Vol. 555 No. 2
376 Mr. J. O'Keeffe asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the copies which were made and retained in his Department of passport for sale files sent to the Moriarty tribunal; if copies of all files were not retained; and the reason some files were selected for copying and others were not. [18365/02]
As the Deputy is aware, files related to the naturalisation of 128 persons under the investment-based scheme as well as four policy files related to that scheme were sent to the Moriarty tribunal in November 1998 on foot of a production order. Due to the number of case files involved and in the light of the prior agreement of the tribunal that files could be retrieved if they were required, a decision was made at that time that it was not necessary to retain copies of the case files related to the naturalisation of the 128 persons in advance of the files going to the tribunal. It was decided, however, to retain copies of the four policy files in the Department.
Copies of five of the case files, related to the naturalisation of 45 persons, are on hand in the Department at present. It is not clear from records within the Department when these files were copied, i.e. whether there was there a copy in existence prior to the transmission of the file to the tribunal or it was copied after being retrieved from the tribunal, nor is it clear from the files the reason why they were copied.
