It was a year of tribunals. From political and business chicanery to the negligent use of infected blood products, the public was appalled and scandalised by an on-going succession of revelations involving gross political corruption and patent dereliction of duty that permeated the upper echelons of Irish society. The process has been painful and damaging to public trust and confidence in the short term. But, in the longer term, such investigations have the capacity to provide a constructive framework within which badly needed reforms can take place. The alternative would be to slip deeper into the malaise that was seriously affecting our rapidly developing society.
Investigations by the Flood and Moriarty tribunals into planning corruption and the process of government and into the financial affairs of Mr Charles Haughey and Mr Michael Lowry TD, continued to astound. The level of abuse in the Dublin region was outlined by Mr Frank Dunlop before the Flood tribunal in May when he revealed that in 1991/'93 he had paid £160,000 to 25 councillors in relation to the re-drafting of the county development plan. He was, in effect, the "bag man" for 14 developers and they arranged for him to have access to funds amounting to £420,000 to secure important rezoning and planning permissions. Then there were the nefarious activities of Mr George Redmond, former Dublin city and county assistant manager. And, at year's end, Mr Liam Lawlor TD was reluctant to explain where an estimated £2.6m in his various bank accounts had come from. At the same time, former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, was resisting efforts by Mr Justice Moriarty to hear evidence from him concerning the party leader's allowance and the fund for the late Brian Lenihan, on the grounds of ill health. In spite of that, further details of his unorthodox financial affairs and of the lax approach taken towards him by the Revenue Commissioners became public.
As confidence in politicians and the political process was shaken by revelations of financial fraud, the nomination of Mr Hugh O'Flaherty, a former Supreme Court judge, to a lucrative European Central Bank position generated public outrage. Mr O'Flaherty had been forced to resign under threat of Government impeachment a year earlier, because of his involvement in the Sheedy case. His nomination was regarded as flagrant political jobbery. Eventually, under severe public pressure and resistance from the bank itself, Mr O'Flaherty declined the nomination. As the economy grew by more than ten per cent, inflation took off. By year's end it had touched seven per cent. These developments - and a £2 billion-plus give-away Budget - were accompanied by increasingly sharp warnings from the Central Bank. And, as growth levels in the United States moved downwards, fears of a knock-on effect in the Irish high-tech sector and of possible negative equity in the housing market increased. Elsewhere, the Department of Justice was still struggling to contain an inflow of asylum seekers through the introduction of a voucher system of payments, the dispersal of persons throughout the State and the introduction of fingerprinting. Plans for their accommodation on board "floatels" were shelved because of public resistance. The numbers being killed on the roads rose again as the Government failed to deliver on its road safety programme. Waste management continued to generate controversy and the Minister for the Environment's proposal to charge for plastic bags remained an aspiration. And, as beef consumption dropped across Europe because of a BSE scare, the Minister for Agriculture sought to grapple with the implications of an EU "slaughter-out" scheme that would generate hundreds of thousands of tonnes of unwanted and potentially dangerous by-product. It was the best of times . . . it was the worst of times.