Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Taoiseach is aware, my colleague, Deputy Kelly, has been raising questions of fundamental importance with the Minister for Justice and Equality over the past week. Deputy Micheál Martin and others put some of these queries to the Taoiseach yesterday on Leaders' Questions. It is unfortunate that the Minister failed to make clear in his responses to those parliamentary questions that neither he nor his predecessor had knowledge or were aware of the legal strategy being pursued by the former Garda Commissioner against Maurice McCabe. That the Taoiseach was able to do so yesterday when asked in this House and subsequently by the media shows it was possible to answer these questions. I cannot see any legitimate reason for the Minister not to have done so.

While clarity has been bought to that aspect of the situation we are still unclear as to the level of involvement or knowledge of the Department of Justice and Equality in the strategy. Yesterday, the Taoiseach said that the Department of Justice and Equality is a big place and that many different people are in it but that as things stand the Department has not been able to find any record of being informed before the fact of the legal strategy the former Commissioner was going to pursue.

I would like the Taoiseach to confirm whether he has spoken directly to the Secretary General of the Department on this matter. Is he satisfied at the absence of sufficient reassurance for him to confirm to the House that the Department was not aware of the strategy to go after Maurice McCabe? Yesterday, the Taoiseach said the Tánaiste "found out about it after the fact, but around the time it was in the public domain when everyone else knew about it as well".

This matter came into the public domain when it was reported on by Mick Clifford and Katie Hannon after the commission had reported in May 2016, which was a full year after the strategy to go after Maurice McCabe was set out by the commission. If we are to accept that the Tánaiste did not become aware of this until the matter came into the public domain, we must believe two things. This House is expected to believe either that the Department of Justice and Equality did not receive any contact from Garda management about this issue, even long after the strategy had been dropped, or that the Department actually had this information but sat on it for an entire year without informing the Tánaiste about it. Which is it?

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