STATEMENT FROM MR. TOMÁS MAC GIOLLA

IN RESPONSE TO DÁIL COMMENTS BY AN TAOISEACH BERTIE AHERN TD.

Tuesday, 12th February 2008

The former Workers’ Party President Tomás Mac Giolla has responded to comments made by Bertie Ahern in Dáil Éireann this afternoon (Tuesday) in which the Taoiseach referred to Mr. Mac Giolla’s invoking of Dáil privilege in relation to his evidence to the Beef Tribunal almost 20 years ago.

Mr. Mac Giolla said that in 1989 he had given information to the Dáil in relation to illegal activities that were going on at a meat processing plant controlled by the Goodman Group and which were subsequently found by Mr. Justice Liam Hamilton, in his report to the Beef Tribunal,  to be wholly correct and substantiated.  

Mr. Mac Giolla had refused to name the source of this information as the person in question was a young man employed by the Goodman Group and was risking his job to expose illegality in the beef industry.

“There is no comparison between my use of Dáil privilege back in 1989 to protect an honest young worker who was prepared to expose the corruption of certain companies in the beef industry and Mr. Ahern’s attempt to evade the questioning of a Tribunal which he established himself to expose corruption in the planning process”, said Tomás Mac Giolla.

“In fact the only similarity between the two situations is that wholesale corruption was exposed in both cases”, he said.