Court in camera ruling - Order gives two fingers to democracy

IT would have been wonderful this morning of all mornings to step away from the anger that has defined the year coming to an snowy end, but yesterday’s outrageous and autocratic behaviour by our wretched Government makes that impossible.

Not content with making the Dáil a dowdy burlesque Finance Minister and senior counsel Brian Lenihan moved to turn our High Court into a star chamber yesterday where secrecy and exclusion replaced some of the fundamental truths of justice systems worthy of the name and deserving of our confidence — openness and transparency.

The Government’s first application of Draconian Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Act was to use it to do the business of the multi-billion euro Allied Irish Banks rescue — with money we will have to repay — behind closed doors and beyond the scrutiny natural in a real democracy.

They used the emergency powers — questioned even by the European Central Bank — to exclude all observers from an Irish court where the business of every citizen of this broken, betrayed and bankrupt State was being conducted. How dare they.

We’ll send for you when we need someone to pick up the enormous, country-crippling, generation-destroying bill, but until then don’t worry your little head about it was the actuality of the message from Government yesterday. They didn’t quite say “trust us”, but that’s what they meant.

That they were supported in their secrecy application by Ms Justice Maureen Clark must be a cause for concern. That she refused even a brief adjournment to allow the representatives of media and legal interests to consider or challenge her ruling moves her order into a different, almost Mugabesque, sphere.

Of course we’ll be fobbed off, in law library’s very best, gurgling and patronising tones, with declarations of commercial sensitivity and the need for discretion.

To respond with today’s vernacular — bah humbug.

It is this very kind of secrecy that has us where we are. It is this kind of secrecy that, as RTÉ showed this week, allowed insolvent developers move billions beyond the reach of the State-owned banks they owe staggering sums to. This is the kind of secrecy that allowed bank balance sheets dependent on loans disguised as lodgements to pass muster.

This is the kind of secrecy that allowed bank chiefs move unimaginable pension pots beyond the reach of the economic collapse that has ruined so many Irish people. This is the kind of secrecy Bertie Ahern sought by not having a bank account.

This kind of secrecy on a issue as central as the one at hand has no place in a strong democracy and it must be challenged and overturned. A little over two years ago, as he defended social partnership, Taoiseach Brian Cowen argued that you could not run a modern democracy by fiat. What has changed that makes his Government believe today that it can? This kind of autocracy has no place in the kind of society we all want this to become. Yesterday was a bad day for this democracy, but if it emboldens those who still support this unworthy Government to bring the charade to a quick end it will have served some purpose.