Mahon Tribunal

liaconn said:
Not condoning some of FG's behaviour but it is nowhere near on a par with what Bertie and his like have done to this country, actions that will haunt many people for years to come as they struggle to pay huge mortgages on properties worth nothing, raise families in half finished estates miles from shops, schools and public transport and face long soul destroying commutes to work (if they're lucky enough to have a job)that leave no time for any kind of work life balance.
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I often think back and consider would things be any different now if say FG had come to power in 2002. Would they have regulated the banks better, would they have slowed down the housing bubble? Would their leaders have succumbed to the corruption within FF?

All I remember are giveaway budgets from FF during thise false 'boom' years where they were throwing cash around all over the place and FG and Lab would come on the airwaves saying "they did not go far enough". And FG/Lab councillors proved themsevles just as dodgy in terms of expenses and corruption during the boom years as their FF counterparts.
 
whatever you say about fianna fail, they were democratically elected 3 times in a row, everyone knew in 2007 that bertie had got money under the table and that the planning process throughout the country not just in dublin was corrupt, yet the irish people put them back into government in 2007, nobody wanted to believe the truth they wanted to believe in the fianna fail fairy tale then. At this stage i think it is better that the whole country admits to the mistakes that were made and takes responsibilty for them. At the end of the day fianna fail and bertie ahern were just incompetent parish pump politicians that we freely chose to re elect time and time again, they were not puppet politicians put there by moscow like what happened in eastern europe, or a colonial government like what happened in the past
 
joe sod said:
At this stage i think it is better that the whole country admits to the mistakes that were made and takes responsibilty for them.
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If by "taking responsibility" you mean that proven liars and corrupt politicians should be prosecuted, expelled from their parties, have their ministerial pensions removed and their assets seized, then I'm with you.

There was nothing "incompetent" about Fianna Fáil or Bertie Ahern's actions.
 
why cant we pass a law that allows for the removal of pensions from anyone who gets one from the Govt if they are convicted in a court or found against in a tribunal, etc etc
I really think that would scare a lot of the corruption out of public life...not it all, but a lot of it
 
Michael Martin says he believed Bertie. What? that he won it on the horses?:( Michael is either very gullible indeed or maybe he's telling a little porky.
 
Am up North at the moment and the main surprise of people around me is that people down there seem in any way surprised by any of the findings.

It is taken for granted by most here that this is how Free State politicians act and that this corruption has been long accepted by the majority in the twenty-six counties. Old Sod says it in his post "we freely chose time and time again to relect".

When the Duke of M says in his post " Michael is either very gullible or maybe is telling a little porky" would it be just as correct to say most of the voters were very gullible or knew he was telling porkies - but didn't care. ?
 
oldnick I meant that maybe Michael is telling a porky (about believing Bertram) but my comment could equally be interpreted as you have.

BTW the House of Paisley or the House of Robinson could not really be held up as role models of ethics in politics. Are you sure that your 6 county friends are not saying to you "why are the paddies getting their underwear in such a twist, we would never spend 300M investigating such peccadillos";)
 
Martin served under Haughey,Reynolds and Ahern......does he really think that the public think he knew nothing of what was going on in any of those regimes. He's either telling blatant lies or else he's too stupid to have seen what was going on/be involved>
either way, FF have to get rid of him
(personally I hope FF hold on to him, O'Dea et al...it's a good reminder to the voting public of the true FF)
 
Careful with the word "lies". Maybe they are mere untruths.

Pee appears to have told lies and Bertie untruths :confused:
 
the world and its mother knew bertie and FF were corrupt for years, strange that we didn't really care about this when he was telling us that our houses were going to keeping incresing in value by thousands every year! or that the boom was going to get boomier! but now that things have gone pear shaped, well he's a crook, get rid of him ect.
we dont care how corrupt anyone is.........just so long as they are telling us what we want to hear.
 
blueband said:
the world and its mother knew bertie and FF were corrupt for years, strange that we didn't really care about this when he was telling us that our houses were going to keeping incresing in value by thousands every year! or that the boom was going to get boomier! but now that things have gone pear shaped, well he's a crook, get rid of him ect.
we dont care how corrupt anyone is.........just so long as they are telling us what we want to hear.
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I'd love to be able to disagree with you.
 
DrMoriarty said:
If by "taking responsibility" you mean that proven liars and corrupt politicians should be prosecuted, expelled from their parties, have their ministerial pensions removed and their assets seized, then I'm with you.

There was nothing "incompetent" about Fianna Fáil or Bertie Ahern's actions.
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What baffles me is that they managed to spend between €250-300 million euro and not prove where the money came from. The also failed to prove that he was responsible for accruing any benefit to the developers.

As has been said the dogs on the street knew what was going on. Now we are taking a revisionist viewpoint and pretending we all thought that they were not on the take.

The Mahon report being referred to the DPP and Gardai is pure political optics. It is to make the foolish general population believe that something is being done.

The findings of the Mahon report are barely more useful than what could be drawn from Indo journalists over the years.
 
ontour said:
What baffles me is that they managed to spend between €250-300 million euro and not prove where the money came from. The also failed to prove that he was responsible for accruing any benefit to the developers.

As has been said the dogs on the street knew what was going on. Now we are taking a revisionist viewpoint and pretending we all thought that they were not on the take.

The Mahon report being referred to the DPP and Gardai is pure political optics. It is to make the foolish general population believe that something is being done.

The findings of the Mahon report are barely more useful than what could be drawn from Indo journalists over the years.
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+1 good post.
 
I dont get the way the media arent all over Michael Martin for trying to distance himself from characters in the Mahon Tribunal. The report mentions that he was the recipient of donations from Owen O'Callaghan as this time - see details below (wont let me cut and paste into this post for whatever reason). I agree the Report does not implicate Martin in anyway and mentions that he got less money than e.g. Liam Lawlor. But, it is concerning that the current leader of the opposition was in receipt of a policial campaign donation, of what would have been considered a large sum of money at the time, from one of the central figures in the Tribunal. The report also mentions that O'Callaghan's company made a charitable donation at the request of Martin.

Item #8 on page 122
Paragraph 1.235 page 725
Paragraph 22.44 page 1004
Paragraph 22.52 page 1006
 
How can the reports findings be used by the DPP, gardai and revenue. On what basis. The report states that it does not believe the 10 people who say they loaned Bertie money. But there is no proof either that they did or didn't. It's taken 14 years and 300 million and nothing will happen to anyone. That's the real scandal. That report is just as good as any newspaper report I've read in the last 14 years but that didn't cost me and you 300 million.
 
Bronte said:
How can the reports findings be used by the DPP, gardai and revenue. On what basis. The report states that it does not believe the 10 people who say they loaned Bertie money. But there is no proof either that they did or didn't. It's taken 14 years and 300 million and nothing will happen to anyone. That's the real scandal. That report is just as good as any newspaper report I've read in the last 14 years but that didn't cost me and you 300 million.
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The Bertie loan money forms only a small part of the report. While it cannot say where he got the money from, it does confirm that he received this money, so, it can be regarded as taxable income by Revenue.

Likewise with the considerable sums of money paid out to quite a sizeable number of individuals mentioned throughout the report. Revenue can check whether or not the individuals declared the income and paid tax on it. Some 15-20 years later, there will be a considerable amount of tax and penalties on even some of the more modest undeclared income.

I assume that the CAB has a strong case to confiscate some of the assets accumulated by some of the individuals mentioned in the report arising from their corrupt activities.

And, while the reports themselves cannot be used as evidence, they do contain exhibits and statements which can be used by the Gardai to prosecute for corruption. I myself will be very annoyed if the Gardai/DPP do not manage to put a few individuals behind bars. The report has done most of the hard work, only a matter of following up for them.
 
csirl said:
The Bertie loan money forms only a small part of the report. While it cannot say where he got the money from, it does confirm that he received this money, so, it can be regarded as taxable income by Revenue.

.
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Well let's just take this small amount of money. 165K I think it was. How is it taxable if Bertie tells revenue it was gifts or loans and if he demonstrates he has paid it back. I think he's already made a settlement with revenue so what else can they go after him for?

Do you actually really believe anyone will go to jail? Nobody does real jail time for white collar crime, certainly not politicians. Only if you falsify garlic vat returns and are a nobody it seems do you get a hefty sentence.

What is going to happen is that revenue/cab/gardai/dpp are going to spend years investigaging this and if they do decide to go after someone, no doubt that person will fight it in the courts and then that person will be 70 and no point jailing somebody elderly.
 
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