Taoiseach says tribunal should have got details of donation

FINE GAEL in hindsight should have sent the details of a $50,000 Telenor donation to the tribunal, said Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

He told the Dáil he would later publish a senior counsel’s advice to the party on the matter.

“Based on the evidence given to the senior counsel – the background information, the notes about meetings and all the rest of it – the eminent senior counsel said that, in his opinion, it did not fall within the remit of the tribunal. One has to apply political common sense to these things as well. I would have disagreed with that decision.”

Mr Kenny said when it was discovered that it was from the group involved, then party leader John Bruton asked that it be sent back.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said this was like saying “big boys made me do it’’. The legal advice did not have to be taken.

Joe Higgins (SP) said he wanted to remind Mr Kenny of the relationship between Fine Gael and Denis O’Brien. “Two months before Fine Gael in government awarded the most valuable contract in the history of the State the private individual who was desperately looking for it was lubricating the throats of Fine Gael grandees at a gala dinner. Is it not obvious to everybody this was to lubricate the licence process?’’

He added that Mr Kenny was “rostered’’ to be at a private dinner in New York in November 1995, around which time the $50,000 donation was made.

Mr Kenny said the sponsorship by Mr O’Brien of a golf classic conducted by Fine Gael was not an individual thing. “Many companies sponsored many golf classics around the country.”

He said he was never “rostered’’ to be in New York, adding that the late David Austin proposed in the beginning that a number of Ministers might attend the function and that he should be one of them. “In the event, I had no hand, act or part in the persons who may have attended that function.’’

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said that earlier this year Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan had publicly stated that Fine Gael would shorten the work of the Moriarty tribunal. He asked if Mr Kenny or Mr Hogan had sight of the tribunal’s draft unpublished report before Mr Hogan made the statement.

Mr Martin also asked the Taoiseach to outline if any contacts or meetings had taken place between Mr Hogan, or any other senior Fine Gael representatives, with Mr O’Brien in the past 12 months.

Mr Kenny said he had made his view known on several occasions that he would like to see the report published as quickly as possible.

He had not seen the draft of the report and he did not assume Mr Hogan did.