Time for Moriarty to examine FG finances

In June 1995, during the course of the Wicklow by-election, Denis O'Brien made a donation of £15,000 to the Fine Gael campaign. This was four months before the first commercial mobile phone licence was awarded to Denis O'Brien's company, Esat.

Fine Gael accepted the money then - there was no question of returning it at the time or subsequently, even when it became an issue of controversy the following year. This was even though there could have been a perception of it influencing the decision on the award of the phone licence and the fact that it was perhaps a record for donations during a by-election campaign to an Irish political party.

It is not at all clear therefore why a contribution of £33,000 from Telenor should have been refused in early 1995, as John Bruton now claims. Why, if it was OK to accept money from Denis O'Brien before the phone licence was awarded, was it not OK to accept money from Telenor afterwards?

Anyway, how could Fine Gael have avoided such perceived conflicts of interests in the years 1995-97, when it received well over £1 million in donations from a variety of sources during a period of the most spectacular enrichment that any political party enjoyed in such short a time?

Fine Gael was virtually bankrupt when it fell into office in December 1994, and within little more than a year it was out of debt and flush with cash. Having pathetically failed to raise money while in opposition, suddenly on its return to office it got money from all over the place.

On several occasions since 1996, I and others have inquired of Fine Gael where it got its money during this time and, again and again, we have been fobbed off.

Further questions arise in connection with this Telenor business. Why, given that Telenor is all upfront now about what happened, did it insist on confidentiality in 1998? One can image why in advance of a meeting with Fine Gael it might have required a confidentiality agreement, but following the meeting, why did they insist on the Moriarty tribunal not being informed of what had happened?

It seems what Telenor wanted was to establish that the money it gave went directly to Fine Gael rather than to the party's fundraiser, Michael Lowry, who at the time was the subject of investigation by the Moriarty tribunal. Having established that it went to Fine Gael, why would it have objected to the Moriarty tribunal being informed?

The legal opinion that Fine Gael got from James Nugent SC reveals that when informed of the Telenor contribution John Bruton said, "Leave it where it is." This would seem to have left options open on whether to accept the contribution or not and, as suggested above, it is difficult to see why Fine Gael should have had any qualms about taking money from Telenor.

Neither did the legal opinion state that Fine Gael should not disclose the donation in the light of the confidentiality agreement. Michael Noonan said on radio yesterday that Fianna Fail was trying to draw Fine Gael into the same moral morass as it was in itself. Fine Gael has got itself into this morass all on its own and it got there in 1995 when it got huge amounts of money on returning to government.

In yesterday's interview, Michael Noonan claimed there was some qualitative difference between corporate donations and private donations. What conceivable difference is there whether rich people use their companies to make contributions or use their own money?

John Bruton has previously got himself into tangles over funding. On June 22nd, 1992, he gave evidence to the beef tribunal. He was asked if, as leader of the party, he or other politicians were made aware of particular contributions? He said "no", and went on to say that on a random basis politicians might become aware but "there is no systematic informing of politicians of contributions".

The point he was making was that this wall between party fundraising and politicians was to ensure no favour would be done for donors, because politicians would not know who made donations and who didn't.

On April 28th, 1997, he told the McCracken tribunal he had made numerous approaches to business people in 1991 and subsequently because of the financial problems the party was having at the time.

Asked how he could reconcile that evidence with what he had told the beef tribunal, he said there was no "systematic arrangement" for informing politicians about donations, and anyway, he was talking about donations made during general election campaigns - not between elections, as was the case in 1991.

There is only one way all this can be cleared up. The terms of reference of the Moriarty tribunal should be expanded to include an examination of Fine Gael's funding between 1994 and 1997. This is not quite the new territory it might seem, as the tribunal has had to cover some of this ground in its examination of the affairs of Michael Lowry, who during most of this time was the main Fine Gael fundraiser.

There is no other credible way.