Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Everyone can see through it.

As for the Pembroke Street incident, the Minister has not answered the questions. The questions hanging over the Minister are not personal matters but are in the public interest because the Minister is the officeholder. The Minister must deal with the questions hanging over him because a cloud is hanging over him. The Minister can ask the Garda Commissioner to generate a report and can put that report into the public domain, which would put the entire issue to bed. The Minister has stated he has asked the Secretary General to check with the Garda Commissioner and no report can be found but that he cannot ask the Garda Commissioner to generate one. As for the breathalyser sample, unlike the Minister, I am not a lawyer, something for which he gets great credit from all the speakers. However, last night, he sought to confuse and muddy the issue in respect of the Road Traffic Act, by citing reasonable excuse.

He did that to take a side-swipe at the media to try to discredit them-----

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