Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Fennelly commission was established by the Government to review the bugging of telephone conversations in Garda stations, as well as the background to and circumstances of a letter sent to the Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality from the former Garda Commissioner on 10 March. The commission also has the task of investigating and reporting on the sequence of events that led up to the retirement of the former Garda Commissioner, Martin Callinan, on 25 March.

As part of the process of establishing that commission, the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality wrote to the Taoiseach to request that the terms of reference for the commission be amended. It wanted to ensure that the sequence of events leading to the resignation of the former Commissioner would be front loaded to the first eight weeks of the commission's work and that the evidence would be taken in public, if possible. The Taoiseach refused this entirely reasonable request. It would be useful to hear and understand his reasons for refusing. We then had what was described as a farce when the Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality, Mr. Brian Purcell, appeared before the committee and refused to answer questions about his role in the events that led to the resignation of the former Commissioner. In the interest of fairness and trying to understand all of this, I ask the Taoiseach to explain to the Dáil why he refused the committee's requests to front load the first eight weeks of the commission's work and to take evidence in public.

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