Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is a point not only for the Minister, Deputy Naughten, but for the Taoiseach. If the Minister had said he was caught off guard, he was thinking of other things, he should never have taken the call, the caller got through directly, he should never have imparted any information. It should never happen again and that acknowledgment would be really important. I invite the Taoiseach to make that acknowledgement today.

In my own time in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, when we were dealing with public private partnerships, PPPs, I established a protocol that was published on the departmental website - it is still there - that said if a person has an interest in a PPP then he or she could not contact the Minister or any of his or her political staff directly. There is a published conduit for a person to put in a submission, query anything or provide data to the Department. It is completely wrong that it would be done in a covert way. It was not in the public domain and it was information that was subsequently withheld from the Dáil. Will the Taoiseach acknowledge this was something that should not have happened? Are there protocols to deal with this matter in future?

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