The flood gates open

Those who think the ball always hops in favour of the opponent, of the big fellas, of the rich and powerful should take a check on that. Not always. Mr Justice Flood didn’t mince his words in his interim report. He laid out, in clear and unequivocal language, that Ray Burke knowingly took corrupt payments from builders and Century Radio... Corrupt. Great word. Rolls those Rs. Corrrrr-upt. A certain kind of politics in a single word. Foul, putrid, rotting, defiled.

Ray Burke is the cutting edge, but he wasn’t the first and he isn’t the last. The 1960s brought new waves into Irish politics and business. On one hand, there were the civil servants like TK Whittaker, who brought the virtues of the public service with them. On the other, there were builders and property speculators, men in mohair suits and a hurry, bearing scant regard for heritage or taste and driven by pure self-interest.

They ruined Dublin in particular. First, there was the old city, its key streets ripped apart to be infilled by such tatty and tasteless monstrosities as Hawkins House, the ESB offices and the building known as the Harp Building at O’Connell Bridge.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am in favour of irreverence and iconoclasm. And I very much like and appreciate modern and post-modern architecture.

But I also understand that one of the things that has brought tourists to this country has been the great Georgian streetscapes of Dublin and (yes!) Limerick, and that history is what it is.

As for the politicians, when they weren’t taking money into their party coffers, as in the Fianna Fàil TACA system for example, they were waving the speculators through. Encouraging them to go forth and multiply the houses that sprang up like boxes, little boxes, and they all look just the same.

Hundreds of thousands of houses, all made of ticky tacky, as the song goes, all built for maximum profit, not warmth or security or playing spaces, or grace or beauty or style. And then, as now, unfortunate people queued for them and wept for them and begged for them, because there was no other choice.

Many millionaires have been made from property. And the rest of us? We’ve been fleeced, stripped and sacrificed. Sure, it’s the very same now! Look at how hard it is to buy a house and how expensive to rent.

There is no way of recovering what we once were before the degeneration of politics and public life kicked in. We can’t unbuild the crappy houses and the shopping malls. We can’t recreate the parallel universe that might have been if these mobsters hadn’t gotten into our bloodstream. But we can remember and we can learn. So, change is in our hands.

The judge found that money changed hands with a view to changing planning permission, and influencing policy, and that a lot of those involved had obstructed the tribunal in its work. Right now, the guilty and the implicated are fleeing the catastrophe and the all-too-real prospect of collateral damage for dear life. Few will escape for long.

There is only one problem with the fallout from Flood’s interim report, and that’s the possibility that voters will use the Nice referendum to punish the Government for old corruptions and new ‘adjustments’.

The Nice Treaty is a complex, difficult piece of work in many respects. It’s hard going. And it’s not perfect. There is less there than some opponents think, and yet, there is also more than many want.

Opponents see it as leading towards a unitary state with its own army. This seems fanciful – there is already very considerable opposition to the idea of such a development, and not only in Ireland. True, the posturing of the British on Iraq is ominous, but even there we can see the unlikelihood of a single army, given the opposition in smaller countries like Finland and Denmark, as well as larger states like Germany. Indeed, if this referendum is passed, Ireland can’t participate in a mutual defence pact without another referendum.

There are downsides as well, such as the slight dilution of our veto and the loss of an automatic Commissioner. On the other hand, there is the rightness of enlarging the EU and allowing other countries access to the material benefits we have enjoyed for the last 25 years.

It’s your choice. There’s only two things I’d say. Firstly, don’t use this as an opportunity to punish the Government over old corruptions and new cuts. Secondly, if you have a vote, use it. And enjoy doing so. Because you’ll have a chance to punish whomsoever you want in due course, and it’ll come through the ballot box as well...

The Hog