But it's not only in the American media that the richest man in the world and those who aspire to his wealth and power are regularly portrayed as champions of the common people, the corporations they control as more important than the governments we elect.

Who are our heroes in Ireland now? Are they the three who are engaged in the tug-of-loot over Eircom, Denis O'Brien, Dermot Desmond and Sir Anthony O'Reilly? Or Michael Smurfit, like the others so patriotic that he spends enough time abroad to avoid the heaviest of Irish tax rates?

You won't find many politicians on the list because, as De Rossa said at a conference on the relevance of James Connolly: "People have steadily lost faith in politics because they no longer know what governments are good for . . . Because of the steady withdrawal of the State over the past 20 years from the public sphere, it is corporations, not governments, that increasingly define the public realm."

Could it be that commentators, who used to keep watch for conflict or controversy between church and State, should now train their sights on areas of conflict - and common interest - between politics and business?

We've already been permitted an occasional tantalising glimpse of the operations of business and politics by the tribunals and the hearings of Oireachtas committees. We've seen enough to suggest worlds apart where different rules, or none, apply and the public interest is rarely mentioned and then only as an obstacle to progress.

This week we learned that the Cayman Islands authorities have no intention of giving up the list of Irish tax-evaders, who have done the next best thing to emigrating: stashed their money overseas. We've been told that O'Brien is itching to explain to Mr Justice Moriarty the nature and detail of his financial relationship with Michael Lowry.

We've heard how a Smurfit contribution to Fianna Fáil (or Charles Haughey) was helped on its cloudy way through Monaco, London and the Cayman Islands by Des Traynor of Ansbacher and David Austin of Smurfit, better known for his dealings with Fine Gael.

And, of course, we've been treated to rambling discourses on the nature of friendship and the place of Abbeville in world politics by Charles Haughey.

He might have saved the tribunal time and effort and the public some expense if he had simply explained the source and destiny of the money which passed through his accounts.

As it was, all he did was contribute to the general impression that our affairs have been handled for decades by politicians who can't remember what was going on and by business leaders who preferred not to know.

When either politicians or businessmen talk about public services, which might help make this a fairer place, they do so only to complain about the cost and argue that the country can't afford it. It's the McCreevy line.

The people whose interests are most assiduously served by this line don't have to depend on public services and do their best to contribute as little as possible to the cost. Whether others are forced to pay in pain or misery doesn't matter a damn.

In the 1980s two ministers for health were misinformed about the risks run, and the terrible consequences suffered, by haemophiliacs who were given blood products by the Blood Transfusion Service Board, a State agency.

Barry Desmond of Labour and Dr Rory O'Hanlon of Fianna Fáil gave evidence about the misinformation this week to the Lindsay tribunal which is investigating the infection of more than 220 haemophiliacs with HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated products.

They explained that because they had been kept in the dark or were misinformed, not only had no action been taken but they had inadvertently given false information to the Dáil.

Neither discovered the true position until the tribunal was set up. "Dreadful misinformation was given to the Department, by whom I don't know," Desmond said.

O'Hanlon said allegations about BTSB products causing HIV infection had not been brought to him, even when haemophiliacs were dying of it.

Had he been given more accurate information the minority Fianna Fáil government might not have collapsed, a general election need not have been held in 1989 and the formation of Fianna Fáil's first coalition might have been delayed if not avoided.

But there is a difference between not knowing and not wanting to know. Now it appears that Ministers in the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Coalition, who were given the opportunity to question officials about the current state of the health services, simply walked away.

On their much-advertised Cabinet outing to Ballymascanlon, intended to demonstrate concern, members of the FF-PD Government failed to show up for a question-and-answer session with officials from the Department.

The officials, as Maev Ann Wren reported in impressive detail on Thursday, had described services now suffering the effects of endemic under-investment and deficient facilities. The officials supported arguments made by Mícheál Martin, the trade unions and the Opposition. They know the consequences of failure to meet the expectations of those who use the service.

Does McCreevy not know?

© 2001 ireland.com

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