Fair Plae - Village Magazine

PB April-May 2025

April-May 2025 13

NEWS

Fair Plae

Michael Healy-Rae’s deal with government

is unlawful; and he should have resigned

several company directorships when he

became a junior minister

By Michel Smih

n 21 January, Fintan O’Toole

shared the following insight in

the Irish Times:

“It is illegal for government

ministers to allocate

resources to a particular constituency

because of the identity and interests of

the TD that represents it.

The taoiseach, the tánaiste, the

members of the cabinet and the junior

ministers are all ‘Oﬃ ce Holders’ and

subject to the Ethics in Public Oﬃ ce Acts

of 1995 and 2001.

As the Standards in Public Office

Commission (Sipo) puts it in the handbook

each Minister has received: ‘Oﬃ ce holders

should at all times observe the highest

standards of behaviour and act in good faith

with transparency, fairness and impartiality to

promote the common good in the performance

of their oﬃ cial functions’”.

O‘Toole proceeded:

“Transparency means that all decisions

and the reasons for them must be open

to scrutiny. Fairness means that the

criteria used to allocate resources must

be the same for every constituency. And

impartiality means that oﬃ ce holders

cannot put their thumb on the scales

because it suits their personal or

partisan interests to do so”.

He didn’t even deal with good faith though

no better man. And he should have cited the

section of the Code that requires that

oﬃ ceholders “act only by reference to and

dedicate the resources of their oﬃ ces in

furtherance of the public interest”.

O’Toole summarises: “In case this is not

clear enough, SIPO [Section 1.5 of the Code]

spells it out: ministers must ‘make decisions

and encourage and support the making of

decisions on merit and without discrimination’

and must not ‘be inﬂ uenced in their oﬃ cial

duties by personal considerations’. This last

phrase surely covers the highly personal

consideration of securing one’s own seat at the

next general election”. He might also have

cited the section of the Code which states:

“The public interest should always take

precedence over the interests of the individual

and, perhaps more importantly, over the

interests of a political party whether in power

or in opposition”.

According to the Irish edition of the London

Times of 22 December 2024, “The Healy-Rae

brothers will back a government of Fianna Fail,

Fine Gael and independents for the next ﬁ ve

years in return for their native Kerry being

‘looked after’, Michael Healy-Rae has said.

Both Michael and Danny Healy-Rae met the

tanaiste last week and presented him with a

policy document outlining their priorities,

which included issues on infrastructure,

housing, health, farming and ﬁ shing”.

Village asked to see a copy of this document.

Neither the Government information service

nor the Fianna Fáil Party obliged.

The Times reported that: “A senior Fianna

Fail source said the Healy-Raes were being

dealt with ‘seriously and properly in terms of

actual government formation’”.

Michael Healy-Rae was duly appointed

Minister of State at the Department of

Agriculture, Food and the Marine, with

responsibility for forestry, farm safety, and

horticulture, on 29 January 2025.

Shane Ross was Minister for Transport from

2006 to 2010 on behalf of the Independent

Alliance. On 19 January 2025, he wrote in the

Sunday Independent:

“The Programme for Government is

camouﬂ age, a long-winded blurb, an

umbrella that shelters the uncosted

ambitions of the Independents, Fianna

Fáil and Fine Gael”.

He noted that: “A stroke was being

pulled to fool the listening public. There

are, of course, no visible written deals

between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and any

Independents. There is no paper trail.

Personally, I have similar experience of

such manoeuvres. Nine years ago, in

2016, I was a negotiator for the

Independent Alliance in government

formation talks with Fine Gael. As the

talks approached a climax, I asked a

speciﬁ c question of the Fine Gael team:

was there a ‘deal with Michael Lowry’?

The reply was an emphatic, ‘No’…

During the [sports-club] grants process,

a constant unwritten — but whispered

— message came down the line from

Fine Gael colleagues that on Tipperary

issues, ‘We have to look after Lowry’.

Of course there was no written ‘deal’

with Michael Lowry, just a quiet

arrangement, what both sides liked to

call an ‘understanding’”.

The former Minister concluded his article:

“The era of secret deals has never been

stronger. The public will not be fooled by the

platitudes of the Programme for Government”.

O’Toole ﬁ nishes his own article, which is

peppered with examples of shifty rural

politicians hamming it up on whether they

have a deal with the governments they are

reported to have agreed to support, that “the

art of the deal requires TDs to be able to say to

their voters: look what I got you. When those

claims are made, SIPO should investigate

them for what they are: evidence that the law

is being ﬂ outed”.

This article is the substance of that

complaint.

Together with a complaint that Michael

Healy-Rae remains a Director of Ml Healy-Rae

Properties Ltd, which registered its annual

return for 2023 on 31 January 2025 but for

which the Companies Registration Oﬃ ce

shows no sign of the necessary B10 form

indicating there has been a change of director.

Section 2.2.4 of The 2003 Code of Conduct

for Oﬃ ce Holders also states that “Oﬃ ce

holders should not hold company directorships

carrying remuneration. Even if remuneration is

not paid, it is regarded as undesirable for them

to hold directorships”.

Healy-Rae is also a Director of Roughty Plant

Hire Limited, Roughty Properties Limited and

Black Cap & Co Limited.

Michael Healy-Rae’s deal with government