FoI request: HSE estimate is a gagging order

There is hardly a scandal undermining the confidence we can have in public affairs that might not have been avoided if we had a proactive, effective, and respected culture of accountability. 

Most of those destructive, wasteful affairs might not have materialised if those involved believed they would be held to account or have to explain their actions if difficulties arose. In what seems a peculiarly Irish context, accountability equates with responsibility and where there’s no accountability there’s no responsibility.

In circumstances where accountability is routine, it is hard to believe that drink-driving test figures would have been so spectacularly exaggerated or that the banks that defrauded some tracker mortgage holders would have been so bold. The prospect of a day of reckoning might have saved corporate or individual integrity.