Martin cannot brush off criticism for his silence on tribunal bashing
I mean, it’s not as if he’s being asked to embark on a mission to find the lost city of Atlantis. Or, indeed, solve an even bigger mystery — the source of the monies that were discovered in Ahern’s convoluted bank accounts.
The list of people who could be implicated is by no means infinite and runs to just 15 members of cabinet and 20 junior ministers, after Ahern magnanimously opted to swell their ranks by three, from 17, when the party romped home in the 2007 election.
Martin should know this better than anyone seeing as he was reappointed to the cabinet that year, having first joined the front bench in 1997. But no, he has no recollection of any concerted attempt to undermine the tribunal’s work.
Odd then that the Mahon Report was so adamant that members of that government had launched “unseemly and partisan attacks” on its work, concluding: “There appears little doubt but that the objective of these extraordinary and unprecedented attacks on the tribunal was to undermine the efficient conduct of the tribunal’s inquiries, erode its independence and collapse its inquiry into [Ahern].”
Having had 24 hours to digest the report, before he faced reporters at a press conference on Friday morning, Martin appeared to brush off this damning indictment by suggesting that because no one was specifically named it was impossible for him to delve any further into the matter.
He also pointedly said that while he unequivocally accepted the findings of the tribunal, the critique of the government did not appear in the report’s findings and was instead mentioned more generally in the summary — the implication being it somehow carried less weight.
Of course, this is an entirely disingenuous statement as it seems obvious that the reason the tribunal judges did not include their scathing criticism of the government in their findings was because that particular determination was not derived from evidence that was painstakingly adduced at the tribunal over 15 years but, rather, from the venom that was spewed in print and broadcast media during a relatively short period of time, while Ahern was spinning his financial fairy tales in Dublin Castle.
Instead of treating the tribunal’s unprecedented criticism of ministers with the seriousness it deserves, the message from a glib Martin, eager to use the proposed expulsion of Ahern from the party as cosmetic proof it has finally mended its ways, was “move on, nothing to see here”.
If Martin was moved to investigate a simple Google search would reveal a plethora of incendiary slurs that were casually bandied about by his erstwhile colleagues back in the halcyon days when the government’s greatest concern was an alleged assault on Ahern’s reputation.
Examples are myriad. A Sunday Independent interview with Willie O’Dea in September 2007 stated he had “put the government on a warpath with the tribunal by claiming it was ‘impossible to understand’ how [it] has allowed a ‘general trawl in public’ into the Taoiseach’s life as ‘a definite matter of urgent public importance’”.
The piece went on to conclude that “by openly challenging the tribunal on this issue, the government has clearly taken a decision that it believes the tribunal is effectively operating ultra vires [beyond its legal power]… it seems clear that Judge Mahon will have to respond to protect the integrity of his inquiry”.
Unleashed at the time as a government attack dog, until he suffered his own ignominious fall from grace and was forced to resign from cabinet, a terrier-like O’Dea was adamant the tribunal was engaged in a public trawl of the Taoiseach’s life “from cradle to grave” and wondered if the judges would next ask Ahern about his First Communion money.
Dick Roche, then Minister of State for European Affairs, was also appalled by the questioning and said “it was petty, it was personal, it was prurient, and it was voyeuristic” — suggesting the tribunal’s legal team were getting some kind of depraved thrill out of asking Ahern legitimate questions about his finances.
Another Minister of State, Martin Mansergh, was aghast that Ahern had to appear before the tribunal at all: “No other head of state in the EU has to appear before tribunals… In France, the president is immune from prosecution. It’s a ridiculous way to conduct public affairs.”
No doubt all three men, if asked about their comments today, would say they were merely raising reasonable concerns about the tribunal’s procedures and deny any insinuation they were agitating to undermine its work but, in the light of the report’s stinging rebuke, it is surely legitimate to ask if the combative language employed by them, and others in similar positions of power and prestige, was deliberately used to try to stymie the tribunal’s important work.
In fact, debate at the time degenerated to such an extent that the Dáil spent two full days in January 2008 debating a Fine Gael motion of confidence in the tribunal, which Enda Kenny insisted was necessary due to the “sinister and orchestrated attack on the integrity of the Mahon tribunal mounted by the Fianna Fáil party”.
EAMON GILMORE noted it was strange the tribunal had trundled along for 11 years, quietly doing its work without a squeak of protest from anyone in government, until Ahern began giving evidence.
Gilmore further claimed the government press office was contacting current affairs programmes and requesting airtime for ministers who were eager to condemn the tribunal — completely contrary to the usual routine of researchers contacting the government and begging and pleading for ministers to deign to appear.
“The government has decided to mount an attack on the flank of the tribunal in order to distract attention from the Taoiseach’s appearances before it, and possibly to cause a collapse of the tribunal, and certainly to take away public confidence in its work and in the importance of what it is doing,” he said
Four years later and that’s exactly the conclusion the tribunal came to — members of that government launched a sustained, and co-ordinated, attack on its work to try to “collapse” its investigation into Ahern.
Martin’s reluctance to probe this deeply worrying charge is undoubtedly related to the fact that he himself, by virtue of his senior cabinet position within that government, is unquestionably implicated in its display of arrogant contempt for one of the cornerstones of any functioning democracy — the separation of powers between the executive and judicial arms of government.
At the very least, if ministers had spent more time concentrating on their portfolios, and less time sticking the boot into the tribunal, then maybe they’d have noticed the small matter of the economy going over a cliff before it was too late to save it.
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