Double standards - FG can not be selective on tribunals

Even allowing for the drawn-out choreography of politics, the reluctance of Health Minster James Reilly, while speaking on RTÉ yesterday, to be even-handed about those indicted by the Mahon and Moriarty tribunals was as disheartening as it was tragic.

It reflected poorly on Dr Reilly, Fine Gael and this society’s self-destructive indifference to accountability.

The senior minister and his Fine Gael colleagues have no difficulty in attacking delusional and, by now, largely irrelevant Fianna Fáil politicians exposed as sleazy blackmailers. Yet they — with at least the exception of Lucinda Creighton — seem unable to accept that “findings of fact” made against magnate Denis O’Brien by the Moriarty tribunal carry weight equal to the findings against Ahern, Flynn or Lawlor by Mahon.