Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald has said she did not ask the Department secretary general Brian Purcell to resign.
“I didn’t ask him to stay, I didn’t ask him to go. I asked for his view on the report,” she said .
She was speaking following the release of an independent report which criticised the department and resulted in a decision by Mr Purcell to leave and be reassigned elsewhere in the public service.
“I didn’t ask him to move on. ...I wanted him to consider the report. He got the report he came to me and he felt that in the interests of the department, himself, my job as minister, he felt to stay on given all the recent events would be a distraction,” Ms Fitzgerald told Pat Kenny on Newstalk Radio.
Ms Fitzgerald also said that former Garda commissioner Martin Callinan was not fired by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. "He didn't fire him. Martin Callinan resigned and he gave the grounds on which he was resigning" she said of the commissioner stepping aside in March. In March Mr Kenny received information on phone tapping and sent Mr Purcell to Mr Callinan's home the evening before he announced his departure from the force,
“I believe the Taoiseach got information that was of serious concern to him. ....he wanted the seriousness with which he viewed that information to be conveyed to the commissioner of the day,” Ms Fitzgerald said.
Meanwhile Minister for Health Leo Varadkar was asked about Mr Purcell maintaining his salary of some€200,000 despite leaving his role as secretary general . "I imagine Mr Purcell has contractual rights and so on and it may relate to that but really it's a matter for Minister Fitzgerald to comment on rather than me," Mr Varadkar told reporters . He had not yet had a chance to read the report, he added.
Mr Varadkar said he did not think it was necessary for Taoiseach Enda Kenny to outline what happened on the night Mr Purcell went to see then Garda commissioner Martin Callinan in March. “I don’t think it’s necessary. We have a commission for investigation under Justice Fennelly. He should be allowed to do his work,” he said.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said of Brian Purcell’s stepping aside that it “looks more like a sidewas move”.
He told RTE Radio: “Given the centrality of his role in the events leading up to the reginstion of former commissioner Callinan and that on the back of the taoiseach requesting or instructing Brian Purcell to go and speak to the commissioner at that time, there re a lot of questions to be answered.”
The report released yesterday found that the Department of Justice has a “closed, secretive” culture as well as “significant leadership and management problems”, according to an independent report.
A "shared culture of secrecy" with An Garda Síochána and the confidential nature of the relationship with the force also influences the department's attitudes, it is claimed.
