Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Ahead of this evening's debate on the Local Government Accountability Bill, will the Leader and his colleague, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, explain why they are preventing the publication of a key report into possible corruption in local government, a report that the Minister admits has been sitting on his desk since last June? Allegations of nepotism and other corrupt practices have been coming out from Donegal County Council for more than a decade, with whistleblowers risking their livelihoods and standing to release information about low standards and shady practices. The former Green Party Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Mr. John Gormley, commissioned reviews of such allegations in Donegal, Carlow and Offaly only to have the reviews killed by the Minister in the next Government, Commissioner Phil Hogan. Subsequent internal reviews claimed to find nothing, yet these were rejected by the courts and an independent report was ordered. That report has sat for almost a year gathering dust in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government.

Past Green Party Members of this Chamber and the Dáil, such as Ms Déirdre de Búrca, Mr. Paul Gogarty and Mr. Trevor Sargent, have had a proud record of standing against low standards in local government. They were often told that they were doing it wrong, not adhering to protocol and not observing their place, yet they were eventually vindicated. My Green Party colleague, Dublin City Council member, Mr. Patrick Costello, is taking up the fight and has lodged a request to access the report in question under the Aarhus Convention.

We have seen the consequences of the corruption in planning that has been exposed by various tribunals in recent decades. The last thing I want to see is another lengthy and costly tribunal, yet that is exactly what the Minister's delay will end up causing. When will the independent report be published and what remedial measures will be taken by the Government to tackle these problems?