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

Earlier on the Taoiseach told us "I believe [the Minister, Deputy Donohoe] is somebody we can trust, and somebody who I believe. I think, deep down, everyone in this House knows that ...". I looked deep down, a Cheann Comhairle, and I must say I do not know that. I do not trust the Minister. I do not trust the fact the Government has blocked a real question-and-answer session here and I do not believe the story that has been concocted after the fact to try to avoid as many rule breaches as the Minister can. The Taoiseach also told us the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, was happy to answer questions but earlier the Minister said he was not going to make any further comments after this to avoid prejudicing SIPO, so it is a theoretical commitment to answer questions.

I will ask some questions and I want answers. Were the workers who were putting up the Minister's election posters being paid by the Designer Group at the time they were putting up the posters? If not, how were they being paid? How can workers working for the Designer Group putting up posters during the day not be a corporate donation from the Designer Group? How can someone paying to get posters of the Minister put up for his election campaign not be a donation to his election campaign? If the Designer Group put up only 150 posters at a snail's pace, how many other posters did the Minister get put up and how did he get them up?

Does the Minister accept he is an extraordinarily fortunate man? I wonder if that good luck transfers into other aspects of his life because there are series of very happy coincidences with the values placed on various donations he got here. The value of the van donation was €140, which is an amount below the €200 requirement for corporate donors. The value of the work of putting the posters up was €917 and from an individual, so it also did not trigger the need for a corporate donor to be registered and reported. The fact that both these donations, together amounting to €1,057, were donations to the Fine Gael branch rather than the Minister's personal election campaign is again very fortunate because if they were to his campaign, they would be an illegal donation above the €1,000 limit. As it was to the party and was less than €1,500, it does not even need to be declared. Is the Minister normally that lucky? Will he resign if SIPO finds he breached the rules here or does he think it is credible for him to continue as the Minister with responsibility for SIPO when it has made a finding against him?

Anybody who follows what has gone on here can see what happened. This is an "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" situation. A friend who is a private developer and head of the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, helps the Minister out with postering, which is an illegal corporate donation. He gets the chair of the north east inner city initiative, gets appointed to the board of the LDA and continues to get large State contracts. This is a tight golden circle of establishment politicians and big business looking out for one another. The Minister is caught out and questions are asked. He denies it, it is published and he concocts a story after the fact with entirely implausible elements. I do not think this is the only example of that. I know of one case where a People Before Profit councillor was asked by a developer to vote for the rezoning of land and was told if they voted for it, the developer would get all their election posters up for them. Of course, we did not have anything to do with that but I suspect other Deputies in the House have had posters put up as a donation and have not declared it.

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