Silence on constitutional crisis not confined to media

When is a constitutional crisis not a constitutional crisis? When the Taoiseach is hiding behind the Four Courts, hoping it will all just go away, apparently.

Mon, 01 Jun, 2015 - 01:00

Shaun Connolly

With most of the media silenced by an injunction, Enda Kenny is by choice saying nothing on a pivotal matter of national importance. The controversy centres on what takes precedent: A citizen’s right to privacy; a TD’s right to be heard; and the media’s right to report what is being said in the Dáil.

For veteran Socialist TD Joe Higgins, the Constitutional situation could not be clearer: “Article 15 gives privilege to parliamentarians who speak in the Dáil and then article 34 says that the judiciary has to be subject to the Constitution.”

Not so, says billionaire Denis O’Brien, who insists he is just a private citizen like everyone else, and does not need to air his financial affairs in public.

Indeed, the only thing Mr O’Brien and his fiercest critics in the Opposition appear to agree on is that we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis.

However, the Government is attempting to sit this one out, despite calls from across the Opposition for Mr Kenny to show the authority expected of a Taoiseach and stand up for the Constitution and the right of TDs not to be silenced.

Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin went as far as accusing the tycoon and his team of attempting to “bully and intimidate” Independent TD Catherine Murphy after she made the allegations about Mr O’Brien’s business arrangements with IBRC that nobody is, apparently, allowed to repeat. With the issue of the temporary injunction back in court tomorrow, the Government is relying on the affair being sorted out without it having to become involved. But as the losing side is likely to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, that might be very wishful thinking.

Labour haughtily dismissed the recall of the Dáil as an “empty gesture” because the matter needed to be resolved in the courts.

Yet, as the Dáil has been largely on vacation since St Patrick’s Day, and when it has sat there have been sudden, lengthy adjournments because the Government has given it no legislation to debate, perhaps having an emergency session in the middle of a constitutional crisis which goes to the heart of representative democracy and freedom of speech, would be no bad thing.