Response to Hobbs’s programme is really about freedom of expression

IF you were Eddie Hobbs, presenter of the Rip Off Republic series on RTÉ, wouldn’t you just love to have a Minister of State attack you, especially with a threadbare attack like that launched by Tim O’Malley this week.

If there were medals for inept, counter-productive whingeing, O’Malley would surely be a gold medal contender.

He accused Hobbs of “creative bankruptcy” in echoing Fine Gael’s website at www.ripoff.ie.

The bankruptcy was in the merit of O’Malley’s arguments, which were as vacuous as they were politically inept. The attack was broad on generality but vague on specifics, whereas the Rip Off Republic programmes have been detailed on specifics. If Hobbs made any mistakes, he would have left himself wide open to be discredited, but nobody should pay a blind bit of attention to any critics who do not cite specifics.

It is a cardinal rule in politics not to highlight the achievements of your opponents, especially if people are unaware of them. O’Malley not only highlighted the Fine Gael website but he effectively credited it with inspiring the Rip Off Republic programme, which has been the runaway success of the summer. Nobody has paid such a compliment to Fine Gael since Alan Dukes was leader.

More than half a million people viewed the first Rip Off Republic programme at the beginning of August, and some 677,000 watched the second of the four-part series. The programme has been a hit because viewers empathise with the presenter’s arguments.

For example, he broke down the cost of a bottle of white wine from the production of that bottle to the rip-off by a restaurateur who pumped up the price by 340%.

The first two programmes depicted members of the Government as responsible for the rip-off. That would seem to be a fair depiction, because they have presided over the whole thing. They have also contributed to it with stealth taxes and upping their own salaries and supposed expenses, which frequently bear little relationship to the actual prices that they pay.

The Government as a whole has certainly been seriously embarrassed. Thus, it was always going to be only a matter of time before the politicians would try to fillet Eddie. It seems that the PDs are already in favour of shooting the messenger, but in the process they are highlighting their own ineptitude.

People are ready to believe the worst of politicians because some members of this Government have shamelessly exploited their ministerial positions by nakedly preferring their own constituencies, whether it has been in relation to the funding of the Punchestown Equestrian Centre or the Killarney Summer Fest, or the placement of Government agencies.

Eddie Hobbs, on the other hand, has street credibility through his work over the past decade and a half as spokesman for the Consumers Association of Ireland.

Some people have complained that Hobbs talks down to his audience and treats them like children.

But, let’s face it, he has been demonstrating that we have been behaving like children in allowing ourselves to be ripped off.

The hype about Rip Off Republic has evoked memories of RTÉ’s 1969 programme Home Truths, which was taken off the air after 14 programmes because some companies were threatening to withdraw their advertising from the station. A cosmetic company threatened to cancel its hefty advertising arrangements, if the programme was not pulled. RTÉ promptly capitulated.

A couple of years later, Joe MacAnthony of the Sunday Independent was shafted for exposing criminality at the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake.

The knives are already out for Eddie Hobbs. Stephen O’Byrnes, the former secretary-general of the Progressive Democrats and a member of the RTÉ Authority, had already complained to one of the station’s executives about Rip Off Republic. The programme has exposed some of the most powerful commercial entities in the country, so nobody should be surprised if they try to use their financial clout to intimidate the station.

THIS is not really about Eddie Hobbs but about freedom of expression. Unfortunately, when it comes to freedom of expression, commercial reality still tends to dictate, as Mary Ellen Synon found out when she provoked controversy with an insensitive column on the Special Olympics in the Sunday Independent. The newspaper apologised and repudiated her views. Then, when the Eastern Health Board made threatening sounds about withdrawing its advertising, Mary Ellen was canned.

We should not really be surprised that the health sector has been responsible for some of the most deadly and outrageous scandals in Irish history, such as the blood fiasco, the organ retention scandal, or the more recent costly debacle over the retention of part of the pensions of people in nursing homes.

There is a price to be paid for such gutlessness in the face of bullies.

The threat to Eddie Hobbs is not just posed by advertisers. There is also a smear campaign against him personally. In the 1990s he was a director and held a 24% share of Taylor Asset Management (TAM) group, which collapsed spectacularly.

Hobbs resigned from TAM before the crash, and Tony Taylor disappeared, leaving £1.7 million of the investors’ money unaccounted for. Hobbs helped pay investigators who tracked Taylor to Britain and he was returned to this country and sentenced to five years in jail.

Taylor has since been released and he has been badmouthing Hobbs, and this has led the TAM liquidator to hand over documents to the Financial Regulator (formerly known as IFSRA, the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority) to consider the role played by Hobbs in TAM. This could lead, in theory, to him being stripped of the directorships of at least seven companies. But he shows little signs of being worried because he did play a vital role in bringing Taylor to justice. And Hobbs describes as “vexatious” Taylor’s complaint to the Financial Regulator.

The attacks on Hobbs are likely to boost interest in his final two programmes, and the rip-off merchants will have to grin and bear it.

Will he do anything about the great rip-off by many golf clubs in green fees? Portmarnock has announced that it will be charging €750 for people to play a round of golf there while the Ryder Cup is on at the K Club next year.

The public was saddled with the cost of advertising golf abroad in order to boost Irish tourism, and now that people are coming here, many clubs are ripping them off by upping the charges in order to limit numbers using the course. What is this doing to tourism? If the gougers at Portmarnock think that the Yanks will play because corporations will pay the fees, they should consider what happened to Governor Bob Taft of Ohio last week.

He was convicted of four counts of criminal misdemeanour for not declaring free rounds of golf for tax purposes. As Governor, he had accepted invitations for 21 rounds of golf since 1999.

Taft is a stalwart of the Republican Party. His great-grandfather, William Howard Taft, was president of the United States, and his grandfather was known as “Mr Republican” from 1939 to 1953 while serving in the US Senate. The present Governor’s father also served in the US Senate from 1971-1977. With the likes of Bob Taft being nailed, they will nail anybody. Portmarnock should beware!