Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the support from Fine Gael on this issue. I have been dealing with Revenue on the matter for the past number of months and have had great difficulty establishing the actual position. We are going to invite the Revenue before the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service to answer some of the questions raised by Senator Brian Hayes and which were also raised by me last week with Revenue and publicly. It is disgraceful that the people whom we entrust to look after our interests in terms of taxation are not balanced in their approach. There will be time for another discussion on the matter. We will return to that matter.

We have talked twice in the past two years about the need to deal with the libel laws. I speak from a disinterested position on the matter. For the past number of months a tabloid Sunday newspaper has been conducting an extraordinary witch-hunt against a member of Government. I do not know the rights or wrongs of the matter but I have a simple view that if a member of Government is found through due process and proper investigation to have breached the required standards of ethics, probity or accountability, and if that is proven to be the case, that person should resign.

Opposition parties who have spoken on this matter have shown extraordinary responsibility and have helped the image of politics during a bad week. Representatives of the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party refused to jump on a bandwagon which attempted to cast a slur on aspects of a Minister's life which had no bearing whatsoever on his job. If he is found to have acted wrongly or to be in breach of ethics or probity, then he will have to go, but that decision is to be made in another place. We should never be seen to run in front of the media and we should remind ourselves of this the next time we deal with reform of the libel laws. I am completely disinterested in this matter but the things that have been done to this person do not serve journalism or the public interest in any way. I cannot understand how this can be done within the current libel laws without any redress being available to the person in the middle. Many articles were not even connected to the story in the vaguest of ways. I would like to return to this issue again and it is important that we do so.