Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Anybody can make a mistake. I have certainly made mistakes. It is about how one handles those mistakes. If we are looking for perfection in politicians, we are not going to get anyone to put themselves forward. However, how we deal with mistakes when they are made and the consequences of those mistakes are what is important so that trust is restored. I say that conscious of tribunals in the past that have cost the taxpayer an absolute fortune. The most recent estimate for the costs of the Flood and Mahon tribunals was €143 million. The Moriarty tribunal, with the clue of "payments to politicians" in the title, cost almost €70 million. I also say this in the context of SIPO which has begged us repeatedly, year after year, to change the legislation to give it more powers and to make it totally independent. SIPO does not have its own budget and in that sense does not have independence. My comments are in that context and the successive failures of governments to take heed of what we should have learned from the tribunals in respect of payments to politicians and the endemic corruption identified by the Mahon and Flood tribunals. SIPO has been ignored year after year. The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, announced in December that a report in respect of the review of the ethics legislation was to hand. A press release acknowledged the review was there and ready for publication but its last line included gobbledegook. It stated, "The Review report is being prepared for publication. It is expected to be published shortly." In his speech tonight, the Minister made no reference to the absolute urgency for the review to be published. Why was it not published today? Why was it not published before now? In 2009, SIPO recommended that the Department of Finance should draft new legislation. In 2021, and time precludes but I could pick any year, SIPO stated "for a number of years, the Commission has called for a comprehensive review of the...ethics framework" legislation. It has not happened. When some sort of review was eventually carried out, gobbledegook was used to tell us it is being prepared for publication. It is in that context that I stand up here tonight, not to point a finger: I will leave it to SIPO to carry out an investigation in respect of the complaint that has been made. However, SIPO could not carry out an investigation before that, which in itself tells a story. If we want to restore faith to politics and public discourse, we must be honest and make language mean something. We are not perfect. We all make mistakes but it is about how we deal with those mistakes, what we do about them and more importantly how we resource and empower the independent bodies to keep us in line.

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