Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom ceist iontach tromchúiseach a ardú ar maidin, ach i dtosach báire ba mhaith liom cuidiú leis an leasú ar an Riar Gnó atá molta ag mo chomhghleacaí, an Seanadóir Cullinane.

I second the amendment to the Order of Business. We have had a great deal of discussion about supporting business and attracting foreign direct investment but a startling report has been published by Transparency International, which says Ireland has suffered the sharpest fall in the corruption perception index in its history. It shows that our international reputation is that corruption is on the increase from a business perspective. The index is one of the most commonly used measures of political risk and it is used by credit risk agency, Standard & Poors, to assess the likelihood of sovereign debt default. Internationally, our reputation has not improved. The report says the poor result comes after a succession of political controversies. The Moriarty and Mahon tribunals published negative findings against politicians and business people. There was further controversy following the publication of the final Moriarty tribunal report when the Taoiseach shared a platform on Wall Street with Denis O'Brien.

The report says that Ireland's failure to hold people to account for wrongdoing is also having a negative impact on international perceptions of Ireland and little action appears to have been taken on foot of the publication of the final Moriarty tribunal report. Transparency International says that 45% of businesses have been deterred from investing in a country because of its reputation for corruption and Ireland could be losing ¤1 billion a year in FDI having slipped 11 places on the index. This is startling and worrying and we should have a debate on corruption in business, our international image and the effect this might have on our credit rating in the financial markets. I call on the Deputy Leader to arrange a debate with the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation about what he is doing to improve Ireland's image in the business world in order that we can attract badly-needed investment and tackle the corruption of previous regimes which has not been tackled by this Government.