Let us consider the incredible world of the McMahon Tribunal. 10 years and 300 M Euros mostly paid to legal fat cats to find out what we knew already? That Politics (and Law and Banking and …..) and Politicians in Ireland is systemically corrupt. Time to take the Italian approach of throwing them in jail and making the Gombeens prove their innocence?
I have had some personal experience of this corruption but one anecdote will suffice. My friend in Dublin, Architect Jack Keenan was appointed to An Board Plenala, (The Planning Board) by Ray Burke the then Minister of Local Government. Jack I might add was a member of Fianna Fail and architect for developers Brennan and McGowan who benefited greatly from wide scale rezoning of previously low value agricultural land at Kilnamanagh and Swords by Burke. Jack was architect for these developments and also designed Burke’s own house which was built and given to him as a “gift” by Brennan and McGowan. After his term on Board Plenala had ended Jack was walking down Herbert Place near Fianna Fail’s party headquarters when he bumps into Ray Burke who then abuses him in the street for not “looking after our people enough” when he was on the Planning Board.
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| Ray Burke, being led off to prison |
Bear in mind this was a government minister who went on to become Minister of Justice. He was later jailed for six months in 2005 for tax evasion. He was left with a €10.5 million legal bill from his long-running involvement with the planning tribunal. He also made a €1.3m settlement with the Criminal Assets Bureau following its investigation into his financial affairs.
When Bob Geldof was given the Freedom of Dublin in 2005 he was nearly run out of town for his observation that the fabric of modern Dublin could only be explained by a culture of “deep rooted corruption between “developers and politicians.” With the benefit of hindsight, Bob the Gob must be impressed with his previously undetected talent for understatement.
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| Charles "The Squire" Haughey in front of his home, Abbeville. Haughey sold the property and stud farm in 2003 in order to pay a settlement to the Revenue Commissioners. It was bought by Joe Moran’s Manor Park Homes, who subsequently went into receivership after Bank of Scotland Ireland sought to recover outstanding debts. |
Since then he has blasted Fianna Fail leader and three times Taoiseach Haughey, who died aged 80 in 2006, accusing him of having the blood of innocent Irish people on his hands by helping finance the IRA.
"The man who was prime minister was a sort of Irish Robert Mugabe. His name was Haughey and he was a completely corrupt man - morally, economically, whatever," said Geldof explaining to his audience how he and his Boomtown Rats' bandmate bassist Pete Briquette had come to write the band's 1980 hit Banana Republic. And he made a lot of money doing business deals, criminal business deals with his son. And he took the money and he bought guns and bullets for the IRA to kill other Irish people," added Geldof in a reference to Haughey's implication the Arms Trial of 1970.
For the story of the Boomtown Rats first concert (organised by moi!) see;
The Boomtown Rats 1980 hit 'Banana Republic' remains a scabrous and prescient indictment of corrupt Ireland in the late 1970s.
Banana republic
Septic isle
Screaming in the suffering sea
It sounds like crying (crying, crying)
Everywhere I go, oh yeah
Everywhere I see
The black and blue uniforms
Police and priests
And I wonder do you wonder
While you're sleeping
with your whore
That sharing beds with history
Is like a-licking running sores
Forty shades of green yeah
Sixty shades of red
Heroes going cheap these days
Price; a bullet in the head
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