Shatter needs to make a proper apology over penalty points affair
Mattie McGrath’s sources about Shatter’s driving were not as good as Shatter’s were about Mick Wallace’s behaviour — the minister had the advantage of a briefing from the Garda Commissioner — but they did force Shatter to explain that something different, but somewhat similar, had happened, but two years separate to when McGrath thought. And it was about something more important than using a mobile phone when driving.
Shatter was not able to fulfil a breath test when asked to do so by a garda. Having failed he blamed his asthma and then told gardaí that he was on his way home from the Dáil, where he served as a TD. The garda exercised his discretion and there is no reason we know why he shouldn’t have let Shatter go on his way. But it is somewhat embarrassing for Shatter nonetheless.
This latest controversy may serve towards ending the public’s keen interest in what has become known as the Alan Shatter affair. It should not be allowed to fade away, however. Too many important things have happened to be pushed aside.
The justice minister might have a past as a writer of racy and raunchy fiction — how embarrassed he must be by the attention paid this week to his 24-year-old novel Laura, stuff of a standard to make anyone blush — but you couldn’t make up his behaviour over the last week or so, especially given his much vaunted levels of intelligence.
Once Shatter had blundered — by telling tales out of school about independent TD Mick Wallace while on television — there was only one sensible option immediately available to him: he should have apologised swiftly and unequivocally, both to Mick Wallace and the public. Instead he gave an unsatisfactory press conference on Monday and then issues a fulsome (in the proper use of the word) apology on Tuesday evening. He was sorry only if Wallace had taken offence.
Here’s why Shatter should have apologised sincerely. It wasn’t just that he was wrong to have used Garda “information” about the TD in a television debate to score a political point — and thereby undermining public confidence in the fair use of Garda information — but because it would have made him bigger to have admitted his mistake.
There were reasons for him not to apologise. Ego was one. Politicians, especially those like Shatter whose self-regard for his intellect is transparent, don’t like to admitting to making mistakes or getting things wrong. His palpable lack of respect for Wallace is such that to admit that he was wrong to do what he did would be galling, to put it mildly. But sometimes you have to suck such things up.
Admittedly, Shatter had reason to fear the political damage that would arise from an apology. The opposition would have deemed him unfit for the holding of office, demanding his immediate resignation. But that was happening anyway, especially as it had seized upon his 2010 Dáil statement in which he rightly highlighted Willie O’Dea’s misuse of office, his attempted placing of erroneous information about a Sinn Féin election candidate with a local Limerick newspaper on an unattributed basis. O’Dea fell from power as a result of his actions, the Green party demanding his removal from office. Shatter had been implying that Wallace’s actions had been hypocritical but what about his own? Indeed, one of the biggest problems about all of this involves judgement: Shatter doesn’t seem to have realised that he was wrong in doing what he did to Wallace, although in his private moments he must have doubts as to the appropriateness of his actions as much as to their consequences.
Shatter may genuinely think that Wallace is a hypocrite, if he thinks that Wallace has availed of something that he has condemned, discretion on the part of a Garda when caught using mobile phone when driving. But Wallace availed of nothing. He was not stopped and given a fixed penalty point notice, as the gardaí (apparently) merely waved at him to drop his phone. It can be argued that he should have been, but that is an issue for the gardaí who wrongly applied discretion. What was Shatter to do? Drive after them to demand he be given penalty points? Shatter, and others in Fine Gael, have sought to imply that Wallace had sought discretion of the very kind he demands not be given to others. But there is absolutely no evidence to support such innuendo.
Wallace has been campaigning against the bigger and more important issue: the cancellation of penalty points after they have been issued, a favour that it seems gardaí administered to a favoured elite, made up of the well-connected or famous. Those cancellations came after the errantmotorists had lobbied actively to have their points removed. That is a matter of grave concern and the publication of a report following an internal Garda investigation by Assistant Commissioner John O’Mahoney has done little to assuage many of those who are worried by what has happened — and that goes far beyond the four independent TDs who have made an issue of it.
The Shatter incident should not be allowed to distract attention from that.
And that is where Shatter has made another political blunder. Had he offered an apology then the public would be more likely to move on to other matters more quickly. He has kept it alive.
Shatter probably feels that he has to stand up for the reputation of the gardaí, no matter what, that this is necessary to maintain public confidence in the force. That is a dubious position to take.
The minister can take aim at the gardaí when it suits him, although it is usually for financial or administrative reasons, but, unfortunately, when it comes to matters of genuine public concern, Shatter, like so many ministers before him, may have erred on the side of giving the gardaí a free pass.
It is not too many years since we learnt from the Morris Tribunal of the corruption of the Garda force in Donegal, when officers ran wild in planting evidence against those they didn’t like. That may be far more serious than the cancellation of penalty points for those in the know, but such behaviour stems from a culture where some Gardaí believe they can do what they like — and act against those they don’t.
That is what is very worrying about the Wallace incident. Apparently there is no written confirmation of the driving incident in Dublin city centre. But the gardaí involved told others. Somehow this got up the chain of command, as far as the Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan. He, in turn, decided to tell the minister, just before Shatter was due on television to debate the issue with the same Wallace.
REMEMBER too the Clare Daly incident. Daly, who is Wallace’s closest friend in Dáil Eireann, and who has been highly articulate in pursuing this issue publicly, was badly stitched up earlier this year by the gardaí. There is no suggestion that the Garda were not within their rights to stop her when she took an illegal right hand turn on Dublin’s South Circular Road, as she has admitted. We are unlikely to ever know the truth as to how she reacted, but it is interesting that it was deemed necessary to handcuff her. It is also noteworthy that somehow this information leaked into the public domain and that some elements of the media fell gleefully upon it. Daly’s test for alcohol proved to be innocent — thankfully we have not reached the stage where we have to fear the deliberate manipulation of a sample to convey guilt.
I may have missed it, but has Shatter condemned this treatment of Daly? Would Fine Gael have been so passive had a member of its party been treated this way?
There are good reasons to question why Wallace remains a member of Dáil Eireann, given that he did not pay Vat that he had collected on behalf of the State over to the Revenue Commissioners during his desperate efforts to save his construction business from financial collapse. That his actions can be explained does not excuse them. But he is on the right side of the penalty points argument.
Shatter has undermined his own authority by his actions. Even at this stage his best form of redress would be to say sorry.
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