It has been said that history repeats itself - the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. This confidence motion put forward by Fine Gael is a pathetic, even farcical, attempt to repeat what happened in the autumn of 1982.

Fianna Fil at that time were tackling the problems of the national finances, had just reached a [645] valuable agreement with the trade unions aimed at cutting back special pay awards and had produced The Way Forward, which, if implemented, would have saved us from the most prolonged recession any country in western Europe had to suffer over the next four years. Instead, Fine Gael and Labour were determined to pre-empt any success by tabling a motion of no confidence - there is nothing wrong with that. They subsequently won an election and took office, on the pretext of providing a Government of - I am quoting from some of their literature - "honesty and integrity", a phrase which was marketed then like a soap powder. They gave us what was probably the worst and certainly least successful Government in the history of the State.
Once again, the Opposition have nothing to offer in terms of policy alternatives. Instead of trying to beat or to match this Government on policy, they are once again trying to beat them by producing a wide series of so-called sensational revelations to break up the Government and to win power by default.
I find the style of politics being pursued at present distasteful. It would not be my chosen way to carry out political debate. However, Fine Gael, Labour and, above all The Workers' Party have chosen the level at which the debate is to be conducted and that is the level of debate in which they must now be answered.
What is most objectionable in this whole series of affairs is the rampant hypocrisy and the double standards. The Fine Gael Party are particularly good at striking poses and talking about low standards in high places but they consistently choose to ignore the beam in their own eyes. The last Fine Gael-Labour Coalition besides being a grotesquely incompetent Government did not rate very highly on the subject of public and political accountability. At the time of the debate on Irish Shipping the then Minister, Deputy Jim Mitchell, was at great pains to distance himself, his Department and his officials, from any knowledge of the very questionable charter deals which led to the sinking of that [646] great company. Deputy Mitchell, in spite of what he now holds, refused to appear before a Dil committee to discuss how he had handled his affairs. The late Deputy Cluskey asked a lot of questions at that time about the fiasco in Dublin Gas which cost roughly 100 million to the taxpayers of this country. The scandal so infuriated Deputy Cluskey - a man of great honour - that he resigned from office. He was not the only one to resign from office about what was going on and the low standards in high places at that time. Mr. Colm McCarthy also resigned from the board of BGE over a scandalous deal, a disgraceful deal, a deal which was highlighted for the Irish people by the courage of Deputy Cluskey.
I am sure it is a matter of coincidence, and I will be told by Fine Gael that it is a matter of no relevance, that the Chairman of Dublin Gas, Mr. Ferguson, happened at that time to be the chairman of the Fine Gael fundraising committee. When this happened, with one honourable exception, the Labour Party did nothing and said less.

One can imagine the furore that would have been created in similar circumstances if Fianna Fil Ministers or Fianna Fil appointees or Fianna Fil fundraisers were involved.

The Deputy is a gas man if he can sit there and say nothing about all of this. In the course of this contribution I will outline more than one other scandal involving and implicating senior Fine Gael contacts which remain firmly brushed under the carpet. Deputy Michael Noonan, for example, has never explained the loss of 6 million of taxpayers' money in the export credit insurance scam in Canada. That money disappeared through fraud in 1986. He was Minister for Industry and Commerce at that time but he has never commented on the matter in this House. I hope he [647] will break his long silence and inform us now of his accountability in the issue.

People talk about golden circles these days. Fine Gael above all parties have had some friends in the business world. AIB, for example, was bailed out with remarkable expedition from the ICI debacle and allowed to pay an unaltered dividend with indecent haste.
However, I would like to come to some more recent controversies and deal specifically with them. The commercial activities of the Irish Sugar Company over the past four years have, rightly and properly, come under the microscope following revelations about arrangements that certain executives made to reward themselves and their families at State expense. The political connections of these people has been a matter of comment in some sectors of the media for some time.

I am not saying that association with Fine Gael is a crime or that it is an offence of any kind against the law of this land but I would suggest that it is an offence, on occasions, against common sense if it is not actually a crime. Nor am I saying that Fine Gael can be reasonably blamed for every character, shady or otherwise, who is associated with them. However, I do hold that above all else that party which have based their entire existence on what one perceptive journalist called earlier this week the mirror image of Fianna Fil, should be the last party to decide to base their attack on this Government on the idea of guilt by association.
I have already dealt elsewhere with another aspect of the affairs of the Sugar Company in 1986. I refer to the report which I laid before the Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies on the acquisition of a shareholding by the Sugar Company in Woodland Investment Group Limited. On 1 May 1986 Irish Sugar acquired 140,000 shares in that company. The Companies Office records for 1 May 1986 on Woodland Investment Group Limited make very interesting reading indeed. I am glad Deputy Deasy has now joined us. Among other things it shows a set of share transactions involving a private individual whom the Fine Gael members on the Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies choose to identify as Mr. Brian Hussey. In these dealings 52,181 shares were sold by that gentleman to the Sugar Company and 59,601 shares were sold to the new group. Having offloaded a total of 111,752 shares, Mr. Hussey was left with a holding of one share in the original company. We do now know how much was [649] paid by the then State-owned company to the relation of a serving Fine Gael Minister. The deal has been described to me by one leading businessman not as a golden handshake but as a golden parachute. In due course, as we know, Mr. Comerford and Mr. Tully - two gentlemen whose names crop up elsewhere and, indeed, everywhere - joined the board of the new company.
While we do not know how much Mr. Hussey received, we do know that the investment was far from highly regarded by either financial or accounting specialists who looked into the affairs of the Sugar Company and this is the important issue. One of these firms of consultants operating just over a year later for the Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies referred to this investment as having been "undertaken without due consideration" and went on to suggest that the investment be disposed of. Within months of that report, another firm of consultants, Price Waterhouse, found that the cumulative losses on this venture at that time amounted to 750,000 and described the investment as being valued at nil. The Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies accepted my report on this quite extraordinary affair and the matter has been referred to the inspector appointed by the High Court.
There are a whole series of questions appended to that report dealing with the cost to the Sugar Company of this investment, possible payments to Sugar Company executives and possible contacts between Fine Gael Ministers. I have no doubt that Fine Gael contributors will provide us with the details of exactly how much was paid for these shares and exactly why this investment took place. Why, for example, did the Sugar Company which had ample space in Tuam and had a well-known and a long-standing connection with Hilleshog, the other firm involved, not get involved directly in this particular investment? I await with interest the answer to those questions.

While we are on the issue of friends and golden circles there are aspects of the affairs of Telecom ireann which would seem to warrant considerable and closer scrutinty than they have received to date. I am glad Deputy S. Barrett is in the House. Quite understandably, virtually every eye in this House and elsewhere has been focused on the Telecom ireann site at Ballsbridge. In nearby Clonskeagh there is another site where some interesting things have been happening. In October, 1990, Ericssons, one of the major suppliers to Telecom ireann occupied a newly constructed office at Richview in Clonskeagh. The building is in the front garden of the Smurfit headquarters. The building was constructed by a company called D-MAC, a company which Dr. Michael Smurfit claims is owned by the Smurfit pension fund. Journalists have been unable to establish whether this is the case and the companies involved, and some of their leading personnel, have not been particularly helpful in establishing the facts. However, we know that two shares in the company are held by Bacchantes Properties Limited, an Isle of Man company which has featured in debates here and elsewhere. The other is held by Bacchantes Properties Limited and by a Mr. Frank Conroy. Mr. Conroy is a very busy man. He is, among other things, a director of Telecom ireann. My IPA year book informs me, although it is not on his list of directorships, that he is also a director of Telecom ireann Information Systems. He is also a director of a number of other companies - Barrett, Hegarty, Molony Limited is one. That company will be well-known to members of the Fine Gael Party. They and Mr. Conroy will be particularly well-known to Deputy Sen Barrett who has joined us and who is another of the partners of that company. The interesting point about all this is that Ericssons moved to the Beechill office from offices [651] at the Harcourt Centre. Their old offices did not stand idle--
Mr. S. Barrett Mr. S. Barrett 

Mr. Roche: The old office at the Harcourt Centre did not stand idle for very long as Telecom ireann obligingly occupied 10,000 square feet of the vacated offices and the lease was assigned to Telecom ireann by Ericsson Limited. All this could have just been a happy coincidence, but I think not. The deal between Ericssons and D-MAC was negotiated by Mr. Frank Conroy. He at that time was a director of two State bodies, TEIS and Telecom ireann. I wonder whether Fine Gael, who appointed Deputy Barrett's business partner to the board of Telecom ireann in 1984, would see any conflict of interest there. I await with interest the demands of Fine Gael to have this whole affair made the subject of another inquiry and I anticipate their ringing condemnations of conflict of interests.
With regard to saying these things outside this House, I have no problem. At least one newspaper has already specifically said these things outside this House, despite the whingeings of Deputy Barrett. The truly interesting thing about this is that the Conroy/D-MAC/Telecom triangle and all of its tortuous manifestations were fully explored by The Sunday Business Post two weeks ago, but a Trappist-like silence has surrounded the whole affair as far as Fine Gael are concerned.
Interestingly, this is not the only property contact between the Fine Gael appointed company director in Telecom and Ericssons. That gentleman was involved in the development of an office block at Adelaide Road, Glasthule, in Deputy Barrett's constituency in the early 1980s. That building lay effectively idle until 1985 mainly due to the problem of getting sufficient phone lines. The problem was resolved shortly after Mr. Conroy joined the Telecom board, no doubt a concidence, and the phones were put in place and Ericcssons moved in as tenants.
[654] I would like to turn now to issues raised recently by Deputies Owen and Mitchell. I refer to the Kinsealy pipeline.

I would like now to turn to the issue raised recently by Deputies Owen and Mitchell. I refer to the Kinsealy pipeline. In this, Fine Gael have been in pursuit of inherently unverifiable and implausible conjectures about the possible future implications of sewerage connections for the development of the grounds of the Taoiseach's property at Kinsealy. What we are dealing with here is conjecture laced with innuendo. The Taoiseach has categorically and unambiguously stated that he has no intention of seeking a rezoning of the grounds of his home.
[656] The facts of the case have not been clearly dealt with. The Taoiseach allowed pipes to be laid across his land to connect the Baskin Cottages. This happened ten years ago. The Taoiseach did not look for any form of compensation. Recently, to prevent an outflow polluting an open stream with very limited capacity this scheme was connected to the Feltrim/ Kinsealy sewerage scheme for a cost of around 80,000. I state that fact because it is relevant. It is impossible to see anything against the public interest in all this. Deputy Bruton in his characteristic fashion joined in the hue and cry. I wonder should he have so done.
It is a pity that Deputies Owen and Mitchell with their minds so concentrated on sewerage did not extend their investigations in the direction of Dunboyne, where something very much more interesting and significant has been taking place. It is my information that land at Castle Farm, Dunboyne, belonging to members of the Bruton family, including Deputy Richard Bruton, who together with his brother Deputy John Bruton is trustee for another portion, was rezoned for residential development in May 1989. There is nothing wrong with that. Nearly a year later a contract was signed for the sale of almost eight acres to a developer for 55,000 an acre with an extra 1,000 "luck money". The deal also involved land belonging to a neighbour, bringing the total area involved to around 17 acres. The original asking price had been pushed up in negotiation from 35,000 an acre. The price caught the peak of the market. The land was sold without planning permission but in the confident and assured expectation that there would be no difficulty getting permission.
An application to build 95 houses was subsequently lodged with Meath County Council by the developer in 1990, and was refused. The grounds of refusal were not simply the lack of sewerage treatment capacity in Dunboyne, but also that the River Tolka was much too small to take effluent. Consequently, the development was stated not to be "in the interests of proper planning and the development of [657] the area". That is a matter of record. However, An Bord Pleanla upheld an appeal stipulating that no more than 50 houses should be built for the time being and the remainder when the sewerage improvements were in place. This was against the specific advice of Meath County Council.
As recently as last June Meath County Council submitted a scheme costing 560,000 to pipe sewage from Dunboyne to link with the greater Dublin scheme at Mulhuddart. I understand that their report refers among other reasons to new developments about to take place at Castle Farm. This matter is still with the Department and it is not clear at whose behest the county council acted on this. I am sure some Fine Gael worthy will ask, what is wrong with all this? There may well be nothing wrong with it - so far. However if the name on this land was Haughey and not Bruton we would be deafened by the clamour about it.
There is however another interesting detail in all these issues. While this was going on in Dunboyne the building industry was going through a very difficult period. The builder sought a number of extensions - and got them - on the closing of the sale until he could get planning permission. I am informed that the owners were paid 60,000 under a variety of penalty clauses for the period to May 1991 with a further 22,000 due in September last. I am sure I will not be told if it was paid but it is claimed that the builder was asked to call these payments, in particular the 60,000 payment, "compensation" for tax reasons. Penalty int erest, as the House knows well, is added to income and taxed at the full rate. Compensation is a different matter. The questions which have to be asked are whether this was true and would this constitute a legitimate tax avoidance ploy - a term which infuriates every PAYE taxpayer.
As I understand it the contract has now fallen through. Well over 100,000 in deposit and compensation has been paid for land which remains in the hands of the original owners which has not merely been rezoned residential but now has absolute planning permission for 50 [658] houses and potential for another 45. It is worth several hundred thousand pounds and, perhaps, more when the taxpayers pay for the sewerage improvements in the Dunboyne area. I do not wish to suggest that land owners in selling their land for housing development do anything wrong or that as land owners they are not perfectly within their rights irrespective of whether they are politicians or not to seek to use and develop their lands as they so wish within the planning laws. The tax aspects of any transaction in these matters clearly will be dealt with in due course by the Revenue Commissioners.

However, what I cannot understand, given the striking parallels between this and the allegations which have been made not only by Deputies Owen and Mitchell but by Deputy Bruton, is why Deputy Bruton should be so imprudent as to deal with this issue in the way he has. I have to say that I take no personal joy in recounting such issues as I have touched on here.
I much prefer to carry on political debate on the level of policy and performance. Fine Gael and other parties have been happy to debase political debate by focusing it entirely at the level of invective and innuendo. They should not now whinge when they are responded to in like coin.
I was amused recently when the deputy leader of that party chose to refer to my report to the Oireachtas joint committee [659] as muck-raking looked through his own eyes.

I have no doubt as to the nature of the response my contribution will touch off here. What I am suggesting is that if we take any set of facts and choose to portray them in a certain way we can conjure up scandals where probably none exist but the Members sitting on the Opposition benches started this and they should not whinge now when they are responded to in like form.
