Amendment No. 30, which proposes that "the Minister shall lay a Report before the Houses of the Oireachtas detailing the propriety in the operation of passports for sale schemes in the State", attempts to ensure we do not bring an end to the passports for sale schemes without compiling a proper report on them. Such a report may detail the impropriety of their operation. The amendment seeks to inform the public of what happened under their terms before they are consigned to history.
The Minister mentioned in his earlier response that he had reported to the Taoiseach after he had conducted an investigation into the matter. He said the report referred, in particular, to one of the most notorious applications, made in the early days of the scheme, when Ray Burke was Minister for Justice and Charles J. Haughey was Taoiseach. The unsigned citizenship applications lodged by Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz and ten others, which arrived in the Department of Justice on 6 December 1990, were returned to the applicants that day to be signed by them the following day. Although the applicants were abroad at the time, the applications were returned to the Department the following day, allegedly having been signed by the applicants. The entire process was marked by such a slipshod approach. While the applications did not comply with the terms of any scheme, the political connivance which marked the applications process was even worse. The passports were issued before the naturalisation papers had been signed.
Everybody knows about the matters to which I have referred, but certain similar issues have not been highlighted. In his reply earlier the Minister did not refer to the three Irish citizens who had provided character references for Sheikh Mahfouz and his associates. I understand it was required at the time that every application be accompanied by three character references from Irish citizens, but details of the referees have not emerged in this instance. Perhaps that was another aspect of the applications process which was not properly upheld. Such information needs to be disclosed.
I would like to raise another aspect of the Sheikh Mahfouz case in which I am interested. The certificates of naturalisation and passports were handed over on 8 December 1990, two days after the initial application had been made. The original applications were returned to the applicants on the evening they were made, 6 December 1990, and delivered to the Department the following day. A funny thing happened after the certificates of naturalisation and passports had been given to the people in question by the then Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey, and the then Minister for Justice, Ray Burke, at a function in the Shelbourne Hotel on 8 December 1990. It was required at the time that the granting of naturalisation and the issuing of passports had to be recorded in Iris Oifigiúil. By some strange coincidence or otherwise, the notice of the granting of the hurriedly arranged passports to Sheikh Mahfouz did not appear in Iris Oifigiúil until two years later, on 4 September 1992.
Such issues have not been teased out or considered. Who was responsible for the delay? Who arranged the publication of the notice in question? This case is just one of a series in which passports were issued in dubious circumstances. It is obvious that all the rules, regulations and guidelines were not upheld. It is probable that the laws of the time were broken. I am in favour of the section of this Bill which brings the scheme to an end, but it is not right that it is being done without a proper explanation of what happened in this and other cases in which passports were issued under the scheme. I refer, in particular, to cases in the early days of the scheme, when activity of the kind I have mentioned was common.
I do not question the judgment of later Ministers who granted passports. The administrative procedures introduced by Máire Geoghegan-Quinn when Minister for Justice were properly followed thereafter. Ministers used their judgment in later years when deciding whether to grant passports, based on whether it was in the interests of the State. I am not interested in such cases.
I have given the reasons for my amendment. The Minister accepts he has the same interest in unearthing the facts and that there should not be a whitewash. He agrees there was considerable impropriety, if not clear illegality, in the granting of some passports. Therefore, I hope he is prepared to agree to the sprit of my amendment, if not its wording. Does he accept there should be a proper examination of such activities and that a report should be produced? I will be delighted if Judge Moriarty succeeds in producing such a report, but I am worried that he may not be able to do so, particularly as a timeframe for the completion of the tribunal's deliberations has been discussed with him, if not imposed on him. It would not be in the interests of our democratic system to bring this scheme to an end without producing a full and complete report on it. I will pursue my amendment on that basis.