Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I pay tribute to Mr. Justice Frederick Morris and his legal and administrative team for the outstanding work they have done in uncovering the truth of what happened in Donegal. It is due to them that serious wrongdoing has been exposed and innocent citizens' rights have been vindicated. It is now for us to build on their work and to respond to their findings.

Due to domestic circumstances yesterday it was not possible for me to include in the script, which I will circulate, all the remarks I intend to make and there will be some substantial departures from it.

As I said on the publication of the first report and again on the publication of the second report, the findings of the Morris tribunal are profoundly disturbing, at times shocking, and call for a strong and effective response. The first report found that a superintendent and a detective garda had engaged in planting hoax explosives in various places in Donegal. On one occasion they planted real ammunition in a place in Northern Ireland. Their fraud ought to have been quickly exposed, but through local management weakness and incompetence, and a blatant disregard for procedures, they got away with it for far too long.

The second report found that the Garda investigation into the death of Richie Barron in Raphoe was characterised by similar incompetence, weakness and disregard for procedures, but also that it was heavily prejudiced against two suspects, Frank McBrearty Jr. and Mark McConnell. Most shockingly, that report found that some elements within the Garda Síochána tried to frame those two completely innocent men for that murder. As if that were not enough, the report also found that a garda colluded with an informant in the making of blackmail demands of a third completely innocent suspect, Mr. Peoples, in an attempt to procure evidence against him.

These findings are deeply shocking to the public and to the vast majority of the Garda Síochána alike. Gardaí everywhere will feel bitterly let down by a number of their colleagues who have cast a shadow over the force. The fact that a relatively small number of gardaí were involved does not lessen the case for the programme of radical and wide-ranging reform which I am undertaking. The reality is — we have to accept this — that the whole system failed badly. The handful of corrupt gardaí should not have been able to get away with their outrageous behaviour for so long, but they did. The fact that they even started out on their corrupt path indicates a certain confidence on their part that they would not be challenged and stopped. The damage inflicted on their victims is enormous and the damage inflicted on the force would be incalculable unless we respond decisively to address the management and system failures exposed by the Morris tribunal report.

The Government, at the request of the Opposition spokesman in the committee, arranged matters so that the debate today would precede the taking of Report Stage amendments of the Garda Síochána Bill.

I wish to state two things at the outset. First, there is an impression abroad that there was a reluctance on the part of the Government to have an inquiry into the McBrearty affair and that there was internal pressure from within the Government not to have such an inquiry. That is not true. The then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue, who is beside me, behaved impeccably and at all times to the highest possible standards in the way in which he addressed his duties.

When I was made Attorney General in July 1999 the McBrearty affair had been in the public domain for upwards of two years. It had first surfaced in 1997 in a series of complaints and the institution of legal proceedings during the life of the rainbow coalition. In that regard, Nora Owen, a person I admire greatly and for whom I have not merely a fondness but a great respect, was recently under the impression that I was trying by remarks I made to dump on her or to say that in some respect she had acted in a way which was not appropriate in the circumstances. I have never implied that. What I said, and I reiterate, is that the underlying features in regard to Garda management, chains of accountability, discipline and the breakdown of discipline, and the attitude in the Garda Síochána, recently characterised by Gordon Holmes as the blue wall, were a long time developing under various and successive administrations, and that nobody who looks to the underlying context in which the activities in Donegal took place and in which it was apparently in the minds of the people who were perpetuating these wrongs that they might get away with them, should think that these are the responsibility of the Administration that took office in 1997 or since then. They are a shared responsibility which go back over a long period. I wish to make that very clear.

The second point I wish to make clear is that in 1999 when I was made Attorney General there were already in existence allegations and civil proceedings.

My job as Attorney General was to advise the Government and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and also to conduct the defence of those proceedings. In that context it was necessary for me to assess as best I could all the information that should have been available to me as the legal adviser to the Government and should have been available to the legal team, for which I was responsible, conducting the civil proceedings on behalf of the State.

Repeatedly during the year 2000 and into 2001, the Office of the Attorney General sought from the Garda Síochána a clear statement of the facts, as they were known to the Garda Síochána, to enable it to conduct the defence of the civil proceedings. Even after the Carty report had been furnished to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Office of the Attorney General repeatedly sought sight of that report from the Garda Síochána. Unfortunately, it was the case at the time, doubtless in good faith, that there was a doctrine that the Garda Síochána was in privity with the Director of Public Prosecutions and that it was open to senior gardaí in consultation with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to decide what the then Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue and myself could see in respect of the investigations being carried out in Donegal.

As I pointed out later, that view was profoundly legally mistaken.

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