Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Taoiseach's response to the Moriarty tribunal today has been mainly to deal with the changes wrought in the intervening period. From his response to this massive tome, one does not get any sense of the environment or atmosphere in which politics was played out during that period in which many of us here were Members of the House.

In the actions of all men, and most of all princes, where there is no tribunal to turn to, we look to results. Those are the words of Machiavelli, sometime inspiration to the former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, and his followers. Unlike Machiavelli's unhappy subjects, we had a tribunal to which to turn. It is just as well we did, given the results we faced and so the House discusses the first report of the Moriarty tribunal into those results. This report is a bleak but essential analysis of the relationship between politics and business and what posed as, and passed for, national leadership in worryingly recent times. It is a catalogue of corruption. It is a devastating critique of a powerful elite exposing a gross abuse of privilege, a rank abuse of public office and, most importantly, a devastating abuse of public trust. In that alone, Mr. Justice Moriarty has done an important job, notwithstanding the lengthy timeframe.

It is fair to say that the behaviour he uncovered was less than edifying and less than worthy of high office, or indeed of any office in our modern democracy. Mr. Justice Moriarty returned a devastating verdict on the late Taoiseach, Charles Haughey. However, to see Mr. Haughey's behaviour as an aberration within Fianna Fáil would be an affront to the tribunal and to every democrat in this country. Far from being an aberration, Mr. Haughey's behaviour and attitude typified the culture of Fianna Fáil at a significant period, in which Raphael P. Burke accepted corrupt payments related to radio licences, there was serious corruption of the planning process and funds, donated to Fianna Fáil for the practice of democratic politics, were deliberately misappropriated.

To Fianna Fáil, it may have been just business as usual. There is an abiding sense and abiding evidence that many in the inner circle wanted, and felt they deserved, a piece of the action. More disturbing still is the current Fianna Fáil leadership's refusal to condemn the actions of their former colleagues. Throughout the Moriarty tribunal and in its aftermath, they have been ambivalent, to say the least. Many of the new breed of Fianna Fáil Ministers were apprenticed into their craft by those who are now in public and political disgrace. Those usually voluble Ministers have been stunning in their silence on how their masters profited personally from holding high political office. Recently, individually and collectively, they refused to condemn the practice of serving senior Ministers accepting money from friends for private use. As to the misappropriation of funds intended for Fianna Fáil, I have yet to hear even one of them demand that the matter and the money be pursued.

Is time itself the only difference between new Fianna Fáil and old Fianna Fáil? It seems to be the same old attitudes and same old culture, just bright new, if not tired, faces. Their attitude is summed up by the Taoiseach's refusal to answer any questions on the tribunal's findings relating to himself. This is a clear abdication of his duty of accountability to Dáil Éireann and to the country. Until current senior members of Fianna Fáil are willing to acknowledge the wrong and the damage done to public confidence in politics, it will not be possible for them to make a clean break from the culture of corruption that enveloped their party for such a long period. Many people are sickened by the revelations and want a Government of integrity which will have the public interest, rather than personal gain, as its compass.

While some in public life equivocate about former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, in his long, considered and detailed analysis, Mr. Justice Moriarty does not. At the core of his valuable work there is uncovered in the period up to a decade ago a ruthlessness, an ambition and a sense of force and cunning more in keeping with how a banana republic operates than one of the world's most modern and newest Republics. It was repressive, secretive, corrosive and, as Moriarty now reveals, corrupt. In that context, the report is an eyewitness to misery.

Ordinary Irish people tightened their belts almost to the buckle, paid mortgages at 16%, tax at 58% and collected dole at £42 per week. Meanwhile the docile, biddable, cohort of loyalists scuttled along their party and departmental corridors, signed blank cheques while Ireland was broke, put up and shut up, watching their leader, immaculate in Charvet, smile and smile and be a villain.

Some say Moriarty holds up a mirror to Irish politics and the people who led it, some of whom still lead today. Surely, no mirror can reconcile the utterly contradictory views on the late Mr. Haughey. On one hand, Mr. Justice Moriarty considers Haughey to have devalued the quality of a modern democracy, while, on the other, the current Taoiseach holds that Mr. Haughey had a proud identity with Ireland. Mr. Justice Moriarty found that Mr. Haughey volunteered no information on payments to the tribunal, which was set up by the Oireachtas, and that several portions of his testimony were unacceptable and had to be rejected. The current Taoiseach takes the view that Mr. Haughey was a patriot to the core.

Mr. Justice Moriarty said that the man affectionately called "Boss" engendered elements of fear and domination in individuals, in both the private and public sectors. The current Taoiseach can reconcile patriotism with the abuse of power and of the institutions of the State, not to mention taking money from friends for private use in public office. I cannot. Nor can I, as a public representative, or my party, accept a dig-out or free loans because with power comes responsibility — the responsibility to apply the highest standards of probity.

Power is always problematic. It is not always exercised benignly, justly or morally, as this report confirms. It is a damning indictment of former Taoiseach, Mr. Haughey, and far more damning than we might have expected. He finds that Mr. Haughey lived a lifestyle and incurred expenses vastly beyond public service entitlements, which were his sole, apparent income. He rubbishes Mr. Haughey's protests that he knew virtually nothing of his financial arrangements and his claims that he never knew where the Cayman Islands were, never mind what they were for, before the tribunal. He finds that Mr. Haughey had use of €11.6 million over the 17 years to 1996. That amounts to 171 times his salary in, as Mr. Justice Moriarty notes, difficult economic times and when Governments led by Mr. Haughey were championing austerity.

According to the report, the former Taoiseach's financial actions were secretive, opaque and frequently involved offshore vehicles. He siphoned money from friends, party and, ultimately, his country at a time when he held the highest office in Government. Even the late former Minister, Brian Lenihan's transplant fund was fair game. Public austerity went with private affluence and avarice. As for tax, the subtext was "I am the Taoiseach; I can be a difficult adversary".

Money is one thing, public duty is another. This report's findings cast serious doubt over the probity, independence and ethical operation of Mr. Haughey's Governments. The report notes his disposition to involve himself in the affairs of individual Government Departments. We have to ask on what basis he did so. We have to ask what actually took place at the Cabinet table, in Government Departments and in public decision-making fora. The report finds elements of fear and domination engendered by him in individuals in both private and public sectors. That fear enabled him to hide the money trail. The domination meant he could live with impunity on dirty money. Together, they sent the Haughey gravy train down the tracks because, in that corrosive climate, he and his inner circle in business knew that nothing or no one could stop them.

There is a solitary comfort in this report, namely the conclusion that, while what transpired was unacceptable, wrong and must not be replicated, it would be quite unwarranted to conclude that everyone was at it. Everyone was not at it but the names Haughey, Lawlor and Burke cover politics with something less than glory.

The Taoiseach said that everyone was at it and I know of many cases where treasurers at various clubs around the country sign blank cheques. At the end of the year, however, they have to account for where they went. The Taoiseach said he was at an election count on 16 June when a cheque for €25,000 was made out to cash, for personal purposes. The fact that it was not accounted for properly represents a failure on the part of the Taoiseach, as an accountant and a politician.

I will finish with the words of Machiavelli:

Everyone understands how praiseworthy it is in princes to keep faith, to live uprightly and not craftily. Nevertheless, we see from what has taken place in our own days that princes have set little store by their word, but have known how to overreach men by their cunning, have accomplished great things, and, in the end, got the better of those who trusted to honest dealings.

I hope this tribunal report will ensure such a thing never happens again.

See this speech in context