Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

We have waited a long time for this investigation and I welcome it, now that it has been announced. The amendment proposed by my colleague, Deputy Costello, would have made for greater clarity. He recommended that the order should refer to an investigation into matters surrounding "the arrest and detention of" Dean Lyons. The Minister told us that he has changed the wording of the order which is now before us to state that the commission shall investigate "matters relating to and surrounding the making of a confession by Dean Lyons". The Minister is more knowledgeable in this area than I am and it may well be that his wording is adequate to deal with the point which Deputy Costello sought to clarify, although there may be merit in Deputy Costello's framing of the term "the arrest and detention of". It is an important point.

Why did this case take eight years to get to the House? Would it have got here under a different Minister? Why is there a last-minute change to the order? There may be a perfectly constructive and positive explanation, but one gets the impression there is still grandstanding in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform about this case and that the Minister directed this material change. I do not know if that is the case. Nevertheless, it is a cause for concern.

I have raised the matter on several occasions in the House. Dean Lyons was a constituent of mine, and his family still are. It is a troubling case and as a citizen one must be concerned that it has taken eight years to get to this point. The order is important and, taking the Minister at face value and his satisfaction with the term "surrounding", I am happy to welcome it on that basis.

This investigation is important for one crucial reason. The story of Dean Lyons is not just the sad case of a strung-out, semi-literate heroin addict, who admitted to committing terrible crimes when he did not know what he was doing or saying. It is not just about an unequal confrontation between the forces of the State and one of its less adequate citizens.

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the story suggests that within the ranks of the Garda Síochána a deliberate decision was made to frame a suspect who turned out to be innocent. The Grangegorman murders were savage and brutal and Dean Lyons was wrongfully charged with them. The Garda Commissioner, after a "comprehensive probative enquiry", declared he was satisfied that Mr. Lyons had no part in those murders. He published a notice in the newspapers apologising for any embarrassment caused. The apology was, of course, to the Lyons family since Dean Lyons died in Manchester over four years ago from a heroin overdose.

The two murders, however, remain unsolved and we still have no explanation of how it happened that Dean Lyons confessed to two murders he did not commit. We know that Sylvia Shiels and Mary Callinan were murdered as they lay in their beds in a sheltered housing scheme on the grounds of Grangegorman hospital in March 1997. Dean Lyons was arrested in the months after the murders and, although he confessed to them, it transpired later that he could not have committed them. The charges against him were eventually withdrawn and he was released from custody in 1998.

He was living the life of a homeless heroin addict in July 1997 when he was arrested for questioning about the murders. Detective gardaí questioned him in a video and tape-recording suite. We are told the transcript of the taped interview showed him as confused and incoherent. In the interview, he admitted to every charge put to him. His parents visited him and said he appeared completely disoriented and was swaying and slurring his words when they met him.

After his parents left, he was questioned again. As a result he made another, written, statement. When this statement was made, however, there was no video or audio taping. The statement contains a chronologically correct narrative of the murders. There are also accurate descriptions of the interior of the house and the actions of the murderer inside, how he broke a window to get into the house, where he stacked the broken glass, the layout of the staircase and bedrooms of the house, what the victims looked like, what they were wearing and how they died.

Dean Lyons, the man the Garda Síochána now accepts had no part in these murders, was able to describe in his statement with chilling accuracy and in clear grammatical English how he emptied the kitchen drawers and took all the long knives and a carving fork to mutilate his victims. This information was not published in the media at the time of the murders.

On the basis of this "confession", he was charged with the murders. If the trial had proceeded, it would have been impossible for him to withdraw a confession that contained such accurate and unpublished detail. Only the real killer could have known it and, of course, the investigating gardaí.

Then events took an extraordinary turn. A second man, Mark Nash, arrested in connection with a separate double murder in Roscommon, confessed to the Grangegorman murders, again with accurate and unpublished detail.

Dean Lyons's trial did not proceed. He remained in custody for over eight months, his case adjourned from date to date, while the authorities worked out what to do. Eventually he was released without explanation and he left the country. To prosecute Mark Nash with the Grangegorman murders would have opened up a can of worms so, effectively, the case was dropped entirely.

There was an internal Garda inquiry but its findings have been kept secret. The Garda spokesman said much was learnt following this inquiry in respect of investigation and interviewing techniques. To publish the report, however, "would only be of assistance to the criminal fraternity". The Lyons family has never received an explanation of what happened. It is to be hoped that this commission of investigation will at last deliver the answers they seek.

I must repeat, however, that I am bewildered by the Minister's continued refusal to set up a similar such inquiry into the Brian Rossiter case. It has become increasingly clear that there are serious aspects of the Brian Rossiter affair which require investigation but which will be outside the limited remit of the inquiry announced by the Minister. The Minister has failed to explain or justify his decision to launch an inquiry with such a limited format, under a statute so little used that it will be repealed without replacement when the new Garda Síochána Act comes into operation.

There are growing and legitimate suspicions that the inquiry will be spancelled by its terms of reference and that such an outcome may well suit the Garda Síochána, the Department and the Minister. The Minister has decided to invoke an amended version of section 12 of the Dublin Police Act 1924, which allows him to nominate a person to hold an inquiry and to examine on oath "into the truth of any charge or complaint of neglect or violation of duty preferred against any member of the Garda Síochána".

There is one basic problem with this procedure. It is an adversarial process, a mini-trial, and it requires that a specified "charge or complaint" be levelled against a Garda before there can be an inquiry into such a charge or complaint. In other words, as the gardaí involved will no doubt forcefully point out at the inquiry, it will be limited to examining allegations of specified misbehaviour by specified gardaí that have already been put on the record.

I raised this issue on Leaders' Questions with the Taoiseach and subsequently in written correspondence. Specifically, I wrote to the Taoiseach on the Rossiter family's behalf seeking clarification on reasons for using the 1924 legislation in preference to an Act passed just last year. The Taoiseach replied that, on the Government's legal advice, a charge or complaint need not be specified in circumstances where there is widespread public concern. If that is what the legislation was intended to mean, that is what it would have said.

It is worth recalling that the Minister originally wanted to set up a similar section 12 inquiry in the Dean Lyons case also, until he was persuaded that it was not adequate or appropriate. The Minister eventually had to agree that the inquiry in that case should be under the broader terms of the Commissions of Investigation Act, legislation introduced by him. I do not understand why the Minister will not use the same legislation in the Rossiter case.

The issue, however, is now before the inquiry, headed by Hugh Hartnett SC, and it is a matter for him to resolve what still seems to be a basic procedural and jurisdictional difficulty. Perhaps the Minister is waiting for the report from Mr. Hartnett before making a final decision. For the life of me, I cannot see why the Minister will not use legislation which he recently put through the House that is arguably tailor-made for the Rossiter case as compared with the little-known and now repealed Dublin Police Act 1924. The Lyons family will welcome and be pleased with the Minister's initiative today. However, it is a pity that our system means that it has taken us eight years to get this far.

While the Minister, in his unique style, took much persuading about certain aspects of the Garda Síochána Act, he did take some criticisms and recommendations on board from this side of the House. However, I am bound to say he missed a great opportunity in two major respects. At this stage, the argument for the establishment of a Garda authority is irrefutable. It is a pity the Minister did not import the police ombudsman system as it applies in Northern Ireland. It is not in the interests of our democracy or the Garda Síochána that confidence can be eroded in such a fashion as it has been over the last several years. Many diligent gardaí are coming around to this point of view. However, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform believes it must take up a defensive position on this issue, irrespective. Eight years later, the investigation we are now embarking upon is dragged out of the Department. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform knows far better than I the number of incidents throughout the country that give cause for concern.

The direction and framework of the Garda must be taken from the aegis of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and placed in a properly constituted Garda authority. An ombudsman system, along the lines of that obtaining in Northern Ireland, is needed. I know the Minister made some changes to his original proposals in the Garda Síochána Act which were an improvement. However, that even gardaí admit they have no confidence in the old complaints board system, through no fault of the people who served on it, is sufficient evidence, if needed, of how badly these reforms are needed.

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