Corruption legislation - New laws only part of the answer

Ireland may not be corrupt in the way Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or Putin’s Russia is — citizens don’t disappear if they challenge the incumbent autocrat, the majority don’t starve while a kleptomaniac dictator drains the public coffers — but that legislation as obvious and basic as that advanced this week suggests we have some considerable catching up to do if we are to at least confront corruption in Irish life.

That the draft scheme of the Criminal Justice (Corruption) Bill 2012 was brought to Cabinet while a deputy who knowingly misled the revenue commissioners, pocketed Vat rightly the property of this State, still sits in our parliament confirms the urgent need for legislative change. That Deputy Wallace and many of his Dáil colleagues enthusiastically encouraged people to break the law in regard to the household charge suggests that we need huge cultural change in this area too. That so many supported the call, a good number of them confusing convenience with principle, confirms that our attitude to corruption is at least ambivalent.

That individuals like Bertie Ahern, Ray Burke and Padraig Flynn, all former Fianna Fáil centurions, and others indicted by various tribunals, are still paid very substantial pensions from the public purse, pensions that insulate them from the reality of the betrayed world their behaviour did so much to create, suggests that we need legislation that makes it possible to sequester State pensions, even retrospectively, if a person is found to have abused their position while in office.