Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I would be amused, were it not so serious, at the section of the Minister of State's speech which states that "we already have in this country a very sophisticated body of anti-corruption legislation dating back to the late 19th century, which has been frequently updated since then". How in the name of heavens does the record show that the legislation has been frequently updated? The legislation has most emphatically not been frequently updated. Until the rainbow coalition Government introduced the Ethics in Public Office Act in 1995, the matter had been untouched since 1916, pre-independence.

If one came into this House as an innocent, one would take the ministerial script as saying that this Bill is broadening the legislation as it relates to the prevention of corruption; that it brings us into compliance with the OECD convention; that the latest inspection by the OECD indicates that it is very happy with us; that everything is above board; and that we have been frequently updating the legislation from 1916. That is a very seriously inaccurate picture of what has taken place. In fact, the dominant party in the State, Fianna Fáil, has shown no stomach at all for addressing this issue or for updating the law, not to mention updating the law "frequently", as is claimed in the ministerial script. That is not the situation at all.

While I do not want to go over the territory covered by Deputy Charles Flanagan, this legislation is before the House today because of the embarrassment caused by OECD criticisms. The embarrassment caused by Transparency International criticisms, although nuanced differently, is also very interesting and very pertinent to the culture that obtains in Ireland in this area. The OECD criticisms obviously had to be dealt with, but I am puzzled as to why we are dealing with them in such a piecemeal fashion. We now have six items of legislation and towards the end of the ministerial script, it is asserted that the OECD essentially shares the position of my party, which is that if we are expected to these items of legislation as a code in this area, then the sensible thing to do is to codify the legislation and bring it up to date. The script states:

The evaluation team has expressed the view that the various anti-corruption measures on the statute would benefit by being harmonised. The OECD has expressed the view in its evaluation report on Ireland which was published last year, that it would for example wish to see a harmonisation between elements of various statutes. However, our advices indicate that this issue does not present any practical difficulty from a prosecution point of view.

That is to quibble with the desirability of codifying the legislation, but I ask the Minister or Minister of State in his reply to tell me what prosecutions there have been to date. I would like to hear the number of prosecutions taken, whether convictions have been secured and so forth because, clearly, it does not present an obstacle to prosecution if there have not been any prosecutions.

The Minister's script seems to hint that, at some ill-defined stage in the future, he is prepared to examine the whole business of putting all related anti-corruption legislation under one cover. That is desirable and is what lawyers and others would expect and require.

It is a coincidence that we are discussing this Bill on the day in which we learn that the Mahon tribunal has concluded its public hearings. It is not our business in this House to draw conclusions for Judge Alan Mahon. He and his two colleagues will presumably do that in due course. However, it cannot be gainsaid that what we have endured for the past 11 years has done serious damage to politics and to public confidence in politicians. It is very difficult to read the evidence, day after day, before the Mahon tribunal without concluding — and without trying to draw conclusions for Judge Alan Mahon — that there was corruption and, indeed, may still be corruption, in the planning process.

Any of us addressing this issue should probably pay tribute to the remarkable patience and endurance of Judge Mahon and his colleagues while at the same time say that there must be a more speedy and economical way to address corruption in our society. A statute enacted in 1921, which precedes the foundation of the State, is scarcely the most appropriate way to probe corruption. Rather than frequently updating the legislation, we have been slow enough to address this issue.

Why is there not an expert unit in the Garda to which many of these matters can be transferred? Why can we not ask an appropriately equipped unit of the Garda to do much of the work, which takes such a long time to complete and must have due regard to keystone decisions such as the In re Haughey judgment, if one is going to pursue the matter by way of public inquiry under the 1921 Act? Is there any reason why forensic accountants could not be added to such a Garda unit? Could members of the Garda be equipped with such a mix of skills, given that it is possible in the Criminal Assets Bureau? Can we have a mix of skills in a unit of the Garda designed to probe white collar corruption? We have been very slow in attending to this area.

There is no wish to link the anti-corruption legislation to which I have referred with the electoral Acts and to tie them in a fashion that will give us greater protection. The former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr. Michael McDowell, presented an initiative in respect of the commission of investigation facility which was an improvement on the instruments available beforehand. However, it is not adequate. One can predict the response from the dominant party in the country, namely, Fianna Fáil when the Mahon tribunal produces its report. It will be focussed on the cost, which will be significant. However, a storm about the cost will be created as a diversion. The cost may represent a substantial amount of money at a time when we are enduring a recession, but it is within the capacity of the House to produce a more efficient, speedy and economic means of investigating white collar corruption.

Why is the House and the Government so reluctant to re-establish inquiry by parliamentary committee? Given the nature and the narrow scope of this Bill, which involves the pursuit of misuse of public money and public procurement, inquiry by parliamentary committee is appropriate in some cases. However, by conventional wisdom it is taken that this method of inquiry collapsed with the Abbeylara judgment. This ought not to be the case as there were particular circumstances obtaining in the Abbeylara inquiry, which would not necessarily be present in most types of inquiry overseen by a Dáil committee dealing with pursuing the misuse of public money. Since the DIRT inquiry, there is no appetite on the part of the Government to carry out an inquiry by parliamentary committee. However, the DIRT inquiry retrieved just under €1 billion for the State and it cost just over €1 million. It is beyond me why there is reluctance to re-boot inquiry by parliamentary committee.

The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Peter Power, referred in his speech to provision in respect of whistleblowers and Deputy Flanagan referred to the Labour Party Bill which I introduced. Deputy Power stated: "The Bill also provides new protection for whistleblowers, a term which covers employees and other persons who report suspected corruption offences in good faith". There has been a remarkable reluctance by the Government to deal with this issue. The Labour Party brought forward a Bill which the Government approved on Second Stage. With the benefit of hindsight this was an act of deception and dishonesty, as the Government only wished to avoid the perception that it would vote down a whistleblower's Bill as a general election approached. The Government gave the Bill the nod on Second Stage and then buried it in committee from where it has never resurfaced. There has been much talk about introducing whistleblower's protection on the basis of a sectoral approach, but there has never been a coherent argument advanced outlining why that is a better option.

Reference was made to the arrangements put in place for the Garda, but it is too early to evaluate the experience of the Garda, it has not been long enough in operation. Public representatives ought to have access to the confidential receiver appointed for the Garda. The Garda is a special and particular case and there are good reasons why individual members of the Garda may be concerned about making the approach themselves, which is a weakness.

I cannot pass over the whistleblower matter without being reminded of what happened in the House. There was a very inadequate, truncated debate on the eight reports from the Morris tribunal. The more I consider the matter the more angry I become with the position of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. A retired High Court judge applied himself diligently to the task given by the House of producing eight painstaking reports. He unearthed matters experienced by the State of the most acute concern about the operation of some elements of the Garda. People were coerced into signing confessions to a murder that never took place. Gardaí planted explosives and claimed credit when they were uncovered, as it might assist their careers. There was a litany of other incidents contained in the reports.

In his 15 minute contribution to the debate on the tribunal, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law reform devoted nine minutes to criticising a Member of the House and a former Member of the House, referring to a particular remark by Mr. Justice Morris which indicated they might have engaged in more investigation. It took Mr. Justice Morris, with all the resources of the State, a long number of years to come to his conclusions. It is rich of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to lecture any Member of the House on how to investigate allegations, given his track record of investigation. The then Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, sent him to London to investigate whether any of the allegations in the ether about former Deputy Ray Burke were true. The Minister, Deputy Dermot Ahern, came back to the House to report to the Taoiseach that there was no truth in these allegations. The Minister does not have a good enough record as an investigator to lecture people in this House about the steps they should take in causing investigations to be held into matters of public interest that are brought to their attention.

The reason this subject is important is because the reputation of the State is vital in terms of our ability to conduct international trade and commerce and do business with other countries. It cannot be a matter of satisfaction to anybody here that an organisation like Transparency International ranks this country as low as it does. Therefore, it is critical that we, as a modern western democracy, are in the good books of the OECD on the issue of our capacity to do business with other countries. After all, we do not have a big stake in any military industrial complex, we do not do business with the Saudis and we are not involved with large companies that supply other countries with a terrible record of corruption. That is not to say that the issues and the criticisms raised by the OECD are not especially important and we should show the will of this House by dealing with them.

In times of affluence, people tend to turn away from politics. In terms of recession, when things are more difficult, people begin to engage with politics again. We have seen that in the past few months. In that regard, it is regrettable that the standing of politicians has been lowered in the last decade due to the conduct of a small number of very senior politicians, former Members of this House. The damage done has caused public cynicism towards politics, which is very serious.

When the 2001 Bill was introduced, the then Minister was in full flight lecturing us on this subject. Former Deputy Jim Higgins, to whom I referred in a different context, produced the following quotation:

I staunchly supported Mr. Haughey. I admired Mr. Haughey greatly, and few men of this century were more committed to this country and its people than Charlie Haughey. There is a song which says follow the fellow who follows a dream, and Mr. Haughey had a vision of this country with which I could identify. A lot of people at grassroots level of Fianna Fáil could identify with it. It was a vision of a republic, of a just society, of a society which made up its own rules and did not ape and copy the rules of any other country for the sake of doing so.

The former Deputy's point was that the quote was taken from an interview in The Voices of Kerry with the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, who was introducing the 2001 Bill and lecturing us on the subject of corruption, yet that was his view.

There is a need for us to revisit the pieces of anti-corruption legislation that are now on the Statute Book. At that time, the Minister summarised it as follows:

At present, the law relating to corruption is governed mainly by the Corruption Acts 1889-1916. There was some updating to these made by the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995. Under these Acts, various activities are criminalised as corrupt practices. For example, the 1889 Act, as amended by the 1995 Act, makes it an offence for a person holding a public office, a special adviser or a director of, or occupier of, a position of employment in a public body, to corruptly solicit or receive any reward as an inducement for acting or refraining from acting in accordance with the individual's duty. It is also an offence for a person to offer such an individual any reward for acting or refraining from acting in accordance with his or her duty.

That summary is fair enough, but we have learned that the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995 is in need of updating. There is a need for us to draw the necessary connections between the anti-corruption Acts on the Statute Book and the electoral law. That needs to be done as does the codification to which I referred earlier.

I would like the Minister to tell us about the instances of prosecution under the legislation so far. If it is the case that the instances are few, as I suspect, then the House needs to be reassured that we are not just going through the motions here and putting yet another amendment to an amendment on anti-corruption on the Statute Book, but it is never really the intention to invoke it or enforce it. What is being done in the Minister's Department to make resources available to enforce the provisions of the existing legislation?

There is a definite connection between the recession in which we find ourselves and the culture that dominates politics in this country, as well as the party that dominates politics in this country. If it were not for the unhealthy nexus between 30 or 40 major developers and the dominant party in this country, then we would not be in the depths of recession. People cried out for the Government to intervene in the cost of building land and to terminate the incentives that were there to drive the building industry. We continued the tax incentives to boost output in the construction industry at a time when we knew the bubble was going to burst and we were going to be left with too much property. There has since been a collapse in the revenues coming into the State and, as a result, the hole in the public finances is much larger than it would have been otherwise. That is partly because of the unhealthy nexus in the culture of Irish politics involving some of the leading developers, whereby the major party, Fianna Fáil, made decisions in the interests of financiers rather than voters.

See this speech in context