Tony Gregory (Dublin Central, Independent)

Ba mhaith liom tacaíocht iomlán a thabhairt don tairiscint seo ón Chomhaontas Glas. I wholeheartedly support this motion from the Green Party. That party and the Independent Deputies are among a minority of Members of this House who have consistently made clear their condemnation of the activities of those public representatives, including members of the main parties in the Dáil, who accepted payments in the rezoning scandals involving people such as the self-confessed corrupt lobbyist whose well known name I am not permitted to mention.

Any public representative who is in any way corrupted through rezoning or other bribery should leave public life. There is no other way to resolve this issue finally and preserve the honour and integrity of this House and the democratic process. This will not happen, so it will be a matter for the electorate at the next general election to reject those who have behaved in a corrupt manner, whether in the recent rezoning scandals of which we have read and heard so much, and fair play to Mr. Vincent Browne for outlining the issues in greater detail on his radio show, or in other similar scandals.

The real outrage is that the billionaire developers and builders who were the main beneficiaries of this corruption continue to reap rewards and amass enormous wealth at the expense of the people forced to pay scandalous prices to obtain a home of their own. The abandonment by this Government of the plan to integrate 20% social and affordable homes into all housing developments demonstrates that Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats will always cave in to the interests of their builder and developer pals. It is the private developers and not the public interest that calls the shots in the current Government.

I support the call in this motion that no politician should accept money from developers where those same politicians are in a position to influence development decisions. In my constituency, when the Spencer Dock consortium involving Treasury Holdings was seeking planning permission for the largest planning application in the history of the State, those same developers were funding Fianna Fáil. I have no doubt this practice continues across the State. A major step away from the corruption of the past and the present would be achieved if the House were to implement the recommendations of the 1974 Kenny report and, as the motion states, to empower local authorities to purchase land for housing at its existing use value plus 25%. Will that happen while Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats are in power? Not a chance.

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