Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

This is extraordinary. The Taoiseach knows that everybody in the world except Mr. George Bush knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — everybody knew that. Everybody in the world knows that the Taoiseach knew what was going on. When Fianna Fail councillors could tell me ten, 12 or 15 years ago, with chapter and verse, what was going on — they were not involved in it but they knew the system of corruption of which Mr. Ray Burke was leader on Dublin County Council — the Taoiseach knew then. Will he tell us what he knew? Is he telling me that nobody from Fianna Fáil came to him in the 1980s or early 1990s and told him exactly the type of fixing that was going on between the speculators and his colleague Mr. Burke and others at that stage? That alone would have been a reason for not appointing Mr. Burke.

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