POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
ALAN Shatter’s attack on Enda Kenny is a big deal. Well, sort of. Unfortunately, it is also a year too late. The media is taken with Shatter’s belated claim that Kenny has a “casual relationship with the truth”, but I was more interested in his charge that many in Fine Gael live in “fear of the wrath of Enda Kenny”. Ho-hum. Even at this stage, Kenny’s would-be challengers are tentative. Willie O’Dea put it well here last weekend: “They wait for Enda Kenny to hand over the written permission slip required to allow them to actually challenge him.” In his defence, Kenny has referred to Shatter’s resignation letter, in which the minister said as he headed out the door, a knife thrust between his shoulder blades: “I believe you are an extraordinary Taoiseach doing an extraordinary job during what has been a very difficult time for our country and I want to thank you for all the assistance and support you have given to me.”
This puts me somewhat in mind of Niccolo Machiavelli, which in itself raises a question: in five centuries, or even 15 years, how will Enda Kenny come to be regarded? I ask as one of his harshest critics, harsher than this latter-day critic Mr Shatter. In The
Prince, Machiavelli advises on how to avoid flatterers: in short, he states, a prince should take care to choose as ministers men who love him above themselves — but not men who are flatterers. The court, writes Machiavelli, is full of flatterers, and it is hard for a prince to avoid them.
AN excellent new book, Be Like a Fox, aims with some success to shatter the myth that Machiavelli was one of history’s most notorious political thinkers. Since the publication of The Prince, Machiavelli has become something of a byword for political amorality. Author Erica Benner reveals him instead to be an ardent republican whose life was a passionate struggle to restore the democratic freedoms of Florence, a city wrecked by greed, power and decades of conflict. Machiavelli, she concludes, was a man with a great love of life: entertaining, tolerant, charismatic — and, above all, wise and deeply humane. The book title refers to his advice that by being like the fox one can avoid snares. Is Enda to be captured before he slips through the door? I’d doubt it, not by Simon Coveney anyway. The Housing Minister made something of a mess of the politics of water last week. By month’s end it will be evident he has climbed down from his high horse, although his descent is still camouflaged. Here is something for Fine Gael’s electoral college to ponder, when eventually they come to choose: if a new prince is a good ruler, he will actually impress many more people than a hereditary prince would. He will also have what Machiavelli calls a “double glory”: the glory of founding a kingdom and the glory of governing it well. In contrast, a prince who is born into power and loses his state earns a “double shame”. In short, Fine Gael would be mad to pass on Leo Varadkar.
FIFTEEN years ago, I was one a number of journalists who reported uncritically on the work of the then Flood, subsequently Mahon, Tribunal, more formally the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments. Indeed, I was among a handful who carved out a something of a name in reporting on the investigations of the tribunal. All these years later the findings of that tribunal are steadily being quashed in the High Court, the latest last week, findings against Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering, and specifically Joseph Murphy Junior.
A ruling in a separate tribunal-related case six years ago by the late Supreme Court justice, Adrian Hardiman, comes to mind: “modern” tribunals, he said, had powers that were “truly awesome”, their expense “enormous”, the cost of participating in them “grotesque” and the duration of some “nothing less than appalling”. It was also clear that the law reports of tribunals were “legally sterile”, he said, “devoid of legal consequences” and could not be used in legal proceedings as either a weapon or a shield. “Junior”, as the late old rogue James Gogarty referred to Mr Murphy, deserved his day in court and his belated vindication.
IT can not be known whether Alan Shatter would have faired any better before a Tribunal of Inquiry than he did in the curious report of Sean Guerin of the Law Library, which examined his handling of the complaints of garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe. He could scarcely have fared much worse. As a consequence of a Court of Appeal judgment last week, which found his constitutional rights were breached, the former Justice Minister has turned up the nature of his attacks on Enda Kenny, who forced his resignation on the back of the Guerin report. Perhaps Shatter will find time to elaborate on the nature of Kenny’s truthfulness at the Charleton Tribunal, now that tribunals seem to be coming back into vogue.
ELSEWHERE, Machiavelli writes, a prince’s reputation has a lot to do with the character of his officers. If he has competent and fair secretaries and ministers, he will usually be thought of as wise and good himself. How can a prince know who to choose as a minister? Machiavelli offers a rule of thumb: if a man is selfish and seeks his own profit above all things, he will probably not be a good minister. Good ministers must be willing to think of the prince first, always and in every case. This works two ways, however; the prince, if he wishes to keep his good minister, must always be willing to give the minister honours, riches, and other kinds of gratification. Like the prince and his people, the prince and his ministers should exist in an ideal interdependence, since each needs the other. Or so ’twas written five centuries ago.
FOR all the injustice done to Alan Shatter, this is my abiding recollection of those events: the Minister for Justice in RTE failing to uphold his statutory duties under the Data Protection Act by disclosing during a televised interview in 2013 that Mick Wallace had been cautioned by gardai for using a mobile phone while driving, information that was provided to him by the then Garda Commissioner, Martin Callinan. *Shudder*.
AS the Irish Times has editorialised, Mr Justice Peter Charleton has set off into an ethical and legal minefield with his announcement that his tribunal into alleged attempts to discredit Maurice McCabe will inquire into the limits to journalistic privilege or the protection of sources. I have some form in this regard, having being lifted by the guards not once but twice (or was it thrice — I can’t recall) in relation to journalistic sources on various stories, including at the behest of the Flood Tribunal itself. Indeed, I was the first witness at said tribunal, where wee Fergus Flood himself grilled me in the box, at one point asking if I felt I was above the law no less (for refusing to divulge a source), whereupon I was rescued by our legal counsel, who said that, no, a journalist is not above the law, but sometimes must stand to one side of the law. I could not have put it better myself. Nothing has changed in that regard, of course. That said, Mr Justice Charleton is wished a fair wind and all speed.