Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I propose to give two minutes of my time to the leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, with the agreement of the House.

The final reports of the Morris tribunal are at last before the House and I regret the time is so short for me to contribute to this debate. It seems to have been an extraordinarily long and painful process for many people, not least myself. Six and a half years of hearings and examinations have led to eight reports and a catalogue of abuses outlined in most of the thousands of pages in those reports. The abuses by some gardaí are unprecedented in the history of the State.

Many will no doubt feel this is ancient history but for the families centrally involved, it was a long, ongoing and living nightmare.

I refer to the McBrearty, McConnell, Peoples, Gallagher, Brolly and Shortt families, as well as many other individuals who have been in touch with me over the years. They have suffered grievously at the hands of agents of this State. That these shocking events could have gone on so long, been so widespread and involved so many individual gardaí is both shocking and frightening for any democracy, let alone a democracy as mature as ours.

I had intended to contribute during my few minutes today on their shocking suffering and how we should map a way into the future. Unfortunately, the opening speech of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Dermot Ahern, requires me not to do that. I resent this because neither former Deputy Jim Higgins nor I wish to be the centre of this debate. We were mere agents in trying to discern the truth. We are no heroes. We did not, as one backbench Fianna Fáil Deputy suggested today, parade ourselves around looking for great accolades for doing this. It was our duty to do it, nothing less and nothing more. The statement of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform today was spiteful, partisan, petty, unfair, selective, mean-spirited and self-serving. I greatly regret that, unfortunately, it was characteristic.

I now am required to comment on a selective series of quotations from Mr. Justice Morris. The Minister stated this morning that the accusations brought by Jim Higgins and me to the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform against "two Assistant Garda Commissioners were of the gravest kind". That is true and I deeply regret the hurt that was caused to those two fine people. However, I did not know them from Adam, any more than I knew any of the other serving gardaí against whom accusations were brought which, if one reads the eight volumes, unfortunately proved to be true. Were these allegations so grievous that they outweighed the others? The other accusations that proved to be true were of framing innocent people for murder, manufacturing and planting bombs, perjury and suborning justice. We did not know what would be the outcome of any of the allegations. Consequently, it is extraordinary that, because it has been determined that Jim and I did not know the outcome in these two instances, in essence, we needed to know the outcome of the inquiry for us to cause an inquiry or seek an inquiry to examine all these matters. That is an extraordinary view to take.

The Minister quoted Mr. Justice Hardiman selectively. The essence of the quotation was that the inquiry had an obligation to find out the source of the information. This constituted selective quoting. The Minister could as easily have read the High Court judgment of the current member of the Supreme Court who found that the action in protecting those sources was absolutely constitutionally right. However, the Minister did not dream of making that choice.

He went on to state the net effect of our actions was the establishment of "a tribunal of inquiry that lasted six years at a cost to the taxpayer of some €50 million". Does the Minister regret the establishment of the tribunal? Does he regret the uncovering of this awfulness? Some people do and they have worked to resist the outpouring of the truth for a long time. Unfortunately, the Minister made this appalling speech today. On the day the tribunal report was published, the Minister issued his own press release, more than an hour before I had sight of it, to put a political spin on it. While I do not normally divulge conversations, the Minister told me this item was a creation of his Department, not of his, and that he had only changed one word of it.

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