Future of the Centre for Public Inquiry

Madam, - The controversy concerning the Centre for Public Inquiry is cast as a tussle about the respective bona fides of Frank…

Madam, - The controversy concerning the Centre for Public Inquiry is cast as a tussle about the respective bona fides of Frank Connolly and Michael McDowell. A more fundamental issue for Irish citizens is the threat to the survival of the centre itself. Whatever the Government's intention, the effect of its action is to jeopardise the centre's funding by Chuck Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies.

In less than a year since it started work, the centre produced two factual, dispassionate reports, on the Trim Castle hotel development, and on the Corrib gas field. This information is available to all Irish citizens to read and evaluate as they will. In view of Mr McDowell's professed concern with "prevention of subversion of democracy" and with "a threat to the State's democracy and authority" (statement of Dec 11th), surely the work of the centre to date demonstrably strengthens our democracy, by providing information that would not otherwise be available. As such, it enhances the knowledge base of our society's citizens.

In short, the centre has already done the State some service, to paraphrase former taoiseach Charles Haughey. The centre is reportedly now investigating Mr McDowell's handling of the purchase of the Thornton Hall site in north Dublin, to replace Mountjoy Prison. This was presented as a fait accompli, with no opportunity for public discussion or evaluation. Given attempts to set yet more obstacles to public involvement in the planning of such developments, the value of the centre as an independent source of information is clear, even if that prospect perturbs vested interests, which have barely disguised their hostility to the centre.

A case in point is the Tánaiste's recently expressed suspicion about a private inquiry agency funded from outside Ireland: "The idea of some group of citizens setting themselves up with absolutely no justification to the wider public is absolutely sinister and inappropriate" (Dec 10th). Her misgivings about the source of funding do not extend, apparently, to Mr Feeney's gifting an estimated €600 million to Irish universities over two decades, or to political donations to Government parties by multinational corporations. Moreover, her suspicion about civic activity, independent of the State, is hard to reconcile with the Progressive Democrats describing themselves on their website as "liberal" and standing for "freedom as essential to a civilised, just and prosperous society".

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The Government that has, in effect, acted to close the centre, is the same Government that emasculated the Freedom of Information Act by introducing prohibitive charges. It is the same Government that only reluctantly bowed to irresistible pressure in establishing tribunals to investigate planning abuse and Garda corruption.

Given that Government ministers so frequently bemoan the high cost of these tribunals and the unnecessary enrichment of the lawyers who man them, it seems perverse that it should seek to shut down the Centre for Public Inquiry, which provides factual information without cost to the taxpayer.

If the motives of the Government are called in question by its actions, the credibility of the sources of "evidence" on which it has acted is also dubious. The Government relies on the word of the gardaí and the Colombian security services, despite the fact that both these institutions have been found by judicial investigators to have told untruths in the recent past. None of the "evidence" has been published for citizens to evaluate; all that is available is rumour and innuendo about a false passport application which could have been posted from anywhere in the State.

In short, Irish citizens are expected simply to evince blind faith in the judgment of a single individual who famously "knows what he knows".

It is only the interests of the powerful that will be served by the closure of the Centre for Public Inquiry.

On behalf of the general public, whose interests will most definitely not be served by its closure, we appeal for the continuing operation of the centre, funded by public subscription, if need be. - Yours, etc,

Dr COLMÁN ETCHINGHAM, People before Profit Alliance;

Dr CATHERINE SWIFT, Chair, Save Viking Waterford Action Group;

Dr MARGARET KELLEHER, Kimmage, Dublin;

ANDY STOREY, Centre for Development Studies, UCD;

ÉAMON Ó CIOSÁIN, Dept of French, NUI Maynooth;

MAURA HARRINGTON, Davitt League;

KIERAN ALLEN, Dept of Sociology, UCD;

JENNIFER MAY, Dún Laoghaire Housing Action Group;

PATRICIA ROSE LOVE, Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny;

RORY HEARNE; People Before Profit Alliance;

RICHARD BOYD BARRETT , Irish Anti-War Movement;

FRANK MCBREARTY Jr, Raphoe, Co Donegal;

AILBHE SMYTH, UCD;

Dr MUIREANN NÍ BHROLCHÁIN, Save Tara Campaign;

Dr COLIN COULTER, Dept of Sociology, NUI Maynooth;

JOE FENWICK, Dept of Archaeology, NUI Galway;

Dr MICHAEL PUNCH, Depts of Geography and Sociology, TCD;

Dr ANDREW MacLARAN, Dept of Geography, TCD.