Derek McDowell (Labour)

Senator Jim Walsh is right to point out that police in some parts of the world have infiltrated organised crime gangs. One is on a very slippery moral slope when that starts to happen. If members of police forces want to impress their would-be colleagues in crime, they have to be seen to engage in criminal acts. It is difficult to justify a decision to authorise police personnel to do things which are criminal, such as possessing firearms or being part of bank robberies so they can see what is happening. I completely agree with Senator Walsh that if we are dealing with offences of this nature, the truth is they will be prosecuted in the last analysis by internal informer evidence rather than external observation. I see nothing wrong with informer evidence in such cases. I mentioned on Second Stage that the Labour Party proposed an amendment that would allow people to be retried for offences of which they were convicted. Deputies Howlin and Jim O'Keeffe argued that it might be a good thing for people who have got away with murder to spend the rest of their lives wondering whether one of their accomplices in the murder will inform on them. It was suggested that they should not be given a free ticket for the rest of their lives — they should not be sure they will not be brought to book for the crime. It is an issue about which I will have to think seriously. Perhaps people who have committed such crimes should live in a world where the prospect that one of their accomplices might get into trouble someday and decide to provide vital evidence, such as telling the gardaí where the murder weapon is concealed or the body is located, is always hanging over them. They should be worried that they could get caught in the end.

I will consider the important point made by Senator Jim Walsh. Today is not the day for me to give a definitive answer in that regard. I take the point that if one really wants to penetrate organised crime and organised drug dealing, one has to be willing to pay and protect informants. As Fr. Peter McVerry said in today's Evening Herald, we need to be in a position to penetrate these organisations, by whatever means, so we can get evidence from within. Under our law, it is impossible to prove many of these offences from the outside. We are familiar with some of the structures which are used in the United States, including plea bargains and immunity deals, etc. We may have to raise our game substantially. I would like to say, in response to the points made by Fr. McVerry in the Evening Herald about the amount of resources being allocated to informer evidence and witness protection programmes, that there is no sense in which the Government is holding back on resources in that regard. If the Garda Commissioner tells me more money is needed for a witness protection programme or an informer evidence programme and that such funds would yield results, the Government will not fail to sanction such expenditure.