Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Kenny spoke about the need to maintain standards. I would like to quote from a person Deputy Kenny might know, the former leader of Fine Gael, Mr. John Bruton, who said:

There is not, and never will be, a system of conviction by denunciation. Independent authorities, not rivals nor those with an axe to grind, make judgments as to culpability.

If Deputies Kenny and Gilmore want to seek to accord high standards, which I always seek to accord to myself, as I am sure does every colleague here, then perhaps they should listen to that statement.

The Oireachtas has decided there are matters of urgent public importance, which began in respect of inquiries into planning matters about 728 acres in north County Dublin and have subsequently developed into a range of inquiries into areas quite apart from the original intention, which was amended by this House on a number of occasions. Again in 2004 we amended the terms of reference and directed the tribunal to indicate the other matters upon which it wished to proceed to public hearing. If it did not so indicate by 1 May 2005, it could not proceed. Those were interventions made by this House which, I remind Deputy Bruton, were not deemed as an abuse of the tribunal. It was a case of us trying to ensure we could maintain public confidence by trying to bring some efficacy and finality at some stage to all these necessary inquiries and that the methodology being used would protect the constitutional rights of everybody.

A contention was made by Opposition leaders that we are trying to permit a privileged few to have entitlements over and above those of other citizens. That is not the case. What we seek for the Taoiseach, as we would seek for anyone appearing before the tribunal, is precisely the same rights and entitlements of any citizen. If Deputy Kenny wants to maintain standards, due process requires that we avoid judgment by denunciation, that we await facts to be established and all witnesses to be heard, and that we allow the judges who have been designated by the Oireachtas to adjudicate on these matters and to report back to the Oireachtas which will make its own judgment on the basis of the calm and final deliberation of that tribunal in respect of all those matters. That is what is required for the maintenance of standards.

I do not accept that Deputy Kenny has a principled view about all of this. Last October he saw an opportunity. He came with his dagger, but it did not work: it was quite blunt. When that happened and Deputy Rabbitte saw that he had gone down by five percentage points in the opinion polls, he acknowledged that he was wasting his time and would not proceed with it because he had an election to fight. Suddenly principles went out the window when the issue was not going to be the big political hammer the Opposition thought it would be.

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