Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Does the Taoiseach agree that the state of the aquatic centre is a metaphor for the state of the Government? He has just admitted that the centre and the Government are his own creations; that both are defective and incapable of performing the job they were set up to do. Their foundations are cracked and both are leaking like a sieve. They are swallowing up and wasting taxpayer's money and both are involved in a cover-up and PR bluster.

I refer to one of the cover-ups, the circumstances where as a result of the story in The Irish Times on Saturday we now know that what has been asserted from these benches all this time is true, that both the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform of the day and the Attorney General of the day had full knowledge from the report submitted by then Deputy Commissioner Conroy in August 2000 of what was happening in County Donegal and the circumstances surrounding the framing of the McBrearty family and so on. Despite this, they refused to investigate. They came into this House and voted down a motion tabled by the Labour Party, Fine Gael and the Green Party to have the matter inquired into. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, anxious as ever to give precedence to the necessity to clear himself and make a display of the correctness of his own advice, has dropped the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Deputy O'Donoghue, into the most serious situation any Minister has experienced in this shambles of a Government.

He has created a circumstance where the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, is on the run. He will not even appear on "Questions & Answers" when invited. He will not come in here in case he is asked a question about it. I want to ask the Taoiseach a question because he came in here and misled the House as well. He said they only had partial knowledge and not then until November 2001. We know they had the Conroy report in August 2000. Was the Conroy report in any way inadequate and, if the answer is no, why did the Taoiseach promote him to Commissioner? If the answer is yes, why did the Taoiseach fail to investigate the serious matters with which he dealt? That report is a very comprehensive summary of what is in the Carty report. The fact the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is shaking his head and that witness statements were not appended is neither here nor there. If I were Minister for Justice and I or any Minister for Justice got the entire barrow full of the Carty report, he or she would be annoyed. Assistant Commissioner Conroy summarised the gravamen of the allegations in a 37-page legible, intelligible report to these two Ministers and now they are covering up why they failed to investigate one of the most serious public interest issues in this jurisdiction.

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