‘Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael & Sinn Féin must audit their TD/Landlords to ensure lawmakers are not law breakers’, says Tóibín

Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín TD has called on Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin to carry out an audit of their TDs.

“You can’t be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker at the same time,” Deputy Tóibín said.

“We need to draw a line under the practice of law makers from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin being lawbreakers.

“This is especially true when it comes to the  housing sector which is in a state of permanent crisis.

“It is not good enough that these cases are coming to light as a result of the work of investigative journalists.

“Political parties have a responsibility here”.

Deputy Tóibín said political parties who want to see reform of the system must actually put in the work themselves to ensure standards are maintained.

“Political parties continually speak of the need for political reform at Oireachtas level,” he said.

“But parties themselves can reform the debasing practices of their TDs with a policy of zero tolerance.

“Parties themselves could root out the practice of conflicts of interest being hidden, of assets and liabilities of TDs being kept out of sight and responsibilities to hard pressed tenants being ignored.

“This would involve a deep audit of each TDs records by the parties themselves.

“For the sake of transparency each party should publish the findings and proper due diligence should be carried out of new candidates in the future.

“It’s hypocritical to continually call for the system to be cleaned up when these parties would clean up their own organisations”.

“The laws that have been broken by these parties are there to prevent corruption.

“They are there to ensure transparency and fairness.

“They are there to protect vulnerable renters.

“These are not small issues. Mícheál Martin, Leo Varadkar and Mary Lou McDonald should know by now, political reform starts at home”.