Focus, Ireland, focus – 1990s not that important

Posted on Friday, March 25, 2011 at 03:54 PM

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Despite living in Ireland for 20 years, despite being Irish on both sides of my family, despite being married to an Irish woman and having Irish children and Irish in-laws and Irish friends, despite all that and more there are times when I'm completely dumbfounded by the Irish people. This is one of them.

Now first I should say that it may be that I'm misinterpreting the excessive focus of the Irish media and Irish Twitter users on the report of the Moriarty Tribunal. Yes, that again.

I hope I'm wrong and that the average Irish person is not really that exercised by the report's publication. I'd actually like to believe that for most people a bad result in Ireland's soccer game with Macedonia tomorrow night will actually cause them more distress. I hope that's how it is.

It's just that the radio and the Internet are still full of people fuming over the report, which is, after all, about a government tendering process that happened 15 years ago! And I haven't seen anything that says that the government got a bad deal. They wanted competition in the cellular phone market and they got it. Despite some of the more emotive claims, it bears no relationship to what happened at Enron.

Now maybe one of the losing consortia would have done a better job than eventual winners ESAT, but maybe not. What I remember of that time was how surprised I was at the speed with which the market was transformed. We went from one stodgy, overpriced, under-performing state-owned mobile phone company to a fully competitive market in next to no time. I don't think anyone could argue that ESAT didn't do what it was supposed to do.

Of course there are aspects of the deal that stink, but there are a lot of smelly government tenders in every country. It's important that government tenders be as transparent and equitable as possible, but at least in this instance we got a decent company and a competitive marketplace.

I'm not saying that if it can be proven that a politician took money from a businessman that he shouldn't be prosecuted, but I gotta figure if that were possible it would have happened long before now. You have to bear in mind that Judge Moriarty's report represents a (2,000 page) summary of 14 years of public hearings and his conclusions.

Public hearings. As far as I can tell all the facts presented in this report were already in the public sphere, which is why I can't quite understand why people are getting so worked up about it now. (Probably because most of the irate Twitter users were only in grade school when these facts were revealed the first time.)

There are real problems facing this country right now. If corruption is one of them - and I suspect no more so than in America or other western democracies - then let's learn the lessons from the mobile phone license tender and move on. Anything more than that - such that might even cause our new government to lose focus - would be far worse than just burying the whole report. We're in a big economic-financial hole and beating ourselves and each other over something that happened in the mid 1990s is totally counterproductive.

{Photo: TD (MP) Michael Lowry, who was at the center of the Moriarty Tribunal's investigation.}

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Cranleigh | Mar 30, 2011, 11:45 PM EDT

I agree we need to look to the future and not sail forever in 'puddles of the past'. Ireland is long overdue a whack of legislative and cultural changes to become an open, modern state. For instance, we would benefit big time from American-style libel laws. Unfortunately, the tendency has been to copy Britain which has failed to progress in this area. But given how the country has managed to face up to child abuse, drink driving and even smoking in pubs over the last decade, I think it can be done.

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Cranleigh | Mar 30, 2011, 06:33 PM EDT

Yank, a few specific additional points. Many of the facts were NOT in the public sphere until revealed by Moriarty and more could not be published until the report was out. Even now, you must have noticed how careful interviewers are with the principal persons of interest while they feel free to excoriate Moriarty and other judges. The Inquiry took so long partly because some of the people being investigated spent fortunes delaying things and you can hardly blame the judge for that. As for no harm done because the best team won, give me a break. If Ireland are playing Brazil in soccer and the Brazilians are caught bribing the ref, would the Irish simply accept defeat because they probably would have lost anyway? There are real problems facing the country but some of them ultimately derive from a lack of respect for the laws of the land shown by our banking and business elite. Moriarty and the other Inquiries on business matters since 1988 (which feature many of the same people) should be seen as a wake-up call which, if properly understood, can help, not hinder, Ireland's recovery.

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TheYank | Mar 30, 2011, 06:00 PM EDT

Cranleigh,

Funny enough when I first started this post it was all about how important the 1st Amendment is and how important it is not to make libel and defamation laws too strict. Post got too long so I cut that bit, figuring I'd return to it.

What I'm saying is, yes, you are right. I think the Moriarty report contains many important lessons we need to learn, but dwelling excessively on who should be punished for what happened in the 90s is a waste of time and possibly destabilizing for our new govt. I wish it would go away.

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Cranleigh | Mar 30, 2011, 05:16 PM EDT

Yank, I think you may be taking too generous a view of Ireland which is not all bad when most foreigners are tearing strips off us. Yes, corrupt pols and businessmen are alive and well in very country but in the US there are some important safeguards against scoundrels that we Irish lack. Like freedom of the press. Dodgy deals get written about fairly quickly because of your First Amendment. In Ireland, it’s extremely dangerous to publicly allege anything about a rich person that hasn’t been proven in court. Because of the Moriarty Tribunal, people can now say things in public and on the internet (and note I’m not even going to repeat what has been said lest some bewigged advocate takes umbrage) that they would only mutter last week for fear of being ruined by litigation. Secondly, stateside there are consequences for white-collar crime. Rich businessmen go to jail for long stretches on a regular basis. Not so in Ireland. We prefer the golden circle system that puts an elite above the law. Thirdly, no transparency. Our business elite is largely exiled from Ireland's tax system despite the fact that their wives and chiildren live in Ireland. Look at America's wealthiest people - Gates, Buffett, the Waltons etc. The vast majority are but one generation from a publicly listed company that beat the world fair and square. Contrast that with most of our oligarchs, Michael O'Leary excepted, who claim to live in odd little places offshore and whose companies are privately owned. So, yes, the Tribunals have been appallingly slow and expensive but they have shown us some very dangerous and destructive practices at the heart of the Irish establishment. In many ways, Ireland is still living in the Seventies let alone the Nineties. I can only hope that American-style reforms are carried out that will make such Inquiries a thing of the past.

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SeamusMor | Mar 27, 2011, 12:33 PM EDT

O'Brien and Lowry sound like two Chicago cronies rigging bids! Here's how it works when a bid goes out to fix a wall at the White House: The contractor from Ohio surveys the job using a tape measure and calculator and says he needs $400 for materials, $400 for labor, and $100 profit for himself, $900 total. The contractor from Tennesse goes through a similar routine sizing up the job and says he can get the materials for $300, and his crew will do the work for $300, plus $100 profit, for a total of $700. The contractor from Chicago says $2700 without measuring anything. The White House staffer handling the bids is surprised and asks how he came up with a bid so much higher than the other two. The Chicago contractor leans toward the official and whispers " A thousand for me, a thousand for you, and we hire the guy from Tennesse to do the job."

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antoman | Mar 26, 2011, 08:45 AM EDT

Lowry is a business man and as such should have no place in politics.Were it cat food he was manufacturing the people of Tipperary would eat it themselves for breakfast,dinner and supper.,and vote him in again.

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Towngate | Mar 26, 2011, 07:27 AM EDT

Hi Yank. Just because it is in the past that does not make it irrelevant. Being so Irish we are bombarded with 'The Brits! 'The Troubles!' 'Recession after recession' 'The Last FF Government'even the ' EU/IMF Bailout request' ... all in the past! You would think the 'heros of Easter Week' were alive and walking about today - the way some people carry on. Anyway, thats being Irish,I suppose and the Emerald tint won't wash off any of us.

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