Fine Gael TD Paul McGrath has made an official complaint about the disclosure of information by a Government department about questions he had tabled on a controversial State purchase.
Mr McGrath made the complaint after he was contacted by the person about whom he was asking the questions, before the replies had actually been given by the Department of Arts.
The five questions related to the purchase on behalf of the State for €1.17 million last year of a James Joyce manuscript of part of Finnegans Wake from a former consultant to the department, Laura Barnes. Ms Barnes had bought the manuscript in 2004 for some €400,000.
Mr McGrath had also sought details of the €188,000 she had received as a consultant from the department in 2004 and 2005 to cover her own salary and staffing fees.
It was Ms Barnes who contacted Mr McGrath before the questions had been answered.
Yesterday Mr McGrath said he had written formally to ask the Ceann Comhairle, Rory O'Hanlon, to contact the Department of the Arts to establish how and why the information about the questions was passed on to Ms Barnes before the questions were answered.
He wrote to Dr O'Hanlon outlining how he had been contacted by Ms Barnes who asked to meet him, and that she warned him that she would consider legal action if she was defamed outside the Dáil.
"In my 17 years in the Dáil I have asked thousands of questions, many about third parties, and this is the first occasion I have been contacted by a third party like this," he said.
He wanted to establish the exact protocols relating to how information on Dáil questions are handled by departments, and whether there was a breach of this on the part of the Department of the Arts.
Yesterday Ms Barnes said she had contacted Mr McGrath because she was upset that somebody had been asking personal questions about her but that she had said "nothing mean" to him.
"Clearly maybe I shouldn't have done. . . but I figured I should stand up for myself."
She said she had been contacted by the department to confirm details in the responses officials were preparing for Mr McGrath.
In relation to the questions, answered on December 12th, Ms Barnes said "he wanted to know everything about me short of what I had for breakfast". "If you want to answer any question entirely truthfully, accurately and completely, you make sure your facts are right," she said.
The questions tabled by Mr McGrath related to the manuscript purchase and the contracts Ms Barnes was paid for in relation to consultancy work on the 2004 Joyce festival and the recent Samuel Beckett centenary celebrations.
In 2005, AIB bought the Finnegans Wake manuscript, on behalf of the National Library, from Sotheby's auction house for €1.17 million. AIB was subsequently granted a tax credit from the Government equal to the full purchase price under a special art purchase scheme.
The National Library had previously been looking at the manuscript in 2004 before it was purchased by Ms Barnes.
In the Dáil replies last week, Minister for the Arts John O'Donoghue said there had been independent valuations of the manuscript before the Government agreed to the €1.17 million purchase price.
Ms Barnes said she had no idea the National Library was interested at the time she bought it in 2004, and that she had found out about the availability of the manuscript from a book dealer friend.
"It was a very straightforward deal," she said of the subsequent sale to AIB and the National Library.
"Everything was done to ensure there was not a conflict of interest," she said.