Time to engage with reality over tribunal
People are becoming fed up with an out-of control beast which is intent on damaging the Taoiseach, writes Brendan O'Connor
Sunday September 23 2007
Harry Magee summed it up best on the radio on Thursday. Acknowledging that what went on in Dublin Castle that day wasn't necessarily anything to do with planning corruption, he defended the tribunal by saying that the payments in and out of Bertie Ahern's bank accounts were worth pursuing for their own sake because they were unusual. The link to corruption could possibly be established afterwards, he argued.
And in that phrase, "worth pursuing for their own sake", is summed up the whole madness of this constantly morphing out-of-control expensive beast that is the planning tribunal. It is no longer a means to an end but an end in itself.
It is no longer connected to its stated aim but is merely worth pursuing for its own sake. And this is why we get the madness of pulling the Taoiseach in to sit for the morning while lawyers hear evidence about the evidence about the provision of evidence. They actually discussed the discussion about the discovery of evidence. And they needed our Taoiseach to be there, while the economy appeared to be crashing around our ears.
In Britain, they were pulling guys in to talk about banking as well. But it was the head of the Central Bank and he was being asked what the hell he was doing to the economy. They must be so envious that we have the luxury of ignoring all that in order to fiddle with Bertie while the economy burns.
Ironically, given his fashion victim past, it is the anoraks that have turned on Bertie in the end. But Bertie is well able for them. When anoraks like Mr Magee are starting to shift the goalposts and concede that the tribunal has lost sight of its raison d'etre, and are admitting that the obsessive pursuit of detail that is incriminating only because it is "unusual" is the only real justification for the madness in Dublin Castle, then you know Bertie's winning. Essentially, even Mr Ahern's worst enemies are admitting that no, he is not corrupt, but there is something unusual here so we should look in to it.
Because, of course, Harry and the anoraks need this to continue. They need it to continue because they are the only ones getting anything out of all this apart, of course, from the lawyers. The anoraks are getting reams and reams of obsessive copy about details. They are getting to go on the radio and the TV regurgitating this obsessive detail. And the lawyers -- the well-spoken men who seem to treat our Taoiseach like a vaguely grubby little man, a working-class Dub shyster whom they find slightly distasteful -- are making lots of money. Tribunal lawyers are the highest paid State employees we have ever seen in this country. And any of us would be hard pushed to say what they have produced in return.
With no disrespect to autistic people, we seem to have found ourselves in a national fit of autism. We have lost our ability to see the bigger picture or the humanity or the complex holistic reality of Mr Ahern's life and instead we pore obsessively and continuously over the same details all the time. There is, of course, a great security in obsessive and repetitive detail for people who find real life too challenging and risky to engage with, but slowly it is emerging that most of us would rather engage with reality.
Take Harry again. I get the Examiner every day because it's arguably the best daily paper in the country. Unfortunately, taking the Examiner means I have to take Harry as well. I could barely bring myself to read Harry's piece in Friday's Examiner because, glancing at it, I was dazzled by pound signs and numbers. There seemed to be more figures than words there. More regurgitation and obsessing over the details. And in it, too, was a statement of intent from the anoraks. Because in it, Harry also damned anyone who would try to see beyond the obsessive detail. He said that Mr Ahern "conceded nothing and quibbled over, challenged and contextualised every area of consensus that Mr O'Neill tried to establish. He refused at all times to give a straight yes or no."
The suggestion there is something wrong with a man trying to contextualise the messy details of his life is something that could only come from the fact-obsessed anorak rump of journalism. Mr Ahern should apparently forget the rich tapestry of life and stick to the cold, hard figures. But facts without context are meaningless.
For example, you tell me the cops shot two guys dead and I say, shocking. But give me the context, that this was in the context of a raid where one guy was aiming his weapon at the cops and another guy was hammering glass in on top of a woman who feared for her life, and then the whole thing takes on a different complexion. Normal human beings understand context and understand that when Des O'Neill asks Mr Ahern a long, rambling question, a question which, you could say, puts a context on facts, that Mr Ahern is a wise man not to answer merely yes or no. Because ordinary people understand life isn't like that. And ordinary people are increasingly tiring of the autistic read of events.
In general, the country is moving on from this fit of madness and is starting to realise that it is not Mr Ahern we find grubby, but the rummaging in Dublin Castle. Twice before, the people of this country have made it clear they have no appetite for a tribunal that appears to have become obsessed with damaging Mr Ahern. And twice before the people of this country have rejected a media consensus that became obsessed with damaging Mr Ahern. But in their fit of autistic madness, the media has forgotten this. They have forgotten how wrong they got it the past two times. Because in their obsessive madness they are living that very definition of insanity -- that of doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.
The country has said categorically it has no appetite for middle-class media smartarses kicking around our working-class Taoiseach, sneering at his accent and his alleged lack of sophistication. They certainly don't have any appetite to see posh law boys from posh schools -- all of whom could buy and sell Mr Ahern -- pruriently invading his struggle to get set up in a house again after his marriage break-up. And yes, Harry, it was "unusual". But everyone has unusual lives, and as Jody Corcoran so eloquently and movingly demonstrated in this paper last week, the aftermaths of marriage break-ups are unusual times.
There has been much speculation about the effect this will all have on Mr Ahern's legacy. In fact, when our children look back on this era, it is the legacy of the tribunals they will question. How did the country go so collectively mad, they will ask, that we gave a tribunal carte blanche, without boundaries, to demand the right to pry into aspects of his life. How was the man who led this country so well for so long put on trial without evidence that he did anything? How did we allow our elected leader to be toyed with like this? And who, they will wonder, were the ones who were really demeaning politics in this country?
