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

People will know who I am talking about. People will know about a former Taoiseach who benefited to the amount of £8 million - Irish pounds - including £1.3 million from one prominent big business man in particular, Ministers who received multiple corrupt payments and a finance Minister who managed not to have a bank account and who did not truthfully account for the origins of money paid to accounts in his name, and multiple corrupt councillors, primarily in Fianna Fáil but also in Fine Gael. Fine Gael is not innocent in all this. I will not mention the name that is never allowed to be mentioned here but I will refer to a major funder of Fine Gael historically, from whom Fine Gael has benefited, receiving significant financial backing from someone who became rich on the back of corrupt payments made to a former Fine Gael Minister. Again, this relationship exists between big business, corrupt payments and an establishment political party. The multiple cases of corruption in respect of councillors also exist in Fine Gael. I will not name their names, but it is interesting that some of the scions of business in Ireland, big respected businessmen, three in particular, have been involved in relationships of corruption again and again through the decades. This points to corruption being endemic in Irish society, traditionally in the establishment parties, and the question is what should be done about it. We need a society in which the link between money and politics is broken and power is not in the hands of tiny elites. To be concrete, we need the proper funding and resourcing of the Garda, that is, resourcing not only in terms of money, but also in terms of expertise to enable gardaí and, if necessary, the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, to tackle white-collar crime to ensure that corruption and white-collar crime are investigated and prosecutions then brought.

I have looked through the answers over the past number of years, effectively since the publication of the report of the Moriarty tribunal, to questions asked by various Deputies as to whether prosecutions would take place or about Ministers' awareness of prosecutions taking place. The most recent answer I found was from the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, to Deputy Broughan. The Minister's reply states:

I am advised by the Garda authorities that investigations relating to the findings of the Flood and Mahon Tribunals, as well as the investigation of certain matters arising from the report of the Moriarty Tribunal, are ongoing. I am also advised that recent relevant liaison is maintained by Gardaí with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

A variation on this theme has been the answer for years and years, that is, that the Moriarty tribunal report is sitting gathering dust in the DPP's office. We are aware that they cannot rely on the material directly gathered as a result of that tribunal and then we are told there is some sort of back and forth between the Garda, but there is no clarity. This raises serious questions as to why there is no progress in bringing these matters to fruition and a point of prosecution, and this in turn points to the more general point about ensuring that these things are properly funded.

I wish to raise a question about section 18(2), providing a defence for a corporate body which proves that "it took all reasonable steps and exercised ... due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence" where such an offence of corruption is carried out by a director, manager, secretary or other officer, employee or subsidiary. There is potentially an issue here that corporations should ultimately be able to say, "This definitely was nothing to do with us." I am worried that, as currently drafted, this is a loophole on which corporations could rely to avoid responsibility for someone who they may say is just a rogue official operating on his or her own. If, for example, the company is the one benefiting from the actions of the so-called rogue official, and if the actions and the activity of the so-called rogue official take place partly due to a certain culture that exists in the company, we need a more in-depth discussion about that.

The final point I make concerns the Government and its bringing this corruption legislation through with a straight face. I will not name the Deputy because he is not in the House, but it was very likely, and it seemed pretty obvious, that the previous Taoiseach had a relationship with a certain Deputy who has been found by the Moriarty tribunal to have accepted corrupt payments. With the current Government and the new Taoiseach in place, does such a relationship still exist? We need an answer to this question because the Government's credibility in presenting itself as a fighter of corruption etc. is completely shot by the reality of that relationship. What the recent revelations of the so-called Paradise Papers again point to regarding that relationship and the use of Isle of Man bank accounts for the transfer of money from one prominent business man to the then Minister, now Deputy, is that we need answers from the Government in this respect.

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