Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I do not accept that the High Court decision of 2005 opens the door to another inquiry or in any way indicates that an injustice has been done to Mr. de Róiste. We must remember that two decisions were made, one by the High Court and the other by the Supreme Court, which all witnesses were entitled to attend and where Mr. de Róiste was entitled to present his full case. On the substantive facts of the case, the High Court found and the Supreme Court subsequently agreed that too much time had elapsed and that, therefore, Mr. de Róiste was not in a position to prove his case. This is the reality of the matter.

In 2005, Mr. Justice Quirke decided that the procedure established under the Judge Advocate General was incorrectly conducted. From reading the judgment in full, it appears that if one was to hold an inquiry, one would need a different procedure. One would need to use the procedure suggested by Deputy Ó Snodaigh, namely, a sworn public inquiry where witnesses would be called. It appears that the difficulty with this is that, on one side, one would have Mr. de Róiste, but practically all the witnesses on the other side are dead. I believe one or two are still alive but they are too incapacitated to attend. Therefore, one would have an oral presentation on one side against the silent testimony of the archival documents on the other. This form of inquiry is not very fair.

In the 2005 case, Mr. de Róiste did not seek an order of mandamus, any follow-up order or the recommencement of the Judge Advocate General's inquiry so this is where the matter stands. We cannot have a proper inquiry based on physical evidence on the one side and documents or archives on the other. It seems that if we have to come within the terms of what the High Court wanted in 2005, that is all we could have.

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