Mr. J. Higgins: This very morning the Government has thrown thousands of Aer Lingus workers to the multinational wolves, on stock exchanges around the world. Yesterday, the Government had gardaà pushing the decent people of Rossport around the place at the behest of the Shell Oil corporation.
Mr. F. McGrath: Hear, hear.
Mr. J. Higgins: At every hand’s turn the Taoiseach has facilitated the powerful and the very wealthy. Therefore it is no surprise that wealthy businessmen should cough up €50,000 to him. What is shocking is that the Taoiseach still apparently does not see that a Minister for Finance taking large amounts of cash from businessmen is by any objective yardstick a massive conflict of interest. The Taoiseach minimises the amount of money, but in 1993 the average industrial wage was €13,416 per year, so that three times that amount, by any ordinary worker’s standard, would be colossal. By coincidence, two years after that I bought a semi-detached home for €47,000 with a mortgage that goes on until I am 65. At no stage should the Taoiseach have brought his personal life or difficulties into this issue. It is not relevant.
Again last night, deliberately, he cast RTE’s Brian Dobson in the role of agony aunt in order to divert attention from the critical issues which he is refusing to answer. The Taoiseach’s personal circumstances are irrelevant because he said, last night, that he had already got a bank loan to pay off pressing bills, that they were taken care of. Presumably he had a schedule of repayments to the bank. He then used what he says were personal loans to pay off the bank loan. Can he explain that conundrum to the House?
When the Taoiseach was in the Dáil in 1997 setting up tribunals on payments to politicians, it beggars belief that the alarm bells that should have been going off in his head were not so deafening as-----
An Ceann Comhairle: The Deputy’s time has concluded.
Mr. J. Higgins: -----to tell him to pay back the €50,000. It was at the very least a catastrophic failure of political judgment. It further beggars belief that he could not give it back. Did the Taoiseach ever hear of a bank draft? This morning it took me two minutes to draft the letter the Taoiseach could send with it:
Ah Jaysus lads, you’ll have me in huge trouble if you don’t take back the €50,000. My circumstances are improved and I’ll have 50 reporters traipsing after me for the rest of my life if this comes out. Bertie.
It was as simple as that. Perhaps he might have said: “P.S. Tell Paddy the plasterer to steer clear of Callely’s house. He is in enough trouble with the painter already.â€
