Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I would like to pay tribute to "RTÉ Investigates" for the programme that was aired last night on Patrick Russell. I particularly commend Mr. Paul Murphy for his determination to expose not just what went on with this particular conman, but the failure of the institutions of our State to deal with him. The Revenue Commissioners have questions to answer about how it was allowed to escalate to the degree it did. An Garda Síochána also has questions to answer as to why this particular gentleman had not been convicted prior to recently, given the fact that many complaints were made and plenty of evidence was available. I do not know how we go about dealing with that but I suggest that the Joint Committee on Justice should do a body of work on it. The justice committee should bring the Garda Commissioner before it and engage as to what role the fraud squad has played in this case. More importantly, at this stage, the committee could find out if there are more examples of this type of corruption that the Garda is aware of but has not done anything about. What was exposed in that programme is totally disgraceful.

I commend the people who participated in the programme. They showed bravery in sharing their experiences and stories in order to ensure this type of thing does not happen in our society. It has been a bad week for RTÉ but that programme was a very good example of public service broadcasting.