General

By Frank Connolly. In the Spring of 1996, I met with Jim Gogarty at his home in north Dublin. Over a conversation lasting a couple of hours he told me of the day in June 1989, during a general election campaign, when he was present in the Swords home of then minister, Ray Burke. He said he witnessed his employer, Joseph Murphy Jr, and builder Mick Bailey each hand over a package which he believed contained €30,000 in cash in return for a promised 700-acre land re-zoning. The allegation ultimately resulted in Burke’s resignation as foreign minister and TD and to the establishment of the Planning and Payments tribunal headed by Justice Feargus Flood in the Autumn of 1997. The notes and taped transcript of my interview that night were provided to the tribunal, at its request, and used to substantiate the allegation, long in circulation, that Burke had received illicit contributions over many years in return for securing favourable and lucrative planning and re-zoning decisions at Dublin County Council. In its 2002 report, the tribunal found that the former minister had received other substantial rewards; and he was subsequently jailed for tax offences. When providing the transcripts of our interview, and acting under advice from lawyers for the Sunday Business Post where details of Burke’s misbehaviour were published during those years, I requested that contents that were not relevant to the terms of reference of the tribunal, and that included unproven and unsubstantiated allegations against other individuals, should be redacted before they were circulated to other interested parties. Among those individuals, as widely reported in recent years, was a different former minister, from a different party and a former, now deceased, Supreme Court judge whom Gogarty claimed had also received illicit payments from his employer, Joseph Murphy Sr. Not so widely reported was a claim by Gogarty that a third former minister, still active in politics, was also involved in swinging votes at the council to benefit certain developers. Whatever about my request, Flood and his legal team, in an effort to confine lines of inquiry to those relevant to the tribunal’s terms of reference and to avoid revealing the identities of individuals not immediately involved in its inquiries decided to redact some information from witness statements. This was the practice of the tribunal until 2005 when the Supreme Court ruled in an action taken by developer Owen O’Callaghan against the judicial inquiry, that all statements made by Tom Gilmartin, which had previously been redacted, should be provided in their entirety in order to test the credibility of his evidence. Gilmartin was, of course, the source of the explosive allegations of corruption against O’Callaghan and others, including Bertie Ahern and other prominent politicians. As a consequence of its earlier practice of withholding certain statements made in the interview with me, and presumably in private with the tribunal, and on the basis of the Supreme Court ruling in the O’Callaghan case, Joseph Murphy and a co-director Frank Reynolds appealed a finding of obstruction and hindrance made against them, and in 2010 the Supreme Court quashed the tribunal decision to deny them their substantial costs. This decision led to a successful appeal by former assistant city and county manager, George Redmond, who was found to have been at the epicentre of a decades-long planning scandal, against the findings of corruption made against him. He and others including Burke, JMSE and the Bailey brothers had had adverse findings made against them, based on Gogarty’s evidence. Other findings of wrongdoing against Redmond, Burke and others arising from different modules of the tribunal remain in place. The final report published in 2012 dealing with the Gilmartin allegations and the findings against O’Callaghan, Ahern, Padraig Flynn and a host of others, still stands. “Another fine mess” is how the Irish Times editorialised recently when recounting the sequence of events that have unfolded. But the newspaper’s concern, and that of its contributor David Gywnn Morgan, professor of law at UCC, was not directed against the tribunal but rather at the manner in which some judges of the higher courts have unpicked decisions made by public inquiries. The professor suggested that “the judiciary has applied its own standards to very different and particular institutions without regard to the different context”. Some of the learned colleagues have also had ‘skin in the game’ in that they have a long history of antagonism, even before they were appointed to the bench, towards the planning tribunal, in particular. A number of senior barristers argued back in 1998 that the tribunal’s sweeping orders of discovery against well-heeled banks, businessmen, lobbyists and politicians were hardly justified by claims that a few councillors had pocketed small sums in return for planning favours. Now we know that the corruption was more endemic and went far higher up the political and commercial food chain – and that most of those involved have walked away with their bank accounts in rude health. •

By Frank Connolly. The Syriza victory in Greece has its foundations in the polarisation of that society following the collapse of the economy in the great financial crash of 2008/2009, and since. It is rooted in the implosion of the traditional parties, and in particular of Pasok, the social democratic party that dominated the Greek left, and many governments, in the post-dictatorship era. The emergence in a few short years of an alliance of former communists, euro communists, radical economists, trade unionists, community organisations and cultural groups to displace the traditional Left, and take political power, has now inspired similar movements across Europe, notably with Podemos in Spain, but also now in Ireland. Its plan is to renegotiate its huge debt burden by swapping it for bonds linked to growth, among other anti-corruption and tax-raising measures. Hardly revolutionary and well short of burning all bondholders, but enough to bring the wrath of the austerity-mongers in the ECB, on to the charismatic Alexis Tsipras and his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. On the commemoration of his death in January 1947 of that great socialist and subversive, Jim Larkin, the president of SIPTU, Jack O’Connor, recently told the crowd assembled in Glasnevin cemetery that it was an opportune time, in the wake of the welcome and dramatic Syriza victory, for the Left in Ireland to cultivate and harvest a similar ambition, a year ahead of a general election and the centenary of the Easter Rising. He also set out the parameters of a possible charter of principles and policies which could underpin a Left platform on which different parties, organisations and individuals could combine to offer an alternative government. “Dramatic possibilities are now opening up here in Ireland as we approach the centenary of the 1916 Rising. At this extraordinary juncture, history is presenting a ‘once in a century’ opportunity to reassert the egalitarian ideals of the 1916 Proclamation which were suffocated in the counter-revolution which followed the foundation of the State. It is incumbent upon all of us Social Democrats, Left Republicans and Independent Socialists who are inspired by the egalitarian ideals of Jim Larkin and James Connolly to set aside sectarian divisions and develop a political project aimed at winning the next general election on a common platform, let’s call it ‘Charter 2016’. This would entail the most difficult and challenging intellectual and political task because, when the moment arrives, t the proportion of the electorate who will decide the outcome will demand to know what we are for, as distinct simply from what we are against, and we have to be able to answer the question comprehensively”. O’Connor set out the challenges facing those with different perspectives and positions on issues ranging from taxation and spending to stealth charges, sustainable economics, industrial policy, social welfare and Europe that could easily scuttle any such project at birth. He warned that having a wish list of demands would not suffice and that any proposals would be scrutinised in forensic detail by those who will claim that such a Left alliance could never present a viable taxation and spending programme. You can’t rebuild the health service, eradicate housing lists, provide proper pensions while abolishing all the unpopular taxes and charges at the same time, he said. But he also argued that where there is a will, and more importantly a necessity, to provide the hard-pressed citizens – arguably the majority – of the country with the prospect of a radical, Left-leaning government, then there must be a way. “What the first Left of Centre government in the history of the State could do is to reassert the interests of the common good, shifting the balance decisively in favour of working people and those who depend most on public services”, he said. Welcoming his call, Declan Kearney, the national chairperson of Sinn Féin (which will almost certainly comprise the single largest left-wing bloc in the next Dáil), said: “There is an obvious need for a democratic, inclusive and politically non-sectarian discussion among all those genuinely committed to opposing austerity, supporting equality, social solidarity, and the protection of citizens’ welfare. Those who recognise the need for an alternative political and economic vision and strategy across the island have a responsibility to discuss how that can be brought forward”. Kearney had earlier called for the opening of formal discussions between “ourselves, progressive independents, the trades union movement, grass roots community organisations, and others on the Left in Ireland, North and South….on the ideas and strategies which will ensure the future election of a Left coalition in the South dedicated to establishing a new national Republic”. Crucially, he acknowledged that, while Sinn Féin wants to be in government to advance republican objectives, it cannot achieve this without “a new critical mass for change” that “presupposes increased unity within progressive, Left, national and democratic opinion”. The challenge is to find areas of common interest and agreement rather than focus on differences, and there are potentially many. The future of Europe, the North, climate change, environmental, foreign policy, corporation, water, property and other taxes and charges, democratic reform, gay and reproductive rights, migration, local government funding, are just a few. Over recent months and years others on the Left, in the various progressive think-tanks and trades unions and through the media, have elaborated the broad principles and strategies, including detailed economic, spending and taxation, and jobs- and-investment proposals that could underpin such a Charter for change. There is no need to reinvent the wheel in this regard, only to find agreement on workable solutions and proposals that do not pander to the dogmatic or the egocentric. There is an urgent need, however, given the imminence of a general election, for those who share the ambition for a government of the Left, and who recognise the opportunity presented by the national and European political climate, to act. It is evident that the likely headcount of left-wing TDs after the election, based on current trends, and including SF, Labour and