If there were only one objective for the Public Accounts Committee's hearings on bogus non-resident accounts, it should be that this State would not ever again be judged to be a "basket case" - in any sense, and not just financially. Most importantly, it should never be condemned as such by its own public. The remark was Maurice Doyle's and the phrase was not original. In the late 1980s, I heard a banker near the top at Citibank in New York describe the whole of Africa as a "basket case". The Citibank man was, presumably, chastened when Citibank got into substantial commercial difficulties shortly afterwards. He didn't make it to the top. And Africa is still described dismissively as a basket case.
What matters now to the Republic is not the view of an international banker, but what our own public judgment about the State is. In some of the commentary on the DIRT scandal, it is said that the public is captivated by the proceedings on TG4. Farmers out harvesting have Sony Watchman's hooked up to their tractors. The big screens in the pubs are stuck on TG4, the beer is flowing and no-one is going back to work. Office workers have special permission to bring the telly in. Normal classes are suspended in school as children are allowed watch the cross-examinations. People are wearing T-shirts with the faces of Jim Mitchell, Maurice Doyle, Pat Rabbitte and Tom Mulcahy etched on them. Meetings have been scheduled to avoid coinciding with the match - I mean, the Committee hearings. Not quite.
The public interest is often made up of not very interesting stuff, as the Beef tribunal demonstrated par excellence.
While the details of the public interest will be examined by arduous questioning of witnesses and reading of many old memoranda, my guess is that the public mood will be attracted to people, answers, demeanours and facts which will help answer the question, "Who do I trust?". The results of the inquiry in terms of policy, procedures or even prosecutions may not be felt for a long time, if ever. It may be true that people are looking for some practical, positive change to occur as a result of tribunals and investigations. But the wait is long, even where practical steps are taken after tribunals. The investigations into the Ansbacher accounts, the legal and tax proceedings against Charles Haughey, the NIB investigations all require a lot of time. Immediate, practical consequences of the "decisive-action-is-being-taken" type are difficult to implement.
In the meantime, the amorphous public mood, and the public judgment is formed and no one can tell at exactly what moment or how. Most of the participants in the hearings have an interest in the public judgment not moving against them. The politicians clearly depend on it, expenses notwithstanding.
The civil servants need public confidence at base, even if they are paid to provide advice when the public mood is out of synch of the public interest. There are a lot more civil servants and their families and friends in the State than politicians or journalists. It is hard to see, on numbers alone, how the public mood could swing against civil servants as a group to the benefit of politicians.
The bankers know that the confidence of their customers, not necessarily of politicians or of commentators, is crucial to their business. Bankers are in business and they will pay real attention to public perceptions when they start losing business. So far, there is little evidence of that happening as a result of any bank's actions. The DIRT hearings provide an opportunity to individual banks to differentiate themselves from other banks in the public mind, since it is clear that not all the banks acted in the same way in regard to bogus non-resident accounts. The job of the committee is really to inspire public confidence in the running of the State. It would be wrong to decide that to achieve this, there must be a symbolic hanging of one or more culprits. In relation to DIRT evasion, there are no ringleaders whose "execution" or resignation would solve the problem. Rather, a sufficient number of individuals among the politicians, civil servants, tax officials and bankers need to inspire confidence in their integrity. They must be people who are not perceived as mavericks in their own organisations. And others outside their group must be perceived to respect them.
Disagreements can abound and arguments persist over capital flight, and the long wait for practical consequences can begin, but first public confidence must be secured that there are enough people of integrity in positions of power. Only then can there be any hope that "decisive actions" will ever be effective.
Oliver O'Connor is managing editor, Fintel Publications
