Question everything – let’s not have an Irish Enron

IT’S been quite a while, but GUBU is making a comeback. An acronym for grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented, the phrase was paraphrased from a comment by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey while describing a strange series of incidents in 1982 that led to a double murderer being apprehended in the house of the attorney general. It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance.

The corresponding acronym was coined by Conor Cruise O’Brien and both it and the phrase are still occasionally used in Irish political discourse to describe notorious scandals.

Now we hear the grotesque news about ceann comhairle John O’Donoghue’s expenses when he was a minister. He spent more than €32,000 frolicking around on the government jet to social events in less than a week while at the same time 32 thalidomide victims lose their Christmas bonus, saving to the exchequer €9,000.

Is there any other vulnerable group within our grubby society for easy picking? O’Donoghue should resign or if our Taoiseach had any scruples, he would remove him and respond to taxpayers’ fears immediately.

What hope has the Government of passing Lisbon or NAMA when their own moral standards would have to climb dizzying heights to get to the level of the sewer?

Its “unbelievable” how the Government or the Greens decline to comment on this story. Sorry folks, but this is not good enough.

Having reached the very threshold of their incompetence with NAMA, Fianna Fáil and the Greens appear powerless to do or say anything except talk NAMA. But it’s everything else they’re not telling us that tells us exactly what NAMA is really about: a Celtic Enron in the making? That would be unprecedented, but it is possible.

The belief that the Irish people still trust the Government is “bizarre”.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly beautifully alluded to the situation before him in his assessment of the Liam Carroll examiner strategy. He asked whether the captains who “navigated the ship onto the rocks would be remaining in charge”?

Unlike evoting machines, we won’t be able to bury NAMA debts in some warehouse along the border until the public forgets about them. NAMA must be transparent and must be built on trust. Anything short of complete transparency is simply fodder for a future tribunal: “Namron”.

What went wrong? There are many similarities between NAMA and Enron and its open to the same abuse by vested interests. We cannot just hope and pray this morally bankrupt Government gets NAMA right. We must question every single one of their promises and actions along the way so that we’re not hoodwinked into financial as well as moral bankruptcy.

Question everything – let’s not have a Celtic Enron.

Paul Feeney

Botanic Hall

Glasnevin

Dublin 11