Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the final report of the Mahon tribunal. I supported its establishment in 1997 and I believe it has carried out important and valuable work and has been of significant public service. I have accepted the findings of every tribunal of inquiry which has reported during my membership of this House. I also accept the findings of Judge Mahon and his colleagues. This is a very important report that deserves a debate as serious as its contents. It raises issues relating to individuals but also to a wider political culture.

As is acknowledged in the report, the legislation regulating politics and politicians has been transformed since the events which it investigated but more action is required. Equally, there is no doubt there are still major concerns about planning procedures. The principal events dealt with in this report are over 20 years old. Irrespective of this, it is reasonable and fair for such practices to be exposed no matter how long ago they occurred. Each person honoured by the people with holding public office must be willing to be held to account for their action.

The basic challenge for this debate is to show that we understand the importance of what the Mahon report contains and what it says to us collectively and individually. Do we genuinely believe in accountability or is accountability just for the other guys? Are we willing to apply the same standards to comparable practices or will politics triumph over principle? Nothing will change if this is just another debate about finding new and more creative ways of kicking the other side while ignoring the implications for one's own. The public can see the difference between politicians just trying to exploit issues like this and those who have a serious interest in addressing what happened and ensuring it never happens again.

During this statement I will be making direct political points, as I am fully entitled to do particularly given the unequivocal evidence in both this report and that of Mr. Justice Moriarty. However, it is my intention to fully acknowledge the scale of the problem which was present in my party. I have no intention of seeking to avoid accountability for my party and those who held office as Fianna Fáil representatives. Equally, I have no intention of letting others away with deeply cynical tactics of ignoring the implications of this and other reports for their parties and their representatives.

The largest single point which comes from this report is the need for everyone in public life to not just talk about high standards but to be willing to act on them no matter what the personal inconvenience. It is a wide-ranging report which deals with the specific matter of the corruption of planning in Dublin, as well as the broader facts of the behaviour of specific individuals and fund-raising by national parties. I will address each of these in turn, as well as some other points including the comment in the introduction concerning statements by former Ministers. During last year's Moriarty debate a succession of Ministers came to the House and chose to cherry-pick the more convenient parts of the report for comment. I will not follow their example.

It is important to remember first the context in which the tribunal was established in 1997. While it was a direct response to revelation about payments to Ray Burke, it was actually part of a decade-long build-up of concern about issues relating to money and politics. It was explicitly seen as going in tandem with the Moriarty tribunal. Problems with planning in Dublin had indeed been clear for several years. My former colleague, Michael Smith, was the first Minister to try to do something about it. He publicly attacked the councillors of County Dublin and said that, under them, planning had become a "devalued currency". He acted as strongly as he could within the law as it was, as did his successor, the Minister, Deputy Brendan Howlin.

Michael Smith split up Dublin County Council in large part because of the habit of councillors of pushing through controversial rezoning for parts of the county with which they had no connection. It was clear that councillors across areas and parties frequently co-ordinated such votes to allow councillors vote in accordance with their local voters' views but still get the motion passed.

Michael Smith also began the drafting of legislation for limiting political donations and regulating them via a strong national body before he left office in late 1994. It is not clear why the rising concern about what had happened in the early 1990s did not lead to any serious investigation during either the Fianna Fáil-Labour Government or the Fine Gael-Labour-Democratic Left Government. Equally, it should not have taken the actions of private citizens in offering a reward for information before this House would act.

The tribunal's report confirms the picture which was laid out in Mr. Justice Flood's earlier report. Planning in Dublin at this time was rotten to the core. There was a systematic subversion of the planning process by some councillors willing to seek and accept payments in return for pushing through rezoning which they would otherwise have opposed. This was, in turn, a systematic subversion of the democratic system and a betrayal of the people of County Dublin. The report shows how the promoters of rezoning were deeply networked in the council, having a level of influence over the decisions of many Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors which was far worse than was anticipated when the tribunal was established.

The brazenness of some of this corruption was startling. Liam Lawlor and Tom Hand effectively appear to have sought to shake down people approaching the council with major proposals. Both are deceased, but it has been clearly documented that they received large amounts in corrupt ways. The behaviour of many in the Fianna Fáil group was infamous and their legacy remains. In the 1991 local elections, the public rightly reacted against their behaviour by throwing out many of them. They built up a level of distrust that has been difficult to overcome for the good people who stood in subsequent years. It has been 21 years since Fianna Fáil controlled any of the councils in County Dublin.

It is right that councillors be held to account if they engage in corrupt practices. Ray Burke, Liam Cosgrave, Liam Lawlor and others have been through the courts. Other cases are following. As was evident from one of the cases that followed the McCracken report, we must be careful in what we state about individuals. We have privilege, but we can still cause cases to collapse by being prejudicial.

The evidence uncovered by the tribunal and independently available to the Director of Public Prosecutions is more than sufficient for a number of people to face serious charges. I hope these charges will be progressed urgently.

Perhaps the most important question in terms of the planning element of the report is whether this situation could recur. There is no longer any doubt about the boundaries between personal and political finances. Many of the explanations offered to the Mahon tribunal have been firmly dealt with in legislation. What is considerably less clear is whether the planning process has been cleaned up. Planning decisions by councillors and councils continue to have the prospect of delivering significant gains to private individuals and to reward lobbying.

The most recent development planning processes gave widespread cause for concern, so much so that the former Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Mr. John Gormley, recommended to the then Government the establishment of independent expert and low-cost investigations into planning decisions by six councils. No credible explanation has been given by anyone in the Government as to why it was decided to close down those investigations in favour of administrative reviews. Those reviews were done before the investigations were established. About what is the Government concerned? If it is sincere in its response to the Mahon report, it will reinstate the independent planning investigations. It should also introduce proposals on implementing the recommendations of Judge Mahon and his colleagues. Planning has been devalued for so long that there is an unanswerable case for an independent regulator.

Last week, I announced the action to be taken by Fianna Fáil against a series of people in respect of whom the most serious findings were made. There is more to be considered in the report, which has been referred to our rules and procedures committee for a fuller analysis. That committee will make recommendations to our ard comhairle and, unlike other parties, we will make them public.

Although the tribunal was established specifically to inquire into Dublin planning matters, it was empowered to follow different threads as they emerged. The Supreme Court and others stated it was not focused enough, but the matters outlined in the report deserved to be exposed.

The report states that Pádraig Flynn corruptly sought a donation intended for Fianna Fáil and took it for himself. This finding is even more serious, as it involved a Minister taking money in his office from a person who was promoting a project that might have gone before that Minister. Mr. Flynn had his opportunity to be heard by the tribunal. It received evidence from many sources and reached a conclusion. I accept that conclusion and believe it should be followed up in the appropriate way by the appropriate authorities. The £50,000 payment should be received by the State through general proceedings against Mr. Flynn. In no shape or form was it an appropriate payment.

There is no excuse for the failure to confront Mr. Flynn with this allegation at the time. There is no doubt it formed part of a political culture that ignored or dismissed allegations of corruption rather than properly investigated them. This wider point is made by the Mahon tribunal's report and the accepted evidence that the then leader of Fine Gael refused to take any action when informed that one of his representatives had sought a bribe of £250,000. The tribunal heard that his entire response was to comment, "neither Fine Gael nor the world is populated by angels". In the tribunal, he waited until 2007 before acknowledging that he had been told about Councillor Hand's bribe request.

There is no doubt there was a high tolerance of unacceptable behaviour and that it aided and abetted the practices exposed by the tribunal. The tough laws introduced since 1997 by successive Fianna Fáil-led Governments have changed this behaviour. There are regular referrals to the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, and none of the excuses used by those offering and receiving corrupt payments is possible.

A substantial part of the Mahon tribunal's report addresses its attempt to discover the source of significant amounts of money held in accounts directly or indirectly under the control of the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. The tribunal has not made a finding of corruption against him, but what it has stated is, nonetheless, extremely serious. The tribunal could not define the source of the funding it identified because he did not disclose from where it came. It was certainly the case that he had a difficult personal situation at the time, but this is not enough to excuse or explain what was revealed.

The tribunal reviewed his personal and constituency accounts from before and after he stepped down as Taoiseach. At no stage under privilege of the tribunal or elsewhere has any person made any allegation about any corrupt act by Bertie Ahern during any of his three Governments. This is no excuse, but the findings against him by the tribunal are serious enough without people trying to invent others or extend them so they can make partisan points.

No politician elected to this House in the past 20 years could have achieved what Bertie Ahern did in the peace process. While others followed their personal or party agendas in the negotiations, he worked doggedly to bring them along so that they also became peace makers. This achievement is real and enduring, but it cannot absolve him.

In last Friday's edition of the Evening Herald, Fine Gael sources were quite open in saying that their strategy in response to Mahon was to try to inflict as much political damage as possible arising from the report's publication. Part of this has been to promote the idea that everyone must have known and refused to say anything. The line was taken up with enthusiasm in many quarters. It is a strategy that is as cynical as it is flawed. It took a judicial inquiry with large powers and an unlimited budget to get the information and draw it together. Nothing was alleged by the Opposition about Bertie Ahern during debates on the original or amended terms of reference for the tribunal.

Of those who were around him in the 1991-94 period, if anyone outside of a small few knew about this money, he or she kept very quiet. In Colm Keena's book on Bertie Ahern, he asked one of only two people still in this House who served in government with him at the time if he had had any idea at all that Bertie Ahern was receiving large amounts of cash. Bertie Ahern's former ministerial colleague replied that he had had no idea and was "shocked" by what has emerged. I believed the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, when he stated he had noticed nothing, the reason being that the activity was hidden. The same applied for the rest of Bertie Ahern's colleagues.

Last year, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, correctly told the House that no one had the right to imply guilt by association because he and others had worked closely with a former colleague exposed in a tribunal. The question for him and for the Government Deputies who are ready to deliver their attacks is whether they are willing to apply the same standards to themselves that they demand be applied to others.

The tribunal report makes a serious point regarding a particular instance of fund-raising by Fianna Fáil Ministers. It is stated that the donor felt pressurised to give a donation and that the fact of making a donation from someone who might seek Government support for projects was an abuse of office. The tribunal does not state that any action was sought or received specifically because of this donation, but it does state that it should never have been sought. This matter did not receive a great deal of attention during the tribunal and I am conscious the tribunal accepted that Albert Reynolds was not in a position to have this criticism put to him.

There is no question now that such fund-raising was wrong even though it was legal. If we all accept that Governments using their position to increase donations is wrong, I presume Deputies will take the time to note how Mr. Justice Moriarty pointed to exactly the same issue in his report. This needs to be explained, given the number of Government Deputies who continue to refuse to acknowledge the clear facts. Mr. Justice Moriarty showed how there was a pattern of donations to Fine Gael by bidders for the second mobile telephone licence, which began shortly after the party entered government. Regarding Esat, he laid out how 15 donations were made to the party in the run up to the awarding of the licence. One of the many aspects of the Moriarty report that has been ignored is the finding that only the first of these donations was unsolicited. When asked about why he had agreed to give money to Fine Gael even though Esat was financially strapped, Denis O'Brien Senior's reply was "because Fine Gael asked for it".

In regard to the $50,000 New York donation which Fine Gael chose to hide from Mr. Justice Moriarty for four years until the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, insisted that it be revealed, the report is equally clear. In paragraph 41.47 Denis O'Brien said Fine Gael asked for the donation and further that he felt that Fine Gael should not have asked for it. The then Taoiseach and three serving Ministers received donations in their constituencies which were solicited from Esat. Other money was put into the form of bank drafts as part of a successful effort to ensure that the origins of the donations were known to the officeholders but not to the wider public. This is what led to the well known correspondence to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government. To remind Deputies, it states:

Dear Phil,

Please find enclosed a draft for the Golf on 16th.

I understand Denis has requested that there are no references made to his contribution at the event.

Best of luck on the day.

I'll give you a call soon.

Sarah Carey.

The golf mentioned in this letter was a corporate fund-raising event in the K Club which has continued uninterrupted since that day. The Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach, Deputy Creighton, said that the event is no different from the Galway tent, which was stopped four years ago. As the report states in paragraph 6.30, the entire episode most likely started on 7 February 1995 when a Fine Gael Deputy employed by Esat as a consultant introduced Michael Lowry to Denis O'Brien at a meeting in Fine Gael headquarters in Mount Street. The effort by Fine Gael to whitewash Moriarty's findings from history is deeply cynical and the support it is receiving in this from the Labour Party is striking.

The fund-raising which the Mahon report chronicles was wrong. However, it is simply not possible to look at the facts of fund-raising under another government and view what Mahon reveals as unique. This is a more serious point about the political system. It has raised many questions which should be answered. Are we willing to clean out the stables when it comes to historical cases of abuse in political fund-raising? Are we willing to expose wrongdoing without fear or favour? There has yet to be a full inquiry into all political fund-raising at that time.

If there is a need for a further more detailed examination of the decade before regulations and limits were introduced, I have no problem supporting it and promising full co-operation. I hope other parties would be willing to do the same. The broadcaster, Vincent Browne, has failed to get an explanation as to how Fine Gael raised millions of pounds during 1995 to erase large debts. Given its newfound attitude towards historical accountability, the party should take this opportunity to finally answer.

The Tánaiste will surely agree that the funding of his former party was less than transparent given the involvement in counterfeiting of the party's in-house printing company as well as the continued racketeering of the Official IRA, or Group B as it was then known. If he believes in accountability, is it not time this was investigated rather than continuing to insist on double standards?

Sinn Féin's embrace of double standards on this issue is particularly brazen. Lest anyone forget, during the period examined by the Mahon Tribunal, Sinn Féin's movement killed over 200 people, knee capped and exiled many more and ran this island's largest racketeering, kidnapping and bank robbing network. Its position has been a consistent one of refusing to expose its members to the law without an advance assurance that there will be no accountability.

Studies show that Ireland's current system for controlling political finances is very tough in international terms. New measures are making it tougher, even if they do not go as far as the measures we introduced but which were voted down by the Government last year. We believe there should be a stronger ban on corporate donations and that the matter should be made crystal clear via the Constitution.

In the introduction to the report the Mahon tribunal states its belief that comments made about it by former Ministers amounted to an attempt to collapse the inquiry in a vital investigation. This is not a finding but it has played a central part in the Government's public relations strategy. Within minutes it had supplied its representatives with instructions to emphasise this and say that it was a finding against me and other colleagues. Unlike the partisan attacks, I take the comments of the tribunal seriously. Unfortunately, this is a matter on which it heard no evidence, provided no detail and gave nobody an opportunity to be heard in response. It is not a finding of fact and the Government should stop pretending it is.

None of the quotes which have been produced by Government spin doctors come anywhere close to justifying the claim of such a conspiracy. For example, Dermot Ahern is being attacked for effectively quoting the now Chief Justice. Other comments fall well short of criticisms of the tribunal's work, which was widely spread.

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