The €2 million demand from the Criminal Assets Bureau for unpaid taxes has shattered the quiet of Ray Burke's retirement, writes Paul Cullen
'Ray who?" someone was heard to ask as the 60-year-old suburban man on our television screens this week closed his hall door and fumbled for the car keys.
It's a fair question, given that six years have passed now since Ray Burke resigned from the Cabinet and the rest of political life after one scandal too many. In the blink of an eye in October 1997, the once all-powerful political fixer from north Dublin bade farewell to the political world that had consumed his entire adult life up to that moment.
Unlike Liam Lawlor, whose departure from politics has done nothing to diminish his desire for publicity, Burke disappeared almost completely from the public gaze. With the exception of his enforced appearances before the Flood tribunal, he opted for silence and exile. While Lawlor promises to sort out Iraq, Burke has contented himself with quiet pints, games of cricket in north Dublin and driving holidays in the UK.
His erstwhile pals in Fianna Fáil have done little to disturb this peace. Once an integral cog of the party's administrative and election machine, Burke was quickly relegated to the status of a forgotten man.
Party colleagues who once hung on his every word started asking "Ray who?" long before anyone else.
Unlike Pádraig Flynn, another departed figure facing allegations, Burke did not create a political dynasty. The seat he inherited from his father and which remained in the family for 51 years was not passed on to one of his two daughters, who opted to keep out of politics. Some of his closest political henchmen, such as local councillors Pat Dunne and Cyril Gallagher, are dead. Fianna Fáil didn't even manage to hang on to the seat in the by-election that followed his resignation, although it has bounced back since.
There seems to be no one in the Fianna Fáil party today prepared to stand up for Burke or ward off further threats to his tattered reputation.
Besides, the present party has had enough controversies to deal with - some of them in north Dublin - without having to worry about the ghosts of yesteryear.
While Burke is very much a figure from the past, the legacy of his political achievements - and strokes - lives on. As minister for communications, his controversial foray into the world of commercial radio created the template that survives today, even if Century Radio itself flopped.
Like everyone else involved in the Northern peace agreement, a final assessment of his performance as minister for foreign affairs awaits the completion of the peace process. Meanwhile, his decision as minister for energy to liberalise the terms for granting licences to oil exploration companies may yet cost the State a heavy price, according to critics.
More and more, we can see now that the main purpose of being in power for a politician such as Burke was to retain power. Never an ideologue, he appears to have adopted positions on the basis of popular sentiment or personal resentment. He was for nuclear power in the 1970s; against Sellafield in subsequent decades. His attempt to strangle RTÉ by squeezing its revenue flow from advertising was motivated more by his dislike of the way the station's journalists interviewed Fianna Fáil politicians than by any grá for the free market.
Instead, power was about showing people who was boss. It was about steering influence - jobs, grants and the like - in certain directions. And it was about bringing the money in, for the party and the man.
No one did this better than Ray Burke. In the 1989 election campaign alone, he took in £117,000, enough to buy a country mansion in those days. Of this, £10,000 was remitted to Fianna Fáil headquarters.
Then there were Brennan and McGowan, the builder friends he shared with George Redmond. Between 1972 and 1984, the Mayo-born pair claimed to have raised £150,000 for the politician at a series of lavish events at Cheltenham and Ascot.
"On occasions the drink was flowing like a river," Joe McGowan waxed to the Flood tribunal.
But Burke was already on a retainer of £1,000 a month from the two builders, which was paid between 1975 and 1982. This money was paid to the politician's estate agency, but the tribunal said most of it ended up in his pocket.
Between these payments and further offshore payments made in the 1980s, the current value of the monies that flowed to Burke from Brennan and McGowan amounts to almost €2 million.
Burke made a settlement with the Revenue Commissioners when he came under investigation by the tribunal in the late 1990s. He also availed of the tax amnesty around this time, though the amount of undeclared income he disclosed was only £5,000.
As for the current demand by the Criminal Assets Bureau for €2 million in unpaid taxes, he can almost certainly afford it. While never super-rich or ostentatious in his lifestyle, he is understood to have a substantial investment portfolio and may even avoid being saddled with legal costs arising from this tribunal appearances.
However, Burke will want to know if this is the end of CAB's interest in him, rather than the start of a process that could lead to further demands and possible criminal charges.
At this stage, it is impossible to know whether the bureau has amassed the necessary levels of proof, or even the witnesses, to sustain a conviction in the courts. It is one thing for a tribunal chairman to point the accusing finger in an interim report and another to convince a jury that someone is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.