Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will put this to Mr. Smyth. There were three bidders in a race. Two were very well known and one was less well known. One faced certain questions regarding capacity, experience and so on. Suppose that one of the bidders then decided, in an effort to address that apparent imbalance, to begin a process of dialogue, engagement or advertising. Suppose that bidder promoted itself as capable, confident and having the necessary wherewithal. Suppose this was all done in the presence of the Minister. To me, that is canvassing. We are politicians. We canvass in different ways. We knock on doors and talk to people. We like to get our pictures in the paper so that people see us. Canvassing can happen very overtly or in a subtle way. One could not term what happened here as anything other than canvassing. One bidder had multiple opportunities to ingratiate themselves in the eyes of the Minister. One might say there is a remove between the Minister and the Departmental officials and the team. There are certain walls there that prevent that. However there is no benign way to see this as anything other than canvassing. Whether or not the canvassing had a material outcome is not the relevant point when it comes to these rules being breached. If one accepts the principle that this is canvassing, the impact is a separate issue. That is the gap in Mr. Smyth's report, if I might respectfully say so. He has not looked at all the activities that happened or what the clear intent was. He could have done that. He could have made certain findings and still come up with the same conclusions, that is, that the process was not tainted as such. Mr. Smyth covered that pretty well when he recognised that the Minister's resignation insulated the process from further contamination.

There is one issue. The former Minister spoke to it in recent days when he stated that his only desire was to keep Mr. McCourt at the table. SIRO and Eir might have liked to have the same level of desire on the part of the Department and the Minister to keep them at the table. They had all raised issues of concern. Consequently, they did not see business in it for them and pulled out.

I must push the point that Mr. Smyth's report is somewhat less than complete on the canvassing. I will give Mr. Smyth another opportunity to explain how he did not see it as canvassing.