The controversy surrounding the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe's undisclosed election donations raises again Fine Gael's relationship with big business and its influence at the heart of Government. The whole saga carries the stench of cronyism and favours for insiders.

The businessman at the centre of the controversy, Michael Stone, issued a statement today in which he revealed he gave a second undeclared donation to the Minister in the 2020 general election. This means the Minister failed not once but twice to disclose a donation in back-to-back elections from the same wealthy supporter. This is a supporter who has secured lucrative State contracts, was appointed to the powerful Land Development Agency by Fine Gael outside of the normal process and was appointed as chair of the north-east inner city programme implementation board. Mr. Stone has now resigned from both bodies. A theme of this controversy is the Minister’s ever-changing story, the muddying of waters and the ducking and diving to evade accountability. It has been an exercise in concealment and cover-up from start to finish.

This morning we have it again. Mr. Stone claimed the Minister asked him twice if he had paid for his postering operation in the 2020 general election and that he told the Minister he had not. Then, in a eureka moment as the Minister was being questioned on the floor of the Dáil, Mr. Stone remembered that he had paid for the postering in 2020. This is the farcical story the Minister asks the Dáil and public to believe but nobody buys it. The reason Mr. Stone had a sudden recollection is he knew they were caught out. The idea that this donation slipped through the net and out of memory does not stack up. The idea the Minister did not know and the businessman forgot does not hold water. Are we seriously supposed to believe neither the Minister, his director or elections nor any member of his campaign team knew anything of who was putting up the election posters? The posters had to be ordered, delivered and their distribution planned. Mr. Stone’s vans were crisscrossing the constituency putting up the posters and taking them down. People had to know Mr. Stone was taking care of the postering, and the Minister had to know also.

Tá sé seo an-dáiríre. Tá rud éigin aisteach faoi scéal an Aire, an Teachta Donohoe. Tá a chreidiúnacht i gcruachás. Caithfidh sé an fhírinne a insint. The Minister’s credibility lies in tatters. He has chosen concealment and cover-up again and again. At every turn, the truth has to be dragged out of him.

He was informed about the nature of the 2016 donation in 2017 and he did nothing. He denied there was anything to see when he was questioned by the media last November. It was only when the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, wrote to him that was he forced to respond. When he was asked about the 2020 election, he denied the involvement of Mr. Stone. Indeed, we would know nothing of the 2020 donation had it not been for questions being put to the Minister in the Dáil last week. The Minister misled the Dáil last week. Now, to continue the cover-up, Michael Stone has fallen on his sword, all to protect the Minister.

Is the Taoiseach also standing by this story? Does he also claim that the Minister did not know and that the businessman simply forgot? As the head of the Government, does the Taoiseach stand by this account of events?

As the Deputy knows, the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, will make a statement before the House this afternoon and he will take questions on it. That will be an opportunity for the Deputy to put some of those questions directly to him, should she so wish. Once that process is over, once he has made his statement and once he has answered questions, it will be a matter for people to decide whether they believe Paschal Donohoe. I heard his explanations over the weekend. I spoke to him about it, and I believe him. I have fought four general elections and I know what can happen in a campaign, particularly in a chaotic campaign. There might be 1,000 posters and somebody might offer to put up 100 or 150 for you. They may offer to drop a few thousand leaflets for you. You do this on the assumption they are going to do it voluntarily. It is possible that they may pay a third or fourth party to do that for them and not inform you. That appears to me to be what happened in this case.

We have strict laws when it comes to election spending in Ireland, and we have them for a very good reason. We do not want it to be the case that people have to have hundreds of thousands of euro or millions of euro just to stand in an election. That is why we have spending limits that cannot be breached, and that were not breached, even inadvertently, by the Minister with respect to 2016 and 2020. We do not want to have the kind of politics they have in the United Kingdom, the United States, or indeed on other parts of this island, where politicians and political parties accept multimillion euro donations, which is something Deputy McDonald’s party has done, with questionable legality, quite frankly.

Paschal Donohoe has not breached the spending limits, as I have said. However, he or his agent did fail to account for some of the spending in 2016 and 2020, in the region of €1,000 to €2,000 on each occasion. Why did that happen? It was because he did not know. Once he found out the full facts, only after last Wednesday, was he in a position to file revised returns. I understand he has filed a revised return for 2016 and is in the process of filing a revised return for 2020. Once he found out the facts, he acted to amend his declaration. This is something that is allowed under the law. Deputy McDonald knows it is allowed under the law because her whole party had to file its election declarations on three occasions after the 2020 election because it neglected to include in its accounts a €7,000 payment to a British polling firm. Sinn Féin tried to claim it did that after it noticed the error itself. It was exposed on that, and it turns out it only found out about that after The Irish Times contacted the party. Therefore, Sinn Féin filed its returns in 2020 three times because of errors that had been identified by the media. The sums involved were much greater than any sums involved in relation to the Minister, Deputy Donohoe. Therefore, the Deputy seems to be trying to apply a very different standard to him than she would apply to her own party.

Indeed, the Deputy needs to consider revising her own declarations. Her declarations show she received a personal donation of €1,000 from her friend, gangland criminal and Navan Road torturer, Jonathan Dowdall. Members of the Deputy’s party, who are around her, have claimed that was a donation to her party. That requires Deputy McDonald to decide which it was and to make an amendment to her own declarations, just as the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has done.

Nice try. That is a nice try at a distraction. If the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform has a very faulty memory, then I have to say the Taoiseach is of Olympic-level competence in trying to breed further distractions. This is what has happened. Every rule in the book has been broken. Spending limits, I suspect, have been breached. Certainly, a corporate donation was made by somebody who was not registered as a corporate donor.

But here is the rub: a very wealthy individual who is a beneficiary of State contracts and who is appointed to State boards is a donor to the then Minister for Finance. That is a matter of public interest, but the deliberate concealment of that, election after election, is a real cause for public worry. There is a need for accountability on this. The Taoiseach says the Minister will come before the House again, I imagine to spin the same cock-and-bull story he spun last week. I put it to the Taoiseach that it is not credible for him, on his own part, to attempt to stand over these donations that were undeclared and the cock-and-bull story his colleague has fabricated, after the fact, to try to cover his tracks.

I thank the Deputy. Exposing her hypocrisy is not a distraction; it is simply telling the truth, something she consistently runs a mile from. She has some brass neck, quite frankly, in that regard given her party had to file its 2020 declarations on three occasions-----

That has nothing to do with donations.

-----because of a €7,000 payment to a UK polling company it had forgotten about until The Irish Times questioned the party about it.

Michael Stone did not pay for that, though, if that is your concern.

Let the Taoiseach answer, please.

The Deputy always wants to shout me down when she does not want to hear the truth, but this country is still a democracy-----

It is the truth. Answer the question.

-----and the Deputy is not in charge of it.

You are.

As long as we are a democracy, people will be allowed to speak freely in our Parliament and I will continue to do so. The Deputy has some brass neck in this regard when we consider the Jonathan Dowdall donation, which was a personal donation to the Deputy, not to her party, and the fact her party had to file its own declarations on three occasions in 2020, something the Minister has not had to do.

What is a distraction is this snide reference to Mr. Stone receiving public contracts from the Government. The Deputy knows as well as I do that Ministers have no role in awarding commercial contracts to businesses, and trying to throw that out there under cover of privilege is a pure distraction. The reason the Minister and his agents did not declare the donations is they did not know they had happened. They did not receive or give the donation. No money was exchanged-----

Michael Stone, under cover of darkness, stole Paschal's posters.

A service was provided, which they believed had been done on a voluntary basis, and once they found out about it, they made efforts to put things right.

Okay. Bang on.