Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There have been all kinds of media reports around this case.

I ask the Deputy to withhold judgment on all that until a document is published. The job of the senior counsel is not to re-investigate what An Garda Síochána has investigated. The job of the senior counsel is to look at what is a very detailed report that for all sorts of legal reasons cannot be put into the public domain in its current form and address how the necessary and important - I do not want to use the word "appropriate" because it will be misunderstood - information in it that answers and addresses the myriad of questions that have arisen around this case can be put into the public domain without creating a legal difficulty. That is the first issue. In the context of having read this report, the second issue relates to doing the second job and, to put it in simplistic terms, to do the second job in the context of ascertaining whether a further inquiry would have a reasonable prospect of establishing the truth, taking into account the existing mechanisms for the investigation of offences. They are the two key issues.

The Ferns report was different. I am speaking from memory. Mr. Justice George Birmingham was then a senior counsel. He went to Ferns to examine files and circumstances where there was no report and he produced a report which contained a very important body of work. Here we have a report which answers and addresses a range of questions which, because of the nature of the way it is constructed, cannot be put into the public domain for legal reasons. I want to put what is possible into the public domain to see where we go from there.

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