IF YOU ever wondered what the term "news management" might mean, just remember all those stories over the last fortnight about the Government looking for cuts in public spending to enable it to meet the nurses pay award.
Ministers - most notably Ruairi Quinn and Michael Noonan - appeared on television to talk about the problem. Journalists were briefed on the Government's determination to keep public spending under control. Informed sources informed us that the cuts would be spread over different Departments.
This was very interesting, but there was also something fishy about it. If a large, unbudgeted pay award to the nurses presents such a serious problem for the public finances, how is it that huge amounts of public money can be squandered by, for example, the Department of Agriculture, without Cabinet meetings, briefings and the informing of sources becoming necessary?
Why, when a few pounds end up in the pocket of a midwife, do we have to calculate the consequences with furrowed brows, and yet when millions of pounds of public money end up in the pockets of a few beef barons, there are no consequences at all?
Recently the European Commission took another £2.29 million - merely the latest instalment in an endless series of penalties for corruption in the beef industry and mismanagement by the State - from us. It did so because it simply did not believe that beef supposedly exported to Iraq by Goodman International actually ended up there, and was not prepared to cough up for export refunds paid to the company by the Exchequer.
In essence, the Department accepted "proofs of import" showing that beef had been imported into Iraq when, as we now know, it actually ended up in Poland, Romania, Gabon, Lebanon and the Canary Islands, where some of it is currently the subject of a police investigation.
When I pointed this out here last month, and suggested that the Department of Agriculture should have known all along that the documentary proofs on which it was paying out this money were highly questionable, the Department sent an indignant reply. It stood over a claim made by its Secretary, Michael Dowling, to the Dail Public Accounts Committee that "we had no reason to doubt the accuracy of the proofs."
Since then, documents that have emerged at the PAC as a result of Des O'Malley's diligent pursuit of this issue show not only that the Department had reasons to doubt the accuracy of these certificates, but that it was under active pressure to alter them.
One of them is a letter written in September 1989 by R.G. Cullen, director of veterinary services at the Department, to Jim Fairbairn of Goodman International, about the latter's attempt to get the Department to change certificates: "As regards integrity you agreed at Wednesday's meeting that the object of this exercise was to hoodwink your customers in Iraq, i.e., to remove the old labels off the boxes, and then, complete with a new certificate from us, to send them the meat that they had earlier rejected/refused... To alter the date on these certificates is simply not justifiable.
Another is a letter of August 1991 from Mr Fairbaim to the Department, responding to allegations that some of these certificates had been tampered with: "I have become aware of your comments regarding the `defacing of the document'. This has been conveyed to me as having the effect of discrediting the certificate."
Soothe whole issue of what was happening to these documents was a live one all along. And the fact is that one glance at the certificates themselves would make even the most credulous person suspicious.
On one of them, for instance, there is a stamps from the Irish Embassy in Baghdad, signed by the Ambassador, authenticating the signature of "T. Gumey", in whose name the certificate is issued. But in fact there is no signature by "T. Gumey" - it is signed by "C. Peyron".
SO THE Irish Embassy is validating a signature that does not even appear on the document. In relation to another of the certificates, Des O'Malley put it to the Department secretary, Michael Dowling, at the PAC earlier this month that it was clear from the figures on it that "two different typewriters were used" and asked him, "Why did Mr Dowling's Department accept forged secondary proofs?"
Mr Dowling replied that it might be that the wrong date was initially put on the certificate and that the Department "were asked subsequently to confirm it."
Was it then "all right with your Department to put in a date afterwards?"
Mr Dowling: It may be if it can be correlated with ships documents and other commercial and customs documentation.
Mr O'Malley: I put it to Mr Dowling that if it costs the Irish taxpayer a couple of million pounds it should not be all right.
Mr Dowling: That is hardly the issue.
Asked if the Garda had been requested to investigate any of this carry on, Mr Dowling said that he did "not see there is a case for referring it to the Garda." Asked if "one penny" had been recovered from the people who benefited from all of this - Goodman International - he said, "No, we do not believe we are legally able to recover this money.
Yet it is clear that Department officials did believe that the money could be recovered. An internal report of a visit by Department officials in June 1994 to the headquarters of the agency that issued the certificates, Bureau Veritas (BV) in Paris, reveals that they expected BV and the Goodman company AIBP to pay for any "correction" (a euphemism for a financial penalty) imposed on Ireland by the Commission.
THE MEMO, signed by a Department official, Gerry Cody, notes, "this Department would not carry a correction of the magnitude proposed and that there were financial implications for BV. .. Given the fact that the certificates presented by Bureau Veritas would not in any circumstances be acceptable to this Department nowadays we should consider living with that level of disallowance and recovering same from AIBP or BV or both."
In other words, instead of trying to make excuses to the Commission, the State should be pursuing the people who actually gained from all of this - an approach that would have both common sense and justice on its side but that seems to be, in the way of this bizarre world, hopelessly naive.
What Leonora Helmsley said of taxes - "they are for the little people" - seems to be true of fiscal rectitude as well.
Only when the State has to give money to public servants like the nurses, who are trusted and valued by the community, does the question of protecting the Exchequer and controlling State spending seem to arise. Maybe if they could do really important things in the national interest, like making boxes of beef sent to Iraq appear by magic in the Canary Islands, the State would take a different attitude to them.