Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

When Fianna Fáil is sponsoring a Bill such as this it is safe to conclude that its love affair with the construction sector is well and truly over. It is interesting that this comes at a time when the construction industry is in ruins and when Fianna Fáil would struggle to get donations from that sector. Those paying the heaviest price within the construction sector are construction workers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers and brick layers, many of whom have had to emigrate or, as it might more appropriately be described, go into exile. Other out of work construction workers are struggling to pay mortgages on homes provided by the very sector in which they worked. The companies they worked for were for decades some of the biggest funders of the right wing political parties.

While I am in favour of planning and building all sorts of things I believe we should never go back to a developer-led approach. As someone who believes in strategic planning, I watched the orgy of rezoning requests, the assumption of a positive relationship between the developers and speculators and the major political parties, in particular Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I always believed that the money created a culture, opened the door and delivered the result they desired. There is a direct relationship between what occurred in relation to the property bubble and political donations. There may have been infamous cases of people getting payments directly, as evidenced by the tribunals, but the money primarily bought a culture, one for which we will pay heavily well into the future.

As someone who has contested many elections since 1988 without the benefit of big corporate donations I know what it is like to contest an election on a shoe-string. Too often I believed elections were essentially bought, which is perhaps the reason we have limited political choice. I agree that the relationship between big business and politics must be broken. It does not have any place in a healthy democracy. I favour the ending of all significant private donations to politicians and political parties, a register of lobbyists and the vouching of all public moneys paid to politicians and political parties. Although I am cynical in terms of the source of this legislation I do not believe it should be postponed for a day longer than is necessary.

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