Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

During the past 18 months the Minister's handling of the different crises that have arisen has been generally weak, ineffective and indecisive and too often it has been governed by his appetite for political survival rather than an appetite for doing the right thing according to the responsibilities of his Ministry.

I do not have enough time to go through everything but I will outline 30 bullet points as to why the Minister should resign:

No. 1 - he bypassed GSOC and ignored its statutory remit and role to investigate Garda misconduct in regard to the Roma children controversy;

No. 2 - in the terms of reference he set out for the Ombudsman for Children he did not allow for any examination of the racial ethnic profiling which was central to the whole issue;

No. 3 - he was satisfied with the Commissioner's assurances that no racial profiling takes place despite the ECRI report, UN committee report and the whistleblowers' PULSE allegations regarding 40 Traveller families;

No. 4: instead of dealing with the penalty points issue properly and thoroughly from the outset by setting up an independent inquiry or even referring it to GSOC, he first ordered a constitutionally flawed internal investigation that violated the rule against bias because the gardaí were allowed to investigate themselves and the rule of hearing the other side because the whistleblowers were not interviewed;

No. 5 - despite what the Minister said today, page 8 of the inspector's report states that they did not get the report until 4 July after some political pressure;

No. 6 - the Minister suddenly decided to refer the penalty points matter to GSOC in January of this year but again only under political pressure rather than in the considered exercise of his ministerial duties to properly address the matter;

No. 7 - he only allowed for GSOC access to PULSE this year, despite GSOC demanding it in September. He refused it at the time but political pressure again changed his mind; No. 8 - he refused to conduct a separate investigation into the mandatory comment box, as recommended by the GPSU - the report would probably have been damning;

No. 9 - the fixed charge manual which the GPSU demanded is still not published;

No. 10 - the audit system which was introduced was as demanded by the GPSU. It was not independent and the inspectorate pointed out that it just reinforces the old system;

No. 11 - the Minister refused to look at the lawfulness of discretion which has been open to question all along;

No. 12 - the Minister's main focus was the cover-up rather than the security of State intelligence with regard to the GSOC bugging allegations;

No. 13 - he undermined GSOC by wilfully misleading both the Dáil and the Cabinet in regard to the GSOC's duties under statute - section 80(5);

No. 14 - the Minister referred to the GSOC commissioners as being confused during their committee appearances as a way of minimising the seriousness of their concerns;

No. 15 - the Minister wilfully misled the Dáil as to the seriousness of the brief he received from GSOC;

No. 16 - he commissioned and clearly favoured-----

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