Quinn: Ahern is misleading public

Labour leader Ruairi Quinn today accused the Taoiseach of misleading the public over revelations that a former minister received corrupt payments.

He said there were still questions Bertie Ahern must answer on how much he knew about payments that had been made to Ray Burke when he appointed him as Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1997.

His remarks came after the Flood Inquiry’s interim report, published last Thursday, found that former Fianna Fail minister Burke received corrupt payments totalling almost £200,000 in the 1970s and 1980s.

Quinn today claimed that the Taoiseach knew before Mr Burke’s appointment to the Government that he had received money but still went on to take him on as Minister for Foreign Affairs.

On Irish radio this morning, he urged the Taoiseach to conduct a debate on the matter, which he described as “murky“.

He said: “The one thing about this is, nothing is clear, it’s murky, it’s waffly, it’s contradictory it’s inaccurate and it’s misleading.

“And it’s all designed to do one thing, and that is to cover up the fact that even though he was told by close colleagues in Fianna Fail not to bring Ray Burke back from the political wilderness into which (former Taoiseach) Albert Reynolds cast him, Bertie Ahern did so.

Quinn repeated demands for a debate, after the Labour party tabled a Dail motion on Tuesday calling on the Taoiseach to make a statement on the circumstances of Ray Burke’s appointment.

He said today: “As the leader of the Labour party ... I’m saying to the Taoiseach have a proper debate, let us have accountability in the place the people of the Republic have established for those kind of debates and not have it elsewhere through innuendo.”

Mr Burke, who resigned from the cabinet in October 1997, has always maintained that the donations he received during his career were legitimate political contributions.

However, the second interim report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments found that Mr Burke received numerous corrupt builders, developers and other businessmen.

The report found that the acquisition of Mr Burke’s home at Swords in Dublin formed a corrupt payment, in that the price of the property did not represent its open market value.

It also found that several witnesses had failed to co-operate or hindered the inquiry.

Among those who failed to fully co-operate was PJ Mara, who was directing Fianna Fail’s election campaign for the Nice Treaty until his resignation last week.

Mr Ahern said on Monday night he felt “betrayed” by the corruption in which Burke was involved.

Fine Gael on Wednesday announced details of a private member’s motion on the matter. Leader Enda Kenny said it was a matter of “grave national urgency” that Bertie Ahern revealed what he knew about Ray Burke.