Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17 ============================================================ Alan Kelly (LAB), Tipperary North We will look into that. I want to be associated with the Minister's comments about Deputy Michael Healy-Rae. I am thinking of him, his family and his supporters in south Kerry, many of whom I know very well. Deputy Doherty raised the question of when the Minister first knew about the holster issue. I have the answer. It took three attempts before the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan's Department would tell me, but we now know it was August 2020. It is shocking that it took three attempts. The whole country is talking about last night. This does not give me any pleasure. Everyone in this House knows that I have been raising these issues for years. It does not give me any pleasure to stand here today to say what I have to say. Luke, Brian, Donal and Rose are incredible people. They are real honest people. Many of these revelations are not new, by the way. There is a man sitting up there in the press gallery, John Lee, who has written about this for years. So has Mick Clifford. They deserve great credit. There are so many layers to this programme and so many issues that have not been covered but the Minister should not worry; we will cover them in this Chamber over the weeks, months and years to come. The Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, as the sitting Minister, will have to answer for how An Garda Síochána and his Department acted. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, will also need to outline to the House what she did. I am not talking about the details of the individual protected disclosures. I am interested in process and pathways. Brian O'Reilly sent the Minister his protected disclosure in September 2023 as it impugned the then Commissioner. That was the correct thing for him to do because it was about the Commissioner. The Minister sent it to the Office of the Protected Disclosures Commissioner later that month. That was also the correct thing to do. In October 2023, the OPDC sent its statutory direction that the Secretary General of the Minister's Department be appointed to investigate this. The Secretary General made no objection to this. That is where it sits. What happened next was detrimental to Brian O'Reilly's life, his career, his livelihood and the well-being of him, his wife, his children and his family. As Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee directed that the investigation be removed from her Secretary General and redirected to An Garda Síochána, thereby usurping the OPDC's statutory direction. Giving such direction is that office's role. We in this party know the legislation. Deputy McEntee, as Minister for Justice, thereby revealed Brian O'Reilly's identity, depriving him of the legal protections he was entitled to and exposing the nature of his allegations. In doing so, she acted without legal authority and directly interfered with a serious and significant protected disclosure. She did exactly what the Taoiseach spent all day yesterday lecturing us about, telling us that it would be completely and utterly inappropriate. How does the Minister explain this? It was either done deliberately - to be fair to her, I actually do not think it was - or it was just incompetence or a mistake. Everybody in here is talking about this. On 25 March this year, I told this Chamber that the issue of the holsters, one of which I am holding now, and how the Minister handled protected disclosures would haunt this Government, the Minister herself and the previous Government. Last night's programme absolutely confirmed that to be the case. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-17