Blowing the whistle on corruption

At the beginning of this week the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin, published the heads of the long-awaited whistleblowers bill. This legislation has been needed for a for a very long time but this week’s announcement seems, at last, to be concrete evidence of good intentions on the part of the government.
The aim of this legislation is to protect people in all sectors in the case that they come forward with information regarding illicit activities in their workplace. In theory, the bill will provide protection for people’s future job prospects if they come forward to regulators or authorities.
What we can say for sure is that there are people all over the country who are in possession of information which, if it came to light, would lead to the prosecution or, at the very least, reprimand of others in both the public and private sector.
For many years the lack of legislation in this area has protected those who are using their positions for nefarious purposes.
The announcement of the legislation has been welcomed by the Irish chapter of Transparency International, the think tank that monitors corruption worldwide. It’s own website sums up its corruption league table as follows.
“The Corruption Perceptions Index measures perceptions of business people and experts of corruption in the public sector including corruption involving public officials, civil servants or politicians.”
It looks at factors such as enforcement of anti-corruption laws, access to information and conflicts of interest. Its findings are regularly used by business analysts, rating agencies and investors to measure the quality of regulation and rule of law in those countries listed on the index.
According to John Devitt, the chief executive of Transparency International Ireland, “The latest figures for 2011 show that Ireland dropped from 14th to 19th in the world ranking of perceived corruption. This is a significant drop and places Ireland well down the rankings compared to our North European neighbours. The reason for the drop has been put down to a cosy cartel culture involving bankers, business elites and politicians. This same pernicious culture brought us the Moriarty Tribunal, the Planning Tribunal, the DIRT inquiry and more.”
He adds that, “The country’s international reputation now rests as much on our leaders’ commitment to open up government and uphold the rule of law as it does on fixing our economy.” 
This week’s announcement of whistleblower legislation is certainly an important first step; what remains to be seen is the speed with which it is put on the statute books but more importantly how comfortable people will be to use it. One of the most difficult aspects of corruption to tackle is the culture that grows up around it. As outlined in Devitt’s comments, the various tribunals that have been going on in Ireland for years, allow us a glimpse into the networks of corruption which existed in the power networks of Ireland for many years. The danger with such a culture in the upper echelons of society is the normalisation of the concept or practice of corruption.
Another interesting aspect of Ireland’s social life, which bears examination in this debate, is the small population. Inevitably people from all walks of life have family, friends or friends of friends in the right places to get things done quickly, cheaply or more effectively than they might by going through formal channels. This has the effect of normalising the friendly favour that circumvents the standard procedure within the culture. The small population also places little distance between the voter and their political representative.
Weekly clinics mean people have far greater access to their TD whose help they can invoke to get relatively small jobs done on their behalf by pulling strings or making pleas at higher levels.
Most people will be of the opinion that these are small matters and that they represent no real harm to the society and of course to a large extent they are correct. They do constitute a foundation however for something that can evolve into something far more serious when it is continued in area where more power, money and influence are at play.
This kind of culture is best represented by the “Fianna Fáil Tent” which used to spring into being at the Galway races. Thankfully this icon of all things rotten in Irish politics has been consigned to the waste bin of history but the fact that it operated in plain sight for so many years tells us something very important about the culture that existed within and around it and how acceptable this was in political and business circles and in the mind of the general public.
What we have had this week is an announcement of intention from the government so we must wait to see what the actual results of their good intentions will be.
It is only after nine months in government that the current coalition finally got around to publishing legislation proposing a ban on corporate donations to Irish political parties. Fianna Fáil and the Greens had long promised this but never got around to it. The new government had almost a year to gather together funding under the old rules before they brought the legislation forward and it will be interesting to see how much this earned them when the figures are published. Even the bill, as it is proposed, is a far weaker piece of legislation than what was proposed by the Moriarty Tribunal but I suppose it constitutes a start.
Similarly, the whistleblowers legislation is a step in the right direction but it is one step on what looks like a very long road. Culture does not change overnight and certainly not as a result of one piece of legislation. Those who wish to abuse their positions and their power will continue to do so; it is up to everyone else to try and guard against the practices that have blighted Irish life for so many years. These practices serve only to benefit those in power to the detriment of everybody else.