Taoiseach’s challenge - Just what is he trying to hide?

THERE is a terrible irony and sadness in the fact that on the very day that one of the traditional authority figures in our society — a cardinal of the Catholic Church — finally accepts that a person, an office, entrusted with such authority, can no longer seek refuge in secrecy, obfuscation or legal point scoring, that our Taoiseach turns to the High Court to stymie the Mahon Tribunal’s investigations into his finances.

The Taoiseach now faces the same, self-inflicted dilemma Cardinal Connell brought upon himself when he began an action to deny a state inquiry access to documents on child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

If he succeeds we will wonder what he is trying to hide, if he fails we will always wonder why he tried.

By seeking an injunction restraining his cross-examination over Dáil statements, by claiming privilege over financial advice and by seeking documents related to dollars or sterling payments, he joins a cadre of spanner-in-the-works protagonists who hindered the tribunal and added tremendously to its costs.

These actions utterly cut the legs from the assertion made by Mr Ahern yesterday — it just had to be tongue-in-cheek — that he would fully co-operate with the tribunal and that these were just “technical, legal matters” that had to be dealt with. Really?

And by recalling his reaction to the McCracken Report we can see that he is as happy to hide behind hypocrisy as he is procrastination.

In August 1997, Judge Brian McCracken was blisteringly critical of Mr Haughey, concluding that it was “quite unacceptable that a member of Dáil Éireann... should be supported... by gifts.”

Mr Ahern endorsed that position: “The tribunal stresses a point I have repeatedly emphasised, that public representatives must not be under a personal financial obligation to anyone,” he declared.

In a sleight of hand that would have done one of

Fagin’s pickpockets proud Mr Ahern yesterday began a process that would establish a situation where he could tell the Dáil that issues surrounding his finances are matters for the tribunal and frustrate the tribunal, telling it that he is only answerable to the Dáil.

The credibility of our political process has already been shaken by the Taoiseach’s conflicting, confusing and diversionary evidence to the tribunal.

That credibility, or what remains of it, will bedamaged even more by yesterday’s initiative, which can lead to only one question, one that will not go away.

What is he trying to hide?