Belief, perhaps, restored in political system

“I AM drawing a line in the sand,” Ray Burke once said, after he had contemptuously swept aside a whole series of legitimate questions about his so-called political donations.

But instead his own reputation has been drowned under a tidal wave of truth. And at last, perhaps, people can begin to believe in the political system again. As long as there are people like Feargus Flood around, the system might work as it should.

Ray Burke's house was a corrupt gift, intended to make him beholden to builders. The same builders opened off-shore bank accounts for him and put large amounts of money into them in order to make sure that he continued to do their bidding. Some of the promoters of Century Radio made corrupt payments to Burke. He took the money and, in return, specifically acted against the public interest to help them.

Ray Burke took money corruptly at his home £80,000 in all and in doing so sold his influence. Burke, and most of the people who gave him money, lied to the Tribunal about it, and otherwise did everything they could to prevent the truth coming out. And all the while, along with others yet to be dealt with, protested his innocence in terms that were almost arrogant.

That's a very bald statement of the facts as uncovered by the Flood Tribunal so far. None of the sentences above represent any conclusions of mine they are all set out, simply and directly, by Judge Flood in his report.

The report in that sense is a tribute to the courage and clarity of the judge. Clarity is never easy in these matters, as we know from some previous Tribunal reports, but once the judge came to his conclusions, on the balance of probabilities, he set them out with devastating simplicity.

And courage was required because this judge has been under ferocious pressure. There have been a great many efforts over the last number of years to undermine the work of this Tribunal and many of them have been directly pointed at him. His resilience in standing up to all that, and in giving exactly the right answer to his critics, is a great tribute to him.

Ray Burke's old mentor, CJ Haughey, grandiloquently described himself on the day he resigned as Taoiseach as "having done the State some service". Not true in his case, but in the case of Feargus Flood, let it be recorded now that he has done the State, and all of us in it, a very considerable service indeed. In the process, he has uncovered a set of pathetic, venal, grubby personalities. We can't be 100% sure, but almost certainly this report also paints, in broad brush strokes, the outline of a culture.

It was a culture that had all the characteristics of the mafia arms twisted in closed rooms, money changing hands, lifestyles that were an insult to the community around them, an oath of secrecy to shroud it and a brazen face to front it.

Where to now? We can't afford to lose sight of a couple of things. Ray Burke was on the take, systematically and over a long time, but others gave him corrupt payments. The corruption is just as much in the giving and in the taking. There's no getting around that. The report is full of words like untrue, false, corrupt, and they are applied without fear or favour to named individuals.

Those individuals must face further investigation, this time into clear criminal charges.

But what do we do about the culture? Because we have to remember one additional fact: Ray Burke was on the take, for years. It was widely alleged, and we know it to be true. After he did all the things that are now fully reported, Bertie Ahern investigated him, cleared his name, and appointed him to one of the most sensitive positions of government.

Bertie Ahern must have been uneasy about Ray Burke. The Taoiseach is no innocent abroad, he is a man who has a very good feel, and a very strong instinct, for everything that matters in the way of knowledge. There is no evidence that Bertie Ahern ever took a shilling from anyone for anything, and all the signs are that he will leave politics no better off than when he entered it. But he knew the culture was there in the background.

Choosing to turn a blind eye was one way of dealing with it. Promoting Ray Burke, in the face of the very considerable questions that surrounded him even then, was surely the biggest misjudgement, to put it no more strongly than that, of Bertie Ahern's career so far.