Alex White (Labour)

I know what is happening. A hugely important constitutional question is being raised by the Taoiseach. I am entitled, as a Member of this House, of which the Mahon tribunal is a creature, to make the point that there ought to be a debate in this House, as there has been in the other House, in respect of the integrity of the Mahon tribunal.

While the Taoiseach has not been in the House since I was elected to it, when he was here in September 1997 he stated:

It is unacceptable that people who have held high office and enjoyed a high degree of public trust should give evidence that is, in the words of the tribunal, unacceptable and untrue or deliberately conceal vital information from this House, or from a tribunal set up by this House. There is no excuse for this.

The Taoiseach is now posing as a defender of the privilege of this and the other House in the action he proposes to take to the court in circumstances where he tells us he is instructed by lawyers to do so, when manifestly he has made the decision himself to go to court to seek to curtail the tribunal or prohibit it from asking him about — this is the extraordinary part — statements he has made in the Dáil, one of the Houses that set up the very tribunal he is seeking to curtail. Manifestly, there is a requirement for a debate in this regard.

I know it is uncomfortable for members of the Government but——