An article by Leslie Mallory in yesterday’s Sunday Independent talks about planning corruption in Spain. The general tone of the article is ‘If you think things are bad in Ireland, take a look at Spain.’ In other words Spain has a greater problem with corruption than Ireland. The article spoke of local politicians appearing in court, local government members charged with planning offences, creative accountancy and perversion of the course of justice and a deputy mayor facing four years in jail.
The key words here are ‘ ‘appearing in court’, ‘charged’, and ‘jail’. In Ireland, this simply does not happen, corruption is either ignored, side-lined into never ending tribunals or simply not noticed because it’s such a part of our culture.
In properly run democracies, when corruption is detected a sequence of events follows: police investigation, charges, court case and if guilty, appropriate punishment. This is usually done within a reasonable time frame.
Let’s make a comparison. The very powerful American billionaire Martha Stewart was found guilty of lying to investigators about the sale of some minor stock. It took less than two years from the date of the alleged dodgy stock sale to Martha finding herself slopping out with the great unwashed in jail. (Note that Martha got jail for lying to investigators, something that is regarded as a national pastime here by the so-called great and good)
Ray Burke was first investigated by the Gardai in 1974. Despite constant questions about his ‘activities’, it took 31 years before Irish justice caught up with him.
Of course there is corruption in every country but the difference between an accountable democracy and a Banana Republic is the action taken to counteract it. Leslie Mallory suggests that Spain is more corrupt than Ireland because so many politicians are facing prosecution. I maintain the opposite – the fact that no Irish politician has ever faced corruption charges is an indication that the system itself is corrupt, that it protects rather than exposes the guilty.
Comments
4 responses to “Nada corruption?”
this is one element of the ‘democratic veneer’ comment i’m still getting whacked over.
ps – like the new look. schnazzy.
Not forgetting that two investigations into Martin Cullen’s activities have pretty much said ‘they weren’t illegal but they probably should be’. And the government response? ‘Case closed, Minister vindicated.’
Democratic veneer indeed.
That said, according to Transparency International (last year’s Corruption Perception Index), we are perceived as being less corrupt than Spain. We also do better in the Global Corruption Barometer in most categories except political parties, police and medical/health system. Both tables make for quite interesting reading. Worth noting is that our rating has fallen since 1995 – I’m guessing this is related to the setting up of various tribunals but won’t swear to it – whereas Spain’s has climbed.
One of the points raised above is not unique to corruption proceedings though – it seems to take ages for almost any case to wind its way through the judicial system in this country.
I’m guessing that half my comment above is missing because I didn’t close a HTML tag properly or some such carelessness…All I said after that is that we largely did better on the Global Corruption Index (also on the Transparency Intl site somewhere), although a point worth noting is that our ratings have slipped over the past ten years whereas those of Spain have climbed.