Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate. It is timely and important. I am speaking primarily as Chair of the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and also as a Deputy from a Border constituency who lived through all of the Troubles.

If anything is absolutely true, it is that the Good Friday Agreement has worked and the violence has ended. Notwithstanding the fact that more than 3,500 people died as a direct result of violence by the IRA, Protestant paramilitaries, the British army, the RUC and others, peace is in our land, North and South. This means that the focus of the legislation that was used during those troubling years has now changed. The IRA’s guns - that we know of - are silenced, but there are still serious issues in our country. The court was revived because, as the Minister stated, 29 people died as a result of the Real IRA’s action in the bombing of Omagh. Earlier this year, there was an attempt to murder Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell. It was an evil act in front of his son.

There is still a serious threat to the security of the North and South from paramilitaries.

The State's capacity to deal with terrorism and organised crime, while protecting human rights, must be paramount. That capacity means that there is a constitutional provision which allows the use, in exceptional circumstances, of courts like the Special Criminal Court, to deal with actions like jury intimidation. That is allowed under our Constitution. It is an exceptional measure and must only be used exceptionally. The majority and the minority reports talk about changes in the way the court sits, the Constitution, the need for unanimous verdicts and issues around juries. It is important that we address other issues raised in the minority report in relation to juries and the way jurors are announced in open court. There is a suggestion that there should be a separate entrance for jurors but whether they go in by a separate entrance or not, the fact is that we are now dealing with the Kinahan cartel and with violent and evil people who are absolutely ruthless in the murders that they commit. Jurors would be very unhappy if they were identified because if they then convicted such people in an ordinary court by way of a gold-standard jury trial they would be in danger as a result.

It is important and judicious that this report is properly examined and that the Minister introduces, at the appropriate time, the new legislation that is needed. Of interest in my constituency was the conviction in the Special Criminal Court of a person for the murder of Keane Mulready Woods, a young child who was murdered and his body dismembered. The court passed sentence for that crime and there will be other such crimes in our society because the drugs and the drug dealers are not going away.

The use of the Special Criminal Court must be exceptional and rare and here must be a real and present danger to jurors. As a Border Deputy, I am very conscious that during the period of the Troubles Ms Jean McConville was buried in an unmarked grave by the IRA, Mr. Tom Oliver was brutally murdered by the IRA and Robert Nairac is believed to be buried somewhere in my constituency. These crimes still affect all of the people in my constituency. Very recently I went to Bragan bog where the remains of Mr. Columba McVeigh are believed to be buried. The bodies of Columba, along with Mr. Joseph Lynskey, Mr. Robert Nairac and Mr. Seamus Maguire, four of the so-called disappeared who were murdered by the IRA, have yet to be returned. To say that the war is over is absolutely true. Sinn Féin calls it a war but I do not call it that. That is what Sinn Féin says. We need those bodies to be returned and we need the people in the IRA who murdered them to make sure that the victims' families, after 50 years in some cases, can get closure. The Good Friday Agreement is working and it is important that Sinn Féin would support this legislation. Sinn Féin has its history and its interpretation of our country. I note that the spokesperson for Sinn Fein named a number of people who were active in the IRA and who were jailed. Some of them were executed during the Second World War. I did not hear him mention the name of Mr. Seán Russell who was a commander in the IRA at that time. I understand he died on board a Nazi u-boat on his way to Ireland, 200 miles off the Galway coast. He was an associate of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Joachim von Ribbentrop, of the Nazi regime. There is history that the Sinn Féin representative should not forget either.

The key point now is to move our country forward and try to reach a consensus on where we have to go. Any legislation the Minister proposes will obviously be duly and properly considered and will be brought before this House. In the meantime, I fully support the renewal of this legislation. At the end of the day, jury trials are the gold standard and there is no doubt about that. However, when juries are intimidated, as they can be and have been, exceptional measures are needed but there also needs to be exceptional safeguards. I have no issue with increasing safeguards to ensure that when judge-only trials are taking place, there is a very serious and profound examination of the reasons for that. One of the arguments about having to come into this Oireachtas to renew this legislation is that it is a good thing because it forces us to renew the mandate to continue on an annual basis. That is constructive in that it gives us the opportunity to examine the situation, to read the report on what has happened in the previous year and to do due diligence on what we are going to do in the future. I will be supporting the Government in the forthcoming vote.

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