Derek McDowell (Labour)

Before dealing with the case which is the subject matter of the Adjournment debate, I would like to bring to the attention of the Members of the House that the report of the review group on investment based naturalisation in Ireland was brought by me before Government in July 2002. I arranged for its publication on 4 August 2002 and a number of copies were placed in the Oireachtas Library at the time. In addition, I issued a press statement which was widely reported in the media.

As that report shows, a major flaw in the scheme was that it was not statute based. The operating rules governing it, in the form of a statement of intent, were essentially a set of administrative guidelines which were flexible and flexibly operated. The review group report also shows that this flexibility or looseness of process applied in many cases and was not confined to the case which is the subject of this debate.

I informed the other House in response to a parliamentary question on 17 October last that I had examined a particular file at the request of the Taoiseach. The file is currently with the Moriarty tribunal. All the passport for investment files in respect of persons naturalised under the scheme prior to 1997 were sought by the Moriarty tribunal. There was a copy of the file in my Department. However, I also retrieved the original from the tribunal to satisfy myself that the copy file was complete and that was the case.

My examination confirmed that the file discloses that 11 passports and naturalisations were granted in a manner which was, even by the lax standards that frequently characterised the operation of the scheme in question, irregular and unusual. It appears that the passports and naturalisations in question were effected in a manner which bypassed usual formalities and ignored failure by the applicants to comply with elementary documentary requirements. It also appears that the passports in question were prepared in advance of the completion of the applications for naturalisation.