In all the debates about African poverty, there is now a broad understanding that change can't happen until the continent gets rid of its kleptocratic rulers, writes Fintan O'Toole
Using the polite euphemism for corruption, the Minister of State in charge of development issues, Conor Lenihan told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs last month that we must "treat the issue of good governance as an important development issue in its own right wherein we help, encourage and, where necessary, pressurise our partner governments".
Two years ago this month, Bertie Ahern, launching the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, told the world: "If we are to retain public support for the level of overseas development assistance necessary to fight extreme poverty, the fight against corruption must be intensified."
African kleptocrats: bad. Irish kleptocrats: wonderful.
That is the very word used by the same Bertie Ahern a fortnight ago on The Last Word programme on Today FM: "I think that long after he's gone, people will say Charles Haughey was a wonderful person."
And this was no rush of blood to the head. The Taoiseach is on a personal campaign to rehabilitate the reputation of his old mentor.
He was on the This Week programme on RTÉ on Sunday, telling us that Haughey's government in the late 1980s is directly responsible for the State's current prosperity: "The policies that were pursued in that 1987/89 government are why we are where we are today, and the person who helped to turn that around was Charlie Haughey."
So while the Government is pressurising African governments to eliminate corruption, it is also suggesting that corruption doesn't really matter.
Charles Haughey stole money from Fianna Fáil while Bertie Ahern was party treasurer.
He stole taxpayers' money directly by using the Fianna Fáil leader's allowance, for whose bank account Bertie Ahern was a co-signatory, to pay for personal indulgences.
He stole public money indirectly by functioning as the pinnacle of the Ansbacher Cayman tax evasion scheme for himself and his golden circle. And he is now being held up by the Taoiseach as a national saviour.
The notion that the Haughey-MacSharry government of 1987 to 1989 created the boom of the 1990s is mere propaganda, based on a classic logical fallacy: that because A happened after B, it happened as a result of B.
The winter sun may rise after I have my porridge, but it would be rather odd to conclude that the consumption of porridge causes the sun to rise.
The same is true of the sequence of events that preceded the Irish boom of the 1990s. That the economy began to grow rapidly after Haughey's government cut public spending and services is undoubtedly true.
But if there is any relationship of cause and effect between these two events, it is at best a tenuous one.
In the first place, the fiscal crisis of the 1980s was partly caused by the corruption which Haughey embodied and protected. The Exchequer deficit came about partly from over-spending and partly from the failure to raise enough revenue because massive tax evasion by the well-to-do was tolerated.
Ordinary workers paid penal tax rates to subsidise these rich scroungers, and this lunatic taxation of modest incomes devastated economic growth.
The cosy relationship between a small golden circle of native business people and some key members of the political elite held back the economy.
Nothing stifles enterprise more than the knowledge that the system is crooked and that rivals with an inside track already have it sewn up.
Nothing stifles innovation more effectively than the easy availability of nice little earners.
Haughey's sickening hypocrisy in pandering to reactionary Catholicism also had economic consequences.
One of the eventual reasons for the Irish boom was the influx of women to the workforce.
Haughey did his best to impede this critical social and economic development with his craven and stupid Family Planning Act, aimed at making access to contraception difficult and expensive.
When Haughey and MacSharry started to tackle the fiscal crisis in 1987, it was the path of least resistance, supported by the political opposition, the trade unions and the media.
Crucially, Haughey made sure that the burden of adjustment fell exclusively on the poor and the vulnerable. He called a general election in 1989 because the Dáil had voted, against his wishes, to establish a £400,000 trust fund for people with haemophilia who had contracted HIV from blood products supplied by the State.
In the course of that election, Haughey, and his sidekicks Ray Burke and Pádraig Flynn, received substantial personal donations.
Africa's most brazen rulers would surely have applauded the sheer effrontery.