Mr Holmes said: "As a politician who has never accepted a cent from a property developer, I am calling on other candidates in the Meath East by-election to come clean on any donations they have accepted in this election or in previous elections, from builders, land speculators or their agents.
"It is unfortunately the case that in the boom times, property interests saw it as their absolute right to influence public policy, and it is unfortunately also the case that some politicians were perfectly happy let that happen.
-- Advertisement --
"We saw the consequences of this disastrous approach when our economy based on political patronage on the one hand and property speculation on the other, crashed and burned in 2008, Five years on, we are still cleaning up that particular mess.
"Well organised lobbying by property interests had a catastrophic effect on our economy and on our people, and in the years up to the property crash, housing estates sprung up, not based on demographic needs or planning considerations, but rather on who owned which piece of land, who they could influence, and which politicians they had on their side.
"The practise of developer-led planning wreaked havoc on communities all over this country, and it is a blot that we are still trying to clean up.
"But developer-led planning did not just happen in vacuum. It was facilitated, and in many cases actively encouraged by certain people in the political classes. Bertie Ahern became their standard bearer, but as we saw in the Mahon Report, he was hardly alone.
"If Mahon's findings highlighted one thing, it was that property developers and political donations make for a toxic concoction."
(CD)
