We have in the Emergency Powers Bill, consequent on the passing of this motion, a provision to suspend the operation of the Constitution in regard to the most vital section or article in the Constitution, which is Article 40, involving the right of the individual not to be detained by the State without being brought before the courts. That fundamental right has existed for centuries in the common law system. It might be regarded as the fundamental lynchpin in regard to the freedom of the individual and is equally written in and guaranteed in the Convention on Human Rights.
I take issue very strongly with the Minister in not spelling out this in his opening speech. He did make an apology for not going into the Emergency Powers Bill but surely, either in comment or explanatory memorandum, or in speech here, we should have been told before now precisely why this motion on which we have been asked to vote is introduced. This motion is introduced in order to suspend the basic constitutional right of any person detained by the State to have the issue of his detention brought before a High Court judge—habeas corpus, the fundamental right which broke the despotic power of the monarchy and the feudal laws in Britain, the fundamental right that is transferred into the American Constitution, the Canadian Constitution, the Australian Constitution and the New Zealand Constitution, the fundamental right to which we have subscribed in our two Constitutions and which is written into Article 40.
It is quite evident that this is internment by the back door, recurrent internment. That is what it amounts to because under subsection (3) of section 2 of the Emergency Powers Bill, it is now proposed to extend the period of 48 hours within which a person may be arrested under the Offences Against the State Act. Forty-eight hours was regarded as a very extensive period when it was introduced in the Offences Against the State Act code. That period is now being extended for a further five days after arrest if the Chief Superintendent so directs. After the seven-days' detention or internment without trial, or without being brought before the court, that person on his release after seven days can be rearrested under another section of the Offences Against the State Act and incarcerated for another seven days without habeas corpus operating to insist that the explanation for his detention be brought before the court as a matter of right.
This motion is before us to enable that to be done. What we say in our amendment to the motion is that, by implication, it is not the appropriate way to deal with this problem. This is the sledge-hammer cracking the nut. This is an Aunt Sally type of politics, building up a matter that can be dealt with by other legitimate, constitutional and proper legal means. The amendment to the motion agrees with the assessment of the Minister in regard to the continuing violence in Northern Ireland, agrees with the Minister on the deteriorating law and order position within the State.
We suggest bluntly that the Government should provide and utilise fully adequate personnel and resources to ensure the safety and well-being of our citizens. Is this being done at the present time? Are not the two offences to which the Minister refers in his opening remarks, and which I strongly condemn—the introduction of explosives into Green Street court house and the unfortunate and tragic killing of the British Ambassador—offences under the ordinary law of the land? We do not need to suspend the Constitution to apprehend the people responsible for these offences. The tragic murder of the British Ambassador is an offence which under the law of this land, and in my view rightly so, is accountable after conviction to capital punishment. The Minister does not need the Constitution to be suspended in order to apprehend the perpetrators of that crime. I do not want to go into it but those two offences did show to put it mildly, a security situation that could be tightened up internally either by more personnel or better deployment of resources.
Either way, this represents an administration problem. It does not represent the problem that demands the suspension of the Constitution and the elimination of the basic right of habeas corpus and the introduction of detention without trial in recurring periods of seven days at the dictates of a Chief Superintendent. This amounts to the internment without trial that failed so disastrously in the North of Ireland after it was introduced by Mr. Brian Faulkner, the type of approach to this matter of adding institutional violence to individual and organisational violence. That response on the part of Mr. Faulkner in the North of Ireland was shown to be a lamentable failure. We said so as the Government and refused to introduce it. The present Government are now seeking to bring in that system of detention without trial. I would call it recurrent internment.
As our amendment points out, one can deal with this matter and other matters that have arisen by full utilisation of the personnel and resources available to the security authorities in the State. All necessary and appropriate steps can be taken to combat and defeat subversion and the activities of unlawful organisations. I am glad the Minister said something which I was going to refer to myself—the statistical fact that the level of deaths and injuries is now high but it is not as high as it was in 1972. Nineteen seventy-two was the worst year since 1969 in regard to violence, deaths and injuries in Ireland. We brought in the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act, 1972, because of the high peak of crimes of violence that existed at that time. The Minister says that was the worst year. Today they are still bad. I agree with the Minister on that.
I do not like taxing people too much with their sins of the past. We are all vulnerable in that respect. One reads the reasonable tone of our amendment to the motion and then I listened to Senator O'Higgins objecting to me using the remark "window dressing". I would quote, very briefly, Deputy Cooney, as he then was, speaking in the Dáil on the Offences Against the State Bill, 1972, as it then was, on 29th November, 1972, the year in which, he has just stated, the level of violence was at an all-time high in Ireland as a result of subversion and of the activities of unlawful organisations. At column 276 of the Official Report, Deputy Cooney said very emphatically, and I quote:
What is required is an amendment and a strengthening of the will of the Executive rather than window dressing of a legal fashion.
In his concluding remarks, at column 290 of the Official Report on 29th November, 1972, he said:
It is window dressing on the part of the Government to ask us to give them a power that turns the rights of the citizens, the very freedom we are here to protect into a nullity and I would ask this House, when it comes to decide how it votes on this particular matter, to decide in conscience if the Minister has demonstrated that the present laws are inadequate to justify this awful interference with individual freedom. It is a matter of conscience for every Member of this Parliament on which he must make up his own mind. If he feels that the rights of the individual are now threatened beyond a tolerable limit consonant with the necessity to protect democracy, then he must in conscience vote against this Bill. No case has been made, in my submission, for voting for this Bill and I ask this House to reject it.
That Bill brought in the offence under which the Minister has made practically all the arrests in connection with subversion since he became Minister for Justice. In the course of his brief, the Minister mentions the substantial number of arrests in regard to crimes of violence in the State that have been made since he became Minister for Justice. The Minister takes some pride in that fact, but he has not stated the particular section of the Offences Against the State legislation under which the majority of these arrests were made. The Minister is well aware that the operating section of the Offences Against the State legislation that is most effective in dealing with subversives in our community at present is section 3 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1972, to which the Minister took such grave exception in November, 1972, and which he described as window dressing. It has been the most useful, practical piece of legislation in so far as the Minister for Justice is concerned in dealing with this problem which we all abhor. The importance of that section, which was sorely criticised by Deputy Cooney, as he was then, and which he is now operating as his main legislative means of dealing with unlawful organisations, is that the people apprehended must be brought before an Irish court, open and subject to the scrutiny of the media. That is a very fundamental safeguard.
At that time, we resisted pressures from the British Government in regard to bringing in internment and persisted in ensuring that as far as possible, however tough the laws and penalties might be in dealing with subversion, they would be laws and penalties subject to the scrutiny of our courts. Section 3—the section to which the then Deputy Cooney severely objected before there was a swift retreat beaten on a famous evening—however tough, has the merit that the Chief Superintendent who states he is satisfied that the person apprehended is a member of an unlawful organisation must do so in a witness box, be subject to cross-examination and his statement can be rebutted by the offended party. In some cases where the offended party, a member of an unlawful organisation, has done so, he or she has escaped. That avenue was open. The cases are open to reportage in our national newspapers and on the radio and television.
That is the difference of approach between the way we decided to go about it and what the Minister is now deciding to do in this motion. In this motion the Minister is deciding to remove the courts out of the situation altogether. The motion will have the effect of suspending the Constitution in so far as it relates to the Emergency Powers Bill which is consequent on the motion. In effect, that means that a person can be detained and rearrested and detained again. We have here what I would describe as a backdoor method of recurrent internment by the Minister who is taking this particular class of offender away from the scrutiny of the courts and subjecting him or her to this form of detention.
Is it really necessary to do this? This again is where the Minister has fallen down in presenting his case to us. The only two offences he raises as being the reason that prompted the Government to bring in this package of legislation are offences that can be dealt with under the ordinary security arrangements that exist at present, if they are rendered more effective, and under the ordinary law of this land. The blasting of Green Street Courthouse with explosives and the murder of the British Ambassador are two common law offences that would have been offences long before the Offences Against the State Act was ever heard of. The Minister is well aware of that.
I would emphasise that we in Fianna Fáil, who introduced the Offences Against the State Act in 1939 and strengthened it in 1972, support the Minister in the aspects of this package of legislation that strengthen the Offences Against the State Act. We support the Minister on the legislation in which penalties are being increased. We support the Minister fully on the increased penalties he suggests. I realise penalties are largely a matter for the courts but, at the same time, this will act as a psychological lever on the courts, or hopefully it will, if the Oireachtas shows its abhorrence of these offences by suitably increasing the level of penalty. I go along with the Minister on that and so do the Fianna Fáil Party.
I go along with the Minister on the increased powers of arrest for offences against the State which are given to the police. I am giving a warning here that we do not go along with the Minister in giving Army personnel down to the rank of private the same police powers of arrest. We feel very strongly that the answer here is to recruit more Garda personnel. What we want here are more Garda with powers. We do not want Army personnel who are not trained for this job to have these powers.
We go along with the Minister in securing increased powers of arrest on suspicion of an offence having being committed, or about to be committed, provided these increased powers reside with the police force of this nation, trained, educated and fitted to perform these duties. We feel very strongly that the existing ordinary legislation can be firmed up, as it is done in certain sections of the Criminal Law Bill which we will support—the sections I have just mentioned. We feel this can be done effectively.
The Minister has certainly introduced a very tough penalty for the offence which he decried in 1972. He decried section 3 of the 1972 Bill giving this right to the chief superintendent. He was severely critical of it then. We had a penalty of two years. He now proposes a penalty of seven years. We support him in that. We support him in all the increased penalties relating to offences against the State and all the increased powers he proposes to give to Garda Síochána personnel who are seeking to apprehend people in connection with offences against the State. The Minister has that assurance of our position.
We will not support the Minister in suspending the Constitution and depriving apprehended people of the right to the protection of habeas corpus. We will not support the Minister in taking this drastic step of declaring a national emergency for that purpose when he has the wide-ranging powers in regard to arrest on suspicion by police personnel which we willingly give him and which he has to some degree already under the Offences Against the State legislation which he now seeks to enhance under this package of legislation. We are willing to give him that.
We will not give him the power to suspend the Constitution and take this basic human right from our people, especially when one realises the consequences of this. This sort of window dressing is only giving the impression of activity when, in fact, nothing is really being done. We have not got a single iota or word of explanation prior to this by way of statement, or in an explanatory memorandum, or from the Minister, as to why this ultra-excessive reactionary power is sought to be acquired by the State. When there is this panoply of law and regulation and power of arrest existing under the whole corpus of the Offences Against the State Act code, now extended under one of these Bills, the Criminal Law Bill, when all of that exists and is about to exist, with very much increased penalties to all of which we suscribe, why is the Minister going through this charade—and if it was only a charade it would not be too bad—which will be seriously damaging to our economy and which has already caused it considerable harm?
It is not doing Ireland any good to have a national emergency declared, and to have a state of national emergency in which fundamental human rights are abrogated and by reason of which we may have to derogate from the European Convention on Human Rights. We have succeeded very recently, as a result of our initiative when in Government, in securing an order specifying that our allegations in regard to torture by the British Government of offenders in Northern Ireland were fully justified. We will now have to derogate from that precise convention under which we brought our proceedings, by reason of our abrogation of the Constitution as proposed by the Minister in this motion.
Surely all of this is serious enough to warrant some degree of explanation from the Minister. Yet we have not had this. We have had no indication from the Minister why he wants seven-days' detention, why he wants the Constitution suspended so that by arrest for seven days, and rearrest for a further seven days, and rearrest for a further seven days, people can be kept indefinitely without being brought before a court because their rights of habeas corpus have been taken from them. To put it mildly that is surely a serious enough matter to warrant an explanation from the Minister for Justice and the Government. It is some weeks now since these proposals were announced. They have been published for a week. Yet we have had no explanation up to now. I do not know what the Taoiseach has said in the other House but we have had no explanation as to what circumstances have arisen which warrant this basic departure from the rule of law and the declaration before the world that we are in a national state of emergency. The Minister owes it to the House here and to the nation as a whole to spell out precisely the reasons why this is being done. If the Minister did that it might enlighten all of us to some extent.
I can see no reason why this is being done at present. I can see why the Criminal Law Bill, the other measure in the package, is being brought in. That is the type of measure we brought in, in 1972. It is a tightening-up measure in regard to offences against the State. It is a firming-up measure with increased penalties as I have already said, and some new offences. It is a measure on which we will have, hopefully, a very constructive debate both in the Dáil and Seanad because, in principle, we support the idea behind bringing in that measure. We will have some important amendments to make on it in regard to the incitement provision which we think is too widely drafted under section 3. We will have some very real opposition to the provision extending the police powers to the Army. Apart from that, we agree with the broad principle of a measure firming up the existing Offences Against the State legislation.
Without explanation, and even with it, we will not agree to this. No matter how one rationally assesses this matter, upside down and inside out, one cannot see why the Constitution has to be suspended and this basic human right denied to our citizens, and internment brought in, or detention without trial on a recurring basis in effect. All to what purpose, when we have already got some very Draconian measures which we introduced, and there are further such measures with Draconian penalties proposed by the Minister in the Criminal Law Bill which can be provided under ordinary legislation.
Under the Offences Against the State Act legislation enough powers are available to the State and the Government if there is a political will to implement them. If the political will is there, the legislation is already there, subject to being firmed up, improved and strengthened. Subject to the political will being there to provide the resources and the personnel, we can give the proper security cover required to protect the State and its people without bringing in this measure. Up to now we have got no explanation. We would like to hear from the Minister why this very serious step is being taken. I cannot see in any rational investigation of the matter how any reasonable explanation can be forthcoming. We will oppose this motion in the other House and here. We will oppose the Emergency Powers Bill. We will support many aspects of the Criminal Law Bill and offer constructive and responsible criticism on the Committee Stage.
The real problem in this country at the moment is the state of the economy. There is not much point in going through the arid motions of depriving people of their rights if there are to be no people here in gainful employment and we are not to have the sort of social development and expansion in the economic sense that we all wish. The two are related. If the Government act in this sort of ham-fisted manner, heavy-handed manner, and produce a state of emergency out of the air, and a general image of martial law and a national state of emergency, that is the sort of stuff we were used to seeing emanating from South American banana republics over the years. It does not help the economy. That is precisely the sort of extreme, heavy-handed over-reaction which the Fine Gael Lord Mayor of Dublin warned his colleagues against before the appearance of these Bills. That is the sort of heavy over-response or over-reaction which traditionally we get from crude dictators in the remoter parts of South America.
That is the sort of reaction that deters investment in the economy. That is the sort of reaction, by reason of the publicity it has got, that has already affected investment in our economy here, and the two are entwined. We will only get the substantial investment we require, both from our own investors and from abroad, if we create the climate for it. The climate for such investment is grievously damaged by this sort of ultra-reaction and creation of a panic state of emergency, not required by the facts, not required by a Government who can, as we suggest in our amendment to the motion, utilise their present resources in the way of personnel and other resources to ensure the safety and well-being of our citizens. They have sufficient powers already and will have more powers under the sections of the Bill to which we have no opposition to handle unlawful organisations under the law of this land.
That is the way investors expect Governments to behave. They do not expect Governments to generate national emergency crises out of the sky and to quote as the justification for that in the Minister's opening statement to this House two offences which could be dealt with under the ordinary law of the land: the offence of murder and the offence of damage to property caused by explosives, the perpetrators of which are still at large. It is to this whole area of recruiting more personnel, deploying resources more effectively, and improving police methods, that the Government should be directing their attention. They should be directing their attention possibly to reopening many of the police stations which we closed in happier days, having more personnel on the beat in touch with the people and in a position to gather information, having a far stronger police presence on the ground, both on the beat and in contact with people in every part of the country, in every townland and street. That is the area to which the Government should be directing their energies.
There are 2,500 applicants for 500 Garda positions or something of that order. If I am wrong, perhaps the Minister would correct me when he is replying. The Minister spoke about how the Garda strength and Army strength had been increased. It is not enough to deal with the problem. If the problem is as serious as the Minister states—and I am inclined to go along with him—the Minister should have more Garda personnel and more Army personnel. What is wanted is more personnel and greater utilisation of existing powers, rather than creating new legislative powers which do serious harm in the area of human rights, in the area of the freedom of the individual, in the area of the suspension of the Constitution, and do nothing except harm and damage to Ireland's image as a free and democratic State.
I regard it as the very essence of bad Government to over-legislate through over-reaction. If over-reaction after the unfortunate murder of the British Ambassador has resulted in a national state of emergency being declared here, that is bad Government; that is bad administration; that is jumping into an easy headline and setting up a smokescreen of diversionary tactics. That is not good enough. That is reacting; it is not constructing. The only constructive steps we have seen in recent weeks have been the steps taken by the people of all denominations who are acting together in the interests of peace. That is constructive. It is very necessary to ensure that the responses on the part of all of the Executives concerned with administration in Ireland today—the Executive here as well as the Executive in the North and the Executive in Britain—do not become intolerant, or brutal. If that sort of response develops and if the cycle of institutional violence is added to the unfortunate cycle of organisational and personal violence, that is bad. That is serious.
I would suggest to the Minister and to the Government that they should bear in mind our generously constructive attitude. The Minister and the Government can be fully assured that we will support the adoption of any legislative measure designed to strengthen the existing situation in regard to offenders against this State no matter where they come from. We will support fully the principle behind the main purport of the Criminal Law Bill, subject to the amendments we will put down which I have indicated. We will not support the Minister in abrogating the Irish Constitution. We will not support the Minister and the Government in taking away the basic human right of being charged before the courts of this land with whatever offence for which one is being detained. We will not support the Minister in that.
Recent events have fully supported our approach. The approach of Mr. Faulkner when we were being pressurised was proved wrong. Internment bred its own reaction and counter-reaction, and this sort of internment involved here in section 2 (3), internment by recurrent detention, will not work either. I believe very candidly —and I have reason for this belief— that the sort of power involved there, and the sort of power involved in giving the Army personnel police powers, is resented and not liked at all by the members of the two security forces concerned. This is the really serious aspect which could render the whole matter nugatory as far as the Minister and the Government are concerned.
Police and Army personnel today are civilised citizens of the State. They do not want to be cast in this sort of role, particularly having regard to the very fine traditions of the Irish Army and the Garda Síochána. My information is that these undesirable roles which are being accorded to them by the Government in this legislation are not roles which the Army or the Garda Síochána would seek for themselves. The Minister is bringing in this motion and the emergency legislation consequent upon it. He is bringing in legislation against the whole principle of human rights and against the whole principle of trial before a court. As well as doing that, and doing an injustice to that basic principle enshrined in our Constitution, he is also doing a serious injustice to the personnel and the administration of the two security forces of this State who, on my information, do not like at all what is being imposed upon them in this legislation.
They realise fully that what is wanted is far greater security administration, far more personnel, much more money devoted to the problem of security, and the extension of existing laws within the criminal law of this land without flouting the Constitution in any way, the human rights guaranteed by our Constitution, and the Convention on Human Rights to which we subscribe. Surely it should be the purpose of what I would hope we have here, and have had heretofore— a civilised democratic State—to ensure that all security measures be taken consistent with bringing subversion under control and, at the same time, consistent with preserving basic rights. The Minister should come in here, and the Taoiseach in the other House, and tell us, the elected representatives of the people, fully, entirely and openly, how the existing legislation, how the existing resources, how the existing personnel, are unable to deal with the problem, how and in what manner the whole operation is falling down, and in what way detaining people for seven days without bringing them before a court will resolve the situation. In what way will that secure the apprehension of the murderers of the British Ambassador? In what way will that apprehend the people who planted explosives in Green Street courthouse? It cannot do it and the Minister knows well it cannot do it.
It is the duty of the Government to explain to us what they want and to be frank with us and the people. If the Government come to us in that spirit, I can assure the Minister for Justice that the Fianna Fáil Party will support them fully in every aspect required by him and by the Government to deal with subversion and men of violence, provided it is not something, as is enshrined in this motion, designed to flout the Constitution without any necessity. If he is suspending the Constitution, as he is proposing, he should certainly prepare a very serious dossier of reasons why. We have not got a single iota of explanation in the Minister's opening speech as to why. That in my view, is bad government.
In this part of Ireland, in the free State which we have, the independent State which we have, in the Republic, we have built up a reasonably constructive and thoughtful, responsible electorate, and they want to know why and, so far they have been denied an explanation. They will not go along with the Minister and the Government and give them support in their hearts or with their votes at the next election unless they are told why. They want to be informed.
I feel very strongly that this elaborate smokescreen has been erected by the Government to show cause— maybe to the British Government, I do not know—to somebody that they are doing something. In fact, the whole nub of the security problem lies fairly and squarely with them and can be dealt with by them if they get on with the job and do it effectively, stop erecting smokescreens, stop—to use the Minister's phrase— window dressing, stop playing politics with this very serious matter. They are doing serious damage to the State by erecting a system of emergency, by declaring a state of emergency without any real basis for it. Until there is a basis for it, the Minister and the Government are doing a grave disservice to our society and to our economy: our society in the form of the protection and enhancement of human rights, and our economy in the form of lack of trust and confidence in it by reason of the creation of an entirely artificial state of emergency. The Minister as the Minister responsible for the administration of criminal law should be getting on with the security job, making it fully effective and, as we say in our amendment here, utilising all the personnel and resources at their disposal, and coming in here with rational legislation which does not suspend the Constitution, rational legislation which we will back up to the hilt to deal with crimes of violence, subversion and unlawful organisations.