Mr Ray Burke approved 44 passports to two families under the investment-based naturalisation scheme when he was Minister for Justice in the period July 12th, 1989 and February 11th, 1992. The number of persons naturalised during Mr Burke's tenure as Minister for Justice was revealed yesterday in a written Dail reply to a parliamentary question tabled by Mr Jim O'Keeffe of Fine Gael.
Though the names of the investors who received passports under the scheme were not given in the reply, it is understood 11 sets of naturalisation papers were provided to the family or associates of the wealthy Saudi Arabian Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz. A further 33 were given to a family called Fang from Hong Kong.
The Fang family, who were heavily involved in the clothing business invested wholly in Shannon Apparel in Coolock, Dublin, but the firm went out of business in the early 1990's because of a downturn in the market.
It has already been established that Mr Burke signed the naturalisation form in the case of the Mahfouz applications after receiving a recommendation from the then Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey. It was reported that Mr Haughey, in a highly unusual move, personally handed over the passports to the Mahfouz party in Dublin.
The passports were given in return for a pledge of £20 million sterling investment by the Sheik in Ireland. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, last week noted in his Dail speech on the Rennicks payments to Mr Burke that the passports issue had precipitated the final resignation of his Justice Minister.
The Government last month abolished the controversial passports-for-sale scheme. It had been suspended when the Fianna Fail/PD coalition took office last July.
Following his receipt of the reply last night, Mr O'Keeffe claimed the Government was deliberately trying to obstruct the public disclosure of all the facts surrounding the passports-for-sale scheme. He had tabled 31 PQ's since November last but elicited information with the same ease as one would pull teeth from a goose.
Calling for the immediate publication of the Government's "secret" review of the scheme which was finalised in April, he said it should be given to the Flood Tribunal now that the Government intended to extend the powers of that body to investigate revelations over additional donations to Mr Burke.
In 1994, the then Minister for Justice, Mrs Maire Geoghegan Quinn, put an inter-Departmental committee in place through which all applications had to be channelled. It was she who "finally reined in the scheme and brought it under proper procedural scrutiny".
"I am particularly interested in what happened between 1988, when the system was introduced, and 1994 when this inter-Departmental committee was set up," Mr O'Keeffe said.
Claiming the Government was trying to bury the Department of Justice review into the passports scheme - particularly in the "twilight zone" between 1988 and 1994 - he said a recent space "inspired leaks" to Sunday newspapers was a hamfisted attempt to divert the focus from the operation of the scheme "under very questionable circumstances in the Haughey/Burke era".