Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

We now know that Fianna Fáil Ministers see nothing wrong with a Minister for Finance taking large amounts of money for personal use from business interests as long, they say, as there is no proof that any specific favours were done. Thereby, they defend not only the major conflict of interest involving the Taoiseach when he accepted €60,000 from wealthy individuals, but they also defend the sleaze, cronyism, patronage and corruption that pervaded politics in the 1980s and 1990s. Not one person was caught in the middle of that who did not come up with the same catch-cry: "We did no favours and we did nothing wrong". How could Fianna Fáil Ministers think there was anything wrong when the Fianna Fáil Party is massively financed by big business? Big business financing individual leaders on the one hand, or the party on the other, is a continuous process.

There is a tendency to isolate this controversy of moneys to the Taoiseach but it cannot be boxed off from the Taoiseach's relationship with big business interests, Fianna Fáil's relationship with big business interests, and the PD's relationship with big business interests — they accept massive funds from those sources as well. It was the Taoiseach's associate who helped him with his personal donations; who, in the 1990s, sat in a plush Dublin hotel and took in millions from speculators, developers, multinational corporations, oil companies and any kind of moneybags that darkened the door of his plush suite. Every ordinary person knows that business does this to influence Government policies, and that it succeeds. Ordinary people are the victims of this. Look at the strife, struggle and stress that young people must endure to secure the basic right of a roof over their heads because the Fianna Fáil-backing speculators have put the price of a home out of their reach. The Government sat and let them do it for ten years.

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