No doubt the Taoiseach has studied the documentation clearly. As a matter of fact, there was an email from gardaí to the Department. Whatever about that-----

Yes-----

Whatever about that.

If I can point out to the Fine Gael benches, I am merely demonstrating that the Taoiseach, I hope inadvertently, has misled the House again and I am correcting the facts.

Hear, hear.

For those who have not read the documents which were released, perhaps they might take the trouble to do so and then come at this from an informed position. The net point I put to the Taoiseach relates to the issue of the withholding of documents from the Charleton tribunal. That is not just a matter of sloppy practice or an administrative error, it is a breach of the law. I want to know what the Taoiseach, as Head of Government, proposes to do about that. He has turned up email correspondence and records of phone calls that were withheld from the tribunal and these happen to be the very pieces of documentation that were perhaps the most politically sensitive; those pieces of correspondence that clearly linked the former Tánaiste and her state of knowledge of the malicious legal strategy. I want to know what the Taoiseach proposes to do about that breach in the law. I invite him to go beyond a general statement about some unspecified general investigation. We want to know, in the spirit of accountability, that the law will be respected and upheld.

There were indeed emails from gardaí to officials in the Department of Justice and Equality, but not among those which were in the public domain last Thursday or the one to which the Deputy referred in her contribution last Thursday, which was that of 15 May 2015. The latter was entirely an email involving officials, advisers and the Minister.

Did the Taoiseach get that from the Department?

I have already answered the Deputy McDonald's question. Last week I ordered a trawl of all the documents and Members have seen the outcome of that already. I ordered a progress report on the implementation of the Toland report and Members have seen the output of that already. As of today, I am ordering an external inquiry into why the Department of Justice and Equality did not find those emails-----

Carried out by whom?

-----and why they were not sent on to the tribunal.

By whom will it be carried out?

I am absolutely open to suggestions for who should carry it out but the norm in these circumstances is for it to be carried out by a Secretary General of another Department or of the Government. It may be the case that a reason cannot be discovered for why these documents were missed but I want to find out, for my own information at the very least. We will deal with it when we have an outcome

It is important to reiterate what the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Charles Flanagan, said and has said consistently throughout this affair. When he was made aware by his Secretary General on Monday night last - not Monday gone by but the one before that - that a document had been discovered pertaining to Maurice McCabe, he did exactly the right thing. He instructed the Secretary General to send it on immediately to the tribunal and that was subsequently done.

It was a week later.

It is of deep regret to me that he did not actually see that email, that document for another week, when I saw it. Perhaps if he had seen it, we might have been in a different situation today but he acted absolutely appropriately in saying the email should be sent on to the tribunal, which is exactly where these documents are supposed to end up.

He did not even look at the email.