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Michael Woods – resign

From the RTE archives. September 30, 2003. Michael Woods is interviewed about the indemnity deal. Up to now it’s been sitting somewhere without a link on the RTE website, I pulled it off.

First, an analysis of the C&AG’s annual report 2002, which questioned the indemnity deal:

Then, the Michael Woods interview. Hold onto your hats.

Miriam: The report suggested today we could be looking at a bill of 1 billion. Was that a good deal you brokered?

Woods: That is a guesstimate by the Comptroller and Auditor General. He has made his own sums up and says what he thinks might be the case. As you read out there, he says that the average is going to be 96,000 and multiplied it by 10,000 and all this kind of thing, and got the figure.”

Actually even the Comptroller was off by a fair bit. It turned into 15,000 victims of abuse, and a €1.2bn bill. Mathematics, Mr Woods, mathematics. Here is the report being talked about. But then what would the Comptroller know about figures compared to Dr Woods?

Some more choice quotes:

“The State carries the major responsibility, there’s no doubt in my mind about that”

“The country will be glad in time that this shadow on the people of Ireland has been lifted – because it was done by the people”

Just to emphasise that final bit, I recorded the last 2 minutes in a separate video:

No, Mr Woods, it was done by the religious. And you blame us.

You did a secret sweetheart deal with the religious. Resign your seat and disappear with your gold plated pension. I never want to hear from you again you fool. You were either incompetent or complicit.

Resign.

Tax implications?

Take a look at this explanatory note:

Conditions to be Satisfied to Avail of the Section 54 Exemption

4.1 Revenue will now apply the gift tax exemption under the “public purposes” provisions of section 54 CATA, 1976, to political donations that meet the various conditions and requirements under the Electoral Acts. These include the requirements that the donation;

• is made to a political party, a member of either House of the Oireachtas, a candidate at a Dail, Seanad, European or Presidential Election,
• does not exceed the maximum permissible limit of €2,539.48 (£2,000) for individual politicians/candidates and €6,348.69 (£5,000) for political parties in any given year or in the context of any specific Dail, Seanad, European or Presidential Election,
• is not anonymous (unless less than €126.97(£100)) or prohibited (e.g. from a person residing outside Ireland other than an Irish Citizen).
• is of a type set out in section 22(2)(a)(i) of the Electoral Act, 1997 e.g. a donation of money, a donation of property or goods, the supply of a service free or for less than full commercial price, etc. and • that the donation is expended on political purposes (as defined in section 49(b) of the Electoral Act, 2001 – see Appendix) whether in the context of an election or otherwise.

Did Fianna Fail pay gift tax on the Durkan New Homes donation?

What is going on?

On Monday, an Irish Examiner report revealed that Fianna Fail had failed to disclose donations from some of the country’s biggest developers: Ballymore Properties and Durkan New Homes. The news has been greeted with apparent silence elsewhere in the media. I have to wonder why.

It strikes me as important given that electoral law looks to have been broken, and Fianna Fail have responded with rather nonsensical denials that anything untoward has happened.

The information was revealed only because of a series of requests and an FOI request, that up until this year, had never been performed by anyone. Other companies turned up in the trawl, including:

Mosney Irish Holidays
MP Administration
Bridford Properties
Omega Aviation Services
Beechill Growers
Airscape Limited
Harcourt Developments Limited
Garland Homes
Harte Designs
Burgrove Limited
Williams Motor Warehouse
Seabass Limited
Poplar Linens Trading Company
O’Riain Associates International
McGettigan Construction Limited

These donations were declared under the Companies Act and Electoral Act, but the amounts given were not known until this week. They are not the only companies.

I know probably more than most that looking at a list of limited companies is not very appealing. So it is perhaps helpful to look behind the companies, who directs them, and then trawl newspaper archives to see what business they have been involved in.

Ballymore is famous enough, Sean Mulryan is one of the country’s best known developers. But what of the others? Let’s start digging. First up: Burgrove Limited.

[Disclosure: I work for the Irish Examiner]


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