Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Chair's guidance.

I will recap the Ian Bailey case. This State handed over the Garda investigation files to the French authorities. That was deemed to be the thing to do. It was a remarkable decision because An Garda Síochána is not co-operating with requests from the ombudsman's office in the North regarding the killings of Denis Donaldson in Donegal and Councillor Eddie Fullerton, yet it did co-operate with this. That is the Minister's wisdom. It is a remarkable thing to do, and the Minister did it.

On foot of that, as the Minister knows, the French authorities have established a magistrate's hearing. Their representatives have been to this State investigating witnesses and they have requested that Ian Bailey be extradited to France. Indeed, our High Court agreed to extradite Ian Bailey to France for prosecution there. However, in November 2011 this State passed over documentation to Ian Bailey's legal team and among that documentation was a damning 44 page report from the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, from 2001 which clearly stipulated that there were no grounds for prosecution of Ian Bailey. That documentation was a game changer. In the subsequent Supreme Court hearing it was decided not to extradite Ian Bailey to France.

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