Daly hits out at Shatter’s ‘brazen, bare-faced denial’

Independent TD Clare Daly has accused Justice Minister Alan Shatter of either not realising how serious the Garda tapes scandal is, or of covering it up.

In a withering attack on Mr Shatter, Ms Daly said it was “not credible” that the justice minister was only made aware on Monday of a widespread system of recording of phone calls in and out of Garda stations going back decades.

The independent TD said the issue was not just about the “fitting up” of two citizens by members of An Garda Síochána but the minister’s explanation that he was not aware of the tapes until early this week.

“You’ve said that the reason this information is being acted upon now is that very serious information was likely to come into the public domain regarding an horrendous miscarriage of justice and fitting up of two citizens... The issue here is your brazenness, is your bare- faced denial and the Government’s serious mistake in continuing to back you. It is not credible that you didn’t know,” she said.

Ms Daly said Mr Shatter was either unaware of how serious the issue was or was covering it up and, as a result, he should resign.

“On May 21 last year, you stood up here and you told us that the commissioner had a duty to tell you about Mick Wallace’s non event. A duty to tell you. And yet you’re saying he didn’t have a duty to tell you about this one and you don’t have a problem with that?”

“You stood up in front of this house and berated GSOC for not telling you about the bugging. You listed every piece of legislation you could. Here you spend paragraphs telling us that they didn’t have to tell you and you don’t have a problem with that. So, you either don’t realise how serious this issue is or you’re covering up. Either way, your position is not credible,” she said.

In a similarly scathing attack, independent TD Mick Wallace said it was not believable that the minister could not have been aware of the Garda tapes and that he was seeking to blame everybody else in order to save his political career.

“We are well used at this stage to the minister’s approach of dealing with the Garda controversies he has presided over. Blanket denial for as long as possible in order to save face, impartial admission on a drip, drip basis to the Dáil, using his favourite media, hiding the real extent of the issues, then misrepresentation of both fact and law within the Dáil chambers and finally frantically pointing of fingers at anyone else that he can think of that might act as a fall guy and save his own political career,” he said.

Mr Wallace said it was a case of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” and joined a chorus of opposition TDs calling for Mr Shatter’s resignation.

“Having got rid of the confidential recipient and dispensing with the commissioner, and it seems, doing his best to encourage GSOC to do the same, he now appears to be blaming the civil servants at his department and the attorney general.”

“This Government, and particularly Labour who appointed the attorney general, will have to make a choice between who you will sacrifice to survive the latest mess. The secretary general? The attorney general? Or, is it going to be the minister this time?” he said.