No political interference

Reilly has to resign TBH and Labour party should eat Gilmore alive for knowing about this and supporting Reilly over Shortall.

I can FG falling a good bit in next opinion poll based on this and budget.

What is "political interference"?

If Ministers didn't interfere in matters of State, we might as well let the civil servants runs the country. Therefore there must be "good" political interference and "bad" political interference.

Let us look at the primary care centre issue.

Example 1: Civil servants go to Minister and say we have used X criteria to determine that there should be 20 funded primary centres and Y criteria to determine where they should be. Minister says you should have used W and X criteria to determine the number and Y and Z criteria to determine the locations because W and Z are important principles to take into consideration and were part of our election manifesto. Civil servants says that means 35 centres in different locations and decision is implemented. That is an example of a Minister making a political decision as part of his job and part of what we pay him and vote for him to do. Should be seen as "good" political influence.

Exqample 2: Civil servants go to Minister and say we have used X criteria to determine that there should be 20 funded primary centres and Y criteria to determine where they should be. Minister says fine so long as one is in my constituency. This is a clear example of "bad" political influence.

Unfortunately, most decisions which Ministers make are not as easily distinguishable as those two examples. Take example 1, what if the Minister picked W and Z as two principles but had others to choose from? What if W and Z favoured someone he had connections with? Then it becomes a question of whether a decision that appears to be made for good reasons (and which may well have good outcomes) was really made for those good reasons or for some other bad reasons. Lines become blurred.

The awarding of the mobile license to Denis O'Brien is another example of where the lines get blurred. The allegation was firstly whether the criteria favoured his company, secondly whether Michael Lowry interfered in the competition towards that outcome and thirdly, whether in doing so, he knew and was influenced by the possibility that this would favour Denis O'Brien. You can read the many pages of the tribunal report to see how long it took them to reach their conclusions, conclusions which may yet be challenged in court.

There are examples that are much more clear cut. Frank Dunlop's evidence puts a whole heap of planning decisions into the Example 2 corner. Further back there is the Ray Burke situation. Haughey, the Revenue Commissioners and Ben Dunne is another one that looks like Example 2. Ditto the bizarre Finance Act provisions on paintings that Ahern did as Minister, though this has never been fully investigated to my knowledge.

There is certainly something fishy-looking about the primary care centre saga - it is certainly not a clear Example 1 above.

On the other hand, we don't want to go the full distance the other way where Ministers possibly won't make the optimal decision on a children's hospital (Blanchardstown) because it is in a Minister's constituency and opt for a lesser decision (St. James') which is the opposite of the Government taking a lesser decision on a children's hospital (the Mater) because it was in the Taoiseach's constituency. (P.S. I don't know enough about the hospital decision to know which is correct.)