Opinion

Nama back channel revelations show how politics can be a dirty trade

Independent TD Mick Wallace and loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson, the unlikely duo involved in exposing the Nama scandal
Independent TD Mick Wallace and loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson, the unlikely duo involved in exposing the Nama scandal Independent TD Mick Wallace and loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson, the unlikely duo involved in exposing the Nama scandal

I don't expect many of you listened to the live stream of the special sitting of the Stormont finance committee this week, recalled despite the summer recess to deal with information revealed in this newspaper a week ago.

It's only journalists and political anoraks who usually eavesdrop in on committee hearings, the majority of which are as dull as a winter's day and would send you into a boredom induced coma.

I suspect Tuesday's special sitting attracted more attention than usual, given the subject matter being discussed, and bucking the usual trend, dull it certainly was not.

When the Irish News published a story based on back chanelling between Sinn Féin and a hardline loyalist the political fallout moved at a pace that took many by surprise.

The investigation into the biggest property deal in Northern Ireland's history, the £1.2 billion fire sale of properties by the Republic's bad debt bank Nama, has been tainted with controversy.

From the bidding process to the final sale and what happened afterwards there have been allegations of political corruption, financial skulduggery and £7 million 'kickbacks'.

Those allegations, while still under investigation, exposed a world few of us ever get to inhabit, a world where status, power and influence mean everything.

It was a circle of influence where property, lucrative contracts and financial incentives passed through the same hands and rotated around the same small group of people, a circle of wealth none of us plebs ever have a chance of penetrating.

And until the Nama deal so powerful were this group of people that their money making actions went largely unquestioned and unchallenged.

Enter a maverick TD with wild hair and a working wardrobe that suggests he has no iron in the house.

Mick Wallace was a builder done good, worth millions at the height of the Celtic Tiger he lost it all in the property crash but managed to get himself elected in the process.

He's a popular figure in his native Wexford and has caused tidal waves in the usually grey suited and stuffy Dáil Éireann.

When he started using parliamentary privilege to link northern politicians to a £7 million fund syphoned off into an off shore bank account last year, it kicked off a chain of events that has to date tarnished the political legacy of former first minister Peter Robinson and ended the career of Sinn Féin MLA Daithí McKay.

His unlikely sidekick has been a loyalist who rose to prominence during the flag protests and since then seems to have the ear of a broad spectrum of political figures.

He was leaked details of the Haass talks, apparently in a toilet at the Stormont Hotel.

He was leaked information from rivals of Peter Robinson that he blogged with scant regard for the laws of libel, and now using information from unionism aimed at toppling the first minister he was given advice by Sinn Féin through a back channel with the former chair of the finance committee.

Commentator Newton Emerson tweeted this week that Jamie Bryson has claimed "more scalps than Geronimo" and the political slaughter may not be over yet.

'Political dynamite' was how the UUP assembly member Philip Smith described the back channel revelations and that was probably an understatement.

In Bryson's case his dealings with Sinn Féin have been dismissed as the tail wagging the dog, he wanted his day in the spotlight to deliver his Nama evidence and they were obliging enough to help him in that respect.

Also Bryson has nothing to prove nor lose.

However, Sinn Féin are a party of government and not only that they've now been unmasked as having conspired to bring down the leader of their coalition partner.

Back in September last year when the astonishing messages between Bryson and Sinn Féin were pinging back and forward across the internet, relations between Sinn Féin and the DUP were at all time low.

Since then we've had the Fresh Start and a new beginning - what impact this will have on that relationship remains to be seen.

That it puts the Nama scandal back on the agenda is no bad thing for the extent of the financial corruption has yet to be fully exposed.

The back channel revelations have exposed just what a dirty world politics can be and how power and the pursuit of power corrupts.

Daithí McKay has fallen on his sword but is he the last scalp to be claimed in a political scandal of epic proportions?

I'd be tempted to bet he won't be the last casualty of this extraordinary saga.