Transparency mantra no more than a mirage

So, were they small steps for a newly-found accountability?

Have we just witnessed the re-emergence of that great Fine Gael God, OTA — openness, transparency and accountability? Or is it just the opening act of the annual silly season which is newly arrived or even an optical illusion?

Some of us older folk will remember back in the day during a previous incarnation of Fine Gael, that OTA was the mantra de jour. Indeed, prior to the last general election, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, without naming her, committed to the immediate return of OTA if he was given enough seats to form a government. The election came and went, Enda was elected Taoiseach but a trace of OTA there was none. In the intervening timeframe, there has been much dirty linen washed in public. Unfortunately, the fall-out confirmed our suspicions that accountability and responsibility were still missing. So what’s happened in recent days to make this worth writing about?

To be precise, there were two issues in the headlines in the last few days. The first was the jailing of Ivor Callely for apparently using false invoices to claim some €4,000 from the Dáil for mobile phones that he claimed he purchased. Unfortunately, it would appear that company’s name on the headed paper was a company no longer registered.

Now we might wonder why he was given a five- month custodial sentence for such a lowly sum of money after he had apparently paid the money back. After all, only last week, another chap was given a four- year sentence, suspended for three, for helping himself to some €200,000 from his then employers, Anglo Irish. Apparently this other chap was desperate as he and his family were suffering serious financial, health and personnel difficulties and he had paid the money back.

Now nobody wants to see anybody going to jail unnecessarily. More importantly, we do not want our learned legal friends to think we are questioning their impartiality or even their sentencing policies, but we have to wonder what it all means. If some young one snatches a bag from someone else in the centre of Dublin, they have been known to get six months in jail when they are caught. Could it not also be possible that they were also desperate through lack of employment, sickness or a myriad of other things?

So let’s assume for the moment that poor Ivor was being made an example of. To most of us, he appears arrogant and self-serving. And we should not forget that as a TD, he was a servant of the people and he did break what should have been mutual trust between the representative of the people and the people. Even if he does actually do time, he will be accruing a pension at a reported €1,000 a week. We should not forget that he also claimed he lived in West Cork despite his constituency being in Dublin and thereby accruing greater expenses. Does that sound like accountability?

The other issue was the unveiling of the report commissioned into the Justice Department. Most of it came as no surprise. Very many of us already believe that silo management prevails throughout the civil service so why would Justice be any different?

What we do not understand is if the report found “a lack of leadership, no clear ownership of issues, a lack of accountability, and poor document tracking”, where exactly does the buck stop? Surely, being held accountable and responsible means more than simply being transferred to some other role on the same terms and conditions? On the surface, it would appear that there is more to this than meets the eye.

So for a brief moment I thought that we had caught a fleeting glimpse of OTA. Unfortunately it must have been dust in my eye, yet again. After all, this attitude to openness, transparency and accountability has us €215bn in debt.