Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

He has used the sub judice rule to excuse his non-appearance either before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights or on RTE to answer questions on the issue. There is a contradiction here. My interpretation of the rule is that if an issue before the courts is also being debated in this House, at a committee or elsewhere, one should deal with the issue in a restrained way and one is quite entitled to deal with the issue provided one uses careful language and a measured approach. I will leave objective observers to decide whether the speech of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform fitted within the category of being a measured reaction.

In his speech, the Minister admitted that RTE had done extensive research and had unearthed all the information. Is he now trying to suggest that only his version of events can be published or broadcast? He is using his attack on RTE and his attack on everybody else last night, including me — I do not take any notice of the rubbish coming from him — to deflect attention from his deficiencies and inadequacies in this transaction. He has essentially been caught in the corner. As he has awkward facts to explain, he just hits out at everybody including RTE. The default position of the Progressive Democrats on any issue is to shoot the messenger. After all the bluster and ranting is over, the Minister still must face the bare facts. It is rather like what Winston Churchill noted after the war: the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone were still there. He paid five times the market value for this farm. That fact remains. The Minister bought what I have called and will continue to call the dearest farm in Europe. We are not talking about any change with regard to Mountjoy but about the appalling waste of taxpayers' money in spending €30 million on a farm worth no more than €5 million or €6 million, and paying that for a prison site which turns out to be entirely unsuitable.

We will look at the question of cost, an issue which the Government has been trying to avoid. In terms of value for the taxpayer, this was a crazy transaction. Any property experts to whom I have spoken and who are involved in that area or adjoining areas said they were stunned by the amount of money paid by the Minister for the site. He was buying a farm — agricultural land. He did not have to get planning permission. The land did not need to have development potential of any kind. Zoning did not matter, nor did anything else. The Minister was supposed to get a suitable site at a reasonable cost. He got neither.

The Minister has attempted to use the process and explain through it that he did a great job. In the speeches delivered, much reference was made to the deficiencies in that process, and clearly such deficiencies existed. A farm was introduced at the end of the day, virtually at the last minute, dropped down from the clouds, so to speak, and within eight working days the sale was rushed through, accepted, put through Cabinet and contracted by the Minister.

The Minister cannot say that the process produced the result and that as a consequence he can justify this outrageous waste of public money. The process was irregular, but it was the Minister who set it up. If the process produced a bad result, he is also responsible. He will say he had to be open with everyone in the way he did business, that the matter had to be publicly advertised and so on. With whom was the Minister open? In the end, he was open only with the vendor, before whom he waved a crock of gold, and the vendor's advisers. At the same time, the Minister took great care to ensure that nobody else in the area or the community would have the slightest idea as to what he was about. If this project goes ahead it is those people and the coming generations who will suffer the consequences. They were not to be told what was happening. Where is the openness and transparency in that approach?

With regard to the process and the cost, the Minister is indicted on all fronts. He does not have an answer to the basic question why he paid five or six times the value of the farm. If any of us wished to buy a farm, would we do that? In my legal days I bought farms for many clients and I would not engage the Minister to do the job. There are many agents in the area involved. One would check the current market value with the agents in the area. One would check availability and take reasonable steps to ensure one was getting what one wanted. Nothing of that kind was done in this case. What happened took place with unseemly haste. It was rushed through at the last minute and there is no way of avoiding that. It was a disgracefully hurried decision in a situation where a preferred site was apparently back on the market, a site which was far superior and had been carefully examined by the committee.

The Minister talks about price per acre but the Coolquay site was clearly superior. It had access and development potential. Per acre it was a more expensive site, but I am not complaining about the price per acre because the site was suitable. The Minister has the duty — as has every member of Government — to get value for money and pay market value, no more or less. This did not happen in this case.

We have also ended up overpaying enormously for a site which clearly is unsuitable. That is becoming increasingly obvious. The suggestion has been made that the site was properly checked in advance, with the names of engineers and surveyors touted around by way of support. I have gone to the trouble of looking at the site search survey produced by these eminent people and everything I read in it confirms that going ahead with the purchase at the time was absolutely foolish.

The survey begins by telling us that the Thornton Hall site was 155 acres. No explanation has been given for purchasing just 150 acres. This reason is that the five acres zoned for rural cluster development were the only valuable part of that farm. No explanation has been given as to why the only valuable five acres out of 155 suddenly disappeared off the scene over a 24-hour period. The Minister did not even mention this.

The report goes on to say that a detailed survey of the site together with a geophysical and archaeological study would be required to finalise a decision on suitability. Why was this not done before the decision was made? This was a good report and everything it said about road access indicated enormous problems ahead. It noted there was no sewerage service for the land. It also looked at the issues of water, electricity and gas supplies and in all cases pointed out the difficulties and problems involved. The report ends by advising further investigation by means of bore holes and notes that such investigation could not be completed prior to the completion of the report.

Everything in the report tells us that this transaction should not have gone ahead in the manner it did. If one looks at the situation, coupled with the decision of Fingal County Council yesterday to designate the vicinity involved as an architectural conservation area, an ACA, one wonders what will ever happen in terms of a prison development on the site.

Regarding what has been referred to as the Mullingar motion, the Fine Gael-Labour motion, the bottom line is that major concerns have been raised about this site transaction and the public is entitled to have those concerns addressed. I fully accept that when Deputy Costello or I raise such concerns, people may legitimately say that we are in Opposition and that is our job. However, our motion is not intended as a means of utterly condemning the Minister, although at first sight of what has happened, it should be. We are restrained in what we are doing. Our motion is effectively neutral. We are simply calling for an independent examination of the transaction. Why does the Minister reject this approach? What has he to hide? That is the issue before the House and for the public.

The Minister said this is a bizarre proposal, complete nonsense with no basis in law or reality. I have no respect for the Minister's business sense but I have some for his legal knowledge. However, at this stage I am beginning to doubt that too, because the provision permitting the Oireachtas to request the Comptroller and Auditor General to conduct a report goes back to 1923, the foundation of the State. Those who founded the State had the foresight to include a provision in section 7 of the Comptroller and Auditor-General Act to allow this procedure to be followed. The Minister is therefore quite incorrect when he says this proposal has no basis in law or reality. It is based on the Comptroller and Auditor-General Act 1923, as amended.

That then gives rise to the central and major issue. What has the Government to hide? Why will the Minister not allow an independent audit of this transaction? He tries to defend the indefensible. He is not at this stage prepared to allow the Dáil ask the Comptroller and Auditor General to examine the transaction. He wants to leave it for 12 months, when the deal will be done and dusted and nothing can be done to question it. The approach of the Government and the Minister, Deputy McDowell, is very simple. Effectively, he is asking the Dáil to endorse an approach which involved paying five times the value for this farm to acquire a site which it transpires is utterly unsuitable for the purpose for which it was purchased.

On that basis, I ask the House to accept the very reasonable Fine Gael-Labour Party motion and to reject the Government amendment.

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