Yesterday’s letter to the Irish Times from eight former attorneys general opposing the referendum in relation to Oireachtas inquiries has somehow failed to persuade Fintan O’Toole to vote no.
Now, I’m sure all of these men have acted out of a genuine sense of public duty. But three of them might have had the grace to point out that they could possibly have a little bit of a personal stake in the issue.
Peter Sutherland (top) was criticised by the Dirt inquiry in relation to his role as chairman of Allied Irish Banks, and the experience is unlikely to have endeared him to the notion of Oireachtas inquiries. He also opposed the idea of an inquiry into the banking catastrophe (“We need to look to the future”).
Dermot Gleeson (middle), as chairman of AIB through the years of madness (chairman’s speech to the agm, April 2006: “Asset quality, that’s to say the quality of our loans, is at a historically high level”), would certainly have been called before such an inquiry, had the Oireachtas been able to mount one.
And Michael McDowell (bottom) just might be called to account for one of the most spectacular wastages of public money, the €45 million we’ve so far spent on his grand prison project at Thornton Hall, which may never house a single prisoner.
Time To Show We Are No Longer Suckers (Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times)