Planning corruption; politicians are not all the same!

Really, really annoyed this morning listening to "Morning Ireland". For years, the Labour Party fought the fight against bad planning, and indeed many of the rezonings currently before the Mahon Tribunal.

However, on the programme this morning concerning the evidence of Tom Kitt to the Mahon Tribunal, in an interview with Trevor Sargent, the question was asked as to ‘why aren’t the parties involved, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael … Labour, paying a price at the polls’.

No Labour Party councillor of the time stands accused of any wrongdoing at the Mahon Tribunal. The Labour Party fought a long, hard war against indiscriminate rezoning on Dublin County Council, and indeed on its successor councils. Indeed, the party was traduced and mocked for being ‘anti-development’ by the very people who now stand before the Tribunal.

It is wholly wrong to say that the Labour Party was in any way involved, implicated, or in any other way associated with wrongdoing in the rezonings that have formed part of the Mahon Tribunal investigations.

There is no possible reason for Labour to ‘pay a price at the polls’ for its stance at this time. My predecessors in this area, Frank Buckley and Eithne Fitzgerald, fought bad planning tooth and nail. By including Labour in this way in this question, Morning Ireland fell perfectly into step with the FF ‘sure, everybody was at it’ strategy of slinging the mud as widely as possible. Many of those facing traffic jams on the M50 and long commutes every day have the bad planning of this time to blame. The politicians who took those decisions are answerable. But the Labour Party is not to blame, stands accused of nothing, and has nothing but the proudest record on this issue.