asked the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy if the documents which he laid before the Dáil on 9 January 1978, and respectively entitled "Bula Limited, Inter-Party Agreement" and "Tara Mines Limited, Agreement and Lease" in fact are true and complete copies of the original documents bearing those titles.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Bula and Tara Mines Documents.
10.
The documents respectively entitled "Bula Limited, Inter-Party Agreement" and "Tara Mines Limited, Agreement and Lease" are true and complete copies of the original documents except that in the case of the Bula document the accounts referred to in article 1.01 of the agreement as being annexed to the agreement and letter of disclosure referred to in article 5.00 of the agreement were not published as they contained intimate details of the company's business affairs. In the case of the Tara document a letter of disclosure referred to in article 4.00 of the agreement was not published for similar reasons and also rather voluminous maps relating to areas described in the lease were not published.
Did the Minister tell the press conference which he called at the beginning of the year in order to release these agreements anything of what he has just told the House in regard to omitted matters?
I am not certain whether I was asked if there were any omitted matters. The matters omitted are minor annexes to these agreements and were omitted because they refer exclusively to the commercial business of the company and it has never been the practice to publish any such documentation in relation to a private company. The fact that these annexes, a document and an account, had to be retained is proof that the agreement itself and all the other various annexes and so on were not commercial information the publication of which would cause any damage to the company. In the case of the maps the reason that they were not published was because they were so physically large that it would not have been feasible to publish them.
We will make the Minister a present of the maps, but would the Minister agree that in holding a Press conference to launch what was supposed to be a full disclosure he did not say to the Press or to the public that the accounts in the case of Bula would not be shown to them?
They were not shown. It is perfectly obvious to anybody reading the agreement that they were left out, because they were referred to in the agreement. If I was trying to hide anything, the agreement where it refers to the accounts in some appendices could have been amended, and it was not amended. It has never been the practice, as the Deputy should well know, to publish the commercial accounts of private companies without their consent.
That is what the Minister's predecessor said. Would the Minister agree that he has laid before the House a document, entitled as I have indicated in the question, without any indication to this House that the accounts, which are an integral part of the agreement, were not going to be disclosed?
It is perfectly obvious to anybody who reads the agreement, as I presume the Deputy did, that the accounts are not there. The schedule or annex is referred to, and they are not there.
In regard to what the Minister calls a minor annex, would he agree that the following matters are referred to specifically in the course of the Bula agreement and can only be understood by reference to the accounts, namely, disclosure of the company's liabilities on page 13, provision for taxation on page 14, the value of plant on page 17, the value of stock on page 17, the absence of guarantees or unusual liabilities on page 18, the absence of charges on loan capital on page 18 and the extent of the book debts on page 19?
These matters are all commercial matters relating to the business of the company. It has never been the practice to publish private commercial information of that kind without the consent of the company involved.
The Minister is only saying what his predecessor said.
Is the Deputy objecting to the fact that I published the agreement?
Would the Minister not agree that to purport to publish this agreement without publishing the accounts, without which the agreement cannot be assessed by a businessman, is a piece of sharp practice without parallel in this Dáil?
That is certainly not so. What the Deputy is sore about is that the agreement was published. The agreement can be read on its own and all the salient points of it fully understood without recourse to the private accounts of a private company.
Would the Minister tell the House——
Question No. 11.
We spent weeks on this very point a year ago.
That does not mean the Deputy can spend weeks on it now.
If I may be allowed, without being disorderly, to ask the Minister this——
One question.
Would the Minister agree that a businessman looking over this agreement could form no solid opinion on the rights or wrongs of what was being done as between the Minister and the company unless the accounts referred to in the agreement were in front of him?
A businessman could form plenty of opinions as to just how bad a bargain this whole arrangement was.
That is not the question.
I am calling Deputy Cluskey.
Will the Chair take note that it would appear, after this exchange of supplementaries on the basis of the question put by Deputy Kelly, that the Minister has deliberately misled the House by placing before the House a document purporting to be the full agreement and lease in respect of the Bula and Tara mines and it is now disclosed by the Minister to the House that there were omissions from that?
The Deputy cannot accuse the Minister of misleading the House.
The Minister has attempted to.
(Interruptions.)
It is perfectly clear——
The Deputy cannot use the word "deliberate".
If the Chair was more anxious to observe the Standing Orders of the House than to protect the Minister he would be aware that I asked the Chair——
The Deputy has made an accusation. The Chair is protecting nobody.
I asked for the Chair's view.
We are now five minutes on this question.
I asked for the Chair's views on the fact that the Minister by his own admission here today deliberately misled the House.
I admitted no such thing and the Deputy's unilateral statement to that effect will not create any such situation. In the light of the allegations that are being made I had better reiterate what I have already said. There is and was no attempt to mislead anybody.
Not after the Minister was flushed out.
The accounts were omitted from the schedules or appendices which were published. There was no attempt to mislead anyone into believing that there were no accounts. The references to them in the agreement were left there. It was perfectly clear that one of the schedules which contained the accounts was simply skipped. That is in accordance with the normal practice of this House for 50 years or more, not to publish the commercial accounts of private companies. I have no intention of doing that and I tried to mislead nobody and nobody, in fact, was misled.
May I ask the Minister if, in connection with his assertion that no attempt was made to mislead the House, any deletion took place in page V of this agreement before it was published—at the end of the table of contents?
In which of them? In the Bula agreement?
In the Bula agreement— that is the one we have been talking about.
No deletion took place anywhere, as far as I am aware.
Did the Minister erase or cause to be erased a reference in the index of contents to the accounts at the end?
I do not know which schedule the accounts were in——
They were not in the schedules; they were annexed to the whole job, but an integral part of it because it referred to it at least six times. Did the Minister have erased or deleted from this table of contents the reference which would have told the House and the Press that something was being omitted?
There are references in the agreement to accounts. I cannot tell the Deputy where and on what page—this thing is very long—but it is perfectly clear that there were accounts; there would have to be accounts.
The Minister has asserted that he made no attempt to mislead the House. I am putting it to him that so far from that being the case he caused to be erased from this agreement a reference to these accounts in the table of contents which would have shown the public and the Dáil——
I am calling the next question, which is No. 11.
Could we have a denial of this?
The Deputy was making a speech.
On a point of order, in a case where it would appear that a Minister has deliberately misled the House could the Chair say what function it has in such a matter?
The Chair has no function. If the Deputy is accusing the Minister of deliberately misleading the House it is unparliamentary and according to precedent should be withdrawn.
The Minister has every right to refer to the Committee on Procedure and Privileges. He is not doing that. He would not dare.
If the Ceann Comhairle would listen to what I am saying, I am asking in a case where it would appear that the Minister has deliberately misled the House, what is the precise function of the Chair?
It is not the duty of the Chair to point out or direct action in this connection. The Deputy is well aware, as most Deputies should be aware, that there is another course of action open to him by way of motion in the House, or otherwise to raise it if he thinks there is a matter to be raised. It is not for the Chair to direct.
If it is revealed that a Minister has deliberately misled the House am I to take it that the Chair has no function whatever in that matter?
The Chair is not in a position to rule that anybody has deliberately misled the House. The Deputy is making the charge and it is a charge that should be withdrawn unless——
——it is substantiated.
Unless it is substantiated.
May I put it by way of final question to the Minister that is it not unreconcilable with his expressed desire not to mislead the House that an item should have been deleted from the table of contents before reproduction for the purpose of laying before the Dáil——
The Chair has no right to rule on what is the Deputy's view regarding a particular matter.
Would the Chair let the Minister answer?
The question has been asked several times.
In view of the continuous repetition of this allegation I want to assert finally that I did not mislead the House nor did I attempt to mislead it nor has it been misled nor has anybody been misled.
But the Minister had something deleted——
I have no intention of publishing the private commercial accounts of that or any other company without its consent.
(Interruptions.)
Question No. 11.