Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

It should not be left in the gift of the Minister whether to grant this exemption when somebody has made the Minister aware of a previous conviction. Not all Ministers would have the same attitude as the current one in terms of saying that something is in the past, because there are no criteria and one could have a vindictive Minister in office. There have been many in the past who would refuse point-blank to do so, by virtue of a person's history. Rather than leaving it in a Minister's gift, it should be changed so that those who would qualify under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement as political prisoners should not have to inform the Minister. If they inform the Minister, however, they can state that they would qualify. The Minister can ring the Minister for Justice and Equality and say "Can you check this file? Would this person, or has this person, come under the criteria that are set out?" The criteria are very easy because the vast majority, if not all, of those who would qualify were in fact political prisoners who were convicted in Green Street courthouse in this State. In the Six Counties they were convicted under the Diplock court system. Both court systems were political and dealt specifically with those who were involved in offences that the state believed were political. That is why they created a separate court and justice system, which allowed them in many ways to be railroaded into prison.

Some of these people who were convicted were never involved in the activity for which they were convicted. They may have been republicans or IRA members but the circumstances of the decision taken by the IRA in those years was, at times, not to recognise the court. That meant that a defence was not even put up in some cases, and in many cases they were wrongfully convicted. We have seen what wrongful convictions have done in key cases in England, such as the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. Those are the cases we know of but there are quite a number of others.

They were convicted of serious offences which, under this Bill, would mean that they would not qualify for exemption but would have to depend on a Minister having the cop-on or the political wit, or at least not being opposed to them, and saying "Yes, I understand".

For instance, a member of the Labour Party, Mr. Nicky Kelly - although I do not know where his political allegiance is now - contested an election. He was convicted in this State of a very serious offence. If he had been elected to this House he would be in the same position of supporting me in my call for this amendment to be accepted, given what he went through and how long it took for him to be pardoned. We could run a whole list of people and seek presidential pardons for quite a range of republican prisoners who were convicted of serious offences in the past 30 or 40 years, who would be discriminated against by this legislation. That is not being sought, but we will pursue the issue of expunging the convictions in some legislation to be introduced in the near future. In the meantime, however, the easy way of addressing the matter in these circumstances is that people who qualify under the terms of the prisoner release scheme under the Good Friday Agreement would also qualify under this Bill.

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