Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The Deputy will be aware that a number of years after the Good Friday Agreement was entered into, it is still not functioning properly. There are groups on this island still engaged in paramilitarism, not merely dissident republicans but also the provisional IRA. That organisation has proved in the past to be ruthless in its intimidation of people involved in the criminal process. I need only mention circumstances in which witnesses were intimidated arising from the killing of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare in 1997. Witnesses were extensively intimidated by members of the IRA into retracting their statements which resulted in a manslaughter verdict rather than one of capital murder.

It is by no means fanciful. There is active paramilitarism on this island and people who believe, when they kill policemen or beat up, torture or murder people, rob banks or extort money etc., that they are acting with a mandate from history and that their actions do not amount to crimes. They believe they are justified in intimidating those who testify against them in courts. Unfortunately, while that is going on, the ordinary courts will continue to remain incapable of dealing with such serious organised intimidation. As somebody who believes passionately in the system of jury trial, it is my fervent desire to restore fully, as quickly as possible, the system of jury trial in Ireland. Let us keep our moral compass clear on this issue. The fault does not lie with Government. It emphatically lies with those groups who reject our police force, our courts — both jury and non-jury — and the concept that any of their actions are criminal in the eyes of our law. Those groups have proven that they are murderous in their capacity to intimidate witnesses, and I will not back down in the face of these groups or allow this country to become a no-go area as far the enforcement of law is concerned.

See this speech in context