Statement by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
Dail Éireann — 2023-01-24
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Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West

The issue of transparency of declarations is vital to a functioning democracy. This is because we have a dark history in this State of business people, developers and so on, people with money, buying influence regarding what happens in this democracy. It has cost us phenomenally, that type of buying of influence. The other side of this equation has not really been focused on at all as of yet. Michael Stone was nominated to the board of the Land Development Agency shortly after the donation. That is significant. The Minister named Mr. Stone as the chair of the north-east inner city initiative. That is significant. The Irish Mirror reported that his donor received contracts worth €8.7 million over six years. I think that is significant as well. Two companies of which Mr. Stone was director received 141 payments over six years including for work that was done in Leinster House. Many of these payments were made for contracts through the OPW, which was part of the Minister's Department. Was he aware of any of these contracts contemporaneously when they were made?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-01-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-01-24