Paying a price for golden circle politics

THE irony of people from Fianna Fáil, of all parties, calling for the Moriarty Report to go to the DPP could almost be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that it is still likely that there isn’t one single elected representative in Ireland who would pass a proper audit of their expense claims or their fundraising.

It simply beggars belief that when a politician is asked to give their time to person A rather than person B they do not understand perfectly well it’s because nod, nod, wink, wink person A gave the party more money than person B. So before there is a rush from the political class to judge Mr Lowry and pretend that his actions are in the past, they might want to explain why it is that, for example, not one single party, not Fine Gael, who made a great show of claiming it, would publish audited accounts in 2010 but has still not done so, or even the self-sainted Socialist Party, publish verifiably audited party accounts, which explain how they are funded and by whom. The first set of expense claims by the new Dáil will be interesting because, to date, not one single elected representative, at any level or from any party or none, has ever published the receipts to prove the expenses they claimed were genuinely incurred. Nor have any ever published audited accounts of how they funded their election campaigns and what they spent those funds on. Nor do any of them declare their beneficial ownership of properties they claim the accommodation allowance for, ie they rent the apartment and/or local office from a family member, but don’t declare the interest, and the taxpayer pays the mortgage with the beneficial ownership of a capital asset remaining with the representative’s family and/or a party hack.

How many TDs are claiming accommodation expenses on properties that no longer have an outstanding mortgage and how many have re-mortgaged and kept on claiming the allowance? The only way to end this culture of cronyism is for monumental changes to how politics is funded in Ireland. How different would Ireland now be if Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour hadn’t sold their souls to vested interests and instead were able to develop their policies without favour on the merits of the policy arguments and not on who paid them the most. The cost of the taxpayer-funded politics is far cheaper than the cost we are now paying for the failure of politics to not cave into the vested interests of a select golden circle.