‘One law for Bertie, another for the rest’

FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny said there seems to be “one law for Bertie Ahern and another law for the rest of the people” in relation to tax compliance.

Earlier yesterday, the Taoiseach, speaking at a press conference during his trade visit to South Africa, said that Mr Kenny was telling a “barefaced lie” when saying Mr Ahern was not tax compliant.

But Mr Kenny dismissed that attack as “desperate and dishonest”, saying the Taoiseach’s problems were of his own making because he failed to pay all his taxes.

“I have no intention of descending to his level of name-calling; this is much too serious a matter, where the Taoiseach of our country is unable to produce a tax clearance certificate and be compliant with the Revenue Commissioners,” said Mr Kenny.

“He’s the person who introduced the law requiring politicians to be able to send out a statement to the Irish people that they are tax compliant.

“He has not been able to produce a tax clearance certificate, and the fact of the matter is, had he paid his taxes when they were due, he would not now be in this situation. It is of his own making.

“In the Dáil in 1997, the Taoiseach, when criticising the behaviour of Mr Haughey and Mr Lowry, said ‘paying tax is not something just for the “little people”. No one, however, eminent, is above the law’. Mr Ahern seems to think that he can write his own rules.”

Asked if he was saying the Taoiseach definitely owed tax, Mr Kenny responded: “Yes, I am.”

Further questioned how he could make that assertion when the Revenue was still investigating, Mr Kenny responded: “Well, I am definitive from this point of view: He is unable to produce a tax clearance certificate, and my point is, had he paid his taxes when they were due, he would have been able to produce a tax clearance certificate.”

Yet despite Mr Kenny’s belief that the Taoiseach owes tax from the 1990s, Fine Gael has not made a formal complaint to the Standards in Public Office Commission about the tax clearance certificate Mr Ahern obtained following the 2002 general election.

It is understood Fine Gael is reluctant to do this in case the commission fails to find against Mr Ahern, in which event the Government would claim the Taoiseach had been given a clean bill of health — thereby backfiring on Fine Gael.

Asked if this was the case, Mr Kenny replied: “Well, I don’t want to comment on that now.”

Meanwhile, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said: “Failure to secure a tax clearance certificate means that he has been unable to establish to the satisfaction of the

Revenue Commissioners that he is tax compliant.

“Is there any precedent from anywhere in the democratic world of a head of government being unable to establish that he is tax compliant and remaining in office?”