Paul Kelly talks with Dr Elaine Byrne about political corruption in Ireland and where we go from here. Dr. Elaine Byrne is a lecturer, journalist, consultant and political analyst as well as lecturer in the Department of Political Science in Trinity. Her first book, A Crooked Harp: Political Corruption in Ireland 1922-2010, will be published by Manchester University Press this spring.
What do you think is the gravest problem facing our new government as regards political corruption in the Irish political system?
I think really the big issue, and that’s what my book looks at, is how the definition of corruption evolves and changes. How thirty years ago we had certain definitions and understandings of corruption and they change over time. When we look at the issues now we can ask: well how did that happen? But back then it was perfectly normal, and I think the same thing is happening now in terms of the influence of vested interests in decision making. I think that’s the big challenge for the current government to understand- that that’s a serious issue.
What do you think about Fine Gael and Labour’s proposed reforms to the political system?
Well, myself and several other academic colleagues have put together this methodology called reformcard.com where we rate the different proposals in the program for government against different criteria. They’re being released soon and I think they’ve scored relatively high. We’ll have to wait and see, lots of governments in the past have promised to implement different proposals but they haven’t done so. If they do implement them that’ll be a massive step, a fantastic step, but I’m a little worried about political funding. I don’t see a commitment in the Programme for Government that they will publish their accounts. I know in Fine Gael’s manifesto they said that they would do that so I’m a little bit concerned about that, but on the whole I think it looks very positive. What would be interesting though, is that they have a minister for public sector reform, Brendan Howlin but it’s not immediately clear to me yet who’s the person responsible for political reform in government. That’s something that would be great to see more of an emphasis on.
Just going back to Brendan Howlin’s appointment. There was a huge scandal that erupted about Joan Burton being passed over for that same position. Do you see that as there being more of the same in this coalition government? That people are just being passed over for friends of the government?
I think that you could say that Joan Burton is a friend of the government just as much as Brendan Howlin.
Do you see this more as a sexist issue then?
There has been a lot of discussion about that. I think it’s sad and, as a young women, it’s disappointing to see that there aren’t more women in cabinet and that there aren’t more young people in cabinet. There are only two ministers under 50 in the cabinet and only two women.
Do you see a correlation between people wanting more experienced members and this age gap?
I can see that argument, but just because you have more experience does not mean that you’re very good at what you do. In the last government we had ministers who were in government for 14 years and we still had the intervention of the IMF, so experience didn’t matter very much because we still lost our economic sovereignty because of decisions that very experienced ministers made. I would go back to the very first government Ireland had: apart from Eoin McNeill and WT Cosgrave the entire cabinet were men in their thirties.
I think we tend to define experience as longevity in a position and I think that experience should be defined more as meritocracy for a position. We see people talking about glass ceilings for women, but I think we also have glass ceilings for young people.
Why do you think previous anti-corruption legislation has failed so miserably? We’ve had anti-corruption legislation in the past but it hasn’t really stopped anybody such as Senator Callely and the expenses scandal that erupted there.
Well the legislation wasn’t always necessarily there. The ethics act was brought in in 1995 but before that anti-corruption legislation in Ireland dated back to British statues of 1916 and 1906 so we had a very outdated legislative framework. I think there is a focus on the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law which means the law always has to play catch up because there are always loopholes to be found when people only define their behaviour on what’s legally expected of them and not necessarily what their own moral obligations as servants of the public trust is. I think were coming to the point now where people are beginning to define their behaviour and realise that there’s not only legal expectations of them, but also moral expectations. It’s interesting in resignation speeches of a Ceann Comhairle or a Taoiseach or a former minister you see this phrase that crops up a lot: “I broke no law, I did no wrong.”
So on one hand they’re resigning in protest because there saying I broke no law so I don’t see why I have to resign, but, on the other hand, they’ve resigned because of moral pressure and public pressure.
Do you think this has hurt the government’s ability to govern? Have people lost faith in the political system?
The Euro Barometer polls would show that, in comparative terms, Irish people have one of the lowest levels of trust in government, second only to Greece, but that can be changed. However I think that Irish people have very little trust in authority in general, whether that be the Church or the Gardaí. A whole series of institutions in Ireland have undergone incredible challenges and self-scrutiny. There have been approximately 30 different inquiries since the 1930’s into public life in Ireland and that’s very welcome because that’s a redefinition of values that’s occurring now, rather then just taking things for granted and not challenging and not questioning.
Would you see that as linked to the crisis in party politics that’s occurring in Ireland right now? The latest election has received the largest independent vote in the history of the state, is that a challenge to party authority?
I’d see this election as a protest election. 41% of candidates in this election were independents which is absolutely incredible and an indication that people don’t trust the formal party political system but still want to contribute to politics. It’s great that so many people felt that they want to engage in politics but, on the other hand, didn’t trust politicians, but still did something about it. I’m not sure we’ll see that next election because I think the first election, just as we saw in Iceland and in other countries, after an economic collapse tends to be very reactionary and in protest. The new government’s symbolic actions like going to the Oireachtas in a bus, cutting the pay of the Taoiseach- those things matter. Those kind of things instil a sense of trust in politicians far more than rhetoric.
Is there a problem with excessive localism in Irish politics? What you consider that as a part of corruption?
We could get into a very deep philosophical discussion about whether clientelism and patronage is a form of corruption as we define it or whether its just politicians acting in the interests of their constituents. I have a very definite view on that. I think that it’s not just politicians that need to act differently, it’s people that need to act differently, it’s the electorate that need to act differently and it’s the electorate that need to take responsibility for electing people to office who have records that are less than clean. You look at Ireland over the last 20 or 30 years and you can look at cases where there have been questions about the integrity of some people, yet the electorate return them to office in record numbers. And you can see people who were trying to introduce ethics into public life and were punished for it by the electorate by recording a lower vote. We can blame politicians and political parties, but people vote them in.
