Call for clarity on people implicated by tribunal

MINISTER FOR Social Protection Joan Burton suggested the Cabinet should consider how it would deal with any future public association with people censured by public tribunals.

She referred to the recent appearance by businessman Denis O’Brien with Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the New York Stock Exchange. Ms Burton said the organisers of the event, and not the Office of the Taoiseach, had decided who was on the balcony for a bell-ringing ceremony.

“It is perhaps time for the Government to reflect on how it should in future interact with people against whom adverse findings have been made by tribunals,” she added.

Ms Burton said the Moriarty tribunal’s final report, published last year, had detailed the investigation into possible links between Mr O’Brien and former minister and now Independent TD Michael Lowry.

Mr Lowry, she said, had awarded the second mobile telephone licence to Mr O’Brien’s consortium in 1995, with the report concluding that Mr O’Brien had made or facilitated payments to him of a combined £447,000 (sterling) and support for a loan of £420,000.

Ms Burton said there had been “considerable public and political unease about the fact that Mr O’Brien has continued to pop up at various public events’’.

Laois-Offaly FF TD Seán Fleming said he had been subjected to considerable criticism and adverse comment because of a negative finding against him relating to his time as Fianna Fáil’s financial controller.

“Already on the airwaves and in public discourse I have been criticised for my failure to contact Pádraig Flynn relating to the payment of £50,000 by Mr Gilmartin,’’ he added. “I never knew that the donation I was asked to check for was a donation that was made through Mr Flynn.”

Mr Fleming said he looked forward to the tribunal recognising that its finding against him was an error and he asked those “who have accepted and relied on that finding and have compounded the error in this House also to recognise their mistakes”.

Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said abuse of public office was found at every level, from councillors to ministers to taoisigh in a top-down, bottom-up toxic political culture.

“Public confidence in the entire system of public administration has been deeply undermined,” she added.

Limerick city Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea said that if the tribunal regarded a statement he made about it as too flippant, harsh or disrespectful, he regretted making it. “However, in no way was I seeking to undermine or collapse the tribunal’s work, nor was I acting in concert with my colleagues or anyone else,” he added.

Wexford FG TD Liam Twomey said he had first heard of Liam Lawlor in the mid-1980s. “An aunt of mine who lived in Dublin saw him on a television news programme,’’ he added. “She laughed and suggested one could build a piggery in the middle of the Phoenix Park if one paid that man enough money.’’