As an exercise in turning a blind eye for the sake of everlasting friendship, former TD Jim Glennon’s character reference for Daniel Ramamoorthy really does take some beating.

Ramamoorthy, who was convicted of exploiting a child while volunteering at a Christian children’s camp, was credited by Glennon as having a ‘remarkable and infectious energy’ and being a person he was proud to call a ‘friend’.

Glennon continued in that unctuous vein saying he ‘simply couldn’t and still can’t reconcile the charges and now convictions with the friend for whom I had and still have so much respect’.

To be fair to Glennon – who has since apologised for being ‘wrong’ and ‘naïve’ – he was not the only individual who, prevailed upon by Ramamoorthy to praise him to the skies in court testimonials, obliged with wholehearted enthusiasm.

Ramamoorthy, a former government advisor, called on a representative of the Indian embassy in Dublin, a co-founder of a global children’s charity, a pastor and a corporate marketing executive to big him up. Yet as these top people praised his exemplary character, not a ‘single one’, according to Judge John Edwards, mentioned his 13-year-old victim or the ‘vile nature’ of his crimes, which the judge said was something he found ‘extraordinary’.

It is indeed baffling that decades after the trauma this country suffered due to the steady drumbeat of child sex abuse allegations coming into the open, the issue is still met with a measure of indifference, particularly among those who should know better.

More than 30 years after the 1990s clerical child sex abuse scandal opened a can of worms, such has been the convulsion through every level of society that it’s easier to count the number of elite schools, sporting bodies, scout groups and industrial schools that looked after children than failed them.

Garda vetting, child safeguarding practices and child protection legislation make children safer than ever. They also mean the likes of Bill Kenneally, one of the most prolific paedophiles this country has ever seen – who was free to rape and terrorise boys for 26 years with impunity after admitting to being a dangerous pervert to gardaí in 1987 – should not have the run of the place in 2026.

A Commission of Investigation into the Kenneally affair reported recently, with Judge Michael White finding a serious dereliction of duty by senior gardaí. He also found that Kenneally – who was connected to a powerful political dynasty in Waterford – ‘no doubt received objectively favourable treatment’.

In other words, Bill Kenneally was protected because of who he was, rather than judged on his behaviour. He had a pass to lurk around groups of boys as they played basketball and to take them for spins in his car. Double standards are unacceptable in a republic of equals where justice must be seen to be applied equally without fear or favour. Character references are another symptom of an unequal society, another way for the elite to exercise influence in law.

Daniel Ramamoorthy sought character references from movers and shakers, not from the nobodies among his acquaintances. Yet if we take Jim Glennon’s appraisal at face value, it’s clear that status doesn’t make you a good judge of character.

Ramamoorthy’s local shopkeeper could have sized him up better than Glennon, but that wouldn’t do because what the offender was really looking for was the imprimatur of Official Ireland, the sign that he’s in the loop, that someone of ‘good’ standing would vouch for him.

Character references are controversial for other reasons, especially since instances where high-profile figures were caught essentially pleading for mercy for unsavoury individuals.

Former ceann comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl provided a reference for constituent and convicted sex offender Joseph Dempsey in 2006, while Fianna Fáil’s Joe Flaherty wrote to the judge in a violent assault case, part of a Traveller feud in Longford, on behalf of the three defendants, saying they were likeable family men.

The Longford politician denied it was a character reference or ‘an attempt to sway the court’.

The most notorious was David Norris’s plea for clemency, penned on Seanad headed notepaper, to an Israeli court on behalf of his former partner, who was convicted of having sex with an underage Palestinian teenager in the 1990s.

The imbroglio derailed Norris’s Presidential bid while the other examples just brought politicians, with their craven need for approval – and votes – into disrepute. Two years ago, constraints were introduced around references for sex offenders so that character witnesses had to be prepared to be sworn in and cross-examined.

The Rape Crisis Centre is rightly concerned about the effect on victims of these gushing character references. Noeline Blackwell of the Children’s Rights Alliance says it’s time to remove them from sexual offence cases because there are many ways for defendants to mitigate their sentences, such as pleading guilty to spare their victims the trauma of a trial or proving they have turned over a new leaf.

Surely that would be preferable to relying on tributes to ‘infectious energy’, a la Jim Glennon, and an outdated ‘us and them’ idea of society.

It’s doubtful the parade of politicians burnt after tossing off paeans to dodgy friends and neighbours would disagree.

Hewson, we have a problem with your gripe 

Ali Hewson is one of the more famous names objecting to plans for a luxury residential scheme in her well-heeled Killiney neighbourhood. Along with many of the objectors, she believes ‘the scale, density and design of the apartment complex goes against the natural character of the surrounding area’.

Perhaps Ali doesn’t realise that the same could be said for most of the new builds mushrooming throughout the Dublin suburbs, whether in beauty spots and quaint villages or areas of dereliction. It’s unfortunate that nearly every green space and vacant lot is being gobbled up by developments, but the alternative is forcing more young adults to live at home or be permanently at the mercy of landlords. Perhaps if Ali’s adult child was living in the boxroom, she’d think twice about objecting.