Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

My points are along the same lines. I am surprised by what the Minister has said. He maintains that Constitution would not allow him to ban all corporate donations or to go below a figure of €100, if I understood correctly when he explained it on an earlier Stage. I agree that it is most difficult for Independents. The public and the media should examine this issue. There should be a fully transparent system and a certain amount should go for each vote collected. Some allowance should be made to all parties and then we would have a level playing field based on votes garnered at an election. That would cut out the need for funding altogether. Naturally that would not suit the larger parties.

Fine Gael has been fund-raising wholesale since and before it came into government. The Minister was leading the charge with all the various events including horse racing events and the tents. Fine Gael attacked the last Government for the Galway races tent but those in the party have a fair number of tents themselves and a fair amount of money. A good deal has been raised since Fine Gael came to government in spite of all the promises it made about transparency and so on.

Fine Gael is treating the Labour Party as the mudguard or the hind tit - pardon the expression - of this coalition. The fund-raising is under way and the big business cabals are still here. We have read in the newspapers of certain senior people in Fine Gael who got vast sums of money in soft loans on an interest only basis. Other Fine Gael Deputies bought properties off them and this sticks in the craw of the electorate. The old big Blueshirt regime is still going on.

This is the same way the Minister treated people with the septic tank charge. The ideas was to charge the little people, stand on them and then kick them out of the way because those in Fine Gael were the big people or the landed gentry as they used to be called. That will not wash with the public and certainly it does not wash with me on behalf of the public in my constituency. Deputy Healy-Rae pointed out that the so-called independent gerrymandering of the constituencies is an effort to get rid of Independents. What is taking place in my county is outrageous. Two county councils which have been in place for almost two centuries are being abandoned and then forced together.

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