Pressure rises on Shatter in points outrage
Alan Shatter’s actions were compared to George Orwell’s dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four and were deemed Stalinist, vindictive, and unprecedented.
However, Taoiseach Enda Kenny backed his minister and said Mr Shatter did not collect files on TDs or anyone else.
Mr Shatter faces questions in the Dáil this week, from both Coalition and opposition benches, after last week he accused Wexford TD Mick Wallace of escaping penalty points while using a mobile phone behind the wheel.
The State’s ethics watchdog — the Standards in Public Office Commission — is investigating the minister’s remarks and private gardaí details about Mr Wallace which he revealed on live television.
Mr Kenny said during a three-day visit to Boston that his justice minister had disclosed “relevant information” during RTE’s Prime Time last week.
He added: “What the minister has been pointing out here is that people cannot have it both ways. You cannot be saying that there should be no discretion used and at the same time avail of discretion.
“I want to make it clear the Minister for Justice is not in the position of collecting files on any individual or any member of the House or anybody else.”
Mr Kenny added that Mr Shatter had no difficulty attending any Oireachtas hearings into the Garda penalty points report and he stood 100% behind his minister.
Labour TDs Kevin Humphreys and Gerald Nash said Mr Shatter needed to answer questions in the Dáil about why he revealed Mr Wallace’s encounter with gardaí, where he only got a warning.
Mr Wallace says he does not remember the encounter with gardaí, which is understood happened last May on Dublin city’s North Circular Rd, several months before the penalty points inquiry was launched.
However, Independent TD Clare Daly told RTÉ yesterday Mr Shatter’s actions were “unprecedented”.
She added: “This is like [George] Orwell’s Big Brother. Has he files on the other TDs? How many gardaí are talking to him? It’s astounding that the minister for justice feels he has the right to trawl through information on people.”
Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea said Mr Shatter’s use of the Garda information against Mr Wallace had been “vindictive” and “mean”.
He told RTÉ’s The Week in Politics: “It’s a Stalinist, sinister, sort of a state where a minister, by virtue of his exalted position, comes into very sensitive information and he can use that information to do down an opponent.”
Junior finance minister Brian Hayes defended the minister’s comments. Referring to Mr Wallace’s unpaid €1.4m Vat bill to the Revenue, he said the Government would not be lectured to by people who did not pay their taxes.
