Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North-West Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Issues have arisen in relation to the Cregan commission of investigation. The Government wants to ensure an effective and timely investigation of matters of public concern and aims to secure the greatest possible degree of consensus across the Oireachtas on the optimum solutions. The Taoiseach, therefore, intends to meet the leaders of the Opposition to explore these matters in the coming week.

I believe all of us were shocked by what was revealed on RTE the other night. All of us who have been in this House over the years, in my case the past 35 years, were made to feel very conscious of our responsibility to the people, to ourselves and our system. We have a great system of government in this State and we were shocked and felt let down by what we saw. If the people are to have confidence in our democracy, we must robustly prevent, detect, and punish corruption no matter how rarely it may occur. This Government has enacted significant reform through the Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Act 2012, the Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015 and other reforms. We are not complacent. Further significant reforming legislation on planning, public standards and corruption law will be published in the coming days and weeks.

We must all work together to restore public trust in politics and politicians. We must reinvigorate the systems that regulate political behaviour and the systems to detect and punish wrongdoing when it occurs. Legislation and enforcement are important parts of the solution. Of equal importance will be the efforts we make to change the culture. We must have a culture where there are no winks or nods and where it is not possible even to contemplate a wink or a nod. Nobody should respect, excuse or attempt to justify the attempt to fix, square away or sort problems in grubby, corrupt deals. We must end the culture of cute hoorism for once and for all.

I commend the Government's amendment to the House. I also acknowledge the sincerity with which this motion was tabled by the Social Democrats.

See this speech in context