The Department of Foreign Affairs has been "effectively betrayed" with the leaking of the confidential documents relating to the North, according to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Mr Andrews said he did not believe the guilty person or persons were within his Department.
Speaking on RTE Radio 1's This Week yesterday, he said: "The Garda investigation will begin immediately. We are determined to get to the bottom of this. The Department effectively has been betrayed by some person or persons unknown."
Asked if it was possible that some official with an axe to grind may have been responsible, the Minister said he believed there was no one with that type of agenda within the Department. "This is the first time in the history of this so-called green book, or box, to give it its official name, that leaks of this nature have occurred." He paid tribute to Department staff going back 30 years, and was grateful for similar tributes from former Ministers for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dick Spring and Dr Garret FitzGerald.
The Minister wished to reassure people in the North that they have nothing to fear. They had no reason not to trust the Department and the system "will be tightened up". Those responsible for the leaks should stop in the national interest. He had no problem with the role of the media, and wished to pay tribute to the Sunday Independent for the way it had handled "terribly, terribly sensitive documents" which, if published, would have caused "irreparable damage to the peace process and probably put lives at risk".