Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Some 86% of Irish people think corruption is a major problem in the country, while 70% think the Government is not doing enough to combat it. Some 30% of Irish companies believe they have lost out on a public contract due to corruption, which is shocking. One estimate put the annual cost of corruption at the outrageously high figure of €2.5 billion. Corruption is endemic in the capitalist system in which money and politics intertwine multiple times daily and developers, big business, landlords can legally fund political parties and seek to influence their policies. It is a system under which Ibec had almost 700 perfectly legal meetings in the Oireachtas last year with politicians or political parties, seeking to influence them in favour of the interests of the 1% in the State. The dominant ideology of the system is that profit should be the goal of economic activity and money will inevitably trickle down to benefit ordinary people. Competition between firms to maximise profit is the dominant motive for the actions of corporations and individuals. It is almost inevitable in such a system that what capitalism considers to be legal competition, lobbying and attempts to influence policy will become naked corruption. It is like the relationship between so-called tax avoidance and tax evasion. In the case of corruption, illegal payments are made to gain access, get information or have decisions go their own way in order to benefit in terms of money and profits.

This is a general truth about the nature of the capitalist system and the corruption that is absolutely intertwined with it. I do not make this observation in order to say that one must therefore be quiescent, that there is nothing one can do and that this is just inevitable. However, it means there must be an almighty struggle against corruption to expose it and to resource in particular a fight against corruption. I link this to the need for a political and social revolution to transform how our society operates to end the power of big business and the relationship of establishment parties with big business.

We support the broad outlines of the Bill and think it is an improvement but we also think it is inadequate. I will come later to some of those points as to how, if one wants to deal with corruption, one can do so. To move from the general point about capitalism being intertwined with corruption to the specifics of Ireland, it is obviously the case not just that Irish capitalism has the general forms of corruption, but also that it has more than the average amount of corruption. Ireland has, and has had from the foundation of the State, many features of an undeveloped capitalist economy: a weak capitalist class and a political elite that is happy to be the middlemen who facilitate, fix and organise the exploitation of people and resources on behalf of capital. In these conditions there is no question but that the two traditional establishment parties, the two traditional parties of capital in this country, namely, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have had as members prominent politicians who have on multiple occasions been synonymous with corruption. This is just a reality. It is an elephant in the room of this discussion, and the records of both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael regarding corruption are shameful. Fianna Fáil, the party of Charlie Haughey, Ray Burke, Bertie Ahern, Liam Lawlor, G. V. Wright-----

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