I GOT a pleasant jolt the first time I rang up the RUC. The man at the end of the line provided me with copious information about the incident I was inquiring about. He helpfully pointed me in the direction where peripheral inquiries could be pursued. And then he wished me luck with the assignment.
That was more than two decades ago. Up until that point, my only experience as a reporter in dealing with a police force was An Garda Síochána. A call to the garda press office was usually met with courteous responses from officers who would have excelled at politics, such was their skill in conveying as little detail as possible, while giving the impression of being positively verbose.
The juicy details usually ended up with a few chosen reporters through various sources in the force. These reporters were “trusted”. In such an arrangement, the balance of power necessary between a reporter and source was tilted heavily towards the source. If a reporter stepped out of line, his or her access would dry up. Real information was provided not as a right, but as a favour.
Little has changed since those days. And it’s not just a problem in the gardaí. Right across the organs of State, with a few exceptions, there persists a culture of secrecy, in which citizens are subjected to the mushroom treatment of being kept in the dark and fed manure.
That’s what has happened in relation to the IBRC/Siteserv/Denis O’Brien controversy that has blown into a full commission of investigation. For more than six months through the course of 19 parliamentary questions, Michael Noonan kept batting away requests for the truth. Later, he claimed he answered every question, but did not provide background information, as if the obligation of the executive to be accountable to parliament is little more than a game.
Noonan’s Jesuitical interpretation of what he was obliged to reveal in parliament tells much about the culture of secrecy that prevails in the state’s power centres. Information is closely guarded like an asset, or a liability. It is rarely disseminated in a straightforward or prompt manner. When dissemination is reluctantly deemed necessary, the information is often carefully edited.
That’s how governments and many other organs of state habitually deal with any inquiry in which controversy might lurk. The provision of information which should be readily made available in a democracy is disregarded. Getting straight answers is an exhaustive exercise. So Catherine Murphy found out, and only her dogged pursuit dragged it out of Noonan, through questions and Freedom of Information requests.
The culture reaches right down to frontline services. One feature of the recent report into the deaths of babies in Portlaoise Hospital was the manner in which bereaved parents were dealt with. Some of the parents were told that their baby’s death was the only one which had occurred. This was entirely false. (There were eight deaths in total). Even those who weren’t lied to were not informed that their tragedy was shared by others whom, for example, they may have wished to contact.
Somebody, somewhere in the system obviously saw the prospect of parents being comforted in sharing their grief as a threat. While the reasons for lying have not been explicitly laid out, it would not surprise if it was just an instinctive reaction from some functionary trained in the ways of the state. Tell them nothing. Consider them possible adversaries. Protect the institution at all costs.
It’s not just the organs of state. Secrecy was a mainstay of the Catholic Church when it ruled society. One of the main findings of the commission of investigation into clerical abuse in the Dublin Diocese was the obsession with secrecy over any consideration for victims or action against perpetrators.
Some might ascribe the culture to a post-Colonial mentality, passed on from the administration which feared that the natives could transmogrify into barbarians at the gate at the drop of a hat. That is something of a cop-out. The Colonials left more than 90 years ago.
The culture of secrecy was a handy tool in power centres when this was a poor, underdeveloped state. Hoarding power can only be truly effective if information is also hoarded and citizens in a society grappling with the basics had more pressing issues to deal with. Then, as the country emerging blinking into the frontline of developed nations in the early ’90s, priorities were re-evaluated.
In his first day as Taoiseach in 1994, John Bruton said he intended to govern “behind a pane of glass”, in a spirit of “openness, transparency and accountability”. Great soundbite, shame about the outcome. That government did introduce the Freedom Of Information Act, belatedly letting in a little light.
Too much light for some. In 2003, Charlie McCreevy rolled back many of the act’s provisions when he introduced punitive fees and new blocks on access. He had been particularly put out the previous year when the Sunday Tribune had been mistakenly furnished with an envelope of documents from his department on foot of a request under the act. The documents showed that contrary to pre-election pledges of no pending cuts in spending, plans had at the time been set in motion for swinging changes. That was obviously a secret that was supposed to remain so.
The current government has widened the scope of the act, but in some ways it is a mere fig leaf. What the Siteserv controversy has highlighted once more is that the first instinct in the power centres is to bring down the shutters.
The fall-out from the culture is obvious. Once more the government has managed to heighten suspicion that something is awry on a matter of public interest. Apart from anything else, that drains further confidence from the practice of politics.
The stream of scandals leaking from the HSE can, in part, be ascribed to a management culture in which a lack of transparency plays a major role. The Church’s obsession with secrecy contributed hugely to its devastating moral failings. And the recent upheavals in the gardaí were in many ways inevitable when a police force’s first instinct is to shut out even cursory media scrutiny.
A culture of secrecy inevitably leads to cover-up when things go wrong. Now and again, cover-ups are laid bare, controversy ensues, and the whole caravan moves onto some form of judicial inquiry. The only real difference over the years is that more cover-ups are being rooted out.
That’s how things are done in this country, and despite platitudes from the then opposition prior to the last general election, and the current opposition in the last few weeks, there is little sign of any real appetite for change.
Next up, expect Paddy Power to open a book any day now on when we’re going to have an inquiry into the workings of NAMA.
Michael Clifford
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