Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, can check the record. I respect utterly the Taoiseach's right to a private life and his family's right to a private life. This is no business of mine and I will not stray into that area.

Politically my attitude is radically different from the Taoiseach who came into the house just a short time after myself. For 12 days we have witnessed him with each intervention he has made failing to clarify matters. Today, he did not address the fundamental issue at stake. There are many things we do not know about these matters and we hope to get some answers in the following period.

We know a couple of fundamental facts. The Taoiseach admitted to accepting, while Minister for Finance in 1993 and 1994, cash to the value of €61,000 from businessmen friends and associates. We know that this cash was accepted by the Taoiseach after three separate collections. We know too that the Taoiseach claims to have had €63,000 of personal savings at a time when he had no bank account.

We thought that the culture of old Fianna Fáil — that of Haughey, Burke and others — was long since gone, but it appears to be accepted again by the Ministers, Deputies Cullen, Martin, Cowen, O'Dea, Roche, Hanafin, Coughlan and Ó Cuív, and the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan. All have come out and stated the Taoiseach did no wrong. The only Deputy to break the silence, the omerta, was Deputy Nolan from the backbenches, where he will probably stay.

Does the following sound familiar? "I am taking the opportunity to state unequivocally that I have done nothing illegal, unethical or improper." These are the words of former Deputy Raphael Burke spoken in this House on 10 September 1997 — same words, same standards, but a different application. I thought this country had moved on from that period. I thought we had moved away from the Haughey era of the 1980s but, apparently, new Fianna Fáil resurrects the same old standards in the same old way.

Of the first two items, the collection and acceptance by a Minister for Finance of cash to the value of €61,000, we know one fundamental fact — it was wrong. There is no need for discussion of ethics, no need for legislation, no need for guidelines. When the Taoiseach put his hand on that money in his then capacity as Minister for Finance, private or public, he did wrong.

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