Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The sneering, arrogant and spin-addicted side of this Government has been on display over the past few weeks. It has unfolded around the Siteserv and IBRC issue, in particular. The contempt that has been shown to anybody in this House who has aired a difference with the Government or tried to secure accountability has been palpable. The Government treats Opposition Deputies by bringing them for a run around the block. Deputy Catherine Murphy had to ask the same parliamentary question 19 separate times before she got the answer she wanted at the outset.

Alternatively, the Government simply refuses to co-operate. I remind the House that the Taoiseach recently advised an Opposition Deputy in this House to "toddle along" and move on. Where has the Taoiseach been while the streets of this country have been occupied with a discussion around Siteserv and IBRC? The so-called leader of this country has been nowhere to be found with respect to this issue. His silence is either a sign of very poor leadership from a man who is acting under advice, or of a person who is simply refusing to comment on his deep friendship with a citizen of this country. Perhaps he is reflecting on the laissez-faireapproach or attitude that is evident in the Labour Party, the views of which seemed to be best summed up when Deputy Costello, who is a former Minister of State, said it is up to the media to uphold the Constitution in the first instance.

It is not up to the media to uphold the Constitution; it is up to this Parliament to do so. The Government seems to believe that securing the freedom of the press to report on matters of public interest, including the right to report what is said in this Parliament, has nothing to do with the Government or this Parliament. It seems to think it is a battle for the print media and the State broadcaster to establish this in the courts. Happily for the Taoiseach, the FAI upcycled a story about a €5 million payment and this became a bread-and-circus issue over the weekend. The €5 million scandal in the FAI was used as a significant whipped-up distraction from certain activities and from the debate about the €119 million write-down in Siteserv.

Cliff Taylor attempted to frame the context of this debate in The Irish Timeson Saturday by categorising the scale of the grievance with a suggestion that the Government is responsible merely for "not closely enough" watching what was happening in the Department of Finance and IBRC. I do not agree with Cliff Taylor and The Irish Timesin this instance. In fact, I think the concerns relate to a suspicion that there is a strong quiet political influence from Fine Gael in particular - or for some individuals within Fine Gael, but not all - with respect to one citizen in this country and the influence he has with respect to favours and becoming a favoured person within society.

Three weeks after he became the Taoiseach of this country, and in command of a self-proclaimed "democratic revolution", the Taoiseach promised us an opportunity "to sever the links between politics and business once and for all and, in so doing, achieve three fundamental goals: stop the further pollution of our society; re-establish a moral code and order regarding public life" in this country.

Against these three goals, the Taoiseach and the Government have failed abysmally. For the second time in our history, Fine Gael and Labour in government have enriched the same person. That was a decision made by this Government subsequent to 2011. Society has seen actions taken in the past repeated under this partnership Government.

There is a dangerous political nexus in this country of media and a political party or movement, with a significant effort on the part of one section of the media to support one political party. We have a concern with that because it ignores any negatives and accentuates the positives. The moral code and the order the Taoiseach spoke about in 2011 has been damaged by a cynical abandonment of commitments and promises made to the people prior to the general election in 2011. All of this has increased public cynicism and damaged the perception of politics in this country. People have become quite cynical about this Government, particularly in respect of the broken promises. It has been intertwined with someone who has been enriched a second time by the coalition. That cynicism reduces the Dáil to minimal authority when morally considering another commission of investigation.

Criminality was already uncovered by the Moriarty tribunal which confirmed the largest single act of public corruption in monetary terms. Where is the Garda investigation? Where is the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB? Why is the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, not seeking to prosecute the criminality that was identified? The Moriarty tribunal found that Denis O'Brien, the man who cannot be named, had links to Fine Gael. A former Minister, who is a Member of this House, managed to secure meetings in the corridors of power with the current Taoiseach, Deputy Kenny, and with the current Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton. Large sums of money went from Denis O'Brien to Michael Lowry and Fine Gael. That is fact yet we have the audacity to come into this House and discuss a new commission of investigation while the report of the Moriarty tribunal gathers dust.

The question arises of how we report this forthcoming commission. We will see a clamp down on analysis and Oireachtas debate, as we see in respect of the Fennelly report. We cannot ask questions in this Chamber on that process. A blanket has been placed over it. The Government parties made noise in 2011 when they came in. Not long after the publication of the Moriarty tribunal report, the Government was engaging with one of the protagonists of a report in which criminality was defined. We were engaging with Siteserv. A month before the deal with Siteserv was done, the Taoiseach and Mr. O'Brien were photographed in New York ringing the stock exchange bell.

Since then, companies that Mr. O'Brien has interests in have secured debt write-offs and several Government contracts for the running of valuable municipal services. On 6 May, Fianna Fáil put forward a motion to ask for this commission of investigation but it was rejected by the Government and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, insisted that the special liquidators were best placed to get the answers. Since then, the Government has crawled back to a position where the special liquidator's only role is to do a scoping exercise. The engagement in this type of politics, particularly by Labour, has resulted in an ongoing virtuous blind eye. It is turning its back on issues of great public concern and holding onto Fine Gael's coat tail while continuing to look the other way.

The Government has botched this process. While the Minister for Finance supports the setting up of the commission, he has prejudiced its outcome by saying: "There is nothing to see here." The relationship between the Minister, the Department and IBRC needs to be examined. It is hard to accept the contention of the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Harris, that the Minister, Deputy Noonan, was ignorant of the battle taking place between senior officials in the Department of Finance and the board of IBRC. There is an increasing amount of evidence in the public domain of a seriously dysfunctional relationship between the bank and the Department. If the Minister was ignorant of this, as the Minister of State contends, it raises significant concerns about the Minister's capacity with respect to his fiduciary responsibilities.

On the day the Taoiseach deigned to comment on Siteserv, he accused people in this House of hysteria. That was the same day that a 101 year old woman lay for 26 hours on a trolley in an accident and emergency unit. Due diligence with respect to €1 billion of write-offs of public moneys that directly impacts the delivery of public services is of significance and importance. The Taoiseach's failure to show any concern for IBRC, Siteserv or that vulnerable 101 year old woman who spent 26 hours on a trolley demonstrates the most striking failure of this Government.

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