Some thing really and truly needs to be done about Terry Prone. Why do papers continue to promote her as a disinterested columnist when she is anything but? There is a disgraceful piece by her in today's Times (not the Irish one).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5062356.ece

She pretends to think that Mahon is all over bar the shouting so that it is now okay for her to say what she 'thinks' - as if she were an honest Joan just making some commonsensical asides. In reality what she is doing is spinning outrageously in advance of the report itself - the most significant aspect of the entire process - on behalf or her one- time benefactor, one Bertie Ahern - who for all we know may even have her on a retainer now. We've discussed her here before but it bears repeating quite often that Prone has been in the pay of Fianna Fail for quite some time as 'communications expert' to the political stars (a difficult job too - tryig to put a bit of polish on those clients). Carr Communications where she worked until quite recently were also the beneficiaries of some truly handsome government contracts while Prone was in their employ. You know the sort of thing: it's where government pays out taxpayers money to get the sultans of spin to do their jobs for them, in effect. All in all, Terry has much to be grateful to Bertie and the gang for.

When news of his financial irregularities broke originally Prone was lividly spinning for him in her column in the Irish Examiner (archives not very good at that paper so can't provide a link here). Three weeks running she lashed out about how it was all an unnecessary fuss - striking at targets from Trevor Sargent (before he sold his soul to the same devil) and generally complaining about having to bother with things like honesty and transparency. She did as good a job as a girl could do to paint those qualities up as irksome irrelevancies - the preoccupations of prigs and such like. This stuff is pure poison but she's a clever clogs alright. Once you spot her MO however, the superficiality of what she is about is unmissable.

Take this example of truth inversion:

Quote :

That someone could be legally forced to incriminate himself is a coercive break with Irish traditions, resonant of a Stalinist purge. Just as importantly, 10 years of allegation-tossing has eroded trust in the Irish political system. The taint of corruption, bribe-taking and extortion clings not to a minority of dirty politicians but to politics in general.

People were required to attend Mahon in order to give truthful evidence. Not nice if you are a liar, I'm sure. It necessarily follows that if a person has been involved in wrongdoing of any sort and it emerges under questioning they will have to meet the consequences. That's a basic principle of civil society. Ergo, Ahern was discovered to have been lying and so has had to resign as Taoiseach. And if the taint of bribe-taking and extortion clings to politics in general it is because politicians in general have shown themseles to be almost wholly impervious to upholding standards in public life. The Fianna Fail pack has disgraced itself - putting party loyalty (hello Tonys) ahead of any other consideration. Prone villifies the quest for truth rather than those who have done their utmost to delay and prevent it - which is also the real reason why the tribunal has cost so much.

Elsewhere in the piece she claims that Mahon has 'destroyed Caruth'. Bertie Ahern destroyed Caruth by requring her to lie for him.

This woman's outrageous undermining of the body politic has surely gone far enough. She and her ilk are a form of political cancer - the backdrop against which the corruption she is almost openly defending can take place.

I wouldn't worry about her too much. Anyone who compares the tribunal to a Stalinist purge is quite obviously only capable of hype and bombast.
And if I were FF, I'd ask Carr Communications for the money back. 27%!? Pffft!

yehbut_nobut wrote:

I wouldn't worry about her too much. Anyone who compares the tribunal to a Stalinist pruge is quite obviously only capable of hype and bombast.
And if I were FF, I'd ask Carr Communications for the money back. 27%!? Pffft!

You make some excellent points !!!

What do you suggest we do?

I would have thought her opinions were as legitimate as anyone else's.

Terry Prone as an individual is of course entitled to her opinions. She is also obliged to be honest about any factors that are likely to influence those opinions if she chooses to publish them in the media - such as the fact that she has been paid substantial sums to improve the public perception of the very people and groups she is pretending to write neutrally about. Many if not most readers may not realise that Prone has a commercial relationship with Ahern stretching back a long time. She is clearly not impartial though she is pretending to be. Would you take as neutral an article about Ahern written by an undeclared member of Fine Gael? I'm sure you understand this nine-oh-fiver, really. Fair enough if she actually declared the realtionship in plain view - but she never does in these columns and articles. The newspapers that let her do this are a disgrace too.

Funnily enough this has got me thinking of Bertie's speech in Manchester, where he was apparantly speaking as an individual rather than as a cabinet minister.

It is an extraordinary article alright. This, for example:

Quote :

Happily relegated to footnote status. I was lucky: few tribunal witnesses emerged undamaged. Grainne Carruth was destroyed; Frank Dunlop experienced moral meltdown; Bertie Ahern’s political career was ended.

But hold on, tribunal proponents say, look at the gain. In other words, the end justifies the means. The tribunal changed everything for the better, they say. Nonsense.

But hold on, we might say - Frank Dunlop's moral meltdown preceded the tribunal by many years, and Bertie's career ended because he couldn't explain the payments the Tribunal asked him about. These are not tear-jerking stories of innocent victimhood - these are results.

And this:

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Similarly, when Fianna Fail HQ was told what Padraig Flynn taking a substantial cheque from Tom Gilmartin meant for the organisation, the party could have instituted proceedings against the former minister. Such proceedings would have had one of three results: a) Flynn might have handed back the cheque, b) Flynn might have been forced to hand back the cheque, c) Flynn might have satisfied the court that Gilmartin had meant him to take the cheque and changed his mind post factum. Fianna Fail didn’t use the legal option open to it.

Well, exactly. They had no interest in using that legal option - that, as she says herself (dismissively) is indeed why we end up with tribunals - because those who are supposed to investigate or censure do neither.

And last:

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It had grievous hidden costs, too. Financial and emotional costs. Every witness, no matter how peripherally involved, experienced enormous fear and came under pressure to lawyer up.

Boo hoo. She's so right - we should never investigate anything ever, because it upsets people. Worse, it upsets Terry Prone.

Quote :

And last:

It had grievous hidden costs, too. Financial and emotional costs. Every witness, no matter how peripherally involved, experienced enormous fear and came under pressure to lawyer up.

Boo hoo. She's so right - we should never investigate anything ever, because it upsets people. Worse, it upsets Terry Prone.

"Grievous hidden costs?"

At no stage does she refer to the cost to the nation of carrying the burden of corruption, dissembling, evasion, cronyism and shame.

Why every witness should experience "enormous fear" is something she doesn't clarify. What was the nature of that fear? Fear of being caught out - of being answerable? Of being dragged into something they had no hand,act or part in? There are at least two categories of fear here and they are not equally deserving of sympathy.

Kate P wrote:

Quote :

And last:

It had grievous hidden costs, too. Financial and emotional costs. Every witness, no matter how peripherally involved, experienced enormous fear and came under pressure to lawyer up.

Boo hoo. She's so right - we should never investigate anything ever, because it upsets people. Worse, it upsets Terry Prone.

"Grievous hidden costs?"

At no stage does she refer to the cost to the nation of carrying the burden of corruption, dissembling, evasion, cronyism and shame.

Why every witness should experience "enormous fear" is something she doesn't clarify. What was the nature of that fear? Fear of being caught out - of being answerable? Of being dragged into something they had no hand,act or part in? There are at least two categories of fear here and they are not equally deserving of sympathy.

Yes - what could anyone fear if they had done nothing wrong? Someone else has said that if there were too many more like Prone in Irish politics it would be a horrible and dangerous place. I think the fact she has so many media platforms from which to spin without challenge is indicative of how much influence she has already had. It's astounding.

Aragon wrote:

Yes - what could anyone fear if they had done nothing wrong? Someone else has said that if there were too many more like Prone in Irish politics it would be a horrible and dangerous place. I think the fact she has so many media platforms from which to spin without challenge is indicative of how much influence she has already had. It's astounding.

They couod fear financial ruin. The tribunal might decide you were lying and award costs against you. This could happen if you were telling the truth or thought you were telling the truth. Once the tribunal decides not to believe you then you are open to huge financial penalties. A case in point would be Joseph Murphy Jnr. who Gogarty had a huge grudge against for taking over the company. Gogarty had to change his story to place him at a meeting with Burke when Murphy could prove he was out of the country on the day in question. Take Carruth too. She could have hers and the tribunal's costs awarded against her. You might think that's fine if you are like Aragon and have decided that she lied on Bertie's instructions. I think she made a genuine mistake, whether influenced by Bertie's recollections or otherwise. I don't think she set out to mislead the Tribunal but she is exposed to a huge financial penalty just because she has a faulty memory. I thiink that's real fear for somebody who did quite possibly did nothing to put themselves in that position.