Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Mahon tribunal report. I acknowledge that the findings of the Mahon tribunal are a damning indictment of a political system that was rotten and riddled with corruption. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to Judge Mahon and his legal colleagues at the tribunal. He has done the State a service pursuing this issue despite the best efforts of some former Fianna Fáil Ministers but if we are to be honest with ourselves we must also recognise that political corruption did not start or end with the Mahon tribunal. The Mahon tribunal is but a snapshot of the times in which we were living. Corruption existed long before the Mahon tribunal and has continued right up until today. It will continue until those with courage stand up, shame those involved and offer real and credible alternatives.

I became involved in politics because I believed in politics and active citizenship. I firmly believe that politics can improve the quality of people's lives. I believe that people have rights and responsibilities and that those rights and responsibilities must be upheld, defended and strengthened. When I look back, I see a history riddled with political corruption. James Connolly said that with partition we would have a carnival of reaction. He rightly predicted what would happen. Unfortunately, that has been in full swing, and we have seen various manifestations of it.

What we have is a very conservative State where the institutions of the State, including local government, have been dominated by a right wing, conservative political ideology and, therefore, prone to corruption. We have had consecutive Governments in this State that have failed the people. If the Proclamation of 1916 and the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil were the measures of success, many Governments in the past would have failed. Generations have been laid to waste in reform schools, unemployment queues, emigration and drug addiction. All of those crises were overseen by the main parties in this House. No generation has escaped the corruption and the failed promises. The Mahon tribunal should force many in this House, both in Government and in Fianna Fáil, to take time to reflect on the reason they are involved in politics.

It must be said that there is still too close a relationship between big business interests and politicians. While we have families struggling to make ends meet, people languishing in unemployment and people queuing to emigrate, the Government intends to hand over €3.1 billion to the Angle Irish zombie bank this weekend or to turn it, as we are being told, into a sovereign bond that will be glued to the backs of Irish children who are going to school today to be paid at some future date, with interest. That is also corruption. It may be legal but it is corruption. We have a Government that promised a new way of doing business, yet it still prioritises the needs of big business over the needs of the public. The lessons of Mahon appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

Donations to political parties and politicians must be reduced at least to a level recommended by Judge Mahon. Last week, we had a debate here on corporate and other donations. We believe corporate donations should be banned.

People are deeply concerned about the relationship in the 1990s between the then Fianna Fáil Government and major oil companies. I pose the question: did Fianna Fáil receive dollars or sterling from an oil company called Enterprise Oil, and what was the relationship between John McGoldrick and Des Richardson?

At the time when much of the corruption outlined in the Mahon tribunal was taking place, those of us in our party were marginalised, vilified and censored by all the major parties in this State, but we received a genuine and warm welcome in those working class communities that felt abandoned by the political class. Communities in Ballyfermot and Tallaght welcomed us into their community centres to allow us space to meet and debate important issues, including the peace process, tackling unemployment, the housing crisis and much else.

The Mahon tribunal points the finger at both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Elected members of both parties are implicated in corruption. Both parties must sort out their own houses. Swift action must be taken if confidence on the part of the electorate is to be restored. If cases of corruption are to be investigated leading to prosecutions, the Garda must receive the support of all parties in this House.

To further restore confidence, reform of local government must also take place. To date, local government reform has been seen as an excuse to undermine local authorities. Democracy, and local democracy in particular, has been eroded, with more power residing with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and unelected city and county managers who remain unaccountable.

Ironically, a greater travesty is the power of planning and building regulations which currently still lie with developers, and the policy of self-policing and self-certification. That has led to the problems in Priory Hall, the Riverside apartments in Portarlington, County Offaly and hundreds of other estates across the country. A legacy of the corruption is the 1,800 empty houses left standing, with over 2,000 unfinished housing developments.

I say sincerely that the proposed reform of local government by the Minister, Deputy Hogan, offers a real opportunity to make local government workable and accountable. Sinn Féin proposes a programme of real local government reform that is radical, practical, realistic and solution based. We believe that good planning makes all the difference to community and family life. Responsible, ethical and sustainable planning, underpinned by equality considerations, is the right of all who live in Ireland. Property developers must not be allowed to build new housing developments without taking into account the need for the provision of basic facilities and amenities. That is the key to much of what went on and where things went wrong.

For all communities to thrive and be sustainable, they require essential physical and social infrastructure. Sinn Féin is not saying it has all the answers but we have developed sustainable communities criteria based on the delivery of economic and social rights. All planning decisions must meet those criteria before earning the support of local authority members. These criteria include a sufficient supply of social and affordable housing, a safe and adequate water supply, adequate and proper sewerage, access to public transportation, employment, health care, child care and schools as well as reasonable access to local amenities including shopping, play areas, recreation facilities, community and social centres and cultural amenities. If those criteria had been in place for councillors when they were zoning land, it could not have been done on a bribe because they would not have met those criteria. That is the key point we are making. If clear criteria had been set out in different county and city councils, local councillors would have been able to judge whether a particular area should have been zoned. Unfortunately, what happened instead was that brown envelopes were changing hands.

The Mahon tribunal has given us a snapshot of the way politicians in both of the major parties were abusing their positions to line their pockets while making millionaires out of developers. Our job is to make sure that we do something about that and not just complain about it. Our job is to ensure that public office is never again brought into public disrepute and that we put in place systems that work for the people and not just for a few developers.

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