Dáil Report: The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, defended his appointment of Ray Burke to the 1997 Cabinet in his first Dáil response to the former minister's imprisonment.
"As I have said, my decision was based on what my bona fide view was then. If I knew then what I know now years later after all the investigations, I would not have appointed him.
"Not only I, but several other members, congratulated him at that time. Even when he came before the House, people were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt."
Mr Ahern was replying to a strongly-worded attack on the appointment by Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist Party, Dublin West), who said the Taoiseach had once savaged those who questioned him for making the decision.
Mr Higgins said: "The Taoiseach must explain because when Fianna Fáil was mired in corruption and sleaze in the 1980s, nobody believes he did not know what was going on. He was the party fixer and the runner for party leader Mr Haughey.
"It is simply not credible that he did not know what Mr Burke and his team of cronies were up to regarding rezonings and land corruption.
"The Taoiseach may have kept his own face out of the feeding frenzy at the speculators's trough, but he knew it was there, he knew who was bucketing the swill into it and he knew the biggest snouts who were slurping from it, but, unlike when I was a young fellow on a farm in Kerry when we had to take a stick to the greediest pigs, he simply left them at it.
"The Taoiseach knew but he said nothing because if he had he would have gotten the Fianna Fáil equivalent of the concrete shoes, feeding with the small fishes on the backbenches, and he would not jeopardise his career by taking a moral stand. He knew and they knew what he knew. That is why today he is reticent to attack those found guilty of corruption, and that is why he had to appoint Mr Burke in 1997."
Mr Higgins said the Taoiseach's investigation of Mr Burke was a "sham", adding that Mr Ahern had a method of contriving to look in places where he knew there were no answers.
"He had his head stuck in the fragrant trees of north Dublin when he should have been lifting the manhole covers from which the real odour was coming."
Mr Ahern challenged Mr Higgins to say why he had not brought the evidence he claimed he had to the tribunals.
Mr Higgins replied: "Is he telling me that nobody from Fianna Fáil came to him in the 1980s or early 1990s and told him exactly the type of fixing that was going on between the speculators and his colleague, Mr Burke, and others at that stage?"
Mr Ahern said he did not know all the things which Mr Higgins knew with certainty back in the 1980s. "Even in the 1990s, when as Taoiseach I was trying to make preliminary inquiries, they were not matters the Garda knew either. I put all that on the record here many years ago.
"Rather than being here berating me for these issues, the deputy should explain why he knew with certainty all of these matters were going on, and about which he never made any statement."
