Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

——the tribunal itself is also not without blame. Fortunately for public life in this country, the Government did not sit back awaiting the final report of the tribunal and proceeded to take action by introducing a number of significant reforms in the areas where the tribunal will make further recommendations.

The purpose and terms of reference, as set out by Dáil Éireann, were clear and unambiguous. Yet, when Members of the House, as opposed to just about everybody else, dare to voice the not unreasonable concern that the tribunal appears, at times, to be straying into areas outside its remit and not conducting its business as efficiently and expeditiously as this House intended and directed, we are accused of intimidating and undermining the tribunal and questioning the process. To make reference to the fact that the tribunal has made mistakes does not equate to undermining the tribunal.

Do the Opposition Deputies believe that Miss Justice Denham was attempting to torpedo, thwart, undermine or intimidate the tribunal when she said on 4 July 2007, in the case of O'Callaghan v. Mahon: "The fact that the tribunal is still inquiring ten years later is the antithesis of an urgent public inquiry"? Do they think this was the intent of Mr. Justice O'Neill's High Court ruling, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in March 2005, that the tribunal's actions: "amounts to a failure by the [Tribunal] to observe and protect... [certain parties']... rights to fair procedures and to natural and constitutional justice"? The tribunal had been in operation and doing that for seven years, according to the Supreme Court. Do they believe this was what motivated Mr. Justice Hardiman's criticisms of the tribunal in his judgment of 30 March 2007? Not only did he find that the tribunal's procedures were "extraordinarily unfair", but he also observed "that it is a reasonable inference [from the withholding of the material of certain people before the tribunal] that the Tribunal have indeed prejudged certain vital issues". That is a very serious charge from a Supreme Court judge. Mr. Justice Hardiman went on to conclude that the tribunal had "suppressed" certain material and referred to "the profoundly flawed nature of this Tribunal's procedures and the insensitivity to the requirements of justice for [certain parties] which that produced".

See this speech in context