O'Dea denies any part in attacking tribunal

FIANNA FÁIL TD Willie O’Dea last night denied that he was one of the former ministers who made a “sustained and virulent attack” on the planning tribunal around the time the former taoiseach gave evidence to it in 2007 and 2008.

Mr O’Dea said he had made no more than a few statements in the Dáil and elsewhere.

“I questioned why it was taking so long. I also questioned why it was challenged so much in the courts. I was asking those questions at the behest of my constituents,” Mr O’Dea said.

In its report, the tribunal said it came under “sustained and virulent” attack from ministers in the last government with the aim of collapsing inquiries into then taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

The tribunal’s report stated that members of Mr Ahern’s cabinet questioned the legality of its investigations and the integrity of the judges in 2007 and 2008, when matters relating to the then Fianna Fáil leader were the subject of inquiry.

“It was entirely inappropriate for members of the government to launch such unseemly and partisan attacks against a Tribunal of Inquiry appointed following a resolution passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas to inquire into serious concerns regarding corruption in public life,” the report said. “There appears little doubt that the objective of these extraordinary and unprecedented attacks . . . was to undermine the efficient conduct of the Tribunal’s inquiries, erode its independence and collapse its inquiry into that individual.”

While the report did not detail individual examples of such statements, the archives of various news sources show that among those who criticised the tribunal’s approach were former ministers Dermot Ahern and Mr O’Dea, who remains a Fianna Fáil TD.

As minister for defence in the period referred to by the tribunal, Mr O’Dea suggested the inquiry was acting outside its remit in an interview in September 2007 with the Sunday Independent, a newspaper for which he was a columnist.

Mr O’Dea said it was “impossible to understand” how the tribunal had allowed a “general trawl in public” into the taoiseach’s life as “a definite matter of urgent public importance”. The tribunal had made a “a wholly unprecedented decision” to “go to public hearing on any matters whatsoever concerning him, not limited to any allegation or any subject matter”, Mr O’Dea added.In a similar criticism in December 2007, Mr O’Dea said: “I’m waiting for the day the tribunal is going to go back to Bertie Ahern and question him about his First Communion money.”

Dermot Ahern, who is now retired from politics but who was minister for foreign affairs at the time, claimed in late 2007 that the line of questioning directed towards the then taoiseach was “astounding”.

Dick Roche, who was minister for the environment until June 2007, when he was appointed minister of state for European affairs, said in December of that year that certain questioning of Mr Ahern “was petty, it was personal, it was prurient, and it was voyeuristic”.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin last night stressed he never questioned the legality of the tribunal or the integrity of its members. Speaking on RTÉ 1’s Six One News, he said the charge made against former ministers was “a very serious assertion”, but noted the report did not “name names”.

Last night, Mr O’Dea said that the tribunal’s findings were not directed at him and, if they were, he did not accept them.

“Goodness no. That was talking about people who were conspiring to collapse the tribunal. I never attempted to do anything of that kind,” he said.