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

-----has become its defining feature. Through nearly every Department, it actively works to hide information and reject accountability. It is so obsessed with trying to sell a fairy tale of decisive leadership that it has no time to recognise, let alone address, the enormous and entirely avoidable crises that have emerged during its term. The withholding of information, twisting of statistics and refusal to answer questions has reached unprecedented levels, and this constant refusal to be open and honest with the people reached new depths in the Taoiseach's behaviour during and after the events investigated by Mr. Justice Fennelly. The report is damning and the facts that it details are much worse than anything alleged in the House. It is a mark of how low Fine Gael and the Labour Party have now sunk that they claim as vindication a report that shows chaos at the centre of the Government and a Taoiseach incapable of owning up to the implications of his own actions. To them, accountability is merely something you demand of other people.

This debate has been stage-managed to avoid any hard questions yet again and to provide a platform for the Government's ridiculous self-praise and empty politics. Not one member of the Government is capable of accepting the unequivocal evidence that the Taoiseach's actions on 24 March 2015 represented the effective sacking of the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána. This is not some minor and insignificant issue. The departure of the head of an independent police force due to pressure from the head of the Government and an attempt to hide this pressure would be a major scandal in any democratic society. What the Fennelly report shows is a Taoiseach who panicked when he heard from the Attorney General about a serious issue. He reached conclusions without hearing all the evidence and has since then tried to hide, twist, turn and then deny the impact of his own actions. The Taoiseach did not even ring the Garda Commissioner to find out the full facts. The Taoiseach did not even ring his Minister for Justice and Equality the day the Attorney General came in. It is a fact that not one single piece of information concerning the events that led to the effective sacking of the Garda Commissioner was volunteered by the Taoiseach. Everything was dragged out of him. On the day of the Commissioner's departure, the Taoiseach informed the Opposition of the event two hours after it had appeared in the media. He then came into the House and praised himself for being so open and attacked me for asking for more information. He only confirmed that the Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality was sent with a message to the Commissioner's house when I asked him a direct question on it the following day. Then, of course, he went on the attack again, saying it was beneath me to suggest that there was anything more to the story. The Taoiseach refused to answer detailed questions or to have any debate after which he or any Minister would answer questions. He has steadfastly refused to answer questions on this for 18 months and his only objective is to bury it as quickly as he possibly can. What the Fennelly report has shown is that there was a lot more that was being withheld from the Dáil and from the Irish people.

As has been said, because of how this debate has been structured by the Government, there is nowhere near enough time to go through the full range of damning evidence contained in the report. However, the basic facts concerning the Taoiseach's behaviour during and after the main events are not complicated, and show that only the most partisan of hacks could believe his spin. The concerns raised by the Attorney General were serious and worth addressing immediately. What they did not warrant was the rush to judgment and scapegoating that the Taoiseach then engaged in. It is quite extraordinary that the Taoiseach did not contact the Minister for Justice and Equality after the Attorney General spoke to him. He was, after all, the line Minister responsible for justice matters. The Taoiseach admits that he had grave concerns, that these focused on the actions of gardaí and that he felt they merited an unprecedented late-night visit to the Garda Commissioner by a senior civil servant. He also admits that he decided that the Commissioner was to be given no opportunity to defend himself. What is shocking about this is that it was based on the entirely false belief on the Taoiseach's part that the Commissioner had failed to inform the Government of the discovery of potentially illegal taping in Garda stations. The report shows that the Commissioner had fully discharged his responsibility to bring the issue to the attention of both the Attorney General and the Department of Justice and Equality - in the case of the Attorney General, four months in advance of that March date. The reason the Taoiseach rushed to judgment and denied the man a right to be heard was that, as always, he was putting politics first. He wanted it dealt with before Cabinet so he could stop political problems and defend the Minister and Attorney General whom he had appointed. It is striking that he has not had the decency to admit that he should have heard all the evidence before rushing to judgment. He has not been able to admit any error or express any regret.

If one goes beyond the fact that the Commissioner was pushed out on the basis of incomplete and incorrect assumptions, there is also the matter of the Taoiseach's lack of honesty in refusing to admit the clear and obvious implications of a course of action for which he alone was responsible. The Government has put everything into spinning one line concerning his intent. It is as shallow a defence as it is cynical. Four people - the then holders of the offices of Tánaiste, Minister for Justice and Equality, Secretary General of the Government and Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality - knew about the Taoiseach's actions, and all disagree with his version. They reject the Taoiseach's claim that he had no idea that he might be forcing the Commissioner to resign. It is a well established legal principle that it is extremely hard to prove intent in the absence of recorded evidence. In this case, the Taoiseach says he had no intention of forcing the Commissioner out. Even those naive or blinkered enough to accept this face the reality that others believed his intention was to force the Commissioner out and that the Commissioner was in no doubt that he felt he was being forced out. More importantly, Mr. Justice Fennelly himself says that, irrespective of what the Taoiseach believed, the reasonable interpretation was that the Taoiseach wanted the Commissioner gone and the actions he ordered achieved that intended outcome. Everyone else thought he was telling the Commissioner to go. The Commissioner thought - he was under no illusions - he was telling him to go and no alternative option was suggested. However, the Taoiseach is incapable of admitting this.

The fact that the Taoiseach had to be questioned more than once and that his answers evolved significantly is unmissable. So too is another piece of information that the Taoiseach withheld from the Dáil and the public - that he demanded that the resignation be effective immediately rather than taking place some months later. The report outlines how the Taoiseach had a sleepless night before he decided not to agree to the former Commissioner's request to stay in position for another two to three months, yet he also said he was very surprised when he was told of the resignation of the Commissioner. The argument that delaying the resignation was legally impossible is nonsense. This happens all the time in the Irish public service. Announcing in advance that one will retire early is standard practice. In fact, the Government is currently deciding who to appoint as President of the High Court as the incumbent has announced that he will retire early at the end of the year. What makes this scandal more squalid is that the Labour Party and Fine Gael have reached a deal to support each other in order to protect their own. Nothing else explains how Labour refuses to say anything or how Fine Gael is leaving the Attorney General untouched. The Attorney General is an honourable person and it is a pity that she has failed to do the honourable thing and be accountable for her part in this affair. The fact is that her office was aware of the issue of the tapes four months before the events of March last year. She did not have or present the full information to the Taoiseach and contributed to the unprecedented forced departure of the Garda Commissioner. Yet we have a situation in which it is obvious that the Labour Party is supporting the Taoiseach as a quid pro quoto ensure the Attorney General remains in place.

In recent days, Ministers have been sent out to say that the report mainly shows problems in the Department of Justice and Equality. This is desperate and cynical in equal measure. The panic was not in the Department of Justice and Equality; it was in the Taoiseach's own office. The only person not clear about the intent to force out the Commissioner appears to have been the Taoiseach himself. This is not credible, and deep down everyone in this House knows it. The report states that one of the biggest issues is the lack of any record - of any type - of either the discussions in the Taoiseach's office or the decisions reached.

The Taoiseach will remember well that it took him nearly four years to withdraw a slur against his predecessor about destroying records of a decision when, in fact, 140 documents and everything had been retained. He even self-righteously said: "If the Taoiseach of the day meets a group from [a] constituency, [you] can be sure that whatever it is about, notes will be taken and be there for posterity."

If this report were anything other than damning of the Taoiseach, he would not have put so much effort into manipulating coverage of its launch and contents. The report was made available to media and Members of this House at 5.40 p.m. on 1 September. However, media outlets were reporting for hours beforehand that the Taoiseach had been "vindicated". The only interview the Taoiseach has done on the report was on "Six One News", and this was before any journalist had been given time to read it. To date, he has refused a debate on the report, refused to answer questions, refused to publish the transcript of his appearances before Mr. Justice Fennelly, refused even to acknowledge the disturbing evidence of a panicked and politically driven atmosphere. The Government can spin all it wants; this report shows a deeply dishonest approach. It shows an inability to tell the blindingly obvious truth. It shows a willingness to put politics first and to search for a scapegoat when trouble appears.

We should remember that the root cause of the panicked atmosphere in the Taoiseach's office on those two days in March last year is that he had repeatedly stood by as the justice system was dragged into crisis after crisis. He dismissed urgent issues as they were raised here and in the media. He offered a blanket defence, particularly of his loyal Minister who was at the centre of the chaos. Reaching a situation where a Garda Commissioner was effectively fired on the basis of false assumptions about his failure to act was not an accident. It was the inevitable outcome of how the Taoiseach runs this Government. Whenever an issue emerges, the Taoiseach's first reaction is to deny that there is any problem. He then tells us what a great job his Government is doing. Finally, he just attacks whoever is raising that question.

What makes this serious is that crisis after crisis is allowed to emerge while the Taoiseach and his Ministers carry on their obsession with political spin. In housing, homelessness, crime, hospital waiting lists, Northern Ireland, mortgage debt, unfair contracts, child care, Irish Water and many other issues, problems have been allowed to escalate until they reach crisis level. This is the direct and inevitable outcome of a Government that, from day one, has put politics first in everything. In this debate, we have already heard the greatest fairy tale of all, that of a strong leader lifting his country out of recession. He came to office driven by such a sense of urgency that he did not prepare a budget for nine months, published no new economic plans and only showed energy when breaking the many, many promises he had made in order to win votes. We all remember the promises that the Taoiseach made on the Roscommon emergency department, including the one he denied making until a journalist produced a tape. This type of shiftiness has not gone away. In fact, it has got much worse over the past four and a half years.

The Fennelly report is yet another inquiry report that has been buried in a political snow job in order to protect an arrogant Taoiseach and Government incapable of admitting error. It appropriately bookends his Government's term. It started by ignoring Moriarty and will end by ignoring Fennelly.

The Taoiseach's affection for overblown rhetoric is long established, but it is wrong to let this distract from the claims he makes on his own behalf and on behalf of his Government. In his first speech as Taoiseach, he stood up in this House, accepted the good wishes of all and said:

... today I enter into a covenant with the Irish people... honesty is not alone our best policy but our only policy. The new Government will tell the people the truth regardless of how unwelcome or difficult that might be. We will tell it constantly and unreservedly.

The Taoiseach's basic inability to admit the obvious truth, his attempt politically to spin his way out of accountability and his dismissal of something as serious as the effective firing of the Garda Commissioner due to false and incomplete assumptions mean that Dáil Éireann has the right and obligation to vote no confidence in him.

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