“Very” might be the typical response. And as we celebrate St Patrick’s Day, there is much talk about a modern day banishment of the snakes blamed for our economic crisis – bankers, regulators, developers, politicians, planners. But in reality, Ireland is perceived to be a relatively honest country. Transparency International publishes what is probably the most highly regarded index on corruption and the latest survey for 2010 claims we are “very clean” – indeed, with a rating of 8.0, we are the 14th “cleanest” country in the world ahead of the UK, US, France and Germany. We are considerably ahead of Spain at position 30 with a score of 6.1, Portugal at position 32 with a score of 6.0 and well ahead of Greece at position 78 with a score of 3.5. So as PIGS go, we are quite clean.
Greece is combating its ingrained culture of graft as part of its engagement with the EU/IMF bailout. In Greece they have a special word for what we would call graft – fakelakia, pronounced fa-Kay-Likya. And it is endemic in Greek society. Want to get a medical procedure fast-tracked at your state hospital? The going rate is €150-7,500. Want to make the tax inspectors go away? The tariff there is €300-15,000. And if you really want that planning permission application to succeed the Greek menu says that will cost you €200-9,000. Other inconveniences in life like traffic infractions, poor examination results, having to interview for jobs are more a la carte. Still think that Ireland is “very” corrupt?
The domestic perception of corruption has been exacerbated by several tribunals and commissions, both for the results of same and in some cases by the operation of the investigations themselves. We have had four significant “financial” tribunals in the last two decades.
(1) The “Beef” Tribunal was established in 1991 to investigate tax evasion, malpractice and regulatory weaknesses in Ireland’s beef industry. It investigated in detail what was described as the unhealthy relationship between former Taoiseach Charles Haughey and “beef baron” Larry Goodman and examined the government’s role in providing export insurance to Larry Goodman in respect of beef sales to Iraq. It concluded in 1994 and its results were debated in the Dail on 1st and 2nd of September, 1994. It uncovered tax evasion and malpractice.
(2) The Moriarty Tribunal was established in 1997 to investigate the financial affairs of former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey and Deputy Michael Lowry. 14 years later and the Tribunal still hasn’t concluded its work, Charles Haughey died in 2006, the Tribunal has cost over €38m to administer so far and the final total cost has been estimated at €100m (UPDATE: 23rd March, 2011. Perhaps a quarter of a billion euros according to some sources). In the Irish general election last month, Michael Lowry was returned again as the deputy for his constituency of Tipperary North where he again topped the poll.
(3) The Mahon (also known as Flood) Tribunal was also established in 1997 to investigate corrupt payments to politicians in respect of building planning decisions in Dublin. 14 years later and the Tribunal still hasn’t concluded its work, the Tribunal has cost over €81m to administer so far and the final cost may well be substantially more.
(4) The McCracken Tribunal was established in February 1997 and had concluded in July 1997. Its purpose was to investigate secret payments by businessman Ben Dunne to former Taoiseach Charles Haughey and Deputy Michael Lowry. The Tribunal gave rise to the Moriarty Tribunal (see above) but is also noted for giving rise to criminal charges against Charles Haughey which were not progressed as a result of a controversial decision which judged that Haughey would not get a fair trial. Michael Lowry was found to have evaded tax when he received a payment from businessman Ben Dunne for an extension on his home in the 1990s,
In addition to the above tribunals, in the past two decades we have had three investigations into abuse of children by the Catholic Church, one of which, the Ryan Commission took 10 years to complete, we have the six-year long Morris Tribunal investigating the conduct of the Gardai (police) in County Donegal, the Travers Report which concluded that there had been systematic overcharging by the State of nursing home residents and two reports into Hepatitis C contamination and an investigation into the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974. UPDATE 6th June, 2011. There is also the Smithwick Tribunal which was launched in 2005 to investigate possible Garda collusion in the killing of two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers in 1989; in June 2011, the Dail sought to impose a time limit on the work of the Tribunal demanding a final report by November 2011. The cost and length of time taken to complete the work of the Mahon and Moriarty Tribunals have, in my opinion, severely undermined public confidence.
Beyond the above, there are strong feelings that white-collar criminals escape justice scot-free – that we lack the legislation, the law enforcement and judicial systems to deal with white-collar crime – and that political party funding is still too loose. There are commitments by the new government to address both these issues. There are outstanding transparency issues such as the absence of a house price database and public cadestre of property ownership, though again there are fresh political commitments in this area which are also enshrined in our bailout deal. More widely, there is the perception of Ireland still being a small country where your family, background and connections count more than merit in terms of career and social advancement. The same could be said of most countries and my own view is that we are not all that bad. Transparency International would seem to agree.
And so on this, our national day of celebration, perhaps it’s worth remembering that there are some fine aspects to this country, relatively speaking, which the current difficulties can’t denigrate. And which might help build the basis for our recovery. A happy St Patrick’s Day to you all!
UPDATE: 22nd March, 2011. The Moriarty Tribunal has published what its sole member Mr Justice Michael Moriarty calls the report which “concludes the substantive inquiries of this Tribunal”. The report is published in two parts – part one and part two. Remember that there had been a previous interim report in 2006. The report published this morning runs to 2,400 pages – RTE is providing some initial reporting here.
UPDATE: 22nd January, 2012. The Mahon Tribunal is set to report in coming days or weeks. The latest estimate of the cost of the Tribunal is €250m+.
NAMA Wine Lake 
I don’t know: corruption is what the previous generation got caught at, activity that has now been declared illegal, while the dodgy activities of the current generation are OK because they are not illegal.
Take, for instance, Section 46 of the Merchant Shipping (Investigation of Marine Casualties) Act 2000. The first 45 sections are all about the investigation of marine casualties, as you would expect. Section 46 is the final section:
[i]Advances by Minister for marine or natural resources based tourism or heritage projects.
46.—The Minister may, from time to time, with the consent of the Minister for Finance, advance to a person, out of monies provided by the Oireachtas, for the purposes of marine or natural resource based tourism or heritage projects, such sums, by way of grant or loan, as the Minister may determine and upon such terms and conditions as he or she considers necessary.[/i]
I have asked two departments what advances have been made under this section; I await a reply from one of them (the other says it’s not responsible: the confusion is a result of the reallocation of elements of ministerial portfolios).
Now, quite clearly, a minister who made a grant to a person for a marine heritage project would not be breaking the law: would in fact be carrying out the wishes of the Oireachtas. But I regard the very existence of that provision as an affront: a way of enabling a minister to hand out money without any form of analysis. And the culture and systems that allowed such a provision to be included are, I suggest, in need of reform.
bjg
Corruption is endemic in Irish life and it is not the “big” corruption pedaled by city hall that is the most corrosive it is the appointment to boards and quango’s made by the myriad of “little golden circles” which look after their own interests without fail. That’s why we have queues out the doors of hospitals and that is why nobody can access the courts without going through the golden turnstile of the law monopoly.
Academia in Ireland can be bought, are bought and are traded the same way as you buy a tin of beans in Spar and the big lie is that they are worth twice their counterparts across the water. Before someone accosts me with their exceptional hard luck story, let me say that I would like to see cuts from the top down in all third level colleges and that these colleges should not be allowed under any circumstances to push their costs onto students.
The unions have become totally corrupt to the point where the decisions that bankrupted this country were substantially made because they needed a “deal” which would see them through, what they thought would be a severe recession, but which quickly turned into a surrender of our economic sovereignty. Stubborn marxist pathologies inbuilt to most of these unions is contributing in no small measure to our road to default. One crowd are propping up capitalism by socialising losses and the other crowd are propping up themselves by socialising the 40% of their salaries that need to be borrowed amongst the taxpayer at large and by burdening their own children with the cost of their salaries. All this will end when the Germans say Nein!
Since this crisis unfolded we have had one dodgy report after another from the likes of the ESRI the CB and even our new regulator it is not that they don’t have the data it is that political correctness and protectionism takes precedence over the truth. We have stumbled from blanket guarantees, NAMA, inadequate stress testing to wildly inaccurate estimates of bank losses which led us inexorably into the hands of the IMF/EU bailout and which is leading us inexorably to a sovereign default. The corruption manifest in all of this is the failure to eliminate the structural deficit not over 4 years but over one year when it became obvious where we were heading. The axe should have fallen straight on to the necks of public servants, quango’s and bankers but instead we opted for an elaborate scheme of slow motion default which will first see thousands of people loose their jobs and homes. Future generations are being stripped right now, of their basic rights and the country will be asset stripped at bargain basement prices which will lock us into a poverty trap from which it will be next to impossible to escape. We gave away our fishing rights. We gave away our mineral exploration rights. We gave away our minerals and our own government sold their own people into debt slavery before making them vote almost immediately to ratify Lisbon because they already felt “indebted or obligated to the ECB for credit. None of this, is in Irelands long term interest. It is not in Irelands long term interest to borrow money to overpay ourselves, it was not in our interest to give Merkel and Sarkosy practically unlimited power over the Irish people when previously we had a veto which they had no option but to abide by. Trust us and we will look after Ireland they said, then, stitched us up with an interest rate of 5.83% Yes, the ECB and our own CB are owed 183bn and are worried sick about loosing “their” money to what they regard as a fiscally delinquent country such as Ireland, which we are. Signing deals which were suicidal for this country is also another measure of our corruption and immaturity is blatantly manifest in the whinging and hand wringing we are now engaged in 24/7. Does anyone really believe that we can use a load of blarney (Noonan, “as long as it has the same fiscal effect”) to try and convince our European “partners” that they allowed us to be delinquent when for years they had to listen to us boasting about us being masters of the universe when it came to economic growth and how clever we were as a people and how our salaries might look stratospheric but sure we were Irish and therefore different to everybody else. Ireland is corrupt and when I see a special jail being built and filled with white-collar criminals I will change my mind but not until then.
It’s not just Ireland. We live in a a hugely corrupt and unaccountable age. When the history books are written, the post Cold War era will be seen as a wild west experiment in governance and law. Ireland will be a particularly interesting case study.
@OMF, the above entry concludes that relatively speaking, we are not very corrupt at all, at least using a recognised international comparison like that produced by Transparency International. Indeed we are one of the most honest countries in the world. If this is a “hugely corrupt and unaccountable age” would you like to suggest an age in Irish history when our affairs were less corrupt or more accountable than today? I think we beat ourselves up more than we have to sometimes.