Miriam Lord: Alan Shatter’s protests fuel residual rancour

Commission of inquiry into the findings of the Guerin report?

Bring it on!

Alan Shatter must have been delighted when he heard the news.

Wheel in that High Court judge immediately. Book the room. Hire the stenographers. Put it all on the TV.

Examine and investigate everything. Open up the files. Get all the information out into the open. Summon everyone involved and question them up and down and inside out.

So that the real story comes out.

And when it does, Alan Shatter will emerge as a man cruelly and disgracefully wronged by the Guerin report.

He will dance a vindication dance on the plinth. He will reach out his hand and take back his good name. He will crow. But in a pained kind of way.

And Enda Kenny and his Ministers will feel shame each time they have to look upon Alan's wistful, martyred face.

Oh, ye of little faith.

But at least that vindication, when it inevitably comes to one as convinced of his faultlessness as Shatter, will be some small consolation.

As too will be the gnawing despair at the heart of Enda's Government, tortured by the knowledge that they needlessly ditched the finest political and legal mind ever to cross the threshold of Leinster House.

And all because of the Guerin report.

As Alan sees it, Guerin did him down when he issued the findings of his examination into alleged Garda malpractice in the Cavan-Monaghan area. Guerin criticised certain aspects of the former minister’s handing of claims made by a Garda whistleblower.

Shatter, who protested he had done no wrong, was furious. He resigned from his department, apparently for the good of the Fine Gael party.

Then he quickly reached for his lawyers.

In the meantime, a full commission of inquiry was going to be established by the Dáil. Surely that would be the route to Alan’s salvation?

Except now it emerges that the former minister for Justice isn’t so keen for that inquiry to happen after all.

Or at least for it to happen with him as one of the principal cast members.

Legal letters

Since last September, Shatter has been firing off legal letters to the Taoiseach’s office arguing that his name shouldn’t be included in the terms of reference. Furthermore, the inclusion of references to his handling of the whistleblower’s claims could interfere with or prejudice a High Court action he is taking.

The Fianna Fáil leader was among the many who find the former minister's approach to the inquiry to be distinctly odd.

He quoted Shatter’s resignation letter to the Taoiseach sent in May of last year in which he told his boss “It is appropriate that these matters be the subject of a statutory inquiry.”

Really?

“Very odd,” mused Micheál Martin. But “that’s what he actually said in his letter.”

But it gets worse.

Micheál reminded Enda of another bit of Shatter’s parting letter.

Backbench mood

“And he said he was resigning because he doesn’t want to distract from the role of Government or, indeed, create any difficulties for the Fine Gael and

Labour

Parties in the period leading up to the European and local government elections.”

That mood didn’t last for too long as far for the former minister as he acclimatised to life on the backbenches.

Shatter’s intentions may have been pure in May, but “if he’s not too careful, he’ll continue to cause you difficulties right through to the general election”, Micheál happily predicted.

Never mind next year, Alan is causing huge ructions now.

Thanks to him, the Ceann Comhairle nearly lost his job this week.

On foot of legal advice, Seán Barrett consulted the Dáil rulebook and decided that it was best for the House not to debate the setting up of the inquiry. Instead, it would just go ahead with all original terms of reference, including the bits Alan Shatter wants removed.

This gave the Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin leaders great cause for outrage and an opportunity to stage a walkout from the chamber. Barrett was abroad last week for that little display. The Taoiseach, meanwhile, said the situation had nothing to do with him. The Ceann Comhairle is independent and had exercised his independence by ruling out a debate.

Then, just when it looked like the controversy might run out of steam, Seán Barrett surfaced on the radio on Friday morning and told Miriam O’Callaghan that the Opposition had it in for him.

He was speaking from an airport at the time, but not even the jets outside could have soared to the dizzy heights of high dudgeon that an overwrought Barrett managed to hit.

With his indignation climbing to an impressive falsetto, it sounded like he was auditioning for the Vienna Boys Choir.

But, as the Dáil’s impartial chair, he had also crossed a line with his comment about the Opposition. He had to row back. He tried with a lukewarm statement on Monday, but finally withdrew his remark in the Dáil yesterday. It had been delivered “in the heat of the moment”.

Incandescent

Anyone listening to him at the time couldn’t have disagreed. The man was incandescent.

Seán Barrett survived yesterday, but it was a humiliating climbdown for him.

There wasn’t any sign of Alan Shatter.

Just as well. It might have set Seán off again.

“Deputy Shatter writes about the separation of powers in the correspondence, but he is straddling, in a selective manner, both domains when it suits. I respectfully suggest he should make his mind up as to where his duty lies and consider why he was elected to this parliament in the first place” said Micheál Martin.

Martin and Adams graciously accepted Barrett’s clarification. And they called off the dogs.

After a few minor skirmishes in the chamber, the controversy was over.

The Taoiseach published all the letters sent on behalf of Alan Shatter and the replies from Government Buildings.

In fairness, they didn’t give him an inch.

But you’d have to wonder what Shatter is about. He’s hardly helping his Government colleagues, that’s for sure.