The interim report by Judge Gerard Buchanan on the reported payment of cash to politicians by Dunnes Stores is, at first impressions, something of a damp squib. The only serving politician named in the report is the former Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr Michael Lowry, whose case has already been well-ventilated in the Dail and outside it. But the real significance of Judge Buchanan's report may lie in what it does not tell us.
The report does reveal how some members of the Haughey family, including Mrs Maureen Haughey and her son Ciaran, received money from Mr Ben Dunne. Mrs Haughey says that the £20,000 was an unsolicited contribution to her husband's election expenses; Ciaran Haughey says that he received £10,000 for business services rendered by his company Celtic Helicopters.
But the circumstances in which the payment to Mrs Haughey was made are not clear. Nor can they be, with Judge Buchanan's limited brief and authority. All we know is that the wife of a former Taoiseach received a large sum of money from Mr Ben Dunne, at a time when the latter was the leading figure in Ireland's largest private company and when Mr Haughey was Taoiseach and already a man of considerable personal wealth. Rightly or wrongly, this revelation alone will further fuel public cynicism about the relationship between politics and big business.
But Judge Buchanan also reveals that Mr Dunne's largesse operated on a scale which makes these payments look insignificant. And that the great bulk of this cash is untraceable at this time. Judge Buchanan, despite his very best efforts, is unable to identify the beneficiaries of over £3.5 million in payments from Mr Dunne. In all, some 63 per cent of the payments referred to in the Price Waterhouse report cannot be traced; confirmation in its own way of Mr Dunne's unorthodox business methods.
Last night's strong signal from the Government that a tribunal of inquiry may now be necessary to sort out the whole business is both welcome and overdue. The inadequacies of the current investigation by a sub-committee of the Committee on Procedures and Privileges are now abundantly clear; the trail has run into the sand, Mr Ben Dunne says that he is prohibited on legal advice from co-operating fully with the investigation and the sub7committee is powerless to do much about it. The view articulated from the outset by both Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats that the whole exercise was a charade, designed to buy some time for an embarassed government, gains credence. Who got Mr Dunne's £3.5 million and why? And why is this generosity untraceable?
There are grounds for optimism that a tribunal might get to the heart of the matter; the hepatitis C tribunal has underlined the potential for a short, sharp inquiry. The first task facing any tribunal is to remind Mr Ben Dunne of his obligations to the State and to the laws of the land. A situation in which he does not appear to be accountable to the representatives of this State is surely intolerable.