Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

It is over ten years since this House resolved, on 7 October 1997, to establish a tribunal to inquire urgently into and to make findings and recommendations on definite matters of urgent public importance. If a week is a long time in politics, ten years is a lifetime. Over the course of that decade the tribunal has published four interim reports. It has conducted countless hours in public session and even longer in private sittings. The tribunal has the terms of reference, expertise, experience, resources, legal guidance and all the components necessary to enable it to discharge the task the Dáil set for it. Over those ten years the tribunal has had the support of the Dáil and it will continue to have that support.

According to its own timetable, the tribunal is now nearing a point where it can report to the House and complete the task we set for it. This it should do, unhindered by any political manoeuvrings. The tribunals was established to ''inquire urgently" into matters of "urgent public importance". The word "urgent" was used twice deliberately in the first few lines of the tribunal's terms of reference. It has been alleged by some that we are expected to accept some extraordinary things arising from the proceedings of the tribunal. I submit, however, that the most extraordinary thing we are expected to accept is that an investigation which is now in its 11th year is being conducted urgently. While much of the delay was due to the actions of others——

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