Michelle Mulherin (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We can safely say that emotions have been running high since the story broke on Sunday week last that the Garda ombudsman may have been bugged. What a sensational story. Much of the focus and comment has been on relationships - good relationships, appropriate relationships, bad relationships - particularly between the Garda ombudsman and the Garda Commissioner, and the Minister thrown into it, but we all know that it is most politically expedient for many on the Opposition benches to suggest that one of these institutions has slighted, undermined or abused the authority of the other and hope to chip away so that a head might role somewhere or other. Would that not be a victory for them? That is the real political agenda that is going on here.

This debate should be about more than mere feelings. Justice is more than mere feelings. Sometimes people who have been in court feel they got justice. From a legal point of view, they may not have got justice. Sometimes people get justice when they go into court and they do not choose to call it justice. Justice is much more tangible than what one feels.

The rule of law, which is the cornerstone of our democracy and which gives some certainty to the parameters of our behaviour and also the protections we experience in society, cannot be ignored and should not be undermined. We are a Parliament, we pass laws. We are the Legislature. Are we now going to suggest that there is no need for evidence and there is no need for anything substantial?

There are some who are sure that GSOC was bugged or suggest there is something amiss and argue doggedly that this must be so, and we hear all the theories that there is a cover-up etc. To my mind, some of these proponents require us to suspend reality to accept these theories, a little like what one has to do where one is enjoying a good episode of "The X Files."

It is important when it comes to an issue of those charged with law enforcement and those charged with their oversight that we do not undermine confidence in these institutions without due cause and, therefore, evidence is paramount. I welcome the inquiry being undertaken by the Minister.

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