After weeks of revelations about his extensive property interests, and consistently inadequate responses from the man himself, Robert Troy’s resignation had become inevitable. No government can bear such prolonged focus on the conduct of one of its members. Had the now-former minister of state done a better job of handling the legitimate questions he faced, he might have clung on for longer, but even that seems unlikely. Taoiseach Micheál Martin may not have asked outright for his resignation, but some things do not need to be said.
Troy’s departure is already the subject of revisionist history. A fanciful incipient counter-narrative has it that his status as a landlord was the cause of his downfall. Troy himself, in his resignation statement, referred to the “vilification” of landlords by some journalists and politicians and said he would not apologise for being one.
[ Robert Troy profile: A hard-working politician and unapologetic landlordOpens in new window ]
The housing crisis does indeed go to the heart of the Troy controversy, if not necessarily in the way he appears to believe. One of the clear divides in Irish society is between those who own property and those who do not. The political establishment is stacked with the former. Indeed, almost 80 TDs and Senators are landlords or land owners. At a time when one of the key policy debates is how to regulate the relationship between landlords and tenants, it is self-evidently important that the public know the scale and nature of ministers’ and TDs’ stakes in that debate. Yet Troy saw nothing wrong in raising the issue of State funding to the rental assistance payment scheme in the Dáil when he was in receipt of the support – a fact that he only disclosed this week.
Troy did not have to resign because he was a landlord. He had to resign because he, the minister of state responsible for corporate regulation, failed to fully comply with the less-than-onerous regulations the State imposes on elected politicians in the interest of ethics and good governance. TDs are legally obliged every year to fill out a form outlining their financial interests. Troy’s was missing some key facts about his properties and his business dealings. When his omissions were revealed, he was forced to make detailed amendments. And as the questions piled up, he chose to answer only some of them, and even then rather unsatisfactorily. Carelessness is not the defence Troy appears to believe it is – not when the rule he flouted was so fundamental.
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If any good can come of the mess Troy created, it should be a strengthening of the State’s ethics laws. Year after year, governments offer the same platitudes about conduct in public life. And year after year, the same governments ignore calls from the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) for legislative changes that would make it work more effectively. That failure does politicians no favours. And it actively corrodes public trust in the State itself.