Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

The report of the Mahon tribunal is a terrible indictment of the way in which politics was conducted in this State for decades. A former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has been disgraced and resigned from the party that he led to record electoral success. A former senior Minister and EU Commissioner, Pádraig Flynn, has been exposed as corrupt and also left the party in which for many years he strutted the Irish and European stages. Councillors, lobbyists and developers were shown to be deeply involved in corruption of the planning process and the politics. The revelations about planning corruption in County Dublin, especially by Fianna Fáil but also involving Fine Gael, over the past 15 years have been confirmed. People have not been surprised but they are no less appalled by what was done.

I want to refute some of the assertions that have been made in commentary about this report. I reject the notion being peddled in certain quarters that somehow the Irish people in general and all of us in political life are to blame because we tolerated or turned a blind eye to corruption. That is false. I believe that the majority of public representatives of all parties are not personally corrupt and their role in political life is above reproach. The vast majority of citizens are totally opposed to corruption as a blight on our country and would do all in their power to remove it. However, they felt powerless to remove it because the institutions of the State that were supposed to be the watchdogs acting on their behalf failed miserably.

A survey of the range and depth of the findings of the tribunal and the number of persons involved causes one to ask where was the Garda. The answer is given in the findings of the report under the heading "The 1989/90 Garda Corruption Inquiry". This section has not received the attention it deserves. The report states that Tom Gilmartin received a telephone call from an individual who introduced himself as Garda Burns and that Mr. Gilmartin was "effectively warned away from the path that he had by then embarked on, namely dialogue with the Gardaí regarding allegations of corrupt practices and demands for money". The tribunal found that the purpose of the telephone call was to "discourage, intimidate or warn Mr Gilmartin to desist from any further cooperation with the Garda inquiry". More seriously, the report concludes that the complaints made to the Garda by Tom Gilmartin about George Redmond, Liam Lawlor and Councillor Finbarr Hanrahan were not thoroughly investigated by the Garda. In the damning closing of this section:

Notwithstanding Superintendent Burns' evidence to the contrary, the Tribunal believed it likely that Mr Lawlor's position as a TD was a factor in the decision taken by the investigating Gardai not to interview him in the course of their inquiry. The Tribunal was puzzled as to why the final Garda report went to such lengths to exonerate Mr. Lawlor and Mr. Redmond in the absence of a more comprehensive inquiry into complaints of corruption against those two individuals.

It is no wonder that corruption thrived when this was the attitude of sections of An Garda Síochána, including perhaps at a very high level. I recall that in the same period my fellow Sinn Féin councillors and I were subject to regular harassment by members of the Garda special branch while going about our legitimate business as elected representatives and members of a legal political party. If some of that very valuable Garda time had been spent investigating corruption rather than trying to dissuade people such as me away from the political course to which we had committed ourselves, we might have been spared some of the millions spent on this and other tribunals.

I believe the conclusions of the tribunal report with regard to planning are too narrow in scope. I accept that the tribunal was dealing with corruption with regard to development plans, rezoning and hugely lucrative commercial developments. However, in the interim, as the report acknowledges, planning law has changed greatly. The role of councillors has been diminished because of the abuse of those powers by people named in this report and by many others. However, the report does not mention the fact that other aspects of planning and development laws and regulations have moved in a very negative and damaging direction. We had a regime which allowed scope for corruption of elected representatives. We now have a regime which has allowed widespread abuses by developers. The most outstanding example is of course Priory Hall. The disgraced developer Thomas McFeely and his Coalport company got away with building that apartment complex because of self-regulation. He is just one of many, albeit the most extreme example - at least to date.

The very governments whose members are found to have been corrupt in this report were the same governments that brought in so-called light-touch regulation for the construction industry. A citizen wishing to build an extension to his or her home must go through the full rigours of the planning laws but a developer can build houses and apartments for sale or rent to hundreds of people without any proper inspection regime in terms of construction standards and fire safety. It can all be done as a paper exercise with no on-site inspection by the local authority and that must change. This is important because we need to see the Mahon report not just in terms of personal corruption, but also in terms of systemic corruption, much of the latter, of course, being totally legal.

In 2006 I stated that the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, had been let off the hook about bigger scandals than those now confirmed by the Mahon report. At the core of these scandals was the close relationship between the Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats Government and property developers, and the oil and gas industry. These scandals included the changing of Part V of the Planning and Development Act after intensive lobbying from developers. The original Part V required developers to provide 20% social and affordable housing in all developments. This was changed by the Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats Government at the developers' behest to allow them buy their way out of their obligations by paying money to local authorities. As a direct result lower-income families were deprived of homes.

Major tax concessions were granted to developers of private hospitals. Bertie Ahern's successor as Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, admitted that he brought in this concession after lobbying from a private hospital developer in his own constituency. This resulted in the allocation of land at public hospital sites to private developers to build private for-profit hospitals while our public hospital system struggled from crisis to crisis. That totally discredited scheme was eventually abandoned.

There is the ongoing robbery of our natural gas and oil supplies by multinationals which have been handed these resources virtually free gratis by successive governments, including the current Administration. That issue is live and current today. All of these measures were and are legal but totally unethical and against the public interest.

As I said in 2006, the brown envelope culture had been exposed but it was replaced with the institutionalised brown envelope. The Government's housing policy was driven not by the housing needs of families and individuals, but by the profit motive of developers and speculators. The amended Part V of the Planning and Development Act amounted to legalised and institutionalised bribery of local authorities by developers facilitated by the Government. It allowed developers to bribe their way out of providing social housing. As originally passed, the Act required developers to devote 20% of each housing development to social and affordable housing. The friends of Fianna Fáil in the construction industry raised an almighty clamour and the Act was amended to allow them to side-step this obligation by paying money or giving land to local authorities. Seldom, in my experience, has a lobby succeeded in getting a law changed in such a short time.

Of 80,000 new homes built in 2005, only 830 were allocated to local authorities under Part V. At that time the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, claimed that the Government changed Part V because of demands from all sides, including here in the Dáil. There was certainly pressure from some on the Government benches but the change was strongly opposed in this House and not only by Sinn Féin. Other parties and voices in this House were equally strong in their opposition. The pressure came from the developers and speculators who contributed so much to the funding of the Fianna Fáil Party. It was one of the quickest turnarounds ever for a political lobby.

This legal but corrupt relationship between Fianna Fáil and the developers was directly responsible for the property bubble and all the disastrous economic consequences. Their approach was driven by the lust for profits of the land speculators and the developers. This played into the hands of the lending institutions which profited from the massive scale of mortgages weighing down on young families. We pointed out at that time that the local authorities must be given a lead role in providing homes for our people. That was ignored.

I would have liked to have been able to add several points. I do not know whether this has been reflected in any of the earlier contributions - those I have watched on the monitor have not made reference to it. We should use the opportunity of this debate to express our apology on behalf of the people of the State and on behalf of all who work within its service in whatever way we do to Tom Gilmartin. He was a much maligned man who at a very difficult time in his own life had the courage to come forward and tell the truth of his experience. It is important that we record that. We should do whatever we can to show good faith with the man and his family. The Government owes it to the Oireachtas now to publish a detailed implementation plan with regard to the recommendations of the tribunal and I urge it to do so.

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