Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

There are more Members on the roads home than there are in the precincts of the House in which nothing of significance is happening to detain them.

This is a considered Government response to two reports that undermine the trustworthiness of a body in which every right-minded citizen is expected and entitled to repose confidence.

The reality is that the Minister supports ministerial accountability for fear that an alternative might actually work, that questions would not only be asked but answered, that stewardship would be examined and that an account would be demanded and given.

The second great shibboleth trotted out by the Minister, Deputy McDowell, is that no change can be made that might undermine the security of the State. He and his Department represent the thin grey line that stands between our freedom and lawless anarchy. He has access to State secrets and information the release of which would threaten lives and freedom. No other person or body, outside the existing institutional architecture, can be entrusted with that information.

I have two points to make in response to that. The first is to repeat what I said earlier in this House in statements on the Nally report, copies of which were given to Deputy Kenny and me but which was not publicly released or summarised, even for the benefit of the families and victims of the Omagh bombing. I said then and I repeat now that I have no reason to believe any of the allegations forwarded to the Minister by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman as to information in the possession of the Garda Síochána that might have prevented that appalling and savage attack. Neither have I any reason to accept the picture that this disaffected Garda detective sought to paint about the handling of Garda informants in general. However, I was struck by the consistent and apparently congenital inability of that committee to query the official Garda version of events in any case where it differed from that of detective sergeant White, even where the official version contained contradictions or was unsupported by any documentary or other evidence, whereas every hole was picked in the case put forward against them.

The report was from a committee of insiders, about insiders, to be read by insiders. It came from within a hermetically sealed environment. The possibility that even some of the allegations it was investigating might be even partially true would represent a collective corporate failure of massive proportions and with devastating consequences. This reminds me of the contribution I heard from Deputy Ferris. The House knows that I agree with him on very little. I do not know who James Sheehan is, or whether he is a member of his Sinn Féin Party — although he probably is — but I fail to see what that has to do with anything. The claim made by Deputy Ferris about the planting of a gun in a car four hours later by members of the Garda Síochána deserves to be investigated. Merely because Deputy Ferris has the provenance he has, does not in any way undermine his right to have it investigated.

The second point is that, in any arrangement for safeguarding the security of the State, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform will be pivotal. I refer to the Minister's argument about the security of the State as to why he cannot change the Bill. Let us look at the Minister's predecessors. They include an individual who, by reason of chronic alcoholism, was disabled from functioning in any public office, let alone that of Minister for Justice. They also include an individual who was the subject of a Garda fraud squad inquiry, who has since been convicted in the courts. Also among their number was an individual who was dismissed from office for conspiring to import arms into this State and whose prosecution case was amassed by his own former departmental secretary. Another Minister for Justice borrowed bugging equipment from an assistant Garda Commissioner, so as to enable covert surveillance of conversations of Cabinet colleagues, and who personally directed the tapping of phonecalls of political correspondents with other Cabinet colleagues. Does the Minister seriously argue that there cannot be found outside the confines of his bunker on St. Stephen's Green a dozen men and women who would match those persons for competence and integrity who could be trusted with oversight and to demand adequate accountability?

In his speech on the launch of the heads of the Garda Síochána Bill, the Minister quoted the line from Juvenal: "Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who will guard the guards themselves? His answer, effectively, is that he will, because no one else can be trusted. Just the Minister, his Department and his senior Garda officers.

This is the same Minister who famously urged his party that it must be "radical or redundant". He has made his choice. He has rejected the radical option. Instead of providing solutions, he has become the quintessential insider, a captive of his Department. More significantly in the context of this particular debate, he has refused to take on board the only major recommendation of Mr. Justice Morris directed at Government. After all of the painstaking, conscientious work that Mr. Justice Morris put into investigating the extraordinary, bizarre, disturbing events in Donegal, he made one recommendation and the Minister, Deputy McDowell, did not even refer to it.

There are so many disturbing facts in that report. I was struck by the notion of a woman dialling the Garda because a man was dying or dead on the side of the road and they did not respond because they were contemplating going on a tea break. When they did respond they did not preserve the scene, examine the area or the body, but they decided to drive to Letterkenny for his suit — all three of them — to get in out of the rain. They drove to Letterkenny for his suit, and as the judge stated, in the event they did not collect it. The report is riddled with this type of anecdote about the reality of what went on in Donegal. Meanwhile two men, Frank McBrearty Jr. and his cousin Mark McConnell, were framed for a murder that never happened. They could be languishing in prison for that crime.

It is shocking beyond description yet one gets the impression both from what the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform have said, that we are going on as before. The previous Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform made no effort to present any plausible explanation for his reaction. He told us that like a pussycat he simply accepted the word from the park that he was not going to get the relevant parts of the Carty report and that he was quite happy to come to the House and mislead my colleague, Deputy Howlin. This was not an everyday, routine occurrence such as giving someone a fine for breaking the speed limit. He was prepared to mislead my colleague in the fashion set out today by Deputy Howlin, with which the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, did not disagree.

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