Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Moriarty tribunal revealed a series of payments to representatives of Fine Gael who had assisted the gentleman in question to win a lucrative mobile phone licence contract for his company Esat Digifone. The profits from that contract assisted the individual to whom I refer to become a multimillionaire. This link between business and politics was still awaiting severance when the Taoiseach was photographed with the same gentleman at the New York Stock Exchange in 2012. It is doubtful whether the legislation will do anything to allay the suspicion that this individual's close political links were instrumental in buying Siteserv, the company that won a State company to install water meters on behalf of Irish Water.

While the Bill purports to provide a veneer of commitment in respect of openness and transparency, there lingers in the air a feeling of old politics, whereby well connected political allies are appointed to public positions and powerful businessmen with close ties to the establishment end up profiting from decisions made by Government or semi-State bodies. The very means by which the gentleman to whom I refer gained possession of Siteserv are questionable. He did a deal with IBRC under which €100 million of debt-----

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