Ombudsman’s speech - Dangerous to dismiss arguments

OMBUDSMAN and information commissioner Emily O’Reilly is a highly respected public official. She has been prominent in public affairs for several decades. Her contributions to public discourse have been reasoned and pragmatic.

We can be fairly certain that she is not a Sendero Luminoso sleeper intent on destroying this Republic or even Irish capitalism. Rather, she is the kind of person who wants this country to succeed. The kind of person who wants our institutions to observe the highest standards because only by doing so they will be successful.

It should not be necessary to point these things out but in the context of her speech yesterday it is important to establish that we are dealing with a member of the establishment, not an extremist.

When Ms O’Reilly told us that poor governance caused our economic downturn she did not tell us anything we did not know but when she warned us that the Dáil can no longer hold the Executive to account we must all sit up and take notice.

There have been questions about the relevance of the Oireachtas for many years but when one of the most senior State appointees tells us that our parliament has been neutered we are in dangerous waters.

Ms O’Reilly has recently been frustrated in her efforts to have an investigation into the Lost at Sea Scheme established. A Dáil vote on an investigation was defeated because deputies voted along party lines rather than on the issue at hand. An opposition proposal that the report be considered by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was also defeated, following a second vote along party political lines.

Once we might have accepted that this is how politics works but the experience makes that impossible. Now we see it as the system looking after its own.

The Ombudsman pointed to the inherent irony: she was trying to do what our financial regulator was severely criticised for not doing but party interests came first and her efforts to establish the truth were stymied.

Once again the culture of secrecy choked even the possibility of reform. This culture, as we have said so many times before, is destroying our country.

Just yesterday morning we had another example of it when Minister for Children Barry Andrews again criticised Alan Shatter for releasing the Tracey Fay report. If Mr Andrews believes that he is right to criticise Mr Shatter it is just another indication of how detached governments become after so very long in power.

Ms O’Reilly has recognised that the public are at the end of their tether with Government prevarication, dodging and cover ups.

Mr Andrews, and his colleagues, should too.

We are at an unprecedented point. Our economic independence is far from secure; our public sector unions are on the cusp of causing industrial mayhem; our institutions, private and public, are discredited; some are despised. Opinion polls tell us Government has lost its mandate yet it sails on regardless, deaf to calls for structural changes in Government, public and civil services. Deaf to calls to purge the culture and processes that belong in another time.

Ms O’Reilly spoke as a friend of Ireland yesterday. For the Government, and especially Fianna Fáil, to dismiss her arguments would be foolish and dangerous.