Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

On behalf of the Labour Party and on my own behalf I put on record our appreciation and thanks to Mr. Justice Frederick Morris for his thorough and painstakingly diligent work in no fewer than eight reports that will hopefully lead to better policing in Ireland.

It is almost beyond belief that the Department has written a script for this very lazy Minister — and worse still that he read it out — that in summary means he regrets the Morris tribunal ever took place. I agree with Deputy Flanagan that this is an entirely inadequate amount of time for us to discuss eight reports from Mr. Justice Morris and that the Government contrived until now to ensure that none of the previous reports could be discussed. I will return to this point later.

It would be inaccurate to deny there have been significant changes in the management, control and oversight of the Garda Síochána since the publication of the first Morris tribunal report. It would be inaccurate and ungenerous to fail to recognise that both the Government and the former Minister, Michael McDowell, attempted to grapple with the findings, the implications of those findings for the Garda service as a whole and the changes needed to ensure that such institutionalised corruption of our policing service could never be replicated.

If we have learned anything from the eight Morris reports to date, it is the extraordinary damage that can be done — and was done — to ordinary citizens by the abuse of the tremendous powers we vest in members of the Garda Síochána. The enormity of the task facing us can be measured by the scale of the wrongdoing that was uncovered. Viewed in that light and acknowledging, as I do, the work already done by this Government and the Oireachtas, I believe our work is only half done. All the evidence points to a still pervasive reluctance, an example of which we have just heard, to face up to the challenge and a desire to avoid a full public debate on these issues. I had not heard the Minister's speech when I wrote that sentence but it bears it out.

I pointed last May to the calculated and cynical slipping out of the previous three volumes — 1,400 pages in all — of the Morris report. The decision to publish a report that had been with the Minister for weeks at that particular time was clearly designed to swamp the bad news of yet more critical findings on Garda conduct in Donegal in the tsunami of news coverage marking the election of the new Taoiseach and appointment of new Ministers.

The exercise engaged in by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform on the publication of the latest two volumes was, if anything, more cynical. All we got from the Minister was a statement displaying his delight and glee at the poor view taken — in my own opinion, the perverse view taken — by Judge Morris on the behaviour of former Deputy Jim Higgins and Deputy Howlin. The speech we have just heard from the Minister can only be read to mean that notwithstanding the horror of what was uncovered in Donegal and the damning finding that Donegal was, according to the judge, "not an aberration from the generality", he regrets the Morris tribunal ever happened.

The chairman misunderstands the role of the Deputy and his very limited capacity to investigate matters of public interest brought to his attention. What could be more responsible when put in possession of such information than entrusting it to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and refraining from public comment even in the Dáil? If a Deputy is given information from a professional person alleging child abuse, for example, is he expected to initiate investigation or entrust it to the appropriate authority?

I will repeat my opinion that there is important business before this House in debating the Morris tribunal reports; that the Government has consistently refused to have any one of those reports properly debated in this House; that even today we are confined merely to making short statements and an entirely inadequate questioning opportunity; and that the failure of the Minister, Deputy Dermot Ahern, to rein in his partisan instincts for a change and to approach the issue on a constructive basis bodes very poorly for any prospect of those issues being comprehensively addressed or for real and significant reform while he is Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

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