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THE WHIPS of the Dáil’s five groupings have agreed not to table any motions of censure against Wexford independent TD Mick Wallace, pending the outcome of a potential committee investigation into his tax affairs.
The whips of Fine Gael, Labour, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the Technical Group met this afternoon to discuss a possible all-party motion condemning Wallace for knowingly under-declaring the VAT of his construction company, M and J Wallace Ltd, to the Revenue Commissioners.
All five groups have agreed to hold fire, however, until the Dáil Committee on Members’ Interests meets to formally decide whether it has the authority to conduct an investigation into the affairs of Wallace and his companies.
That committee, which is chaired by another independent TD Thomas Pringle, is listed as meeting in private session tomorrow at noon in order to further discuss the possibility of a full investigation.
Though Pringle publicly said he did not believe the committee had jurisdiction over Wallace’s corporate affairs from before he was elected to the Dáil, the committee is now working on the belief that Wallace’s decision not to pay the full amount continued into his tenure as a TD.
TheJournal.ie understands that the whips agreed not to pursue a motion ahead of the committee’s preliminary investigations, largely because the committee has been requested to investigate the matter by the Ceann Comhairle, Sean Barrett.
A source said debating, or passing, any motion in advance of the committee’s investigations could pre-empt the committee’s hearings, and would be tantamount to “putting the cart before the horse”.
A Revenue Commissioners list of tax settlements, published this afternoon, confirm that Wallace’s construction company – of which he is the sole director and 99 per cent shareholder – incurred €425,668 in penalties as well as €289,146 in interest after under-declaring VAT to the tune of €1,418,894.
Its settlement with Revenue was the second-largest in the first quarter of 2012.
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When is someone going to charge this joker with VAT fraud?
Only people who smuggle garlic get charged with VAT fraud http://www.thejournal.ie/man-given-six-year-sentence-for-garlic-tax-scam-379395-Mar2012/
I table a motion to censure the Dáil.
Why don’t you people put legislation into place that enables you to oust this rogue TD?
Having to vote on this that and the other sounds like Irish politics.
My trust in Irish legislation has hit rock bottom.
Bunch of amateurs.
We passed a referendum just six months ago to allow just that! AFARCE!
Would it not be possible to transform Daíl sessions into a sitcom?
The popularity would attract a global audience.
@michael, that referendum wasn’t passed.
I voted For Mick, He said He was going to try and make a Difference, and try help change the system.
Its Impossible for him to do this now, So I believe he will resign. Hopefully soon. If he was to stand again tomorrow i wouldnt vote for him because he will be unable to make any positive difference or help change our ass of a political system.
It just came to mind.
Wallace reminds me of a modern day Worzel Gummidge.
But…joke aside.
His appearance and demeanor goes beyond Irish borders and critics of Mick are not exactly favourable.
After all. He is the one who represents YOU.
The people who have elected this jester.
His position in politics are serious business.
Just imagine the following scenario.
You enter a jeweller with the intent of purchasing a diamond ring.
The sales person is…guess who. Mick Wallace.
Would you consider a purchase???
Of course not.
Why, why at this juncture is this crook still allowed to set foot into the Daíl?
A foundation which should represent the welfare and interests of the people and not harbour lawbreakers.
There is something very wrong in Irish politics (not that that is a shocker) when the party pushing the censure is one whose every leader for 35 years has resigned in disgrace, has had several leaders that were large scale crooks and fraudsters. Who fills the papers on a regular basis with its members and their travails with the fraud squad and tax man.
A party that is not making a complaint to the Gardaí fraud squad over massive theft of donations from it coffers exposed in Mahon, due to fear that the rest of the crooks in the party are exposed, thefts that occur at all levels of the party from elected to cumann chairs.
Wallace should resign but there are many others that should as well. Clearer sanctions and higher standards, should apply to all even if the person is not a big 2 TD.
I don’t care about the dáil and resignation, I want him arrested for fraud, the resignation should follow, not lead
I have no problem with it going to court, though Judges oft take a lenient view in cases like this, especially nowadays. If they did otherwise they would need to put a fence around Louth and turn it in to a prison for business people.
I’m sure they could spare a Guard or two from the massive investigation into the other great soccer aficionado Sean Fitzpatrick to have Micko’s pinko collar felt. However, it’s not always a matter of who you might know but sometimes rather what you might know and about whom which determines these things.
John Murphy. When you see that Sean Fitzpatrick was drinking in to the wee hours with Dennis o’Brien and that the driving force of FF’s back office for the last 30 years was there in the hotel as well.
I can guarantee you if Sean Fitzpatrick walked in to a bar and it was crowded, Micheal Martin would push his own wife off her chair to give him a seat.
@ Fagan’s
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that room when they were chatting! Most in the room are involved (allegedly) in some kind of acceptance of another fraudster on their team! Most of them would be a party member as their colleague was before they had to resign (or not resign as the case may be – Lowry – just became an independent!). How could they push Wallace to resign, when none of them have!
Rotten, all rotten, thieving fraudsters! Two worlds, their and ours. Why is revenue/guards not arresting him? Just a question I need answered. Anybody?
Dose anybody know if anybody can make a complaint to the Guards about Pee Flynn stealing €50k? FF aren’t but would we not all be better opening this can of worms(etc call them what u will) and let the guards at them?
Oh for God’s sake Fagan’s! People are beginning to fall for your lies now…! Iit’s not funny anymore! Pee Flynn’s €50k has been referred to the DPP by FF.
As I said in a comment that seems to have disappeared. FF referred it to the DPP but have not made an official complaint to the Gardaí. Which means the force cannot act on the complaint. As it has to come from the aggrieved party but FF are not doing this. Which is nuts when once considers that it would be a real break from the culture of mass corruption but understandably given that people might start talking and send a hell of a lot of FF’ers to jail. Referral to the DPP isn’t the same as making a formal complaint to the Guards. Once the DPP make a decision, will FF then either way make a formal complaint to the Gardaí fraud squad. That’ll be the day, if ye do. I’ll drop in a bottle of wine to you in FF HQ in penance.
Paul pointing out hard facts about your party is not spin, its not lies, its calling a spade a spade.
I always thought that referring criminal investigations to the DPP was a Garda/State function who submit files arising out of an investigation through The Chief State Solicitor’s Office or regional State Solicitors. How does Fianna Fail fit into this procedure?
John. Google “FF refer DPP” and nothing comes up.
As soon as the Minister for Justice said the report would be forwarded to the DPP by his dept. FF jumped in and said they had no problem with it. Course they would, it was happening anyway. They did not refer it to the DPP, it is a line they are putting out, hoping that people in their own party and outside it will fall for it.
The meat on the bones is that 50k was taken from their party, there are witnesses who confirmed this. It would be the equivalent of 200k today but FF think it is not worthy of a Gardaí reporting it to the Gardaí. It opens up the blank cheques style of politics from the Haughey years, that continued as an integral party of FF life. Millions have been stolen over the years from the party at all levels. Well reality is catching up now, no matter how much they want to hide from it.
Oh Dear Fagan’s. You and I could wear our fingers to the bone googling to expose the corruption of FF, their lies and deceit and guess where it would get us? Yeah you’re right!
Because there are people out their willing to believe them no matter what. Like the Roman Church FF have a ‘cultural’ vein that runs through the Irish psyche, like it or not they are part of what we are. They are as much part of the Irish make up as the Costra Nostra are to Sicily. OK, mavericks like Wallace might crop up from time to time but they are no more than slight aberrations in a political culture that is inherently corrupt to the core. In that overall scheme of things you could attach FG as minor amateurs and Labour as just blatant opportunists.
What Wallace did is wrong, but who here can honestly say they never paid ‘cash-only’ for a job to be done or when selling/purchasing an item where VAT is chargable/payable? I’d say very few can honestly be counted as having paid VAT on every service or purchase. Perhaps on an individual basis not as dramatic as the €2m liablitiy Wallace’s company has to strump up. But on a collective basis €2m would be peanuts! I know I’ve paid cash-only for several jobs to be done on my house, for me it’s the difference of affording to get the job done or not. I also know several civil servants who pay cash-only where they can too. So in effect we are all defrauding the VAT man of what is due!
On one hand I have sympathy for Wallace, but then on the other what a feck’n idiot. He would had been better off keeping his mouth shout, his enthusiasm to be an ‘honest’ politician is to be applauded, but it has just landed him in shite. As a director of a limited company he has limited liability, however, that limited liability is gone when found to knowingly committing a fraud. It is rumoured the revenue wanna prosecute (more like make an example), and he has just given them the loaded gun to go after him personally. He has admitted to fraud therefore cannot any longer enjoy the limited liability of his company!
I can honestly say I always pay my taxes.
Fair play, Pete, I pay my taxes too. But let say for example you were quoted a job on your car, house or whatever and that quote was €1,150 plus VAT @ 21% = €1,391.50, or I’ll do it for €1,000 cash. Can you honestly say you’ll pay the €1,391.50 rather than €1,000? Well if you can say you’ll pay the €1,391 then you’ve clearly got more money than me and you’re a better man than I am!!!
Clearly.
Can ask a question? Where did the 2 million go? The guy is broke.
So it either went to Governemt in income tax, the banks (same as Government) or paid his other creditors(staff, subbies). You can’t draw blood from a stone… unless he has 2 million quid under matress.
So the guy under huge stress lied to the VAT man and paid someone else…
While I don’t agree with his actions, I do understand what he was thinking at the time. People do funny thinks under stress.
Mick –
don’t let the bastards grind you down. You’re not the worst.
For the haircut alone he deserves to go to jail
Nearly as bad as a mullet Gis eh! :-)
Indeed Frank
It’s quite simple, there have been no motions of censure because they live by the motto of people in glass houses should not throw bricks!
It’s a disgrace that Wallace is potentially able to get away with this while hard working tax paying citizens like Paul Begley are sitting in mountjoy prison having paid back half of what he owed with an arrangement in place to pay the rest whereas Wallace has already admitted that the 2.1 million that his company owes will probably never be paid. Mr Begley will cost the state about €540,000 to keep him locked up for his full sentence, let the man home to his family and give Wallace & Bertie & co his cell to share, it’s all they deserve!
The Garda need hard evidence eg like a dead body to say they found a body. Wallace saying he did it is not enough and the revenue saying he did it is not enough. Mind you the guy who broke into Shatters house was refused bail and I bet he does time for his crime. How many Garda were involved in his case? Also I bet there will be no errors in his arrest or his detention. He won’t get off on a technicality. Mr Shatter is very quiet on this one. Mind you I wouldn’t believe a word he says and he took an oath.
the longer and nastier this gets the more names will be implicated hopefully
Why isn’t the DPP preparing a file for Mick Wallace’s prosecution? The Troika is looking on in disbelief at the Banana Republic of Ireland.
I lol at the myth of wallace not paying tax so he could keep people employed.. he is a political insurgent and he only wants to make fools out of the public
Guys, can anyone clarify this for me? is it possible to censure a sitting TD for their actions before winning a seat?
The more I read and hear on the radio of the Mick Wallace affair the more I despair for this country. I despair not because there are TD’s and people in business making dodgy tax returns but because there is no understanding in the Dail of the reality of trying to keep a business alive in this country today.
In business, in politics, in life you have to make choices, sometimes there are good and bad options, for lots of business people nowadays there are only bad options. When you only have bad options to choose from it is impossible to do the right thing. I can understand the position Mick Wallace found himself in when sales started falling through, when the banks turned the credit business’s in a normal economy can rely on off and people’s wages still had to be paid.
I can put myself in his shoes where the decision was to buy time by underpaying a VAT bill or to stop paying the wages and to close the door. I can also understand the bond between a business owner and their business. When you have fought long and hard to bring something into existence, spent long days and nights nurturing and growing it then you do not give up. You do not let it die without fighting for it, and fighting dirty if you have to. You cannot sit in that meeting with your accountant and detach yourself from the emotional involvement you have with your business because in many ways it is you.
I can respect a man for fighting for something he believed in. I have no respect for the hurlers on the ditch that make up the Dail and that sit in sanctimonious judgment of Mick Wallace. I can also respect a man that can admit; in plain language, that he did the wrong thing.
I have no respect for those that sit in their comfy chairs while the rest of us struggle, that lecture about paying tax while they feather their own nests with outrageous salaries and pensions that the rest of us will never see. I have no respect for them because they reward their own failed civil servants with massive EU jobs for billion euro blunders all the while calling for the heads of those that make mistakes on the other side, the working side, of the fence. I hear our politicians calling for an end to Limited Liability, for the bills of a defunct company to fall on the heads of its directors and I despair. If the cost of their bad choices fell on our politicians in the same way as it falls on us maybe it would be OK, maybe we’d get better decisions out of them, but the costs don’t fall on them, far from it.
I, along with many friends and family that are self employed and formerly self employed in this country struggle and do whatever it takes to survive because we have no other choice, no safety net, no pension for us if we lose our business’s, no soft landing out here. Sometimes the only choices we have out here on the frontline are bad choices.
I realize our political betters don’t understand the world I live and work in at all, and if they don’t understand it, don’t understand the problems I and countless other small and not so small business’s in the country face and struggle with every day then how are they going to fix our problems? I think Mick Wallace probably understands how difficult things are better then most of them, nothing teaches you like experience.
The Dail is meant to be reflective of the people of Ireland, to have teachers farmers, shop workers and business people that understand the country, what its like to live here, to do business here. If the Dail doesn’t understand what its like to run a business with a bankers hand in your left pocket, the tax man’s hand in your right, a load of debt behind you and no customers in front of you then it is not representative of this country. It will not lead us out of this mess it led us into because the Dail still does not really understand just how bad the mess is.
I hope Mick Wallace survives this witch hunt because then we will still have at least one TD in the Dail that understands what its like for those of us out here that are trying to keep our business’s afloat any way we can. It is all well and good for Enda and co to act like scolded children in our dealings with the EU but we are fighting for survival out here, and maybe if we had some fighters in the Dail that knew how to fight a little tougher, and if necessary fight a little dirtier then we’d all be a little better off.
A little better off would be a good start.
Wallaces actions – doubling the salary he paid himself and his son was a calculated move by a shrewed businessman. This guy is no fool. His decision to with hold the VAT was most likely done on the basis he would get away with it. His concern for staff excuse is at odds with the amount of cash he was stripping out for himself. It could have paid a number of peoples salary for a year. Wallace has to go. Wallace has to face the consequences…
What about the FG councillor that got a slap on the wrist for the same thing?
http://ht.ly/bwgP8
He is one of the elite,so nothing will happen to him.One law for them,and one law for us.
I have no respect for those that sit in their comfy chairs while the rest of us struggle, that lecture about paying tax while they feather their own nests with outrageous salaries and pensions that the rest of us will never see
if this is the case, how do you respond to wallace’s own behaviour in this field whose money was he helping himself and his family to?
it begggars belief that posts like this are being made. crookedness in business is ok? jesus, i give up
what is the difference, each and every person with a name td is a liar, and a thief, so one got into trouble before hand, he is sitting with the best, leave him sit next to the one who steals from travelling expenses, ink, selling land, building frauds, he is with the best so leave him be, at least we know who and where to find them, leinster prison for the corrupt,, only stupid thing he did was be honest and file,,, eejit,,,,,,, and enda up there spluttering as he cant tell the truth,,,,, oh well at least we are under german thumb now it may get better,, they sold us cheap, but a 100 years of freedom was to much for the irish to hold onto,, britain, germany, think china next,,,, if britain have 6 counties, how many will the germans claim,,, so much further from 32,,, sorry but our government of school teachers and psycologists are such a let down, we need a government of people who know economics, banking and not bring them in to pay 500,000 for a consultation after the damage done, we need to vote them in, not what we got, men filling their daddys position,,, its a joke , and as long as it continues, they are allowed to steal and thieve
Of course not. One rule for them and another for the rest of the country. And who is going to foot the bill for this committee? YOU the taxpayer….. No Thanks!!!!!
While the likes of Lowry, Stagg and Mitchell to name but 3 remain in the Dail after their “indiscretions” it’s a bit rich any of the political parties going after Wallace, it’s starting to come across as bullying of someone who isn’t a party hack. Who has most to gain if he does quit the Dail and politics? FF or FG. I wasn’t a bit surprised at the guy from the Wexford newspaper on drivetime yesterday saying he thought Wallace would be re-elected if he ran again, that’s the way it’s been with Irish politics for as long as I can remember.
There is no VAT man. There is a tax man. There is one revenue. There is one pot into which all the revenue of the state goes. Article 11 of our Constitution states that all revenue forms one fund.
Mick Wallace defrauded the state of 1.4 million euro in VAT. He is not above the law. He must be punished.
By letting him off, we only set a dangerous precedent. It leads to vicious descending cycle where people refuse to pay their share of taxes. It leads to a situation where we have a fake property boom and where a third of our revenue comes from tax receipts related to this property boom. It leads to a situation where we require a bailout and supervision from the EU/IMF/ECB after the phoney property boom runs out of steam.
We should take responsibility for our own actions and inactions and stop blaming Ze Germans. Believe or not, we are a sovereign state.
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