Ó Corráin calls for a second republic

THE need for extensive reform was the key message of a number of speakers at this year’s Burren Law School in Ballyvaughan.

Historian Professor Donnchadh Ó Corráin called for the declaration of a second republic at last weekend’s event, which attracted crowds from across the country.
The professor was hugely critical of the situation Ireland finds itself in because what he claimed were poor leadership and abuses of power.
“Our political leaders rob the State. The public good is subordinated to private gain, and re-election, not public service, is the aim of the politicians, that is, re-election to continue their plunder. The collapse of the commercial banks shows that the disease, that is, incompetence and dishonesty, has spread outside Government and its arms but Government is deeply complicit in this failure and in bumbling and dishonest plans to remedy it at the citizens’ expense,” Professor Ó Corráin claimed.
“Less than 90 years since the foundation of the State, we are staring collapse in the face. No time for minor improvements, no time for tinkering with failed systems, no time for jobbery under the name of reform, no time for political hacks in national leadership, no time for fools in power. It is time to declare the second republic,” he asserted. Speaking on the lessons that must be learned from the abuse of economic power in modern Ireland, Eleanor McClorey, chief executive of the Young Ballymun Project, stated that “the economic system in Ireland through the Celtic Tiger era did not invest sustainably and equitably in the lives, the learning and the social and emotional development of Irish children.”
As a result, she said about 20% of children leave primary school without the basic level of literacy to engage with the secondary school curriculum. She added that about 20% of secondary school pupils do not progress from second to third-level education.
“These children and young people will, throughout their lives, continue to pay very dearly for the failure to provide them with the appropriate supports to their learning and development,” Ms McClorey claimed, adding “one key lesson from the abuses of economic power is that a dramatically different response to children’s development is now socially and economically an imperative”.
Dealing with prosecuting the Misuse of Power and White Collar Crime, Juan Carrau Mellado, anti-corruption prosecutor in Majorca outlined the Spanish experience in the fight against corruption.
“In Spain in recent years, there has been a great improvement in the fight against political corruption,” he said.
Mr Carrau Mellado pointed out that, in the past two years, 19 mayors from various political parties were arrested for alleged crimes of corruption.
He added that in November 2009, the chief state prosecutor informed the Spanish parliament that a total of 594 proceedings were taken against political appointees or those in political positions.
Mr Carrau Mellado said he believed that in Spain, three factors have been very important in tackling the misuse of power: legal changes, changes in the new types of investigation and changes in the operational methods.
“From my limited knowledge of the Irish experience in investigating, it seems that the Spanish approach to investigating suspected political corruption has certain advantages over the Irish system, which might have avoided some of the key problems associated with the tribunals in Ireland,” Mr Carrau Mellado stated.
“Firstly, we have two different judicial processes. One is a judicially controlled investigation and the second the formal trial, which avoids the problem of tribunals carrying out dual functions. The other advantage in the Spanish system is that the process is a criminal one from the outset, which avoids the problem that the Irish tribunals have that the evidence of criminality unearthed by the tribunals cannot be transferred to a criminal trial, which results in the need for a separate criminal investigation. That problem cannot arise in Spain,” he concluded.