Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Someone had to go, because a head of steam had been building up since the previous Thursday, when the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Leo Varadkar, publicly called on the Garda Commissioner to withdraw his "disgusting" remark made at the Committee of Public Accounts. He was backed up by a succession of Ministers in the following days. Of course, the sacrificial lamb would be none other than the Garda Commissioner.

The Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality was sent to the home of the former Commissioner, Martin Callinan, to raise an issue that the Attorney General knew all about since the previous November and which the Department of Justice and Equality had known about for the previous two weeks. The Commissioner was told, apparently, that there was grave concern at Cabinet level about this issue, despite the fact that the Cabinet was not even aware of it until the following morning, by which time the Commissioner, Martin Callinan, had bowed to be inevitable and resigned. The Commissioner knew well the nature of the code of the visit from the Secretary General of the Department to his house after hours. The code was that the Government had lost confidence in the Garda Commissioner and that he had to go. He did go. There has been much playing with words in recent days to the effect that the letter was not received by the Minister or was not furnished to him. However, the content and the core message was indeed delivered and that has been confirmed.

The Minister's colleagues will go through the motions of voting confidence in him this evening. However, I submit that they do not have confidence in him. His days are numbered because they know well that he is now a serious political liability for this coalition. The Minister should ask himself why the Taoiseach bypassed him for a critical a 48-hour period when this issue was coming to a head. The Minister was absolutely and utterly bypassed because, I believe, the Taoiseach does not have full confidence in the Minister, nor do the members of the Garda Síochána, who have passed a motion of no confidence in an unprecedented way at the Garda Representative Association, GRA conference.

A more concerning development for the Government is not the lack of confidence in the Minister but the Taoiseach's credibility and authority, which has been undermined fundamentally by his handling of this issue. When the Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar, came out and made his comments to the effect that the Commissioner should withdraw the "disgusting" remark he was slapped down in a very public way by the Taoiseach. The Taoiseach said that Minister's should raise those concerns at Cabinet level but his request was not acceded to. It was blatantly ignored by a line of Ministers in the following days who repeated that call for the Garda Commissioner to withdraw the remark. The reality is that considerable political capital has now been extended to protect the Minister and his colleagues know all about it. Anyway, the fundamental question which has not yet been answered is why the Garda Commissioner felt the need to resign.

See this speech in context