asked the Minister for Energy if, in view of his commitment to the Dáil on 22 October, he will now agree to place in the Library of this House, his letter of 22 April 1986, to the banks, concerning the Dublin Gas Company.

The letter has been placed in the Library. I made my position clear to the House on the last occasion. I considered the matter and, having done so, I have placed the letter in the Library.

I thank the Minister for finally bringing the letter to the House so that we can all make a judgment on it. It is surprising that I raised this as far back as last June and had to repeat my request many times before the Minister brought it. Has the Minister got the letter with him in the House today?

I have it on file, yes.

Will the Minister read the final paragraph?

I believe the Deputy has it himself.

Of course I have. It would not be in the House if I had not got it.

So much for confidentiality.

Did the Minister want to keep it confidential?

This is a very serious matter and I had to bring it to the notice of this House.

The question asked was in regard to a certain letter being placed in the Library and the answer is that it has been placed in the Library.

Does the Minister recall saying the following in this House on 22 October 1986, in response to many questions raised by me, and I quote one of the many responses:

I have made the position quite clear in relation to the banks. I have said there are no State guarantees, no letters of comfort. If tomorrow morning the Dublin Gas Company went out of business the banks would lose their money.

In view of that statement will the Minister now refer to the final paragraph of the letter he has in front of him and agree with me that the clear content of that letter indicates he has, regrettably, misled this House?

That is clearly a separate question.

What is separate about it? I am talking about the contents of the letter we now have.

The Deputy can put down another question now that he has got the letter.

In that whole debate there are seven statements from the Minister in which he made it clear to this House that he issued no letter of comfort and no letter of guarantee to the banking institutions in relation to Dublin Gas. Is the Minister saying that that very serious misleading of this House will go unnoticed in this House?

There may be another way of dealing with it——

I am asking the Minister to refer to the final paragraph——

Will the Deputy please give way to the Chair. The question was to ask the Minister for Energy if, in view of his commitment to the Dáil on 22 October, he will now agree to place in the Library of this House his letter dated 22 April 1986 to the banks concerning Dublin Gas and the answer is that the letter has been placed in the Library. That is the end of the matter. It may come up again and probably will.

Arising out of it, and in view of the very misleading information presented to this House by the Minister, I am now asking him to admit to this House that the final paragraph of his letter of 22 April to the banking institutions under his own signature confirmed it was the Government's intention that the affairs of Dublin Gas would be conducted in such a fashion as to allow all amounts due to BGE through the loan stock trustees and to the banks under the terms of the syndicate loan agreement dated 13 September 1984 to be paid in full. Yet the last time I was in this House and prior to that I got commitment after commitment from the Minister that there were no State guarantees and no letters of comfort. Will the Minister admit that the final paragraph of that letter was clearly a letter of comfort?

The Deputy is well aware of what letters of comfort or letters of guarantee normally are because it was quite fashionable in Government a number of years ago to issue them on a regular basis. I am satisfied, from the legal advice to me, that this letter is neither a letter of guarantee nor a letter of comfort.

I am well aware of what is the content of letters of comfort. I checked it with two previous Ministers for Finance. I have senior counsel's advice on that matter and not alone——

I will not allow a speech.

I am not making a speech.

It sounds very like it to the Chair.

It is a very serious matter.

That is obviously a speech.

I have taken senior counsel's advice on the content of that letter and the advice of previous Ministers for Finance. I am now asking the Minister to accept that he has misled this House at least by omission. Why was all this information hidden for so long? When the Minister found himself and his Government under pressure he was prepared to mislead this House.

That is another argument.

He was prepared to mislead this House by omission at least in not putting the information that was available to him to the House. No wonder I had to ask him on many occasions to come clean and stop covering up.

I totally reject the implication of the Deputy's statement that I have attempted to or have in fact misled this House. I have made my position very clear. This letter is in the Library of the House at the Deputy's request. It is not a letter of guarantee or a letter of comfort in the normal manner of Government business. I, likewise, have legal advice available to me and it is that this letter is not a letter of guarantee or a letter of comfort.

That is to be threshed out some place else.

Will the Minister accept that when he said to this House on 22 October that if the Dublin Gas Company went out of business the banks would lose their money, he was misleading the House? That letter clearly gives the banks a blank cheque in relation to Dublin Gas and it is absolute. Why was this letter not produced last June or July when I asked for it? Why have I to ask three or four times, and why is it only in the final analysis that it comes in when other political pressure has blown off? The House has been misled. I want to ask the Chair's guidance as to whether I am in order in asking the Minister to make a personal explanation to this House in regard to the serious manner in which he has misled it?

The Chair does not give advice about matters like that.

I ask for further guidance because in all the examination of that by any reasonable person there is only one word that would describe the Minister's actions here and that word is not allowed in parliamentary language. Would the Chair mind telling me what word would aptly describe it that I could use in parliamentary language?

I feel I must respond because the Deputy persists. On the legal advice available to me, the letter is neither a letter of guarantee nor a letter of comfort. It is a letter setting out the Government's intentions.

Deputy Reynolds, there are other ways of raising this and the Deputy will have to find them.

This matter is far too serious to be glossed over and I will raise the matter in a different way.

That is if you find a way that is in order.

35.