Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I record my thanks and appreciation, and that of my party, to Mr. Justice Moriarty and his team for this report. Tribunal reports are the end product of a tortuous process. All parties in this House are uneasy about that process, in particular about the delay and extraordinary expense involved, but much of that is due to the stonewalling and destructive tactics of those who have most to lose from the truth. We have yet to see whether the tribunal will use the new powers available to it to ensure that the eventual cost is borne by those who generated this expense rather than by the taxpayers.

Despite the attendant reservations that must accompany the publication of a document that was commissioned almost ten years ago, I believe this report is important. It, together with the McCracken report which immediately preceded it, goes some way towards rescuing our democracy from growing uneasiness that a small group of powerful and wealthy individuals had come to regard themselves as the beneficial owners of the State, while nobody in authority was prepared to call a halt.

The findings of this, the first report of the Moriarty tribunal, represent a damning indictment. As Deputy Kenny said, it is an indictment not just of the record of Charles Haughey, but also of the entire political culture in Fianna Fáil during the period when he dominated that party. It is the reason that a new conventional wisdom has grown up that Fianna Fáil cannot be let out without an escort. Even those likely to support the party do not trust them to govern alone. It is accepted without question that there must be a watchdog. For years the Progressive Democrats made a good living from riding shotgun on Fianna Fáil. When the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, went up a pole in Ranelagh during the last election with his "Single Party, no thanks!" poster, he did not need to explain that he was exploiting the Haughey legacy; Fianna Fáil cannot be trusted to govern alone.

Whether the Progressive Democrats have discharged that role is a subject for another day. The fact that the Progressive Democrats today collude with the current leader of Fianna Fáil to allocate just 90 minutes of Dáil time, almost two months after the report was published, to allow for statements only on the issues that arise is testament that the watchdog no longer even barks.

The point of these tribunals and their reports is not just to conduct historical researches and arrive at the truth about long distant events, but to derive lessons for public policy on the way we conduct our business in future. This is a very detailed report but it is just part one. There are still public hearings to be held and then a second and final report. I hope that final report will contain Mr. Justice Moriarty's recommendations on some of the outstanding issues.

Despite the attempts of the Fianna Fáil spinners to downplay Mr. Justice Moriarty's findings, the judge, in most cases, is unsparing in his criticism of Mr. Haughey and other senior Fianna Fáil figures, both members of the parliamentary party and those who were key contributors to Mr. Haughey and his party. This is a sorry tale of misuse of taxpayers money, the placing of public servants under pressure to do the will of the then Taoiseach and a group of craven colleagues who were unwilling to challenge his writ. I had arrived at my own view on these matters ten years ago and I repeat today what I said in the debate on the setting up of this tribunal. I stated:

What would Mr. de Valera have thought of the Gandon mansion, the estate with the roaming thoroughbreds, the island, the fine wines and the yacht? A successor of Mr. de Valera posing as a country squire, a man of the arts, a man of the turf, a great helmsman who embodied the spirit of the nation and who was born in, or with an affinity to, a county in each province, a man who was the possessor both of the common touch and wealthy benefactors. The persona which Mr. Haughey affected, where Micheál Mac Liammóir meets the Great Gatsby, seemed to regard the huge private payments not merely as being permissible but as being the natural order of things. Just as the chieftains of ancient times lived off the fat of the land, our modern day warrior took it all as his due entitlement. Others, while almost certainly not knowing any of the details of Mr. Haughey's financial chicanery, also seemed to regard it as the natural order of things. This was the high point of the new political culture ushered in when the men in mohair suits took over from the men with no arses in their trousers.

Charles J. Haughey was the arch-practitioner of the new culture in a party where only a few rebelled and a majority willingly did his bidding.

Throughout all these controversies. . . we did not hear one word of criticism about the conduct of the main players from any senior figure in Fianna Fáil. When in Opposition, the Progressive Democrats had no doubts about the reason this was the case, as their then Finance spokesperson, [Deputy] Michael McDowell, made clear in the Goodman debate of 2 September 1994. He stated:

We have never heard it and I dare say we never will because the reality is that they were bought and stay bought. They know that Goodman knows where the bodies are buried; they dare not even rebuke this man because they know in their hearts that he has information on them and that he would bring them down like a group of skittles if the truth ever emerged.

That was the Progressive Democrats in Opposition. These days, it is a mutter from a relieved Tánaiste to an even more relieved Taoiseach after a press conference during the "Bertiegate" affair: "We have survived it, Taoiseach".

It is hard to disagree with Mr. Justice Moriarty's conclusion that the payments received by Mr. Haughey during his political career "devalued the quality of a modern democracy" or the finding that the years from 1979 to 1992 "was a dismal period in the interface between politics and business". Some idea of the scale of the money received by Mr. Haughey under the period examined by the tribunal can be gauged by Mr. Justice Moriarty's finding that it was the equivalent of 171 times Mr. Haughey's salary as Taoiseach for the year of 1988.

Perhaps the most shocking finding of the tribunal about Mr. Haughey is on the question of the money raised for his friend and lifetime colleague, Brian Lenihan. It is difficult to believe that somebody as wealthy as Mr. Haughey could actually have set out to raise more money than he knew was required to fund Mr. Lenihan's operation and then apply part of these funds for his own purpose. Nothing has been more revelatory of the nature of Fianna Fáil as an organisation, and its single-minded focus on retaining power, than the restrained response of those closest to the late Mr. Lenihan.

I also find it significant that the tribunal has specifically commented that its findings "cannot and does not give rise to a finding that all other acts or decisions in public office on the part of Mr. Haughey during the relevant years were devoid of infirmity". For example, as someone who gave evidence to the beef tribunal and studied it carefully, the decision not to make a single order for discovery of bank accounts virtually undermined its credibility when it came to its findings as to corruption.

The terms of reference of the tribunal were geared towards examining Charles Haughey's finances throughout his later ministerial career, and his period as head of Government, rather than examining particular allegations concerning specific public, ministerial or Government decisions. On the one hand, in trying to determine where the money came from, it was an exhaustive and exhausting exercise. On the other hand, in the absence of specific allegations and specific leads, we still do not know why the money came nor, despite the stories of fine wines and Charvet shirts, do we know where it all went.

We do know, however, that during the periods when he raised most money and spent so much, Charles Haughey retained a relentless grip on the reins of power in Fianna Fáil despite the fact that every reasonable assessment both within and outside that party was that he was an enormous electoral liability.

The misuse of the party leader's allowance, which is taxpayers' money, was denied up to the last in this House. Charles Haughey even resorted to the leader's allowance to give a colleague a "dig out" from public funds to avoid a bankruptcy that would have cost the party a Dáil seat.

It was his abnegation of responsibility in the management of that account that has come back to haunt the present Taoiseach. Introducing the resolution to establish this tribunal back in 1997, the Taoiseach was disingenuous, to put it at its kindest. He said:

Deputy Spring has raised the issue of the party leader's allowance during Fianna Fáil's period in Opposition. In so far as I could with little available records I am satisfied, having spoken to the person who administered the account, that it was used for bona fide party purposes, that the cheques were prepared by that person and countersigned by another senior party member. Their purpose was to finance personnel, press and other normal supports for an Opposition leader. There was no surplus and no misappropriation. The person involved had sole control of the account. The money came in, the person lodged the cheque, dealt with the bills and invoices and paid those not covered by the ordinary allowance.

Nowhere in that account of events did he admit the fact that the "other senior party member" he referred to was in fact himself, or that his practice was to sign blank cheques by the dozen. If Deputy Spring on this side of the House knew enough about the abuse of the leader's allowance to write to Mr. Haughey about it at the time, how is it that the man signing the cheques suspected nothing?

It is true that in the ten years since the tribunal was set up, there have been reforms. It is also true that every reform has been dragged from this Government like extracting teeth. My party published Bills in 2000 on tax clearance for candidates, on reform of our prevention of corruption laws and on the registration of lobbyists. There has been movement on two of those issues but no action at all on lobbying. That failure is all the more disgraceful given the relentless river of revelations coming from the other tribunal that shows just how debased our public planning process had become due to the interaction of big business, party funding, lobbying and backhanders.

The Government has failed also, despite some initial signs of movement following the first DIRT report, to do anything to enshrine the independence of the Revenue Commissioners and ensure their freedom of action, free of any fear of political interference. Both the Revenue and the Department of Finance signalled their acceptance of a need to legislate along these lines but nothing at all has been done about it.

One other failure also needs to be mentioned. In the past 20 years or so during which tribunals, judicial and parliamentary, have become a part of the Irish furniture, I cannot recall a single example in a single module of any one of those tribunals where a public servant blew the whistle. We have no culture of whistle-blowing in this country and our public life is the poorer for it.

Labour's reaction to this report is not just one of recrimination and "I told you so". Our reaction is that it sets an agenda for change. It reaffirms us in our commitment to our registration of lobbyists Bill and our Protection of Whistleblowers Bill, which this Government accepted on Second Stage and then put out to Committee Stage six or seven years ago and left it there. It strengthens our resolve to reform the Ethics Acts in line with the Standards in Public Office Commission's own recommendations to allow it to hold a preliminary inquiry without the need for a formal complaint and formal hearings.

We are committed, another promise flagged by the Taoiseach ten years ago but about which we have heard nothing since, to the establishment of a single, independent and resourced electoral and ethics commission. This single commission will incorporate the Standards in Public Office Commission, the Constituency Review Commission and its constitutionally enshrined status will, in the Taoiseach's own words, "guarantee the independence and impartiality of the commission, generate greater confidence in public life, create greater transparency in public institutions and provide an independent source of advice and information in the areas of ethics in public life and electoral law reform".

At the time of his death I said of Charles Haughey that, in and out of office, he was a dominant figure in Irish politics for a period of almost four decades. He was at all times a hugely controversial figure who attracted great loyalty among his supporters, even if it inspired amnesia in them, and fierce opposition from his opponents. As Taoiseach and as a Government Minister, Charles Haughey had many achievements of note. He was a skilled parliamentarian and a genuinely reforming Minister for Justice and Minister for Social Welfare.

There is no doubt, however, but that we must conclude Charles Haughey did this State a profound disservice. He devalued the State as a political entity because he devalued the profession of politics and, thereby, he devalued our status as fellow politicians. We have collectively been lowered in public esteem as a result of the self-serving swathe he cut through public probity and, when it came to the Lenihan fund, common decency.

This is the dilemma that faces us. On the one hand, we must search out the truth and face up to its implications. On the other hand, the damage that is done in the process is suffered by all of us currently involved in politics. The only way to rebut the claim that "all politicians are the same, they are all at it" is to demonstrate convincingly that standards have changed, that the rules are different, that new rule changes are on the way and that there is no going back to that discredited and utterly discreditable way of doing the public's business.

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