Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I hope it will because there was a significant delay, even after their discovery within the Department, between them being brought to the Minister's attention and sent to the Charleton tribunal.

I was interested in the Minister's response to Deputy O'Callaghan, which relates to whether these documents were considered before or whether they were news. He stated that, essentially, they are new documents. The Department had gone through two substantial exercises in looking for documentation, namely, by means of the O'Neill scoping exercise and on foot of the discovery order for the Charleton tribunal. If the Minister is saying that these are new documents, that leads us to assume that in searching for such relevant documentation, the emails of the Secretary General of the Department were not considered and neither were those of other relevant officials or key political advisers within that Department. How is it possible that, in the context of a scoping exercise or a discovery order, emails of the key officials and political staff within the Department for the relevant dates were not considered? Is it the case that these people's email accounts were not checked? How is it possible that they did not show up in searches given where it was located?

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