PAC’s remit is value for money rather than governance, Taoiseach tells Dáil

Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has written to the Public Accounts Committee requesting that it forward to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission any relevant information on its penalty points investigation.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dáil yesterday the Minister was writing to the committee. He was speaking in advance of the committee’s decision last night to hear evidence in private from Garda whistleblower Sgt Maurice McCabe, who had already supplied it with documentation about the controversy.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams had claimed the only reason the controversy about the irregular quashing of penalty points was so protracted was Mr Shatter's failure "to deal decisively with the scandal in the first instance".

Mr Kenny said, however, that the remit of the committee, the State’s financial watchdog, “related to value-for-money as opposed to matters of governance”.

Mr Adams claimed the Minister had attempted to undermine the committee, considered the most powerful in the Oireachtas. He also alleged that Mr Shatter had “made the situation for future whistleblowers more difficult by his failure to defend the integrity of the whistleblowers in this case”.

He said it had been almost two years since the controversy had emerged but, rather than announce an independent investigation at that time, “the Minister has chosen to do so just before a planned appearance by one of the whistleblowers at the committee”.

Mr Kenny insisted the Minister had “acted responsibly and decisively in referring this matter to the Ombudsman commission for completely independent and objective analysis in as broad a way as the independent commission thinks fit”.

He said it was not “good practice for information provided during a private session of a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee to be bandied about in the national media . . . The committee is doing its job but it needs to stay within its remit”.