Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Either the Minister, Deputy McDowell, is telling this House an untruth or the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, told this House an untruth regarding a grave matter which goes to the cornerstone of our democracy. I ask the Taoiseach as head of the Government to answer the question. I put it to him that both Ministers are now being untruthful, that the Government possessed the Carty report and that the Government is doing what Deputy Martin when Minister for Education and Science did by dumping on the senior Garda authorities because it needed to provide a fig leaf as to why it resisted an inquiry into Donegal. It had the report, minus the appendices, all along. The appendices comprised the witness statements but the substantial conclusions of the inspector which were submitted to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform bore out the gravity of the allegations with regard to Donegal. As Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue sat on it and covered up and used it in this House as and when it suited him. The Government voted down the request from this side of the House for a joint motion on an investigation into the events in Donegal.

The current Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has the cheek to allege inside and outside this House and on radio that, somehow, those whose knees were under the Cabinet table of the rainbow Government were responsible. He gets away with this in some sections of the media. It is almost beyond belief that the man who says he did not receive the report until 2002 can say his predecessor in office from 1994 to 1997 was responsible. It is disgraceful. If former Minister for Justice, Ms Nora Owen, was implicated in this manner and the Taoiseach and his colleagues were on this side of the House they would hound her to resign. It is a disgraceful dereliction of duty. The Government did not anticipate that Mr. Justice Morris would get to the bottom of the matter.

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