With a TD behind bars and charred documents blowing in the winds of west Dublin, the issue of political truthfulness is in the air. There is no avoiding the simple, basic notion that a democracy can't function if elected representatives do not tell the truth. Yet the revelation of the recent past has become so fascinating that it is hard to pay attention to the present.
Liam Lawlor's credit-card records are not the only dodgy documents drifting on the breezes in west Dublin. At the heart of one of the biggest physical projects ever undertaken by the State, the massive Stadium Ireland proposal that has become Bertie Ahern's personal crusade, there is an extraordinary degree of downright political deception.
Even in the midst of great political turmoil, it was always seen as crucial not to directly mislead the Dail. Clever evasion? Yes. Withholding vital information? Fine. Precise parsing of sentences so that the words used convey a false impression without actually telling lies? Good on ya, boy! But for a minister to stand up in the Dail and say something that was untrue remained the ultimate taboo.
Now, it seems, people who pay attention to such things are either so distracted by the lurid drama of the tribunals or are so inured to various forms of dishonesty that they have become unshockable. Even the sin of getting caught no longer produces much reaction.
Last week, for example, in a fine report for RTE's Prime Time, David Nally showed quite clearly that Bertie Ahern had given the Dail untrue information about the cost of Stadium Ireland. The issue is straightforward: how has the projected cost of the stadium and its ancillary sports campus gone in a year from the £281 million estimated in the 1999 PriceWaterhouse feasibility study A Stadium for the New Century to at least £550 million and probably, all told, a billion pounds?
On October 17th last John Bruton and others asked the Taoiseach this question. His answer seemed simple and plausible: "The cost for the stadium element of this project was, and still is, £281 million. The feasibility study was based on that, and all the examinations carried out by the interim and advisory board were based on that. The 15,000 capacity multiple sport indoor arena, the medical centre, the administration blocks and the other facilities were not, of course, covered by the £281 million.
"Therefore, one cannot make a comparison - I am not sure the deputy is doing so - between the £281 million and the £550 million because they relate to different elements. The £281 million relates to the stadium only and the campus involves all the other initiatives.
"The original PriceWaterhouse report was on just the stadium and not any other element of the campus. The price in that report was £281 million. The additional elements, to which I have referred, are what bring it up to £550 million."
THOUGH time for follow-up questions was limited, the Taoiseach's explanation that the new costs come from the addition of new facilities was unchallenged. But the explanation doesn't add up.
The £281 million cited in the consultancy report (published by Bertie Ahern's own Department) explicitly includes both the stadium and the other elements of the sports campus. The report costs the 80,000-seat stadium itself at just £144 million. Under the heading "Other buildings - Sports Campus" it includes an additional £50 million. This, the report says, explicitly includes "multi-purpose halls, indoor tennis facility, sports science and medical centre".
The Taoiseach's statement to the Dail is therefore incorrect in two respects. The estimated cost of the stadium alone in the report, which he said was £281 million, is in fact given as £144 million. And the cost of the sports campus, which his statement puts at £269 million (£550 million minus £281 million) is in fact given as £50 million.
It is possible, of course, that Bertie Ahern did not know that he was giving incorrect information to the Dail. But this in itself would be extraordinary, since it would imply that he had not read the PriceWaterhouse report and didn't know what is in it.
This seems highly implausible for two reasons. First, the Taoiseach has made no secret of the fact that Stadium Ireland is a personal passion rather than a standard State project. Second, in that same debate, he actually urged those who were questioning him to read the report, strongly implying that he himself had done so.
Some of us have always felt uneasy about the whole Stadium Ireland project in which a vast amount of public money is being given to a private company to develop a massive complex for which there is no obvious demand.
The trotting out of incorrect explanations for a massive inflation of the cost to the taxpayer can only add to that unease. But aside from the substantive issues around the Bertie Bowl itself, what has happened here should shatter any complacency about the improvements in Irish democracy that will follow Liam Lawlor's spell in Mountjoy.
The biggest change is that it appears a Taoiseach can now mislead the Dail without having to worry there might be a fuss.
fotoole@irish-times.ie