Dublin Report: Celtic Tiger mired in a cesspool of sleaze

By John Kelly

I would like to tell you the good things about Ireland. I’d even like to advise you on where you should travel if you are coming on vacation. It’s still a beautiful, unspoilt country, probably the most unspoiled in Europe. The Atlantic Ocean still churns in over rocks and cliffs that have changed little since the year you, or your grandparents, or their grandparents, left these shores.

Although it has become quite a modern place with traffic easy motorways pumping like arteries, it still retains a sense and atmosphere of what it was. In many ways it is an old, new place.

If that’s a paradox I make no apologies. That’s the way it is.

However, all I can do at the moment is to write about sleaze, more and more sleaze, loads of juicy, headline grabbing sleaze. It has nothing to do with vicarious sex, such as in Washington. It has all to do with money, corruption, repayable favors and the personal use of political fame. In short, it is much more serious than sex.

Currently, I am covering the Moriarty Tribunal which, seemingly, is turning into the Haughey Tribunal. When I get home, I pick up the Evening Herald, an excuse for a newspaper in the absence of everything else. I turn my eyes to the blaring headline and, there it is again, more sleaze! I read: “Bertie: It’s All Lies and Nonsense.”