Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with Deputy O'Dowd.

Deputies Kenny and Gilmore have outlined in great detail the reasons the Taoiseach is unfit for office. Therefore, I would like to address the other Government parties which intend to support Fianna Fáil on the motion. Their capitulation to the larger party, emboldened in recent months by the Progressive Democrats wipe-out and the Green Party's sell out, will be complete if they trudge obediently through the Government lobby and vote for and accept low standards in high places. There was a political time when low standards in high places were important to Fianna Fáil, particularly in the 1980s when such standards were the subject of much debate and led to the establishment of the Progressive Democrats, as Des O'Malley and the late George Colley led the charge against Mr. Haughey. However, that party effectively no longer exists. Many in the party are embarking on an exercise in soul searching to identify where they can go but we all know they are going nowhere. They should fold the tent rather than allow a lingering political death to continue. If anyone wonders why that is, they only need examine examples of total political cowardice such as we are witnessing today as an explanation. The indecision of the Progressive Democrats on issues such as the truth and political standards came to an abrupt end with Michael McDowell's defeat last May when he ceased to be the legal and political adviser to the Taoiseach.

The Green Party is setting out on the same political route to oblivion. Its Members will be squeezed and politically suffocated by their friends in Fianna Fáil if they decide to support motions such as the one before us. However, Planet Bertie, to borrow a phrase from the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, is a strange place and the Green Party has found itself in office. However, being in office does not by any means mean being in power. The Greens self-serving decision to go into power has resulted in 100 days of policies abandoned, priorities ignored and principles jettisoned — in other words, total submission to Fianna Fáil. I refer to its record over a few short months.

As the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources will be aware, 91% of communications pledges in the programme for Government come directly from the Fianna Fáil election manifesto. The section on energy contains commitments taken from the same manifesto, with none from the Green Party. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has opposed an incineration motion identical to one he presented last year.

The Green Party has completely reversed its opposition to the co-location of hospitals. Its being in government has led to delusions of adequacy.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, limped home in Dublin South-East and almost lost his seat yet again. He occasionally gives the impression that he is a political force. The stranger members of the Green Party, of which there are a few, have even sought to perpetuate the myth that the Minister was responsible for the downfall of the former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell. Deputy Creighton, the Fine Gael representative from Dublin South-East, may offer a different version of events.

I wish to make crystal clear what the Green Party, as well as the Progressive Democrats, will support today if they back Fianna Fáil. When the Taoiseach was asked by the tribunal if he were to attend an Irish function now similar to the famous Manchester dinner — an event which now looks as if it never happened — and be offered an envelope with a large sum of money, he did not say he would absolutely not accept it. He did not say it would be wrong or inappropriate for a Minister to do so. His reply was "Now you can't". He went on to say he may have then, if there were similar circumstances, before all the new rules were introduced. He probably would have. That is the ethical standard the Green Party sees fit to support. It is not the belief that it is wrong to take money which is stopping him accepting wads of cash in brown envelopes but rather the rules.

In recent days the former Green Party leader, Deputy Sargent, has asked what has changed since the general election which has brought Fine Gael to move a motion of no confidence. I will tell him. In mid May he was describing the Taoiseach as a dead man walking. The Taoiseach stated he had co-operated fully with the tribunal and given it all the explanations required. We now know that was not true. When Deputy Sargent was in the National Botanic Gardens getting assurances before forming a Government, he was giving statements along the lines that the Taoiseach certainly would not let him down, that he had no reason to distrust the Taoiseach and that he believed him to be a man of his word. The evidence to suggest otherwise is clear.

Truth is the key. The Green Party knows the mantra of letting the tribunal do its work no longer washes. I ask the party and its Deputies to consider such matters before they cast their votes on the motion.

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