Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I agree with everything the Minister and Deputy Charles Flanagan have said about the origins of these measures, the gruesome circumstances of the Omagh bombing and their condemnation of the organisation responsible and associated dissident organisations who continue to operate in the jurisdiction and outside it. I join with the Minister in congratulating the gardaí on their continued vigilance and commending the co-operation that exists between the PSNI and the Garda Síochána on these important matters.

Having said that, I repeat what I have said in previous years in what has become a routine, brief and inadequate debate on these issues. I am not in possession of the intelligence information the Minister has. The Minister makes no attempt to brief Opposition spokespersons on the quality, nature, scale and significance of the intelligence information he has. We got a very slight communication on a half page from the Department or the Minister on today's debate. Unless one was very alert one would miss the laying of the report before the Houses, as required by legislation. Usually it would go unnoticed.

I find it very difficult to second guess the Minister, who has the information. My party would be very reluctant to go against the advice the Minister offers the House. The Minister has this information. He says there is a real and definite threat from the dissident groups referred to and I find it difficult to gainsay that. However a great many people will be very disappointed that so many years after the Good Friday Agreement and relative normality returning to Northern Ireland and this island as a whole, we are still in a situation, as a modern, liberal democracy, where we have to rely on draconian measures that are not consistent with people's civil and human rights in normal circumstances.

In one international instrument, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, one article permits a state to derogate in certain circumstances but only "in time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed, and only to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation". Only the Minister can say if the intelligence he is in possession of is consistent with our meeting our obligations on that.

If the Minister advises the House of a real and definite threat from dissident groups we must have regard to that, however I refer to the warning of Mr. Justice Anthony Hederman in the famous Hederman report: "Emergency legislation may be abused for pragmatic political purposes; special powers, introduced for special reasons, may continue to be used when those reasons no longer justify this, or for purposes extending beyond those that warranted their original introduction; and powers of detention or interrogation may be used cruelly or inhumanly upon innocent (or even guilty) people". I am not saying that is happening here but the learned judge charged with chairing that committee and making his findings about the fact that such laws are extant on our Statute Book issued that warning. Last year in the Dáil I said the Hederman report acknowledged that the issues are complex and fundamental and said:

The authors of the report, under the direction of Mr. Justice Anthony Hederman, detailed widely divergent views on the necessity for and use of the Acts under review. The main recommendations included the proposed repeal of the existing Offences against the State Acts and the introduction of new legislation which would keep in place some of their key elements. There was also a minority report, headed up unusually by Mr. Justice Hederman, which favoured dismantling much of the existing legislation because it was seen as incompatible with a modern democratic state. Therefore, having requested the Hederman committee to report, which it did in great detail, we find the substantial measures in the legislation, such as the continued existence of the Special Criminal Court, its use for non-terrorist "ordinary" crime, the statutory provisions for internment, whether inferences should be drawn from a suspect exercising his right to silence and so on, are the subject of different conclusions by the majority and minority in the report.

That is far from a clear conclusion on these issues and whether in peace time there is an argument consistent with human rights and civil liberties that can be made for their continuation.

The Supreme Court has held that the DPP has discretion on resort to the Special Criminal Court for matters other than subversive crime and that this occasionally happens. We know from the Minister's public statements that he is considering the extension of that power to attempting to deal with gangland crime in the jurisdiction. We need to have a major debate on that. Nobody on this side of the House is soft on crime, particularly gangland crime, which is motivated mainly by drugs trafficking, pushing and abuse. All reasonable measures should be taken to try to gain control of that phenomenon, but a debate needs to be had on whether resort to the Special Criminal Court gives us any hope of better success than we have had by using normal procedures. I note in passing that the Green Party now in Government is on the record in successive debates on this provision. For example, in 2003, Deputy Cuffe argued that "we should drop the use of the Offences against the State Act". He also said that "the Green Party... does not want to see the use of the Special Criminal Court continue". It may be that the Green Party has changed its view on that matter. If the Minister is able to bring before the House his package to deal with serious crime, we obviously will have an opportunity to debate it.

I cannot put my hand on my heart and say if the Minister says that the dissident republican groups referred to and their links with in some cases criminal gangs remain a threat to this country that we can do other than for the time being continue in force the measures that would otherwise fall if we did not pass this motion. I note the Minister's remarks about significance of these measures in the context of international terrorism. I am somewhat puzzled that countries, which for obvious reasons would be on considerably higher alert than Ireland, do not seem to require extraordinary measures like this in order to deal with that aspect of it. If the mindless individuals engaged in threatening mayhem in Northern Ireland and threatening the peace process that is working out reasonably well in this country could be got under control, the time will come for us to look seriously at whether the measures here encompassed ought to continue.

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