Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

There are good grounds that reasons for not prosecuting cases are not given. For example, the Garda could believe that an individual, making an allegation of, say, assault, rape or robbery, is being untruthful. The Garda could argue that, in the past, the individual had a reputation for fantasising. A reporter could then ask the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions why a case was not brought and be informed that the individual concerned was a shifty character and an unreliable witness. To publicly state so would be a great injustice to that person. I accept this is a basic and unlikely example. However, the Director of Public Prosecutions often has private reasons for not prosecuting and, if put into the public domain, these could be injurious to the injured party or someone closely associated with him or her.

This is not an easy aspect for the Director of Public Prosecutions to deal with. The director must also deal with the proposition that if reasons are given in some cases, as they are inoffensive to the parties concerned, and not in others, the natural inference will be that something was wrong with the injured party. It is not easy to push this through.

Senator Jim Walsh raised the issue of where investigating gardaí, having put much effort into a case, put together a file they consider will lead to a successful prosecution, only to find, to their dismay, that the Director of Public Prosecutions declines to proceed and offers no real reason for such a decision. Based on my experience at various levels in the prosecution process, and as an officeholder, in such cases the director will normally explain the basis of the conclusion reached. There are few cases where a one line answer is given to the Garda, with no explanation offered if asked. We are dealing with human blood and flesh in these decisions. If a team of detectives has made a great effort in putting together a case against an individual and convinced itself it has done the needful, it is disquieting and disheartening if someone sitting in an office 100 miles away declines to proceed. However, this is the whole point of having an Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Otherwise, prosecutions would be brought by the people at the coalface without the intervention of the director.

I understand what Senator Jim Walsh is driving at. I am aware from my own experience that what he says has been true on occasion. Teams of detectives and individual prosecuting officers have felt greatly deflated when projects have not been accepted for prosecution by the Director of Public Prosecutions. The obverse of the coin is that if we did not have an outside authority to decide whether a case had made the grade, there would be no Director of Public Prosecutions and no outside view. I temper my remarks with my experience, which has been that the Director of Public Prosecutions works closely, but not improperly closely, with investigating teams and, generally speaking, offers advice and guidance to them. I would be very surprised if the director did not offer a reason for his or her decisions, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. To offer an entirely theoretical explanation, it might have been the case that the director had come to the conclusion he or she could not trust what he or she was being told. The director might not be inclined to say that to the gardaí in question. If that happened, it would be on a very rare occasion.