Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The second defence put forward was that both the slander and the false affidavit to the High Court were perpetrated by Willie O'Dea, private citizen, not Willie O'Dea, Minister.

Invisible hairs are being split here. A belief in the capacity to separate private impropriety from public office now appears to be standard operating procedure for Fianna Fáil in Government. We heard precisely the same logic from the Taoiseach's predecessor when he stated in regard to his Manchester whip-round that despite the fact that he was Minister for Finance at the time, he was Bertie Ahern, private citizen, when he was handed £15,000 in a brown envelope.

The Taoiseach's defence of his Minister comes straight from Fianna Fáil's code of operations. He claimed the Minister broke no code of ministerial ethics. The reason he broke no code is because some things are so obviously unethical that it would be laughable to include them in the code in the first place. For example, one would think the sentence: "Do not lie to the High Court" is redundant to a code of ministerial conduct.

The Taoiseach failed to answer specific questions regarding the steps he took in the two months since the issue was brought to his attention. His colleague is involved in a matter of importance. Equally, we have no indication that another Minister attempted to seek an explanation for these events. This is about the Minister as distinct from the Deputy. It appears that it was not an issue for anyone in this Government until it became the subject of an editorial in a national newspaper yesterday. That the Taoiseach and the Minister for Defence define their ethics by the specific warnings of a code of conduct rather than by a moral compass points to a lack of morality which is endemic to their party and which smears the good name of every Member of this House by association.

The vote before us is simple. If Deputies believe it is wrong for a Minister to tell an untruth in a sworn affidavit in the High Court, they can have no confidence in the Minister for Defence. If they believe it is appropriate for a Minister to swear a false and defamatory affidavit in the High Court, they can vote their support for him and, by doing so, define publicly their own political morality. These are the questions that must be answered by Fianna Fáil and Green Party Members when they vote on this issue.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government gave the following address on 24 February 2007:

It's great to be back in Galway. I came down on the overcrowded train...there's a strange cult called Fianna Fáil, a type of religion without vision or values; and every year in August they go on their annual pilgrimage to one of their sacred sites, the tent at the Galway races, where they pay homage to their gods and the gods bestow them with gifts for doing their bidding...The Green Party wants high standards in high places...

See this speech in context