THE JUDGE, THE THIEF, HIS BEEF AND SUSAN O’KEEFE

What’s come over Eamonn Dunphy that he’s writing sensible? A fortnight ago on the back page of the Sunday Indo, he lashed out at Liam Hamilton, the man who wrote the report of the Beef Tribunal and was soon afterwards appointed Chief Justice by Albert Reynolds’ Government.

As Dunphy observed, the Beef Tribunal affair revealed the southern State to be rotten to the core, run by people whose stock in trade consists of evasion, obfuscation, half-truths and lies, who not only accept but operate a system where money can buy influence at the highest political level and vast fortunes can be accumulated not on the basis of hard work and entrepreneurial flair, or even low cunning and good luck, but on the back of deception, fraud, the misappropriation of public money and downright theft.

We have a government which illegally exceeded its powers in order to alter the terms of an arrangement whereby a huge amount of public money was to be poured into the coffers of a private company to fund the company’s expansion plans. The purpose of the illegal intervention was to set aside a requirement that the company create a number of jobs through its use of the money. The boss of the company had been known to the minister most directly involved for 25 years and was a close enough personal friend to have been an invited guest at the wedding of the minister’s daughter.

Dunphy describes the conclusions of the Hamilton Report, on the basis of which no politician or public official has had to resign and no criminal charges have been brought against anyone (apart from Susan O’Keefe, of course) as “bewildering”. As readers of this column will know, some of us think that that’s a bewilderingly mild word to deploy in the context. But at least Dunphy has pointed to the role of the Hamilton Report itself, which is best understood not as a report on the Beef Tribunal affair but as part of the Beef Tribunal affair. He thus becomes the second commentator in the land willing to deal not just with the issues in the Report but the issue of the Report. He’s welcome aboard.

All others remain in the grip of irrational and undesirable reverence for The Law. Self-assessed radicals are among the worst – although it is still possible to admire the imaginativeness of the excuses they devise for themselves.

Vincent Browne, for example, while lamenting that a charge has been brought against Susan O’Keefe, is among many who have explained to their readers that, unfortunately, the courts and Director of Public Prosecutions really had no option. Hamilton had no choice but to refer Ms. O’Keefe’s refusal to fink on her sources to the DPP, the theory goes, and once this step had been taken the impersonal, not to say majestic, machinery of law took over, programmed so as to permit no discretion. So no legal dignitary nor element in the legal system is to blame.

This is shite. In practice, Hamilton did not have to refer Ms. O’Keefe’s entirely proper refusal to become a tout to the DPP or anyone else. The DPP did not have to bring a charge. The courts do not now have to process the charge. After all, Damien Kiberd and Brian Carey of the Sunday Business Post also refused to name sources to the tribunal, and they haven’t been charged with anything.

Generally speaking, there is far more discretion available within the legal system than is ever acknowledged. The discretion is usually exercised in favour of the rich and powerful, or in favour of elements who are themselves involved in the defence and maintenance of the State. Wander down to the Four Courts any day you are in central Dublin, for example, and you will see and hear instances where it would be possible for judges to refer witness box performances (usually by cops) to the DPP for consideration of charges of perjury or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. But it hardly ever happens. The judges simply choose to take no action.

Hamilton could have made that choice regarding Susan O’Keefe, but didn’t. And there were similar choices to be made at every stage along the road which could yet lead her to prison.

They are all to blame. The law isn’t an ass, it’s a hyena, and never to be trusted.

f f f f f f

I’m feeling like I’m surrounded by death these days and it isn’t good for the spirit. A couple of months ago, I mentioned in these columns the sudden death of my old friend Big Noel Hegarty, and the fact that in Derry you never thought of Big Noel without also thinking of Big James. The two went together, Big Noel Hegarty and Big James Doherty, both around six foot four and more than built to match, Noel with a palpable powerful presence, James with a raucous, loud, bass voice and the readiest wit I have ever known. For off-the-cuff one-liners, Big James in my experience had no equal.

I wrote that Big Noel’s death would hit Big James hard. I knew when I wrote it that Big James wasn’t well but I had no idea, because he didn’t tell me, and his carriage and demeanour gave no inkling, how desperately ill he was. He had stomach cancer, which he died from on Sunday of last week.

I was told afterwards that the priest at his funeral – one of those naff new priests who think they look cool if they keep their hair unkempt and wear black leather jackets – I made an exception for Big James and darkened the door of the church but I didn’t go in far enough to hear – talked a lot of twaddle about Big James signing up to the full catechism before he died. But he did receive the so-called “last sacraments”, with a shrug and a chuckle, I imagine.

In his last week or so, he had replied to every enquiry as to his health by explaining, “I’m fucked,” which is what he said as the priest came in to do his ministering on what was to be the last day of James’ life. When the naff priest came out from the room afterwards and James was asked how he felt now, he responded, “No different, I’m f-u-c-k-e-d.” Sitting alongside his coffin at the wake was the only time I’ve ever been in his presence that he didn’t totally dominate the conversation. I’ll miss him greatly.

I will also miss Domhnall McDermott a lot. Around 2,000 people turned out for Domhnall’s funeral four weeks ago, city councillors, civil rights campaigners, most of the journalists in the North West, members of most of the rock bands in the area and a great host of his other friends.

Domhnall was a reporter with the Derry Journal but figured in these columns occasionally in his alter ego of Dick Tracy, of Dick Tracy and the Green Disaster, a unique and brilliantly shambolic punk band which went on being properly authentically punk long after the genre had degenerated into just another of the stock poses available off the publicist’s peg to aspirant stars.

The Disaster never made it, and wouldn’t have understood the concept. Those who experienced the Disaster will recall them with fond nervousness as they charged pell-mell into the theme from Neighbours or the Radiators’ ‘Kitty Ricketts’, coming close to collapse a third of the way in, forgetting the words or stumbling out of line and into the words of a different song entirely, playing guitars with their elbows better than they had managed with their fingers which admittedly on occasion was no great achievement, and in the case of drummer Micky Griffin sometimes falling into the kit unconscious from the drink, and yet somehow always managing to keep the act together through the full set and invariably succeeding at least once towards the end in bringing the audience to its feet in wild orchestrated delirium.

If you’ve never ended an overdosed night punching the air to the Disaster giving ‘Green Door’ a good kicking you haven’t fully lived rock and roll.

Domhnall was also acutely intelligent, very well read, radically minded, generous and a totally decent person. It seems desperately unfair and pointless and stupid that he should die from natural causes at the age of 35. But then death is always around, and coming closer. And, hey, is this deep down in gloomsville or what?

No need. The only point is really, be soft with your friends. And don’t waste time.