Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is a matter of fact that any of those parties could, and would, legally scrutinise our work and if they were so moved, they could intervene if they believed there was something legally unsound in the report or that they had been impugned in some dramatic way by the work of the committee. However, focusing on that misses the point. There are forces within the system which wish to thwart our work. People can call me a cynic but I am not hugely surprised to hear that because the experience on this committee is that at a certain point during the previous term the system intervened, not because we were doing a bad job but we were doing too good a job and that caused a problem. We need a simple assertion from the committee, irrespective of our political stripe, that we are here to do the work of the citizens and of those who send us here and no Minister, officials or head of any State agency will get in our way. However, we need to be single minded in that regard. The Chairman should have shared this information with us. I will not second guess his honourable position in making the call he made but it was a mistake. It is important that we understand that there are those who wish to thwart our work and we cannot allow our work to be thwarted.

What do we do next? We need the Minister to apologise to the committee. To suggest we are "conjuring up" allegations or findings is outrageous and is beneath a member of Cabinet. He needs to clarify that. I do not know what we do regarding the official if the Chairman is not prepared to name who it is. I am sure there is a Standing Order that facilitates a report to be-----