Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The Attorney General replied in June 2001. He required sight of the full Carty report. The Attorney General, while agreeing that a public inquiry was the most attractive option, advised that since tribunals had to be conducted in public it would seriously prejudice the pending prosecutions. He also advised that a tribunal could be established if the truth did not emerge in the pending court cases.

In November 2001, having consulted the Director of Public Prosecutions on foot of the Attorney General's request to see the Garda file, the Garda Commissioner gave an edited version of the Carty report to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. This consisted of those parts of the Carty report considered to be relevant to the defence of the civil actions related to Donegal. This edited version was a very bulky document and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions remarked that it would be difficult for persons reading themselves into the case to make sense of the issues without sight of these papers. Therefore, it was not possible to do it and the Director of Public Prosecutions had declared that.

In November 2001, Mr. Shane Murphy was appointed to review all the papers and advise how best to proceed. The full Carty report was given to the Department in the second half of January 2002. Mr. Murphy submitted his report at the end of that month also.

In February 2002, the Government approved, in principle, the establishment of a tribunal of inquiry and the drafting of a Bill to amend the tribunals of inquiry Act to facilitate the holding of an inquiry allowing a tribunal to hold part of its hearing in private, if necessary, to avoid prejudicing a criminal prosecution. At all times the Minister and the Attorney General were anxious to have the matter fully inquired into. The issue in question was — Deputy Rabbitte knows this because I said this last week — one of prejudicing pending proceedings and that difficulty was overcome only by amending the law, and that is what happened. Those are the full facts.

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