If the party is to set itself apart from Fianna Fáil, ending the implicit culture of impunity would be a good start, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
IN NOVEMBER 2008, Enda Kenny responded to suggestions in this column that there was little substantive difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
Characteristically, he made his point by recounting a personal encounter: “‘Give me two differences,’ the questioner demanded. ‘Just two, between your lot and Fianna Fáil.’ The answer came without hesitation, ‘First, Fine Gael never had a corrupt leader. Second, we tell the truth about the economy.’”
The second of these is too vague to function as a clear point of distinction. It is the first that is crucial to Fine Gael’s self-image: we never had a corrupt leader. This badge of honour expresses Fine Gael’s underlying belief that it has been uniquely capable of disinterested service to the State. And it has the virtue of being true. Whatever their limitations, Fine Gael’s leaders have never sought to use their political positions to enrich themselves.
But two qualifications are necessary. First, being less corrupt than Fianna Fáil is a bit like being more monogamous than Elizabeth Taylor: the bar is not set very high. Second, Fine Gael’s pride in its own incorruptibility has an odd effect – it makes the party curiously blind to the compromising effect of money on politics. Since the thinking goes everybody knows we’re pure of heart, we can wallow in the mire without being tainted.
The Moriarty report should shatter that complacency. Fine Gael may not have had a Haughey-like leader. But it had, in Michael Lowry, a Haugheyesque chief fixer and fundraiser, cabinet minister and taoiseach’s confidant. And the party raised, with Lowry’s involvement, £1.3 million to clear its debts between 1991 and 1994.
Four important facts need to be recalled:
1 John Bruton knew, shortly after he appointed Lowry to his cabinet, that Lowry was a tax evader who had availed of the 1993 tax amnesty.
Bruton wrote to me last year to clarify a reference in my book Ship of Fools: “I first came to know he had availed of the amnesty after his appointment in his response to a form I asked all already appointed Ministers to fill out and give to me confidentially on their financial position so I could identify possible conflicts of interest.”
2 Fine Gael was much less upfront than it ought to have been about its massive fundraising campaign. In June 1992, Bruton gave sworn evidence to the beef tribunal. He was asked: “Are you as leader, or other politicians within your party, made aware of the particular political contributions made by a company or person?” He replied: “No. Now, that is not to say that one might not on a random basis become aware of contributions that are made by particular individuals, but there is no systematic informing of politicians of contributions . . . not even the party leader of the time.”
Later, Bruton said that while he might have received contributions personally at election times, “these contributions were not sought by me at all, entirely unsolicited, but people would just make contributions which would be used towards the local campaign, or passed on to party headquarters”.
While there was clearly no intention to mislead, this evidence gave an impression that we now know to be entirely false. John Bruton told the McCracken tribunal in April 1997 that he was “intensively involved” in seeking funds from about 100 business people between 1991 and 1994. Similarly, his predecessor Alan Dukes said that he had contacted about 200 business people seeking donations and met about a dozen of these for lunch or dinner.
We also know from Moriarty that in 1995 senior political figures – including Bruton and Lowry – were directly involved in raising funds from business donors. Their knowledge cannot have been confined to “random” awareness of “unsolicited” donations.
3 Fine Gael continued to be less than forthright on the issue with Moriarty. From February 1998, John Bruton knew that Fine Gael had received $50,000 from Telenor, which was part of the Esat consortium. To his credit, he ordered that it be returned.
The payment was, the tribunal reports, “secretive, utterly lacking in transparency and designed to conceal the fact of such a payment”. Fine Gael knew that an utterly unacceptable donation had been made in a decidedly fishy manner. Fine Gael kept this knowledge entirely to itself. It took media disclosures in 2001 to bring the episode to the tribunal’s attention. Otherwise, as Moriarty concludes, “the matter would have remained hidden from public knowledge”.
4 Fine Gael continues to be deliberately secretive about its sources of funding. The party contrived in 2009 to disclose not a single cent in donations, even though it spent heavily on local and European elections. This is a cynical exploitation of bad legislation. Fine Gael, like other parties, is not required to keep proper books or to publish annual accounts.
If any of these statements were true of Fianna Fáil, we know how Fine Gael would react. The Moriarty report should explode Fine Gael’s moral smugness. If it wants to be seen as different to Fianna Fáil, it has to prove it – by cleaning up the system and ending impunity.