Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is deeply depressing that the democracy of this State and the functioning of government has been paralysed due to weeks of collective failure by the Government to uphold the free and fair administration of justice. This is not just a matter that falls on one Minister. The events of recent weeks have demonstrated the profound weaknesses that exist here in the 31st Dáil. Those watching on their television screens have observed with deep scepticism the concern that Deputy Micheál Martin has portrayed over the last few days and weeks; this is the same man who for decades defended the indefensible and sat in a Cabinet which oversaw the financial destruction of the State. Equally, the general public is expected to believe that Deputy Gerry Adams, without any hint of irony, has concern for the protection of whistleblowers; this from a man who is widely accused of ordering the abduction and murder of a woman who his movement believed to be a suspected whistleblower. Forgive me and many people outside this Chamber if we have difficulty in stomaching that level of cognitive dissonance.

Three years ago, two thirds of the people elected by the Irish people to this House were from Fine Gael and the Labour Party; over 100 men and women elected by over 1 million voters who put their trust and faith in us to defend their interest and to protect the public interest at large. I know very well that there are members of the current Cabinet and colleagues in the Fine Gael and Labour parliamentary parties who have been privately appalled by what has taken place over the last number of weeks. I know that because they say it in private. These Members are not appalled because they believe it is damaging their support for the local and European elections; they are appalled because of the cavalier attitude shown to matters of profound importance to the free and fair administration of justice in this State. Yet for these public representatives, public silence is absolutely deafening. Politics is supposed to be about more than simply the parish pump and local issues on which Government TDs will happily challenge their own Ministers. Defending the indefensible on the grounds that the current Minister for Justice and Equality acted in the exact same fashion as his predecessor in Fianna Fáil - essentially what was argued this morning - is not what the almost 1.2 million voters who voted for Fine Gael and the Labour Party expected of this Government.

Nobody can dispute the diligence, duty or dedication of this Minister for Justice and Equality, but neither should these qualities excuse him from a failure to act, nor a refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing. The single fact remains that the Minister received a Garda confidential recipient report from Oliver Connolly in January 2012, outlining a number of grave allegations which have been well reported in recent days. Less than a week after the Taoiseach received what we believe to be the exact same documents the Minister received two years ago, independent outside counsel has been appointed to investigate these allegations and to explore the need for a full commission of inquiry. The question remains: why did the Minister chose not to adopt the same course of action two years ago, besides arguing that it was precisely what his predecessor, Dermot Ahern, did or did not do? What damage has the Minister's inaction caused in the intervening two years? These are serious questions and I hope that we will receive some answers to them this afternoon.

I firmly believe that the vast majority of the 1.2 million people who voted for Fine Gael and the Labour Party in the last election did so because they honestly believed that they would be given something different to what went before. Whether the polls move up or down, the silence of over two thirds of the Members of this House in upholding their constitutional duty to hold the Executive to account is an extremely sad indictment of the state of democracy in this country at this point in time.

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