Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I support this motion and congratulate the Deputies who tabled it. It gets to the nub of the problem, namely, the lack of political will to take real and effective action to deal with what the Moriarty tribunal found to be systematic and endemic corruption. The words "systematic" and "endemic" do not mean a few rogue politicians or a few bad apples corrupting what is, in general, a clean system. They mean systematic and endemic. People are paying the price for that today, including those whose homes are flooded because they are located in areas prone to flooding and the thousands of individuals and families being made homeless by housing policies geared to the interests of speculators and developers. These policies show an undue influence, to put it mildly, by speculators and developers on the establishment political parties.

One need not go back to the publication of the Moriarty tribunal report, which was only three years ago, to see the influence of this lobby of builders, developers and land speculators. One can look to the Kenny report published 41 years ago in 1974. Basically, the Kenny report contained recommendations that would have ended speculation in building land. That is the reason not one of its recommendations has ever been implemented. Even the Green Party, which included these recommendations in its 2007 general election programme, made no effort to implement any of them when it was in government, despite former Deputy John Gormley being Minister with responsibility for the environment.

There is nothing new in the failure to tackle corruption in the planning process or corruption in general. The implementation of the key elements in the Kenny report and the key recommendation of the Moriarty tribunal, the appointment of an independent planning regulator, would go a long way towards addressing this corruption. The political will to do that does not exist in Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil or, unfortunately, in today's Labour Party.

I refer to a report last year from the Council of Europe Group of States Against Corruption, of which Ireland is a member. This report expresses concern about corruption among elected representatives and the lack of independence of the Judiciary. It found that Ireland now has its lowest ever ranking with Transparency International among the business community. It has fallen to 25th place behind countries such as Uruguay, Chile and the Bahamas. The report states that recent reforms of the freedom of information and ethics Acts are too complex and conflict each other in some areas. The report wants laws that threaten Ministers and politicians with six months jail for disclosing confidential information to be scrapped because the latter discourages whistleblowers. It calls for more stringent rules on conflicts of interest and asset declarations. These should include liabilities and the interests and assets of those with close connections to elected representatives. It calls for a judicial council to appoint judges, establish an ethics code and oversee training.

The Council of Europe group has given the Government 18 months to report on the steps taken on its 11 recommendations. Hopefully, it will not still be seeking that action 41 years hence.

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