Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

We know now what we did not know then, after he gave evidence under due process. One year ago the Taoiseach's finances became the dominant political issue of the country. Looking back at that period, especially with the benefit of the public disclosure of the forensic work of the Mahon tribunal, I am convinced that the convulsions which we went through counted for nothing. Why? Most of the events we were discussing never happened. In my view, they are fictitious. They are complicated stories, part of a web of complicated stories designed to mask hard facts, and constructed stories to fit known facts. These facts are the lodgement into the Taoiseach's and Celia Larkin's accounts of the equivalent of €300,000 in today's terms, the bank documentation created at the time of the lodgements which point to lodgements of $45,000 dollars, £25,000 sterling, £20,000 sterling, £10,000 sterling — substantial sums of money — and the persistent failure of the Taoiseach to provide the tribunal with information on the source of these funds.

Instead we became besotted with stories about whip-arounds, after dinner presentations and, more recently, a bag of sterling to refurbish a virtually new house. The Mahon tribunal will continue its work. It will continue to treat the Taoiseach as he has asked to be treated, like every other citizen. Its members and staff will continue their efforts to get to the truth behind the facts it has already uncovered. However, the public interest and the protection of the reputation of the highest executive office of the land, the Office of the Taoiseach, demands that the charade that is currently being played out is ended now. The Taoiseach's stories are threadbare, his evidence is invisible. With blind loyalty his Ministers, Deputies Cowen, Ahern, Hanafin, Dempsey, Ó Cuív, Lenihan, Cullen, Brennan, Coghlan and O'Dea, have all been out foursquare behind him. They nailed up their statement of standards and acceptance of this type of activity.

What about the other Ministers in the Government? We remember the slogan "Green politics is clean politics". Now, Green politics is blind politics as Deputies Gormley, Ryan and Sargent adopt the standards we have come to associate with the Progressive Democrats. Last year Deputy Sargent, a man of impeccable standards and principles, sat on this side of the House as an admirable man who week after week rose to his feet to excoriate Fianna Fáil and the Taoiseach, in particular, for the lack of standards manifest in his taking of money. He now sits behind the Taoiseach, his mind utterly changed having been seduced by the attraction of power.

Two decades ago a young woman in this House walked away from a political party and leader on the matter of standards. She had the courage on much less evidence to take on the enormous personal risk of challenging the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey. She was a woman with standards who stated she could not live with this, nor should her party. Now it is silence of the lambs.

In time the Mahon tribunal will come to its conclusions. We now know that some of the criticisms made of the tribunal on its cost and the time it was taking are not down to the tribunal but to the individuals it was investigating. It will reach a conclusion on whether specific allegations made are true. We can and will wait for its verdict on those issues. However, we must not wait — the office of the Taoiseach cannot wait — for the tribunal to report.

As Leader of the Opposition and, for what it is worth, the most senior Deputy in the House, I have no choice but to stand by our republic——

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