Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

For the avoidance of doubt, the Minister and I were at an Irish Business and Employers Confederation, IBEC, dinner in the Four Seasons hotel with a couple of hundred people. We sat around a table of ten or 15 people. It is disingenuous of the Minister to try to correlate the two events and suggest they are the same. Will the Minister respond to the question I asked him? On 18 April, did the Minister have lunch in Leinster House with David McCourt? Who else attended that lunch? Were there officials with the Minister and did he retain a minute of that meeting?

Can the Minister explain to us what he thought the purpose of that meeting was and why there was need for a subsequent one? The Minister will be berated in this House and held to account for the non-performance of his Department, but if there is a procurement process in place, as there was, and if there are officials assigned to make it happen, if an executive decision is required, make the executive decision, change tack if necessary, but it does not need the Minister to go out to the individual players , one by one, or one at a time, or one on their own, and try to give them some comfort that everything will be all right on the night. Nor should they be allowed to canvas the Minister. What the Minister has allowed to happen is to bring in to-----

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