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

I will open with some quotes from leading Fine Gael politicians. First, "I do not, as standard, keep text messages" was not said by the Minister, Deputy Coveney, but by the Tánaiste on 5 November 2020. On 31 August 2021, Deputy Coveney stated: "I do not hold on to text messages for long periods in terms of data on my phone and so on." On 7 September 2021, he also stated that he cleared texts from his phones regularly when business was done, or something like that. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, that is not normal behaviour. Let us forget about Ministers, freedom of information or anything else; people do not do that. Unless they have something to hide, people do not finish a text message conversation by saying, "Oh, that's done, I'll delete that". It is not like getting a letter someone does not want and putting it in the green bin. Unless people are like Deputy Danny Healy-Rae and have a Nokia that does not have enough space for text messages, they do not do that. People do not delete text messages, in terms of normal behaviour.

We are not, of course, dealing with normal, regular citizens but, rather, with Ministers who have obligations under the FOI Act to retain records. In all of the earlier responses from members of the Government during the motion of confidence debate, what was most troubling was that their main line of argument - when they were not just attacking the Opposition, which was most of the time - was that the man apologised and what more do we want? It was almost as if they believed we were engaging in cancel culture, were trying to cancel the man for making a mistake, and while the man has made a mistake, he has also done all this great stuff and he has apologised. However, he never apologised and he never acknowledged the most significant aspect of all of this in everything that followed, apart from the actual act of cronyism, which was the deletion of text messages relating to official Government business and the breaching of the FOI Act by doing so. He did not apologise for that and he never acknowledged it was a mistake. He tried to simultaneously maintain, for example, on the second occasion he appeared before the foreign affairs committee, that while he had deleted the text messages relating to the appointment of Katherine Zappone as special envoy, he does not delete text messages relating to Government business because that would be in breach of the FOI Act, despite the fact that the two statements clearly contradict each other.

What was most amusing, and made me raise my eyebrows the most during the defence of the Minister was Deputy McHugh's contribution, who at one stage wondered that if we voted no confidence in Simon Coveney, what message that would send out to young people thinking about getting involved in politics.

Perhaps it would send a message to the young people getting involved in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael about careerism and there might not be much of a hope for strokes and so on because there are consequences for actions. However, most people would say it is good to send a message that there are consequences if someone breaches the FOI Act and are engaged in blatant cronyism etc. There should be consequences. This stuff should matter.

Clearly, there is a pattern, at least among some senior Fine Gael politicians, of consciously deleting text messages which are official Government business to avoid there being an electronic paper trail of controversial decisions and to avoid them being accessed. There is now significant evidence to suggest that is a conscious policy. The text messages to which the Tánaiste was referring in November 2020 were messages he had sent to Maitiú Ó Tuathail, the chair of the National Association of General Practitioners, to whom he had leaked the draft GP contract with the Irish Medical Organisation. There were text messages about the delivery of the contract. It was obviously very convenient. Technologically, they were WhatsApp messages. Therefore, they should have continued to exist in the cloud but, apparently, they were also deleted from there, which would have required a special effort. It is not in the normal business of people deleting messages that they are finished with and so on that somehow they are gone; it would require a special effort to remove them from that. The Tánaiste is under Garda investigation for that. We will see what transpires. I have previously given my views on that, but it is quite significant. Then, we get to this issue of the other contender for the leadership of Fine Gael openly saying he is doing the same thing in terms of deletion of text messages.

It is clearly a breach of the FOI Act. Someone who deserves much credit for his work in trying to shine light on the murky business of Government and the use of the FOI Act, despite all the frustrations there are with it, is Ken Foxe from Right To Know. A consequence of one of the many cases he has taken is the decision of the Information Commissioner that where email accounts or messaging on mobile devices are used to transact official business, such records should be filed as part of the record management process. It is very clear that did not happen in the case of the Tánaiste and the GP contract, nor did it happen in the case of the messages on Deputy Coveney's phone.

Another of the multiple aspects related to this, to which Deputy Shortall referred, is the text messages between Katherine Zappone and the Tánaiste. It is troubling that journalists were submitting FOI requests precisely for records, including on the Tánaiste's mobile phone between him and Katherine Zappone and being told point-blank that such records did not exist. Then the messages came out. There is controversy about it. The response of the Tánaiste in a statement was:

The relevant FOI officer who received the request, checked all emails and records and found no records. I was on annual leave at the time the decision was released and I wasn't contacted to check my phone for records.

Someone is somehow empowered to say, "We have checked the phones and there is not a record" - the phones are specifically mentioned - despite not having talked to the Tánaiste. It stretches credibility at the very least or certainly would indicate a real problem in terms of process. What that indicates is that we have a significant problem. That poses the question: how many times have journalists, Deputies or ordinary people been told that records do not exist when they do and they are simply not caught out on it?

All the blame is heaped on this anonymous individual in the Department. I do not wish to make that individual not anonymous. I do not want to heap any blame on that person. They were presumably doing their job. There is political responsibility here, but the twist at the end was when the Tánaiste told the media that the person is no longer at the Department. They just kind of disappeared. One can imagine the staff photo from one year and there is a blank face the next year because all the blame is being put on that person. This is another person thrown under the bus - this time to protect the Tánaiste.

The final issue in this saga is that two or three days ago the Tánaiste was on the radio speaking about all of this and precisely to avoid dealing with the repeated flagrant breaches of the FOI Act by the Government to cover stuff up, he announced we were going to have a review of the legislation while forgetting the fact there has been a review in process for two months and that we have a law and decisions about the law already from the Information Commissioner that need to be applied right now. However, the Tánaiste announced that we will have another review simply to distract attention and to pretend that there is a problem with the law as opposed to the implementation of it. How about the Government implementing and obeying the law as it exists? Then I would be all for reform of it, as I outlined, in the direction of making things more transparent, etc., but it is not an excuse for breaking the law as it currently exists.

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