Updated | Labour parliamentary group to take final decision on Farrugia Sacco on Monday

The government has turned down a request by the Opposition, calling for an urgent meeting of the House Business Committee.

In a statement, the PN said the government had refused the request after the opposition stated it wanted to discuss the impeachment motion against Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco without any further delay.

In a reaction, the Labour government said its parliamentary group will be meeting on Monday to take a final decison on the matter.

"This matter has been pending since 2007 and the Nationalist government took five years to act. When it did finally take action, it did so at the end of its legislature before parliament dissolved ahead of the general elections," the government said.

Following the Speaker's ruling and the statement by the Commission for the Administration of Justice which informed parliament that its investigation into the judge remains valid, the Opposition said parliament should discuss the motion without any further delay.

"This case has negatively affected the public's trust in the judiciary. Parliament must immediately discuss the matter, pronounce itself on the matter and take a final decision," the PN said.

It went on to urge the Prime Minister not to hinder the impeachment process.

Farrugia Sacco has written to MPs in the House Business Committee, to insist that the judiciary's watchdog's decision to have him impeached by the House, is not valid.

Farrugia Sacco is currently facing a second impeachment motion, after the original motion filed by then prime minister Lawrence Gonzi in December 2012, was ruled "invalid" by the Speaker of the House because Gonzi is no longer an MP.

Farrugia Sacco is claiming that he was neither notified nor given the opportunity to make his own case in what should have been a second investigation by the Commission for the Administration of Justice.

The judge is also claiming that since the original motion was declared to be invalid by the Speaker, it follows that the decision on that motion be also considered null.

In a decision of 6 January 2014, the Commission for the Administration of Justice ruled that Farrugia Sacco had compromised his position by retaining the post of president of the Malta Olympic Committee in breach of the judiciary's code of ethics.

It found Gonzi's request for an impeachment had been proven, after Farrugia Sacco entertained a discussion on the resale of the MOC's tickets to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, with two undercover Sunday Times of London reporters posing as ticket agents.

This decision was forwarded to the MPs in the House Business Committee to schedule a date for the impeachment, but Farrugia Sacco insisted that the original parliamentary motion could not be carried over to another parliamentary administration.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat proceeded to file a new impeachment motion to have the Commission for the Administration of Justice restart the investigation of the judge, who is due to resign in August.

But on 4 February, the CAJ informed the Speaker that its original decision was "definite", spiking the need for a protracted series of hearings and kicking the ball back to House Business Committee MPs.