The Minister for Justice has strenously denied he used Irish to "pull a fast one" when he introduced new phone tapping legislation before the Seanad last week.
The new legislation will allow police in EU member states to tap phones and access Internet records and text messages without seeking the permission of the Government. Mr McDowell presented the legislation to the Seanad in Irish.
Michael McDowell
Speaking this afternoon, Mr McDowell criticised an article in yesterday's Sunday Tribunethat alleged he spoke in Irish to confuse members of the Seanad.
"I do want to decry the disreputable journalism that was unleashed on me yesterday. The first proposition that was clearly the import of the article was that I was in some way trying to pull a fast one by using the Irish language. That's a complete lie," he said.
"I circulated an exact translation of the speech in English to all of the members at the same time because I knew that, like myself, many of the members of the Seanad wouldn't be in a position to follow proceedings on a technical matter if they didn't have a translation available to them."
"The way in which the Sunday Tribunedealt with this issue yesterday is not up to decent standards of journalism. Especially when they were told by a press man in my office that the English version was circulated at the same time and they deliberately chose to exclude that from their stories . . . so this is a bad one for the media I'm afraid," he said.