Total Fail

It affected every level of government, from some holders of top ministerial offices to some local councillors and its existence was widely known and widely tolerated”. (Report of the Mahon Tribunal)

We are now entering Titanic time. Next week marks the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic’s fatal encounter with an iceberg. The loss of the liner on its maiden voyage had an enormous impact in Belfast. In one fatal encounter, it destroyed the sense of invincibility felt by the city and by the industry that was its economic engine. It undermined faith in technology and progress. It was so devastating that some of its builders never spoke the name of the ship again.
With the publication of the Mahon Report, Fianna Fáil’s plunge into the deep has been almost as spectacular as the Titanic’s. And its iceberg? From childhood, we all learned that the tip of the iceberg is just a fraction of the whole. What brought Fianna Fáil to its knees in the last election was the terrible economic situation created by its pals in banking and building. But the rest of the iceberg on which they crashed so spectacularly is a sprawling, hidden mass of intrigue and deceit that has ruled Irish political, social and economic life since the ‘60s, and ultimately ruined it. Only now is it being laid bare just how big that iceberg was, and how deep it went.
Actually, this analogy may be unfair to icebergs: they’re just out there floating around. Being sunk by one may involve either misfortune or stupidity. But what is reported by the Mahon tribunal goes way beyond that. Indeed, rather than an iceberg, what has been revealed is more akin to a cancer, a disease affecting the body politic and spreading its toxins into the other parts of wider Irish society.
The temptation, and it is one to which Irish people all too easily succumb, is to assume that this is how it works, that this is us.
But to take on the guilt would be wrong. While there is no shortage of petty graspers in Irish life, it is not fair to most people, nor to the public service, nor indeed to Irish society as a whole, to assume that everything is infected and corrupted. It isn’t. We don’t routinely have to bribe public servants to get something done, as is the case in very many other countries. Indeed, the kind of crass misbehaviours by a small numbers of public servants uncovered in the tribunals are remarkable for the fact that they are genuinely unusual.
It may not be popular to say it right now, but the same is generally true of politicians. But not all. And therein lies the nub of the issue…

As most people will already be aware, the worst of the cancer was amongst those politicians, both national and local, who were close to the processes of planning and rezoning, arenas of activity where vast wealth can be created and harvested. The opportunities created in that sphere, however, were spotted not just by those who would vote on an issue at council level. The guys in the higher echelons knew too which way the cookie was crumbling.
It is important to recognise, therefore, that we are not talking here about individual temptations. We are talking about something far broader, in which those who had their hands on the levers of power realised that it gave them access to the contents of the public trough, ahead of anyone else. There is no point in being naïve: it is customary for those in power to do those things which enable them to stay in power, even where it involves effectively bribing the electorate, or playing cards from the bottom of the deck on the run-in to polling day. But this was on another scale entirely.
Who was it who first realised that what you did for the party you might also do for yourself? At what point did political venalities turn into private ones, with those in power lining their own pockets, at the expense of the State and of Irish citizens generally?
Knowing what access to the levers of power might mean in terms of privilege and personal advantage, a culture developed in Ireland where people became members or supporters of political parties not for the ideas they espoused nor the ideology they represented, but for the express purpose of getting ahead, of having access to decision-makers, of being able to influence decisions in their favour. It was a political culture in which the insider always got the bounty over the outsider, a scenario that led inevitably to the Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway races and to all that it signified – money buying access, money buying influence, money buying anything and everything else that money can buy – unofficially.
To its shame, as the Mahon Report confirms, Fianna Fáil was the party most associated with this nodding and winking and insider trading. It wasn’t alone but it was by far the worst offender – largely, one suspects, because it was the party in power for most of the last eighty years.
There are principled party members and Fianna Fáil old-timers who express rage and regret at the party’s fall from grace. This, they say, happened because the party lost its soul sometime in the ‘60s and gave itself over to being seduced, pleasured and exploited by unprincipled pragmatists and managers, the most notable of whom was Charles J. Haughey. But, of course, he was not the only one. Far from it. Those who rose to the top tended to be of a similar mind-set.
The Mahon Report describes the outcome: a culture of self-aggrandisement before service, of power without principle, of cute hoorism and irresponsibility and parish-pump loyalties, of Tammany Hall-style protection racketeering and corruption. Fianna Fáil became, not exclusively of course but widely, a party of made men, who functioned off the core assumption that you were entitled to make hay while the sun shone, both personally and for those others within the party ambit on whom the opportunity arose to bestow favours and benefits.
This might remind you of some Mediterranean countries, where corruption seems simply to be part of the fabric of things, but the closest comparison is probably with Chicago under Mayor Daley and his machine. As happened in that particular Irish-American domain, FF party people came to regard the spoils as their birth-right. Only a fool would join another party. Fianna Fáil was the party of power.

During the tribunal hearings, the evasiveness of many of those being questioned was astonishing. The Mahon Report captures for posterity the brazenness of their responses, as well as it does the utter tawdriness of the practices revealed. The sheer grubbiness of people, who in other circumstances bestrode the Irish, European and world stages as if they were statesmen, is hard to credit – but there is no denying it. That is the great achievement of the Mahon Tribunal. No one can claim that they did not know, ever again.
Bertie Ahern, the most popular and successful Taoiseach since Eamon de Valera, feted for his role in the Northern Ireland peace process, emerges in an especially unforgiving light. He spun tales of dig-outs and whip-rounds to help him through his marriage break-up. He claimed that he won money on a horse, that he slept in his office. A cast of pals wove a fantasy to the tribunal of how they gathered round the poor fellow in his time of trouble. As the evidence was given, it was literally unbelievable. And yet he kept going, digging an ever deeper hole for himself.
Some of the evidence bordered on the hilarious. David McKenna of the then-hugely successful Marlborough Recruitment, was asked why money was given to Bertie in cash. He said, apparently with a straight face, that maybe it was because Bertie was the kind of guy who was proud enough, if you gave him a cheque, he’d tear it up.
The tribunal didn’t buy any of what was said about Bertie and the money trail, and found instead that the great statesman had given “untrue evidence” about his personal finances, including those hugely significant lodgements to accounts that the tribunal decided were, in truth, large and unexplained, sterling and dollar cash amounts.
The Mahon Report says that Bertie Ahern knew the source of the funds but chose not to reveal them. For this reason, the report stated that tribunal could not determine whether or not Ahern had received corrupt payments from the developer Owen O’Callaghan. Thus, Bertie’s decision not to say anything more than he needed to may have saved him from a more damning finding. But that’s small comfort to Ahern. His reputation is in tatters and his decision to resign his membership of Fianna Fáil merely pre-empts what would have been a decision by the party to expel him.

Among the cast of villains, perhaps Pee Flynn, the man famously and rightly lampooned on Scrap Saturday as Fred Flynnstone, ranks highest. While Bertie Ahern was genuinely liked by many, the Hog has never met a single individual who liked Pee Flynn. Yet, incredibly, he kept being elected and appointed to high office.
Always preening and thoroughly self-satisfied, Flynn seemed to think of himself as some kind of western prince, one who was elected by right, and that we should all be grateful for his presence, his opinions, his chutzpah and his cunning.
But he regularly opened his mouth just to change feet, and fittingly it was his stupid and recklessly over-confident remarks on The Late Late Show about developer Tom Gilmartin that prompted the latter to change his mind and co-operate with the tribunal, a development that gave the process crucial heft. Hubris was his undoing, and the undoing of many others in Fianna Fáil too.
Hauled to account, he blustered at the tribunal as if this was all a minor irritation. They didn’t believe him, concluding that he gave “astounding, incredible and untrue evidence.” That’s two adjectives more grievous than the assessment of Bertie’s evidence – though you’d have to say that the former Taoiseach’s statements to the tribunal were also astounding and incredible. The report asserts that Flynn had “wrongfully and corruptly sought a substantial donation” from Gilmartin and was given £50,000, which he then used “for his personal benefit”, including the purchase of a farm in Cloonanass in his wife’s name. Cloonanass indeed. As the man said: “Yabbadabbadoo.”
Another former Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, was also the subject of adverse findings. The pressure he put on a businessman to give a donation to FF was “an abuse of political power and government authority.” The late Liam Lawlor, another panto villain in his day, was also up to his neck in it. As indeed was Ray Burke, a man who has already done time for receiving corrupt payments.
Of course, it was not only politicians who were on the make. Most famously, in the planning arena, there was George Redmond, a public servant who spectacularly betrayed the trust put in him as Assistant City and County Manager of Dublin, and lobbyist Frank Dunlop – a long-term Fianna Fáil insider, and former party (and government) Press Secretary, who made corrupt payments of up to £170,000 to politicians on behalf of developers to interfere with the planning process…
These lead actors could only flourish in an ecosystem where this was assumed to be “the way things are done here.” But it also indicates one in which those in charge felt invincible. This is where the comparison with Tammany Hall is most pertinent. So inflated had they become with their own self-importance, they were able to imagine that those elsewhere in the system, who should have been vigilant, and who should have reacted to the suspicions that were out there in the Irish air, would remain quiet and compliant. Which, for years, they did.
A bullying and intimidatory command culture is demoralising, infusing public servants, including investigators, with a fatal mix of resignation and reluctance. They may know that the system is rotten – but they are pessimistic regarding the possibility of getting a result if they do go down the road of stirring up the hornet’s nest. And besides, they have their own careers to think about. If you dream of becoming Garda Commissioner, will you take the risk of squaring up to the ones who have the decision as to who will be given the job in their gift? If you want to gain promotion, lower down the line, will you choose to confront the power-brokers? A corrupt system has a way of sustaining itself.
As a result, complaints by Tom Gilmartin about Liam Lawlor, George Redmond and councillor Finbarr Hanrahan were, as the tribunal report says, not “thoroughly investigated” by the Gardaí. Likewise, the Revenue Commissioners pulled their punches.
This should be a source of great embarrassment to those involved at that time in those organisations. But, of course, they had cause for their cynicism.
Old folks tell of an RTÉ Late Late Show (back in the day) where a group of Fianna Fáil ministers joked about their late night drinking sessions and how gardaí who tried to enforce the law on pub closures were offered a choice between a pint (which rendered them complicit) and a transfer to Tory Island (hahaha, weren’t we the gas men altogether?). It was a small but shameful example of how they operated. Those who do not play ball can and will be crushed. And the discomforting thing now is that people laughed along with this and thought it was fine. This was Ireland.
Or this was, rather, the Ireland these sharp operators were in the business of creating. An Ireland in which they were the go-to boys when anyone needed any fixing done. An Ireland in which unless you went to them it might just be impossible to get anything fixed. Their message was seductive in its way and people were suckered. We’re of you and with you, trust us, we’ll sort it out, just leave it to us, that’ll be grand, ya know yourself, say no more, say nothing. A wink’s as good as a nod. The problem is that the horse was indeed blind...
They were winners and the Irish like to be in the winners’ enclosure, in life as well as at the Galway Races and Cheltenham. For the Irish, someone who keeps winning must have something extra and they want winners in charge, not losers because, begob, we were all losers for long enough. And time and time again, those in charge, who we now know to have been rogues of the worst variety, were feted and celebrated hither and thither and yon by people who knew better but repeatedly left their instincts aside to join in the laughter and the applause.
It’s a short hop from ‘What are you having?’ to ‘What am I having?’ And that’s the hop they made because, of course, everyone gets a slice (fair’s fair). Everything was co-opted into this mission of control and aggrandisement: council houses, grants, welfare allowances, EU funds, tenders, contracts, consultancies, the lot. You name it, they parcelled it up and divvied it out.
Thus, in some still undefined way, a huge number of people were drawn into the conspiracy and, even if only because they were voted in again and again, all of those who put their number one beside a Fianna Fáil name became somehow complicit. The end result of which is the appalling fact that we are now forced into paying off the debts accrued by the banker and builder cronies who lost the run of themselves as the Tiger madness spiralled out of control.

So, what next? Well, the Mahon Report is being referred by the Government to the Garda Commissioner, the DPP, the Revenue Commissioners and the Standards in Public Office Commission. Without wanting blood or wishing ill on anyone, the fact that Ray Burke and Frank Dunlop served time does offer the possibility that charges will follow, at least where the worst of the transgressions are concerned. And in any event, one expects that the Revenue Commissioners will want to follow up with all of the relevant individuals.
But beyond that, two major questions arise. The first is to do with Fianna Fáil’s future. Micheál Martin has said that he accepts the findings, adding that the people identified in the tribunal report had “betrayed the trust put in them by the public”.
That’s putting it mildly.
But they also betrayed their own history and the radical roots of the Fianna Fáil party. They betrayed the republic they were established to defend. They betrayed the Irish people. So, there is now a major question as to whether the party can survive, bearing in mind that the other historically anti-Treaty party, Sinn Féin, is now demilitarised and participating successfully in the democratic process. If it’s to have a future, Fianna Fáil needs to discover its unique selling point in 2012. That it’s not Sinn Féin and that it’s not Fine Gael is not enough any more.
The second is about the quality and calibre of civil society, politics and administration in Ireland. Of course, there’s the immediate need to excise the cancer from our public life. But if we wasn’t to go beyond that, we are all going to have to move past the admiration for those in the winner’s enclosure, and the acceptance of back-scratching and manipulation of the official systems, and cynicism and mistrust of the democratic processes that went with it…
It all leads in one direction, and that is towards a renewal of our collective commitment to the society and the State – and its commitment to us as equal citizens of a Republic. Mutual responsibility and accountability are part of that contract. The momentum is now towards what President Michael D. Higgins has called the campaign for the real republic. Its context is increasingly clear.
At the risk of over-egging the metaphor, the coming struggle will be titanic but worth it. We may have shipped some holes, but we ain’t for sinking yet.