Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I wish to return to the Stardust issue that was raised yesterday. I presume the Taoiseach, like most Members, watched the programme last night. The Taoiseach made a commitment yesterday that if new evidence came forward, he and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform were prepared to review it. There is no necessity for me to describe the horror of what was depicted in an example of the best of public service broadcasting. Whatever the apprehensions about the programmes before they were screened, nobody can say that as a documentary drama it was not an excellent contribution to public service broadcasting. We have a duty in this House to protect the safety of citizens and where their rights are abrogated, we have a duty to see some fair procedure to vindicate those rights.

On reflection, what is the Taoiseach's position today? Just because the programmes are finished, we should not pass over this issue again as we have done so many times in the past. Yesterday, I suggested that perhaps the speediest, most effective way to deal with the legitimate questions raised by the families would be to borrow the practice followed in the Dean Lyons case. A senior counsel might be appointed by the Minister to review the Garda files and the papers available to the tribunal, to assess any new evidence, to assess the significance of last night's programme and to make recommendations to the Minister. Has the Taoiseach had an opportunity to reflect on that? This is a cheap, speedy, effective and sufficient way to establish whether there is a basis to believe that another investigation would be more effective.

There were two new experts introduced last night. We did not know there was a difference of expert opinion at the tribunal. I do not know what weight colleagues in the House give to the programme, but there was sufficient concern raised by two independent experts with no axe to grind to suggest the relatives have a fair claim to have some procedure open to them whereby they can seek answers to questions that have remained unanswered to date. The Taoiseach should agree to the suggestion I made yesterday. The senior counsel should have access to the kind of technical fire advice that we saw on the programme last night and he could then bring conclusions to the Minister.

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