Cover-up, denial, delay, secrecy, missing/destroyed files and moving blame.
These are the usual strategies employed by Irish authorities in response to state scandal.
Every one of them has been used in the last week in a desperate attempt by state authorites to avoid acting on or taking responsibility for the Halapanavar tragedy scandal.
None of them have worked so we’ve seen a strategy that is rarely necessary – public cowardice by elected representatives.
No Fine Gael politicians has been available in the last few days as each and every one of them took to the cowardice bunker.
And in a perverse way, who can blame them.
This scandal is different from all previous scandals because in this case the world is looking on as our corrupt political/administrative system struggles to cover-up the scandal while trying to maintain the fiction that Ireland is a functional democracy.
The first strategy to fail was the attempt to pack the original investigation team with consultants from Galway hospital.
If this was not an international incident those consultants would still be on that team, beavering away in secret to ‘resolve the problem’.
It has been said, and I have little reason to disagree, that these people are of the highest integrity.
I say ‘little reason’ because they did, after all, agree to participate in what the rest of the world clearly saw as an attempt to influence the outcome of the investigation in the state’s favour.
If these people are so wonderful they should have immediately recognised the implications of the situation and rejected the invitation to participate.
If this was not an international incident the people of Ireland would have been told by the ruling elite to take a run and jump if they objected to the form of the investigation team.
Be nice to find out exactly what happened before joining the mob in rushing in to condemn hither and thither
Ah yes Jimky, that old canard ‘let’s await the outcome of the report/tribunal/investigation before making comment’.
In Ireland, that could be anything up to fifteen years after the whole matter has been consigned to history.
What’s wrong with making comment about events that have already occurred in relation to a particular scandal?
For example, making comment about the inclusion and then quick withdrawal of the three consultants.
What’s wrong with making comparisons with this disgusting scandal and the endless other scandals over the decades that have, ultimately, destroyed our country?