Why do people say that Fianna Fail is corrupt as a matter of fact ?

scr123 wrote: »

People..[]..go on and on about corruption until you ask them to make specific charges against the individuals associated with FF they constantly list. Like all cowards they stick to innuendo because they know to be specific will leave them open to possible legal proceedings.

The people who say FF is corrupt as a matter of fact are people who have never voted FF and generally people who are at this stage emotionally disturbed at their inability to beat FF where it counts, the ballot box.

On 3 June 1999, Fine Gael made a voluntary disclosure and payment of £111,000 to the Revenue Commissioners for under-the-counter cash payments to its staff over a nine year period. This figure related to PAYE and PRSI arrears and included a similar figure for payment of interest.[42]
In 2003, the Mahon Tribunal, set up to investigate allegations of corruption among Irish politicians, heard that Liam T. Cosgrave had accepted illegal payments from property developers in return for voting to rezone property in Dublin. He resigned from the Fine Gael party when this became known. On the 17 October 2005, the former senator pleaded guilty at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to making a false or misleading report of a political donation.[43]
Anne Devitt, a Fine Gael councillor was listed on 15 September 2009 as a tax defaulter by Revenue. Ms Devitt paid €50,000 in settlement of undeclared income tax and CGT, and interest and accumulated penalties. A Fine Gael spokeswoman was quoted as saying “Our understanding is that it was an oversight that has been fully resolved,” [44].

The party, along with its coalition partners, was re-elected in the 2002 general election. It has been hit by numerous scandals. (Founding father Frank Aiken refused to run in the 1973 general election because the party had Haughey as a candidate while first leader Éamon de Valera told a senior minister in 1970 that "Haughey will ruin the party."I]citation needed[/I
Another former minister, Ray Burke, whom Ahern appointed to cabinet for a short time in 1997, was recently explicitly described by retired High Court judge, Fergus Flood in a tribunal of inquiry as "corrupt", and was jailed in January 2005 for tax offences. The privileged treatment accorded to Burke in prison was subsequently widely criticised, especially by Fine Gael.
Former Fianna Fáil Government Press Secretary Frank Dunlop is giving evidence to a tribunal of inquiry in relation to his allegations that long-serving Fianna Fáil senators took bribes to arrange for planning permissions to be granted to particular property developers. Other councillors (past and present) from a number of parties, but predominantly from Fianna Fáil, are expected to be named. The tribunal has yet to judge the credibility or otherwise of Dunlop and his evidence.
Former Fianna Fáil TD, Liam Lawlor was also accused of corrupt practices in relation to planning and development. He was jailed repeatedly for refusal to cooperate with the tribunal. He did not resign his Dublin West seat and continued to attend the Dáil, returning to Mountjoy Prison after the sessions, where he enjoyed most of the same privileges as Mr. Burke. Another TD, Beverley Cooper-Flynn of Mayo, was forced to resign from the party when it was revealed that she had advised people on how to illegally evade tax while working as a financial adviser for National Irish Bank. She was readmitted when she threatened to run as an Independent candidate, expelled again after she lost a libel action against RTÉ, and readmitted unanimously to the party shortly after Ahern's resignation.
Kerry North TD Denis Foley was found to have held an Ansbacher bank account and subsequently could not seek re-election in 1997. Michael Collins of the Collins family dynasty in Limerick suffered a similar fate in 2002, when he was found to have evaded tax by the Revenue Commissioners.
On 8 December 2005, Ivor Callely TD resigned his junior ministerial post after RTÉ News reported that a building contractor involved in public contracts had painted his house for free in the early 1990s. It was also revealed that Callely had offered to personally buy a new car for one of his civil service advisers, in an attempt to persuade the adviser not to leave their job. Apparently, Callely's department had an unusually high turnover of staff for some time under his stewardship [4].
Bertie Ahern, in September 2006 admitted having received payments from "friends" in the early 1990s which he termed as a combination of loans and gifts totalling £48,000 while serving as Minister for Finance. Damaged by the controversy initially, which included admissions of appointing friends to state boards and not having a bank account while serving as Minister for Finance, support for the party in opinion polls rose after Ahern described the circumstances of the payments to the public in an interview with RTÉ television.[5] Former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds stated in a radio interview on RTÉ that he would have told Ahern that taking such payments was totally unacceptable. As the then Taoiseach he should have been informed by Ahern and would have been very clear that accepting the payments was wrong. He said that many other options were open to Ahern such as getting a bank loan. [6] After the payments controversy, polling data suggested that Bertie Ahern's increase in popularity due to the payments controversy was primarily a sympathetic reaction.
In September 2007, Ahern testified over a four day period at the Mahon Tribunal about these payments and his explanations under oath varied from day to day, being described by one of the sitting judges as "polar opposite"[7]
In April 2008 Ahern announced his intended resignation as Taoiseach and party leader, naming May 2008 as when he would step down. The announcement came during a period of increased disquiet over his evidence to the Mahon Tribunal, in particular denials of foreign currency lodgements, which were contradicted in evidence given by his former secretary, who accepted that paperwork before the tribunal indicated a sterling lodgement was made by her on his behalf.

The Moriarty Tribunal has sat since 1997 and has investigated the granting of a mobile phone license to Esat Telecom by Michael Lowry when he was Fine Gael Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications in the Rainbow Coalition of the mid-1990s. Lowry resigned from the Cabinet after it was revealed at the Moriarty Tribunal that businessman Ben Dunne had paid for a IR£395,000 extension to Lowry's Tipperary home. Lowry, currently an independent TD, supports the Fianna Fáil–Green Party government in Dáil Éireann.
Following revealations at the Moriarty Tribunal on the 16th February, 1999, in relation to Charles Haughey and his relationship with AIB, former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald confirmed that AIB and Ansbacher wrote off debts of almost £200,000 that he owed in 1993, when he was in financial difficulties because of the collapse of the aircraft leasing company, GPA, in which he was a shareholder. The write-off occurred after Dr Fitzgerald left politics and Dr. Fitzgerald also said he believed his then Fine Gael colleague, Peter Sutherland, who was chairman of AIB at the time, was unaware of the situation.[41]

scr123 wrote: »

In 2007 75% of the electorate did not vote FF. Thats a lot of people who want your blood, especially after the economic downturn. They are coming out of the woodwork all over the country to get a piece of the anti FF action. People who have never even voted in their lives are enjoying the moment of glory of at long last crucifying FF. On message boards like this threads are started time after time by perpetual political failures who can smell blood. They go on and on about corruption until you ask them to make specific charges against the individuals associated with FF they constantly list. Like all cowards they stick to innuendo because they know to be specific will leave them open to possible legal proceedings. One FF politician has been convicted in our courts of corruption and served time.
Those on the corruption bandwagon are sick hypoctites who are no way interested in right and wrong but have an obsession with only destroying FF in their hunger for power denied to them for so long by superior politicians.

FF are in power so long and so often because a majority ofthe people who come out to vote have rejected the extremism of right wing FG and the cabal left wing extremists led by the Labour Party who now have 100 years of failure behind them. I am FF because when I look left or right I see nothing but convoluted disaster.
Whether its me or any member of FF I suggest specific charges of corruption are made and those charges will be dealt with in a court of law.

The people who say FF is corrupt as a matter of fact are people who have never voted FF and generally people who are at this stage emotionally disturbed at their inability to beat FF where it counts, the ballot box.

Oh, a little worry of mine is that if the hatred of FF ever stopped it means FF are dead !

Wide Road wrote: »

Were you drunk when you made this up? Are you questioning the electorate? Why have they continued to win elections? Is it because they are a "CANCER" as you say. Look in the mirror in the morning. The answer is closer to home, your home.