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TWO OF MICK WALLACE’S colleagues in the Dáil’s Technical Group have said Wallace should seek to pay his company’s €2.1 million settlement with the Revenue Commissioners using whatever resources he has available.
Both the Socialist Party’s Joe Higgins and independent TD John Halligan have said Wallace should use whatever assets he has in his other companies to cover the settlement, which Wallace yesterday said would probably never be paid.
Both TDs, however, joined with their technical group colleagues in stopping short of asking Wallace to resign, saying he was ultimately answerable only to the people of Wexford who he represents at Dáil level.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Pat Kenny, Higgins said “every penny that’s owed to the tax [sic] should be paid” – saying the money should be found ”either from personal resources or any other company where there are assets”.
Higgins said it was unjust that one company could “go to the wall” while another “which is substantially in the same ownership doesn’t have to hold responsibility in any sense”, adding:
There should be a common responsibility right across companies owned by the same people where there are assets.
John Halligan, who is out of the country and did not sign yesterday’s Technical Group statement criticising Wallace’s actions, today expressed similar sentiment – saying Wallace should initiate the payments “from whatever resources he has”.
Wallace is the secretary and director of several companies, including M. and J. Wallace Ltd, the construction company which is currently in receivership and which was involved in the €2.1 million Revenue settlement.
Among those are four companies involved in property management – Quartiere Bloom Management Ltd, Cannavaro Management Ltd, Behan Square Management Ltd and John Rogerson Management Ltd - as well as Wallace Calcio which operates his series of Italian cafe-bars.
He also runs Savage Streetware Ltd and Wallace Imago Ltd, which operate in the retail clothes business, and Wexford Youths FC Ltd – the Airtricity League team which he founded in 2007 and managed for three years.
CRO records show that club to be 100 per cent owned by M. and J. Wallace Ltd, the company at the centre of the current news. That company is in turn 99-per-cent owned by Wallace, and 1 per cent owned by his son Sasha.
Wallace has previously stated that most of his companies’ income was going straight to the banks, given the debts they had run up during the construction boom.
Separately, Fianna Fáil has urged the two appropriate Oireachtas committees to move quickly to establish whether Wallace was in breach of Oireachtas rules in his companies’ tax affairs.
This morning the party whip Seán Ó Fearghaíl called on both the Oireachtas Committee on Procedures and Privileges, and the Committee on Members’ Interests, to investigate and form views about the settlement between M. and J. Wallace Ltd and the Revenue Commissioners.
“Being elected to Dáil Éireann is a great privilege and honour. It also carries with it certain responsibilities,” Ó Fearghaíl said.
“We have onerous personal responsibilities as public representatives, but we also have a collective responsibility to ensure that we behave in a way that encourages public confidence in the Oireachtas.
In this spirit, I believe it is important that the Oireachtas Committee on Procedures and Privileges move quickly to confirm that it will be calling Deputy Mick Wallace to give evidence on the recent revelations about his business affairs and that it will make a statement on the issue.
Ó Fearghaíl said it was important that all members of the Oireachtas, regardless of their prominence or party affiliation, be held to the same standard of probity and accountability.”
This morning the chairman of the latter committee, independent TD Thomas Pringle, said it was unlikely that his committee would have any grounds on which to investigate Wallace because his company’s VAT underdeclaration was made before he became a TD.
The Irish Times this morning reported that the former committee, chaired by the Ceann Comhairle Seán Barrett and including members from all sides of the Dáil, was preparing meetings with a view to proposing a motion of censure in Wallace.
Such a motion would be the second since the current Dáil was elected; a similar motion condemning Michael Lowry was passed in the aftermath of the Moriarty Tribunal’s findings being published in March 2011.
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Thanks to the government – Home is unattainable for masses of people that are not disabled…
And to those that are unfortunate to be disabled should forget getting a home here in Ireland.
@John Johnes: interesting comment John. I mean I think it is really fascinating that anyone would compare the two. I mean the reality is most people in employment can infact purchase a home somewhere but many wish to live in a certain location. The sad reality for many people with disabilities is the limited access to employment, mortgage approval and subsequent life assurance to draw down any mortgage offer they may be offered and of course servicing the mortgage depending on the nature of the disability. This along with genuine restrictions on where one can live, e.g. to be near services, healthcare, supports, functioning public services like transport links etc again depending on the nature of the disability and generalising grossly here. I find it fascinating that anyone would bring on the perceived wows of the “typical” “mainstream” or non disabled person into the sole comment on this article.
@Sarah Lou: yeah but that’s John for you
@Sarah Lou:
Most people in employment can purchase a home? The average wage nationwide is less than 50k, good luck with getting a mortgage that would be enough to buy a house.
@Dean: 50000×3.5 +10% deposit, would get you a home somewhere in Ireland. As I said above most people who say they cant afford a home, mean they cant afford a home where they want to live. Also many if not most people buy a home with 2 incomes statistically, so that is 100000×3.5 + 10% and would buy you a home in many areas. I cant actually believe you think a person on 50k without a disability is in anyway comparable to someone on the Disability Allowance without the ability to earn any wage or secure any mortgage etc. This is a little to me like when people were describing individuals in dublin airport going on their jollies as the third world. Unpleasant Airport experience, definitely not satisfactory or acceptable in Ireland in 2022 but no kids were dying from malnourishment in the airport. Get a little perspective.
Owning a home is only a pipe dream for anyone in Ireland regardless of disability or not
@Ronan Horan: Really? I’m someone in Ireland I’ll be collecting the keys to my new build home by the end of the month.
@Roy Dowling: Roy you have been around here long enough to know noone wants to hear your good news!!!!! Just kidding congrats and well done for highlighting that it’s not all doomsday stuff
Not to minimise the challenges faced by people living with disabilities, but the reason for this is the same reason that numerous other people not living with disabilities, also struggle to find or afford a home, the lack of affordable social housing.
Which is a failure of successive governments across all parties that have been in government in the past and three of whom are currently in government, to build social housing.
Not because the demand hasn’t existed dyring the last 35 years, but because they instead chose to keep house values inflated, by limiting the supply and facilitating property developers and investors to capitalise on the artificially created circumstances of turning houses into assets that out performed all other investment opportunities, great for their cronies, but the knock on effect is that houses are now so overvalued, that hedge funds have bought them up to control the rental market, further inflating the price of rent to levels that even people with good jobs can’t afford to pay.
The only way out of this cul de sac of greed is to elect a government that will deliver social housing on the scale required, this will allow everyone that needs social housing to be housed and also lower the prices of houses and rent across the board to benefit everyone, except property developers and hedge funds.
This socialist solution may be a bitter pill for some to swallow, but the alternative is continuing to watch generations of our children leaving Ireland, because they can’t afford to live here…
@David Van-Standen: We know how this works. Sinn Fein/IRA will promise to fix all our woes, including global famine. But if they do get into power will claim that due to years of mismanagement they are unable to fulfill our dreams and will be worse than those who went before as they’ll have no experience of government. What they have is a well oiled machine to rally voters.
@David Van-Standen: The subject is persons with Disabilities and homelessness.
Yet as usual, people forget the main topic to push their own agenda.
Please stuck to the topic,
The topic is disabled peoples access to housing, nothing else.
If you are not interested in the subject but housing for able people instead comment on an article about that subject, as this is not that article
3d printed housing technolgy may help when it gets going properly. Apparently the build is much much cheaper as labour is significantly reduced.
The first thing we want should be for the Government to lay down rules for banks. With regard to mortgages when on disability allowance Banks should be made give these people the loan they need at a reduced interest rate. They could recoup 50% of their loss on mortgages over one million euro – that’d solve the problem but obviously No politician has the ingenuity to pull this off.
Amazing all these comments by people pushing their own issues and nothing to do with the topic.
Nothing unusual with, disability issues being ignored or worse used to push personal agendas.
Our needs and campaigns are regularly hijacked by able people to promote themselves and their agenda.
Disability rights, issues etc will then be fully ignored again until they see the possibility to use us again.
Noteworthy have worked hard to show the reality of my community and its issues.
Sick of the crocodile tears on here for my community. Not just here either, the hypocrisy of most people in relation to disability inclusion is frightening.
Most of it is by accident but it still has the same affect on us.
Educate yourselves on the topic, beome aware of the people in my community.
Here is a shocking thought, ASK THEM?
Julie Helen
No one can solve the Affordable Housing issue in Ireland until the Referendum on Housing is passed. Only then can the laws be passed to remove all the barriers to enable affordable house building and affordable rents for all Irish citizens.
Current Irish Constitution is ambiguous, vague and open to interpretation which suits all those vested interests in high Rents and high House prices.
New home in France for €160,000 (80K site & 80K house.) not €260,000 in Ireland.
37% of cost of new homes in Ireland is completely artificial and has nothing to do with the cost of build. VAT alone on a new house in Ireland is €28,000 .. none in France.
A Referendum is the only way out for all those locked out of home ownership and rent slaves.
https://www.change.org/p/irish-referendum-on-family-home-special-status
@Neuville-Kepler62F: Please stick to the topic and keep your own agenda to yourself.
the topic is the DISABLED COPMMUNITY and Housing
It could be argued that Homelessness is the new disabled?
have your say