Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

The Minister has clearly misjudged not just the mood of the House, but the mood of the country with regard to these matters. The country is scandalised by the hurt caused to individuals. It is only through a cursory throwaway remark that the Minister finally gets around to apologising to them. He did not apologise in his main speech or contribution, which was reserved for his political bile.

The bulk of the Minister's speech was concerned with two criticisms of former Deputy Jim Higgins and me. First, he agreed with the tribunal that we should have carried out "inquiries, interviews, correspondence and meetings into the allegations before bringing them further". In his view, should we have done that just with regard to the allegations relating to the two assistant commissioners or should we have had the same investigations, correspondence and meetings on all the other issues we brought to the Minister, issues such as the planting of bombs, etc.? Is it his view that we should have set up parallel investigations into all of these?

Has the Minister read the Abbeylara judgment? It circumscribes in a clear way the role of parliamentarians in inquiring into the wrongdoing of any citizen. Has he read it? What sort of inquiry should we have been involved in that would be consistent with the determination of the Supreme Court in the Abbeylara case?

The second criticism the Minister makes is that we were wrong to protect our sources and he selectively quotes a Supreme Court judge in that regard. The judge basically said the tribunal had a right to look after that. Has the Minister read the entire judgment of Mr. Justice Kearns in the High Court, which quashed the order of discovery and laid out in clear legal terms a compelling legal basis as to why Members not only had the right, but an obligation to protect their sources? Former Chief Justice Hamilton found in a case in which my colleague was involved — in the beef tribunal — that Members not only had a right to protect their sources, but an obligation to do so.

Perhaps the Minister will soon finish discussing matters with his civil servants here. I am interested in discovering who provided his script and that of the other Member and no doubt we will find out because there is a mindset among circles in the country that does not want the light of day to shine on many of these matters.

Is the Minister aware of the role of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges in this matter? It entirely supported my view that we needed to protect sources. It engaged counsel to argue that to the High and Supreme Courts. Subsequent to the Supreme Court judgment, a memo was prepared by the Chief Whip to see how we could go about the rights of Members to protect their sources. Is the Minister aware of any of that or has he just no regard for it? The memo was prepared so that in the future a Deputy placed in my position or that of former Deputy Jim Higgins — I did not want to be in that position — would be able to act in a way that was in the best public interest, but that would ensure the truth was outed.

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