Without any justification, the Taoiseach proposes to call the House to rise on 1 July. The Government will limp off into the summer recess with the ministerial debris of the parliamentary year still on the front bench. The former Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Noel Dempsey, came up with the idea of spending €52 million on electronic voting, and the subsequent Minister, Deputy Cullen, decided against all advice to implement it. The behaviour of former Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin, with regard to the nursing homes issue would, according to the former Ombudsman, make previous Ministers squirm in their graves. Ministers of State, Deputies Callely and Tim O'Malley, managed to read the brief but did absolutely nothing. Then there is the issue of the former and current Ministers for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputies O'Donoghue and McDowell.

Fianna Fáil backbenchers will like what I have to say. In August 2000, the Acting Commissioner, Mr. Noel Conroy, sent a secret report based on the Carty investigation to the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue. It was a shocking 37-page summary of what Assistant Commissioner Carty had uncovered in Donegal. What did the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, do about it? Absolutely nothing.

In November 2001, the then Minister, on the advice of the Attorney General, voted down a motion from the Labour Party, Fine Gael and the Green Party calling for an inquiry into this affair. The current Minister, Deputy McDowell, came in last week and said if they had known the facts earlier they would have acted earlier. He then went on to accuse me of bluffing when I told him what was in the Conroy report, saying I had not read it or seen it. I have the report here now, entitled An investigation carried out by Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty into allegations that members of An Garda Síochána attached to the Donegal division engaged in criminal and unethical behaviour in the execution of their professional duties between 1994 and 1998.

The Deputy's two minutes have concluded.

Every time I raise the issue, the Minister scurries up the back stairs to brief the media and muddy the waters. I hope when he scurries up today that he brings the report with him and gives the media a copy. Contrary to what he tried to suggest yesterday, I have seen the report and it would cause the hair on the back of any reasonable person's neck to stand up. It is reprehensible and indefensible to think that Deputies O'Donoghue and McDowell contrived to do nothing about it.

That is another untruth. The Deputy is shameless.

I ask the Minister to allow the Taoiseach without interruption.

I will go back over some of the facts again.

We want the real facts.

In February 1999, Assistant Commissioner Carty was appointed by the Garda Commissioner to investigate allegations that gardaí in Donegal had engaged in criminal and unethical behaviour. In July 2000, over a year later, Assistant Commissioner Carty submitted his report, which was the investigation file, to the Director of Public Prosecutions who is independent. A few months later, in August 2000, Deputy Commissioner Conroy forwarded a 37-page summary of the Carty report to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. This was not the Carty report itself. At that stage, the DPP was considering the Carty report and its recommendations and prosecutions. That is the process. He would get the file and then consider it. A number of civil actions relating to Donegal were well under way at that stage and a number of complaints were with the Garda Complaints Board.

In light of the controversy at that time, the then Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, sought a preliminary opinion from the Attorney General in June 2001 regarding the options open to him to have the matter inquired into. The Attorney General replied immediately that he required sight of the full Carty report before he could furnish an opinion. The Attorney General, while agreeing that a public inquiry was the most attractive option — and he said that — advised that since tribunals of inquiry have to be conducted in public, this could seriously prejudice pending prosecutions. A tribunal could not be conducted while prosecutions were ongoing. He also advised that a tribunal could be established if the truth did not emerge in the cases that were pending.

In November, four or five months later, having consulted the Director of Public Prosecutions, on foot of the Attorney General's request to see the Garda file, the Garda Commissioner gave an edited version of the Carty report to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. This consisted of those parts of the Carty report considered to be relevant to the defence of the civil actions related to events in Donegal. This edited version was a bulky document and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions remarked that it would be difficult for persons reading the case to make sense of the issues without sight of the papers. In November, Shane Murphy was appointed to review all the papers and advise on how best to proceed.

The fact is that the full Carty report was given to the Department in late January of 2002. Mr. Murphy submitted his report at the end of the same month. The following week, in February 2002, the Government approved in principle the establishment of a tribunal of inquiry. That approval came a week or ten days after the full report was given. Just a few days after the full Carty report was given, the Government approved the establishment of a tribunal of inquiry and the drafting of a Bill to amend the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act to facilitate the holding of such an inquiry.

As I have said a number of times, there was no delay or holding back. The cases were being proceeded with and it is the role of the Director of Public Prosecution to prosecute such cases. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform had not got the investigation file.

The investigation file is not the issue.

The Attorney General, when he was asked for advice, said that a tribunal would be best but that it could not be held in public while cases were pending. I do not know why Deputy Rabbitte persists with this issue because all of the records, dates and information are available. I can make a list of these publicly available for people to see. I read the full Dáil debate on the matter last night and it is quite clear what the then Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, said to the House on 23 May 2001. It is there for everybody to read.

When the Taoiseach reads the Dáil debates at night I would ask him to focus on some of the language that he uses because language ceases to have any meaning when he issues a reply like the one we have just heard. The fact of the matter is that the then Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, claimed throughout 2001 that he had the Carty report. As time is limited, I will furnish one quotation. On 23 May 2001, Deputy O'Donoghue said, at column 1414 of the Dáil debates, "The investigation by Assistant Commissioner Carty was completed and presented to me and, in turn, to the Director of Public Prosecutions." That was on 23 May and he repeated that point to Deputy Howlin and others. Last Wednesday, 22 June 2005, the Taoiseach came into the House and said: "A partial version of the Carty report was eventually furnished in November 2001..." That is a straightforward untruth. The report was furnished on 1 August 2000. The Taoiseach uttered a straightforward untruth and he has now picked up the habit of his former Attorney General, Deputy McDowell, of trying to throw sand in people's eyes about when is the Carty report not the Carty report; when is the Carty report the Conroy report; and what is the difference between the report and an investigation file needed for prosecution. Opposition Deputies were not talking about an investigation file for prosecution, which was the defence that the Minister advanced. We were talking about the hair-raising report from Mr. Noel Conroy, who acted quite properly and who, within a month of the report being delivered to Mr. Pat Byrne, summarised it and sent it to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform in easily intelligible terms. The Minister did nothing and a year and three months later, when we put down a motion in the House calling for the matter to be investigated, the Government voted it down.

The current Minister, Deputy McDowell, has stated that he could not engage in such an inquiry because he had not received the full Carty report. When, as Attorney General, he was advising on the legal redress scheme and could not get the relevant report because of the secret deal cooked up by the Taoiseach and Deputy Woods, he quite properly said that he would withdraw from giving advice because he could not get the documents from Deputy Woods. However, he did not say the same in this case and he has now dropped the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, in it to the extent that the poor fellow is ashamed to come into the House, go on radio or television or to present himself anywhere. He is properly embarrassed, as he ought to be, about having read the Conroy report and done nothing about it.

I have given the facts as they are, from the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. I can do no more than that.

I have read the Dáil debate and Deputy Rabbitte has quoted only one line from it. In a section of the debate approximately one minute before the line quoted by Deputy Rabbitte, there is an exchange between Deputies Shatter, O'Donoghue and Howlin. This part of the Official Report states:

The Deputy asks if I intend to publish the reports of the earlier investigations into allegations of Garda misconduct in the Donegal area and, in this regard, if I have received the completed reports from the Garda Commissioner. On the latter point, the Deputy will be aware from recent correspondence that I have not seen the investigation file nor would it be normal practice for the Minister to do so. I have, of course, as I have previously informed the House, received a report of the assistant commissioner's investigation from the Garda Commissioner.

The Deputy——

Deputy O'Donoghue said that he had the report.

The Taoiseach is talking about a different matter entirely. He is attempting to confuse the issue.

It is quite clear that the former Minister states that he has the report.

The Minister also explains that he cannot act on that because it is not the full report and because there are legal prosecutions emanating from the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Here we have the Taoiseach with his three Carty trick — now we see it, now we do not.

Deputy Jim O'Keeffe's other profession is law and he should know better than anybody in this House — with the exception of the other legal experts here — that the Minister could not deal with this issue while the Director of Public Prosecutions had cases before the courts. He knows that.

Of course he could.

Not only could it be done, it was done.

I remind Deputy Jim O'Keeffe that Deputy Rabbitte is quite capable of handling his own Leader's Questions.

He is not capable on this issue because Deputy Howlin keeps helping him. Deputy Howlin asserts that of course the Minister could deal with the issue, but I say he could not.

The Government did it eventually. It did exactly that.

We introduced legislation later when we got the full report.

Why did the Government not act two years earlier?

We introduced legislation later when we got the full report.

The Government did nothing until it was compelled to act.

The last point I will make, when Deputy Howlin calms down ——

Would the Taoiseach tell the people of Donegal to calm down also?

Deputy Rabbitte speaks on this matter as if nothing happened but I wish to remind the House that it was this Government, not the Opposition, which identified the solution to the impasse, namely, the enactment of the legislation to enable a tribunal to hold part of its proceedings in private so as to avoid possible prejudice to court proceedings. That was the solution found by the then Attorney General, Deputy McDowell, and the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue. They acted totally properly and correctly.