What does Beverley’s return say about standards in high places?

THE legendary Scrap Saturday mocked the Flynnstones — Ireland’s leading stone age political family — but its clear that the Mayo clan is having the last laugh.

As the father, Padraig Flynn, continued to give evidence to the Mahon tribunal on Wednesday morning about the circumstances in 1989 in which he trousered £50,000 he was supposed to hand onto Fianna Fáil, his daughter Beverley smiled her way through Brian Cowen’s press conference to mark his accession to party leadership. Beverley had returned to the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party the previous evening and her delight at being back in the fold was obvious. But what does that say about Fianna Fáil and the standards of behaviour we demand from our politicians?

In some respects, she may as well never have been away, although she’d say her two expulsions have cost her a junior ministry at the very least. She must have hopes now that promotion will come swiftly.

That’ll be a big test of what standards Cowen requires of those who hold ministerial office. He was lucky that he wasn’t faced with the issue of her re-admittance to the parliamentary party as Bertie Ahern had done that deal in the immediate aftermath of the general election when he was doing the Dáil math and decided she added comfort to the numbers. He lived up to his promise before stepping down as party leader.

Speculation that Ahern had promised her a junior ministry at some stage of the life of this Dáil has been rife. However, Cowen has no reason to live up to any such promises made by his predecessor, especially as it was he who moved the motion for her second expulsion from the parliamentary party.

Cowen’s action followed her failed Supreme Court action in the libel case against RTÉ, after the station had accused her of facilitating tax evasion by investing hot money on behalf of clients of National Irish Bank. The implication of her failure to win the actions in either court are obvious. But there are no apologies from Beverley, even no acknowledgement that she had behaved badly. She was only following orders and, beyond that, she claims that she had no knowledge that she was investing hot money. Her only regrets appear to be how it all impacted on her career.

You’ll never get her to admit that she knew money that she invested on behalf of her father was hot or that it really belonged to Fianna Fáil and had been taken improperly by him. But that is the import of evidence heard on Tuesday at the Mahon Tribunal, the very same day that her return to the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party was completed. The evidence may be overlooked by many because of so-called tribunal fatigue or because of the hoopla about Cowen’s elevation but the timing of her return was extraordinary, given her father’s latest performance at the tribunal that day. We learned, among other things, that investments totaling £68,000 were made by Beverley Flynn on behalf of her father that came from cash he had accumulated in his safe. Just how such a large amount of cash — and remember we’re talking about nearly 20 years ago here — came to be in his safe is a story and a half too.

Flynn disputes the tribunal’s version of events — and particularly the language it uses to characterise some of his carry-on — but we don’t have to wait for tribunal chairman Alan Mahon to issue his final report. Tom Gilmartin did not invent his claim to give the tribunal something to work with. He had complained both to Fianna Fáil and his solicitor prior to the tribunal’s establishment that Flynn had pocketed a £50,000 donation meant for the party’s use.

But, in an echo of Ahern’s excuses for taking political donations and putting them to party use, Flynn senior maintained that this and other money from unspecified sources were personal political donations. In other words any personal benefit was his political betterment which was to the benefit of Fianna Fáil. It just so happens that Flynn told Gilmartin to make out the cheque to cash and to leave the space for the name of the recipient blank.

There are further twists. Flynn as a serving minister and his wife Dorothy opened a bank account in Castlebar in June 1989 but gave their address as Chiswick in London where they had never lived.

This was clearly a bogus non-resident account but Flynn prefers to call it “external”. Some £53,920 was lodged to the account when it was opened, and by June 26th the balance of the account was £71,729. Flynn has said the money came from political donations.

He has claimed he used £40,000 of this money on election expenses but he has no receipts. Flynn can’t remember exactly how much he had in his safe in November 1989, when he made the first investment of £25,000 with his daughter, Ms Flynn, and he could not directly attribute it to a cash withdrawal of £25,000 he made from his non-resident bank account.

In December 1993, Ms Flynn invested an additional £33,000 in Chemical Bank, New York, for her father.

Flynn has been under some, but limited, pressure since the autumn of 1998 over this scandal. As leader of Fianna Fáil, Bertie Ahern wrote to him looking for an explanation and the money back. Flynn said the tribunal would deal with it and Ahern let him away with that. Others might have expected that Fianna Fáil might have alerted the gardaí to conduct an investigation into a suspected theft. But this was probably impossible given what we know about Ahern’s safe and bank accounts and the intermingling of political and personal money.

PADRAIG FLYNN is regarded by many as a joke figure but many don’t laugh at his pomposity and smugness and his willingness to patronise people. As a retired figure he doesn’t really matter, although he draws sizeable pensions from the public pot as a former TD, minister and European Commissioner.

He behaves like he is above it all but fortunately Flynn is not beyond the reach of the Revenue Commissioners. He has admitted paying £23,000 in gift tax owed on the £50,000 given to him by Gilmartin which gives the lie to the idea it was a political contribution. That he did so only in 1999 after the payment became public knowledge is also instructive.

Fianna Fáil is unlikely to pursue him for the money now that he is in retirement, especially now that his daughter — the “class act” as he once described her proudly — is back in the fold. But many of the daughter’s actions are in the present and many people are still angry that Beverley failed to pay RTÉ’s legal bills in full following her failed libel action, leaving the licence fee payer more than €1 million short.

Cowen promises to be pragmatic in power, much as Bertie Ahern was. But he has cited Sean Lemass many times in recent days as an inspiration. Lemass was very suspicious of his son-in-law Charles Haughey and others who seemed to use their power and position to enhance their wealth.

He should be similarly suspicious of Beverley and if she must be back in the Fianna Fáil fold how, with her attitude, can she progress any further than the backbenches if Cowen wants to emphasise standards in high places?