'We must break link between big business and government'

Fianna  Fáil and big business people are "hand in glove" and it would be the job of the Green Party to break the link between…

Fianna  Fáil and big business people are "hand in glove" and it would be the job of the Green Party to break the link between big business and Government, Mr John Gormley TD, told the conference.

"As far as this Government is concerned, it has always been politics before people, big business before the community and the individual before society. That is the hierarchy of priorities," he said

No Government had been so beset by tribunals, scandals, resignations as this administration and the PDs were a part of that.

"The PDs sacrificed their remaining principles for power, and in the midst of those many crises Mary Harney told us that the public would forget in three months."

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The PDs had become part of the disease, a disease which now had to be eradicated. They had become indistinguishable from Fianna Fáil.

Mr Gormley was making a retaliatory attack on the junior Government partner, after the Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell, said at his party conference that the Greens could not be trusted to keep the country on course economically.

"They are no longer the watchdogs but the lapdogs of this discredited Government. They too come from a culture which, if not tolerating corruption, certainly defines it in very narrow terms."

Setting out Green Party demands in government, Mr Gormley said it wanted a ban on corporate donations, a "severe" cap on personal donations of around €100 annually. It also wanted spending limits imposed on parties between elections.

"I say this to other political parties, don't even think of knocking on our door unless you share our commitment to cleaning up Irish politics." All of this should happen, he said, without further assistance from the Exchequer to political parties.

For the other parties, as long as a politician does not pocket the money, then it's OK. "We in the Greens say it is not OK. If donations, corporate or personal, are influencing the political process, that represents corruption of the political process."

Mr Gormley said he would like to see the Greens become the party of public transport and believed they would attract votes as a direct result of that.

"We are the eighth wealthiest country in the world, with the public services of a developing country. What this Government has given us is the classic case of private wealth and public squalor."