Just when you think Irish politics has its full complement of cowboys, over the hill rides another tinpot trouble-shooter. The latest Man With No Shame is Ben Dunne, the tycoon whose previous contribution to the democratic process took the form of enormous financial payments to such political desperadoes as Charlie Haughey.

Outraged at the political elite’s refusal to respect the electorate’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty, Dunne has pledged to take on the establishment figures who’ve tried to “make dirt” of ordinary people. If the government holds a second referendum before next June’s European elections, he threatens to stand as an independent candidate in the Dublin constituency.

In the week when the finance minister, Brian Lenihan, moved to curb the final cost of the corruption tribunals, Dunne’s confident belief that voters would see him as a more honourable alternative to mainstream politicians appears to support the view that these long-running inquiries have been an obscenely expensive waste of time. This, after all, is the upstanding citizen who was found by the McCracken tribunal to have bunged millions to Haughey and “knowingly assisted” the former Fine Gael minister Michael Lowry to evade tax.

Despite his bluster, however, Dunne’s political ambitions will face an obstacle. Thanks to the efforts of some media outlets, not least RTE Radio 1’s Liveline, on which he seems to have a semi-permanent slot, this erstwhile patron of dodgy politicians has been rehabilitated in the eyes of some as a plain-speaking man of the people. But for those with longer memories and clearer minds, the tribunal findings against him will remain a millstone around his hard neck.

The insights we’ve been afforded into the unedifying behaviour of Dunne and many other would-be pillars of society may seem like small consolation for the millions the state has spent on tribunals, but, in terms of Irish political history, they represent a considerable advance. We are better informed about how this country works, and the mechanisms by which the wheels within wheels are greased.

The Flood/Mahon inquiry into Dublin planning, for instance, has extensively chronicled how renegade politicians, public servants and developers conspired to carve up large swathes of the capital for their own enrichment throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. The electorate is free to act as if it doesn’t care, but people can never again claim that they don’t know.

Yes, the costs have been obscene; the combined bill for Moriarty and Mahon alone could top ¤1 billion. But alongside the astronomical fees of legal counsel, the primary reason for the expense is that the tribunals’ work has been repeatedly frustrated by those who were the focus of their investigations.

It’s a bit rich for a Fianna Fail finance minister to pose as a born-again enemy of tribunal-cost escalation when several senior members of his party contributed significantly to these over-runs through their relentless obfuscation.

At this late stage, Lenihan’s restrictions on tribunal costs will do little to reduce the final bills, as the bulk of legal and third-party costs have already been incurred. The state will have to pay up, but it’s the incumbent cabinet that will definitively determine whether the money turns out to have been well spent.

Ultimately, it’s not what happened in Dublin Castle over the past decade, but what happens next that matters. To prove the tribunals were not an obscenely expensive waste of time, the government must act decisively on foot of the final Moriarty and Mahon reports, holding to account all those who are deemed culpable, irrespective of their wealth or prominence within the Fianna Fail family.

Otherwise, the past 10 years of hearings and investigations will justifiably be seen as nothing more than an embarrassing interlude for the myriad forces who, in Dunne’s redolent phrase, attempted to “make dirt” of ordinary people.

Tax man, reaper man

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