Mr Desmond O'Malley has pledged to co-operate with any inquiry into the Arms Trial, saying it should examine all aspects of the trial and the events leading up to it.
As one of the defendants in the 1970 trial, Capt James Kelly, yesterday called for a judicial inquiry, Mr O'Malley said any inquiry "should be an inquiry in depth".
Responding to the report in yesterday's Irish Times that Mr O'Malley had directed that a file containing a key statement be withheld from the Arms Trial, he said it was wrong "to draw major definitive conclusions from one single document".
"The Arms Trial and the events that led to it were complex matters", he said. "To seek to simplify it all down to one document, and to the fate of that document, is to grossly simplify a most complicated affair."
Mr O'Malley said he would have to read "all the relevant papers in the National Archives and probably a lot more besides" in order to respond fully to the revelation in yesterday's Irish Times. He indicated that he would study the files, but pointed out that he could not begin to do this until public offices reopened next Wednesday.
Mr O'Malley's statement yesterday followed the revelation that he had signed a certificate directing that privilege be claimed over an Arms Trial file. This file contained the original statement of the former director of military intelligence, Col Michael Hefferon, which implicated the minister for defence, Mr Jim Gibbons, in the plan to import arms. Claiming privilege over the file prevented it being disclosed in evidence.
All references implicating Mr Gibbons were omitted from the version of the statement which was included in the book of evidence for the trial. After Col Hefferon repeated the deleted evidence in oral evidence he gave at the first trial, he was dropped by the prosecution for the second trial.
Ultimately, he was called by the judge in the second trial and repeated his evidence that Mr Gibbons knew of the arms importation plan. All four defendants were acquitted of the charge of conspiring to import arms illegally.
Capt Kelly called for an inquiry yesterday, saying that the news was further evidence that he and others had been "scapegoated" for what he insisted was a government-approved operation to import arms. An inquiry should be chaired by a judge of the High Court.
However, Mr O'Malley suggested that the Dail Public Accounts Committee should resume the investigation it began in 1970.
The Taoiseach has said he would examine whether the reports of that incomplete inquiry could be published.