Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

——on request. How did the journalist we are speaking about know that the Minister had the document? As the document belonged to the Department of Foreign Affairs, which the Minister admitted, did the journalist in question know that the Minister had the document or that he was the person to ask to get it from the Department? Did the Minister go to that Department and request this document that was part of an ongoing Garda investigation and that might have been needed for a future prosecution? That document would then have been contaminated with the possibility that it could never have been used again. Is that what the Minister is telling us he did?

What were the issues of national security that required the Minister to act in this fashion? He has not answered that question. If there were issues of national security, the Members of this House should know them. This is the body that has the responsibility for ensuring that the people are protected. It does not rest only on the Minister's shoulders. He kept the document to himself all this time, harbouring it until he found a journalist to whom to give it. He protected the integrity of the document but how was he protecting the integrity of the State by keeping it a secret, one which has now come out by chance? The Minister has no credibility. He does not expect us to believe this. A child would not believe what he is saying on this matter.

Why did the Minister not go to Mr. Justice Fergus Flood or Professor Enda McDonagh with the information he had, or did he do this? Mr. Justice Flood is an eminent lawyer. He was chairman of a tribunal, a judge in the Special Criminal Court and a man who knew well about these matters of national security. He was a man who could be trusted through his experience. Professor Enda McDonagh is an eminent philosopher and theologian. Surely he could be trusted to go to about this matter, even if the Minister was not prepared to tell the Members of this House or any other journalist about it.

It seems strange that the next investigation the Centre for Public Inquiry was about to embark on was an inquiry into the establishment of a prison at Thornton Hall and all the circumstances surrounding it. Can the Minister tell the House categorically that he knew nothing about the intention of the centre to embark on such an investigation?

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