Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When the Minister came before the House last week with his version of events, I told him he had been caught out. He was caught out concealing donations that were not declared at the time, in 2016. Despite the fact that he had information back in 2017 on the use of the company van, he did not do anything about it. He was caught out when journalists contacted him in November 2020 and he said his team reviewed everything and that there was no need to make any adjustments and everything was okay. It was only when SIPO wrote to him that he created this narrative to reverse engineer the numbers to make it all seem plausible.

The question I put to him on four occasions last week was the one he could not answer. The information he gave this House even included the number of tickets Michael Stone bought from him in a national draw but he failed to tell us that Michael Stone paid to put up his election posters in not just one but two elections. The reason he could not answer that question was that he knew at that time that he was caught out again. I will ask a specific question. In 2017, who made the allegation in respect of the use of Michael Stone's company van in the erection of the posters? Can the Minister answer that question? When he received repeated requests from the media in November 2022, he said he carried out a review. Who carried out the review? At that stage, did he know of the involvement of Michael Stone in the context of postering?

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