Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Before I came into the House, I had the misfortune to listen to the Joe Duffy show. It is not something I do very often. Comments were made about the Irish Women's Parliamentary Caucus. As long as the caucus excludes parliamentary and secretarial assistants and all the other women who work in these Houses, it is exclusionary and, therefore, I will not participate in it.

Monday was the anniversary of the Stardust fire 41 years ago.There was a large gathering of relatives who met to commemorate their dead loved ones and also to call on this Government to stop putting obstacles in the way of their search for justice. Over the last eight months, the State has put a series of obstacles in their way, the most recent one relating to jury selection. There is an expert working group report on jury selection that is 20 years old. Successive governments have done nothing to act on its recommendations. One of the things the report says clearly is that the way juries are selected for inquests is deeply problematic. We are now facing the largest inquest in the history of the State and are talking about the possibility of An Garda Síochána selecting the jury when it is itself a party to the inquest. When the Taoiseach unveiled a bench at the INMO headquarters at the former Richmond hospital yesterday, he said he was listening to the families. I hope he meant that and was not giving them false hope. Under no circumstances will the families accept An Garda selecting the jury or accept the alternative the Taoiseach mentioned in the Dáil two weeks ago, which would be to have a judge-led inquest with no jury at all. Let us not forget that there have already been two judge-led inquiries into what happened in the Stardust nightclub and that both came out with deeply concerning findings. One actually found that arson was probable and, although this finding was eventually reversed, it tarnished the entire community of north County Dublin and suggested that they were somehow responsible for what took place that night. I really hope the Taoiseach was not speaking out of both sides of his mouth when he gave assurances to the families yesterday.

I would also like to raise a story covered in the Irish Independenttoday on the back of the reply I received to a freedom of information request. It suggested that the Office of Public Works carried out works on Emo Court in Laois without the necessary derogation or licence, destroying a bat roost, before proceeding to try to cover it up and seek a licence for those works retrospectively. When the National Parks and Wildlife Service investigated the matter, did it recommend prosecution? That seemed to be the direction it was taking in the response to my freedom of information request. It seems that someone intervened with the two agencies to ensure that investigation and prosecution did not proceed.