MR Michael McDowell of the Progressive Democrats has repeated his demand for the Taoiseach to answer questions about the role of the Attorney General, Mr Dermot Gleeson, in the Judge Lynch affair.
There was an unanswerable case for an inquiry into this matter by a select committee of the Dail, Mr McDowell said. Such a committee had to resolve the dead ends encountered by the Cromien-Molloy report in their hurried investigation of what happened in the Department of Justice.
In a lengthy statement on the Attorney General's role in the debacle, Mr McDowell suggested his behaviour in sending a single slow-moving letter bearing the date of November 1st was unjustifiable by even the most lax of standards.
He challenged the Taoiseach to answer whether Mr Glee son interviewed staff of the Chief State Solicitor's Office or informed the security sub-committee of the Cabinet about the problem.
Mr McDowell claimed that unless the Attorney General disbelieved the newspaper report of October 29th, which indicated that Judge Lynch had remanded five men in custody at a sitting of the Special Criminal Court the previous day, he was simply not justified in confining his response to one letter which he did not even dispatch with any urgency.
The Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, announced last night that Ms Caitriona Murphy of Allied Irish Banks had agreed to join the steering group to oversee organisational changes at her Department.
