REFORM DOCUMENTS:FIANNA FÁIL had contact with people working on businessman Dermot Desmond's document on political reform before it launched its manifesto, which contained many of the same proposals.
However, spokeswoman on political reform Averil Power said work had already taken place on her party’s policy at that time.
“I did speak to people that had been working on his [Mr Desmond’s] project. But, as I said, we had already drawn up our proposals then but I was ringing to kind of give them an idea of the type of things we were looking at, get their feedback,” Ms Power said.
After she was appointed Fianna Fáil’s spokeswoman on political reform on January 31st, she phoned “a lot of the leading academics” and discussed ideas with them: “We had our draft paper at that stage and I wanted to kind of get feedback from them on things that we were looking at and to hear their ideas.” Ms Power said she did not speak to Mr Desmond.
Fianna Fáil’s policy was launched on February 7th and the proposals outlined in Mr Desmond’s document were circulated on February 1st.
Commenting on what she described as the “overlap” between the documents, Ms Power said it came down to proposing international best practice. “That’s why academics have come up with similar ideas to ourselves.”
Fine Gael director of elections Phil Hogan yesterday accused Fianna Fáil of developing a “deathbed conversion to political reform” which was not credible after so long in power. Mr Hogan said Fianna Fáil’s proposals “bear such an uncanny similarity” to Mr Desmond’s proposals.
Ms Power said Fianna Fáil had published an “incredibly radical” policy, while Fine Gael’s proposals were “conservative”.
Asked about Mr Desmond’s document, Micheál Martin said it was not surprising others were coming forward with similar proposals – “many of these have been in the ether for quite some time”. He also defended the proposal that a future taoiseach would be allowed to nominate non-members of the Oireachtas to be ministers.
Mr Martin said he had evolved his thinking on the proposal that people with “external expertise” should be considered for Cabinet.
He added: “It’s not my personal dictatorship alone.”
