Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)

I agree with Deputy Niall Collins that dealing with the recommendations in the Mahon tribunal report does not absolve anybody of everything that happened up to that point. We certainly must, in the public interest, investigate all of the issues the Deputy has raised. My party will support any such investigation.

However, we are here today to discuss the recommendations set out in the report of the Mahon tribunal. We already spent several days after the publication of the report discussing its findings. There was some political point-scoring in that debate, which is inevitable when members of different parties are discussing such an important report. However, there was also a sense among Members of all parties and none that we had reached a crossroads in Irish politics. The general consensus was that the choice before us was either to take the Mahon tribunal report and, as was done with previous tribunal reports, put it on a shelf without implementing any of its recommendations, or we could look seriously at those recommendations with a view to implementing as many as possible.

If the Minister wants to have a conversation with Deputy Niall Collins, he should leave the Chamber. I will be more than happy to chat with the Acting Chairman and Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett in his absence. Is he interested in what we have to say?

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