Is the pursuit of a neoliberal agenda itself corrupt?

Below, Vincent Browne blogs ahead of tonight's show.

Tonight we discuss corruption, arising from Elaine’s Byrne’s book, Political Corruption in Ireland 1922- 2010. It details a litany of corrupt practices on the part of politicians and others. {jathumbnailoff}

But: Is it corrupt for politicians to so structure society as to benefit an elite to the detriment of a majority or even a large minority of the people?

Is the pursuit of a neoliberal agenda – by which I mean an agenda that holds that the distribution of wealth is to be determined by the market – when that results in social cruelties, including deep inequality and the belittlement of a significant proportion of society, corrput?

Why is corruption perceived solely in terms of the personal transgressions of politicians who use their political power to their own financial advantage and it is not perceived as corrupt to use their power to the financial advantage of elites of which they are a part?

I am quite sure that those ministers who agreed to the bank guarantee in September 2008 had no conscious regard to their own financial or personal interests, and what they did was almost a reflexive action to protect financial institutions in the belief that this was in the national interest. But isn’t there a question about the propriety of such an assumption that the protection of an elite corresponds with the protection of the interests of everybody?

Is the private financing of political parties corrupt?

We'll be curating tweets throughout the show, and Vincent will respond afterward. Refresh the page for updates.