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Fintan O’Toole: Robert Troy should quit or be sacked. Ireland’s fragile progress depends on it

TD’s sins of omission may seem minor but the minister for gamekeeping cannot be a poacher

Robert Troy and Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Photograph: James Forde

Fintan O'Toole's face
Fintan O'Toole
Tue Aug 23 2022 - 05:00

Robert Troy should resign as Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise. If he does not do so voluntarily, Micheál Martin should sack him.

Otherwise, even the most minimal protections we as citizens have against potential conflicts of interest in public life will be revealed as farcical. Troy did not bother to follow rules that are simple to understand and easy to comply with.

If the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste continue to stand by him, those rules are worse than meaningless. They are a mockery of public ethics.

What we know about Troy is that he has been extraordinarily careless about his obligations to register and report both his private interests and his public conduct.

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He did not disclose on the register of interests for members of the Dáil much of his extensive property portfolio, including rental accommodation contracts with Westmeath county council. One of his rental properties was not, as the law requires it should be, registered with the Residential Tenancies Board.

Troy also failed to release his ministerial diaries for 2021 and the first half of 2020, due to an “administrative oversight”. He did not disclose his directorship of a company, RMT Management Limited.

These omissions relate, not to one annual return, but in some cases to a full decade from 2011 onwards. Troy has explained them as inadvertent errors, but this is irrelevant. There is no amnesty for amnesia, no asterisk that marks a legal obligation as optional.

These sins of omission may seem minor. We are not talking about corruption. Yet Troy’s behaviour is important for reasons that are both immediate and long-term.

The most obvious one is that he is Minister of State for (among other things) company regulation. He’s the guy in charge of framing the regime under which companies comply with their legal obligations — including of course the obligation to report their dealings accurately.

That in itself makes his position untenable: the minister for gamekeeping can’t be a poacher. Even if there were no other reasons, this alone would surely suggest to Troy that he can’t credibly do the job.

In Troy’s case, there is no suggestion of actual corruption. What there is, though, is a careless disregard for the mechanisms designed to prevent it

The other immediate consideration is that the State is facing a crisis of confidence in the crucially important planning system. It has been caused precisely by the failure of the deputy chairman of An Bord Pleanála, Paul Hyde, to declare potential conflicts of interests.

How can the Government convince the public that it is serious about clearing up that mess if it simultaneously treats Troy’s failure to comply with rules designed to highlight potential conflicts of interest as a matter of no consequence?

Beneath these specific concerns, there is a more fundamental one: the slow and fragile recovery of public confidence in the ethical conduct of public life. Nonchalance towards Troy threatens that recovery.

[ Opposition calls on Minister of State Robert Troy to make Dáil statement on property dealings ]

[ Robert Troy property controversy: How it unfolded ]

[ Taoiseach defends Robert Troy over property dealings ]

One of the underlying reasons for the great disaster that hit Ireland in 2008 was official tolerance of shadiness, shoddiness and shenanigans. Unethical behaviour in the banking system and in property development could not be tackled because the cowboy culture was sanctioned right at the top of Irish politics.

We had, as the Mahon tribunal found, corruption that was “both endemic and systemic” at every level of politics.

One of the reasons for cautious optimism about Ireland is that we have made progress in moving away from that culture.

A good measure is Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. In 2012, Ireland was seen as only the 25th least corrupt country worldwide, a terrible ranking for a western European democracy.

But there’s been a slow and fragile improvement over the last decade: 21st in 2013, 18th in 2015, 13th last year. No one imagines that we have ascended into a heaven of purity, but we have at least climbed out of the mud.

The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption commission has rated Ireland’s ethics regime as ‘globally unsatisfactory’

In Troy’s case, there is no suggestion of actual corruption. What there is, though, is a careless disregard for the mechanisms designed to prevent it.

Those mechanisms are themselves pitifully minimal. Just look at the annual report of the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo), published earlier this month.

It points out that no fewer than 25 State bodies are not even covered by ethics legislation. It reminds us that the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption commission has rated Ireland’s ethics regime as “globally unsatisfactory”.

Shockingly, the report has 11 pages listing specific recommendations it has made, year after year, for changes to render the Ethics Acts more effective. Against each one it has a heading for “Progress in 2021″. In 49 of those boxes, the text consists of one word: none.

This complacency is both dangerous and disgraceful. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, having allowed corruption to fester for so long, owe the Irish people the only act of contrition that is worthwhile: a serious and urgent determination to ensure that the ordure that has been swept out of the stables does not seep back in.

By backing Troy, however, Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar (who is Troy’s immediate departmental boss) are sending a signal that even the weak defences we have can be easily evaded. If you ignore the rules, all you have to do is say sorry and correct the record. That’s a Trojan horse.

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