Clare Daly (Dublin North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of brief questions. If I am brief, I would like the Minister to be brief, so I can come back in with some more.

It is strange that, unlike GSOC, the Garda Commissioner is solely accountable to the Minister, and that he did not deem it appropriate to ask Mr. Martin Callinan to account for his actions over the course of the past two weeks. The review will be fully co-operated with by GSOC and the security companies involved. Will the Minister and the Garda Commissioner co-operate with it? Why was it not given a full judicial role with powers of compellability rather than just being allowed to ask questions?

With regard to the issue of authorised surveillance, the Minister responded to Deputy Healy-Rae that he had not instructed any surveillance of GSOC. I want the Minister to categorically and unequivocally give an assurance that no one in the Garda, the Defence Forces or the Revenue Commissioners, the authorised agencies for such actions, carried out any surveillance on GSOC. Will he agree that it stretches credibility somewhat that the Garda Commissioner has said there is no basis for any garda involvement in any surveillance, which the Minister verified he did not challenge him on?

I contend that from the beginning the Minister has sought to minimise and trivialise these issues. He has misrepresented the view of GSOC on multiple occasions this afternoon. He repeatedly said it had given no evidence of Garda misconduct. That is absolutely correct, but is an entirely different matter from exonerating the Garda or from saying - as the Minister said, inaccurately - that Kieran FitzGerald had said on “Prime Time" that nothing had been found. GSOC and Verrimus said no such thing. What was actually said was that one of the anomalies - the Minister referred to them as so-called vulnerabilities and feelings, which reminds me of the Garda Commissioner speaking about so-called whistleblowers - constituted evidence to substantiate a potential breach of security in the offices of the Garda watchdog. The chances of one incident being benign were described as close to zero. There is a valid analysis of this which says that on detection that device ceased to exist. That is a plausible explanation.

Points have been made about the Wi-Fi. The Minister flippantly said there was no evidence of people drinking coffee-----