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Ireland’s 'loans' scandal
Socialist MP speaks out
THE IRISH Taoiseach (prime minister), Bertie
Ahern, went to the Dáil Éireann (Irish parliament) on 3 October under
huge pressure to explain the circumstances of ‘loans’ and ‘gifts’ he got
from businessmen when he was a government minister in the 1990s. The
scandal had dominated Irish politics for weeks and led to speculation
that the coalition government of Fianna Fáil (FF) and the Progressive
Democrats (PD), could fall.
Joe Higgins, the Socialist Party TD (MP), spoke
during the Dáil debate, condemning "the sleaze, cronyism, patronage and
corruption that pervaded politics in the 1980s and 1990s". Joe also
condemned ministers from the coalition who defended Ahern to stay in
power, and their parties’ links with big business.
Below, we publish the transcript of Joe’s speech
to the Dáil Éireann on 3 October.
Joe Higgins (Socialist Party): "We now know
that Fianna Fáil ministers see nothing wrong with a minister for finance
taking large amounts of money for personal use from business interests
as long, they say, as there is no proof that any specific favours were
done. Thereby, they defend not only the major conflict of interest
involving the Taoiseach when he accepted €60,000 from wealthy
individuals, but they also defend the sleaze, cronyism, patronage and
corruption that pervaded politics in the 1980s and 1990s. Not one person
was caught in the middle of that who did not come up with the same
catch-cry: ‘We did no favours and we did nothing wrong’. How could
Fianna Fáil ministers think there was anything wrong when the Fianna
Fáil party is massively financed by big business? Big business financing
individual leaders on the one hand, or the party on the other, is a
continuous process.
"There is a tendency to isolate this controversy of
monies to the Taoiseach but it cannot be boxed off from the Taoiseach’s
relationship with big-business interests, Fianna Fáil’s relationship
with big-business interests, and the Progressive Democrats’ relationship
with big business interests – they accept massive funds from those
sources as well. It was the Taoiseach’s associate who helped him with
his personal donations; who, in the 1990s, sat in a plush Dublin hotel
and took in millions from speculators, developers, multinational
corporations, oil companies and any kind of moneybags that darkened the
door of his plush suite. Every ordinary person knows that business does
this to influence government policies, and that it succeeds. Ordinary
people are the victims of this. Look at the strife, struggle and stress
that young people must endure to secure the basic right of a roof over
their heads because the Fianna Fáil-backing speculators have put the
price of a home out of their reach. The government sat and let them do
it for ten years".
Brian Lenihan (Fianna Fáil): "What about the
houses built in the deputy’s constituency?"
Joe Higgins: "Tens of thousands were
heartlessly priced out of the market by the speculators who financed the
parties opposite. Tens of thousands are terrified of the mortgage
increases - perhaps up to €200 a month - they fear are now due. That
amounts to €2,400 a year, which will virtually impoverish them but it is
cigar money to the wealthy people who finance the Taoiseach. Most
shamefully, look at how Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats were
obliging the Shell Oil corporation this morning, manhandling the decent
people of Erris, so that Shell, the most notorious polluter and
profiteer virtually on the globe, can get the gas they [the government]
have given it for nothing out of the sea. This process started with the
then minister, Mr Ray Burke, in 1997 and continued in 1992 under the
minister for finance, now Taoiseach, when they gave fabulous natural
resources to these companies for absolutely nothing in secret deals. How
much did Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats get from the oil
companies?
"How nauseating, in view of all this, to see Fianna
Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste
[deputy prime minister], reduce this whole controversy, this nexus of
patronage and sleaze, to a cynical game of scrabble, of bending and
twisting words so that both parties can walk out claiming to be
vindicated. Taking large amounts of money from business, as the
Taoiseach has said today, was an error and a misjudgement not because it
was wrong, not because there was a massive conflict of interest, but
because it came out into the open and caused grief and consternation to
the Taoiseach and his friends. The Tánaiste, the leader of the
Progressive Democrats, sits beside him and applauds that particular
statement.
"What the Tánaiste is doing today is propping up an
unreconstructed Fianna Fáil party, still defending sleaze after ten
years of investigation. Was it for this that the Tánaiste flew to the
tops of the lampposts all over Dublin to tell us we needed him in
government to straighten out the Fianna Fáil chancers? That event has
now been exposed for the hollow stunt that it was".
An Ceann Comhairle [Speaker]: "The deputy’s
time has concluded".
Joe Higgins: "He would not dare repeat it at
the next election".
A deputy: "He would".
Joe Higgins: "He might try, but at least
nobody will believe him this time. The lampposts will be left to the
poodles of Ranelagh to do at the base what the Tánaiste is doing today
to the alleged standards he defended when he climbed up his ladder.
"This tawdry affair exposes a government utterly
divorced from the reality of life of ordinary people, light years
removed from the struggle of ordinary working people to spread their
wages over the mortgage, child care, transport and the other problems.
"The Taoiseach should go today not just for his
grubby taking of funds from business interests, but also because his
being beholden to business generally has created a society that rewards
the powerful at enormous cost to ordinary people, so let us have the
general election now. There are further questions but I will delay them
until Leaders’ Questions. There are many detailed questions that the
Taoiseach must still answer today".
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