HIGGINS AND RABBITTE SPELT OUT FAVOURS TO o'REILLY COMPANIES

Jim Higgins (Fine Gael)

The changed terms of reference will have to be clear, specific and comprehensive. They must enable the tribunal to investigate all policy decisions by Mr Burke when he was Minister for Justice, Communications, Industry and Commerce and Energy between 1987 and 1992 in order to ascertain whether decisions taken by Mr Burke or Governments of which he was member could have been influenced in any way by payments he or the Fianna Fáil party received in that period.

We want the tribunal to establish the real reason Princes Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of Independent Newspapers, was granted lucrative MMDS licences either directly or as shareholders in companies which held licences in all but two of the 29 cells for which licences were offered and awarded.

We want to know why Mr Ray Burke as Minister agreed to all the main terms sought by Independent Newspapers in the granting of exclusive MMDS licences. We want to know the reason Mr Burke insisted on signing and despatching from his office the letter of comfort to Mr Joe Hayes, Managing Director of Independent Newspapers. We want to know the reason the Minister departed from official advice in providing written assurances sought by Mr Hayes. We want to know the motivation behind Mr Burke's assurance to allow existing franchise holders not only to apply for a renewal of their 10–year licence, three years after the MMDS systems were established, but to also offer them the comfort that:

"I should say that I do not see changes of franchise being made simply for the sake of change. Unless my Department has had cause to express grave dissatisfaction to an MMDS Licensee, it will be safe to assume that Agreements under Regulation 7 will be given to existing licensees."

That was a cast iron guarantee.

We want to know why another O'Reilly owned company, the Fitzwilton subsidiary, Rennicks, visited Mr Burke's home with a cheque made out to cash for £30,000. We are led to believe no favours were sought or given. Does the Taoiseach, Mr Burke, or the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, seriously expect us to believe that somebody would arrive at your home with £30,000 in cash, in a brown envelope, or by way of a cheque made out to cash and do so out of a sense of admiration for the recipient's principles or prowess with absolutely no strings attached?

Much play has been made of the fact that the Rennicks proposal for Kilcoole, County Wicklow, for which it was approved for a grant of £4.2 million, did not go ahead. However, we want to know whether there is any link between the Rennicks £30,000 payment to Mr Burke and the fact that the Rennicks company was approved for grant aid of £240,000 in 1988 of which it drew down £180,000. We want to know if the delivery of the £30,000 cheque to Mr Burke in 1988 by Mr Robin Rennicks and Mr Paul Power who were senior executives respectively of Rennicks and Novum had anything to do with the fact that in 1989 Novum got £10,000 in grants from Forbairt and received a total of £478,000 in grants up to 1996.

A good example of the justification for such a comprehensive approach is the evidence highlighted at the beef tribunal in respect of the export credit insurance scheme for which Mr Burke had responsibility for a period. The £30,000 donation from a Fitzwilton subsidiary occurred at the same time as another subsidiary, Novum, made a claim on export credit insurance following default on an Iraqi contract in respect of which £2.167 million was paid out. The chief executive involved was Mr Paul Power and he accompanied Mr Rennicks to Mr Burke's home to deliver the £30,000 cheque made out to cash. This is an important matter which the Minister may be in a position to lay to rest.

I recall Novum's interest in the export credit insurance scheme at the beef tribunal. Last Sunday, the Sunday Business Post, noted a payment was made to Mr Burke in June 1989 and that Novum was particularly keen on getting export credit support, particularly for exports to Iraq in the second half of 1989. I would like the Minister to address that point if he is in a position to do so. It seems somewhat odd that a company which had a bad experience with the default on a 1988 contract by the Iraqis, and was awarded £2.167 million for that under the scheme, came back to do more business with Iraq. The number of people wishing to do business with Iraq at that time was amazing, all of them guaranteed by the State under the export credit insurance scheme.