Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

We know the Minister got the information during a chat and he does not know where the Garda Commissioner got it but could he tell us when the chat took place? Was it during that chat or a different chat that the Garda Commissioner gave him the information that he divulged about Deputy Luke Flanagan? In the press release that he issued last week he said the Commissioner has a legal obligation to keep him fully informed of issues of national security and so on. Had he kept the Minister informed of his own penalty point termination? Did he explain how when that took place he was allegedly going to a high level briefing and that he happened to be driving his own car even though a State one had been issued to him at the time, and why it was very near his own house even though it was at 10.48 in the morning?

The Minister has made an enormous issue of discretion but does he not accept that we have tabled questions to ask him for the legislative and procedural protocol that lays down the basis for discretion on at least five occasions and he has never furnished us with the answer? Does he accept that the Attorney General has questioned how discretion is applied and that it needs to be transparent? Does he accept that his own internal inquiry found that discretion was not properly applied and that the foremost legal people in the field say that there is a problem with discretion? One man's discretion is another man's favouritism. That was always the basis on which we raised the issue of discretion about when penalty points were awarded and when they were terminated. Is it the Minister or the Taoiseach who is lying about where they got this information?

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