THE IRISH POLITICAL system is truly world-class in a few ways. One of those is maintaining stasis.
When an excuse to do nothing must be found, it will be found.
Today’s example – the Mulcahy report on alleged planning corruption in Donegal. It covers an incredibly serious issue which has dogged Irish public life for decades.
Submitted in 2017, various governments for almost a decade have managed to ignore the potentially explosive document.
The last time we wrote an in-depth piece on this was back in 2023. Since then, nothing has changed. The report remains unpublished. It is still being ‘considered’ by the Minister, with no indication of when it will be released.
So, why bother writing about it again?
Because enough time has passed that we can now confidently say that the government clearly has zero intention of ever publishing the report. It is ignoring the problem and just hoping it goes away.
Let’s take a look at why that matters, and what should happen next.
Let’s kick off with a brief reminder on what the Mulcahy report is.
It centres on claims from Gerard Convie, a former senior planner at Donegal county council who worked at the body for 24 years.
All the way back in the late 2000s, he compiled a dossier of almost two dozen alleged examples of rule breaches at the local authority.
These included claims of irregularities in how Donegal county council granted permission for developments in areas of natural beauty, such as near Malin Head. Most of the incidents allegedly occurred in the late 1990s.
In 2010, the government launched a review into Convie’s claims. In 2012, it concluded that there was no evidence of irregularity and also questioned Convie’s motives in making the complaints.
After Convie challenged the findings, the Department of the Environment agreed to a High Court order overturning its findings. After apologising to Convie and paying him €25,000 in damages, the government decided to launch a new review into his claims.
In 2015, it commissioned Rory Mulcahy to carry out a new review. He was a senior counsel at the time, and he became a High Court judge in 2023.
Mulcahy submitted his report in June 2017 – nine years ago.
The government then went to the attorney general for legal advice, which it received in 2018.
That’s essentially the last major update – since then, we’ve experienced our masterclass in stasis.
The Department of Housing oversees local authorities such as Donegal county council.
All the way back in 2019, it said the housing minister was ‘considering’ the report.
For years, the Department has issued the same stock response to questions about the Mulcahy report saying the same thing – that the report is being ‘considered’. It said the same thing this week.
“The Minister is considering the report by Mr. Rory Mulcahy S.C., and will bring this matter to Government for consideration in due course.”
It is essentially a copy and paste of the response they sent to The Journal three years ago: “Careful consideration is being given to the report by Mr. Rory Mulcahy S.C. Minister O’Brien will bring this matter to Government for consideration in due course.”
Asked whether the Department has sent the Mulcahy report to law enforcement or other state bodies for further investigation, it did not respond.
The government has clearly decided it does not want to publish the report. Several things make this clear.
First, the timeline. Obviously, it doesn’t take almost a decade to decide whether or not to publish something.
This publication previously pointed out that the final report from the Mother and Baby Home Commission, which ran to some 3,000 pages, was published within four months of being submitted to the government.
Plenty of other long, detailed reports on complex and contentious topics are also published within months. If there’s political will, it will happen. Clearly with the Mulcahy report, there is no political will.
This is reinforced by the fact that multiple ministers have held the housing brief since Mulcahy submitted the report in 2017 and have not published it.
Perhaps the most notable example was Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien. Serving as the party’s housing spokesperson while in opposition, he called for an update from then-Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy in the interests of transparency.
O’Brien then replaced Murphy as housing minister after the 2020 general election, and proceeded to give non-statements on the report for the entirety of his near five-year-term.
This was despite pressure from opposition politicians and prominent groups such as Transparency International, which pointed out that Ireland has plenty of form when it comes to planning corruption.
Even government TDs have called for the report to be released. A TD from the Green Party, which joined a coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in 2020, described the unpublished report as ‘an open sore of corruption and failed oversight’.
The last thing pointing to how the government does not want to ever publish the report is that it has said as much.
Unnamed sources told the Irish Examiner that the report was “unlikely to come to Cabinet” due to “concerns over the nature of the findings and fears that some may be defamatory”.
The government itself has alluded to this in on the record statements. The Department of Housing referred to how the Mulcahy report investigated Convie’s allegations “against named individuals then employed by Donegal County Council”.
“Mr. Mulcahy had been commissioned to carry out a scoping review of the allegations against these named individuals. As it was a scoping review, Mr. Mulcahy did not form any conclusion as to the truth or otherwise of those allegations in his report, which are unproven,” it said.
These statements all point to why the government doesn’t want to publish the report. It’s a messy affair which could cause trouble. Much easier to just avoid than to deal with.
The anonymous briefings to the media give further insight. The Irish Examiner reported that the government was worried that even a redacted version of the Mulcahy report “would not eliminate the possibility of defamation proceedings”.
But this risk will always be present when investigating alleged planning corruption. Look at the Mahon Tribunal, the most famous Irish public inquiry into the topic. Parts of its findings were published in stages due to legal challenges.
But it still got published. It can clearly happen if there is the political will to do so. There clearly isn’t with the Mulcahy report, or it wouldn’t have spent almost a decade gathering dust.
As things stand, it seems the document will never be published. At least, not under Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael, with one or both parties having led the government since the report has been submitted.
But perhaps the final irony is that the Mulcahy report does not even need to be published.
If it is truly a scoping report, it would be enough for its findings to be passed onto other state bodies to take a deeper review. To actually find the truth as to whether there was planning corruption in Donegal.
Sadly, the government has given no indication that this has happened, or ever will.
With Convie’s allegations dating back to incidents in the 1990s, it now appears likely that those involved will be dead before claims of corruption against them will be fully investigated.
An Irish solution to an Irish problem: ignore it and hope it goes away. It has worked so far.