Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I would like to deal with the casino issues because the Deputy raised them. Having received a report from Department of Finance officials, I do not think that anybody, including myself, did anything improper in meeting various people from various organisations. The point being forcibly made and the story that ran for two days in a national newspaper is that I gave personal approval to some process, which had nothing wrong with it, about a disclosure agreement or a confidential agreement. I did not do that. It was done subsequently in 1998 but there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

As regards meeting people, I was only one of a privileged number of people that met, but there was nothing wrong with that either. People inside and outside the House who try to state that should at least have the common decency to retract their stories.

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