Not seeing wood from the trees

Remember Ivor Callely? A hyperactive outsider who got into a spot of bother and had to resign as a junior minister? Small, darkish/greyish? Smiled a bit? No? Anyway, there was this junior minister for something or other, the port tunnel and traffic jams, I think. Staff people in his office kept resigning and then it emerged that a builder had undertaken €1,500 worth of work on his home and he had never paid for this.

He did not do anything in return, but it did not look well.

You must remember. It was only a couple of weeks ago. Remember, he was to go on the Gerry Ryan radio programme on the morning after the Budget, but when the Pat Kenny programme rang he went on that and stayed on for about 20 minutes and had a self-pitying hissy fit. Then Bertie had an indignant hissy hit, because Brian Cowen was kept waiting, and then Ivor would not make a statement to the Dáil.

What do you mean "so what"? This was a major national scandal for a day and a half and Ivor was forced to resign. Resign from whatever junior ministerial job he had. No, I don't know why he had to resign, but there was some important principle there somewhere and we all got very excited until the next crisis came along a day or two later. Can't remember what that next crisis was either.

We have these crises about once a week. Knocks everything else off the front pages and off television news. Each one seems apocalyptic until the next one comes along.

Remember the crisis that brought down the government of Albert Reynolds in November 1994. You might recall it had something to do with the Fr Brendan Smyth case, but actually there was another cleric or former cleric involved, and it was this latter cleric who caused the fall. Bet you can't remember that cleric's name or what it was all about. And then Dick Spring went into government a few weeks later with Bertie Ahern and that fell apart. Bet you can't remember why.

All this is vaguely amusing except that our propensity to generate a crisis every week means that when a real crisis or a real issue comes along, we don't recognise it for what it is. And a real issue has come along now of real significance, but we are about to gloss over it and let the culprit off the hook for something very serious indeed.

It concerns Michael McDowell.

Courtesy of The Irish Times, we now know that last September McDowell disclosed the contents of the Garda file on Frank Connolly to Chuck Feeney to encourage Chuck Feeney to pull the rug from under the Centre for Public Inquiry. The purpose of the unprecedented and entirely improper disclosure was to silence an organisation which could have enriched significantly the quality of our society and democracy.

McDowell's protestations that he was doing this to defend the institutions of the State against subversion is bogus. How conceivably could Frank Connolly have used such an institute for subversive purposes, unless, of course, one regards as subversion the disclosure of corruption and wrongdoing at high levels of government in this country? Even if it is true that Frank Connolly facilitated an IRA mission to Colombia, which aided subversion in Colombia and which funded the IRA at home, it has no relevance to the Centre for Public Inquiry - other than, perhaps, a credibility dimension. But even then, that is a matter for the centre itself, not for Michael McDowell.

If Frank Connolly was himself engaged in subversion, he should be dealt with as everyone else engaged in subversion is dealt with - through the Garda and the legal process.

The claim that McDowell had to deal with the supposed threat to the State through getting at the Centre for Public Inquiry is outrageous and entirely disingenuous.

To use Garda files in the pursuit of a political vendetta is something we have never witnessed here before. No other minister for justice - not Kevin O'Higgins, not Gerry Boland, not Charlie Haughey, not Desmond O'Malley, not Patrick Cooney, not Gerard Collins, not Seán Doherty, not Ray Burke - nobody who has held that office ever did something like this. And remember that the likes of Desmond O'Malley, Gerard Collins, Seán Doherty, Michael Noonan and Ray Burke were ministers for justice during the height of the campaign of subversion, when the most shocking crimes were being committed.

None of these ever resorted to the device of using a Garda file in a vendetta against an individual.

This is a real crisis and, if we had real politics here, we would have a real dismissal from office. Ivor Callely was fired for the most minor infraction. But for the gross abuse of his office and the exploitation of confidential files in the pursuit of a political vendetta, under the bogus cover of protecting the State against subversion, McDowell is allowed to remain a minister.

Frank Connolly might contemplate an action against McDowell for unjust invasion of his privacy.