Article from the March 2006 issue of the Socialist
newspaper of the Socialist Party, Irish section of the CWI

Joe Higgins Column - Political corruption

Recently I challenged the Tánaiste and leader of the Progressive Democrats in the Dáil on the issue of corruption. Although I began by referring to further revelations of corruption at the Planning Tribunal, I generalised on the issue of crime and corruption in society. "Has it ever occurred to the Tánaiste that the escalating cruelty and sheer callousness towards the fate of others, witnessed on the mean streets of Dublin in recent days and months, is really only a distorted reflection of the greed and callous disregard for social solidarity, demonstrated by the very profiteering speculators and developers who have been financing her party and other parties. They are the exploiters of migrant workers and their ethos of greed is not only facilitated but glorified by her government.

"The government allows speculators to become obscenely rich, for which homebuyers will pay for most of their lives, and government politicians take substantial donations from those speculators when they illegally or legally accept donations from them. Is the message not clear? The government shrugs its shoulders and turns away. For the tens of thousands stuck with crippling mortgages as a result of the speculators who finance the government parties we must say the PD sandwich has gone stale, in fact rancid. It is an indictment of the government that it stands over and fuels this greed."

What prompted me to make this challenge were the revelations in the Planning Tribunal at Dublin Castle where the Chief Whip of the government, Fianna Fáil T.D. Mr. Tom Kitt had received a £2,000 donation in 1992 from a landowner who was seeking rezoning of his land at that time. Tom Kitt had left the County Council by then, but the same landowner had made donations to a range of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Councillors using the notorious bagman Frank Dunlop in his efforts to secure rezoning. Furthermore, Mr. Kitt neglected to tell the Planning Tribunal that he had received this £2,000 when he had made his first submission in answer to their queries. He had forgotten, he said. As I indicated in the Dáil, it would be difficult to forget a donation of £2,000 in 1992, considering this sum was one sixth of the average industrial wage at that time.

I tackled the Tánaiste on the complete hypocrisy of the Progressive Democrats. One time they made a virtue of pretending to be the barometer of ethical standards in Irish politics. So much so that in 1990, when they were in government with Fianna Fáil, and the late Minister Brian Lenihan was found to have a memory lapse as to whether or not he rang the President of Ireland on a particular issue eight years previously, the Progressive Democrats, including Mary Harney, demanded and secured his sacking. I put it up to Mary Harney that by the alleged standards they operated on in those days, she would now be demanding the Chief Whip's immediate resignation from the government.

I then went on to suggest why things had changed in the meantime. "Is it that the PDs are getting from this government all they want such as privatisation of public assets of which Aer Lingus is the next casualty, indulgence of the unbridled greed of speculators, a tax bonanza for the obscene rich and the pioneering of the race to the bottom which the Tánaiste pioneered by bringing Turkish big business to Ireland and so giving us the infamous GAMA? In the indulgence of that orgy of greed which is the essence of the neo-liberal capitalism that she espouses, donations, alleged memory lapses and all the rest, no longer cause her any problems".