"O'Toole gave incorrect information on land deal," the headline ran. More to the point, he did so deliberately. What's the word for that? Let me think, now. Intentionally telling an untruth? I know. It's called lying, writes Kevin Myers.
Thus Senator Joe O'Toole lied to the media on an issue in which his brother-in-law was party to a €30 million land deal with the State. Richard Lynam, a brother of Senator O'Toole's wife, was selling his land to the Department of Justice for the building of a jail. Senator Joe O'Toole told RTÉ on January 27th this year that he had only just heard of the deal - "obviously, in the last couple of days".
A lie. In fact, not merely had he learned about the deal last year, but he had actually accompanied Richard Lynam to the Department of Justice for the signing of the documents which will utterly transform that part of north Co Dublin, incidentally causing enormous local distress and anger.
In explaining his lie, the senator said last week: "I felt very uncomfortable about discussing this publicly. I didn't know who in the family my brother-in-law had told, and in what order, so I didn't say how long I knew." Another falsehood. Well, that's the nature of lies: you tell one little porkie, and another little sty of the critters comes squealing out of nowhere. For he actually did say how long he knew - "obviously, in the last couple of days" - which was of course a lie.
Moreover, one observes in the most neutral possible fashion, he was the only public representative in the area who did not oppose the land deal which was going to turn his brother-in-law into a multi-millionaire. How very interesting. One also further hears his protestations that he did not stand to gain in any way from it. Good. Indeed, excellent. So - which form of senatorial truth is this? Is it that which he employed last January when he said he had only just heard about the land deal, one which is thus open to later revision or even deletion, and its replacement by an entirely contradictory statement? If so, when might we discover this? In four months' time, say?
And if his brother-in-law makes him an offer of an interest-free loan or gift of a half-million or so - which he can certainly now - is he saying that he will always turn it down, the term "always", of course, being open to the same sort of revision as "obviously, in the last couple of days"?
The liar O'Toole also said he had no personal interest in the land deal. How very interesting. So, is he really saying that if a Department of Justice official had told Richard Lynam in one of the meetings at which he was present that the Department had changed its mind and was going to offer only €35 for the land, that he, Senator Joe O'Toole, would have just sat there, twiddling his thumbs and saying nothing, as a truly disinterested person would have done? But what I like best about this wretched little affair is the relative silence surrounding it. Had Senator Joe O'Toole been a Fianna Fáil backbencher caught out in a lie which vitally affects the fortunes of his extended family, he would by this time have been torn asunder by the media.
But he's not. He is one of the angels, a trade union official and an NUI senator who can be relied on to hit all the politically correct, right-on notes on the senatorial keyboard, and so of course absolutely no one lays a glove on him.
And that has been the central, unchanging and unchallenged moral disorder in Irish life for more than a decade. The liberal-left in the media sit in judgment only on those outside their own community, never on themselves.
This became most flagrantly obvious when President Robinson abdicated the presidency to take up what she thought was a better job - as if there could possibly be a better job anywhere than being Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces of the Irish Republic. But the primrose path of the UN lay before her, and she walked away from the position to which the people of Ireland had appointed her. It was a breathtakingly arrogant act of self-centred careerism, the greatest insult done to this country by a public servant
since the
foundation of the State.
The response in the media? None. No trumpeting editorials condemning her flight from the Áras, no lines of columnists with their thumbs behind their lapels solemnly denouncing her, no radio phone-ins reproving her abandonment of the highest office in the land in order to seek preferment elsewhere - though by God if her name had been Lenihan the din would have been deafening. Instead, there was a mildly reproachful silence, and then we got on with the business of finding her replacement - as it happens, a rather good replacement.
Senator Joe O'Toole belongs to the same left-leaning community as the abdicator Mary Robinson. He mouths the usual politically correct fol-de-rol about the poor and the unemployed and immigration and the US and so on, and so naturally, gets away with a few trifling falsehoods concerning a mere €30 million of public money cascading in his extended family's lap. By this time next week, it will of course all be forgotten history.