Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I move:

That Seanad Éireann, conscious of the Government's commitment to the Oireachtas and the McCabe family, that the early release of prisoners responsible for the brutal killing of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe was not part of the Good Friday Agreement, calls on the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to ensure that this policy is not reversed in the ongoing discussions between the Sinn Féin Leadership and the Government on political developments in Northern Ireland.

I welcome the Minister. With the Chair's permission I will read from a script, something I have not done since I entered this House two and a half years ago. I would like to do so this evening in order to put certain matters on the record.

In putting this motion to the House, my colleagues and I are giving the Government an opportunity to come clean on the full details of a secret deal negotiated between it and Sinn Féin last October. The public and the House want to hear the truth. More importantly, those directly affected by the brutal killing of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe want to hear the truth.

This evening, we want the Government to put on the record of the House exactly what was agreed in discussions last October aimed at kick-starting the suspended institutions. As a means of copper-fastening trust in the peace process and of setting the record straight, the Government has an obligation to come clean on the matter.

For too long this process has been aimed at making further concessions to the IRA as it continues to hold the entire political process to ransom. Peace is on its terms alone. We must all challenge this fundamental hypocrisy which undermines the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. In endorsing the Agreement, the Irish people bought peace for a certain price. The deal was relatively straightforward. The IRA stopped murdering people for an opportunity to allow its political representatives in Sinn Féin to enter the Northern Ireland Government and to also allow IRA prisoners to be freed under the terms of the Agreement. This was a difficult and painful pill for ordinary people to swallow, particularly in Northern Ireland where the IRA's murderous campaign was visited on all sections of the community over the past 35 years.

We should not forget that the IRA killers of gardaí in this State have also been released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Between 1998 and 1999 a total of 444 prisoners from all paramilitary organisations were released in Northern Ireland while in this State 57 prisoners were released. The notion that this was only a painful pill for the people of Northern Ireland is untrue, because significant numbers of convicted killers were also released here under our obligations under the Agreement.

The McCabe case was also outside any reasonable interpretation of the prisoner release programme. It was different, not least because the accused were convicted of manslaughter charges after the Good Friday Agreement was accepted. More important than that, the Irish people were given an assurance when voting for the Agreement that the McCabe killers would not be granted early release. In the Dáil on 27 May 1998, only days before the referendum, the former Taoiseach and former leader of my party, Deputy John Bruton, asked the Taoiseach to clarify the matter on the record. He asked:

Does the Taoiseach agree that a measure of clarity is necessary as it is not clear from the Belfast Agreement whether the relevant provision applies only to those already convicted or to those who may be convicted in future of offences committed in the past? The Agreement specifies that such people to which it applies will be released within a maximum of two years. Will the Taoiseach ensure maximum transparency regarding individual decision making and the procedures adopted in view of the understandable concern of victims' families?

The Taoiseach replied:

Of course there must be maximum clarification. In the Good Friday Agreement we were talking about the release within two years of people already convicted. There is no doubt about this and I am certain of it as I have been asked a similar question on at least three occasions in the past 24 hours.

Later, in September of that year, the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy John O'Donoghue accepted what the Taoiseach had said in the House on 27 May 1998.

Let us be absolutely clear that when Detective Garda Jerry McCabe was gunned down in Adare, this was plainly and simply a bank robbery organised and put into effect by the IRA. These men who were part of that deed were not angry young men from west Belfast or the Bogside. They were involved simply and straightforwardly in a bank job. To suggest that this case has analogies in Northern Ireland is way off the mark. This had nothing to do with Northern Ireland, even within Sinn Féin's warped justification concerning the alleged struggle in Ireland. Let us also be clear that the killers were lucky to get away with manslaughter charges when the more serious murder charges had to be dropped because of unprecedented intimidation of witnesses by so-called republicans. The mandatory sentence of 40 years for murder of a member of the Defence Forces would have been the sentence had a charge of murder been successful in that case.

It was with horror that we recently learned that our Government was prepared to ignore the solemn commitment it gave to the people in 1998 in even contemplating the release of the McCabe killers as part of a new deal with Sinn Féin. Policy in this area has been reversed without recourse to this House or to the people. The new formulation, as seen in the amendment to tonight's motion proposed by the Government, is that the early release of these criminals might now be contemplated where there is an end to all forms of paramilitarism by the IRA. The Government has broken its word and I am astonished the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, who regularly speaks with such authority on the subject of the relationship between Sinn Féin and the IRA, would be part and parcel of this secret deal and this undignified concession to an existing terrorist outfit in this State and in the other state. I do not believe he has much credibility on this subject when one considers his involvement in making further concessions to private armies in the course of his work as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

Furthermore, when he speaks on Northern Ireland, and when he speaks in particular about the relationship between the IRA and Sinn Féin, he speaks for me and many people like me in this State. I fundamentally agree with his sentiments and with his clear and unequivocal language. He spoke for me in speaking so regularly and passionately about this subject in the past, but he does not have much credibility now when it has been exposed that he and other members of the Government were prepared to do this secret deal last October. This is an issue he must address.

If Mr. David Trimble had accepted the IRA's act of decommissioning last October, those responsible for Detective Garda Jerry McCabe's death would now be out of prison. Under paragraph 13 of last year's joint declaration, the IRA could still be running their rackets, specifically because criminal activity was left out of the paragraph 13 commitments. Stopping punishment beatings or intelligence gathering is not the same as ending paramilitarism because it tacitly accepts the continuation of this outfit's criminal activity. Even if the Government were prepared to compromise on the release of the McCabe killers, as was clearly demonstrated last October, it sold us short in that commitment and the commitments that were sought from Sinn Féin and the IRA at that time.

I want the Minister to state unequivocally in this House this evening whether last October's deal included two of the gang members who managed to escape from the scene at Adare eight years ago. I understand that both of these individuals are now on the run and that Sinn Féin wants an amnesty for them in connection with any possible future charges they might face in relation to the McCabe case. We need clarity on this issue.

It is now ten years since the original ceasefire. Most people here want to move on. The real problem is that as long as a private army is in existence, and as long as that private army is inextricably linked to a political grouping, which it is, it will be virtually impossible for the kind of closure to take place which is at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement. We have put up with this ambiguity for far too long. We have an obligation to brave and dedicated people such as Detective Garda Jerry McCabe not to allow our history to be written by a bunch of thugs and crooks. This matter is of the utmost importance because it goes to the heart of what this State is about and to the heart of what those brave men and women, who put themselves on the line day in and day out against paramilitary groups of this type are about. We need an explanation from the Government. That is the intention of our motion.