An immediate investigation into the Irish building industry was sought yesterday by the president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), Sen Joe O'Toole.
His plea came in the wake of the publication on Thursday of the first interim report from the Flood tribunal, which found that several corrupt payments had been made by builders to former minister Mr Ray Burke.
Mr O'Toole said the State should, in a tribunal-type investigation, focus on the beneficial owners of the huge tracts of undeveloped lands in Dublin, and on those making the decisions to release land for housing development on a piece-by-piece basis, keeping supply down and prices exorbitantly high for young potential home-buyers.
He said that "the unscrupulous builder" was still alive and well, a fact proved by the 2001 report from the Comptroller and Auditor General, also published on Thursday. It showed they were "not paying taxes, playing ducks and drakes with company law and defrauding the taxpayer". The ICTU president also called for:
immediate action by the Revenue Commissioners and the Criminal Assets Bureau against those named as corrupt in the tribunal report;
the introduction of structures and protocols to require Government Departments to ensure ministers were at all times acting in good faith; and
an investigation into current tax evasion practices as outlined in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Sen O'Toole said anyone who formed the view after the publication of the tribunal report that the corrupt and the bad had been rooted out of our society should think again.
"They haven't gone away, you know. They are still at it and they are laughing at the rest of us."
He warned people not to hold their breath for expressions of remorse from those named and shamed in the report.
"Even now they will be in the offices of their lawyers and accountants devising strategies and deals to allow them escape from the threat of jail and to allow them hold on to their unlawful wealth".
The tribunal report, he said, showed how little authority the civil service had over a minister determined to do wrong. "Under our current legislation the civil service is no more than the clerks of the elected Government. They have to do as they are told. It is time to review this arrangement. In the UK there is a system where senior civil servants are required to report to the secretary of the Cabinet any inappropriate decisions taken by the minister. The Cabinet secretary is then required to investigate the matter reported."
His comments came in an address to the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed.
Meanwhile, SIPTU's national industrial secretary, Mr Noel Dowling, said public cynicism about the whole political establishment and the favourable treatment accorded to people of property would only be overcome by prosecutions and convictions of those found to have been corrupt.
"Investigations are all very well and even the revelations contained in the Flood report are welcome. However, the acid test of our democratic institutions will be the extent to which those who have been named and shamed are held to account in the courts," he said.
"The gardaí interviewed Ray Burke as far back as 1974 but no prosecutions followed. Similarly, despite the succession of investigations carried out under the Beef tribunal, McCracken tribunal, the Moriarty tribunal, and the Flood tribunal, as well as the report of the inspectors appointed to examine Ansbacher accounts, as yet no prosecutions have resulted except for Liam Lawlor's brief sojourns in Mountjoy for contempt."