The Minister for Justice has staunchly defended his decision to release information to a journalist who had made a Freedom of Information request four weeks earlier before issuing it to Fine Gael.
Accused of politicising the FOI Act, Mr McDowell told the Dáil that he did not play a "naive game of politics". While he played a "robust game of politics, I will not enable my opponents to spin against me without having at least the opportunity to put my side of the story into the public domain".
Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Mr Jim O'Keeffe, claimed the Minister was trying to "milk" requests made under the Act for his own political gain and that this was "totally contrary to the entire spirit and to some extent the letter of the Act".
The party leader, Mr Enda Kenny, had made a request seeking the minutes of the Minister's meetings with the masters of the maternity hospitals, but Mr O'Keeffe said these were given to a journalist, Sam Smyth, before the FOI documentation was released to Mr Kenny.
Mr Kenny was later ruled out of order by the Ceann Comhairle when he tried to raise the matter with the Taoiseach.
Mr Kenny said the Taoiseach had made it clear that the political process had no input into the answers given under FOI requests. But, he said, the Minister for Justice believed that "if the matter at hand is one of public comment or of concern to his Department, not only will he see it, he will also have the opportunity to put it out the back door if he so wishes".
Mr Kenny said his request for the documentation involved four pieces of paper and could have been accessed in five minutes.
Mr O'Keeffe said this raised serious questions about the "impartial" operation by the Minister's Department of the Act.
But Mr McDowell said there was a misconception, particularly among opposition deputies, that if they made a freedom-of-information request they would be the first to receive the information.
He said it was "perfectly reasonable to put important information, which is about to be released, into the hands of somebody who will be objective about it rather than put it in the hands of somebody who will make political use of it".
