Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Niall Collins for tabling this motion. It is extraordinary to think that a week ago a Garda Commissioner left office or was pushed out of office yet no opportunity was given to debate it. Were it not for the opportunity presented to us by the tabling of this motion we would not have a chance to do that. It is evident from the heckles that the press office has supplied the scripts and backbenchers propose to troop in and vote confidence in the Minister. However, what Members opposite will not see in the scripts or briefings provided to them are issues on which they need to reflect. In voting confidence in the Minister, they vote absolute confidence in the manner in which issues in the Department of Justice and Equality have been handled not alone in the past few weeks but in the past three years since the Minister, Deputy Shatter, took office.

The first question Members opposite should ask themselves relates to the actions of the Taoiseach. Why, when the Taoiseach learned last Sunday from the Attorney General about one of the biggest challenges of all time to the Department of Justice and Equality did he consider it not appropriate to involve the Minister, Deputy Shatter, in his discussions and research for 24 hours? They should also question why the Attorney General felt it necessary to say to the Taoiseach that she did not want to discuss the issue on the phone and wanted to see him face to face. What does that say about the Attorney General's confidence in terms of the security of her communications? They should also question why the Taoiseach then spent the following day consulting with the Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality and convened a meeting in his office at 6 p.m. that evening to which the Minister, Deputy Shatter, was invited, at which he laid out a course of events involving the Secretary General being dispatched to the Garda Commissioner to tell him of Cabinet unease despite no Cabinet meeting having been held. The Taoiseach also did not consult the Tánaiste at any stage during the 24 hours before he dispatched the Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality to tell the Garda Commissioner to walk the plank. He did not consider it necessary to speak to the Minister for Justice and Equality or the Tánaiste. What does that say about relationships within government?

We are asked to believe that at that meeting the Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality, who on 10 March had received a letter from the Garda Commissioner in relation to the issue which was the only item for discussion, did not think it appropriate to point out that he had received a letter from the Garda Commissioner in relation to that issue and that even when the Taoiseach told the Secretary General to go to the Commissioner's home to inform him that he was not happy, the Secretary General still did not tell the Taoiseach the Garda Commissioner had written to him on 10 March. The Taoiseach clearly does not have operational confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality when he spent a full day researching an issue without involving him.

One must also question the level of confidence the Secretary General of the Department has in the Minister, particularly when a letter of that importance - delivered by law - was not brought to the attention of either the Taoiseach or the Minister at the meeting in question. A week has passed since this happened and the Taoiseach has had every opportunity to explain why he excluded the Minister and the Tánaiste from his negotiations. However, he has engaged in obfuscation at every turn and has not indicated why he failed to involve the Minister. We must deduce from the lack of a response that while the Taoiseach might express confidence in the Minister, he does not have confidence in him.

We are expected to believe that the Minister, Deputy Shatter, is the greatest Minister since Ministers began - that is the way it will be spun during this debate - that he is the best Minister in "Ministerland", that we should all bow down before him, that he is the great reformer and that they will probably write songs about him in the future. One of the great reforms that will be trumpeted relates to independent oversight in respect of An Garda Síochána. Only a few weeks ago, however, the Minister stated: "I have no plans to introduce a Garda authority and there is no such commitment in the programme for Government." He also stated: "To pass control of such matters to an unelected body beyond the executive and the legislature is untenable." Those were the words of the Minister a few short weeks ago in response to a parliamentary question.

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