I wish to make clear that I do not present this matter as being a major scandal or anything of that kind. I do not want to make an excessive meal of it and I am not trying to inflate the importance of a relatively unimportant item in the Government's work. I am concerned mostly with explaining to the House and to the people that this episode in a small and modest way is an indication of the style and quality of government with which we are fixed until the next election.
When the Minister as a Deputy in Opposition more than a year ago was dealing with the Bill relating to Bula, in the months of February and March and up to the time of the election he added to the list of absolutely non-negotiable points to which his party were committed the publication of the Bula agreement. Everybody in the House, no matter how short his memory, all the Press and the people outside who follow politics will recall that there was a substantial list of matters to which Fianna Fáil were irrevocably committed before the last election. They were willing to sell their souls for the 50-mile fishing limit and to give their lives for the abolition of ground rents. No less conspicuous in their list of priorities was the publication of the Bula agreement, which the Minister's predecessor, Senator Keating, had refused to do. These were absolutely non-negotiable things.
We have seen what happened about the 50-mile limit. I recall Senator Ryan saying that we should reconsider our Community membership if we did not get our way. We have seen what has happened to the purported abolition of ground rents. Now we are seeing what has happened in regard to the publication of the Bula agreement.
In connection with this publication, when the Minister was in Opposition and spokesman on this topic, he expended unlimited rhetoric on the impropriety, as he held, of the Dáil passing a Bill which contains six references to an agreement which was not itself appended to the Bill and which the House was not being allowed to see. The limit of this rhetorical trip of the Minister's, if I may call it that, was reached on 8 February last year when he invited the House to consider the provisions of the Constitution which he said required the President to promulgate a law once he had signed it.
He asked the House to consider the position of the President on being asked to sign and promulgate a law which contained references of a kind which the Members of the House could not evaluate because the agreement was not in front of them. He said in Volume 296, column 993:
The Minister is asking us to ratify something that none of us has ever seen. Does the Minister realise the consequences of asking this Parliament to do such a thing? I wonder is it realised by the Government that one of the basic necessities of law in western jurisprudence is promulgation. Law is not law, even if it is passed by this or any other Parliament unless it is promulgated to the people. If this Bill is passed without publication of the agreement, what is the law?
He said in the next column:
I would address my remarks to the ultimate guardian of the Constitutional rights of the people, that is, the President of Ireland. I am aware that he is abroad at present but will return on Friday.
The President had this item served up to him on the Friday when he got back. He was to investigate his constitutional situation in regard to this Bula Bill in the light of the fact that the Bill did not contain or disclose all the elements of the deal in which the State was to become involved.
I make the Minister a present of something. I personally shared a certain feeling of question in my mind about the very point he mentioned about putting into a Bill references to something which the Bill does not contain. I make the Minister a present of that and he can make what he likes of it. Had he been in my party or I in his, had we been discussing the thing on some other level or had subsequent history not turned out as it did, I would not make much of a point of the argument which he developed with great force on 8 February 1977.
What happened when the Minister reached office? After allowing about six months to elapse he called a press conference in order to publish this Bula agreement. I will tell the House at once why I think matters turned out as they did. I believe, the delay between July and January was accounted for not only by the very large number of other preoccupations the Minister had but by the fact that his Department were begging him not to do the thing which in Opposition he had threatened to do. I believe his Department were imploring him to stick to the principle which his predecessor had enunciated and which every Government of all complexions previously had respected, not to publish agreements involving private interests.
I recognise that the reference inside a Bill to an agreement gives the matter an arguably different complexion. I will not dispute that point. Nonetheless, that was the principle adhered to through thick and thin. As the Minister's predecessor admitted to the House, he could quite easily have achieved the same economic result in regard to the Bula Mines via the IDA. We need not now discuss whether he was right or wrong in making that decision. I am not concerned with raising that point again. I hope when the Minister comes to reply he will not spend the time allotted to him in going over that ground again because I am not concerned with it. It is not to raise that that I kept the House sitting here after 5 o'clock.
I believe his Department officials tried to prevail on him not to go through with his declared intention in Opposition. I believe in an effort— from the point of view of the officials concerned I must say it was a public spirited effort—to save something from the wreckage they said to him "Look, publish the agreement if you have to but at least do not publish the accounts." I have no spies in the Minister's Department and I have heard nothing from inside his Department and nobody in his Department or connected with it has spoken to me about this matter, discussed it with me or been in contact with me in any way whatever. I believe, as a matter of intuition, that his Department officials tried to prevail on him not to do this. When they saw that he had no political option but to publish something they prevailed on him at least not to publish the accounts which were an integral part of the agreement.
I want to make another admission to the Minister. It is quite true that the general lines of the Bula deal were visible without publication of the accounts. It is also true, as the Minister repeatedly stressed from these benches, that what the State was doing in the Bula deal was acquiring a share in the company. I do not believe anybody would feel happy about dealing in a company unless he knew what the company were worth, what their assets and liabilities were worth.
That matter was specifically provided for in the course of this agreement. On page 2 of the document called Bula Limited, Inter-Party Agreement, which the Minister laid before the House the accounts are defined as:
The Consolidated Balance Sheet of the Company as at the relevant accounting date a copy of which is annexed hereto and for the purposes of identification signed by or on behalf of each of the parties hereto.
These accounts were referred to at seven different places in the course of the body of the agreement. One could not understand the agreement or assess the value of this company unless one had access to the accounts. On pages 12 and 13 of the agreement, paragraph 5.04 (a) there is a reference to the accounts in the following terms:
The Accounts have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the relevant statutes and in accordance with good accountancy practice and are true and accurate in all respects and show a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the Company as at the relevant accounting date and full disclosure and provision is made in the Accounts of all actual liabilities and proper provision or note of all contingent or other liabilities whether quantified or not and of all financial commitments of the Company in existence at the relevant accounting date.
These accounts are not disclosed to us and we are not able to assess what exactly is being aimed at or contemplated by paragraph 5.04 (a). The second reference is on page 14, paragraph 5.05 which states:
The Accounts make full provision and reserves for all taxation or other sums payable for which the Company at the relevant accounting date was or may have become liable to be assessed...
On page 17 there is a reference to the accounts as disclosing the value of plant. On the same page there is a reference to the accounts disclosing the value of the company's stock. On page 18 there is a reference to the accounts disclosing an absence of guarantees or unusual liabilities except as disclosed in the accounts there. In other words, unless one could see the accounts one would not know the extent of the guarantees or unusual liabilities which the company had taken upon themselves. Also on the same page there is reference to an absence of charges on loan capital and on the next page again there is a reference to the accounts as disclosing the situation in regard to book debts owing to the company.
I accept that the publication of the rest of the agreement did disclose the general lines of the deal, but these are all matters highly relevant to the value of what the State is acquiring. I say, from intuition only, that the Minister's official advice was to try to save something from the wreck by not publishing those accounts. At the press conference which the Minister called early in January he had a large number of pressmen in and he handed in this document, I presume simultaneously with, or possibly shortly after he had gone through, the formalities of laying it before the Dáil. The same is true in regard to the Tara lease, with which I am not concerned on this occasion. He did not insert in this agreement before the Dáil a note to the effect that the agreement was not what it purported on the cover to be. Mark you, this was something laid before the Dáil, not merely disclosed or passed out to a press conference. He did not include a note saying that the accounts referred to at no fewer than seven pages in the agreement, not counting the definition section, were not included for whatever reason he might have thought fit to give, nor did he say anything about that at the press conference. When asked by me at the beginning of last week whether he had told the press conference that the accounts were not being published, his reply, which I am sorry to say I regard as a prevarication, was that he did not recall having been asked by the press conference about that. You call a press conference not to invite questions but to distribute gratuitous enlightenment to persons who otherwise would not have bothered to show up at your office. That is no reply to the charge that this agreement is incomplete. The answer he gave here last week was wrong and misleading when he told the House that it was a complete answer.
