Where public statements by Deputy Michael McDowell are involved, a generous margin may usually be allowed for colourful flourishes and hyperbole. Thus when he describes the Government's proposals for dealing with the Price Waterhouse report as a whitewash and a well choreographed cover up, he might be suspected of seeking to take a good case too far. There has been more of blundering than anything else in the Government's handling of this business. But what is now proposed by way of inquiry does not fall far short of what Deputy McDowell describes.
The Progressive Democrats - and Fianna Fail - have had the measure of the affair from the beginning in a way that the Government parties have not. Even at the weekend, Democratic Left's Pat Rabbitte was jibing that apart from Michael Lowry's unorthodox building arrangements and the revelation that a former Fianna Fail minister got a million pounds, nothing else has emerged. Mr Rabbitte's preoccupation appears to be with the role of the media and not, as might have been imagined in the circumstances of these days, with standards in public life.
The Government's performance since the revelation of Mr Lowry's arrangements with Ben Dunne has been faltering and unsure. From the Taoiseach down there has been a failure to convey any appropriate sense of concern and resolution. Mr Bruton's initial instinct to remit Mr Lowry's offence (since it happened before he was a minister) set the tone of defensiveness. That tone has not yet yielded to a full recognition that the general public is alarmed and outraged, probably as never before, over the revelation that a huge commercial organisation has spread its influence so far and so wide in political and administrative circles.
We do not know how much of that influence has been properly or improperly used. Straightforward political donations do not, in themselves, constitute an impropriety. But not all transactions have been so clean or so simple. What this newspaper has reported, from its own sources and knowledge, is that a series of payments totalling £1.1 million was paid out of the State in 1990/1991 to the benefit of a senior Fianna Fail figure. But it would be a foolish and naive person who would expect to find that individual's signature endorsing any of those instruments in a London bank or elsewhere. Nor will that individual's name appear on the Price Waterhouse report.
The Price Waterhouse report should, of course, be published, as Fianna Fail has argued from the beginning. If necessary, legislation should be put through to deal with any question of indemnity which might arise from such publication. But it will not reveal the full truth, and certainly not in the Committee of Procedures and Privileges as it is constituted and as the Government envisages it operating in this case. Its members will not have had sight of the report. We will have the Gilbertian farce of an inquiry where nobody knows what questions to ask. Nor can the Committee compel the attendance of the senior Fianna Fail figure, for instance. And even if he were to appear, it has no investigative arm. Bluntly, it cannot ascertain how money was processed, where it went, who ultimately got it or way. . .
The case for a judicial inquiry, mooted by Deputy Mary Harney, gathers in persuasiveness. Her suggestion that inspectors be sent in under the 1990 Companies Act, if considered at all by the Government, is said to have foundered on legal advice. Is it not possible to move swiftly on legislation which would allow inspectors to examine this affair? Is it not possible, even at this stage, to expand the powers of the Dail Committee on Procedures and Privileges, to give it at least an even chance of finding out the truth? As matters stand, Deputy McDowell's description is not inappropriate. The Government's intentions can only amount to whitewash.