Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Many Deputies have outlined a litany of instances that have caused us to believe the Minister, Deputy Shatter, should resign. For the same reasons, the Dáil should vote no confidence in him. It is well worth mentioning them again. I think everybody should put them on the record. They include the manner in which the penalty points scandal was dealt with by the Minister and the Garda Commissioner. The Minister made allegations about Deputy Wallace and disclosed confidential information about him that he had received from the Garda Commissioner. The Minister dealt with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission bugging scandal in a way that reflected the way the Garda Commissioner responded to it. The Minister sacked the confidential recipient because he would not deny that a conversation which showed the Minister in a bad light had taken place. Last week, the Garda Commissioner was sacked, retired, asked to retire or asked to do the good thing and turn the gun on himself. The most recent scandal relates to the bugging of Garda stations.

This evening, the Department of Justice and Equality published on its website a letter that the former Garda Commissioner wrote to the Minister on 10 March last. For various reasons, I believe the Garda Commissioner should have gone before that letter was sent - I refer to his handling of the penalty points scandal and the GSOC affair, for example - but having read the letter on the Department's website, I do not think anything in it would have warranted the Garda Commissioner being forced to resign. This makes one wonder why he was forced to resign at that time. Questions have to be asked about the timing of that decision. It must be very reassuring for the Minister that the Taoiseach has expressed confidence in him in the Dáil on a number of occasions in recent weeks. It is clear from the timescale of how things developed that for 24 hours after he became aware of the taping allegations, the Taoiseach did not have enough confidence in the Minister to consult him on the matter. The Taoiseach decided to seek reputable legal advice on the implications of the taping before discussing it with the Minister. Although the Minister is a solicitor and apparently has some legal expertise, it seems that the Taoiseach did not have sufficient confidence in him to consult him on this issue. Given that the Taoiseach has shown that he does not have confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality, I believe this House should not have confidence in him either.

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