Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will keep it strictly to business. At issue here is the Minister's stewardship of the justice system during the past 18 months. What is not at issue is what we have heard from his colleagues during this debate. What is also not at issue is the Minister's undoubted intelligence, his capacity for hard work or his zeal to reform. What is at issue is his capacity to manage. There is a big difference between his capacity to legislate and his capacity to manage. In my view he has shown a very poor level of performance in respect of issues that have arrived at his door, some of which were of his making while others were not. The test of his capacity to manage those issues and deal with them effectively is what is at issue, not the kind of claptrap we have all been obliged to listen to since this debate began.

The central theme here is that the former Garda Commissioner was forced out of office to save the Minister's skin and the blushes of the Labour Party. What we have failed to elicit from the Minister, his colleagues and the Taoiseach in recent days is information as to why this happened. I accept that the former Commissioner had issues on which to reflect in the context of his dealings with the whistleblowers, the penalty points controversy, GSOC, etc. We understand that he was of a mind to make some form of statement and sought advice in that regard. He was advised against making any statement. Why was that the case? If the former Commissioner had resigned on foot of the issues to which I refer or had reflected more deeply and apologised, the Minister would have been left in the same boat as him. In fact, the Minister was probably more culpable because he had stuck his neck out much further than the former Commissioner in respect of those issues.

On the Sunday before last, the Taoiseach came into possession of what we believe to be earth-shattering information. I accept that said information relates to a serious issue but I wonder about the haste in proceeding to deal with it. If there was a necessity for such haste, why were steps not taken to arrange a meeting involving the Minister, his officials, the great and the good from the Department of the Taoiseach, the Taoiseach himself and officials from the Attorney General's office in order to try to get to the bottom of the matter? The Taoiseach has stated that he spent the day validating the information he received. There has still not been much clarity with regard to the process of validation which he undertook. Another matter which is not at issue is that the Minister and the Secretary General of his Department sat down with the Taoiseach and the Secretary General of his Department. My belief is that the Minister and the Secretary General at the Department of Justice and Equality were aware of the existence of a letter which vindicated the Garda Commissioner in respect of the issue of the recording of telephone calls, a matter that had been brought to the attention of the Taoiseach on the previous day. During his Government briefing yesterday, the Taoiseach stated that he should have been made aware of the relevant information in this regard. The expectation would be that if such information existed, it should have been made available to him. However, it was not.

His briefing should have indicated that he should have been aware and he said as much yesterday at his Government briefing. His expectation was that if that was the information then it would have been made available to him but it was not. The Minister and his Secretary General sat at the meeting while the Taoiseach asked the Minister's Secretary General to meet the then Commissioner Callinan and effectively summarily dismiss him.

It is not conceivable that the Commissioner did not remind the Secretary General that he had sent him a letter which set out clearly the timeline, the chain of events and how the Commissioner had dealt with the recordings. It is not conceivable that the Secretary General, if he had not seen the letter at that stage or was not aware of it because of the explanation he gave in his briefing, would not have been aware of it after his meeting with Martin Callinan. It is not conceivable, notwithstanding the concerns of the Minister and the Taoiseach about the use of mobile telephones, that the Secretary General would not have made a call to the Minister on his return journey from the Garda Commissioner to the Minister and the Taoiseach to indicate that there was a document in existence which set out clearly the process followed by the Garda Commissioner. That process clearly sets out a defence that he had against his dismissal.

Other information has come into the public domain which suggests that the Garda Commissioner contacted the Secretary General of the Department the following day to see if anything had changed. What was it? What message had he given the Secretary General on his return to the city centre which created an expectation in the mind of the Commissioner that minds of the Minister and the Taoiseach or those of the so-called members of the Cabinet had changed? According to the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, they were not even informed. How might their minds have been changed had some information that was already available come to bear?

Will the Minister help me to understand why I have got it wrong, if that is his contention? My belief is that the Garda Commissioner was sacked on a trumped-up charge to the effect that somehow he had done something wrong in respect of the recordings that go back decades. In truth, the Taoiseach, together with the Minister for Justice and Equality, sacked him for his handling of the whistleblower issue, the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission issue and other related matters. The fact is the Minister will not confess up to that. He cannot 'fess up to it because if he did he would have to do the honourable thing. If the Minister was not prepared to do the honourable thing then his colleagues in government from the Labour Party would have no choice but to force him out. However, they are happy to hide behind the weak defence that the Minister has presented as well as the trumped-up charge.

We talk about the Bailey case and people being fitted-up for crimes that they did not or may not have committed. The Garda Commissioner has been fitted up for a crime that he had nothing whatsoever to do with. He did his duty and he did it well. He provided the information to the Minister but the Minister has still gone ahead. The Minister is not prepared to accept the facts or even give credit to the work that this man has done for over many decades. It is shameful and I believe in time the Minister will be found out for it.

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