Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said there is no need for Minister of State Tony Killeen to resign because of the controversy surrounding letters from his constituency office to the Department of Justice on behalf of a convicted murderer and a convicted rapist.
However Green Party leader Trevor Sargent said he would be demanding a full Dáil statement on the matter from Mr Killeen next week and said he may have to resign his junior ministry because of the issue.
The Taoiseach yesterday defended Mr Killeen and said there was no need for him to resign over the petitioning of the Department of Justice. He said he had spoken to Mr Killeen about his representations and was satisfied that he had put in place new procedures in his constituency office to ensure that there was no repeat.
Mr Ahern said Mr Killeen either had or was going to apologise personally to families in the cases involved. It was important to remember the letters were not sent or signed personally by Mr Killeen but were sent on his behalf without his knowledge by his constituency office and he had since changed procedures there.
He ruled out any question of Mr Killeen having to resign but said he fully understood the upset of the families.
Mr Ahern said given that deputies and ministers could not examine every case themselves, but sensitive ones should be referred to them by their constituency staff so that they could make the decision themselves whether to make representations or not.
Every year public representatives received requests from constituents to try and get a relative in jail out for their child's Communion or Confirmation or Baptism and he believed that representations to the Department of Justice in such cases were justified, Mr Ahern said.
"Is it wrong that a prisoner who might be in for a long stay, that they might get out on humanitarian and welfare grounds, that they might get out for an hour for a Communion or for a Confirmation or for the Baptism of their child?" he asked.
Meanwhile, Mr Sargent said Mr Killeen needed to be given the opportunity to put on the Dáil record the exact circumstances of the representations made and the full information surrounding them.
"I think the Government needs to take account of the fact that this is not an isolated incident, and that there is official sanction for this type of representation on the basis that ministers, more than non-office holders, are given considerable staff resources at taxpayers' expense, to write letters, which, inevitably, are going to be done without the full knowledge of the minister."
Green Party TDs had tried to help constituents wherever possible, but he would draw a line when it came to interfering in the judicial process in a matter so serious as the ones coming to light in Mr Killeen's case, he said.
Mr Killeen said last night he did not want to say anything that would add to the families distress. He appreciated the fact that other Oireachtas members across all parties had shown sensitivity to victims and considerable decency in their dealing with the issue. He said he would "keep the situation under review".
Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte said that while it was "immensely regrettable, very damaging and hurtful for the families involved", he would not call for Mr Killeen's resignation.
"I think it is true that too few people guilty of murder are being put into jail and it's not the first duty of a minister to be seeking a release of those few who are in. However, I don't think from what I know about it that I would call for his resignation," he said on a constituency visit to Co Tipperary.
Mr Rabbitte said he had never made representations "for the release of a prisoner or anything like that", but that he could recall making representations for the transfer of young prisoners, for example, to the training section of a prison so they could acquire a skill.
