Source of FG wealth must be scrutinised

Fine Gael was out of office for over seven years from 1987 to late 1994. During that time it got into serious financial difficulty. It was partly because of a financial crisis that Alan Dukes was deposed as leader in December 1990. During that year, the party had spent almost £1.4 million and took in less than £0.5 million.

In spite of the best efforts of John Bruton, Michael Lowry and Ben Dunne, Fine Gael remained in financial crisis until 1995. The party's accumulated deficit was £1.5 million in 1990 and this was reduced only marginally by the end of 1994. The party's expenditure for 1994 almost matched its income, at just £783,000. The accumulated deficit at the end of the year was £1.4 million.

Then all changed, changed utterly. Fine Gael got back into government in 1994 and spectacularly its financial position was transformed. In 1995, the party's income shot to £1.4 million, an increase of 80 per cent on the previous year. Its accumulated deficit declined from £1.4 million to £540,000. By the end of 1996, the deficit had been almost wiped out, at £65,000, and income was £1.2 million.

Then in the year of the last election, 1997, Fine Gael enjoyed record takings, just short of £2 million. It had achieved nothing like it before. In 1992, its income was almost half that, and in 1989, its income had been just £740,000. Fine Gael spent a fortune in that 1997 election: £2.3 million. For a party that was almost bankrupt 21/2 years previously, that was some doing.

The General secretary of Fine Gael, Tom Curran, supplied the above figures to me in July 1999. Mr Curran, explaining this transformation, claimed it was due to four factors: a reduction in expenditure and an increase in Exchequer funding; increases in affiliation income; increases in sponsorships and donations; and a mortgage on party headquarters.

Yes, there was an increase in Exchequer funding during this period but not on the scale necessary to explain this remarkable transformation. Neither do the affiliation income fees nor the mortgage explain it. As for the claim that there was a reduction in expenditure, this was true for one year, 1995, but not true of the other years and certainly not true of the bonanza year of 1997.

As it was blindingly obvious for decades that Charles Haughey had questions to answer about the sources of his spectacular enrichment when in power, it is blindingly obvious that Fine Gael has questions to answer about the sources of its spectacular enrichment when it was in power. Where did it get £4.6 million in the three years after it returned to government?

During the bonanza period, John Bruton, then Taoiseach and party leader, gave evidence to the McCracken tribunal on party finances. A number of aspects of his evidence to the McCracken and beef tribunals in 1991 rai se questions now, but I want to raise one matter. In the context of maintaining that there was no "crossover" between the work of politics and fund-raising, John Bruton said party spokespersons would not be aware if individuals had made contributions and "therefore could not be influenced in what they would be doing in opposition".

NOW, this is curious. Alan Dukes acknowledged that when he met Ben Dunne and got a sizeable donation, he arranged for Ben Dunne to meet the party spokesperson on Industry and Commerce (the area most relevant to Ben Dunne's business), none other than John Bruton. It might be claimed that John Bruton would not necessarily have known that Ben Dunne had made or was about to make a contribution, were it not for further evidence.

In the recent past, I have seen copies of some of the hundreds of letters that Alan Dukes sent to rich people in the late 1980s. In several instances, the correspondence (the original letter and the reply) was copied to John Bruton who was spokesperson on Industry and Commerce, along with a request by Dukes for Bruton to meet the donor or prospective donor. In those instances, the party spokesperson would have known that a contribution had been made or was about to be made, or at least had been requested, and would have been meeting the donor/prospective donor in his capacity as party spokesperson.

In other words, precisely the arrangement that John Bruton said did not happen in relation to spokespersons and donations did happen and he was in the middle of it. That was in 1988 and 1989. Among the documents I have seen is a lengthy list of "fat cats" the party was targeting for donations. Opposite the names of several of these are names of party frontbenchers, indicating that these should make the contact. The names most regularly featured are those of John Bruton and Michael Noonan. (There will be more in this column in the next few weeks on these documents.)

Is it likely that this practice would not have been continued subsequently, that party front-benchers would not have been centrally involved in raising money and engaging in precisely that conflict of interest situation that John Bruton assured the McCracken tribunal did not happen? There is only one way for all of this to be examined and it is by way of an amendment of the terms of reference of the Moriarty tribunal. Why should Charles Haughey's spectacular enrichment be investigated and not Fine Gael's?