The question is no longer whether there is corruption within our political establishment but whether the political establishment is itself corrupt. We know now what we purported not to know before: that senior political figures were "on the take" and that at least one of them was "on the take" for decades.
We now know that the manner in which this senior political figures, Charles Haughey, was "on the take" involved the complicity of bankers, accountants and benefactors, that it involved a complicated financial ruse (the Ansbacher accounts) that were availed of by many others as well. Many of these others were associates of Mr Haughey. But whatever the further revelations of the Moriarty tribunal into these matters and whatever more emerges about the existence of similar financial ruses in other banks, these represent only the symptom of what seems to be a much deeper malaise. That malaise is represented perhaps best by three extraordinary decisions taken by Fianna Fail-led governments in recent years. The first of these decisions was the tax amnesty of 1993, whereby tax defrauders were given a total amnesty on payment of just 15 per cent of the tax they owed to the state and a guarantee of absolute confidentiality hereafter.
The scale of this benefit to the richest in society cannot now be quantified, but it may be assumed with confidence that it was massive.
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