FINE GAEL TD John Deasy has claimed he was once encouraged by Fianna Fáil councillors to take bribes.
The Waterford TD said his first experience with the government party on planning issues was nine years ago at Dublin airport with two councillors “earnestly telling me that taking money was the way of the world and I needed to accept it”.
Fianna Fáil had turned Ireland into a “nation of chronic debtors”. Irish families would be “weighed” down with debt for decades because of Fianna Fáil’s 12 years in government, he claimed.
With the bad bank loans, the national debt had effectively been doubled to €100 billion, he said. He demanded that the National Asset Management Agency release the names and amounts involved in the €90 billion in bad assets, “considering the Irish taxpayer is now responsible”.
He said: “I want the taxpayer to know who they have to thank for saddling their children with debt for decades.” The two councillors had opened his eyes to the relationship between Fianna Fáil, council officials and builders, he said.
“I began to become vocal about it. Besides the abuse, the intimidation, the threats – one of which was on the floor of this chamber – I found it’s a very unpopular thing to do because you’re questioning a system that’s based on greed and you’re questioning a system that hundreds of people feed from.”
The councillors “protected and fed off the local authority officials who in turn fed off the developers and if you questioned the behaviour and activities of that golden circle, you were and still are branded as somebody who is against jobs and development”.
He said: “We now realise the cost that these relationships have had and will have on Irish families for decades. Irish families are going to pay for the stupidity, the greed, the excess and the potentially criminal behaviour for decades and Fianna Fáil was part and parcel of it all. It certainly was in my constituency – a willing, complicit participant and beneficiary.”
He was “jeopardising an ingrained relationship that existed between Fianna Fáil, council officials and developers and many in the public knew about these relationships”.
As long as “the wealth continued, as long as the perceived benefits continued, there wasn’t any major concern”.
Some colleagues believed the Government “should display humility, honesty, a sense of responsibility”, but he believed “Fianna Fáil’s pathetic whimpering about a national government is embarrassing and you should get on with your job”.
Mr Deasy said that “Fianna Fáil deserves everything it gets” in coming elections. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan should “spare us the speeches on patriotism, fairness and national government. Fianna Fáil has denigrated politics to an extent that I never thought possible. You have broken this country and you deserve everything you get. You deserve to be wiped out politically.”
