Ship of Fools Read Online Free PDF Page B

friend’s life-saving medical fund and still be a
patriot right down to the tips of the fingers that were elegantly snaffling the banknotes.
    This was an important moral statement - for Bertie Ahern himself, who clearly liked to imagine that his own venality in public office would be forgotten in time, and for some of the other mourners. Among them, for example, was the builder and developer Mick Bailey who, with his brother Tom, owned Bovale Developments, one of the largest private landowners in Ireland. On the day of Haughey’s funeral, and conscious perhaps that much of the nation’s attention would be focused on that event, the Bailey brothers quietly acknowledged that they had made probably the largest single tax settlement in the history of the state - €22 million to cover systematic tax evasion since 1983.
    The Bailey brothers, in fact, embodied the culture of impunity that is the most distinctive aspect of Irish corruption. Political sleaze in various forms is endemic in many democratic societies. Where Ireland differs from almost all other developed societies, however, Italy being the obvious exception, is that no price need be paid for getting caught. Haughey was never prosecuted either for stealing money from the public purse (and from Fianna Fáil itself) or for lying about it to a tribunal of inquiry. Nor was he, in Fianna Fáil’s worldview, ultimately dishonoured by the revelation of his criminality. And when this is so for those at the very top, the infection cannot be quarantined.
    Mick and Tom Bailey were key figures in the Irish property and construction business, whose land-bank alone was worth €51 million in 2002 and had probably doubled in value by 2006. They were also key figures in the corrupt relationship between that business and politics. In 1989, Mick wrote to James Gogarty of the structural engineering company
JMSE telling him that he could ‘procure’ a majority of the members of Dublin County Council to vote for the re-zoning of over 700 acres of agricultural land in North Dublin that JMSE owned so that it could be developed for housing. The ultimate publication of that letter led to the establishment of a tribunal of inquiry chaired by Mr Justice Flood.
    That inquiry found Mick Bailey to be directly involved in bribery. In June 1989, he handed over either IR£30,000 or IR£40,000 to the Fianna Fáil minister Ray Burke as part of a bribe of either IR£60,000 or IR£80,000 to help get the lands re-zoned for development. He also made three payments totalling between IR£16,000 and IR£20,000 to a senior planning official, the assistant Dublin city and county manager George Redmond.
    Both Mick and Tom Bailey also lied under oath at the Flood tribunal. In its report, the inquiry found that Mick Bailey had given ‘false evidence’ about a meeting with Ray Burke. He lied about money he had allegedly given to James Gogarty. He leaked information to the Sunday Independent newspaper and then claimed that he couldn’t co-operate with the tribunal because of his fear of leaks. He was also found to have given false evidence under oath in relation to meetings and dealings with George Redmond, including the payment of bribes.
    Tom Bailey made a false allegation under oath about money he had given to James Gogarty. He also failed to provide the tribunal with financial records even when it obtained an order of discovery against him. Not only did Mick and Tom Bailey each give false evidence under oath, but the tribunal found that they had colluded together to tell the same lies. As the taxing master of the High Court put it in refusing to pay their legal costs, the Baileys engaged in ‘a
deliberate attempt to ensure that the tribunal would never find the truth’. There are laws against this kind of thing, even in Ireland.
    In almost any other democracy, it would be extraordinary for those who engaged in long-term tax evasion, bribery of