Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With due respect to the Ceann Comhairle, and I take his point on board, I spoke to Shane's mother today and on several other occasions, and one of the commitments I made was that at the very first opportunity I had to put questions to the Minister for Justice and Equality, regardless of who he or she might be, I would raise her son's case. As many Members know only too well, Shane was killed in 2011, at just 23 years of age, by a man who was a known criminal, who had breached several bail conditions at the time and who had 42 previous convictions across three different states.

Since his death, Shane's family have sought justice. Through their efforts, whole-scale failures in the handling of this case by numerous statutory agencies, including An Garda, the prosecution team, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Courts Service, have been exposed. The questions that have been raised are so numerous and of such significance that many people, including myself, believe they can only be properly dealt with through a public inquiry. That public inquiry has yet to be delivered, but a scoping exercise is currently being undertaken by the respected former judge, Gerard Haughton. Will the Minister give an indication as to when he expects that exercise to be completed and whether he foresees a public inquiry taking place thereafter?

I have another question on a different issue. Will the Minister comment in respect of the apparent failure of his Department to heed the request in 2008 by the Attorney General, a senior counsel and the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to publish a report that was compiled by the Courts Service for his Department? The family concerned had to fight for more than two years to receive that report, in February of this year, despite having gone through freedom of information procedures and all the rest. The Minister will understand that it is things like this that create the view among people in my town that there is a resistance within his Department to the type of public inquiry that is warranted in the case I mentioned. I ask, with the Ceann Comhairle's indulgence, for a short response, if possible.

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