Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday afternoon, members of the family of Sylvia Roche Kelly, her mother, sisters and brother, came to see me at their request. They told me that up to quite recently, they were never told anything about the totality of issues surrounding the murder of their daughter and sister. They were unaware that the person who had murdered Sylvia Roche Kelly had some months earlier savagely abducted and beaten a woman, Mary Lynch, whose name is now in the public domain. He was released on his own bail of €200. While out on that bail, he abducted a young five year-old child at 3.45 a.m. in a Tipperary household but, thankfully, he was intercepted by the child's parents and a brave garda living next door who arrested him. Incredibly, he was given bail again and went on to murder Sylvia Roche Kelly. Her family had one simple message for me which is that they want answers about what happened. They are entitled to very basic and straight answers to the questions they now have, as do the other victims of the very serious assaults and endangerment contained in the dossier I sent to the Taoiseach last week. These families and these victims do not need ten volumes of material or paper; they need simple explanations. That is why I ask the Taoiseach, given the sensitivity of the issues involved, the fact that issues of security are involved and public confidence in the administration of justice, that the only way to deal with this is to initiate a commission of investigation with full High Court powers and compellability and a capacity to deal with such issues effectively and efficiently. I ask the Taoiseach to do that.

I ask the Taoiseach if he will indicate to the House that he agrees that the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, should come before the House to withdraw the statement he made that the whistleblower, Maurice McCabe, did not co-operate with the Garda inquiry into penalty points and that he should not have said that. One could put a Jesuitical interpretation on this direction from the Garda Commissioner on 14 December.

We have this spectacle of communications between the Commissioner and the whistleblower simply to facilitate the Minister's stubbornness and his reluctance and refusal-----

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