Justice Minister Michael McDowell today told the Dáil that he recieved an internal garda report into activities in Donegal almost two years after it was completed.
Justice Minister Michael McDowell told a special Dáil debate on the Morris Tribunal that he and his predecessor John O'Donoghue only received the Carty Report in July 2000, when Mr MCDowell was Attorney General, because the DPP had to consider it first.
He also insisted that there was no resistance at Government level to an inquiry into Garda corruption in Donegal and that both he and the then Minister for Justice, John O’Donoghue, were anxious to have a public inquiry in 2001.
Mr McDowell’s legal advice to Mr O’Donoghue was to allow for ongoing criminal prosecutions to continue and that in the event of the truth not emerging from those cases, a tribunal should be established.
However Labour TD Brendan Howlin, whose Dáil questions later led to the public inquiry, said the Justice Department knew of mass Donegal corruption over a year earlier in April 1999.
But Mr McDowell, flanked by Mr O'Donoghue in the Dáil today, insisted they didn't have enough information to act decisively.
"Lawyers on my behalf [as Attorney General] repeatedly sought the full factual matrix of the situation that was emerging in Co Donegal... but they were repeatedly kept away from it at that time," he said.
"But it had the wholly unacceptable effect that the Carty report was not delivered in its entirety either to myself or to Mr O'Donoghue at a time when its full contents would have been definitely of interest to us and enabled to make earlier judgements."
Labour Party justice spokesman Joe Costelloe said Mr McDowell's defence of his record in office was "extraordinarily weak" and it was unbelievable that he couldn't get the Carty report for two years.
"How can a minister of justice operate where an investigation has taken place and a report has been provided, and it is then considered to be a privy report?," he asked.
The Morris Tribunal's second report ruled this month that the garda probe into the hit-and-run death of cattle dealer Richie Barron in 1996 was prejudicial and utterly negligent and that Frank McBrearty Jnr and his cousin Mark McConnell were deliberately framed for murder.
Additional reporting PA