Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)

Mr. Justice Flood is to be congratulated on producing this lucid and conclusive interim report. Any response to a report of this nature must be tempered, especially given the precedent set by the Tánaiste, Deputy Harney, when her misplaced remarks enabled the former Taoiseach, Mr. Charles J. Haughey, to evade justice.

The report details a series of corrupt practices that occurred in the 1980s. It also determines that forenamed persons hindered and obstructed the tribunal's work. This should send out a strong signal that nothing less than full co-operation with the tribunal is acceptable. I expect that the report will be furnished to the Director of Public Prosecutions so that he can take the matter to its conclusion. Will the Minister of State indicate if the DPP has received the report and if any decision been made?

Despite the costs and the length of time the work of the tribunal takes, this report, as with the previous two interim ones, shows that the tribunal, as a forum for excavating the truth, can deliver. I thank Mr. Justice Flood for his tireless work in bringing to light a litany of corruption that has been a black mark against politics for 20 or more years. It must also be noted that Mr. Justice Flood and the tribunal legal team had to work in the face of stubborn refusals to co-operate with the tribunal from the central people in the investigations. Cutting through the golden circle of givers and takers of bribes was not an easy task and we must be grateful that Mr. Justice Flood, with the help of his team, was able to do that. He has exposed what has turned out to be a culture of corruption in certain quarters throughout the 1980s and quite possibly beyond. It must be determined how deep this went because, if this type of behaviour is tolerated and left unpunished, there is little reason it cannot continue regardless.

George Redmond received corrupt payments for using his official position to decide on a lower level of service charges and levies being charged to developments on Forrest Road lands. The amount paid was 50% of what would have been payable had Redmond not intervened. A mere 10% of the savings, which was what Redmond had demanded, netted him payments of more than £12,000. These payments were made by Joseph Murphy junior and were a flagrant abuse of an important public official. While one incident does not make a culture of corruption, it does point to the possibility.

This is not a victimless crime. We, the people, have to live in the poorly planned areas and make up the shortfalls in taxes. The tribunal has decided that George Redmond received £15,000 from Joseph Murphy junior as compensation for not giving him a consultancy job. This raises the question, for what did Joseph Murphy junior feel the need to compensate George Redmond? What did he owe him for? Further payments of between £16,000 and £20,000 were made by Michael Bailey to George Redmond which the tribunal decided were corrupt. No specific instance was used but the tribunal decided that these payments were made to influence George Redmond in his official capacity.

The corrupt payments are shocking enough, but equally shocking is that the tribunal found that people hindered and obstructed its work by various means. Not alone have George Redmond, Michael Bailey and Joseph Murphy junior done wrong, they continue to cover up their wrongdoing. This begs the question as to what the tribunal would have uncovered had these men co-operated with it.

The can of worms is still pretty much closed. There is one person in jail for his behaviour. What is needed now is some kind of sanction against those who hinder, obstruct or fail to co-operate with the tribunal. During the Ray Burke module, several individuals failed to co-operate with the tribunal. Action needs to be taken to let people who are thinking of not fully co-operating with the tribunals know that they will face punishment for such action. If it is not to be legal punishment, then it should be political and social ostracisation.

This is about protecting the heart of politics, the Civil Service and society in general and we should no longer tolerate the actions, past or present, of the so-called loveable rogues. The glamorising by certain quarters in Fianna Fáil of the actions, in particular of the former Taoiseach Mr. Charles Haughey, must stop. People must realise the damage corruption has done to good planning and development. It must be realised too the potential damage of corruption if left to flourish in dark comers with brown paper bags or their contemporary equivalent.

We as politicians must send a message to the people that this type of behaviour is not only unacceptable but, more important, it cannot happen again. However, are we sure it cannot happen again? Are there enough checks and balances in political life and for decision makers? Are Ministers who do not give full answers to questions about their decisions sanctioned and exposed? Are people told on what basis the decisions of the day were made, even after five years? Are Deputies who cheat on their taxes expelled from their political parties? Is major legislation debated to a point where the public is aware of the main points and the Opposition feels that, while possibly disagreeing, it too has had its say? Does the Taoiseach give straight answers to straight questions?

Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions is "No". The Government tries to suggest that the tribunals are in the past and the occurrences into which they inquire could not possibly happen today. That is the latest spin, on which I heard Fianna Fáil members figures speak on radio and television recently, to the effect that the party is not part of those events. They occurred in prehistoric times and former Deputies Flynn and Burke are dinosaurs who have no connection with the present. They certainly have.

The Freedom of Information Act 1997 was enacted at the time when the revelations about Ray Burke were tearing a hole in the credibility of politics. Everyone welcomed the transparency and accountability the Act would bring to politics. It appeared we had learned the lessons of the past as all parties supported its introduction. What has happened since then is nothing short of a national disgrace. The Freedom of Information Act has been crippled and the sponsoring Ministers for the amending legislation so feared the backlash that they ran away to the races at Cheltenham when it was being passed through the Dáil. Content that the Government's charade of being open had served its purpose to pacify a very angry electorate, it put the amendment through after the 2002 general election. The accountability of this Government is at an all-time low. Its position on so many issues has been fudged to ensure that no one must take responsibility for decisions made on issues such as reductions in community employment schemes, rip-off Ireland, transport gridlock and housing. The Government's responses on these issues are at best ambiguous, at worst, hypocritical. For example, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment promised to tackle spiralling prices while the Minister for Finance was piling on stealth taxes which dominated the inflation figures for 2003.

The drip feed of supposedly secret documents from the Mahon tribunal's next module points to a concerted effort to minimise the impact of the tribunal. It seems likely that certain interests are hoping the public will suffer tribunal fatigue long before the damaging evidence is heard. Every week there is a little more. The Oireachtas set up the tribunals of inquiry on behalf of the people to find out what was going on in the 1980s. One lesson they should have taught us is that the veil of secrecy and the brown envelope go together and if decision makers must give a comprehensive account of their decisions, the brown envelopes become much less influential. Guillotined legislation, Ministers who do not answer questions and a Taoiseach who will not answer straight questions is not good enough, as the Flood tribunal should have taught us.

For some time there have been elements trying to undermine the workings of the tribunal. If someone wanted to limit the impact of the issues surrounding the £50,000 cheque and Senator O'Rourke's confirmation of the meeting in the Dáil involving the Taoiseach, leaking the story before the tribunal had heard it would help to do that. The well-orchestrated leaks come from more than one hand. With local and European elections coming up there was an incentive to get the worst of the news out of the way as quickly as possible. We need to know that this type of activity cannot happen within the Government party again. What safeguards are in place to ensure the financial conduct of Fianna Fáil Oireachtas Members? What preventive measures are in place? What is the punishment for tax evasion? We are being duped by a major PR strategy to dilute the bad news before the elections in June. We need to find out who breached the confidentiality of the tribunal and if there is any way of preventing this in the future. The slowness of production of vital documents requested by the tribunal seems part of the Government's hypocrisy in its dealings with tribunals of inquiry. The Government announced the setting up of tribunals describing itself as courageous in facing up to hard issues, and then drip fed the investigation with the necessary documentation as happened in the Laffoy and the Mahon tribunals.

The hypocrisy is possible because this Government has minimised its accountability to the public, the Opposition and the media. The Dáil has been sidelined and 30 second interviews are all we hear from the Taoiseach, unless we hear a pre-recorded sanitised segment that is more like a party political broadcast than information. Following the fall-out from the Padraig Flynn affair, Fianna Fáil is demonstrating a high tolerance for wrongdoing which is nowhere more obvious than in the broad election embrace for Mr. Flynn in Mayo in 2002.

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