Tánaiste Micheál Martin has accused People Before Profit/Solidarity TD Paul Murphy of “weaponising” the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) after Mr Murphy confirmed he had made a complaint to the agency about Fianna Fáil Minister of State Niall Collins.
Mr Murphy told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland on Friday that he had made a complaint to Sipo over the sale of land by Limerick County Council to Mr Collins’s wife in 2008, following a statement on the matter to the Dáil by Mr Collins on Thursday.
Mr Murphy said it would take “a long time” for Sipo to reach a conclusion on his proposed complaint, but he said he would be hopeful it would return a finding of “wrongdoing or breach of the code of conduct”.
He said Mr Collins had made an “implicit admission that he knew that his wife had expressed interest in the land” by stating in the Dáil that in hindsight it would have been better if he had not attended a council meeting in January 2007, when the decision was made to put the land up for sale.
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“It’s open and shut. It’s black and white. He clearly broke the code of conduct for councillors,” said Mr Murphy, adding that he believed the Government was out “to confuse and distract from the essence of what happened”.
Speaking in Cork at an event to mark 50 years since Ireland joined the European Union, Mr Martin defended Mr Collins’s statement to the Dáil and he accused Mr Murphy and others of seeking to “weaponise Sipo” and use it to their advantage to attack the Government.
[ ‘No law was broken,’ junior minister Niall Collins insists as he addresses DáilOpens in new window ]
“In terms of Paul Murphy going to Sipo, I think Paul Murphy at this stage is weaponising Sipo for political reasons – he’s not the first to do it and unfortunately there is a trend developing and a pattern developing where Sipo is being weaponised for political purposes,” he said.
Mr Martin also took issue with the website The Ditch, which broke the story about Limerick County Council selling land to Mr Collins’s wife, saying the original version of the story had distorted the facts of the case to suggest Mr Collins had some role in the council’s decision to sell the land to his wife.
“I would have very serious issues with how The Ditch initially presented this story but also other stories – they do it in a very distorted and selected way. If you read the original story, you were left with the impression he had voted for the disposal of the property to his wife, which he didn’t.”
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Mr Martin said The Ditch had done the same thing in relation to a recent planning story involving Mr Collins, which again had sought to create the impression that Mr Collins had been responsible for a false advertisement and that he had not applied for planning permission in his own name.
“The reason I called it out yesterday in the Dáil – and I’ve been reflecting on this for some time – I think the Ditch and many of the cheerleaders and those who back it and how it operates, making sure you get the story trending, it’s leading to a toxic atmosphere online in politics in this country.
“I’m a democrat and I believe in parliamentary democracy and I think there are many people out who don’t believe in parliamentary democracy and seek to undermine it, so there is a challenge and battle ahead in terms of politics.
“Given my own experience and lifetime in politics, I’m not going to stand back and allow a particular form of political debate develop and I call out what I feel, in my opinion, needs calling out – I believe in respectful debate. We haven’t got that online for some time on some of these platforms.”
Asked about the fact that previous investigations and revelations by The Ditch had led to the resignations of ministers of State Robert Troy and Damien English, Mr Martin said both ministers had decided themselves to resign and he had not put pressure on either man to step down.
“I take a longer view of this and I stand back from all of this, and I don’t believe what is happening through this publication [The Ditch] and through all of the online activity that follows and all the trolling and all the paid-for ads, I don’t think that’s good for politics.”
Mr Martin said that as a political leader he did not want in any way to facilitate those behind The Ditch by adding to the drama by speaking about such matters in Leinster House, given that much of what appears linking politicians to corruption is false and defamatory.
“People who backed The Ditch, they bandied words around, ‘corruption’ and so on, and they defame people repeatedly and the Government is clearly being targeted – sorry, I’m not going to stand back and allow that go unchallenged and that is my position.”
