Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste is conflating two issues: the outcome of the passing on of the information and the actual fact of passing on the information. There is no doubt that the passing on of his likely course of action — these are his own words; that is what he told the House — compromised the statutory process. Whether it was acted upon is irrelevant to that fact.

Bearing in mind that the failure of a previous Minister to abide by the Department's own protocols on contacts with interested parties during a process such as this was at the heart of the most significant litigation this State has ever endured, these matters are not trivial matters. Whatever the consequence in this case was, the notion that Ministers in the middle of a statutory process would take calls from lobbyists identified as representatives of an interested party and give them their intended course of action, and compound this three weeks later by withholding exactly the same information from the Dáil, and never putting it on the file for inspection, is very worrying.

I said this morning that I would welcome the Minister's acknowledgment of the failings in this regard and that it would never happen again. The Tánaiste, as deputy Head of Government, should say that to the House so we can have confidence in processes that are very important — in this instance, to media plurality in the State.

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