Ireland much more tolerant of dubious practices by politicans

A FORMER government minister and his ex-wife were sentenced to jail on Monday in the UK for swapping penalty points while, in our little Republic, allegations that TDs’ penalty points were mysteriously wiped create barely a ripple of controversy.

The sordid tale of Chris Huhne and his embittered ex is more soap opera than Greek tragedy but we could learn something about accountability and consequences from the sorry saga.

Former climate change secretary Mr Huhne was bullish in 2011 when allegations, that he had swapped speeding points with his then wife in order to avoid a driving disqualification a decade earlier, first surfaced.

He was adamant there was “absolutely no truth” in those “wild allegations” and was confident that the police investigation would not lead to criminal charges and he would be exonerated.

His confidence quickly evaporated, along with his political career and he resigned in February 2012, still insisting that he would eventually clear his name.

Little did he know that the wife he had humiliated, when he abruptly left her for his media advisor, had hatched a plot that would ultimately see them both behind bars. Vicky Pryce’s rage at the public humiliation she had suffered at the hands of her ex-husband blinded her to the fact that if she took him down, she would likely go with him.

According to her 38-page email correspondence with the Sunday Times, which broke the story, she had two primary objectives: “bringing Chris down without seriously damaging [her] own reputation in the process.”

“I definitely want to nail him. More than ever actually and would love to do it soon,” she wrote in March 2011.

In the end, Pryce signed an affidavit, allowing the newspaper to publish the story without identifying her as the source, but after she did a follow-up interview with the Mail on Sunday, it quickly became apparent that she was behind the claims.

Despite this, it was initially unclear if police would find enough evidence to initiate a prosecution, but they were dogged in their determination to fully investigate the allegations and, in February 2012, charges of perverting the course of justice were leveled against the warring couple.

Having at first tried to have the charges thrown out, Huhne pleaded guilty. Pryce fought the charges and tried to rely on an archaic defence of marital coercion, which ultimately failed.

At their sentencing hearing on Monday, Justice Nigel Sweeney told them “any element of tragedy is entirely your own fault” before jailing them both for eight months. Justice, in the end, was blind.

Swapping penalty points may be a relatively trivial offence but Huhne, speaking before entering the court, accepted that, “lawmakers can be many things, but they cannot be lawbreakers”.

Perhaps Huhne should move to this country after his release where he would find that we are much more accepting of dubious ethical practices among holders of high office. One only has to look at the refusal of Independent TD Mick Wallace to resign last year after he admitted to deliberately underdeclaring his company’s Vat returns to the tune of €1.4m.

It is unthinkable that a British politician, particularly one who regularly exhorts the government to tax the wealthy, could remain in office if similar revelations were made. More recently, Luke Ming Flanagan is one of four Independent TDs who have highlighted allegations that gardaí selectively expunged penalty points for high- profile people.

Speaking to Today FM earlier this year, he decried “corruption” in the Garda Siochána and said TDs, like himself, had a “duty to talk about corruption if you know about it”.

Mr Wallace, Mr Flanagan, Clare Daly and Joan Collins went to great lengths to name names — including district court judge Mary Devins and rugby star Ronan O’Gara — in the Dáil, where they are protected from defamation laws by parliamentary privilege. Strangely, in all of Mr Flanagan’s many public machinations on the subject, he failed to state that he was one of the beneficiaries of the practice.

A Sunday newspaper has revealed that gardaí stopped him, for driving while speaking on a mobile phone in June 2011, but his penalty points were later “invalidated”. He has accepted that the points were removed but, speaking to another newspaper on Monday, said that he had been approached by gardaí and “the big issue is why did the gardaí contact me in the first place”.

This is a direct contradiction of an exchange he had on Twitter in December 2012, when a tweeter asked him if he had a ticket, for driving while using a mobile phone, quashed two years previously.

“No,” he said, followed by, “definite, why do you ask?” when asked if he was sure.

Journalist Fionnan Sheahan has also confirmed that the deputy flatly denied similar questions posed by his newspaper. Mr Flanagan was last night expected to try to make a statement in the Dáil, responding to the furore, but tweeted on Sunday that his “plan was to wait for [Justice Minister Alan] Shatter’s internal investigation on penalty points to be published and then to expose the real facts”.

HOWEVER, this does not explain why he misled people, when direct questions were put to him, about his involvement in the scandal. At the time of writing, it is also unclear why, given his professed abhorrence of the practice, he didn’t simply refuse the offer to have the points deleted.

Meanwhile, it was yesterday alleged that up to ten serving TDs and Senators had penalty points deleted, ratcheting up pressure on the Justice Minister to speed up the investigation by Assistant Garda Commissioner John O’Mahoney.

Requesting the deletion of penalty points is not a crime, but if it does transpire that if gardaí illegitimately cancelled them, then it is open to the DPP to charge those officers with perverting the course of justice.

I wouldn’t hold my breath. In this ethical wasteland, where probity goes to die, our extraordinary tolerance of dodgy dealings from public officer holders has led to crimes much more serious than the cancellation of a few penalty points going unpunished and, bizarrely, on occasion, rewarded.

Last year’s Mahon Report found corruption at “every level of Irish political life” which was “allowed to continue unabated” but, not alone has there been no action from the DPP as a result of its findings, the government has yet to implement its key recommendations.

The tale of Mr Huhne and Ms Pryce is cautionary in many respects, but there are no lessons in the saga for cosseted Irish politicians.

Considering the assorted brass necks in Leinster House, and our less than stellar record in investigating white-collar crime, it is impossible to imagine the career of an Irish minister ever being in jeopardy if similar allegations surfaced in this country.