What Moriarty tells us about doing business in Ireland

Business and political leaders simply do not believe that ethical behaviour pays off

VIEWED THROUGH the narrow prism of Irish business, the Moriarty tribunal report would seem about as welcome as a hole in the head.

It does not help our cause much that one of our most successful businessmen has been found to have paid hundreds of thousands of euro to a politician who oversaw the granting of the mobile licence that is the basis of the businessman’s fortune.

That the politician in question was at the time a very senior member of the party that has just been returned to power after 14 years on a platform that was meant to represent a break with the low standards in just about everything of the previous administration just adds to the despair.

It is very tempting for all concerned to brush it under the carpet, by availing of the time-honoured technique of “sending the report to the DPP” where it can gather dust. This is the epitome of the activity-rather- than-action approach that rather defines the response of our political class to uncomfortable revelations about the business elite with which they are so closely entwined.

The real problem is not that we have morally challenged businessmen and politicians. All countries do. It is that we have failed to hold them in check in any meaningful way.

As a result we seem to have a created an environment in which business and political leaders simply do not believe that ethical behaviour pays off – both directly and indirectly – in the long run. This helps explain why the same names keep cropping up in Irish business scandals.

You can travel a line from the granddaddy of them all – the so-called Telecom scandal of 1988 – through the beef tribunal to the Ansbacher affair to the Moriarty tribunal and on to Anglo Irish Bank. You could detour to view the Fyffes-DCC case.

What is truly instructive is to compare the list of witnesses who gave evidence in the tribunals, investigations and court cases these various scandals gave rise to. The crossover in dramatis personae is astounding. Sometimes individuals are central to what is being investigated, other times they are just on the periphery. But the numbers making two or three appearances is truly remarkable.

The pattern is evident not just among the leading players; it’s also the lawyers, accountants and other advisers who provide supporting cast.

Stretching the theatrical analogy to breaking point, the Irish tribunals are the bizarre corporate and political equivalent of repertory theatre with the regular cast putting on different shows for the same audience.

There are really only two explanations. One is that these individuals are just ordinary decent capitalists and their political allies going about their business against a backdrop of moral hysteria created by the media and other enemies.

As a result their normal and legitimate business deals get twisted into something seen to be sinister and detrimental to the public good, forcing the government to have expensive – and what some claim seem biased tribunals that nobody wants or needs.

Given the extent to which tribunal stars past and present populated the ranks of the Ireland First group, one has to suspect this is the genuinely held belief of those that feature. Otherwise there can be no reason – outside of pathological cynicism – for them to suggest to the citizens of a country they have profited from for 20-odd years how it should now sort itself out. For them at least the connection between their modus operandi as revealed by tribunals over the years and the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank and the wider economic crisis is not clear-cut.

The other explanation for why the tribunals have so much in common with repertory theatre is that the consistent failure of the State – for whatever reason – to hold people to account for what has been unearthed has translated over time into unofficial sanction for this way of doing things.

At a minimum it has facilitated the creation of a culture in which even if you do get caught there is little to fear. Certainly not the opprobrium of your peers.

When you think through what all this really says about Irish business it does become very tempting to file it all under “you really don’t want to go there”.

But then you are also saying that you really don’t want to know a significant part of the explanation for why your business is failing, the banks are bust and your children will have to emigrate.