“We started to discover clusters,” he says. “Myself and the other man. We started seeing the same names coming up again and again on the Pulse [Garda computer] system and we realised that certain people were being looked after; that people with connections in Irish society, from judges to politicians to celebrities, were having their points quashed and that this was happening in every town in the country.”
John Wilson, former Garda and whistleblower
This is what former minister for justice, Alan Shatter, did about Wilson, Mc Cabe and anyone else with whistles in their pocket: he sacked Oliver Connolly, the man over the whistleblowers, after it emerged that he’d warned a whistleblower that Shatter would finish him. He did not stop there. He called them liars under the subterfuge of double speak when he said: “Widespread currency was given to to a number of ‘incorrect’ allegations made by the Mullingar- officer (Mc Cabe).
Penalty points was the least of the problems of a wholly corrupt and incompetent force of course. A court was not told that a killer was out on bail after a serious assault when he was charged over child abduction. Then there was the falsification of records for all sorts, the sexual harassment of a female Garda, inadequate investigations of several serious crimes and poor policing, which begs the question: what does a Garda do all day? The reliable Director Of Public Prosecution (DPP), at least for the police, as usual gave rise to the implication that there was nothing to see here and for us all (Joe Public) just to move on, while stating as we fled that no laws were broken.
When at last Alan Shatter proved to be the liar that he was to everyone else but himself, he fell on his own sword with a little help from his friend, Enda Kenny. And so it seemed as we all thought he would just go away. An ego that big though never does.
When finally reaching the lofty position of Minister for Justice, Alan could see it all: A portrait of himself hanging on the walls of the Dail, peering down in unspoken rebuke to the lesser mortals looking up at him; then there was the snippets of his written and verbal wisdom to be handed down and repeated by law students and civil rights campaigners across the globe for generations to come. A veneration only given to saints and scholars and great honest statesmen/ women that would be his final accolade, and higher than that given to Caesar to this day.
Alas, it was not to be. In the end It would all come down to a greedy and tardy grubbiness that amounted to exactly €12 and after he got out of a drunken driving charge because he claimed he had asthma.
Yes, this was the price he paid for passport photos, and despite his salary of over €160,000 plus expenses, he was not going to let the taxpayer and those who elected him let him pay that whopping €12. No, Alan is firmly of the school of thought which says: ‘why pay for anything, no matter how small, when someone else can?”
And as I struggled to articulate to myself what kind of a man does exactly that all of the time, good old Alan articulated it better than I ever could when he posed the question and answer to himself and us with pointed finger, (the problem with pointing fingers is that three of them are always pointing back) when he said this: The press has depicted me as a dishonest money-grabbing politician, fleecing taxpayers by an indefensible expenses claim.” Then Using the ‘is it because I am black defence’ he added: “I have become the object of vile anti-Semitic comment.”
And so Alan walked on, huddled against the rain of a waning summer and a wet August while wondering what will people think him now, and yet comforted by the fact that he still has his salary, plus expenses that included that €12; and which we will have to pay for many more years to come. Hail Caesar, hail Alan.
Barry Clifford
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