We live in a Republic in which all citizens are regarded as equal in the eyes of the law. All Irish citizens owe the Irish state what Article 9 of the Constitution describes as a fundamental duty of loyalty.
We do not live in some kind of post-communist Russian oligarchy where the great and the bad pose as the great and the good, live offshore for tax reasons, and in my opinion seek influence and control of the media.
Or so it seemed until last week.
The week marks the anniversary of the Moriarty tribunal report and the publication of the Mahon tribunal report.
It also marks the anniversary of the present Fine Gael-Labour coalition with the greatest majority in the history of the State opposed in the Dail by a weak and fragmented kaleidoscope of multi-coloured shards.
Does last week mark a new departure in terms of public standards and accountability? Read on.
We now understand, thanks to the Mahon report, that even the occupant of the highest office in the democratic system, that of Taoiseach, can behave in a way that betrays us all.
We look to the holder of that office to demonstrate clearly and beyond contradiction that the lessons of Moriarty and Mahon have been learned and taken to heart.
On Monday, as part of his St Patrick’s festival US trip, the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny — knowing well that the Mahon report was imminent — took to the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange for the ritual ceremony that provides a good photo-opportunity to convey the message internationally that Ireland is “back in business”.
He did so in the company of Denis O’Brien, a man who was found by the Moriarty tribunal to have spent years attempting to funnel hundreds of thousands of pounds in a clandestine way into the hands of Michael Lowry, who as we know was a member of the same Government as Enda Kenny when he last sat at the Cabinet table.
The event was sponsored by Irelandinc, an organisation sharing its address with a number of other businesses owned by Mr O’Brien. In short, it was effectively a Denis O’Brien-dominated event. Ian Hyland, editor of Business & Finance, was centre-stage on the balcony. I had not appreciated until I attended the recent Business & Finance Awards in the National Conference Centre that it too had been so intertwined with Mr O’Brien — who featured heavily in the very glitzy event — a tour de force for a publication which had very precarious finances until recently.
If this week is the new beginning in terms of political standards and accountability, we are in very, very serious trouble already.
If Mr Kenny has not read the Moriarty report, he had better read it now — slowly and carefully.
No Taoiseach with decent personal standards (which I still think Enda has) could have both carefully read the Moriarty report and stood on the NYSE balcony rubbing shoulders with Mr O’Brien in the week that marked the anniversary of Moriarty and the week when Mahon was to be published.
It isn’t as if all this happened by accident. Barry Maloney, a decent honourable man who had been in the past a fellow-promoter of Esat Digiphone and whose evidence to the effect that Mr O’Brien had confessed his intentions to make payments to Mr Lowry was accepted by the Moriarty Tribunal, had made public his unhappiness that Mr Kenny’s Government had invited Mr O’Brien to participate at the Dublin Castle Economic Forum last year.
He publicly declined to attend the event on that account. He wrote to Mr Kenny to tell him so. And if you check back on the Dail debate on the Moriarty report, there are hints that Mr Kenny and current Fine Gael ministers have not fully taken the report on board.
This week too, the Financial Times reports that Mr O’Brien plans to use the INM AGM in June to assume control of the company.
If that happens, a broad swathe of Ireland’s media, including national and regional papers and national broadcasters, will have fallen into his hands. In my opinion, We are going down a very dangerous road.
A very wealthy man who has repeatedly declared he doesn’t like tribunals, Mr Justice Moriarty or his report, and who has adopted foreign residence for tax reasons, will dominate our media.
A recent Seanad debate about the media revealed that Pat Rabbitte, the minister with responsibility for the media, reads and sometimes enjoys what I write in this paper.
On Thursday’s Primetime, Mr Rabbitte was clearly uncomfortable when asked about the implications of the balcony scene on Wall Street. He loyally extolled Mr Kenny’s personal standards. But he studiously avoided the elephant in the room.
The Denis O’Brien issue is not going away for Mr Rabbitte or for Mr Kenny.
There is still a small but influential clique in Fine Gael that has a hankering for mending fences with Mr Lowry and adopting Mr O’Brien as their cheer-leader. They know who they are.
This is where Mr Rabbitte and Eamon Gilmore come in. They lead the second party in Government. They have departmental responsibility for the media.
If FG is content to politically rehabilitate Mr O’Brien and hand over the bulk of our media to an oligarchs with a record such as his, so be it. If Labour is content for us to go down this road, God help us all.
The Oligarch is waiting in the wings.