Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed the Minister has not shown up to the Chamber for this debate.

As the House will be aware, on 1 April the Department of Justice and Equality released on its website a press statement announcing the Minister’s intention to grant a posthumous pardon to Mr. Harry Gleeson, a man executed at the hands of the State on 23 April 1941 for the murder of Mrs. Mary McCarthy, a murder he did not commit. It has been seen by many as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the State.

In August 2013 this case was referred to the Office of the Attorney General and reviewed by Mr. Shane Murphy SC, who produced a report in January. For some inexplicable reason the Department of Justice and Equality has not released the report to the public.

It seems there has been an attempt by the Department to play down the significance of this case. Evidence, which has come to light since the execution of Mr. Gleeson, points to deliberate collusion by members of An Garda Síochána relating to his conviction. It is one of the key pieces of evidence which makes this conviction wrong and yet has received little or no attention in the press release the Department released on the pardon.

In particular, there was evidence of a fraudulent entry made in a firearms register. In 1983 a prosecution witness, Mr. Michael Leamy, revealed that on the afternoon the body was discovered and reported by Mr. Gleeson two plain clothes detectives came into the hardware store where Mr. Leamy worked and ordered a fraudulent entry be inserted in the firearms register for the purchase of a particular type of ammunition by Mr. Gleeson’s uncle. This entry has been located and is available to the public to view.

This evidence was submitted to the Department of Justice by Mr. Marcus Bourke, a former parliamentary draftsman, who wrote a book entitled Murder at Marlhill about the case in 1993. Why has it taken 22 years to issue this pardon? Why has it been issued now?

In the press statement of 1 April, the Minister made no reference to the work of Mr. Marcus Bourke. It did not highlight the statement by Mr. Leamy or mention that gardaí approached him on the day the body was found. The statement suggested merely that the firearms register, which was not produced during the trial despite several requests by the trial judge, "tended not to support the prosecution’s case." That is the only reference in it.

In a separate press release on 31 March, a day before the Harry Gleeson press release, the Minister for Justice and Equality announced that she was releasing the report of a similar case which had been reviewed by a senior counsel into the death of Fr. Niall Molloy. Why in this case was the report released but in Harry Gleeson’s case the report is somehow deemed to represent confidential legal advice to the Attorney General and the Minister? It is completely incongruous and it does not add up that one report can be deemed worthy of publication and another report not. Clearly the Department of Justice and Equality wishes to suppress the content of one report.

This case has bemused and concerned people for years. It goes far beyond a merely unsafe conviction, as the Minister has stated in her press release. It was a deliberate miscarriage of justice and should be seen as such by the Minister and her Department, and this should be made clear on the public record.

Mr. Murphy’s report should be released to the public, as it is in the interest of the public to see it. The Minister for Justice and Equality should certify that this was a miscarriage of justice and make a full and frank apology to the families and all people affected by this case, which has lingered on since 1941.

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