Although I was always morally certain that there was a significant element of corruption involved in Dublin County Council's rezoning decisions, this has turned out to be on a much larger scale than I had believed to be the case.
However, this corruption may not have been quite as pervasive as some newspaper accounts have suggested. For what has not been made clear so far is that the information Frank Dunlop has given the tribunal at several sessions relates to Dublin county councillors elected on two occasions, in 1985 and 1991. The number elected on these two occasions was 114 - to which must be added members subsequently co-opted following the deaths or resignations of elected members. Thus the number of people who served as councillors during this 1985-1999 period must have been at least 120.
So the figure of up to 26 councillors receiving payments represents one-fifth of the total number - rather than the one-third suggested in some media reports.
Quite different situations prevailed in these councils before and after 1991. In the 1985-1991 Dublin County Council, Fianna Fail had an absolute majority - 40 seats out of 78. In that council, the Fianna Fail councillors organising the rezoning seem to have been able to use the party whip to secure the support of party members who had not been bribed - although not all of their colleagues obeyed this whip.
By refusing to hold meetings in the evenings, they made it difficult for some anti-rezoning councillors with daytime jobs to attend, and by using the power of the chair to call votes only when a rezoning majority was present, they were able to minimise, although not eliminate, dependence on non-Fianna Fail councillors to push their schemes through.
However this all changed after June 1991: in none of the three councils - Fingal, South County and Dun Laoghaire - that replaced the former Dublin County Council did Fianna Fail have a majority. For, of the 27 Fianna Fail outgoing councillors who stood for re-election to these new councils in 1991, no fewer than 11, or two-fifths, were defeated - some of them apparently because of public dissatisfaction with their past rezoning activities. As a result, Fianna Fail was in a minority in the new councils, with no more than about one-third of the seats in each.
What is deeply disturbing is that, within this new council structure, the Fianna Fail rezoners seem to have succeeded in continuing to push dubious projects through - which clearly required significant support from a number of non-Fianna Fail councillors. Undoubtedly some of those who voted in this way were genuinely convinced that the rezonings they supported were desirable, but the scale of non-Fianna Fail support for rezonings in these new post-1991 councils was nevertheless such as to give rise to suspicions that Fianna Fail councillors might not be the only ones in receipt of payments from developers and landowners, or their agents.
Of course, despite Frank Dunlop's evidence that all but one of his payments related to rezoning votes, some of those who received such payments may argue that these donations were seen by them as innocent election contributions - and it is, I suppose, possible that in a couple of cases councillors may have so convinced themselves. But it is simply unacceptable for any political party at this stage to continue to be represented by anyone so imprudent or naive as to have accepted such a payment from a developer or landowner, or from a known agent of one of these, after having voted for a motion that benefited such an interested party financially.
A party that retained such a politician would have great difficulty in credibly seeking electoral support thereafter. However harsh this view may appear to be, the reputation of Irish politics ought, in this instance, to take precedence over all other considerations.
(Since writing the above, I have heard of, but have not seen, the statement issued by John Bruton last evening. I am glad that Fine Gael has shown its commitment to the highest standards in Irish politics.)
It is against this background that I believe the two main parties were right to set up internal inquiries into the behaviour of their Dublin county councillors.
Of course the parties' private inquiries lack the powers that the tribunals possess, and some of the councillors appearing before them may fail to disclose payments they received, but, should the eventual publication of the names furnished to the tribunals by Frank Dunlop, or subsequently by other witnesses, disclose that some councillors lied to their own party inquiry, that fact will strengthen that party's hand in taking the necessary action to disembarrass itself of the councillors involved.
And if, on the other hand, the receipt of payments, however described or attempted to be justified, is admitted to a party inquiry, the necessary action can then be taken promptly, without having to wait for a tribunal to report.
It has to be said that recent statements by the leaders of some of our parties have given rise to concern that they may not yet have understood and fully absorbed the traumatic impact on public opinion of recent disclosures.
Thus, the Taoiseach has been reported as defending the continued acceptance of corporate donations on the extraordinary basis that they are necessary to help the less-well-off stand for election. First of all, one may reasonably doubt whether less-well-off candidates would be the principal beneficiaries of personal corporate donations. Significant donations to individual candidates are, in fact, a relatively recent development in Irish politics. Throughout my time in politics it was not necessary for a party candidate to dig into his or her pocket to finance a personal campaign. It was not the candidates, but the party at local level, that financed constituency campaigns.
Anything other than party financing of campaigns is inherently anti-democratic because it effectively confines candidacy to well-off people - or, even worse, to people who have good corporate contacts. Personal financing of campaigns by candidates also makes a mockery of the multi-seat PR system, by enabling wealthy candidates to outspend fellow party members, thus destroying party cohesion.
Moreover, we have now become aware that recently much serious abuses have crept in, involving expensive personal campaigns financed by corporate funding of individual candidates - some of whom appear to have diverted part of such funding for their own personal benefit.
I find it astonishing that the Taoiseach, as a party leader who himself comes from a modest background, should appear to suggest that we should now institutionalise personal funding of candidates by corporate donations.
What many people, disgusted with revelations of corruption and financial malpractices in the political system, now want to see is a clear-cut and unambiguous alternative that would hold out the prospect of a politics free from any kind of dependence on corporate donations, to be replaced by a combination of neutral democratic financing of politics by the State and a return to our pre-1963 system of limits on electoral spending by parties.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie