Shatter calls Ahern a 'political gurrier'

DUBLIN SOUTH Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter questioned the Minister for Justice’s suitability for office during the debate on the Morris tribunal report.

He said he had heard Dermot Ahern’s speech with a mixture of interest and dismay.

“My only conclusion is that the Minister is a political gurrier unfit to hold ministerial office,” Mr Shatter said.

In addressing the issues arising from the tribunal report and in referring to earlier reports, Mr Shatter said the Minister had attacked his Fine Gael colleague, Jim Higgins, who was not in the Dáil to speak for himself, and Brendan Howlin.

“It was Mr Higgins and Deputy Howlin who, for a period of five years, sought to bring about a public inquiry into the events taking place in Donegal. It was they who brought information before this House, and to the attention of successive ministers for justice, on the basis that these were matters of grave public concern in which inquiries should be made and which were ignored for far too long,” said Mr Shatter

Dermot Ahern said the more he listened to the debate, the more it confirmed what he had said earlier. He expressed regret about “the name-calling embarked on, particularly by Deputy Shatter”.

The name-calling was not untypical of Mr Shatter, the Minister added, and “was obviously the last refuge of somebody who has no good argument to make”.

Fine Gael’s spokesman on justice Charles Flanagan said that “a terrible, unforgivable wrong” had been done to the Donegal victims of Garda corruption.

Labour’s spokesman on justice Pat Rabbitte said they had learned that extraordinary damage could be done – and was done – to ordinary citizens by the abuse of Garda powers.

Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh referred to the “long overdue vindication of the McBrearty family who suffered greatly as a result of grave Garda abuse”.

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times