Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I wish to refer to an incident of a kind with which the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, will be familiar. I made representations on a REPS application to the Minister for Agriculture and Food during the previous Government's term. I asked about 20 questions in various ways in order to extract a certain amount of information, but I failed in that regard. I had to resort to the Freedom of Information Act to request access to the file. I was eventually given the file and it was incomplete. I knew this was the case because some letters I had written to the Department officials and to the Minister were missing. I complained to the Minister and I re-applied for the complete file but I was again given another incomplete file. On this occasion some of the letters that were missing from the first file were included in the second file and vice versa. One of the letters had a comment written on it by a senior official of the Department who is well known to the Minister of State because he encountered him when he jumped on the bandwagon in respect of the recent farmers' protest. The officer challenged the Minister of State in regard to the credibility with which he participated in the campaign. The officer wrote on the file, which was available in the Department of Agriculture and Food, that there should be no reply to the former Deputy Burke on the question. They are the facts of the matter. If Senator Daly can refute that, I will yield to another point of order from him.