THE Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, confirmed in a statement yesterday evening that a letter addressed to her from Judge Dominic Lynch appears on the file which is held in the courts division of the Department of Justice.
"The letter is not date stamped by the Department, nor was it dated by the sender," the Minister said. "This letter never came to me. When it arrived in the Department, it apparently went straight to the file. Today (Monday November 11th) at 1.30 p.m. I received a letter from Judge Dominic Lynch informing me that he had posted the letter on the afternoon of 10th October."
Mrs Owen went on: "In the Dail, I gave all the information in relation to which I was able to establish facts with certainty in the limited time available to me. I made it quite clear, not once but many times, that there was other information. I made it dear that I was setting up an inquiry precisely to ascertain the full facts and bring them back to the Dail.
"This letter was shown to me shortly before I made my Dail statement last Thursday (November 7th). It was a letter from Judge Dominic Lynch and attached to it was a letter dated July 2nd, 1996."
The Minister added: "This letter was not date stamped by the Department of Justice, nor was it actually dated by the sender when it was received in the Department, and, due to the fact that there were no markings on it, nobody could tell me in the limited time available when it came in, how it appeared on the file, who had put it on the file and what its status was in relation to the Government decision of August 1st. The only thing I knew was that I had never seen it before Thursday 7th November.
"This letter from Judge Lynch, which I now know from his letter to me today (Monday 11th November) to have been posted on 10th October, is also the subject of the current inquiry, along with all other facts concerning the Government decision of August 1st," Mrs Owen said.