Brian O'Shea (Waterford, Labour)

A slush fund is one of the most effective weapons in the armoury of a Fianna Fáil led Government in the run-up to the next election. The Minister may say the Labour Party is expert in this but history will show who are the real experts. Nothing happening today convinces me that anything is changing in that regard.

The only changes effected were introduced by the Labour Party which proposed freedom of information legislation, which Fianna Fáil then emasculated. The Labour Party was also responsible for the ethics in public office legislation. The Minister should not tell me the Labour Party is expert in practices it has sought to eliminate.

Fianna Fáil is returning to the old ways, dismissing open Government and responsibility, and patronising those who talk about such principles. Meanwhile, it is getting on with what it is good at, namely, planning for a third term in a row in Government. I hope the Minister's reply will explain why it is preferable that the criteria for the disbursement of the money are at the whim of the Minister, despite whatever criteria the independent board proposes. We need to discuss the ethics of this Bill and assess it in that light.

Last week we discussed the British-Irish Agreement (Amendment) Bill which was short and technical but the Minister treated us to an account of his republicanism. That may be of interest to him but we were dealing with a technical Bill, designed to cover up a possible loophole this House had not discussed in the original debate on the Bill. We do not want to hear the Minister's Tom Brown's Schooldays speech boasting that he is a great republican and man of integrity.

We are interested in how standards apply in public life. Will the Minister say that, rather than yield to pressure from his Cabinet colleagues to change the criteria proposed by the board, he would hand back his seal of office, declare himself a man of the utmost integrity and refuse to have anything to do with such practices? I suspect he would find it extraordinarily difficult. I am unconvinced it is the road he would follow. I cast no aspersions on his integrity. I am talking about the realities of Cabinet and Government.

See this speech in context