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Dáil
‹ Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation

IMO contract records

Summary

Deputy Ó Broin challenges the Tánaiste and Ministers for not releasing promised records about the IMO contract issue. The Tánaiste says he has already provided what he holds and that any further records would be in the Departments.

Three weeks have now passed since the Tánaiste stood in this Chamber and told the House that he would be happy to provide any and all records relating to his passing of the IMO contracts to his friend and member of a rival organisation, the National Association of General Practitioners. In the same week, the Taoiseach told my party leader that his Department had an open door and that he too would provide all documentation. Yet here we are three weeks later and we have not received a single document from the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach, or the Ministers for Health and Finance, as requested in writing on three separate occasions. If the Government has nothing to hide, then surely we would have got the documents by now. Many of us are asking exactly what is going on. When will the Tánaiste make good on the commitment he gave to this House three weeks ago to provide all the information we have been requesting?

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Leo Varadkar The Tánaiste Fine Gael

For my own part, there are not any more records other than those that have been put in the public domain already and have been flashed all over the Internet. I provided any records that I have. Any records that are held by the Department of Health or the Department of the Taoiseach I do not hold. It is normal practice that when Ministers leave Departments, they do not take their records with them. The records stay with the Department. Any records would be held by the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Health.

I am sure they will release them if they exist but the nature of this interaction, which has been discussed at length for the last few weeks, means that there were no records. I am sure that any records that do exist of communications between the Government and the NAGP will be released by those Departments but I do not hold them personally.

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