Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I think everybody in this House is in favour of peace, whether it is in Northern Ireland, Europe or the Middle East, although we probably differ on how best to achieve it.

Given the events of late in Europe, I firmly believe that bombing people or terrorising them through drone attacks does much more for the arms industry than it does for peace.

It would be dangerous for us to become any way complacent in regard to Northern Ireland and the challenges it provides. I have been to the North on numerous occasions, mostly to Maghaberry Prison, in the company of a number of Deputies from across the parties. I would be very concerned about the tensions that exist, but I am not aware of any of the parties, North or South, addressing those tensions or taking them seriously enough. It would be unfortunate if we had to wait for some bad incident to occur before we woke up to the seriousness of the situation. There are particular challenges in regard to this prison. We have visited both loyalist and republican prisoners and are aware of a number of outstanding issues. Despite the optimism around the stock take, there have not been dramatic improvements in the areas of strip searching, control of movement, the isolation unit and use of it and visiting conditions. Negative tensions within the prison can impact on life outside the prison and the authorities need to be aware of this. It would be unfortunate if they woke up to this too late. Most of our involvement in Northern Ireland is not even remotely attached to any of the politics of any grouping we have visited. We are interested in human rights and believe affairs should be conducted properly. We see huge problems in that regard.

Apart from the prison issue, the Craigavon Two is a stark case that appears to represent an injustice. In 2012, John Paul Wooton and Brendan McConville were convicted of the 2009 killing of PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll in Craigavon in Armagh, but the manner in which the evidence was gathered and presented left much to be desired. We attended the appeal case and met the widow of Stephen Carroll. If there has been a miscarriage of justice, it is of little good to her that the wrong people may be in prison for the brutal murder of her husband. The manner in which the authorities dealt with the appeal was very disappointing.

Of late, Dr. Kevin Harty has drawn attention to the fact that the RUC has been asked to look again at an incident that occurred in 1982 and the DPP in Northern Ireland, Barra McGrory, has ordered the reopening of a case involving MI5 interference with evidence. He pointed out that in the case of the Craigavon Two, a conviction was secured against John Paul Wooton and Brendan McConville, despite similar interference with evidence by the intelligence services. During a recent appeal by Wooton and McConville, it emerged that the intelligence services had deliberately deleted evidence from a tracking device attached to John Paul Wooton's car. As the claim that John Paul Wooton was a getaway driver in the Continuity IRA attack that killed PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll is central to the case against Wooton, questions must be asked in regard to what data was deleted from the device and why. One can assume that if the evidence corroborated the apparent guilt of Wooton, it would be produced in court rather than deleted.

This is a serious matter and I believe the Government should take note of it and the matter should be addressed, irrespective of whether people think these people were involved in military activities. If these people are not guilty of what they have been accused of, they should not be in prison for this crime. The Government should push the British authorities to look again at this case, because it is causing unnecessary tension in the community. It will only lead to a bad outcome if we do not deal with the matter in a positive manner.

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