Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste has never done anything inappropriate in her professional life. As Tánaiste, Minister, Deputy and Senator, she has served the public, through her hard work, with dignity, integrity, and determination. She quite rightly outlined what she did when Minister for Justice and Equality in order to ensure that we could see that there was transparency, justice and an appropriate development of the facts. What more can an individual do?

I find some of the commentary in both of these Houses quite distasteful. Until this evening, that type of distasteful commentary more so marked the debate in the Lower House. There comes a point when one has to ask natural justice. The Tánaiste was in Boston representing the country with dignity in recent days. As soon as she got back, even though she is no longer Minister for Justice and Equality, she made available whatever emails that were necessary to be passed on to the tribunal of inquiry, even though, from looking at the relevant email, she had no role or function whatsoever. That needs to be reiterated.

We live in a society that is fair. The people who are watching in tonight are reasonable and fair. Anybody who engages in a fair assessment of what the Opposition has been doing over the past 24 hours will judge it for what it is - skulduggery.