We all share responsibility for turning a blind eye to corruption in politics

THERE seemed to be a sense of relief and a sense of expectation in many quarters last week as the end of the era of Bertie Ahern was announced.

The Taoiseach’s surprise decision has prompted questions as to whether we are moving into a new era of politics and if the political focus, to quote Ahern, can be “realigned”.

Maybe it can be temporarily, but there are still so many unanswered questions that issues raised at the Mahon Tribunal will be around for a long time. As has so often been the case throughout his career, Ahern’s choice of language in criticising the Mahon Tribunal last week was unfortunate and foolish.

Undoubtedly, he was reflecting a frustration with tribunals that has been felt by politicians for many years — but that simply prompts a few more questions. Is it not the politicians themselves that constantly trot out the mantra, “That is a question for the tribunal”? Is it not the politicians who established the tribunals? And is it not the case that politicians have often prolonged the work of tribunals by refusing to give straight answers to legitimate questions in the Dáil and elsewhere, thereby ensuring that tribunals have become the instruments of accountability?

If Ahern had answered the questions raised in September 2006, a lot of the grief he has experienced could perhaps have been avoided. It is his reticence and stubbornness which has ensured the prolonged agony of the past year and a half.

Neither is the notion he was “hounded” out of office convincing. Politicians have short memories when it comes to media coverage. The support of influential sections of the media played a role in bringing Ahern to power in 1997 and since the general election last year he has been backed vigorously by the Sunday Independent, which has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Ireland.

Was it not legitimate for journalists to interrogate the obviously incredible accounts Ahern gave about his finances? Vincent Browne was often criticised by politicians and his own peers about his constant questioning of Charles Haughey’s finances but, given what we now know, surely he was doing precisely what journalists are supposed to do?

Granted, politicians have reason to be fed up with the tribunals given the manner in which they dominate the news agenda, and it is quite legitimate to question their longevity, their approach to questioning witnesses and their inefficiencies. But how true is the assertion by former Fianna Fáil senator Des Hanafin in 2000 that protracted tribunal hearings “demoralise, shake confidence in politics and even destabilise the State. All politicians and public servants are smeared and held up to public odium.”

Hanafin was exaggerating. There has been no serious suggestion that the public service in Ireland is corrupt; quite the opposite, in fact. In 2002, Justice Matthew Smith, of the Standards in Public Office Commission, said the Irish public service “to a very large extent, has been free of corruption”.

The frustration with tribunals exists because they refuse to leave things undisturbed, which is what Ahern would like. In his report on payments to Haughey, Justice Moriarty noted that it was likely Ahern might have wanted to “leave undisturbed” the details of a large payment made to Fianna Fáil on the day of the 1989 general election.

Much of this reluctance to acknowledge what was going on is dressed up as admirable loyalty. Indeed, for many years Fianna Fáil figures have specialised in waxing lyrical about loyalty to, and love for, the party, but those loves and loyalties have taken precedence over everything else. As Elaine Byrne, who is writing a history of political corruption in Ireland, recently pointed out, “Loyalty is commonly mistaken as a moral virtue. It is not. The four cardinal virtues, derived from Plato’s Republic and the Christian scriptures, are justice, wisdom, courage and temperance. All moral virtues hinge on these four virtues.”

She also observed that unwavering loyalty is an admired and rewarded quality in Irish political life — but it would be a welcome turn of events if the Cowen era heralded an end to the practice of loyalty at the expense of the truth.

Payments to politicians have understandably preoccupied Irish journalists for many years. In 1981, when he was a journalist with Magill magazine, Brian Trench attempted to get to the bottom of the issue of election funding, and observed “election finances are shrouded in mystery. Only a handful of people know the sources, size and uses of campaign funds.” He also pointed out that there was a significant section of business and professional people who continued to believe they could buy favours, and Fianna Fáil’s fundraising activities were organised in such a way as to encourage that belief.

There was concern about many of these activities from the 1960s. Kevin Boland, a Fianna Fáil minister in that decade, noted in 1982 that his father, Gerald Boland, one of the founders of Fianna Fáil, “always ascribed the beginning of the degeneration of Fianna Fáil to the receipt and acceptance of the first big money subscription” and that his father’s generation had thought it essential “to keep aloof from the financial and commercial establishment”.

THAT is not to suggest that the founding fathers were paragons of virtue. There were allegations of impropriety in the 1930s and ’40s, but they were not on the scale of recent years.

Nor is this a problem just for Fianna Fáil, despite what Fine Gael might believe. It is the age-old problem of power corrupting. When political scientists Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh published their book on Fine Gael in 2002 — Days of Blue Loyalty — they discovered that many Fine Gael activists believed the main difference between themselves and Fianna Fáil was that Fine Gael “were more honourable”, as if the thought of corruption wouldn’t enter their minds. It is simply because Fianna Fáil has been in power so often and for so long that there is inevitably going to be more allegations of dodgy dealings against it.

Bertie Ahern suggested in 1999 there was “a culture of tax evasion” in Ireland. On one level, this was a classic Ahern ploy — to divert attention from the difficulties being experienced in his own party by asserting we were all at it. But it did raise the question of whether there has been too much focus on politicians and not enough on others, including the voters. The electorate has continually demonstrated that it does not take a particularly dim view of corruption in politics and has frequently endorsed politicians who have been exposed as corrupt.

Some years ago, the European Values Society Study Group, which, among other things, measured attitudes to corruption, found the Irish were unusually tolerant of tax evasion and social welfare fraud in comparison to their European counterparts. Nor should we forget — as we sometimes do — that there were many venal people willing to buy Irish politicians.