Is it time to forgive Larry Goodman?

BUSINESS OPINION: Does anybody really care any more what Larry Goodman did or didn't do 12 years ago? The settlement of the three-way handbag throwing fest down at the Four Courts between Mr Goodman, Mr Pascal Phelan and Mr Zacharia El Taher has cast the spotlight once again on Mr Goodman's fall from grace. It also raises the question as to whether or not he deserves the bogey man status that he still enjoys.

First a brief history lesson: the row about whether or not Mr Goodman surreptitiously bought Master Meats out from under Mr Phelan in 1987 was the first in a litany of business scandals involving Ireland's most successful meat processor.

The agreement of all the parties to settle their various actions after 15 years means that we are still none the wiser about what actually happened, although a lot of mud was thrown around by all sides.

However, Mr Goodman made one crucial admission. He acknowledged - albeit only for the purpose of the court case - that he was the owner of the Liechtenstein company that bought a stake in Master Meats in 1987 and then acquired it completely in 1989.

It was the inability of the Fair Trade Commission to get behind this Liechtenstein arrangement that prevented it establishing in 1989 whether Mr Goodman was behind the takeover or not and if any breech of then competition law occurred. Instead they concluded that he effectively controlled Master Meats which was sufficient for the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Mr Des O'Malley, to brand his actions as "undesirable and contrary to the common good". There was talk of legal action, but it came to nothing.

The collapse of Mr Goodman's empire into examinership followed by the establishment of the Beef Tribunal quickly overtook Master Meats in the hierarchy of Goodman related scandals. End of history lesson.

It has now emerged that the Tánaiste has asked her officials to look again at the whole Master Meats affair in the light of what emerged in the recent court cases. The Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment's stance is suitably combative, with officials pointing to all sorts of dire consequences if Mr Goodman broke the law.

But you have to wonder how much enthusiasm the Department really has for the chase and more significantly the public's interest. For a start there is hardly anyone still working in the Department who would have had an active role in the original Master Meats investigation according to reliable sources. The new investigation will have to start with a bottom-up review of the various files which were long ago sent off for storage in some dusty archive.

IT is also probably safe to say that Mr Goodman's activities 15 years ago are a matter of supreme indifference to the hundreds of thousands who have joined the work force and started paying tax since the dark days of the late 1980s.

There are many senior figures in the business community that would take a similar view. Long after the shock of what emerged at the beef tribunal about the way Mr Goodman's companies operated has past, he remains one of the the largest beef processors in Europe.

His standing amongst his peers is high and remained so throughout his difficult times. When he went to buy back his company from the banks in the mid-1990s he appeared to have little problem getting the great and the good of Irish business to back him.

The McCann family, who control Fyffes, stumped up money along with various other businessmen and the late Mr Bernie Cahill signed up as chairman of Irish Food Processors as the company is now called.

The banks, which had the final say, supported the deal and the company clearly still has the support of all the financial institutions it needs to continue with its business. You could conclude that this says something not very flattering about Irish business ethics in general, but that would be naive. Businesses exist to make money, not to put the world to rights.

The case for Mr Goodman's rehabilitation - if that is the word - is a compelling one. Throughout the various ups and downs of the last 15 years he never lost the trust of one of his most important constituencies, the farmers who sell him their cattle. This was despite all the allegations made against him at the beef tribunal and elsewhere.

His successes and failures have been entwined in the fortunes of much of the farming community and they would take the view, one suspects, that on balance he has done as much, if not more good than bad.

The refusal to forgive and forget seems to rest in certain parts of the body politic and needless to say the media. It would appear that this lobby still exerts sufficient force to ensure that any attempt by the more mainstream political establishment to normalise relations with Mr Goodman is destined to fail. Hence the fuss a few years ago when it emerged he was down to go a trade mission to Russia with the Taoiseach.

At its most extreme the anti-Goodman camp characterises him as a man so bent on making money that he contributed to a crisis in Irish democracy.

The more level headed case is that his companies have committed fraud and tax evasion on a large scale and are still involved in various legal tussles with the State.

Time and subsequent revelations at tribunals about corruption elsewhere in Irish business may have diminished the impact of what we know about Mr Goodman, but it does not change the facts.

His run ins with the Government include the lengthy legal battle over the export credit insurance scheme - the withdrawal of which by Des O'Malley was a part of his downfall in 1990.

Last month the State's defence team in this action accused him - for the first time - of fraud in the obtaining of this cover.

The decision by the State to up the ante in this action indicates that there is no softening of the line on Mr Goodman at this level. The decision to revisit the Fair Trade Commission investigation of Master Meat would appear to confirm it.