Kevin Brannigan

On the last programme of the “Bertie” series on RTE there was a clip of Mary Harney claiming credit for deregulation and tax cuts – the realisation of the PD agenda. And there was another clip of Charlie McCreevy acknowledging that without the PDs in government he would never have been able to achieve the depth of the income tax cuts he accomplished. There is an irony (and a justice?) that such snippets should be broadcast just at a time when the horrors of the deregulated market should have been best exposed and when the consequences of the McCreevy/PD tax cuts have been exposed. The deregulation agenda has resulted in the financial crisis that now has plunged the world into a depression and with it plunged hundreds of millions of people worldwide into misery and destitution. Deregulation spurred bankers, stockbrokers, financiers and other wide boys into a frenzy of greed, unperturbed by the recklessness and inevitable failure of the mortgage bubble. The McCreevy/PD tax cuts has undercut the tax base of this State and consigned it to a prolonged economic downturn, unrelieved by the kind of stimulus that the British and the incoming Obama administration in the US are about to deploy. But the iniquity of the PD presence in Irish politics and its legacy is far more extensive than that. It may seem harsh to write in such damning terms about a party that was founded by Des O’Malley who had/has fine qualities of courage, persistence and forensic analysis. I recall how in the mid-Seventies as Opposition spokesperson on Industry and Commerce, “marking” Justin Keating, one of the supposed intellectual heavyweights of the Fine Gael-Labour Government led by Liam Cosgrave, he unpicked with painstaking precision the deal Justin Keating did with Bula on the Navan zinc deposit, committing the State to an investment that proved disastrous. Justin Keating never recovered from that mauling and lost his seat in the following election. He brought the same talents to bear in exposing the similarly disastrous export credit insurance scheme that Albert Reynolds managed in the period 1987-1989 largely to the benefit of Larry Goodman. It was that persistence that led to the establishment of the Beef Tribunal, now remembered as a massive waste of public monies – and indeed the contrived opacity of the report seems to justify that verdict – but which, in its dense detail, exposed an extraordinary execution of a bizarre policy (we have to be careful here!). Des O’Malley had (I am sure also has) fine talents of intellect, determination and insight but there was a missing bit to do with an appreciation of the vicissitudes of people less fortunate than himself and his class, a missing bit which could have been contained (somewhat) within Fianna Fail had he ever become leader – had he hung in there almost certainly he would have become leader and Taoiseach at some stage. But in the unregulated new terrain of the Progressive Democrats that missing bit became defining. He could not have done it on his own. He was ably assisted by Mary Harney and Michael McDowell. Odd, perhaps, in the case of Mary Harney, for she seemed to have some of the milk of human kindness about her (in her own blinkered eyes she retained that quality). The PDs became more rapacious after Des O’Malley left the leadership. Under Mary Harney and then Michael McDowell, they targeted every vulnerable group in society, distressing the lives of tens of thousands, starting with single mothers in the 1997 election campaign (Mary Harney’s target), going on to Travellers (Michael McDowell cut grants to traveller movements), old people (the attempt by Mary Harney to legalise retrospectively the theft of the social welfare benefits of old people and then the recent medical card debacle), mentally-ill people (the location of the new Central Mental Hospital at a prison site at Thornton Hall, with the resultant additional stigma attaching to mental illness), and asylum seekers. That latter, as represented in the citizenship referendum and constitutional change in early 2004, was an act of deep cynicism. Michael McDowell argued for this on the basis that there was a double “loop-hole” – pregnant women asylum seekers were coming to Ireland to give birth here, so that their children would be Irish citizens (on the basis of the constitutional change brought about following the Good Friday Agreement) and, on that basis, to claim asylum for themselves and their spouses. The second “loophole” being that such women and their spouses would then be able to claim the right of residency in any EU Member State. Both claims were false. The Supreme Court had closed off the first “loophole” in a shocking judgment in January 2003 and the second “loophole” was a mirage. But the effect of that initiative was to bring the asylum issue on to centre stage during the European and Local elections of 2004, with all the attendant racial undertones and racial overtones – and predictably so. But it is the part the PDs played in intensifying the inequality in Irish society that has been its most pernicious legacy. Ireland is now one of the most unequal societies in the developed world and, as a direct consequence of that, the number of premature deaths arising from such inequality is in excess of 5,000 a year. This has been established by Roth Barrington, former head of the Health Research Bureau, on the basis of a report by the Institute for Public Health, “Inequalities in Mortalities”, a report entirely ignored by the PDs and, notably, by Mary Harney, as Minister for Health. Des O’Malley certainly would be discomforted by the realisation that the PDs were responsible, albeit indirectly, for the deaths of far, far more people that the IRA ever was. That is the legacy of the PD. By Vincent Browne

The notion that Bertie Ahern would assist a group of US venture capitalists to take a chunk of equity in the major Irish banks is as risible as it is dangerous for the economic future of the country. His role in advising Drumcondra- born Nick Corcoran of the Mallabraca consortium surfaced on the same day that Ahern joined banker, Sean FitzPatrick, of Anglo-Irish Bank to give a talk on the future economic prospects of county Wicklow. Given the roles of both men in the rapid deterioration of the national and public finances one would have thought they would have maintained a dignified silence and allowed the government and others to get on with restoring some stability in the most difficult of financial climates. Ahern and Fitzpatrick in their separate ways fed the monster that was the property boom, and failed to anticipate the inevitable downturn. Ahern enriched a small number of property developers and builders, including some major contributors to his party and his personal organisation through reckless politics while FitzPatrick continued his bank’s equally reckless lending that brought Anglo-Irish to the verge of collapse in September last. The notion that US-based JT Flowers and the Carlyle Group, with its links to the Bush family and a long line of suspect oil industry and military contracts, would use Middle Eastern money to take a slice of Bank of Ireland is ominous and is a certain precursor to the short-term asset stripping of one of the country’s leading financial institutions. Of course the boards and management of the banks and building societies as well as inept regulators have made a glorious cock-up of their responsibilities, and cleaned up with extortionate bonus schemes at the same time, but that is no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Finance minister, Brian Lenihan, will soon reveal the nature of his plans to recapitalise the banks and clearly there is resistance in the financial institutions to any challenge to their previous position as the most powerful untouchables of Irish society. Together with the clique of super rich property speculators and developers they have wielded an inordinate influence on the Fianna Fáil-led administrations over the past decade and more. They are seeking to avoid any of the pain associated with the government’s investment of billions of Euro of tax-payers money in the recapitalisation process while Cowen and Lenihan need to ensure that the risks involved carry a future return for the people’s money. Taking equity in the banks on the basis of a guaranteed payback when the recovery comes is the only fair and moral way of ensuring that the interests of the tax-payer and the pensions of the future are protected. There is some indication that the current crisis has forced the government to make correct decisions that some years ago would have been unthinkable. The levy of 3% on those earning in excess of €250,000 a year is a progressive move that would not have been endorsed by the centre-right FF-PD administration just a year or two ago. Other measures in the Finance Bill are also welcome where they seek to target those who can most afford to pay and who for years have availed of the numerous loopholes open to well advised millionaires. But as sure as night turns to day the first instinct of the government has been to cut and burn across the most vulnerable in a way that has unleashed an unprecedented anger among medical card holders, students, teachers, the disabled and their carers. The cynical cuts to the budgets of the human rights commission, the combat poverty agency and the equality authority are aimed at silencing the voice of those who have been even moderately critical of government policy towards the poor and marginalised in recent years. There are even more insidious and largely invisible cutbacks at the front line of those dealing with the appalling problems thrown up by the endemic discrimination and inequity in Irish society. Hospital beds are being closed at an alarming rate and schools in the most marginalised communities are losing teachers and language assistants where they are most needed. Those tackling the latest heroin epidemic in the country‘s poorest areas through the various drugs partnerships have been starved of resources in the recent round of budgetary slashing. This will feed the culture of drugs and armed crime which is evidently out of control in several city areas. As opinion polls show a rapid downward spiral in fortunes for the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, and his party those seeking a more radical and realistic political alternative based on programmes of fairness and equality that enhance democracy and the quality of life of working people must hope for something better than that on offer from Enda Kenny and his Fine Gael friends. Does anybody really believe that Fine Gael can lead the country out of recession and towards a fairer society? Kenny’s latest solution is clearly based on further cuts in the standard of living aimed at those with least to give. His plan for a pay freeze and the abandonment of the partnership agreement must have sent shivers down the spine of Eamon Gilmore whose support Kenny will almost certainly require if he is to form an alternative government. The more confident Fine Gael become the more they shift to the right with austerity politics and a blinkered obsession with law and order that fails to recognise the underlying causes of, and solutions to, crime. Gilmore will undoubtedly be kingmaker after the next election which could well take place not long after the local and European polls next year. With the shape of Irish politics facing a radical reconstruction in the wake of the current economic crisis Enda Kenny has an opportunity to break the traditional hold of the two main right-wing blocs and develop a broader, progressive and democratic alternative. That requires a courage and determination which has been markedly absent from his predecessors over the past four decades. By

What a difference a decade makes! Since the opening of public hearings ten years ago, there has been a sustained effort to transform the perception of the Flood/Mahon tribunal into corruption from a role as ethical saviour of Irish politics to one of a glorious waste of public money. At the outset it was going to expose the depths of corruption in Irish political and corporate life, the role of senior and local politicians as well as public officials in distorting the planning process in Dublin and the manner in which payments totalling millions of pounds were made by businessmen in return for lucrative re-zonings. After its first four years of public hearings in the Printworks in Dublin Castle evidence was presented which resulted in Feargus Flood’s devastating, and hugely popular, report in September 2002 confirming systemic corruption involving former minister, Ray Burke, and a cast of business interests who were greatly enriched by decisions he forced through the political process. Exposed along with Burke was the former city and county manager for Dublin, George Redmond, and the multi-millionaire builders who bribed them, Michael and Tom Bailey. They paid almost €25 million in settlement of unpaid taxes to the Revenue as the result of the investigation while at least the same amount was collected from other errant business interests exposed by the inquiry. In the 588 days of public hearings since three new judges were appointed to the inquiry in 2002, more than 400 witnesses have given evidence which has provided a further insight into the manner in which the planning, and democratic, process was corrupted by illicit payments. A key figure involved in infecting and undermining the integrity of the political system, Frank Dunlop, opened the eyes of the tribunal and the watching public to an even more intriguing web of official deceit and bribery when he had his so called Road to Damascus conversion on Spy Wednesday, Easter week, 2000. Dunlop, a former Fianna Fáil press officer, provided a road map of other corrupt re-zonings across Dublin during the preparation of the 1993 County Development Plan which set out the land banks which would be allowed for residential, industrial and commercial development after consideration by the 78 elected members of Dublin County Council. The largest and most politically sensitive of these concerned the Quarryvale development in west Dublin, now the location for the Liffey Valley retail centre which is currently valued at almost €1 billion by its owners, Cork property developer Owen O’Callaghan and the Duke of Westminster. The closer the tribunal came to investigating the votes at Dublin County Council between 1991 and 1993 on Quarryvale and the allegations of corruption surrounding the development aired by Sligo-born Tom Gilmartin the louder, it found, was the political and media criticism of its work. The main, but not exclusive reason for this growing resentment towards the tribunal was the gradual entanglement of the country’s most powerful politician in the tribunal’s investigation into Quarryvale. Gilmartin had made a series of allegations, many dismissed as “outrageous” and “fantastic” by his detractors during a series of private conversations with tribunal lawyers from early 1998 when he was first contacted by the inquiry at his home in Luton. Later that year he spoke to a couple of journalists, including this writer, about his experience in trying to get two major business projects off the ground at Bachelors Walk in the city and at Quarryvale at a commercially-strategic site on the junction of the N4 and the planned M50 motorway. In his early statements he referred to his contribution to Fianna Fail in 1989 through party treasurer and environment minister, Padraig Flynn, who pocketed the money for himself; the demands for money by former west-Dublin Fianna Fáil TD, Liam Lawlor, for himself and his double act partner George Redmond in return for site maps at Quarryvale and other advices; a demand for £5 million by an unknown man in Leinster House in February 1989 just after a meeting with the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey and several cabinet ministers; the role of Dunlop in bribing named councillors; and a series of claims by his former business partner, O’Callaghan, of illicit payments to senior politicians including former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern. He also made several claims which were incidental to the Quarryvale issue, some of which proved to be inaccurate but others which were established to have a basis in fact as the Quarryvale hearings continued, with frequent interruption, between 2004 and October last. Among the more apparently outrageous claims was Gilmartin’s suggestion that the line of the Lee tunnel in Cork was routed to emerge at land owned by O’Callaghan at Mahon near the city and that his politicallypowerful partner had contributed to the “demise” of former Fine Gael defence minister, the late Hugh Coveney. Both of these claims were cited, among others, as reasons why the tribunal’s investigation into Quarryvale should be halted, in a minority 2007 Supreme Court judgment by Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman. There was also deep scepticism over the credibility of Gilmartin’s claim that Albert Reynolds was handed £150,000 by O’Callaghan after a Fianna Fáil fundraising dinner in Cork in March 1994 after which the then Taoiseach left in a helicopter in the early hours before connecting to a flight to the US for the annual St Patrick’s Day celebrations. But the real political tensions, and growing antagonism towards the tribunal, were provoked by Gilmartin’s description of alleged payments to the country’s most powerful political figure, Bertie Ahern, between 1989 and 1994. He claimed that he was told by O’Callaghan in 1990 that Ahern was paid £50,000 in return for his assistance with a land acquisition at Quarryvale a year earlier. He was told that Ahern received a further £30,000 in return for a promise by the then finance minister in 1993/94 that a rival retail development at Blanchardstown would not be granted a lucrative tax designation. In the course of his tribunal evidence in more recent years