Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

The title of this debate is ill chosen. It should reflect the fact that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has questions to answer as well. The Minister is also in the dock but that is not reflected in the title of the debate.

The Minister shocked the nation with his candid admission on RTE radio yesterday that he deliberately supplied documents concerning an ongoing Garda investigation into a forged passport to his favoured Irish Independent journalist. At the time of the leaking of the documents to only one journalist, the Minister made no statement of his intent or purpose. It was a total secret and nobody knew anything about it. In the Dáil last week, however, when he answered a question, he deliberately departed from the thrust of the question to provide confidential information about a former journalist, Frank Connolly, the director of the Centre for Public Inquiry.

On the RTE programme yesterday, under pressure, the Minister explained his eccentric behaviour by invoking national security for his actions. That is not what the Taoiseach said earlier — he was concerned about the integrity of a passport. The Minister said he was concerned about the integrity of national security.

His actions and statements are absolutely unprecedented. He has moved into uncharted territory where no Cabinet Minister has ever dared to venture before. He has determined that he, as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, can look into his own heart and decide what constitutes a threat to national security. He can then put confidential material into the public domain by whatever mechanism he chooses. After that, the Minister can become DPP, judge, jury and executioner of the persons identified on the file. The Minister believes that he can bypass Article 38 of the Constitution, which requires due process in the investigation and prosecution of an offence. The Minister has not stated whether he has supplied any other documents from Garda files or from the Department of Foreign Affairs to the same journalist or to others. Perhaps he will tell us that in his replies. Did he act in the interests of national security or did he simply leak the information? Neither has the Minister stated whether he intends to supply documents in future to selected journalists in the interests of national security or otherwise.

It is ironic that this comes from a Minister who recently raged so strongly against gardaí leaking confidential information to the media on ongoing Garda investigations and who, in the Garda Síochána Act 2005, imposed the heavy penalty of five years' imprisonment or a fine of €50,000 on any garda found guilty of such an offence. He introduced an amendment to the same Bill arrogating to himself the legal right to access all Garda files at his whim. Now he has apparently begun not just to access files but selectively to release information from them, concerning not only the forged passport but the information relating thereto, to selected journalists. At the time, the Labour Party totally opposed the amendment, knowing that it would be wide open to abuse. We certainly did not expect to be proven right so quickly.

Given the events, would it not be preferable for the Minister to lay before the Houses of the Oireachtas the entirety of the Garda file on Frank Connolly and his alleged trip to Colombia rather than having them filtered through the editorial processes of the Irish Independent? Perhaps the people might then be able to make up their own minds on these issues. While he is at it, would he not also lay before the Houses the Garda files on all Deputies suspected of close connections with the provisional movement, including one Member who he has already alleged is a member of the IRA army council? If the security of the State is so much at risk, would it not be better to brief the Oireachtas and all the journalists of the country now?

It is not desirable in principle or in practice that any officer of the State should have untrammelled and unreviewable powers of access to secret files and of dissemination of related information, either on or off the record, circumventing the judicial or any other adjudicative process, in the absence of redress for those whose rights are adversely affected. Might the hostility shown to this individual, which seems to justify the breaking of all precedent and the making of new assertions of constitutional Executive prerogative, have anything to do with the institution for which Frank Connolly works, the Centre for Public Inquiry? Does the Minister agree with the Tánaiste's outrageous statement on the matter to the effect that the establishment of such a watchdog body is "absolutely sinister and inappropriate"? If so, will he outline the next individuals or institutions against which the Government is preparing to take action?

Can the Minister really expect that a loyal Sancho Panza in the Irish Independent, heroic though he may be and mighty with his pen, will demolish all the giants and ugly windmills that Don Quixote, the Minister, perceives to threaten the national security landscape of this little island?

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