Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are into a slightly new area here in terms of what the Minister has indicated. I note it very carefully. I absolutely concur that a meeting with the family is important. Such a meeting is essential. I hope that it will still be possible to do as the Minister said at the outset in his first reply to Senator Ó Donnghaile and that progress can be made on this issue. That is what I would like to see.

Moving on from that, my questions are in no particular order but I will go straight to An Garda Síochána and an area which has not been addressed with the Minister at all, namely, the issue of gardaí who retired before 1 October 1976.

The Minister will remember that we corresponded with him and we met with representatives of those gardaí. We have done an exercise on correspondence and replies to this committee. It took five months to get a response from the Office of the Garda Commissioner to correspondence that I issued on this matter. Describing it as anaemic is putting it very mildly indeed. As the Chair of this committee, any correspondence I issue is on behalf of the committee. I will give the Minister the statistics in respect of his own Department shortly. They cover a nine month period. The poor co-operation and response times - and no responses in many cases - have frustrated me. On the case of this group of former gardaí, it took five months to get a reply that could have been written the following day. It offered nothing as a response - it was not a reply. These gardaí were not represented in the engagement that took place and which was signed off on the arbitrary date of 1 October 1976.

We have met some of them. Some have been more fortunate in life than others who are now in very stretched financial circumstances. It was not going to break the Bank of Monte Carlo to exercise outreach in this instance. There were fewer than 20 people. There was an instance where a garda had received the pension. He had taken a particular course before that 1 October date. Why was fish made of one and flesh of another? I feel angry that they are in that position given their service. It is a significant number of years in some cases yet they were left high and dry. It is wrong. That was a unanimous position supported by the colleagues of the Minister representing his party on this committee. We were of one voice, una voce. On behalf of the committee, I appeal to the Minister - even if his first response is that he may not be able to do anything - to look at it again.