| Mrs.
Taylor-Quinn: They were decent guys. Mr. Cassidy:
People with such access have become very powerful in
modern day life. The amendment provides for an expert
group to advise the leaders of parties and report back by
30 September. It has five sitting weeks to get matters
right and not give a knee-jerk reaction.
As the Deputy
Leader of the House said, the media rush to condemn
people without due process. I agree with the Leader of
the House who said that a Member of this House did not
receive due process last week from his own political
party. Be that as it may, it is about time members of all
parties in both Houses of the Oireachtas addressed the
proposal that a press council be set up, which would be a
good thing. Many years ago there was a newspaper whose
byword was, "We print the truth of the news".
Much innuendo is being printed at present which is
causing a lot of hardship for families and members of
families. Much of the coverage is based on rumour which
is being used to sell newspapers. I do not think anyone
has anything to fear, but the time has come when
journalists and editors who print stories which are
untrue should have to answer for their actions to a press
council or other authority. At present there is no means
by which to condemn these people. After all, Members of
this House must account for their stewardship to the
electorate approximately every three years. How we
conduct our affairs and how hard we have worked to
represent those who elected us to either of these two
Houses is the barometer for the contribution we make.
By the end of
this year, with all-party agreement and acceptance of the
amendment tabled here this evening, I look forward to
being in a position to facilitate all parties in the
House and all Members' requests. I do not think anyone in
the House objects to the setting up of a lobbyists'
register which is so urgently needed.
Mr. O'Toole:
I object to the fact that the Government has decided to
try to bypass this legislation. It is the articulated
testimony of all the parties that this issue needs to be
addressed and it gives a completely wrong signal to say
we will not do so until 1 December 2000. We could have
taken Second Stage of the Bill and dealt differently with
Committee Stage in due course. The message going out from
here tonight is that the Government does not wish to
address this issue and the reason for that decision is
irrelevant. The fact that Mr. Haughey received £8.5
million will be carried on the news tonight and this is
another subtext to that story which is not in our
interest.
We need to take
a number of urgent measures. First, we must give an
absolutely clear signal to the electorate that elected
public representatives will take the business of politics
in hand and will be seen to deal with the issue of
corruption and sleaze. We know that the vast majority of
Members of both Houses are decent, honest, diligent
public representatives, but the public do not know that
and they certainly do not believe it. That is the
reality, whether true or false - the perception becomes
the reality. Politics is held in low esteem, the lowest
it has ever been, and we need to deal properly with the
issue.
The leaders of
all the groups approached the Leader of the House
recently and asked for an open debate on the issue. For
instance, no decent Irish citizen watching television, in
a pub or on the streets tonight would understand why the
system here operates in the following manner, that is, if
someone becomes an undischarged bankrupt, that person
loses his or her seat in the House and is disqualified
from standing for election. This can happen to people in
business without ever having a bad intention. On the
other hand, the legislation provides that if a Member of
either House has been involved at any level in bribery or
corruption, or is seen to be corrupt or to have accepted
bribes, the maximum penalty we can impose by way of
self-regulation as politicians is that that person cannot
sit in the House for the next 30 days.
I must take
responsibility, together with others, for the legislation
passed in my time, which is inefficient, inadequate and
needs to be strengthened. The reality which must be dealt
with is that we can only impose on someone a 30 day paid
holiday as a punishment. On the one hand, we tell them to
stay at home, that we will pay them for the 30 days, and
then expect the ordinary punter, voter and member of the
electorate in a cynical Ireland to believe this is some
sort of punishment while, on the other, someone who may
become an undischarged bankrupt through no fault of his
or her own is disqualified and thrown out of the House.
Similarly in
the case of former Mr. Justice Hugh O'Flaherty, he is not
a criminal, he did not commit a crime, he never accepted
a bribe and he was not found to be corrupt. However, he
made an intervention, sparked by humanitarian feelings,
which, in the words of the report, was subject to
interpretation, was unwise and showed bad judgment.
Therefore, he made a mistake for which he deserved to be
punished. I said last year, and I repeat, that I do not
think he deserved to be sacked from the Supreme Court or
forced into resignation. There were other ways of dealing
with the matter. It is completely wrong for reports in
this evening's newspapers to put Hugh O'Flaherty in the
same context as people who accepted bribes, sold votes
and were seen to be corrupt. It does nothing for the
perception if we do not make this distinction. I agree
with other Senators that the Government mismanaged the
case of Hugh O'Flaherty last year and again this year,
nevertheless it is important to distinguish between that
and the fact that he is an honest man, a man of integrity
who made a mistake. There are differences and if we are
to do the job properly, we need to be seen to do so.
This raises the
question of due process, which is crucial. I said here
and in a number of interviews last week that a penalty of
14 days paid holiday is wrong. I am not referring to the
issue or the person, but to the fact that the penalty is
not adequate in the eyes of the public. Similarly, it is
completely wrong for us to walk away from dealing with
this problem. There must be due process which is
basically the rights and tenets of natural justice
whereby people have a right to see the evidence against
them, a right to cross-examine and a right to give their
side of the case etc. I am not impressed by kangaroo
courts, by political parties examining their own affairs.
This is more important than political parties. Of course
we must weed out the problems within parties but that
cannot be the end of the matter.
Our proposal
would have complimented this Bill which was tabled by the
Labour Party. We have to be heard to say that people who
accept bribes for their votes and are seen to be corrupt
have no place in the Houses of Parliament. I cite no
further evidence than motion 21, which refers to Article
15.2 of the Constitution, to support my case. This House
and the other House have a constitutional obligation to
protect its Members against interference through bribery
and corruption. We must do something about this, we
cannot rely on the words and hope it will all fall into
place. If voting records have been interfered with
through bribery and corruption and if Members are being
tainted, we have a responsibility to do something about
it. We must deal with the problem before personalities
become involved. Everything goes wrong when a name is
mentioned. People are suddenly faced with party
loyalties, friendships and all sorts of difficulties. If
we deal with these problems before personalities become
involved the matter can be dealt with in an objective and
impartial manner. We have to be seen to take the lead in
this matter.
We must also
look at funding of political parties. I strongly believe
that those who fund political parties should be open
about it. I take a different view from both sides of the
House on the question of funding political parties. I do
not believe in false glass ceilings for contributions
because I do not think it is workable. One cannot
legislate to stop dishonesty. People will always find a
dishonest way to do things. If we put a ceiling of £500,
£5,000 or £10,000 on the amount of contributions
allowed there will always be somebody who will find ten
people who will give £999 or £9,999 etc. All political
contributions, regardless of how they are raised, be it
through a golf classic etc., should be recorded in the
audited accounts. It is that simple. It is not about
restricting the amount of money which people can spend on
an election or restricting the amount of contribution any
one person or corporation can give. The problem should be
dealt with by way of legislation.
I accept that
there are strong arguments for putting a ceiling in place
but the system must be capable of being policed and
implemented. We should take the first step of ensuring
whatever contribution is received by a party or person is
recorded in the party's audited accounts of the election
campaign. That should be our starting point.
The Criminal
Assets Bureau should be set on those who have made
fortunes by way of criminal acts of bribery and
corruption. If current legislation is not competent to
deal with that problem we should change it. We should
also ensure that those who acted in a criminal manner to
gain planning permission should be ineligible to seek
permission for development in future. This is the only
way forward. We should also apply compulsory purchase
orders to the holding of development land. The Government
or the local authorities, rather than quangos or
non-Government groups, should tell us who owns all the
building and development land in the Dublin area. Those
who are carefully parcelling out a couple of hundred
acres of land every year so as to keep prices
artificially inflated should be made known. We should
incorporate three different types of housing - social
housing, affordable housing and the rest - into the
Planning and Development Act, with the Minister for the
Environment and Local Government's positive and
progressive proposals.
There are ways
we can control and beat these people. We have the power
and the authority. We can legislate to do it and we have
the constitutional support to do so. We should be seen to
clean up politics and move forward. I do not say any of
this by way of high moral ground. I am no better than
anyone else in this House or the other House. I do not
put myself above anybody but I see this as a practical
approach to put in place a proper structure.
Ms O'Meara:
I was looking back at Senator Gallagher's contribution on
this matter last year and it struck me that we are going
around in circles. He referred then to matters in the
media, the Paddy Duffy affair, regarding the publication
of this Bill. We now have further issues regarding
lobbyists and the need for them to be registered.
The
Government's reaction that we should take a measured view
and not have knee-jerk reactions suggests they do not
consider this to be an urgent issue. As Senator O'Toole
and others said, the public will laugh in our faces at
that reaction. How long have we been waiting for the
Standards in Public Office Bill? It is three years since
the Taoiseach took office and we still have not seen it.
The Minister spoke about the need for an urgent approach,
that means at least six months delay. Let us not have
knee-jerk reactions, let us have a measured approach.
The Leader
spoke about his sense of honour and pride at being here.
I, too, feel that sense of honour and pride. I am one of
the new Members of this House to whom he referred. It was
with great honour and pride for my community and family
that I took my seat in this House, but I feel a great
sense of shame at the moment. How could one feel anything
but shame when one hears on the radio and television and
reads in the media of bribes being taken and a former
Taoiseach receiving £8.5 million in payments? How could
one feel anything but shame being a politician in this
country today? It is up to us to re-establish trust.
Trust has broken down, there is no point in our
pretending otherwise. There is no point in our going
around this House with a sense of injured pride and hurt
at what the media are saying about politicians. We must
put our heads down and think of how we are going to work
to re-establish trust in our political system. The
consequences for our democracy are too serious to
consider.
It is not
beyond the bounds of possibility that the level of
cynicism and sheer distrust of politicians and politics
could lead to a turn-out so low that a political result
cannot be trusted, a level of cynicism so deep as to be
unknown. Let us not fool ourselves, we run the risk of
doing that. Simply walking around with a sense of injured
pride and hurt is not a good enough response. We have to
move further than the public expect.
Mr. O'Toole:
Hear, hear.
Ms O'Meara:
We are not here as private citizens. We are not private
citizens when we are reported in the press. We are public
citizens and act on behalf of the public. That is the way
in which we are reported, the way in which we must expect
to be reported and the way the media should expect us to
be reported.
How will we
re-earn the trust of the public? It will take a long time
and much more effort in this area than is currently
evident on the Government side. We must grasp the nettle
of resourcing our democracy, with which this and other
legislation on the capping and regulation of donations to
politicians, published by the Labour Party, deals. We
must break, once and for all, in the minds of the public
any perceived or possible connections between business
and payments to politicians. We must separate and create
a wide open space between politics and how it is
conducted and business and donations and how they are
conducted. The only way we can do that is to fund the
political system, including political parties, our
offices and the employment of our staff, and ban
donations. That is the only way to create an
untouchability about politics that must be established if
public trust is to be re-earned and re-established in our
political system. If we pussyfoot around the issue and
say that we must have consensus on this, we will further
damage the political system. We cannot underestimate the
level of damage that has been done to politics.
Our political
culture is changing and that is probably for the good,
although it is with a sense of regret that I note the
passing of the high regard in which politicians were
held. One cannot but regret that public representatives
who are in politics for only the best of motives, as we
are, should be viewed as a bunch of crooks and criminals.
Our political culture must change to ensure that at its
heart lies the principle of accountability. In the same
way as we demanded accountability for the decisions or
lack of them that led to the death of people, such as
haemophiliacs, and that led to children being abused in
State institutions, an ongoing process of accountability
must apply to our political system. The only way to
ensure that is through a structure of strong legislation
of which this is only one element.
There is much I
could say about political lobbyists. I commend this Bill
to the House. Many comments have been made on it. We
would welcome amendments to this Bill. Each Bill that
comes before this House is debated, amendments may be
tabled to it by Members on all sides of the House and we
come up with what we hope is an improved Bill. This Bill
is a start in laying the necessary framework for
re-establishing trust in our democracy. That is an
essential approach if we are not to go down the road of
what would be a disaster for our democracy, for which
many people worked hard and some gave their lives at the
beginning of the last century. Let us not throw it away
because of negligence and a misplaced sense of hurt about
these serious matters.
Mrs.
Taylor-Quinn: I compliment my Labour Party colleagues
on introducing this Bill. I am disappointed the Leader of
the House, Senator Cassidy, deemed fit to vote it down by
introducing an amendment, particularly given that this is
not a slapdash Bill. It is detailed and contains many
sections and a good deal of research was carried out in
preparing it. If accepted on this Stage, the Bill could
be amended on later Stages and thereby improved.
It is
extraordinary that a politician of the Leader's
experience would table an amendment that refers to noting
the proposal to appoint an expert group. It is farcical
and ridiculous that politicians would appoint an expert
group to examine how the political system works and the
corruption, which has been reported extensively in the
media and is constantly being revealed. The greatest
revelation was made today about the £8.5 million
collected by Mr. Haughey, our esteemed former Taoiseach,
over a period of years. Such corruption is a downright
disgrace. To state that an expert group must be appointed
when we know the reality of this matter and that it
should not be dealt with here makes this House
irrelevant.
This Bill deals
with one aspect of the problem in this area, lobbyists.
With regard to lobbyists, we are moving from the sublime
to the ridiculous. We have a population of approximately
four million, about half the size of the city of the New
York, yet we are adopting the facilities and the type of
nonsense one would find in Washington DC, which deals
with legislation to cover the United States of America.
We have lobbyists in this little island nation. Rather
than introducing legislation to register them, perhaps we
should introduce a Bill to abolish and outlaw them, as
they interfere with the democratic system.
It is only 80
years since our democracy was established. When one
thinks of what our ancestors and forefathers did to
establish this democratic republic and that in such a
short time some successors of the founders of this State
could abuse their positions to such an appalling degree,
we are no better or worse than a banana republic. There
are states in Africa with dictators that have a more
credible political system than we have. It is disgraceful
that I should have to say that, but the evidence is there
to prove it.
As a politician
who comes from a political family, I very much resent
that a handful of politicians can bring a bad odour and
bad name to the entire body politic. In this laudable
profession whereby we serve the people and deem it an
honour to be elected to do so, I will not accept that a
handful of politicians can decry the names of those of us
in the political system who are well motivated. It is
appalling if that handful of politicians can get way with
that. We have a responsibility to put in place
legislation that will stop that at all costs. However, as
Senator O'Toole said, there are people with a mentality
to be corrupt and they will be so. Introducing all the
legislation possible to deal with corruption will not
root them out, but we must ensure within our party
structure and by way of the legislation we pass in this
House that action will be taken to prevent the type of
abuses that have taken place.
One element of
the problem in this area, lobbyists, is dealt with in
this Labour Party Bill. Lobbyists have been used by
developers and people in big business to get access to
politicians, including Ministers and people well
positioned in various Departments. I have a major problem
with the use of lobbyists as we are talking about a
sector of people who can afford to hire a lobbyist. I am
talking about divisions in our society. Once the
principle of employing lobbyists is accepted, we must
acknowledge that a sector of the community can afford to
employ a lobbyist to promote its cause and that another
sector, which is more in need, does not have the
resources to employ a lobbyist. There is a danger that
the less well off will suffer while the better off can
afford to employ a lobbyist to promote their cause.
Developers, and
in some instances big business people, have employed
lobbyists and given them vast sums of money to disburse
among people in the public service and people elected to
public office. That has been done for good, bad or evil
as the case may be. Legislation must be introduced to
ensure that those who give lobbyists money to disburse
are made responsible for their actions, as it is wrong
that they have been able to influence people in public
office due to the money they have behind them. That is
not a fair or democratic system. It is not what our
society should be about. I hope the legislation to which
Senator Cassidy has referred will deal specifically with
all those issues.
In this House
there is a variety of elected public representatives in
various capacities. The majority come from the political
party system while others are Independents. Within the
political party structure there are various ways and
means of providing funding, through fundraising events
within the various parties and in some instances through
donations directly to headquarters. I have a difficulty
where a candidate is given money directly at election
time or at any other time. It is highly dangerous for any
person who stands for public office to accept money
directly from any individual or group of individuals for
the purpose of being elected. It should be outlawed
completely in the party political structures and by
legislation. Donations, if they are to be made, should be
made directly to the headquarters of the various parties.
Perhaps we
should consider seriously the possibility of full State
funding for political parties. There is a reluctance to
follow that course because of a fear that the public
would resent paying. Given what has come out in the wash
recently, as a result of all the manoeuvres and
manipulations in relation to the provision of funding,
the public would be happy to provide taxpayers' money for
political parties, independent candidates for election
purposes and to cut out private contributions.
Once a party
has been funded by any individual, company or
organisation it is compromised. There can be no mistake
about it, that party is automatically influenced. It is
difficult to define "influence" because people
can be influenced in a variety of ways. There are subtle
ways of doing it. The reality is that if a candidate is
funded directly by an individual he or she will be
behoven to that individual if elected. That should not be
allowed and it must be outlawed.
There should be
a level playing pitch for candidates who stand for
election. There are some candidates who have massive
amounts of money, although that has been addressed
because of the cap on spending at elections, while others
have nothing. There will have to be a level playing pitch
if there is to be democracy. We must strive to introduce
legislation to regularise the position.
I am
disappointed the Government has decided not to accept the
Bill in principle on Second Stage and allow it to proceed
to Committee Stage where it could be amended.
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