Republican News · Thursday 3 October 2002

Flood - so what happens next?

BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN

There are still 61 areas under investigation by the Flood Tribunal. The tribunal has now been working for over four years and last week's interim report only covers a section of that work.

Lawlor, Redmond, Dunlop set to star

In particular, there are Flood deliberations on Liam Lawlor and the need to question all of the elected councillors from Dublin County Council during the period under examination on what monies they were offered and accepted or not from builders and developers seeking planning favours.

We still have to hear from Flood on disgraced assistant Dublin city and county manager George Redmond, who was arrested in 1999 after returning from the Isle of Man with £300,000 in cash. Redmond had denied holding any offshore bank accounts. In April 2000 he was fined £7,500 for tax offences and paid £782,000 to the Revenue Commissioners. We need to hear who paid Redmond hundreds of thousands of pounds over his career and why.

Then there is Frank Dunlop's operation of a slush fund to win council support for planning projects. Dunlop admitted to the Tribunal that he paid sums to over 20 council members to progress the planning of Liffey Valley shopping centre.

What should happen?

All those who obstructed or refused to cooperate with the work of the Tribunal need to be brought to account.

The Flood Tribunal is only dealing with one council. Are we really to believe that Dublin County Council was the only corrupt council in the 26 Counties? Leinster House needs to find a mechanism to empower a wide ranging review of all councils planning actions in recent years.

Just as the Moriarty Tribunal has decided to widen the scope of its inquiries to cover the granting of the second mobile phone licence to ESAT Digifone, there is a need to widen the scope of the Flood Tribunal to include the whole ministerial career of Ray Burke.

In particular, we need to focus on Burke's role during his brief tenure as minister of Energy from March 1987 to October 1988, when he effectively gave away Irish offshore resources by agreeing the world's most lax terms for oil and gas exploration licences in deepwater fields.

Now in just one case, the Corrib field, where exploration has been completed, it is clear that over €1.1 billion has been lost to the Irish exchequer, as has Irish control over the development and management of this vital resource. How many more billions have been squandered and will find their way in the bank accounts of oil companies?

Should Ahern be the focus?

There is no doubt that Bertie Ahern's political reputation has been damaged by the Flood findings on Ray Burke. Ahern's claim that his investigation of the allegations against Burke had been a comprehensive one is now exposed as a sham. He had claimed that he had been "up every tree in North Dublin".

There are serious questions still unanswered as to why Ahern appointed Burke as a minister. Ahern himself has said that "a test of the true democratic nature of any society is the effectiveness of its response to the exposure of wrongdoing".

He has cited new legislation on the prevention of corruption and standards in public office as proof of his commitment to tackle wrongdoing. However, in the meantime an ongoing trickle of disclosures and resignations still flows from Fianna Fáil. Haughey, Padraig Flynn, his daughter Beverly, Denis Foley, Ray Burke and Liam Lawlor have all been cited as TDs with questions to answer. Now PJ Mara joins the list of disgraced Fianna Fáil members, along with another former press secretary, Frank Dunlop.

Now dissent within Fianna Fáil is leading to rumours of moves against Ahern. This though, overlooks the role the party as a whole has played in corruption in Irish political life over the past three decades.

Replacing Ahern will do nothing to stamp out the environment of corruption that envelops the party. Fianna Fáil have to wake up to implications of the systematic abuse of power propagated by its members.

We need to know not just about Bertie Ahern's commitment to better standards in public office; we need to know too if the Fianna Fáil faithful are on board too. The signs so far are not promising. How many more resignations will we have to witness before the party as a whole realises that it isn't just a case of a few rotten apples?