BRIBERY ‘RIFE AMONG COUNCILLORS’

FORMER Fine Gael councillor Mary Muldoon yesterday said she believed more than half of Dublin councillors had been taking ‘bribes dressed up as legal political donations’.

Miss Muldoon, who gave private evidence at the Mahon Tribunal but was yesterday speaking publicly on the matter for the first time, stated that many councillors were receiving sums of between IR£500 and £2,500, but were calling them legal political donations.

It was on this basis, she said yesterday, that she reckoned the tribunal could not investigate the payments involved.

Asked to quantify the number of councillors receiving these payments, she said: ‘More than 50 per cent, but less than two-thirds.’ There is no independent evidence to support the scale of her allegation, which remains unproven.

During an interview with Raidió na Gaeltachta, Miss Muldoon, who was a councillor for the Rathfarnham area between 19 5 and 1999, said that some councillors were pressurised into taking payments.

Even within her own party, Miss Muldoon said that one ran the risk of being ‘ostracised’ if payments were not accepted.

She had never been offered such payments and this was due to the fact she voted according to her principles, she told the Glór Anoir programme yesterday.

Philip Nolan – Page 14