Three fundamental matters, it appears to me, arise out of this motion which has been sponsored by the Government. I propose to confine my remarks very shortly to these points. I adverted to two of them in the discussion last week on the motion to set up a select committee of the Oireachtas. The first point is a question of Deputies' privileges. The second regards the immunity of the Parliament to investigation of its affairs by an outside body. The third question is: does the motion proposed by the Government, even with the amendment suggested, allow of such full investigation on all the facts and circumstances connected with the sale of this distillery as the public interest requires and as the public demands.
In regard to the first question, I do not propose to repeat what I said last week.
The second is of utmost importance: that Deputies' privileges be safeguarded so that the independence of Deputies in a discussion in the House may not be impaired or vitiated in any way. It is the constitutional right, I, submit, of Deputies, and it is the Parliamentary duty of Deputies, where it is in the public interest, to raise in the House matters given to them, whether in confidence or otherwise, which require ventilation in public, without the possibility of their being brought before any outside body to answer for anything they said or to disclose their sources of information. If that is allowed, it will put an end to the independence of Deputies. I want to know if the Taoiseach proposes to refer to that very fundamental point which I referred to last week. While I was speaking, the Minister for Industry and Commerce interpolated, by way of interruption, the comment that no person would be forced to go to this tribunal except by his own consent. I take the liberty to doubt the soundness of that suggestion and I want to know the Taoiseach's comment on it. It is a matter of such fundamental importance that I spoke as I did not intend to speak. It is not a matter that affects this Parliament or any Minister or Deputy, but it affects all Deputies and all Ministers in all future Irish Parliaments, this question of whether they are to be independent in debate.
The second point is somewhat related to the first, as to whether the proceedings and speeches of the House are to be canvassed, inquired into, discussed or debated by an outside body. It is essential for the independence of Parliamentary procedure that nobody outside the House should be able to inquire into the procedure of the House. This is safeguarded from abuse by the power which the House has of dealing with any offender against morality or against Standing Orders. It is a matter of great national importance that that position should be strongly safeguarded in any procedure of the tribunal which it is proposed to set up, by way of amendment if necessary.
The third point is the one to which most of the speakers have referred. It is the question of whether or not there has been any cloaking of facts. There is no doubt whatever that the motion of the Taoiseach, even with the amendment, undoubtedly will restrict an investigation of all the facts in connection with this sale. I have no intention of going into any of these facts. I can envisage and I can state facts, but I will not do so because I have a firm resolution not to go into any of these facts. There are numbers of points and circumstances that can be ruled out on these terms of reference. Are we to set up a tribunal with judges whose training most inevitably will bring them to the point where this, that or the other which a person wants to ventilate will be ruled outside their terms of reference? Once any fact, matter or thing is ruled as being outside the cognisance of the tribunal, once any fact, matter or thing which the public think relevant is ruled out as being outside the terms of reference, then immediately public confidence in the tribunal falls. I want to make that point conscientiously and in as strong language as the necessity of the case requires. Public interest has been roused to such a point that every decent person in this country wants to know the facts. It is only one aspect of the affair whether any members of this Assembly or of the other House of the Oireachtas had any improper part in the transaction, but inevitably the result of these terms of reference will be to confine the inquiry to that aspect. It is an aspect that nobody in this House wants to keep out, but we must see that no private individual would be precluded from making any case he wants to make or from giving any evidence he wants to give because the body of judges rule it out of order as not coming within their terms of reference. Once their power is exercised to declare any matter as being outside the terms of reference then public confidence at once falls.
We heard the Taoiseach last week giving list after list of all the various tribunals and commissions that have been held. He gave the findings of some of them—not of all of them—but of those that suited him. He said they exonerated the Government or members of the Oireachtas from any charge of corruption—and then mentioned plaintively that in spite of that nobody believed them. If that is a fact, and if there is a strong body of opinion on all sides, with the exception of the Government side, that the terms of reference are such as to restrict the investigation, what possible confidence will the public have in the tribunal? The question of whether the terms of reference should be wide or restricted is of such fundamental importance that it should be impressed on the Government until they see reason.
A subsidiary matter that arises in the terms of reference is that we are to tell these three judges—we assume that it is going to be a judicial tribunal though nothing to that effect is stated in the terms of reference—that they are to go and browse among the leaves of three or four volumes of the Official Reports of this Assembly with a view to finding out what may or may not be charges or allegations. Such a task ought not to be put on a judicial, or on any tribunal. It is wrong in the Parliamentary sense that the judges should be given these copies of the Dáil Reports and be told to find out for themselves what the charges are: "We do not know what the charges are, but look through them and see for yourselves." These judicial gentlemen with their technical training and knowledge of criminal law-and who are perhaps completely divorced from public affairs through their long isolation on the judicial bench-may say that they see nothing which they can frame into a charge, or they might see some charge which no one else sees.
In the first place, an investigation into the proceedings of the House is unsound, and it is a wrong thing to tell them to go through the volumes of the reports to find out the charges for themselves, to say: "We of the Government cannot find them for you." That is wrong.
I raised on the last occasion the question of the procedure before this tribunal. I pointed out that there is not in this case, as there may have been in the case of some of the other tribunals which we set up, somebody who could be regarded as plaintiff and somebody who could be regarded as defendant, somebody who could be regarded as prosecutor and somebody who could be regarded as accused. I stated that it was fundamentally wrong and quite unsound to set up a tribunal in which the judges will be merely investigators of facts, in which they themselves will have to put the questions, as members of foreign tribunals are in the habit of doing in investigating criminal charges. That is not the function, nor is it in accord with the training, of our judges. There should be before this tribunal some trained lawyers—solicitor or barrister or both—independent of the Government and of everybody interested in this controversy, whose duty it would be to put before this tribunal every relevant fact and as many documents as he can possibly get—irrespective of any plea of privilege by the Government—to enable the judges to investigate the facts. He should produce all the relevant documents and witnesses for both sides, whether for the people who are making these allegations or for those people who may think they have to answer allegations. Every fact, matter and thing connected with this entire transaction from its inception-the arrival of those foreign gentlemen who tried to purchase this distillery, the occurrences during their stay and subsequent to their departure, and the incidents that occurred in connection with the power of attorney—should be forthcoming so that the public may be satisfied with whatever finding or verdict is given by this tribunal.
That is the real matter to which we, as Deputies, should direct our attention—the setting up of such a tribunal as will command public respect and whose findings will be regarded, not as the findings of a technical trio of judicial gentlemen, acting within limited and narrow terms of reference, but the findings of independent judges who have been given all the facts. Such a finding will commend itself to the people. If we do not do that, we shall be doing a bad day's work for decency in public life. I think that it is a very wrong thing on the part of the Government to be having a long debate, on a matter which is to be inquired into judicially, merely for the purpose of having restricted terms of reference. That is the issue. Are we to have restricted terms of reference or the fullest inquiry into all the facts? There are facts which the public want to be informed upon in connection with the inception, initiation, progress and final determination of this Locke Distillery purchase which are not connected with any charge or which are only incidentally connected with any charge. Those should be inquired into. Decent people want to know the facts. If the Government insists on restricting the terms of reference, the public will believe that they have something to hide. They will have no confidence in this tribunal and the findings will have the same fate as those to which the Taoiseach referred in the case of other tribunals. Notwithstanding that people were charged before these tribunals and that, the facts having been inquired into, they were found to be guiltless, the public did not, and does not yet, believe in the findings.