What can the Government do about the wave of disinformation flooding our democracies? Here’s a radical idea: it can start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And stop playing cynical games with public information.
The difference between an authoritarian regime and a democracy is the difference between compliance and informed consent. Increasingly, with this Government, that line is being dangerously blurred.
Consider two recent examples:
The first touches on both Ireland’s moral obligations and its international standing. As citizens we need to know whether the Aughinish Alumina plant in Co Limerick is in effect part of Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
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On foot of reporting last March by The Irish Times, in co-operation with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, the Government commissioned an investigation into the export of alumina to Russia and whether it is then turned into aluminium used in the manufacture of weaponry.
On July 24th, instead of publishing the report of this investigation, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment Peter Burke merely issued a short statement telling us that “no adverse findings have been determined in relation to the export of alumina to Russia by the company” and that “no evidence corroborating the media assertions could be found”. He said that “my department has made every effort to substantiate these claims”.
Asked on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland why he was not publishing the actual report, Burke asserted that it contained “confidential data” provided by other countries as well as commercially sensitive data provided by Aughinish.
All of this was misleading in two respects.
Candour and frankness aren’t just about not actively lying. They’re about actively telling the full truth
First, Conor Gallagher, reporting on a copy of the investigation obtained for The Irish Times by Jack Power, wrote in this newspaper that it “explicitly states it does not include any confidential data provided by Aughinish. It also appears to contain no data from other countries of a confidential nature.”
Second, Burke’s claim that his department “made every effort to substantiate these claims” lacks credibility.
A key part of the evidence is a recent ruling by the Swedish tax authorities that Aughinish’s parent company, Rusal, is still in effect controlled by the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
Burke’s department claimed that the Swedish authorities “have been limited in their ability to share information due to the legal requirements of criminal and tax cases, whereby information is strictly confidential and not releasable”.
But Gallagher has shown this is baloney. The Swedish tax ruling is freely available to anyone in return for a €25 administration fee.
Thus, whether knowingly or through ignorance, Burke has made claims about a hugely important matter that do not seem to be true or certainly are not fully true. Even more deplorably, he and the Government have simply refused to explain why such misleading assertions were made or to restore public confidence by publishing the report.
Then last week, we had another extraordinary example of the public being misled by omission – again from Burke’s department.
In June, Burke published an extensive report called The Value of Data Centres to Ireland, which he hailed as proving that these have “a central role in supporting investment, anchoring high-quality jobs and promoting Ireland’s position as a leading global digital hub”.
Much of this boosterism was based on the bizarre argument that since Ireland doesn’t have big polluting heavy industries like other countries do, it’s fine for us to have a massively disproportionate concentration of big, polluting data centres. (“This is our core energy-intensive industry.”) But okay – at least this illogic is transparent enough to be exposed.
What emerged last week, from documents obtained by Sinn Féin after Freedom of Information requests, is that Burke’s department had asked KPMG, which wrote the report, to make large changes to provide “the evidence base that supports the position that we should continue to further develop our data-centre landscape”. In other words, make sure the evidence fits our desired conclusion.
Specifically dropped from the draft report was what everyone knows to be one of the biggest concerns: that the vast amount of skill, labour, investment and planning that goes into building more data centres takes all of those things away from more urgent infrastructural priorities.
The draft stated the obvious truth: “Questions remain about whether infrastructure support and investment could be more impactful if directed toward public services like transport or housing.” But this truth is as inconvenient as it is obvious and it was dropped.
Suppressing or editing one urgent report may be unfortunate; two may begin to look like carelessness. And in fairness to Burke, it is quite possible he is merely hapless. But what’s happening here is immensely serious. The public is being denied what it is entitled to: the full truth on profound national questions.
This gaming of the truth is the rust that corrodes trust in democracy. It feeds the toxic cynicism in which lies no longer matter because, after all, none of them tell the truth. That way fascism lies.
There is a way of dealing with this: the duty of candour. The United Kingdom is in the process of passing the Public Office (Accountability) Bill to create a legal requirement “on public institutions, public servants and officials and on those carrying out functions on their behalf to act in the public interest and with candour and frankness”.
Candour and frankness aren’t just about not actively lying. They’re about actively telling the full truth – including the awkward bits. The law will make it compulsory for all public servants to “act without favour to their own position” and “make full disclosure of relevant documents, material and facts”.
This is good for public servants – it frees them from pressure to tailor truths to the needs of their political masters. They must be freed to say: sorry, boss, but I’d be committing a crime if I colluded in the withholding of any relevant information.
As soon as the Dáil comes back, the combined Opposition parties should table a version of the UK Bill. If the Government wants to oppose it, let its members explain why when they say “to be frank” they mean the opposite.
