Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Minister's bad tempered attack on last night's "Prime Time" programme, which dealt with the purchase of lands at Thornton for six times the normal value of agricultural land in the area, was nothing more than a blatant attempt to avoid answering the key questions posed by the process of this purchase. The "Prime Time" programme went straight to the heart of the matter. What is the Minister afraid of? We simply want the Comptroller and Auditor General to examine the spending of nearly €30 million of taxpayers' money to determine whether, as we suspect, it was done improperly. What is wrong with that? If the Minister is vindicated by the Comptroller, he can come here and strut his stuff, as he is so good at doing.

Important questions must be answered. Close to Christmas Eve, an estate agent who received an exorbitant fee spoke to an auctioneer. Fewer than three weeks after the end of the Christmas and New Year break, he brought that site for the first time to the expert committee meeting, which on foot of a preliminary examination of the site agreed to lash out nearly €30 million in taxpayers' funds. The Minister made much of the Clifton Scannell Emerson consultants' investigation of that site during the three weeks preceding the decision to purchase it. He is trying to use the consultants as a smokescreen. It was a preliminary investigation, as the same consultancy said two months later to the Prison Service, and not the type of detailed examination that will now be needed before the project goes ahead. The estate agent told the landowner that no more than €200,000 per acre would be paid. That is like telling him that he could successfully seek €199,999.99 per acre. It is an incredible scenario involving six times the agricultural value of the land.

I reject the false counter-posing of the need to move from or refurbish Mountjoy Prison. I, with Deputy Gregory, know what Mountjoy Prison is like. I was a guest there for a period. This motion addresses the process of the purchase of this land. The procedure trampled on the democratic rights of the local community, just as the people of Rossport, County Mayo, were trampled on in terms of the shoving through without consent of a pressure pipeline. From the point of view of prisoners' families, the location is completely wrong. It is in the middle of rural north County Dublin and lacks a proper public transport infrastructure. It is ludicrous.

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