Minister defends 'remedy of mistake'

MINISTER FOR Defence Willie O’Dea said Fine Gael wanted him removed from office for openly admitting, owning up and remedying a mistake to the satisfaction of the aggrieved party.

“If Fine Gael and Enda Kenny’s idea of standards, judgment and ethics is to punish those who admit honest mistakes, then there are many, many honest, decent and law-abiding people who should fear the prospect of Enda Kenny ever becoming Taoiseach,’’ he added.

“As I pointed out last night, evidence and testimony are regularly corrected in courts without allegations and assertions of lying and perjury being levelled.”

People in all walks of life had been obliged to correct testimony they gave in written and oral statements, Mr O’Dea said.

He said he had openly and fully acknowledged that his recollection of some of what he had said in the Limerick interview, as described in his original affidavit, was mistaken.

“I corrected the mistake when I realised it,” he added. “I admitted the mistake and apologised for it.” He had known, he said, that he made the remarks reported in the newspaper, but he did not recollect going beyond those.

He added: “To put it in context, the remarks concerned an apartment owned by Brixton prison escapee Nessan Quinlivan which was being used as a brothel.

“Nessan Quinlivan is a brother of Maurice Quinlivan.

“I later saw a transcript of the interview in which I had, contrary to my recollection, gone further than what had been quoted in the newspaper.

“Having seen the transcript, I took the initiative. I went to my solicitor and immediately corrected my affidavit. I was not forced or pressed to do this.”

Mr O’Dea asked if it was even the slightest bit credible to imagine that he would have knowingly made a false statement while knowing that the newspaper and the journalist concerned had a recording of the interview.

He added that it had taken two months since the case was settled in the High Court for Mr Kenny to raise it in the Dáil.

Fine Gael, said Mr O’Dea, was the party that had deliberately concealed a document from the Moriarty tribunal.

“It is also the party that destroyed its financial records,” he added.

“It is not so long ago – less than 10 years – since a leader of Fine Gael said that his party was bound not to disclose information to a tribunal unless obliged to by law.”

Such omissions and errors were not Fine Gael’s sole preserve, said Mr O’Dea. He added that the Sinn Féin TD, Arthur Morgan, had denied Liam Adams was a member of the party in Louth, but photographs and documentation had shown that he was pivotal to the local organisation.