The Trib (13 page)

Today we publish the expenses of Mary Harney, Tom Parlon, Noel Dempsey, Bertie Ahern and even John Gormley, for God's sake. It makes for very uncomfortable reading. They have all, in some way, enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle at the taxpayer's expense – all of it signed off by the finance office of each minister's department and ultimately by the minister for finance.

John O'Donoghue is a fall guy all right, but only in the sense that so many of his colleagues, if they had an ounce of integrity, should resign along with him. As they brazen it out, they make him the lone scapegoat, not a public that wants root-and-branch transformation of the sleazy modus operandi of the Dáil.

The newly negotiated programme for government puts parliamentary reform at the top of the agenda. It is interesting that it proved one of the stickiest areas to negotiate. No doubt its terms will leave most TDs pale at the extent of the transformation proposed.

The fiasco of stonewalling the Freedom of Information Act at every turn must end. All expenses, whether they are vouched or unvouched, must be published regularly so taxpayers can see where their money is going and decide whether or not it is well spent. New regulations covering overly lavish accommodation, travel and dining arrangements must also be issued. And while there is an argument for some unvouched allowances, these should be kept to a minimum.

Nobody in this saga emerges with much glory. But it is to be hoped that, at last, a poisonous boil has been lanced.

It would have been better, however, if the lead could have been taken by the Taoiseach, who not once in this debacle has put it on record that the lessons have been learned and that our public representatives must clean up their own houses before asking everyone else to take a €4 billion hit for Team Ireland.

8 April 2007

A
t about 11 p.m. last Sunday, a nurse bearing bad news entered the reception area of St James's A&E. To gauge when we might see a doctor, the thirty of us waiting should take our time of arrival and add at least ten hours.

The tourists who were accompanying their ill friend had already been waiting thirteen hours and the late-night casualties were getting rowdier, so we decided to cut our losses. As we left, the flushed nurse apologised to all present for ‘this system' before comforting an elderly woman sitting in the chaotic environment. Nine hours to go before the work-to-rule by nurses would begin.

After a ring-around, my resourceful buddy drove me to Tallaght Hospital, hoping it might be less busy – and it was. By 1.30 a.m., I'd been through triage, had bloods taken and was on a trolley in a curtained cubicle on an IV drip. An ordinary sore throat had turned into a severe tonsillitis that had left me drooling, aching and unable to speak or swallow.

I've been in A&E units several times before, all but once, thank God, as a working journalist. Previously, I had seen a nurse not even flinch as she tended a stabbed teenager who drew his own blade out of his boot to ‘show' her before spitting in her face. I had seen a nurse gently persuade a repeat attendee to acknowledge that she had not again ‘walked into a door'. And I had seen nurses perform any number of clean-up jobs on drunks who thanked them with a stream of expletives and, once, an aggressive grope.

This time, I was the patient, and the nurses were as ever the ones making things bearable. One seemed to be with me for much of the ten hours I was on the trolley, her kindness as much of a balm as the drugs she was giving me.

And it was a nurse whose hand my fingernails were sunk into while a doctor stuck a very, very long needle down my throat to prod around.

By the time I was moved further in the A&E ward to a bed, the work-to-rule was well underway but I personally felt no ill effect from it.

What I did see was a nurse coax out of a badly-suffering patient that their pain was probably being exacerbated by their sudden withdrawal from an undisclosed alcohol dependency.

I saw a nurse embracing a young woman who was crying at the latest diagnosis a doctor had left her with. And I saw several visitors who seemed to interpret ‘visiting hours' as the only period when you couldn't visit and ‘two at a time' as the number of visitors who should stay outside, making it considerably harder for nurses to treat patients.

I was discharged last Wednesday and, on the way out, I saw about a dozen people on trolleys in the corridor and another two dozen waiting outside in ‘chairs'. Any A&E I've ever experienced was invariably very busy and patients were invariably on trolleys, industrial action or not.

The Patient Focus Group has this past week reminded nurses that their main duty of care is to their patient rather than their union. I didn't meet any nurse who needed reminding of that fact. But I did meet the humane face of Ireland's ailing health service, doing on a routine basis for complete strangers the kind of messy, smelly, unpleasant tasks that most of us would have to steel ourselves to do for our loved ones.

In matters of war and peace, refusing to sit on the fence is not a denial of political impartiality.

27 July 2008

I
n November 1995, I travelled with Tommie Gorman from Dublin to the Fanad peninsula in Co. Donegal. We were attending the funeral of Neil T Blaney, the former Fianna Fáil minister and longtime Republican independent politician.

I had written a short biography of Blaney a couple of years previously. But at the time, I was still learning my trade as a journalist in the RTÉ newsroom. Gorman had established a reputation as a hardworking correspondent in the northwest region, and by 1995, he was RTÉ's Europe editor. Some years later, he would swap Brussels for Belfast to become the national broadcaster's Northern editor.

I was reminded of that day in November 1995 as I read Ed Moloney's comments on speculation that Gorman played a role of sorts in the Northern Ireland peace process. There has been persistent talk that Gorman facilitated contacts between the DUP and Sinn Féin prior to the establishment of power-sharing at Stormont in May 2007. Gorman has previously denied a role. But both Bertie Ahern and Jonathan Powell, a long-time senior advisor to Tony Blair, had referred to the involvement of the RTÉ journalist.

Moloney contends – if it is true – that Gorman crossed an ethical line, and that the implications for Irish journalism are far-reaching. I am not so sure.

There was a huge turnout on the bitter winter's day when Blaney was laid to rest at the small graveyard at St Columba's Church. In a graveside oration, another former Fianna Fáil minister, Kevin Boland, spoke of betrayal: ‘Blaney is gone. There is no Nationalist, no Republican voice in the parliament of the twenty-six-county State. And there is no principle in it, either.' Given all that has happened in Northern Ireland over the past decade, Boland's words are from another world now.

Martin McGuinness was among the funeral congregation. The IRA ceasefire of August 1994 was in place, but the British had not responded with the same speed as their counterparts in Dublin. Demands for decommissioning and the attachment of the word ‘permanent' to the ceasefire were, in peace-process language, creating an impasse to the invitation of Republicans to the talks table. Unknown to the wider world, there was a dynamic underway within the Republican movement, and one which played out so dramatically with the Canary Wharf bombing some months later in February 2006.

Gorman had a relationship with McGuinness. As I understand it, respect for Gorman had been formed some years previously when both men, for different reasons, were in attendance at a local court hearing. As cases waited to be heard, a traveller woman was before the court on some minor charge. She was a mother of several children and it wasn't her first appearance in court. ‘Is there someone here to go bail for this woman?' the judge asked. There was silence in the body of the court. Then, rather than see the woman go to jail with the inevitable consequences for her young family, Gorman stood and said he would go bail.

After the Blaney funeral on the road to Derry, we stopped at a café. McGuinness and his driver had already ordered tea. I had not met McGuinness before. He eyed me warily. He was a man under pressure. ‘What do you need?' Gorman asked. ‘Talks, Tommie. We need talks,' McGuinness replied. And after a pause, he bluntly added: ‘I could get a bullet in the head if this thing doesn't start delivering.'

McGuinness may have relayed the same information at meetings with Irish government politicians and officials. I don't know if Gorman passed on the conversation the next time he met a senior politician or minister. At that time, I wasn't in a position to have such access. But if I had met an Irish government figure involved in the peace process, would I have passed on my observations? Yes.

I have interviewed Ed Moloney on many occasions. He is a journalist whose work I respect greatly. I agree with his contention that journalists must not take part in politics nor do anything that raises questions about their professional integrity. I would not, however, be so confident as to state that these principles are widely applied. Conflicts of interest are not always declared. And it is regrettable that the purity which Moloney seeks does not universally prevail. The idea of a register of interests for media professionals is certainly worthy of consideration.

But a more pertinent matter concerns the belief that the nonintervention of journalists in political matters is an all-embracing principle. I do not accept that political purity is so easily applicable – or always justifiable – in an area of conflict-resolution.

Is it really unethical for a journalist to make his home and counsel available to rival parties in a political conflict so they can secretly meet to resolve their differences? I would say the answer is no. And it is certainly not unethical if the consequences of non-intervention are that the two sides fail to reach agreement and a return of conflict is a possible outcome.