Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To insert the following after "15th April, 2014":"the Commission will report in modular form at 8 week intervals; the opening modules shall be ‘the handling of correspondence and information by the Department of Justice and Equality and the administration procedures in place within the department governing the transfer of knowledge from officials to the Minister; and

the sequence of events leading up to the retirement of the former Garda Commissioner Mr. Martin Callinan’; and

subsequent modules shall be sequenced according to the Member of the Commission, Honourable Mr. Justice Nial Fennelly, Judge of the Supreme Court."

At this juncture, we need to take stock of exactly where we are. I was a little bemused to hear Fine Gael Deputy John Deasy say publicly on radio that if a bomb exploded within the Department of Justice and Equality, we might not hear about it for two years. When one thinks about this a little further, one realises he may not be wrong. While the statement sounds shocking, what we have heard over recent weeks and months from the Department of Justice and Equality gives us all cause for great concern. At present, there is the Cooke inquiry concerning GSOC and the Guerin inquiry on the matters contained within the dossier that was passed to the Taoiseach. We now have the commission of investigation and a Cabinet sub-committee is overseeing the Department of Justice and Equality. Never before did we have the latter.

Some weeks ago, on 25 March, the Taoiseach came into the Dáil to make an announcement on this matter. His press statement read:

At its meeting today, the Government considered a new and very serious issue relating to An Garda Síochána. The implications of this matter are potentially of such gravity that the Government has decided to set up a statutory Commission of Investigation into this matter of significant public concern.

At that point, there was no mention of the Bailey case whatsoever. We said the Taoiseach hyped the story but we were dismissed and rubbished. There was no rush to the courts, nor was there any queue outside the courts. No one was laying applications before the courts seeking declarations of miscarriages of justice. We must ask why all this happened. All this occurred against a background involving the Government scrambling around trying to hold itself together because it was at sixes and sevens over the penalty points debacle, the whistleblower controversy and the need for a no-holds-barred apology to be given to former Garda John Wilson and serving Sergeant Maurice McCabe. We debated this many times in the Dáil. It was quite unseemly that we received an apology from the Minister for Justice and Equality only weeks later. It should not have taken so long. The public was very disappointed by the Government's dismissive attitude displayed towards the whistleblowers and decent public servants. Consider the message this sends to other potential whistleblowers.

Coming quickly on the heels of these events was the resignation, retirement or premature departure of former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan. It is not just any old day or week that this happens in this country. It had not happened for a very long time. We received no proper explanation.

It is fair to state it should not require a Supreme Court judge participating in a commission of investigation to tell us what the Taoiseach knows about the circumstances of the retirement of the former Garda Commissioner. The Taoiseach has not made himself available for interview by anyone to detail what he knows about the sequence of events leading to the former Commissioner's retirement. The Taoiseach was involved in conversations with Mr. Brian Purcell, whom he sent to the former Commissioner’s house. Therefore, the Taoiseach was in the loop. We are told the Minister for Justice and Equality was not in the loop, nor was the Tánaiste. The Taoiseach is the man who knows exactly what happened and the instructions Mr. Purcell was given. Why was something that was occurring for almost 30 years suddenly the catalyst that pushed Mr. Martin Callinan over the edge or allowed the Taoiseach to throw him under the bus, as it were? These are all questions the Taoiseach himself can answer. We do not need Mr. Justice Nial Fennelly to tell us this. The Taoiseach could answer if he put his mind to it. He is choosing not to.

There are a couple of basic questions to be answered. Why did the former Commissioner resign? Why was the Minister for Justice and Equality not informed by his officials about the famous letter from Mr. Callinan which was marked for his attention? Why did the Taoiseach take a number of days to inform the Minister for Justice and Equality about the issue? He did not inform the Tánaiste. The Tánaiste told us just today that he did not hear about the matter until the Tuesday morning. The three were part of a small circle in Dublin on the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and, therefore, could have addressed this. What is the position of the Attorney General, who was cognisant of all these issues from the previous year, and her officials? They were involved in this on many occasions.

While we have a commission of investigation, it does not take one for these questions to be answered. Despite what the Tánaiste stated in his contribution, namely, that he accepts the versions of events given by his colleagues, there have been no versions given. The Minister for Justice and Equality has not made himself available for interview by any organisation. No media organisation can get within microphone distance of him to ask him some basic questions on the matter. I am reflecting the view of the public in saying it is unacceptable that the public would have to wait until the end of the year to find out why the Garda Commissioner resigned or retired or was sacked prematurely. It is not reasonable to expect the public to wait until then. That is why our amendment to the terms of reference contains the idea that the commission should report on a modular basis.

I believe that is quite constructive. It was discussed at length at the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality and it has the unanimous support of that committee, which has a majority membership from the Government parties. Despite this, the Government is choosing to ignore what the committee is saying. That is regrettable.

We live in an era when the Government is telling us it is promoting an agenda of political reform and that we should have more work from and more inclusiveness on the Oireachtas committees. We sat twice to consider the terms of reference and we wrote to the Government twice, on the first occasion to ask it to include the issue of the Garda Commissioner and, on the second, to deal with the handling of information and correspondence within the Department. While these have been included, it is not good enough that we have to wait until the end of the year to find out about it.

I also want to refer to the Government's insistence that the only specific case the commission of investigation is going to inquire into is the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case. I want to agree with the concerns expressed by the Tánaiste in and around that case in regard to her and her family. The family find themselves in an awful circumstance when, so many years on, it is still an unsolved case. I am not trying to minimise that case. However, the point I want to make is that this is the only case the Government is highlighting out of the recording of 2,500 tapes. Why are we limiting it to that? If we look at it on the flip side, that case is of such gravity and seriousness, as Tánaiste has said, that it possibly merits a commission of investigation in its own right. This is something we need to consider. There will be other families who are party to unsolved cases and unsolved crimes, who are still seeking justice and who will be wondering if there is information in these 2,500 tapes which is relevant to their circumstances and to cases in which they have an interest.

That is why I believe the terms of reference are questionable, in particular where they state: "In particular, the Commission shall have the discretion to decide to limit its investigation to samples of recordings". I would urge the Government to reconsider that whole point in regard to the sampling of recordings. If there are 2,500 recordings, someone will need to know what is in them and it will not be good enough to have mere sampling. At the very least, the commission under Mr. Justice Fennelly should have to publish a schedule in his report which details an inventory of all the recordings. Obviously, he is not going to make them available to the public, but some competent agency of the State is going to have to be able to reference them when other queries arise in this regard.

I am not sure if the Taoiseach or Tánaiste are going to offer any further contribution in summing up. However, there was no commentary from either of them in regard to whether the sittings will be in public or in private. Will this be left to the entire discretion of the sole member?

I note the Tánaiste's contribution in regard to the establishment of the independent policing authority and he posed a number of open questions. That is a debate in which my party will have no problem taking part. I believe the questions the Tánaiste poses are quite fair. In principle, it is something to which we do not have an objection.

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