” the article states: “Under the proposed formula of 0.5%, that would mean an extra €1.5 billion on top of Ireland’s existing gross national contribution, which stood at €2.6 billion in 2021.” The Department of Finance is quoted very extensively in the article.

On the contrary, Ireland contributed 3.5 billion euro to EU budget in 2021, not €2.6 billion as per Tony Connolly article.

Indeed RTE has recently done an article based on official Government statistics, “Ireland has been a net contributor to the EU since 2013, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report” (reference: 2).

In conclusion I state that article implying our national contribution to EU budget in 2021 was 2.6 billion euro is incorrect.

Therefore, I would ask that the Tony Connolly article above is updated to 3.5 billion euro as per official Department of Finance statistics.

Kind regards

Hermann Kelly

Irish Freedom Party

Reference 1

https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2023/0915/1405522-eu-budget/

Reference 2

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/0929/1408128-ireland-eu-budget-cag/

Reference 3

Dept. of Finance figures.

In response to Hermann Kelly’s letter, RTE have replied as follows:

Dear Mr Kelly,

I refer your email below

The position is as follows:

There are different ways of measuring a country’s contribution to the EU budget.

There is the contribution based on Gross National Income (GNI) and there are the contributions based on the VAT and Customs receipts that a member state collects on behalf of the EU.

According to an official at the European Court of Auditors, which issued its 2022 report this week, “The majority of [Ireland’s] contribution is a GNI based contribution (% of our GNI). In 2022, this amounted to €2.6 billion euro”]

That is, the contribution that does not include VAT and Customs receipts, which will bring the total up to roughly €3.5 billion.

Furthermore, contributions to the EU budget are offset by what a member state receives in EU funding.

Ireland received €2.4 billion in 2022.  By referring to Ireland’s gross contribution, our Europe Editor was indicating it did not take account of what Ireland received in EU funding.

The fact he referenced Ireland’s GNI-based contribution was entirely deliberate and significant.

His report was about the fact that the European Commission has proposed that member states make an extra contribution based on the Gross Operating Surplus (GOS) of a member state’s corporate sector, i.e., the amount of corporate profit left over once salaries, production costs and other overheads are stripped out.

Ireland has the highest proportion of GOS to GNI in the European Union, which is central to the government’s concerns.

That is why the report mentions the figure of €2.6 billion: that is the GNI-based contribution to the EU budget, one which does not include VAT and Customs receipts.

Contrary to any notion that our Europe Editor, or RTE, is deliberately downplaying Ireland’s contribution, his online report on the Court of Auditors annual report this week is below and it includes Ireland’s contribution as per the GNI part and the VAT / Customs receipts part:

https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2023/1005/1409110-eu-spending/

In that online report, he quoted the figures provided by the Court on Ireland’s contribution to the EU budget, this time for 2022.

“According to the ECA, Ireland contributed €3.4 billion in 2022, and received €2.4 billion, mostly from CAP payments, meaning a net contribution of around €1 billion.

“In 2021, Ireland paid in €3.4 billion and received €2.7 billion, meaning a net contribution of €0.7 billion.”

Again, on this occasion, the Court’s figures included VAT and Customs receipts meaning that they were the gross amount.

RTÉ stands over the report you refer to.

Yours Sincerely,

Brian Dowling

Consultation – Submission on Gender Equality referendum

Consultation – Submission on Gender Equality referendum on behalf of The Irish Freedom Party.

by Party President Hermann Kelly

The Citizens Assembly on Gender Equality, in its final report to the Oireachtas in June 2021, made recommendations for amendments to Articles 40 and 41 of the Constitution. These were that:

·     Article 40.1 of the Constitution should be amended to refer explicitly to gender equality and non-discrimination

·     Article 41 of the Constitution should be amended so that it would protect family life, with the protection afforded to the family not limited to the marital family

·     Article 41.2 of the Constitution should be deleted and replaced with language that is not gender specific and obliges the State to take reasonable measures to support care within the home and wider community.

The Irish Freedom Party submits: 

In the late 1990s, two well-known physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont wrote a critique of sociologists’ abuse of scientific words. The book was called “Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.”

Clearly fashionable nonsense has not gone away, so basic facts must be stated:

Sex is a biologically and genetically based reality, which can be observed and examined.

The language and concept of Gender is a system of make-believe, thought up in the late 20th century and given pseudo-scientific respectability by a sexologist John Money. If you research the ‘Twins Experiment’ of John Money you will find that he sexually abused two young boys, forcing one to dress and behave as a girl against his will. He used the 2 boys as guinea pigs to falsely base his theories but eventually both young men committed suicide in their 30’s.

His so-called findings were based on a complete lie, indeed, they were built on failure and abuse.

There are only 2 sexes. Humans are dimorphic and exist as male or female.

Men are adult human males. Women are adult human females.

Men and women are identical in value and dignity but different biologically and psychologically.

Men and women are physically complementary but are not interchangeable. Only sexual intercourse between a man and a woman can form a child.

Marriage in the Irish Constitution is held in high regard and its original natural law and biologically based notion should be maintained.

Only sexual intercourse between a man and a woman has the potential to pro-create a child. The child is best growing up in a stable environment or a committed life-long marriage with its mother and father so the child is aware of its identity and is brought up in the safe environment of its parents.

The Irish Freedom Party are pro-natalist, pro-family and pro childbirth. Our society has no future without children and our culture as well as a society and political entity must do everything possible to facilitate and encourage Irish men and women, Irish families to have children so that our society, our culture, our names and our history are passed on into the future.

The Irish Freedom Party believes that removing the words “woman” and “mother” from the Irish Constitution, art 41.2 in the only time that is used, is an act of political, legal and linguistic misogyny.

Inserting language about a make believe concept such as gender, based as it is, on cultural stereotypes which are constantly open to change and interpretation is a legally irresponsible act.

Therefore we hold that retaining articles 40.1 ; and article 41 is better than changing it.

Upholding the biological and genetic reality of sexual identity is important to society.

Introducing the concept of Gender into our legal system would devalue the family based on marriage which is the best locus for sexual intercourse capable of the reproduction of children.

Introducing the make believe language of gender also increases the chances of allowing the dangerous practice of putting sexually intact males into spaces which are and should remain reserved for women, such as women’s toilets, changing rooms, women’s refuges and prisons.

Introducing the concept of gender also encourages and facilitates the indoctrination and physical mutilation of children with gender dysphoria.

For these reasons above,

The Irish Freedom Party supports the retention of the current version of articles 40 and 41 of the Irish Constitution.

Hermann Kelly,

President,

Irish Freedom Party,

Truth in the News – Albanian rapist is not a Wexford man

Truth in the News – Albanian rapist is not a Wexford man

Dear Editor

The New Ross Standard, part of the Independent group had an online news article Tue 24 Jan 2023 entitled

”Wexford man who raped woman he met on dating website is jailed for nine years”

Please see article and link to article below.

I would like to lodge an official complaint and seek a correction to the copy of the article.

The convicted rapist, Bajo Ziflai (22) is not a Wexford man.

It is clear lower down in the copy that the rapist is in fact Albanian. He has an Albanian name, presume has Albanian parents and that he grew up in Albania.

I hold that he should be described in the headline as Albanian man not as a Wexford man.

Bajo Ziflai I suspect does not play left half back for Oulart–The Ballagh. Unless you can demonstrate that his parents are from Wexford, or at the least that he was born and brought up in his youth in Wexford I believe it is dishonest and incorrect to describe Mr Ziflai as “Wexfordman”.

An Irish person who goes to Australia either for a holiday or even works there for a long number of years still remains an Irish person. They don’t become Australian during plane transit. If a Wexfordman goes to Australia and works for a few years, he still remains a Wexfordman for example. The same pertains to all nationalities.

I would argue describing the Albanian as a Wexfordman breaches principle 1 of the Press Council Guidelines and would ask that the headline be changed to read Albanian where you currently have Wexfordman.

Press Council guidelines.

Principle 1 − Truth and Accuracy
1.1 In reporting news and information, the press shall strive at all times for truth and accuracy.
1.2 When a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distorted report or picture has been published, it shall be corrected promptly and with due prominence.
1.3 When appropriate, a retraction, apology, clarification, explanation or response shall be published promptly and with due prominence.

Kind regards

Hermann Kelly,
President,
Irish Freedom Party,

Wexford man who raped woman he met on dating website is jailed for nine years

Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin

New Ross Standard

January 23 2023 04:59 PM

A man who repeatedly raped a woman he met on a dating website after giving a false name has been jailed for nine years.

Bajo Ziflai (22) was found guilty by a jury of four counts of raping the 23-year-old woman and one count of sexually assaulting her at an address in Co Galway following a Central Criminal Court trial in July last year. He was 20 years old at the time of the attack.

Sentencing him on Monday Ms Justice Eileen Creedon noted Ziflai has shown no remorse or acknowledged the harm he caused to the woman on the night in question. He does not accept the verdicts of the jury and continues to maintain the woman made up the allegations because she was “attention seeking”.

Ziflai, with an address at Lacken Valley, New Ross, Co Wexford, has no previous convictions. He has been in custody since shortly after the attack.

The court heard Ziflai met the woman on a dating website and gave her a false name. They arranged to meet at a house and she was driven there by her mother. She told him in advance they would not be having sex, the court heard.

Despite this, Ziflai raped the woman four times and sexually assaulted her before she managed to leave the house and call her mother.

Ms Justice Creedon noted the attack was pre-meditated by Ziflai, who gave the woman a fake name. She noted the attack had a significant impact on the woman, who has suffered with PTSD and depression as a result.

Because he refuses to acknowledge his wrong-doing and, accordingly, has not expressed any remorse for his actions that night, Ms Justice Creedon said there was no mitigation open to Ziflai.

She noted he has no previous convictions, is still a young man and has a long life ahead of him upon his release from prison.

The judge handed down a 10-year jail sentence, and suspended the final year on a number of conditions. Ziflai will be placed on the Sex Offenders Register.

A local garda told Edward Doocey BL, prosecuting, that the woman messaged Ziflai to say that while she intended to stay overnight, there would be no sexual activity between them.

She later told gardaí that they were conversing over Snapchat and Ziflai acknowledged the woman’s message and replied “OK”.

She arrived at the house with pizza, fizzy drinks, crisps and sweets. There was consensual kissing between the pair before Ziflai showed the woman to the bedroom. He asked her if she wanted to have sex and she replied no.

Ziflai then proceeded to rape the woman after forcing her legs open using his legs and knees. She later told gardaí that she “at all times told him to stop”, but he continued.

Ziflai turned the woman over to her stomach, grabbed her arms above her head, pulled her by the pony tail and vaginally raped her again. He then raped her a third and fourth time.

The woman later made an excuse to leave the house, called her mother and the gardaí were immediately alerted to the rape.

Ziflai was arrested and claimed during interview that they had consensual sex once, which she initiated.

The woman underwent an exam in the sexual assault treatment unit of her local hospital and was found to have bruising and cuts to her genital area.

The court heard that Ziflai had come to Ireland from Albania and had been living with his brother in Wexford. He has no previous convictions in Ireland.

The woman stated in her victim impact statement that she went to meet what “I thought was a nice man” but that meeting “changed my life forever”.

“I have two whys. Why did I go there? Why did he rape me?” she continued. She said she suffers disturbing flashbacks and has started to self-harm. She has been diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress disorder and depression and takes medication to help her sleep.

“Not once did you show remorse or say sorry. I can never forgive you for taking away that true version of me,” she stated.

Hugh Hartnett SC, defending, accepted that there has been no admission of guilt from his client but asked the court to take into account his youth. He handed in a number of testimonials on behalf of Ziflai. He submitted to the court that there was no evidence of pre-meditation.

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/wexford/news/courts/wexford-man-who-raped-woman-he-met-on-dating-website-is-jailed-for-nine-years-42308523.html

From Darragh Clifford

Feb 2nd 2023

Dear Mr Kelly,

I refer to your email below.

We described this man as a Wexford man because of his Wexford address in the report.

The report also says that he had come to Ireland from Albania so it may well be that he is an Albanian national and not an Irish one but we do not presume such things in court reports. What we do know is his Wexford address and that is all we meant by describing him as a Wexford man.

Wexford is not a nationality and just because a man has an address in Wexford does not rule out that he is Albanian or any other nationality for that matter.

Yours sincerely,

Darragh Clifford
Group Editor, People Newspapers
Mediahuis Ireland

RTE lying through teeth on Ireland’s EU contribution, ignoring official State figures

Department of Finance Statistics for 2020 state Irelands EU net contribution was 693 million euro and Ireland is a net cash contributor since 2013. These figures were published in Mid December 2021 and are published on an annual basis.
However RTE article at the end of October 2021 says we only gave 360 million and a contributor for 3 years. (link below)
European Council figures show that Ireland has a potential debt liability of 18.7 billion euro and will receive back less than 1 billion euro from the EU Recovery fund. RTE only mentioned we are getting 1 billion but not the liability.
The Irish Freedom Party believe that citizens should be given accurate information by the State broadcaster so they can make an informed decision about Ireland’s political direction.
As a party we don’t agree that people should be misinformed by national broadcaster and disgraceful there is no independent oversight of its Online news output. Read More