Many precedents for the present malaise about tribunal inquiries into corruption can be found in the 1940s, writes Elaine Byrne
THE MINISTER for Finance, Brian Lenihan, wrote to Government departments with responsibility for tribunals last week to inform them that "tribunals and inquiries conclude their business as early as possible and that legal costs are managed in the interests of the taxpayer".
Focus on tribunal costs has become the flavour of the month. Indeed, the impression is given that the future of our economy may even now depend on it.
Back in the 1940s, three corruption tribunals sat at the Four Courts. A snap election, a change in government, a ministerial resignation, a civil servant compulsorily retired and the very invention of political folklore occurred. Many of the tribunal procedures, including the method of assigning costs, were established in this period.
The first corruption inquiry in the State was the 1943 Great Southern Railways Tribunal. The opposition claimed that friends of government ministers had insider knowledge of government plans to heavily invest and nationalise the railways and consequently bought shares. The minister for industry and commerce, Seán Lemass, took the allegations seriously and his response was swift and unequivocal. He established a tribunal immediately and those found guilty were censured or punished. The civil servant who had bought railway shares and shared confidential information was at once removed from his post.
As it happened, the Fianna Fáil government of the day was angry at the tribunal reporting of The Irish Times. Lemass expressed his "contempt" at what he described as the newspaper's "yellow press tactics". The Irish Times was at a complete loss. "On the morning of the Report's publication, our 'sub-leader' was entitled 'Dear Fruit'; on Thursday it dealt with the subject of the harmless, necessary bee". The Irish Times mischievously queried if Lemass's objection had something to do with the Shakespearean quote: "Where the bee suck, there suck I."
The 1946 Ward tribunal amounted to a personal dispute between two prominent members of the medical profession and members of Monaghan Fianna Fáil whose families had connecting business interests.
In response, the taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, sought to legislate for political standards with a Bill which was in many ways the precursor of the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995. Internal and cross-party support for his initiative was not forthcoming and de Valera conceded that "ultimately, of course, the conduct of members will be determined by their own sense of what is fit and right and proper".
It is difficult to find a word to concisely describe the 1947 Locke Distillery tribunal. It was reality soap opera before Glenroe and Big Brother invaded our television screens. Locke sat for 18 days and transfixed the public.
Patrick McGilligan, former minister and prominent Fine Gael spokesman, was senior counsel for the key tribunal witness and whistleblower who instigated the corruption allegations. The tribunal found against McGilligan's client.
Tribunal legal costs were addressed for the first time. Previous to this, witnesses were obliged to pay for their own legal fees and other associated costs.
McGilligan later became minister for finance in the 1948-1951 inter-party government. Indifferent to any perception of conflict of interest, he cited precedent and refused all applications for tribunal expenses. Following a change in government in 1951, the Fianna Fáil senator who appeared before the tribunal corresponded with the new minister for finance, Seán MacEntee, seeking £2,800 in costs. Senator William Quirke, leader of the Seanad, was adamant: "I can see no reason whatever why this matter was not dealt with long before now. There may be some reason why the previous government were not ready to pay but, to my mind, there is no excuse for a Fianna Fáil government to adopt the same attitude."
The Fianna Fáil government reversed McGilligan's decision and decided that costs and legal representation before the Locke tribunal "be borne by the exchequer where the person concerned was not the subject of censure or aversion by the tribunal in its report". And so the principle of costs was established under this "formula".
McGilligan said in the Dáil that the tribunal judges had been wrong in their findings. Mr Justice Cahir Davitt, Michael Davitt's son and later president of the High Court, had presided over the tribunal. He "bitterly resented" McGilligan's remarks and wrote to the taoiseach, John A Costello: "The effect of this unpleasant business upon my mind is to leave me with an acute personal distaste for any further extra-judicial assignments."
The unpleasantness of the Locke tribunal left politicians with a marked reluctance to resort to the tribunal method, or any system for that matter, in order to investigate corruption allegations. Calls for tribunals in the 1970s and 1980s were regarded as outdated. Focus was directed on the method of inquiry rather than on the underlying allegations themselves.
Funny how things repeat themselves.