Sir, You are entitled to reply, to my "jibing at the weekend": (December 9th) but you are not entitled to use your leader column seriously to misrepresent my position. You effectively record "the revelation that a former Fianna Fail Minister got a million, pounds" as a fact, and that I am, dismissive of this fact and unconcerned "with standards in public life" because of my "preoccupation with the role of the media".
I do not know that a "former Fianna Fail minister got a million pounds" but if a quality newspaper reports "from its own sources and knowledge that a series of payments totalling £1.1 million was paid out of the State in 1990/91 to the benefit of a senior Fianna Fail figure", then I am neither dismissive nor defensive about such a serious matter. However, on December 9th, you also record: "Nor will that individual's name appear on the Price Waterhouse Report". Yet on December 4th you said: "As this newspaper reported yesterday, a former Fianna Fail Minister is identified in the report as receiving more than one million pounds".
Since both statements in your own leader columns can't be true, is it not reasonable that you should reflect on the complexity of the issues that have arisen, rather than throwing around charges of Government white wash? At the frenetic pace being pursued by the PDs and your own leader writers there won't be a house, big or small, owned by a Government deputy that you won't have whitewashed by the weekend. You have followed the PDs in a period of a few days from advocating the appointment of a High Court Inspector - and may I categorically state that this option was considered by Government - to now acknowledging the "persuasiveness" of the PDs' arguments for a tribunal of enquiry.
Your latest position may yet prove to be the correct one. However, the preoccupation of Government has been to respond to the entirely reasonable demand to put the Price Waterhouse Report into the public domain, as it relates to politicians and public officials. That process will be mediated by an eminent retired judge. Surely the results of the process should be given a chance to be tested in public session of a committee of the Dail? In the interim, the opportunity will be present to debate the merits of the Judicial Tribunal option, in the full knowledge that some of its most fevered advocates will become its most mordant critics within about three weeks of its work commencing. - Yours, etc,
Minister for Commerce, Science and Technology,
Kildare Street,
Dublin 2.
The two statements in the leaders are not incompatible. Mr Rabbitte needs to exercise his imagination a bit more. - Ed. IT