Chelsea Manning will be free on Friday 17 May

The good news has come, through the Guardian Services, that whistleblower Chelsea Manning will be free on 17 May this year.

Three days before the end of his presidency, Barack Obama has commuted the bulk of her 35 year sentence meaning that she will have served seven years on her release

According to the Guardian, "Nancy Hollander, Manning’s lawyer, spoke to the Guardian before she had even had the chance to pass on to the soldier the news of her release. “Oh my God!” was Hollander’s instant response to the news which she had just heard from the White House counsel. “I cannot believe it – in 120 days she will be free and it will all be over. It’s incredible.” "

My heartfelt congratulations to Chelsea, to her mother and family in Wales, and to all who joined in the struggle to have her released.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/chelsea-manning-sentence-commuted-barack-obama

Apollo House Struggle Continues

The death of a much loved brother, Leo, on Christmas Day meant that I was unable to keep track of events at Apollo House.  Leo had dispensed with the clerical title from his name Fr Leo Morahan about sixty years ago and since then has been known as Leo or Leon.  For eight years we  worked together in the priesthood until I parted company with church and religion. Since then Leo supported my every action, however different, while he himself remained firmly within the fold.

The trauma of his (expected) death and its aftermath have left me out of touch. It was great then to learn of yesterday's march by Apollo House supporters to the Department of Finance in Dublin. They demand action on the housing crisis.  The government, embarrassed by the occupation and the widespread support for it,  had been giving lame excuses in the Dáil before Christmas.. The Department had, it appears, awarded this amount or that amount "to solve the housing crisis". Throwing money at a problem has been common since Mary Harney's time.The idea is to allocate money while continuing with the austerity programme.  It is literally a passing of the buck. "We have put money into the equation; run off now and attack someone else".

Any government worth its salt knows that the housing crisis demands immediate hands-on action.  In the face of enormous odds, Home Sweet Home and the Apollo House occupiers took that action. The march on a bitterly cold January day with over 700 supporters (my own estimate) means that they are alive and well, full of verve and intent.

January 11 is approaching.  The prospect of residents being flung out of their comfortable home is looming. I hope this doesn't happen.

Meanwhile hats off to Home Sweet Home, the Apollo House occupiers and volunteers and to the homeless both inside and ouside that building.

Injunction Granted - Homeless Must Leave Apollo House

The decision by the High Court judge Paul Gilligan to grant an injunction against the Apollo House occupiers and their homeless brothers and sisters but to allow them to stay until 11 January 2017 was a face-saving exercise and an astute one.  It was made as hundreds of citizens of all persuasions were standing in solidarity with the defendants outside the Four Courts on Wednesday 21 December 2011 in bitterly cold weather. Support from passing traffic was loud and relentless. 

Inside, the judge wrestled with some problems, not least if he were to put a stay on the injunction  who would be responsible in case an accident occurred at the premises during the Christmas or new Year.  An early morning radio programme had asserted that he himself would be responsible.  Apparently he decided that the safer route for the establishment and himself was to compromise.  That he did.


This is not a victory for the homeless. In one sense it is a partial victory for the occupiers who have not been criminalised. They have well and truly highlighted the homeless problem. But it was not the kind of victory they had hoped for. Already some of the homeless who had been resident in Apollo House have been moved to shelter in the McVerry Trust Foundation. They will be replaced by others.  It would be understandable if some of the homeless might not have the stomach to appear to resist a High Court order. High Court orders are intimidatory even for the wealthiest, best fed and best housed citizens in the land.  They are particularly frightening for the homeless  They are intended to be so.  The Court, the Government, the receivers Mazars (represented by A & L Goodbody) all profess sympathy for the cause of the occupiers and their guests but . . .


There's always a "but".  The action of Judge Gilligan has saved them from the embarrassment of throwing out homeless people from a comfortable lodging just before Christmas. Christmas must not be tarnished by such grossly unjust and uncharitable actions.  Come 11 January 2017 when all the Christmas fuss and goodwill has died down, that will be a different matter.

The Apollo House occupiers will know that they have the support of millions in Dublin and around the country for their courageous action  . Whatever the outcome their names are written in gold.

I support the occupation of Apollo House 100%

  On Thursday night a number of activists now known as Home Sweet Home occupied the vacant Apollo House and opened it up to Dublin's homeless people - or as many of them as they can safely accommodate.

A spokesperson described the occupation as an act of civil disobedience on Friday night's Late Late Show.

At present about 35 homeless persons are accommodated there. Support for the action has been enormous.

Prominent among the occupiers/supporters  are Brendan Ogle, Glen Hansard, Jim Sheridan, Saoirse Ronan, Liam O Maonlaí, Rosi Leonard, Damien Dempsey, Christy Moore, Conor O'Brien, John Connors, musicians Hozier, members of Kodaline band, Quentin Sheridan, Dean Scurry, Irish Housing Network, unions Mandate and Opatsi.

The plight of the homeless has deteriorated in Ireland since the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. The anomalous situation has arisen, and is visible to all, of hundreds of people on the streets at night, several hundreds of evictions of home owners who are unable to pay the enormous monthly repayments  associated with  more extravagant times and hundreds of "ghost estates" lying empty and dangerous around the country - as well as monster buildings like Apollo House also lying empty and unused.

It was in these circumstances that Apollo House was occupied last week.

  I visited the occupation on Friday and my picture with poster stating my 100% support for the occupation appeared in the Irish Times on Saturday.. Due to new EU rules, unfortunately I may not reproduce it here.

Tomorrow the group are facing a case in the High Court where an order is being sought to remove the homeless and their champions/protectors from Apollo House. Developers want to use the building instead for "much needed office space".

I predict great public anger if this action is successful.

Lay Litigants win Appeal in Supreme Court

Kevin Tracey and Karen Tracey, lay litigants, won their appeal in the Supreme Court on Tuesday 26 July 2016, when six plenary actions against the State and Courts Service, most in the name of Mr Tracey, were re-instated in the High Court. All six cases had been struck out by the President of the High Court on 4 March 2011 while Mr Tracey was ill. The High Court President had rejected his medical certificates as inadequate.

Kevin Tracey and his wife Karen had argued in their submission on one specific case (154/2011) that the State had engaged in egregious wrongdoing in 2000 by issuing malicious summonses to Mr Tracey for not handing in his licence and insurance certificate although he had handed both in within the allotted time. They further pleaded that he had been found guilty in his absence when he was not able to attend court on the day and, after he had paid a fine to satisfy the Court Order, the State defendants had sent three Gardaí to arrest him in his home at 7.15 a.m.on 8 May 2001. They alleged that the Gardaí had assaulted Mr Tracey by handcuffing him, knocking him to the ground and one Garda held him there by placing a booted foot on him. Only when Mrs Tracey produced the receipt for the paid fine did the Gardaí leave. Although the fine payment was eventually returned by the Courts Service Mr Tracey maintained that his name had not been cleared in their records up to May 2006. Plenary proceedings were instituted against the State and Courts Service in April 2007 and were proceeding along normal lines without any undue delay on their part, until 2 July 2010 when Kevin Tracey was suddenly stricken down with a serious illness, hospitalised for seven weeks and returned to the care of his doctor and his wife.

The State and Court defendants pursued Mr and Mrs Tracey to progress the prosecution while he was still under doctor's orders not to conduct his affairs, and while he was in the care of his wife. Their plenary action was struck out by Mr Justice NIcholas Kearns, President of the High Court, for want of prosecution and for inordinate and inexcusable delay.
Five other plenary actions against the same defendants (State and Courts Service) for separate alleged egregious wrongdoing were struck out on the same date by the same Court.

In their appeal to the Supreme Court the Traceys had alleged that the relatively short delay between July 2010 and March 2011 was neither inordinate nor inexcusable, that the defendants had not argued such delay, that even if it had been so, the balance of justice required that the proceedings should not have been struck out. They also alleged errors in law and judicial bias   which were contrary to Irish Constitutional and European law. They cited in particular Kyprianou v Cyprus on judicial bias.

The Supreme Court judgement states that "the Traceys had progressed the proceedings in a timely fashion up to [the time of Mr Tracey's illness]" that "medical reports were in fact furnished (indeed there were two) which did advance matters beyond the position which had pertained on the previous occasion when the case was put back and directions given [and] there is reference to a specific medical condition [and] there is at least a form of report from a consultant (or a consultant's registrar) ... I am satisfied that the trial judge was more than entitled to consider that the medical evidence was insufficiently detailed... It seems to me that the trial judge was entitled to conclude that there had been inordinate and inexcusable delay [because of] the persistent failure of the Traceys to present adequate medical reports to the Court" during the period 2 June 2010 and 4 March 2011.It bypassed the question of the existence of judicial bias.

However, it concluded that on the balance of justice the trial judge was in error in dismissing the proceedings and that the appeal must therefore be allowed.

The full judgement is to be found at http://www.courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/09859e7a3f34669680256ef3004a27de/a818e973ed80e89580257ffc00541dd0?OpenDocument