Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Last week, the Minister, Deputy Cowen, was shielded from having to face questions by a vote in this House. That was a mistake. The consequence of this was a drip feed of information, which is precisely what the Minister said would be damaging. The information which emerged over the weekend is very serious for the two reasons. The first is that the record itself describes a supposed attempt to evade a checkpoint and the second is that the Minister has made the very serious assertion that this record is incorrect. Earlier, the Taoiseach seemed to imply that he was not aware of that record at the time of the Minister's statement last week. He was aware. He may not have seen the record but he had been informed of its existence.

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