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Corruptions Perceptions Index 2010 - Ireland surprisingly clean?

  • 27-10-2010 10:17AM
    #1
    dashboard_hula
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 453 ✭✭


    Off this article: Gawker: Americans Not Very Good at Being Corrupt I looked to see how Ireland was ranked.

    Corruption Perceptions Index 2010 Results.

    Ireland are ranked @ no. 14 in the world, surprisingly regarded as less corrupt than the UK and US. I thought that was a bit weird, they must only be going on "official" reported figures, ie. complaints/convictions. So I looked a bit closer, and because corruption is by it's very nature difficult to quantify, they base a good bit of it on the perception of corruption. So either:

    1. The Irish people view themselves, their government and their nation as noticeably less corrupt than other nations that have ended up lower on that list (the UK for example)
    2. Non-Irish view us as less corrupt than other nations.
    3. Corruption is rampant, and we don't care.
    4. ??
    5. Profit.

    However, nice and all as it is, they have Iceland as the 8th least corrupt country in the world...this is after a bunch of employees @ Kaupthing Bank had their loans written off days before it went bust?


Comments

  • #2
    Cookie_Monster
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 24,715 ✭✭✭✭Cookie_Monster


    14th most corrupt I'd believe, 14th least I find laughable. Every aspect of big business, development and Government is awash with corruption in this country.

    Just look at NAMA, possibly the most important financial business every in this state and its all kept secret for "commercial sensitivity", not to mention all the planning "favours" and politicians expenses.
    I think the general attitude that prevails here is also inherently corrupt, although this is disguised in a culture of "cute hoorism" and "getting one over the man" and massive inefficiency


  • #3
    OS119
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,518 ✭✭✭OS119


    almost philosophoical point - but is it possible that different societies have differing definitions of 'corruption' and that this affects both the way that anti-corruption legislastion is framed and what societies percieve to be 'dodgy' in the first place?


  • #4
    teddy_303
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 361 ✭✭teddy_303


    Reported and dealt with issues I'd suggest. I reported serious corruption involving an NUI member, a Union official and an officer of the court, (a solicitor), and they all got together to smother it telling a pile of lies about it.

    Short of going to a news paper to publish details regarding how these nasty lot operate, who would probably be scared of being sued by these big time bully's, (with good reason imo) what else can you you do with this scum?

    It's not the guards department, the law society has had complaints for years about this solicitor and done absolutely nothing about him, and he was just appointed to NAMA, even given his rather serious "Billing Issues", which I can vouch for myself.

    People just do not know about the corruption, or choose not to in this pyramid scheme of a society we have, imo that is.


  • #5
    Einhard
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,919 ✭✭✭Einhard


    Cookie_Monster wrote: »
    14th most corrupt I'd believe, 14th least I find laughable. Every aspect of big business, development and Government is awash with corruption in this country.

    I think that's BS to be honest. If that index found us to be the most corrupt in the world, people here would be all over it, shouting about how it vindicated their position, and what a disgrace the whole thing was, and how the politicians were only a shower of corrupt [EMAIL="w@ankers"]w@ankers[/EMAIL]. When it shows the opposite however, we choose to ignore it. On both a global scale, and on a urely European one, Ireland is not all that corrupt. Sure, we've had our share of bungs and bribes and the like, but we're a damn sight more clean than the like sof Italy and Greece, and many of the eastern European countries.


  • #6
    Bottle_of_Smoke
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,769 ✭✭✭Bottle_of_Smoke


    Read the wikipedia entry for the perceptions index, its meaningless


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  • #7
    Anonymous1987
    Closed Accounts Posts: 784 ✭✭✭Anonymous1987


    Personally I think its somewhat accurate, we are comparatively less corrupt than much of the world. It doesn't mean that we aren't awash with corruption, we are, its just that comparatively we are not that bad.

    Look at Silvio Berlusconi for example. Italy a country in western Europe has a PM who is believed to be linked to organised crime. Iceland scores higher than Ireland but their financial crisis involved the same type of close connections between politicians and bankers as ours.


  • #8
    seamus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 68,173 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    There's no such thing as a country that's not corrupt, regardless of where they rank on any index.

    If you think about it logically, there's plenty of backdoor shenanigans that go on in Ireland, but plenty of it is uncovered. We could be a whole fecking lot more corrupt - Italy, for example where the media are threatened and the guy in charge was/is trying to pass laws that he cannot be tried for any crime. Think about even worse places - Russia. Though communism is gone, the same antics remain where the upper classes of society run a closed inaccessible shop and do favours for eachother.

    If you look at the top twenty/thirty in that list, they mostly have something in common - (relatively) modern, secular democracies. But you have 150 other countries, the vast majority of which are basket-case dictatorship economies or countries without any real semblance of a proper hierarchical government.

    It's not very hard to rank well on such a list when there's no real competition. Simply holding fair democratic elections will get you into the top 50 with little effort.

    This exact same discussion was had very recently and overall people seem to think that because we hear of corruption in government all the time that we must be rife with it. We forget though that the simple fact that we hear about it demonstrates a certain amount of cleaniness. In half of the world, you'd end up on a landfill for attempting to tell anyone abut corruption.


  • #9
    Scofflaw
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23,283 ✭✭✭✭Scofflaw


    And for those wondering how we manage to come out ahead of the UK, the Vodafone thread may give some pointers.

    Places like Japan, not very much lower down the list than us, have huge organised corruption issues in their construction sector (yes, bigger problems than we do), and people who go up against that can find themselves on the wrong end of a sashimi knife.

    We're not lily-white and clean-o, but we are, all things considered, only very mildly grubby in world terms.

    cordially,
    Scofflaw


  • #10
    Nijmegen
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,086 ✭✭✭Nijmegen


    It's a pity we don't have a transparent government and an open legal system, rather than a closed shop top to bottom.

    Then we could, as Ronny used to say, "Trust... But verify."


  • #11
    Lenny Lovett
    Closed Accounts Posts: 920 ✭✭✭Lenny Lovett


    So which astute body brought us this pearl of wisdom? Is it the same bunch who told us, earlier in the year, that our esteemed (or should that be steamed:D) Taoiseach is in the top ten or fifteen World Leaders? .... Yeah.. Right:rolleyes:


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  • #12
    dashboard_hula
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 453 ✭✭dashboard_hula


    I'm beginning to start leaning towards that word another poster uses in their signature...gombeenism. I don't honestly believe that the Irish government/civil service/political arena is rotten to the core and without redemptive qualities. I don't think it's coming down to everything being about brown envelopes and secret rendezvous (with a few notable exceptions), I think that where there's a hole in the system, people will exploit it, and where there's an opportunity for a fiddle, people will take it. It shocked me when I saw Ireland listed at number 14, but perhaps people outside the country don't know about our backhander culture, or didn't think it was that much of a problem.

    The likes of the TD expenses for instance - yes, TD's should have a facility to claim back expenses, or be covered for certain situations. Being a member of the Dail is a fulltime job, and in a fulltime job, work is expected to cover travel and transport costs. That's grand. What really pissed me off, is that even after the recession hit, even after austerity measures hit Spain and Greece, and even after the UK MP expenses scandal blew up and ended up with people charged with false accounting, ministers resigning, MP's losing their seats....TD's still weren't smart enough to start solving the problem of overly generous/under-governed expenses before it came to public attention. Nobody had the brains to turn around to the likes of Ivor Callely and go.."C'mere you'd want to cop on now, that's enough. At least claim from a company that hasn't been shut down."

    Maybe my question should've been, are politicians corrupt, or just thick. =)


  • #13
    Scofflaw
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23,283 ✭✭✭✭Scofflaw


    Before dismissing this report with an ill-informed snort, people might consider actually reading what the index does, and does not, measure:
    So why does Ireland still rank so high on the Corruption Perceptions Index? The answer lies in the methodology used to calculate the score of countries.

    The index focuses on corruption in terms of public procurement and other aspects of business administration. While Ireland performs extremely well in these areas, it underperforms when it comes to the regulation of legal ’corruption’.

    Legal corruption occurs where patronage, personal relationships and money influences the decisions and policies of government. Last year, the Irish chapter of Transparency International published the National Integrity Systems study, which found that Ireland was susceptible to legal corruption due to a lack of regulation in the relationships between business and government.

    Source

    cordially,
    Scofflaw


  • #14
    Lenny Lovett
    Closed Accounts Posts: 920 ✭✭✭Lenny Lovett


    Thanks for that Scofflaw. Most interesting... And a bit scary, for instance this bit from the piece:
    Laura Lyons, a teacher at a FAS-funded adult literacy centre in Waterford city, had highlighted severe instances of financial malpractice and misuse of funds in the centre. Two investigations, by FAS and by an external human resources expert, upheld her complaints, although no disciplinary action appears to have been taken by the board of management.

    It did not end there. Lyons was arrested in her workplace on the 7th of October and charged with wrongful possession of information. Although released seven hours later without charge, Lyons is not alone in facing legal action or possible jail time for blowing the whistle on abuse of power in the public and private sectors.

    Other cases such as that of Eugene McErlean, the former internal auditor at AIB who exposed the bank’s practice of overcharging customers, have highlighted the poor legal protection afforded to whistleblowers in Ireland. There is also a litany of other sectors where accountability is lacking, including the funding of political parties and the register of lobbyists.


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