The announcement by the Green Party's spokesman on the environment, Mr Ciaran Cuffe, that he will sell any "inappropriate shares" he owns in multi-national companies, represents a correct, if belated, decision.
The party he represents in Dáil Éireann has developed public support and established its political profile by insisting on adherence to the highest environmental standards and the protection of the environment.As a consequence, Mr Cuffe's private behaviour and the nature of his investments should be beyond reproach. His colleague and party chairman, Mr John Gormley, put it bluntly at the weekend when he said politics was nine-tenths public perception and the controversial shares should be sold.
Competing politicians should examine the record of their own parties before deciding to crow in public. In the recent past, elected Oireachtas representatives - even ministers - failed to declare their shareholdings in companies influenced by their decisions and this led to allegations of conflicts of interest that might benefit them financially. That is not the case where Mr Cuffe is concerned. He inherited this portfolio of shares from his mother about three years ago. And he made a full disclosure of the companies involved in the register of members' interests at Leinster House last January. Nobody has suggested that any decision he took as an elected representative benefited the companies involved.
There has been a growing world trend towards what has become known as ethical investment. That development emerged from moral and religious convictions in the US and from a desire by individuals and institutions to avoid investing in tobacco, gambling, pornography and the arms trade. More recently, protection of the environment and other social concerns have been grafted onto these issues. Investment fund managers are now frequently instructed by their clients to apply moral principles to the use of their money. Mr Cuffe transferred his business from the company that originally managed his inheritance. But he failed to dispose of shareholdings in a number of oil and pharmaceutical companies that have bad environmental reputations. That is about to change.
The current controversy sends an important message to all politicians that the standard of behaviour demanded of them in their public and private lives is becoming ever-more challenging. Transparency in politics is a considerable advance. But it comes at a price. Those politicians who seek to occupy the high moral ground - like the Green Party does on economic, social or environmental issues - are particularly vulnerable. Mr Cuffe may have learned that lesson the hard way.