Last night I appealed to the Minister to accept this amendment. I cannot see any logical reason from his arguments why it should not be accepted. The controversy that has raged throughout the discussion on the Minister's proposal to ask the House to pass a Bill which refers to an agreement the details of which he is not prepared to divulge is not at issue in this amendment. The amendment seeks to have written into the legislation the fact that the agreement had not been made available to the Oireachtas during the debate on the Bill. It is essential that the words in the amendment be included in the Bill to make clear the situation under which the debate took place. The Minister referred to commercial dealings between the State and commercial enterprises and said it was his intention that the State be involved commercially with other enterprises in the future. He told us that because of that agreements entered into with business interests must be kept secret. For that reason he did not intend making the terms of the agreement referred to in this Bill available during the course of the debate. He also expressed his intention of never making such agreements available to the Opposition when future Bills of this type are debated.
The Minister has performed a major cover-up during the course of the debate regarding the details of the agreement but it is worse that he is persisting in refusing to accept an amendment like this. He is trying to cover up a situation he created during the course of the debate. He does not want to make the terms of the agreement available to the House nor does he want that fact written into the legislation. This is the second coverup we have had and I cannot see any logical reason for this one. If one reflects on the debate that has taken place on this Bill so far one must be struck by the fact that were it not for the investigations carried out by Deputy O'Malley and his diligence in seeking information this would have been the greatest farce of a debate ever to have taken place here. If no facts had emerged during the course of the debate in relation to what was contained in the agreement, we would have had the most unreal situation imaginable. The House and the country must be grateful to Deputies O'Malley and Colley for pursuing the Minister during the course of the debate, not that he let very much slip—he did on one or two occasions. The research carried out by Deputies on this side has helped put some information in relation to the agreement on the record even though the Minister tried to have it excluded.
Since I became a Member, I have never seen a Minister attempt what the Minister for Industry and Commerce has done in this debate.