Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In the context of the Bill, I was not going to speak about the recent situation with the Garda whistleblower in the Committee of Public Accounts, PAC, but after listening to the debate yesterday and this morning, there is a particular point I want to make. Somebody said that if one had stayed inside the bubble of Leinster House one might have come to the conclusion that it was not correct for the Garda whistleblower to appear before the Committee of Public Accounts because the committee would be acting outside of its remit, but that if one ventured out into the wider world, talked to the public and heard that people in fact wanted the Garda whistleblower to appear before the PAC, the conclusion would be that the PAC took the correct action in calling the whistleblower in. I do not disagree with this negative reflection of the political bubble here in Leinster House, but it is not our job simply to always follow public opinion or media direction. Our job, in the Burkean sense of the reflection of the responsibility, is to use our own judgment; it is to lead. Public opinion is not always correct and does not always have the full facts on these matters. For example, when I spoke to people, I found they were not necessarily aware of the detailed report done by the Comptroller and Auditor General in August last on this matter, that he had met with a whistleblower, that following that meeting he had investigated the penalty points system in its entirety, and that he had looked at issues such as the fact that one in two company cars were not summonsed, 3,000 fixed charged notices were disallowed because they were statute barred and 2% of the system had fallen down because of an issue with notepads, and in all of this, in addition, there was a concern regarding the use of discretion in only 5% of the system.

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