Andrews defends EU Commissioner

The Government will not withdraw support for Mr Padraig Flynn as EU Commissioner, the Minister for Foreign Affairs has indicated.

"This Government has full confidence in Commissioner Flynn in the exercise of his European functions. However frustrating we may find the present lack of information about what precisely happened 10 years ago, it would not be in Ireland's interest to withdraw our support from our Commissioner," said Mr Andrews.

The Minister was speaking during a debate on a Fine Gael private member's motion calling on Mr Flynn to give a full and immediate response to the allegation that he received a donation of £50,000. The motion adds that if Mr Flynn fails to respond within two weeks, the ail House should consider if it believes Mr Flynn should continue in office in those circumstances.

Mr Andrews said: "I know Padraig Flynn for many years and like him. I know him to be as able and hardworking a politician as has ever graced this House. If Padraig Flynn is guilty of wrongdoing, and it is my fervent hope that he is not, then he must and will face the consequences."

He said Mr Flynn had chosen, for his own reasons, not to respond at this time, either to political parties or to the media, to the allegation that he had received £50,000 from Mr Tom Gilmartin. In doing this, he had said he would co-operate with the Flood tribunal set up by the House.

Mr Andrews said it was regrettable that members of the Opposition seemed unwilling to extend to Mr Flynn the basic right to be heard by the tribunal at the appropriate time.

Earlier, moving the Fine Gael motion, the Fine Gael spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell, said it was about Commissioner Flynn and recent controversies, but more fundamentally it was about accountability in public life and about public faith in the political system.

"Mr Flynn's failure to clarify matters to date leaves a cloud hanging over him and increases public cynicism about the political system as a whole."

Mr Mitchell said the issues to be clarified were straightforward:

Did Mr Flynn, when a government minister, receive £50,000 from Mr Gilmartin?

Did he receive this cheque in his departmental office from a man who came to talk to him about departmental policy?

If he did receive £50,000, what were the circumstances surrounding the gift and to what purpose was the money put?

Did Mr Flynn contact Mr Gilmartin after the Flood tribunal was set up, seeking to discuss with him what Mr Gilmartin proposed to say, or had said, to the tribunal lawyers. And did he seek to get him to change his sworn statements to the tribunal?

"At this time, we do not seek to condemn Mr Flynn, rather we seek explanations. It is not good enough now for Mr Flynn to try to hide behind the tribunal and say he will answer questions in due course. At present, it is not even clear whether he will be a witness at the tribunal."

Mr Mitchell said Mr Flynn had shown no reticence on the Late Late Show "and regaled the country with his brilliance and honesty and denial of any charges of wrongdoing". Now he must respond for his own sake and that of the political system.

The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, explaining why he telephoned Mr Gilmartin, said a Sunday newspaper had put several questions to him on January 26th, one of which was whether he had even met Mr Gilmartin.

"As is my practice, I wanted to give a straight, full and final answer to this media query. So I decided to check it out with the only person who could definitely confirm my own view, that I had never met Tom Gilmartin - namely Tom Gilmartin himself. I did not want to be giving replies, based on `the best of my recollection' or based on half-hearted trawls of incomplete old diaries. I wanted to give a definitive answer.

"Mr Gilmartin has absolutely and publicly confirmed that the sole purpose of my call was to establish that we had no previous contact, so that I could confirm this to the media . . . I also repeat here, as Mr Gilmartin has publicly confirmed, that I did not seek to influence in any way what he would say to anybody."

The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, said that whether Mr Flynn merely received the £50,000 for his own use or knew that others had taken beneficial use of it, the allegations represented complicity in a crime.

"Mr Flynn owes this country something. Certainly, we are all owed more than the contempt with which we are being treated at the moment. The question is simple. Did he or did he not receive £50,000 from Mr Gilmartin?

The debate on the motion continues tonight.