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

That is fine. Let us just recap on all the issues that have led to this, including the Minister's presiding of the Ian Bailey case, which will be a scandal of huge proportions that will damage our international reputation immensely. That is becoming clearer by the day and the Minister needs to clarify his role in that. It is one of the reasons my party has no confidence in him. Let us go through the others, from the handling of the penalty points issue, the procrastination from the moment the whistleblowers went to the Garda confidential recipient, through to the decision to go for an internal Garda investigation, the repeated attempts to discredit the Garda whistleblowers, to the two year delay in referring the decision of the report to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission when it became a crisis before the Committee of Public Accounts, and then to the apology that was dragged out of him last Thursday by his colleague sitting next to him and others.

The other issue relates to how the Minister dealt with allegations that the offices of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission were bugged. I do not need to rehearse that again because it is so well known how he has handled that. There was also the sacking of the confidential recipient due to what he said to Sergeant Maurice McCabe about the Minister, his relationship with the Garda Commissioner and the way he does his business. Finally, there was the vote of no confidence from the Opposition in respect of events concerning Deputy Wallace, and the Minister's decision to use confidential information given to him inappropriately by the Garda Commissioner to attempt to discredit political opponents in front of hundreds of thousands of people on television. For all those reasons, we have no confidence in the Minister.

We are trying to move to the next steps, which deal with restoring public confidence in the administration of justice, with the establishment of an independent Garda authority, something the Minister refused to examine until it was dragged out of him, and with a freshly empowered Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. After the massive damage done, people in every village, street, town and townland are talking about the need for the Minister to go. Every Minister for Justice and Equality is a reforming Minister. That is part of their job description, but for all those new beginnings to take place, this Minister needs to step aside and let us get on with it.

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