Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

At every turn, including today, the Minister has tried to undermine the seriousness of these issues by impugning the character of anybody who raises those issues or questions his role in them. He tried to take pot shots at the Opposition rather than deal with the substance. He rubbished the whistleblowers who had the courage to speak out about widespread malpractice in the Garda. The Minister sacrificed the confidential recipient because he raised the most alarming suggestions about the Minister's demeanour when it came to the whistleblowers. He rubbished the competence of GSOC, the body supposed to oversee the Garda, when it came to the serious question of the bugging of GSOC. He now tries to claim that he is the great reforming Minister who wants an independent policing authority when less than a year ago he rubbished an attempt to bring forward a Bill by Deputy Wallace on the issue of an independent policing authority. Let us not forget that the character of two of the TDs who raised this issue at the outset were impugned in the most sinister circumstances with information, and, it would appear, connivance, at the most senior levels of the Garda.

The Minister now has this situation where he expects us to believe, with all of this happening, with all the controversy surrounding his relationship with the former Commissioner, Mr. Callinan, that he receives a letter marked "urgent" from that same Commissioner and he does not open it. For five days, the Minister goes off on holidays to Mexico and he does not open it until Monday. The Minister is the last to know. That is incredible. Either the Minister is not telling the truth or it indicates a level of incompetence that is staggering. How could the former Garda Commissioner send the Minister a letter marked "urgent" for his attention and the Minister not open it? That is beyond belief.

I will finish with this. To add to the long list of scandals which I have not time to go into, there is the shocking case, with which the Minister is familiar, of Cynthia Owen, a ten-year-old child raped, made pregnant and her baby murdered. Her representatives have asked the Minister to look into the sham of an investigation carried out by the Garda, with the most serious allegations that gardaí were involved in a cover-up-----

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