Jimmy Harte (Labour)

What type of country would we now have if the tribunal had not been established? At what stage would Fianna Fáil have stated it was wrong? Would have it have been in 1997, 2007, 2012 or 2013? It took this report to get it to admit that it and many of its councillors had been responsible for much of this. This has been ongoing since I was a child when Charles Haughey was parading around the country encouraging people to follow him and become rich. They followed him and became rich at the expense of ordinary people who today are living in properties that are falling apart, including in Priory Hall. I could name properties in County Donegal in cases where a local voluntary housing association paid big money for housing units only two years old with dampness rising through them. The rules in place were not followed.

The country was reaching a stage similar to what happened in Lord of the Flies, whereby things broke down. This showed in the planning system which operated on the basis of a nod and a wink. I have been a member of Letterkenny Town Council and Donegal County Council. Anytime I objected to or raised concerns about buildings clearly being built in the wrong places for the wrong reasons, the response I received from the local radio station, local newspapers and mainly Fianna Fáil councillors was that I was standing in the way of progress. They claimed they were creating jobs. However, everyone, including the planners, could see they were creating ghost estates and communities with no infrastructure. Those decisions are coming back to haunt us. People living in these estates are complaining that they were promised services, including schools. The whole system was corrupt such that not only was money changing hands but power was also changing hands from councillor to councillor. It was a nod and a wink culture. I have to put up my hand and say that in Donegal the planners were generally 100%, but there were certain councillors who seemed to have more influence than others. That was also true in Letterkenny and Border towns such as Raphoe, Lifford and Carrigans which probably trebled in size in three or four years. The houses are now being sold for €30,000 or €40,000. Everyone knew for 30 or 40 years what was happening. Only the Mahon tribunal and those who instigated it brought the matter to light; otherwise things would be much the same today.

The economic crisis can be traced back directly to corruption in planning. The banking crisis is directly linked with property and the problems here have not been experienced in other countries to the same extent. People in England, Scotland, Wales, Germany and France do not talk about knowing somebody who owns six, seven or eight houses. This was the Haughey philosophy, that if one followed him and Fianna Fáil one would become rich.

Everybody is paying for the consequences of these activities. There are people who cannot afford to pay the €100 household charge living in properties that were built for the wrong reasons, in the wrong areas and without the necessary infrastructure. We have been left to pick up the pieces in the wake of Fianna Fáil's failure of governance. I acknowledge Senator Paschal Mooney's honesty in this regard. He and certain other members of his party have come out with their hands up, but the horse has already bolted. The corruption in high places permeated right down to local government level. I saw it happening in Donegal and we all know it was happening in Dublin and in every local authority in the country. At what stage would Fianna Fáil have said this was wrong if members of the party had not been caught with their fingers in the till? All we can do now is hope that the culture of nod and wink politics is finally over.

The recent report from An Taisce which identifies Donegal County Council as the local authority with the worst planning record in the State seems fairly accurate although not, I would contend, 100% so. One of the factors in Donegal's poor showing is the large number of vacant properties in the county, which was taken as a measure of poor planning. However, one must take into account the high demand for holiday homes in the past decade, a great deal of which are now vacant. If that cohort of properties were removed, the figures might not be quite so bad. Having said that, planning practices in the county were undoubtedly poor, with certain areas being peppered with new builds without any view to the future.

Future generations will surely look back and reflect that the country was destroyed by bad planning and bad connections, by a corruption which emanated from the top and ultimately cost the Irish people dearly in jobs and money. It is an issue of which I have direct experience as a councillor. Local authority members throughout the State were aware that certain parties, individuals and councils had an interest in planning matters. Some of that corrupt interest was not for the purpose of procuring money but for power and political gain. That is the sad reality. I hope the report of the Mahon tribunal will ensure that corruption is eradicated for future generations. I welcome its recommendations.