Up to now I haven’t written anything about the ongoing saga between my brother Frank and the PAC. It has been extraordinary, and of course quite distressing for those of us close to him, not to mention himself.
I have been amazed at some of the activities of members of the Public Accounts Committee. I think in particular of the practice they had of going on lunchtime radio while a hearing was still in progress, and ridiculing some of the things that were being said by the people inside. This had to be wrong, since it was clearly a manipulation of public opinion in a manner that was unfair and unjust to the people being questioned. But what really surprised me was that the media facilitated this behaviour without question, and that no senior politicians objected to it.
Now I learn that the PAC had been warned last January by their legal advisor, Melissa English that they were acting beyond their remit, that “they had so far crossed the line that it was only a little dot in the distance”.
This is almost unbelievable; that a public body, having been warned that they were acting outside the law, would ignore that warning, and, in fact, proceed to act in an even more extreme fashion.
Did the Taoiseach or Tanaiste know the advice that they had been given? Surely they did. (It did not take any great legal knowledge to know that there was a lot that was inappropriate about what was happening — a bit of common sense would have done that!) And if they did, then why did they not act on that knowledge?
There will, we presume, be more chapters to this saga!
