Oireachtas Éireann Sends in the Clowns

First published in the Western People on Monday.

Eddie Fossett and Tom Duffy may sleep on peacefully in eternity. The founders of the circuses that still bear their names must have been worried, even so far away from earthly cares, about the future of their profession.

What point in hiring lion tamers or trying to source those big shoes for the clowns when the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry was about to show the world the greatest circus ever seen?

Instead, the shock resignation of former Minister for Justice Alan Shatter saw the banking inquiry booted into touch as the Government hurried to steady the ship. This isn’t the first time this has happened – political analyst Noel Whelan noted on Twitter that last week was the fourth time the Banking Inquiry has been announced in the lifetime of this Government, and it hasn’t happened yet.

The nation will have a lucky escape if it doesn’t happen at all. Certainly we would like to know what happened with the Irish banks, but that doesn’t mean an Oireachtas Committee is the best means of finding it out.  If anything, an Oireachtas Committee is the last place we should look for anything, bringing up the rear after prayers to St Anthony.

The Oireachtas Committee system is the most over-hyped thing in Irish politics since Seanad Éireann. Oireachtas Committees don’t find things out. They are stages for shapers and windbags, roaring at one another in the hopes of making it to the Six-One News. They only thing they reveal is gas. Any amount of it.

And the Banking Inquiry Committee will be the most wretched of the lot. Fine Gael have been looking forward to something like since they got into power, but it’s not because they think it’ll reveal the truth. It’s because it’s a chance to give Fianna Fáil a thorough kicking, and they can think of nothing more delicious than that.

Consider an interview with Government Chief Whip Paul Kehoe on Morning Ireland on Mayday last. Presenter Gavin Jennings put it to Kehoe that the inquiry was just going to be a show-trial, a chance for some early-season electioneering. Perish the thought, replied Deputy Kehoe.

“When I was briefing the opposition whips yesterday evening of this banking inquiry I asked them to take into account the whole area of bias, and to consider carefully the people who they will be appointing to the committee,” remarked the Chief Whip, blissfully oblivious to the notion that it’d hardly be opposition who would turn up with the tar and feathers.

Deputy Kehoe went on to say “when the members are appointed to the committee by their political parties, their names will be submitted to CPP [Committee on Procedures and Privileges], who will look at the members of the committee to make sure there is no bias involved in the membership.”

Deputy Kehoe did not remark that he himself sits on the Committee on Procedures and Privileges, so he’ll be doubly-sure that there won’t be any bias on the banking committee.

And then, Deputy Kehoe delivered his coup de grace, pointing out how we could be triply sure that the Banking Committee won’t be biased. “I can assure in my own party - and I’m not going to go into individual names - that were very much aware that this committee was going to be set up and they wanted to be members of this committee,” said Deputy Kehoe. “They were very careful in their utterances, and any comments that they have made, over the past numbers of years.”

Deputy Kehoe is a member of Fine Gael party, of course. Sadly, Gavin Jennings did not follow up with a question along these lines: “Hold on a second, Deputy Kehoe – are you telling us that members of Fine Gael have deliberately kept quiet about the banking crisis in the hopes of not being seen to be biased when appointed to the committee? But doesn’t that just make them fifth columnists, there to score every political point going like a cross-code inside line of Gooch Cooper and Henry Shefflin?”

Sadly, that question wasn’t asked and Paul Kehoe finished his interview on Morning Ireland by saying the public wants know who’s to blame. And so they do, very badly. But if the public have learned anything from the past six years, they should have learned this: the blame isn’t some one’s. It’s some thing’s.

That thing being our political and regulatory system, of course. The current government was elected on a ticket that promised change, and they have not delivered on that promise. Not even kind of. Only the faces have changed; the suits remain exactly the same.

Consider the recent trial concerning the infamous Maple 10 accounts at Anglo-Irish Bank. Judge Martin Nolan didn’t spare the timber when it came to the financial regulator’s role in the crisis. People have asked why isn’t he accountable? Well, because Irish law is such that people in those sort of positions aren’t held accountable.

This is how the state is set up. Why would we enshrine laws that could only put one of our own behind bars? Far better to enshrine laws that lock up weirdoes, misfits, gobdaws, quarehawks, hop-off-me-thumbs and Shinners. Lots and lots of Shinners.

In the light of all we’ve learned since the crash, what laws have been passed to make the financial regulator from here on in accountable? Anybody know? Who’s examining these fellas’ homework now that the Troika have move on?

Does anyone know what would happen if, by some accident, the financial regulator were held to account? Would every public servant be held to account? Has anybody asked David Begg what he would make of these onions? Or did nobody bother, because we already know very well what David Begg and the many unions he represents would make of these onions?

That’s why the banking inquiry can only be a circus. When the Troika left, it was like the strings were cut on the puppets and the Government collapsed into a heap. Alan Shatter is gone, the European and local elections will be a slaughter for the junior coalition partner and there’s another tough budget to come. What is the Government doing while the ship sinks beneath the waves? Fighting over towels on deck-chairs, of course.

The Seanad Referendum: Why Go Looking for Trouble?

First published in the Western People on Tuesday.

The last thing a sensible person should go looking for in life is trouble. Why would you go looking for something that is more than willing to come looking for you?

When Enda Kenny was elected Taoiseach two years ago, trouble was the one thing in the country that was not in short supply. The country was broke, nobody could go for a bag of chips without checking with first with Berlin if they could have both salt and vinegar, and it wasn’t so much a question of hoping the 80s wouldn’t return as praying to the living God that we wouldn’t be pitched all the way back to the 50s, or worse.

In those stormiest of days, Enda kept a steady hand on the tiller. He held his nerve in Europe and has reaped rewards. The bailout will soon be over. The man should be hailed a hero.

But that’s not what’s happening. For reasons best known to himself, when he should be basking in the warm glow of clear and visible success, the Taoiseach and his government have got themselves mired in two crises from which the rewards if successful are slim, and the punishments if unsuccessful and many and painful.

On abortion, the Government’s handling of the hottest of Irish political potatoes for the past thirty years has been anything but sure, and the outcome of current moves to legislate for the X-Case is anything but certain. The battle is very far from over.

All this was trouble that the Government didn’t need with the economy in such dire straits – and don’t forget, even though the Government has done great work, the country is very, very far from saved yet. As such, with the huge issue of the economy looming over the state like the iceberg over the Titanic, and the abortion nightmare rearing its head again, the very last thing the Government needed to do was to hold a referendum that isn’t wanted by the people, that is unpopular among their own parties, that is badly thought out, difficult to explain and can only lead to heartache and woe down the line. And yet, for reasons best known to themselves, that is exactly what the Government has chosen to do.

The first Seanad was founded under two noble auspices. It was set up as part of the 1922 Free State Constitution with a view to protecting  the Protestant minority in the Free State, a protection that minority badly needed – their treatment in the triumphalist early years of the State should be a cause of burning shame to every Irish citizen.

When Eamon DeValera introduced his own constitution in 1937, he retained the second chamber but built it around the idea of vocationalism. Vocationalism was the idea that there was a Christian (ie, Catholic) social order, where everyone had a place and there was a place for everyone, a doctrine that was worked out in papal encyclicals from Leo XIII and Pius XI.

This is where the idea of the panels in the Seanad come from, that each social order would be reflected in the various panels. The Seanad recognises five vocations in Irish life, and categorises them as Agriculture, Labour, Administration, Cultural and Educational, and Industrial and Commercial. Farmers, manual workers, civil servants, teachers and shopkeepers to you and me.

And this is where it gets tricky. How relevant vocationalism is in the 21st Century would be more a matter for Father Hoban over the way but Leo XIII reigned at the end of the 19th Century and Pius XI until the start of the Second World War and neither of those may be considered today or yesterday. There are big changes in the world since.

And even if it were relevant, if vocationalism were a magic bullet of social organisation and cohesion, exactly how much of a role does it play in deciding whom is elected to which panel? What qualifications must you hold to get on the Agricultural Panel, or the Industrial and Commercial Panel? How come you’re on one and not the other?

And what of the baroque inside-out method of filling those Seanad seats? We enjoy elections in Ireland – why don’t we hear more about the inside and outside panel seats, who’s been nominated by what body, what difference .874 votes can make on the 13th count? Isn’t all the world’s drama there? Or does the fact that the Seanad currently does as much work as a child’s rocking horse pulling a plough take something of the bloom from the rose?

This is another problem with this referendum. Both sides are as one in saying that the current Seanad is a crock. The Government says wreck it, the Opposition says reform it.

But if the referendum is lost, will the Seanad ever be reformed? Or will it just tick on like it does, filling inside and outside seats in panels of Administrators, Educators, Labourers, Industrialists and Farmers who do not themselves administer, educate, labour, indust [sic] or farm? Is there any way the people can win in this, or do they end up with the worst possible option, yet again?

It’s early days in the campaign yet, but it’s interesting to note that the Government has not gone bald-headed in an attack on the Seanad. To win the election, they should portray the Seanad as a rabid dog that must be shot on sight for the safety of the village. Instead, they’re portraying the second chamber as Old Shep, who has to be taken back the land by his weeping master, holding his shotgun in one hand and his spade in the other. Who wants to pull that trigger?

Of course, politicians can’t go bald-headed and attack the Seanad for doing nothing because it’s they themselves that are inside in it, doing that same nothing. Hasn’t anybody thought this out beforehand? With everything that that needs doing in the country, with everything the Government have on their plate, why would they bother with the Seanad? Why are they looking for trouble?