Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister, Deputy Shatter, says that he is being vilified and being portrayed as public enemy number one. He has acknowledged the theory that everyone makes mistakes but has refused to admit that he has made any. In addition, he has fallen back on the worn-out, deeply cynical excuse that everything is the fault of his predecessors.

Let it be very clear, Fianna Fáil fully supports the holding of an independent inquiry into the recording practices in Garda stations and prisons. Let that inquiry address any time period it wants and question any former officer it wants. The revelation of this past activity is not the reason the Minister, Deputy Shatter, should leave office. Nobody has said it is. What is at issue is a Minister whose actions in handling the exposure of problems has caused them to escalate to the point of crisis, whose actions have damaged morale within our police force and who is completely dismissive of legitimate questions about his behaviour and the behaviour of those he has been entrusted by the people to oversee.

The manner in which the Minister, Deputy Shatter, has carried out his role as Minister for Justice and Equality goes to the core of the reason the public has lost confidence in him and why we should vote no confidence in him tonight. From his first days in office, he has been aggressively dismissive of any accountability to Dáil Éireann or the wider public. When faced with any specific challenges his immediate response has been to limit information and to attack those asking him questions. Were this purely a matter of style, it would be serious but not fatal. However, this behaviour has led to him taking actions which are incompatible with holding the post of Minister for Justice and Equality in a democratic Republic.

In his early months in office, he started as he meant to go on. He came into this House seeking to limit the time available to the Smithwick Tribunal and said that Judge Smithwick had no problem with what was being proposed. It was only later, and through the freedom of information process, that we discovered that he had failed to tell the Dáil that Judge Smithwick had written to him to object to what he termed his "wholly inappropriate interference" in the work of the tribunal. When questioned, he attacked anyone who suggested that this information was relevant. At roughly the same time in 2011, he appointed his personal friend and donor to serve as Garda confidential recipient. Two years later, this friend and donor was fired for a reason which has still not been explained.

When Independent Deputies raised the possible abuse of the penalty points system the Minister's response was not to express concern and seek to get to the bottom of the problem but to go on the attack.

His misuse of confidential information supplied to him by the Garda Commissioner to attack Deputy Wallace with a false claim of hypocrisy remains a disgrace for which he should have resigned. What compounds this is that a Fine Gael briefing document from last Thursday reportedly dismisses it as a "minor issue" and restates the false claim that Deputy Wallace received penalty points. The Minister's disinterest in how information about another Deputy was leaked before the results from the tests to which she had submitted and which cleared her were available confirmed his highly partisan approach to a role which should be above such concerns.

When the persistence of the Garda whistleblowers meant that the issue would not go away, the Minister took every opportunity to dismiss them, including making attacks on them which he now, under pressure and with the minimum grace possible, admits were false. When the possible bugging of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, was revealed, most

Ministers would have responded by committing immediately to investigate the situation. In contrast, the response of the Minister, Deputy Shatter, was to immediately attack GSOC. He supplied the Taoiseach with a false claim that GSOC had a statutory duty to inform him of these matters and he commissioned a technical report which said there was no issue for anyone to be concerned with. The Cabinet showed no confidence in his judgment by agreeing to commission an independent report, albeit with strictly limited terms of reference. For over a week we have been trying to get the Minister to explain why he agreed with the Taoiseach to take actions which directly led to the resignation of the former Garda Commissioner.

The Minister said last night that he does not know if there are legal implications beyond the Bailey case. He said it was the Bailey case alone which gave rise to alarm bells ringing. The chronology published by his officials says former Commissioner Callinan acted on the same basis as the Department and the Attorney General, namely, that it was only the Bailey case which set the alarm bells ringing. However, the Minister and the Taoiseach decided that former Commissioner Callinan alone required a visit in order to be informed him that his actions raised concerns. Despite four attempts during Leaders' Questions, the Taoiseach has failed to answer a simple direct question with regard to why he decided to put pressure on the then Commissioner in such a way as was clearly intended to get him to be the fall guy. The Taoiseach will not explain why he and the Minister did not think they should talk to former Commissioner Callinan before deciding to act. Why did they have so little respect for the position of Commissioner of An Garda Síochána that they did not think the then incumbent had a right to be heard by them? They admit that they did not even discuss his 10 March letter. On this issue, another twist has emerged this evening with a report from thejournal.iethat an internal Fine Gael briefing document of Thursday last confirms that the Minister was told of the existence of the letter on Monday of last week.

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