Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Clearly, the position that applied with the investigation carried out by the ODCE in the FitzPatrick case was none of those.

The judge himself made the point, which is a damning indictment of the procedure that was followed here, that the ODCE had completely lost sight of the nature and the extent of the evidence in respect of guilt and innocence. Everybody before the Irish courts is innocent until proven guilty. Now, the longest running trial in the history of the State has collapsed, the central individual is now free and acquitted and the taxpayer must take up the tab.

All of these issues - a lack of procedural capacity, lack of investigative capacity and lack of forensic analysis competence - were all evident in the structure of the ODCE prior to the current director being appointed in August 2012 where serious changes have taken place. The Minister will outline that to the Dáil and take questions on it. Director Drennan will be happy to go before the Oireachtas committee and have a serious discussion about it. The Government will reflect on this next week. The Minister will produce and publish the report when it is made available to her by the director.

The Minister, Deputy Noonan, and the Government have already commented on the IPO in respect of a portion of AIB being sold on and being applied to the reduction of debt. He has already made the point that it is a paper transfer in terms of whatever the value of the 25% being offered amounts to. The Government is not under any pressure to deal with this because the question of infrastructure is one it is now considering in terms of the capital review. All of the extent of the capital programme at the moment is up to €42 billion between State agencies, PPPs and the Exchequer. Yesterday, I pointed out the scale of what is available that is as yet unallocated, which is now the subject of a review here.

It is also important, as Deputy Howlin is well aware, that we do not want a situation where we apply so much money to infrastructure that all of the inflation costs then result and developers continue to make the rewards from all of that. It is much more important that the infrastructural needs are dealt with, and we are able to deal with these. Yesterday, both the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform were in Europe talking to the European Investment Bank about a number of major infrastructural projects, which can be accommodated through lending from the EIB at low interest rates long term. Issues have already been mentioned, like the development of the metro, like the development of the major motorway from Cork to Limerick and others where potentially there is a stream of income that can come from those to pay off those loans.

I respect the fact that the House made a decision last week in respect of a matter in regard to AIB, but Deputy Howlin will also respect the right and the responsibility of Government to make its decisions, and this decision has been publicly announced by Government for quite a long time and will stand in the context of what Government is doing.

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