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 Public Accounts Committee is a Toothless Tiger

First published in the Western People on Tuesday.

A member of the PAC yesterday

Mr John McGuinness TD, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Oireachtas Éireann, has been having a hot time of it lately in the pages of the Irish Independent. Why is neither here nor there at the moment, but a rumour has been floating around that there have been midnight meetings at crossroads by persons unknown who fear McGuinness and his Committee investigating the Bank Guarantee, and those same persons unknown are leaking to the Independent to stop him at any cost.

Most rumours are to be taken with a pinch of salt. We may need the full packet for this particular one.

There are two reasons for not giving this theory the time of day. The first is that Oireachtas Committees aren’t quite the Irish version of the Spanish Inquisition that they are often portrayed to be. This was brought home by Alan Dukes’s appearance before the Finance Committee during his time as chairman of the ghost ship that used to be known as Anglo-Irish bank.

Under strident questioning from then-Senator Shane Ross, Dukes made it clear that he knew very well that Ross and his committee were all bark and no bite, and underlined that by witheringly remarking  that he was “not here to write a column for the back page of the Sunday Independent.” Dukes had no intention of helping Ross make headlines, and there was nothing Ross could do about it except sit there, fuming. When Dukes puts you in your box, that’s where you stay.

The other reason that McGuinness and the PAC will never investigate the Bank Guarantee is that there no history of such accountability in the history of the state. A parade of the great and the good marching in and out of the committee, giving their version of what happened on the night of the bank guarantee? Not before Hell freezes over.

It would certainly be interesting to find out just how that deal happened. The late Brian Lenihan himself did his best to get his side of the story out before his sad and untimely death, and his family have been burnishing his legacy since. Against that, there are many conspiracy theories about fat cats and golden circles being protected at the expense of the poor eejit who is currently paying a €400k mortgage on an €80k house. That man would like some answers.

But, God help him, he’ll never get them. There is no culture of going on the record in Irish politics. It doesn’t suit our nature. It’s not what we do.

In recent times, we have had the tribunals. What was the function of the tribunals? It wasn’t to discover funny business. Even the least-informed of the dogs in the street could tell there was funny business going on during the boom. The purpose the tribunals served in going on for so very long was twofold.

Firstly, they made truckloads of money for legal profession in providing representation that witnesses didn’t need, those witnesses being immune from prosecution by anything said in the course of a tribunal.

The real legacy of the tribunals is that they were a slow release of highly toxic news that, if released in one go, could have been cataclysmic for the political system and caused a root and branch reform. But over seventeen long years, no one revelation has the power to cause that sort of upset. By the end, first-time voters were going to the polls who could not remember a time when there weren’t tribunals. They were just background noise at that stage, a faint buzzing in the distance that, while certainly annoying, were no reason to go rocking boats.

Not only does Irish political culture not do inquiries, neither does it do going on the record. This is illustrated in a telling story in Frank Dunlop’s memoir of his time as Government Press Secretary, Yes, Taoiseach. Dunlop is disgraced currently, but his memoir is a very interesting and seldom-told account of just what goes on in the corridors of power.

Dunlop was originally hired by Jack Lynch as press secretary. When Lynch resigned in 1979, Dunlop called in to see him as Lynch was clearing out his office. Dunlop found Lynch was filling great big plastic bags full of notes and documents from his time as Taoiseach.

“Will you use those in your memoirs Taoiseach?” asked Dunlop. Lynch laughed at him. Memoirs, indeed. Writing memoirs was the very last thing on Lynch’s mind. All those notes were going into the bin and from there to sweet oblivion.

It would have been nice if Jack Lynch thought differently about his time in office, and all the changes he had seen. He had such an interesting life, he was such an extraordinarily popular figure and he governed at a time of great crisis on the island.

But there is no history of going on the record in Irish politics. Deals are done when they are done and the details are kept firmly within the power triangle of Leinster House, the Shelbourne Hotel and Doheny and Nesbitt’s Public House.

And that is why there is no plot to silence John McGuinness and the Public Accounts Committee. Because even though the public would dearly like to know what happened on the night of the bank guarantee, the public really don’t have a say in it.

There is no tradition of openness in Irish public life. Why would a reliable and definitive account of the bank guarantee ever emerge if we still don’t know what happened in the Arms Trial, forty-three years ago? Behind the twinkle in the eye and the lovely, lilting voice, what exactly did the Taoiseach know about gunrunning to Northern Ireland? That’s accountability in Irish public life.