The money was just resting in my account… | The University Times

The money was just resting in my account… | The University Times: Why do you think previous anti-corruption legislation has failed so miserably? We’ve had anti-corruption legislation in the past but it hasn’t really stopped anybody such as Senator Callely and the expenses scandal that erupted there.
Well the legislation wasn’t always necessarily there. The ethics act was brought in in 1995 but before that anti-corruption legislation in Ireland dated back to British statues of 1916 and 1906 so we had a very outdated legislative framework. I think there is a focus on the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law which means the law always has to play catch up because there are always loopholes to be found when people only define their behaviour on what’s legally expected of them and not necessarily what their own moral obligations as servants of the public trust is. I think were coming to the point now where people are beginning to define their behaviour and realise that there’s not only legal expectations of them, but also moral expectations. It’s interesting in resignation speeches of a Ceann Comhairle or a Taoiseach or a former minister you see this phrase that crops up a lot: “I broke no law, I did no wrong.”?