Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I am delighted to speak on the Morris tribunal reports after six and a half years and eight reports. At last, we have an opportunity to look at them in their entirety. Mr. Justice Frederick Morris has done the State a service with his investigation into the activities of certain gardaí in the Donegal division and his detailed reports. However, his criticism of Deputy Howlin and former Deputy Higgins is unwarranted and wrong. It amazes me how he could say that the Deputies should have conducted a searching inquiry themselves before going to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform with the information. How were they supposed to do that? It would be impossible for them to carry that out.

I was the recipient of information from the whistleblower and I contacted the then spokesperson on justice, Deputy Howlin, who took the matter from there. To my mind he has carried out the work in an admirable fashion. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform owes him an apology, as he owes an apology, on behalf of the State, to all those who were wronged by the agents of the State who were supposed to be protecting them.

The work conducted by Mr. Justice Frederick Morris was not easy and as he said on page 41 of his first tribunal report:

The Tribunal was fed lie after lie. The spirit wearies at the lies, obfuscation, concealments and conspiracies to destroy the truth.

Amazingly this obstruction came from the gardaí involved who were "consumed" with the belief that Frank McBrearty, Mark McConnell and others were the culprits in an investigation into the "murder" of Richie Barren where no murder had actually occurred. Innocent citizens in Donegal have been harassed, intimidated, threatened, bullied, blackmailed, assaulted and framed by gardaí who were there to protect them from wrongdoing. That is why the Minister should apologise on behalf of the State as well as withdrawing his remarks about Deputy Howlin and former Deputy Higgins.

The second tribunal report had equally bizarre findings. In that report, gardaí, together with their pet informer, were found to have traversed the country from end to end and ventured into Northern Ireland planting home-made bombs, contacting the Garda authorities and the RUC as to the whereabouts of these devices and then taking credit for good detective work in finding them. At one time, indeed, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was moved to congratulate the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform on the valuable work of the Donegal gardaí in thwarting IRA bombers. If he only knew the half of what was going on. The unthinkable had happened in that rogue gardaí were perverting the course of justice for their own ends and particularly to further their own careers. The judge concluded that there were no adequate oversight mechanisms in place to prevent similar behaviour taking place in other Garda divisions.

The Donegal saga was a watershed for the Garda Síochána. It was similar to the corrupt payments for politicians, the DIRT inquiry for the banks and the cases of institutional abuse for the church. The Garda Síochána was the latest pillar of society that was found wanting. The time was ripe for a root and branch review of the role, structures and operation of the Garda Síochána in the 21st century.

As well as the Donegal fiasco and scandal, there were and still are serious concerns about the operation of the Garda Síochána. There has been abject failure to tackle the spread of drugs nationwide and the accompanying gangland feuding; crime prevention and crime detection have declined; anti-social behaviour is rampant and despite the substantial increase in new recruits there are growing concerns regarding Garda professionalism, efficiency and commitment.

However, the independent Garda commission which the Labour Party sought to have established to conduct a thorough examination of policing in Ireland never materialised because the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform would not have it. Nevertheless, the Garda Síochána Act 2005 did incorporate some of Justice Morris's recommendations such as the inspectorate and the ombudsman commission, though Justice Morris was strongly critical of the bureaucratic and convoluted manner in which his recommendations were being transposed into law.

One important series of recommendations which were not included in the Act, but were accepted by the Government and the Garda Commissioner, were the recommendations regarding the handling of informants, on pages 651-654 of the second tribunal report. The Donegal gardaí had been allowed to wallow unhindered in the illegal production of informants and in using them to further their careers. The key requirement of the new informant system that was recommended and was supposedly in place was that all informants would have to be registered compulsorily and that a full assessment of the suitability of the informant would be undertaken by the crime and security branch. Oversight was to be conducted by senior officers and there would be periodic independent audits of the operation of the informant handling procedure. Despite the importance attached to a modern informant handling system by Mr. Justice Morris, it appears that the system put in place by the Garda Commissioner has never got off the ground.

The case of Kieran Boylan raises the most serious questions for the Garda Síochána since the Donegal scandal and reflects many of the same failings in terms of structures and oversight. Last week the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission finally agreed to conduct a full scale investigation, "in the public interest", into the case. This followed three related investigations by the Garda Commissioner and a further related investigation by the GSOC.

Mr. Boylan is a major drug dealer who has operated in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Continent. He was convicted and imprisoned in Ireland and the UK for serious drug offences. He is a major importer of drugs into this country. In 2006 he was sentenced to a five-year sentence with two years suspended for possession of €800,000 worth of heroin and cocaine at Dublin Port in 2003. This sentence was ridiculously lenient considering the mandatory sentence in law of ten years and his previous convictions for drug dealing. The issue was raised in this House. To compound matters, while on bail in October 2005 he was caught red-handed in Ardee, County Louth, with cocaine and heroin valued at €1.7 million. Incredibly, the charges relating to this seizure were struck out but were re-entered after Members of this House, including Deputy Howlin, the Labour Party spokesperson on justice, asked parliamentary questions in the Dáil in February 2007.

An incredible event happened again on 31 July 2008, the last sitting day of the courts session before the summer recess. The Boylan case was not listed for mention or hearing on that day nor was Mr. Boylan in court. Nevertheless the case came up out of the blue and the charges were dropped again. When the judge questioned the reason for entering a nolle prosequi , senior counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions stated: "it is a matter for very, very careful consideration at a high level."

I wrote to the DPP requesting him to explain his reasons for withdrawing the charges in the circumstances but he declined to do so. In the light of the DPP's announcement today concerning his willingness to provide public information in certain cases where he declined to prosecute, I now ask him to reconsider his decision and to extend his public explanation to cases of this nature, particularly with regard to decisions of nolle prosequi in cases of drugs.

I wrote to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Dermot Ahern, to request the GSOC to conduct an inquiry in the public interest, as is his specific entitlement, and he replied in a positive fashion. I subsequently wrote to the GSOC requesting that it undertake the inquiry. I believe that the inquiry which is now under way will reveal an appalling vista, not dissimilar to what has been happening in County Donegal. A Garda informer was not registered officially, as required by regulation. He was allegedly used by certain gardaí who colluded with him in illegal entrapment operations involving drug seizures. In this way a blind eye was largely turned towards his illegal drug activities. His threats to disclose details of his relationship with members of the force made him virtually immune from prosecution.

In the first place, questions must be asked how such a state of affairs could operate for years after Mr. Justice Morris's demands for strict criteria for the management of informants. Second, how many offenders were convicted on the strength of drugs and information supplied by Kieran Boylan? Third, this appalling vista is the one faced by Mr. Justice Morris when he was unable to conclude that the Donegal scandal was not being replicated elsewhere within the Garda force.

If gardaí in County Louth were turning a blind eye to Kieran Boylan's importation and distribution of hard drugs as long as they obtained convictions against smaller fry who were also involved in the illegal drug business, might the same thing not be happening in other Garda divisions? Might members of the Garda — this is the appalling vista — have contributed significantly to the explosion in the spread of drugs the length and breadth of Ireland in recent years by shielding pet informers to further their own careers?

This is the litmus test case for the new Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, to show that it is capable of carrying out hard investigations into Garda conduct without fear or favour. Likewise it is a test for the Garda Síochána which was supposed to have put its house in order after the Donegal debacle.

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