THE BIG PICTURE:The main problem behind all our woes is the complete absence of accountability, writes EDDIE MOLLOY
‘ACCOUNTABILITY DOES apply to me,” the Taoiseach conceded in response to Bryan Dobson’s persistent questioning recently.
Dobson was trying to get Brian Cowen to accept the principle that since Colm Doherty and Dan O’Connor had paid the price for their failures at Allied Irish Banks, along with 70 other bankers who had lost their jobs, then surely he should resign as Taoiseach. After all, the implosion of the banking system and collapse of the public finances mostly happened on his watch as cabinet member, minister for finance and Taoiseach.
Cowen once again dodged the personal accountability bullet referring to the workings of democracy and suggesting that the two recent reports by Regling and Watson, and Honohan provided sufficient accountability. Merely giving an account does not satisfy the requirements of full accountability.
For John Gormley, accountability means getting a “grilling”. When Richard Crowley suggested in another radio interview that no one would be held accountable for the staggering waste of public money revealed in the Comptroller and Auditor General’s latest report the Minister firmly rebutted such an ill-informed and cynical suggestion: “You’re wrong there, people are held accountable, officials have to come before the Public Accounts Committee where they get a grilling”. I must say that if I knocked down a little old lady while driving under the influence, I’d be very happy to get away with just a grilling from gardaí.
In the spheres of morality, the legal system, corporate governance and performance management accountability without consequences is meaningless. The Taoiseach clearly appreciates this fundamental principle of any functioning institution since he repeatedly cites the clear-out of irresponsible bankers as evidence of his determination to hold people to account. Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan reassures us that we can expect lots more resignations, adding grimly that not only should such people be fired, they should be investigated by the Garda and jailed if they are found guilty of wrongdoing. They are asserting the principle that accountability must carry consequences.
We all agree, and Brian Dobson asks the question on everyone’s lips: “What are the consequences for calamitous political failure, the failure of Ministers and senior public servants?”
Ireland is comparable to a country that has been involved in a needless war – and lost. The coffers are empty and we are saddled with a debt of €50 billion; a generation of young people has been lost to the nation; people have died and more will die; bulldozers are coming in to clear the rubble of ghost estates; national sovereignty has been compromised; and the population is shocked, disoriented and fearful. Yet the generals who called the shots are still in power.
The root cause of this national catastrophe is the culture of impunity that spread like a contagion since the Haughey era. Charles Haughey’s ill-gotten riches have effectively been laundered through his Kinsealy estates and other trophy possessions and bequeathed, as clean money, to his family. When he died he was granted the honour of a State funeral and at the graveside he was eulogised by Bertie Ahern as “a patriot to his finger tips”. Little wonder then that Burke, Lawlor and others saw nothing wrong and little danger in enriching themselves by dubious means.
Tribunals would hold no fears for these people and so we watched disbelieving as Bertie Ahern swore an oath day in, day out and ended up telling us he won some of his unexplained money on a horse. Drugs baron John Gilligan tried the same line in court a few weeks ago but the judge was having none of it and sent him back to the cells.
We can take some small comfort from the fact that John Gilligan does not see himself as a fit person to become president of Ireland – which would involve taking another oath. Such is the sense of immunity to any sanction felt by Ahern, he seems to revel in the label of the “most cunning of all”, chuckling at the idea, while he runs a soft-focus campaign to achieve his dream of standing at the GPO in 2016 as head of State.
The culture of impunity which led Ahern, FitzPatrick, Fingleton and others to believe they could get away with anything was reinforced by Ahern’s cabinet colleagues who supported him throughout his tribunal appearances while he told us one fairy tale after another. Mary Hanafin, Micheál Martin and Dermot Ahern were in the vanguard making excuses for him, appealing to our sense of fairness towards a man of “simple tastes”.
Because of their collusion in sustaining the pervasive, corrupting culture of impunity, not to mention their share in collective cabinet responsibility for the decisions that have brought economic and social devastation, none of these Ministers is fit to hold high office in this country. In the words of Regling and Watson: “no one in authority shouted stop”. Instead, blind loyalty to the party took precedence over the public good. There wasn’t “one just man” – or woman – among them. They are all tainted.
Lest it be forgotten in the midst of all the financial turmoil, children whom we pledged to cherish equally have been dying in the care of the State at the rate of 1.5 per month over the last decade of Fianna Fáil rule and adults with intellectual disability are still sitting in locked mental hospital wards, in their pyjamas, over-medicated. The republican dream of 1916 has been comprehensively betrayed by the self-styled “republican party”.
It is ironic and a curious coincidence that on the same day the calamitous failure in Government performance was revealed in all its horror with a €50 billion bill for citizens, President Mary McAleese made a speech urging the Government rigorously to address underperformance by staff in the public service, saying: “it really ought to be possible to devise and implement a robust structure . . . that recognises good performance and at the same time tackles underperformance”. The constraints surrounding her office did not permit the obvious extension of these principles to the performance of Ministers.
The President’s reference to recognising good performance highlights an important feature of authentic performance management systems. Not only should the system include sanctions for underperformance but good performance should be incentivised and rewarded. What happens across the public service, however, is that bonuses intended for exceptional performance are given to everyone, regardless of how they performed. We saw this sham exposed when the Government rolled back on cuts to assistant secretary grades because the bonus had become a fixed part of their salary. In local government, over 200 managers applied for performance-related bonuses and every single one of them was awarded the bonus for outstanding performance.
The reward element of the public service performance management system is utterly discredited. People who have shared responsibility for terrible outcomes, or wanton waste of money, as reported recently in the CAG’s book of horrors, have not only escaped sanctions, they have been promoted or, on retiring, have walked away with golden handshakes in the form of pension top-ups, tax-free lump sums and platinum-plated pensions.
Many of them have gone on to secure well-paid jobs as public-interest directors of our banks or as consultants to Government.
What can be done about a system that allows incompetence and even criminal negligence to carry no sanctions and that dishes out huge rewards intended for exceptional performance indiscriminately?
There are a number of remedies available to the next government, which together amount to a comprehensive, radical overhaul of the systems of truth – and consequences:
- Restore the Freedom of Information system to its original intended status.
- Clean up political funding – make it totally transparent.
- Introduce an effective whistleblowers charter.
- Act on the President's advice and install a proper performance management system in the public service.
- Change the rules so that firing a public servant when there are justifiable grounds is not a federal case.
- Bring in laws that can effectively deal with white-collar crime, quickly.
- Change the law so that senior officials can reveal the advice they gave to ministers (who hide behind the "I acted on the best advice" mantra). Publish the advice, as in Sweden.
Above all, effectively restore perjury as a crime that carries a long jail sentence on conviction. The only person to go to jail over the infamous beef exports scandal was the journalist Susan O’Keeffe who said: “If perjury is not a crime we are a craven society.”
Sabre-rattling about “unacceptable behaviour” that will “not be tolerated” will continue to ring hollow so long as there are no consequences for the rampant irresponsibility, incompetence and criminal negligence that has caused what even the mild-mannered governor of the Central Bank called “a catastrophe”.
Eddie Molloy is a consultant in strategy and large-scale change and is director at Advanced Organisation