TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny has told Ministers to report back to him within four weeks with suggestions on how the key recommendations of the Moriarty report could be implemented.
The 2,300-page report – published last week at the conclusion of a 14-year process – dominated yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.
Mr Kenny told his ministerial colleagues to ask their departments to study the recommendations made by Mr Justice Michael Moriarty and report back to him within four weeks.
A Government spokesman said yesterday that Ministers were asked to come back with suggestions as to how the recommendations “could or should be implemented”.
When asked did this mean that the Government had accepted all the recommendations made in the report, the spokesman said that was not necessarily the case.
Mr Justice Moriarty makes a number of formal recommendations, most dealing with the issues of political donations and transparency.
He recommends that all donations to, and indeed all income to, a political party should be disclosed.
He also states that “the financial, commercial or other interests of a donor” be disclosed.
Other recommendations include the independence of the Revenue to have statutory footing; extending compellability of witness provisions to other EU states; and a “positive duty” on witnesses to co-operate with tribunals of inquiry.
Mr Kenny, during his speech during the debate on the report, said the Government had restored the Tribunals of Inquiry Bill to the Dáil order paper, which would put in place a modern and comprehensive tribunal system.
He also said that several commitments in the programme for government would address such concerns, notably the intention to hold a referendum to reverse the Abbeylara judgment and allow Oireachtas committees carry out full investigations.
Mr Kenny said the Government intended to ban corporate donations to political parties and to reduce the limits on donations requiring disclosure. There was a commitment also to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists and whistleblowers’ legislation.
He said that new rules would also prohibit ministers, public servants and political appointees from working in the private sector for two years if there was a conflict of interest with their former roles.
Fine Gael also posted on its website last night the legal advice it received from a senior counsel that it was not required to disclose information to the Moriarty tribunal about a $50,000 donation from the Telenor/Esat consortium soon after it was awarded the second mobile phone licence.
The opinion was written by James Nugent SC, who stated the payment made by Mr O’Brien did not come within the terms of reference of the tribunal.
“Firstly, the payments were not made directly or indirectly to Michael Lowry,” he stated.
“Secondly, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Lowry was a trustee at the time of the New York dinner [at which the donation was first made], Fine Gael could not be considered to be a connected person within the meaning of the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995. Fine Gael is not a ‘person’ nor is it an ‘individual’ nor is it a ‘body corporate’.
“Thirdly, even if it were a body corporate it could not be said that one of the trustees of Fine Gael ‘controls’ that body corporate,” concluded Mr Nugent.
In the Dáil yesterday, Mr Kenny, referring to Mr Justice Moriarty’s criticism of Fine Gael’s refusal to disclose the donation, said it was wrong, as was the circuitous route of the donation. He said the report found the donation was unwelcome and was rejected by then leader John Bruton and that the party waived all legal rights to the tribunal once the source of the donation became known.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said Mr Kenny was trying to “make a virtue of the fact” that his party returned the donation and waived legal privilege.
“The facts are that this only ultimately happened when the donation was publicly exposed [in the media in 2001] and it was clear that the Moriarty tribunal would be investigating it,” he said.
