Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

This Government has been responsible for the conduct of the tribunal and for its terms of reference for the entire ten years of its existence. On occasion, the Government takes credit for having brought the terms of reference and modus operandi of the tribunals before the House. Again, the timing is interesting. After ten years during which many witnesses have appeared before the tribunal and it has faced many legal challenges, when do Ministers suddenly become concerned about its procedures and practices? It is when their Taoiseach is before the tribunal and finds himself getting deeper and deeper into a hole.

Let us be clear about what has been happening for the past couple of months. The Government, or at least its Fianna Fáil element, has decided to mount an attack on the flank of the tribunal in order, at the very least, to distract attention from the Taoiseach's appearances before it and possibly to cause a collapse of the tribunal, and certainly to take away public confidence in its work and in the importance of what it is doing. In doing so, it is engaging in a profoundly political act, at the centre of which is the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern.

It is unacceptable that the financial affairs of one man, even if he is the Taoiseach, should paralyse the politics of this country and leave the affairs of the Irish people neglected. I am sick of the twists and turns, half-explanations, half-truths and untruths, and I am tired of the fairy tales, crocodile tears, red herrings and manufactured outrage. I am sick and tired of it, but I cannot ignore it. As an Opposition party in a parliamentary democracy, we cannot ignore the fact that the Taoiseach has not provided a credible account of his affairs to a tribunal of inquiry set up by the Dáil. We cannot ignore the fact that he cannot produce a tax clearance certificate as required by law or that he and his Ministers are engaged in a concerted campaign to undermine the tribunal.

We cannot ignore the fact that the Progressive Democrats and Green Party Ministers, with manifest and breathtaking hypocrisy, have abandoned their duty to democracy and, like the three monkeys, decided to see, hear and speak no evil. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, who is the line Minister responsible for the tribunal, gave one of the most pathetic speeches I have heard in a long time. The political leader and Minister who has been a champion of good planning and integrity in politics, rather than contributing to the debate or giving a speech that meant anything, was reduced to reading out the explanatory memorandum of a Bill that he said when he was in opposition he would oppose to the last. I do not believe it is a case of the Green Party having changed its political colour since it went into Government, although there is growing evidence of a tinge of yellow around the edges, I just think it is not up to the job. Fianna Fáil is running rings around the Green Party and for those of us who have some respect for that party, its politics and what it stands for, it is a pathetic sight to see a Minister come in here to be walked on and then cut and run after he has delivered his speech.

This motion and the controversy that prompted it are entirely of the Taoiseach's making. We are talking about this issue again because of the actions of the Taoiseach and his Ministers. We would not be here if the Taoiseach had done what he has always professed to do, co-operate fully with the tribunal and give a credible explanation for the substantial sums of money he received in the early 1990s. We would of course be much better occupied in dealing with the problems arising from the turmoil in the financial markets, the job losses in Arklow, the problems in the health service and the rising crime levels.

It is extraordinary that the Opposition must introduce a motion reaffirming confidence in a tribunal of inquiry established by the Oireachtas on the basis of a resolution originally introduced by the Government. We find ourselves in this unique position because of the attacks launched by a succession of Ministers on the independence and impartiality of the tribunal and, by implication, the integrity of the members of the tribunal and the legal staff working for it. The attacks commenced last September after the Taoiseach's first uncomfortable session in the witness box and built up into a crescendo of accusations, vituperation and common abuse in a series of media appearances by senior Government personnel following the Taoiseach's pre-Christmas appearances in Dublin Castle.

Let us recall some of the comments and accusations made by Ministers. The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Roche, described the questioning of the Taoiseach as petty, personal, prurient and voyeuristic, and accused the tribunal of trampling on the Taoiseach's rights. According to the Minister of State, the way in which the tribunal conducted its business was unacceptable in a democratic society. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, was "astonished" at the line of questioning of the Taoiseach, while the Minister for Defence, Deputy O'Dea, who is always willing to go the extra mile, complained about "invasive questioning" and said he expected the tribunal any day soon to question the Taoiseach about his Communion money. Just before Christmas, radio stations and news programmes found themselves in an extraordinary situation in which Government press representatives were ringing them up and offering representation from senior Ministers who wanted to have a go at the tribunal. It is surely unprecedented in any democratic society that a succession of Ministers would try to destroy a tribunal of inquiry established under law by the national Parliament.

These attacks on the tribunal also represent a significant change of approach by Fianna Fáil. Since the first disclosures in the autumn of 2006 about the receipt of large sums of money by the Taoiseach from a number of wealthy businessmen at a time when he held the sensitive post of Minister for Finance, the Greek chorus from the Cabinet said with one voice that we should leave all these matters to the tribunal and judgment should be deferred until the report is published. However, when they found the Taoiseach floundering and unconvincing in the witness box, producing a series of contradictory accounts of the sources and purpose of the various moneys he received, and particularly when they found that the public was totally unconvinced by the accounts given by their leader, their approach changed. It was no longer good enough to leave matters to the tribunal. The tribunal had to be attacked and undermined. It was a classic case of the best form of defence being attack.

After the Taoiseach's appearance before the Mahon tribunal at the end of September, I said that I had not found his evidence credible. The majority of the country agrees with that assessment. After two further days in the witness box, the Taoiseach's credibility has not improved. The cracks that have emerged in his account of the various "dig-outs" and loans grow into gaping holes. As a result, the Taoiseach's credibility is increasingly eroded and his authority to govern is increasingly undermined.

The fact is that the Taoiseach is being treated no differently by the tribunal from any other politician at local or national level who had to appear before it. If an allegation is made against a politician that a corrupt payment was made and received, the tribunal looks at the politician's finances to see whether there is any evidence of such a payment. If, as in the Taoiseach's case, there is evidence that large sums of money were received by him during the directly relevant period, then the politician must account for them.

With all the questioning on why the tribunal is asking the Taoiseach about personal money and his marriage, matters nobody wants to go into, let us understand what is happening. A witness at the tribunal claimed that Deputy Bertie Ahern took a bribe of £80,000. That is the allegation. The tribunal must examine his accounts and it does this for everybody against whom an accusation is made. If it finds, as in this case, that at the time in question the Taoiseach received large sums of money from wherever, which coincidentally amount to £80,000, it asks where he got it. The Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, has offered as an explanation a combination of "dig-out" money from friends, money from Manchester and the money Mr. Mick Wall brought in a suitcase and put on his table in the Drumcondra office. To put it mildly, the tribunal is having difficulty believing this and, therefore, it has put him on the stand and asked him questions to probe his account. He is not being treated any differently from anybody else.

I remember a young woman who had to go into that tribunal and explain a wedding gift she received because her father was a member of Dublin County Council at the time when somebody had alleged he had received money. I felt sorry for the people involved. He told the tribunal the money was a wedding gift for his daughter and she was brought in and made to answer questions. There is no doubt that this is all very invasive, but that is the job this House gave the tribunal because up to that point in time nobody could crack the allegations of corruption in the planning process.

Over the years, there were allegations again and again that the planning process, particularly in Dublin, was being corrupted. In the 1970s, a journalist named Mr. Joe McAnthony wrote a series of articles in which he named some of the people, who subsequently went to prison over it, as being involved in corruption. He was effectively driven out of the country to seek a living abroad. In the late 1980s, a similar round of allegations was made and there were two sets of Garda inquiries, one of which brought a senior planning official before the courts. There was no conviction and a second Garda investigation similarly ran into the sand.

One of the interesting pieces of evidence Mr. Frank Dunlop gave and repeated a number of times recently was that when the planning tribunal was originally set up, all the great worthies thought it would go nowhere and that they could waffle their way in front of it. Only when the tribunal, using the powers this House gave it, examined the accounts did Mr. Dunlop come before it and give his explanation. The tribunal produced his accounts, his "war chest", and there was the famous day when he went out, became ill and eventually came in and told what he had to tell. These invasive powers, which this House gave the tribunal, caused it to crack open for the first time the extent to which bribery and corruption was involved in planning in County Dublin.

This is not a vague exercise going on in Dublin Castle which only people involved in planning, local Government or public administration understand. This is about people's quality of lives, the length of time it takes them to get to work in this city because of the sprawls created around its edges without adequate transport. This is about the problem parents have in September when they cannot get their children in to a school because housing estates were built for the benefit of property developers and the lands rezoned for the benefit of landowners rather than the interests of the wider public who would inhabit them.

It may have taken ten years, but the public domain would never have cracked the practice of corruption and bribery at the heart of planning in Dublin and perhaps wider were it not for the powers given to the tribunal. These are the powers the Taoiseach complains are unfair to him and Ministers say are too invasive and go into areas they should not. The reason the tribunal is pursuing a line of questioning with the Taoiseach about his personal finances and affairs 15 years ago is because he has not to date been able to explain where he got money around the same time that another witness alleges he took a bribe in connection with a planning matter.

The tribunal is following the money trail, an approach recommended by the Taoiseach when the planning tribunal was established in 1997. Moving the Dáil motion for the establishment of the tribunal on 10 September 1997, the Taoiseach said:

The Government considers that following the money trail is the most efficient and effective way to progress this type of inquiry as witnessed by the great success of the Dunnes payment tribunal which adopted this approach.

The terms of reference of the new tribunal are geared towards following the "money trail" rather than examining particular allegations concerning specific public, ministerial or Government decisions, so that we do not necessarily drag in innocent third parties or, on the other hand, omit decisions that may turn out to have been tainted.

The concerted attack on the tribunal by Fianna Fáil must not be allowed to divert attention from the central issue. The fact is that the Taoiseach has been unable to come up with a credible explanation for the huge sums of cash he received at a time when he held the key post of Minister for Finance. More recent revelations in a Sunday newspaper regarding the Taoiseach's tax affairs raise new and extremely serious issues for him. If these reports are correct — despite his own gloss on events, the Taoiseach seems to concede they largely are — it becomes very hard to avoid the conclusion that the Dáil was seriously misled by the Taoiseach on the status of his tax affairs, particularly when he made a statement to the House in September 2006.

The Taoiseach has effectively confirmed that, in a letter sent on his behalf by his tax adviser in the autumn of 2006, he asked that his reply to Revenue queries should be treated as a "voluntary disclosure" of his tax liabilities. A request to Revenue to be treated as having made a voluntary disclosure immediately raises the question: a disclosure of what? One does not seek to make a voluntary disclosure to the Revenue unless one believes some tax liability might arise. A fully compliant taxpayer need not seek the sort of protections that arise when Revenue grants voluntary disclosure status. A compliant taxpayer does not need protection from being named as a defaulter, to seek mitigation of penalties liable to be imposed on him or her, to seek a monetary settlement in lieu of prosecution or to seek an assurance that any statements made by him or her in connection with the disclosure would not be used in evidence against him or her in any subsequent criminal prosecution. These are the assurances given by the Revenue when a voluntary disclosure is made. This request can only be read as an indication that the Taoiseach, or somebody acting on his behalf, had — at the very least — apprehensions that he was not fully tax compliant.

A central question facing the Taoiseach is how he could have been seeking in 2006 to make a voluntary disclosure about tax affairs dating back to 1992 when during the interim period, specifically in 2002, he made a formal statutory declaration that his affairs were in order and that he was entitled to a tax clearance certificate. Last week, the Taoiseach was quoted as saying "I made a voluntary disclosure and I think that the Revenue have accepted that position". This claim, that the letter from his tax adviser had in fact been accepted by the Revenue Commissioners as a voluntary disclosure, was heavily qualified by him in the House earlier today.

In conclusion, the Labour Party supports the motion before the House. We are astonished at the amendment which has been submitted by the Government, which is why we have tabled an amendment to it, in turn.

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