Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

People should be concerned about how easily, quickly and smoothly this House passes severe restrictions on people's civil liberties year after year, extending supposed emergency powers and denying people basic human rights. There are two and a bit hours of debate, a couple of votes and off we go for another year until we repeat this farce again. We should identify what this debate is about. It is about denying the right of people to have jury trials. Under the Constitution, this is a fundamental right and an aspect of the right to a fair trial, but some people will be denied the right to jury trials. It is about saying that the uncorroborated opinion of a Garda chief superintendent can be treated as fact in a court of law. It is about denial of the right of the accused to stay silent. In the Special Criminal Court, people's right to be silent can be used against them as evidence in a case.

What we have here is a gross abuse of emergency powers and a violation of human rights. We know that human rights organisations of all sorts, including the ICCL, Amnesty International, the State's own Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the UN human rights committee have called over and over again for the end of the Special Criminal Court, yet every year, the Government and most of the Opposition wave it through with a wink and a nod. The ICCL has rightly described this annual debate as an exercise in rubber-stamping. We could also call it an exercise in respectability politics, where the vast majority of the Opposition fails to oppose something that they know is unjust and is a restriction on basic civil liberties simply because they are afraid of being labelled as soft on crime or terrorism. This applies, above all, to Sinn Féin, which used to correctly oppose this restriction and the use of Diplock courts, and which will, after tabling an amendment that will be voted down, abstain on the motion.

The Government and most of the Opposition have presided over a disgraceful situation where so-called emergency powers that suspend human rights have been renewed year after year for 52 years. Every year, I and others point out that the Special Criminal Court has never really been about combating organised crime or terrorism. It is about maximising the repressive powers of the State and its ability to jail potential opponents who might threaten the status quo. We have evidence of that. In the past year, we have seen a wave of far-right terrorism across the State, with upwards of 30 arson attacks against accommodation for refugees, and a riot inspired and led by the far right that caused millions of euro in damage and shut down Dublin city centre, but the Offences Against the State Act was not used. Why? It was because the Special Criminal Court is a deeply political court. It is only used against those whom the State or Government consider as an existential threat to the established order, which clearly does not include the far right. Far from it. The far right got the polar opposite treatment to republican and nationalist dissidents. Rather than being subjected to Diplock courts and imprisonment on the word of gardaí, they are handled with kid gloves. Orders come down from on high to take a softly-softly approach. There could not be stronger evidence that the racist ethnonationalists of the far right support the status quo rather than being a threat to it.

Besides the emergence of the far right campaign, just before the last vote, we had the majority report which recommends the end of this legislation and a minority report which correctly recommends the end of a permanent non-jury court. It does not seem that anything will be done about this. A report was published in 2002 but not one of its recommendations has been implemented. It is just a mechanism to kick the can down the road. I support the campaign of the ICCL and the fact that it has eviscerated the idea that this is the only way to prevent jury tampering, which is complete nonsense. Other methods are used around the world. I hope its campaign can persuade some Opposition TDs to set aside their rubber stamps this year. I am looking at Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and Labour.

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