Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

That reply does not deal with the issues which need to be dealt with. What the Taoiseach has tried to do by reading that script is to portray his Government as having achieved a victory out of last week's debacle, which arose from a fundamentally serious systems failure.

I asked the Taoiseach how many cases were affected by sections 1(1) and 2(1) and he did not answer that question. The Tánaiste was not able to answer it last week. What is the answer? Why did the Government not mount the same defence in the CC case which it was able to put together last week? Driven not by conviction but by coercion because of public fury the Government got its best legal brains together to put the case to the Supreme Court. Why was that plan not in place in the first instance in the CC case?

The Taoiseach seemed to indicate that the Attorney General knew in 2002, but somewhere along the line this went wrong. There is the vaguest hint of acceptance of failure but no acceptance of responsibility. The Attorney General answers to the Taoiseach as head of Government. The Taoiseach stated in New York that the Attorney General should have known. Who accepts responsibility? Will the Taoiseach, the Attorney General or the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform accept responsibility? We heard the Minister's claims last week in the Dáil. It seems the extent of arrogance of some Ministers is exceeded only by the extent of their ignorance on what people feel and think about these issues.

I want to hear the Taoiseach state that he, as Taoiseach, will see to it that an independent, full-scale investigation takes place into what happened. It is not good enough if, as is reported, he expects to get away with appointing an official from the Department of Finance to look into it. On television on Monday night, the Minister for Finance stated if Deputies on this side of the House wanted to find out information on the people's behalf they could put down a question to the Minister for Finance or any other Minister to be thoroughly investigated.

This is far too serious. If the Taoiseach does nothing else during the relatively short time left to him as head of Government, I strongly suggest in the interests of absolute democracy he sees to it that an independent full-scale investigation is held into this issue so everybody knows why this happened, who knew what and who did not know about it. The Taoiseach will not get away with having an official from the Department of Finance look into so serious an issue.

The Taoiseach stated the discussion on the broader issue of consent and matters surrounding teenage sexuality would be dealt with by an all-party Oireachtas committee report. To what report does this refer? Will the Taoiseach establish an all-party Oireachtas committee? If so, what will be the remit and timescale of that committee? Will it examine this legislation or the broader elements of protection of children?

Before I sit down, I repeat that I want the Taoiseach to state, in the interests of everybody in the country, that he will get to the bottom of this and that there will be an independent investigation to examine what went wrong in this system. Somebody else may be the unfortunate victim of a systems failure such as happened last week. It is in everybody's interest that the Taoiseach, as head of Government, sees to it that there is absolute clarity and a forensic analysis of what happened. Far from having a vague admission of failure, it is about time somebody on the Government benches accepted responsibility for what is happening.

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