Stephen Collins: Golfgate verdicts show danger of giving in to mob

The dismissal of all charges against the accused in the “golfgate” court case should have prompted some self-reflection in the media on its role in propagating a false narrative in August 2020.

Instead the reaction has generally been one of indignation that the judge did not follow the lead of the lynch mob and convict people of a crime they did not commit.

Clearly stumped by Judge Mary Fahy’s failure to deliver the desired guilty verdict, the general media reaction has been to suggest that the “court of public opinion” had delivered its judgment at the time. This is no excuse for the reports that generated public hysteria and led to the termination of some high-profile political careers and the hounding of the other participants in the ill-fated Oireachtas golf society dinner.

The removal of Phil Hogan from his key role in Brussels was a national own goal

It is worth recalling that the judge did not dismiss the charges against the organisers on some legal technicality. Having heard the detailed evidence about what took place in the Station Hotel in Clifden on the night of August 19th, 2020, she concluded there had been no breach of the law or of the Covid-19 health regulations.

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“I’m satisfied the organisers did everything to comply, not in a court of public opinion, but in the court of law in my opinion. Unfortunately, very good people lost very good jobs and very good contracts,” Fahy said in her summing up.

Thankfully we still live in a democracy where the rule of law applies but unfortunately the legal outcome has come long after the verdict in the “court of public opinion”. This saw two senior political figures, EU trade commissioner Phil Hogan and minister for agriculture Dara Calleary, being sacrificed to appease media-fuelled public anger, and Supreme Court judge Séamus Woulfe being subjected to ferocious pressure to resign.

Injustice done

Leaving aside the injustice done to the two political figures involved, the removal of Hogan from his key role in Brussels was a national own goal. At the time of his departure, he had established himself as one of Ireland’s best-ever commissioners, of the calibre of Peter Sutherland or Ray MacSharry. He had enormous clout at EU level which he used forcibly to the country’s benefit during the Brexit negotiations.

It is no disrespect to his successor, Maireád McGuinness, to suggest that if he had still been in office in January 2021 he would have had the clout to stop commission president Ursula von der Leyen from committing the dreadful error of threatening to invoke article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol. Her faux pas was quickly reversed but it gave Boris Johnson and his aggressive EU negotiator, David Frost, the excuse to repeatedly threaten to invoke it and abandon the protocol in the year that followed.

Fahy’s decision can do nothing to reverse Hogan’s premature departure from his international role but it will hopefully give a new lease of life to Calleary’s political career. He is one of the most talented politicians in Fianna Fáil and deserves to be promoted to the Cabinet at the first opportunity.

That opportunity will certainly arise next December, if not before, when Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin swap roles as taoiseach and tánaiste. A Cabinet reshuffle will accompany that switchover and Calleary has strong claims to be given a senior ministerial position. The Coalition could do with some new energy to cope with the permanent onslaught from Sinn Féin and its allies.

Pointless sacrifice

The fundamental lesson for the leaders of the Government parties is that they need to develop the backbone to face down political opponents and the media when they come baying for blood. A succession of prominent people have been sacrificed for no good reason, including former ministers Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald as well as Garda commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan. The inevitable result is that the mob comes back looking for another head.

A feature of so many political controversies in this country is the lack of proportion in how they develop. Relatively minor misjudgments and even completely false allegations are treated as if they are hanging offences and demands for resignations inevitably follow. Most other democracies take a more considered view of routine mistakes which are an inevitable part of political life.

Look what happened in Finland when newly appointed prime minister Sanna Marin breached her own government’s Covid regulations and went to a nightclub with friends to celebrate. She apologised for her error but there were no serious calls for her resignation and the matter was over and done with quickly.

Or look at Norway which is always held up as the paragon of democratic values. The former prime minister, Erna Solberg, was fined for breaching Covid rules for attending her own 60th birthday party dinner in a restaurant. As in Finland, there was controversy but no serious demand for her resignation although it may have contributed to her losing the subsequent general election.

The whole golfgate episode is a salutary lesson for the political system – and the wider public – to beware being rushed into judgment on any issue before the evidence is clear. The only positive aspect of the court case is that it gave some closure to those involved whose reputations were unfairly tarnished.