The Deputy does not want to hear it - where he said that Fine Gael was responsible for destroying general practice and the health service.

He was very definitely not a political supporter at that time. Some have brought the letter from the NAGP to members of my party to attention, which clearly threatens to campaign against us. Many Members were at the rally which he organised on Molesworth Street where he told everyone that Fine Gael was responsible for destroying the health service so he was certainly not a political supporter at that point, far from it.

The president of the NAGP would have got it. I have lots of friends who are GPs, they did not get it.

He did not get it because he was a friend of mine, he got it because he was president.

Essentially, as I explained earlier, because I wanted to share it with him on a confidential basis. I wanted him to see there was nothing in the deal, or nothing of substance, that had not been publicly announced, that there was nothing in it worth opposing or agitating against and that it was a good agreement which was good for GPs, for general practice, for the public and patients and one that he should not oppose. Where I erred was that, because he was a friend of mine, I did it in this way - a sort of short cut…

As the Cabinet memo of 9 April says, the engagement with the IMO had concluded. There were some minor changes subsequently. They were of no major significance. We did not have to go back to Cabinet on them. A press release had already been issued. The salient, commercially sensitive financial details had all been put out in the public domain on 4 April. The HSE launch was on 6 April when there was an event attended by myself and the Minister, Deputy Harris. All that had taken place before I shared the document.

What I could have done would have been to bring him in for a formal briefing and gone through the contents of the document. That would have been the right way to do it.

What I was doing, as I said earlier, was sharing this on a confidential basis. What the IMO wanted then was to go around the country and do its own meetings to share it with its members. I respect that is how it wanted to do it.

That is a conversation between two other people. It is very difficult for me to comment on it.

I do not know about trouble but certainly it would have been annoyed. I have seen a comment from a former president who expressed displeasure. I have seen comments from other members of the IMO, including council members, who said that this is a non-story. I have also seen comments from other council members saying that the NAGP was an amateur organisation that they thought this was such a big deal when it was being provided to GPs all around the country at meetings and by telephone and being talked about in deep d…

They did not get it in an official capacity. I provided it to them on a confidential basis in the way I did for the reasons I did. I explained that already.

No I do not, I did not receive any advantage from it-----

-----as some people are alleging. He was not a political supporter of mine, certainly not at that time. I have already pointed out that many Members attended a demonstration that he organised outside the Dáil which was very critical of the Government. I gave it to him because he was president of the NAGP. I do not know what advantage it confers on someone who is president of the organisation.

The person is already the most senior officer in the organisation.

I have very strong legal advice on this that the front page is defamatory, that a large part of the content of the article is defamatory, particularly in relation to the suggestion of criminality. The article claims that the benefit I got from this was that Dr. Ó Tuathail wrote nice tweets about me a year later. Not only is that defamatory it is also laughable. I received no benefit from this in any way. The anti-corruption legislation is very clear-----

I have advice on that. I have not decided yet. They appear to be goading me, wanting me to do so, which gives me some degree of suspicion, quite frankly. I am told that it is a fringe publication which is largely self-funded, has no editorial board, does not have a legal team and that suing it would be like suing somebody on Twitter. I have yet to decide what I will do.

On the first point, I am not somebody who goes around suing the media at all. It is not the way I operate. I know that lots of people do so and that some people in this House have done so, but it has not generally been my modus operandi . What I seek usually is a right of reply. If one does not get a right of a reply, then there is the option of going to the Office of the Press Ombudsman. There are many options other than tying oneself up in the High Court for three years at considerable cost. It is not something t…

On the Official Secrets Act, there are two aspects to this that are of significance. One is that the ambit of the Act is limited to persons holding public office, which is a term defined in section 2 of the Act. The definition of public access expressly excludes Members of either House of the Oireachtas. In addition to that, the Official Secrets Act makes clear that the persons who are authorised to release official information are Ministers. The power to authorise the release of official information is one of the …

As I explained earlier, this was somebody who is a friend but not a close friend. I have lots of friends who are GPs. I did not give them a copy of this document. I only gave it to this particular person, Dr. Ó Tuathail, because he was president of the NAGP and for no other reason. I did so because we had made a Government commitment, announced many times by the Minister for Health in a Government memo, that we would consult, inform and engage with the NAGP. I thought it was appropriate. I took a decision, and it w…

I do not know if I would have asked. When one is Taoiseach, one is Head of Government. From time to time, one can, and one does, personally intervene in issues. I know some people may see that as going over the head of a Minister but when one is Taoiseach, one is the head. When I was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, there would have been occasions when the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, got personally involved in and intervened on particular issues. Every Tuesday and Wednesday in the Dáil, Opposition Members…