The Cabinet meets today to consider terms of reference for another tribunal to investigate payments to politicians. All reports suggest that the Government wants to exclude from the remit of such a tribunal the one instance in which there is incontrovertible evidence - a declaration from the man involved - of a politician receiving a large cash sum from a construction company. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Burke, has admitted that he received £30,000 from a building firm doing business in his area. It was, he declares, an unsolicited contribution by the firm in question. He passed £10,000 of it on to Fianna Fail headquarters. No favours were sought and none bestowed on foot of the donation. He offered no further explanation, no details, no context for this philanthropic and generous gesture.
A Martyn Turner cartoon in this newspaper the following day provided an eloquent comment on Mr Burke's statement. It depicted two hard-hatted builders with a wheelbarrow full of money, contemplating a line of collection boxes representing the Society of St Vincent de Paul and other charities. At the end of the line stood a money-box in the effigy of Mr Burke. "We're wondering where we might be able to make an unsolicited contribution", one of the builders declares. Government spokesmen argue that Mr Burke's case ought not to be included in a new tribunal's terms of reference for two reasons. First, they say, a Garda investigation is going on into allegations made against him by a former employee of the construction company. Secondly, they say, Mr Burke has initiated civil proceedings over the allegations which have been made.
Both of these legal initiatives may well be in train. But it is arrant nonsense to suggest that they can or should have the effect of taking Mr Burke's affairs out of the scope of a new tribunal's inquiry. There is no legal or constitutional basis for such an argument. Moreover it is far from clear that the Garda inquiry is going to get beyond an unsigned statement by one individual. And as for Mr Burke's initiation of civil proceedings - the issuing of a writ is a relatively inexpensive gesture which may or may not lead plaintiff or defendant to the inside of a courtroom.
Above all, it should be understood - and it is understood only too well by Mr Burke's Cabinet colleagues - that a Garda inquiry in a matter such as this is a limp and inadequate instrument by comparison with a tribunal invested with High Court powers. Does anyone seriously believe that the Garda Fraud Squad, solemnly warning suspects of their right to remain silent and powerless in the pursuit of key documents, could have cracked the Haughey/Traynor arrangements in the Ansbacher accounts? This is not to doubt the industry and resourcefulness of the Garda investigators. It is rather to acknowledge the limitations upon their powers of inquiry.
The credibility of Fianna Fail's and Mr Bertie Ahern's affirmations that there has been a break with the corruption of the past hangs upon the decision to be taken at Cabinet today. It is in the interests of Mr Burke himself, his party, the Government and the entire body-politic that this episode should be fully cleared up. The Government must not hide behind the fig-leaf of a Garda investigation or Mr Burke's planned civil action against his detractors. If it chooses to do so, it cannot pretend to wonder at the general public's mistrust.