FF senator admits party breached ethics

A FIANNA Fáil senator has admitted her party breached political ethics and has said there is now no place for those who carried around suitcases of cash or claimed expenses for holiday homes.

Newly-elected Senator Averil Power went on to suggest Fianna Fáil had “destroyed trust” among the people. She also insisted it was no longer acceptable for party members to refuse to answer questions about unorthodox financial arrangements.

Speaking at the MacGill Summer School in Donegal, Ms Power said the collapse in the FF vote had happened before the recent general election. She praised FF leader Micheál Martin’s attempts to rejuvenate the party with plans to run a candidate under 30 in every ward in 2014 local elections.

The party’s Seanad education spokesperson said there was huge work to be done among voters to repair a legacy of broken values.

“While breaches of ethical standards occurred in almost all parties, we must recognise that Fianna Fáil, more than any other party, has been associated with the worst of those breaches.

“In the new Fianna Fáil, there must be no place for anybody who thinks it’s acceptable to claim expenses from the taxpayer for their holiday home.

“And in the new Fianna Fáil, there must be no place for anybody who thinks it’s acceptable to carry around suitcases full of cash, give loans to friends from party funds, or refuse to answer reasonable questions about their rather unorthodox financial arrangements.”

Former FF activist Noel Whelan went further yesterday and predicted that the party was unlikely to recover from the recent meltdown at the general election.

Mr Whelan predicted that FF might merge with Sinn Féin or another party or even wither away all together. The party would “probably not survive,” and Micheál Martin had an almost impossible task rebuilding it from the ground up.

“There is no precedent of a modern Irish democracy party making a recovery on the scale that FF now has to make.

“He isn’t building on a green field site. It will be at least a year before there are any green shoots. But his first task is a site clearing job. The debris in his way in organisational terms or otherwise, is immense . . . but even the site he seeks to build on is toxic.”

Fine Gael director for strategy Frank Flannery said FF’s links with developers and the economic collapse had contributed towards its downfall. “It is not just perceived as mismanagement but also as a saga of greed, of avarice, of arrogance and even of corruption embracing politicians, bankers, developers and ultimately the whole apparatus of the social partnership all under the patronage of FF and symbolised in people’s minds by the fundraising tent at the Galway races.”