‘Standards Taoiseach applied to others did not apply to him’

FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny yesterday said that the office of the Taoiseach had been damaged by the revelations that Bertie Ahern had accepted payments of €50,000 from 12 people in 1993 and 1994 to help with legal bills relating to his marriage breakdown.

In the first exchanges with the Taoiseach in the Dáil after the summer break, Mr Kenny said the disclosure of the payments was not simply a matter of ethics but a fundamental principle of the difference between right and wrong.

Confronting Mr Ahern during Leaders Questions, Mr Kenny said that the Taoiseach had, in the past, made many statements about probity and about not being beholden to interests.

He charged that the Taoiseach had prescribed standards that applied to everybody else, but accepted lower standards of himself than anybody else.

Mr Kenny also challenged Mr Ahern to admit that he was wrong in accepting the payments.

In response, Mr Ahern insisted that he the payments had given risen to “absolutely no conflict of interest” or had ever influenced any of his decisions.

“Never have I taken a bribe and put personal interest in front of the public good,” he said.

He described the leaks to the media last week as an attempt to turn confidential information give to a tribunal in a “political smear”.

Mr Kenny later retorted that Fianna Fáil ministers had used the Taoiseach’s personal life as a means of deflecting attention away from the core issue.

“Nobody is prepared to accept responsibility,” he said.

“That is what diminishes the status of your office.”

The Fine Gael leader also raised the issue of the £8,000 (€10,000) paid to the Taoiseach for speaking at a function in Manchester.

He said that if it was paid while Mr Ahern was a minister, it would have breach guidelines that strictly forbid any pecuniary award for personal use by a minister.

Mr Ahern said that the money was paid in 1994, when he was Minister for Finance.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte reminded Mr Ahern that Mr Haughey’s “collection” had also started as a whip-around.

Like Mr Kenny he also accused Mr Ahern of setting standards which he did not observe himself.

The Labour leader drew attention to the fact that what Mr Ahern claimed had been a loan had remained unpaid after 13 years, with no interest paid on the sum.

He also expressed scepticism that there was no written evidence of the loan.

“None of this arrangement was ever committed to paper,” he said.

“Is there any evidence that (the donors) gave you money?” he asked.

In the course of his response, the Taoiseach said that the loan had attracted interest of 3% per annum and that the interest payable of the €50,000 amounted to some €20,000.

He also said that he had paid capital gains tax and also paid gift tax.

He did not specify if the gift tax reference related to the payment of £8,000 (€10,000) for the Manchester engagement.