Deputy Boland desires to raise the subject matter of question No. 11 on to-day's Order Paper.
Adjournment Debate. - Statement by Minister.
If there is not to be an inquiry into the charges that have been made against the Fianna Fáil Government, I hope that we shall get somewhere in clearing them up in the half hour at our disposal to-night. This charge was made by the present Minister for External Affairs on the eve of the general election at an election meeting in Enniscorthy.
That is not right.
Mr. Boland
The first time it was made publicly was at an election meeting in Enniscorthy, four days before the general election, obviously in the hope that it would not be overtaken before the election took place. It was published in the Press, in the Sunday Independent, on February 1st and in the morning papers of the 2nd February. The charge was that no action had been taken against certain individuals who were alleged to be closely associated with the Government and that there had been ample time to have this done. The Minister for External Affairs had been returned to the Dáil sometime about October and if he were concerned with a clean administration of justice, and not with making charges of corruption, he would have raised the matter —he had ample time to raise the matter before the Dáil dissolved—had he wished to do so.
On a point of order, may I take it that if this debate is to be concerned with my conduct, I shall be given an opportunity of replying?
You had your innings to-day.
As I understand it, the question was addressed to the Minister for Justice and I am giving Deputy Boland an opportunity of making his introduction before he comes to the actual point of the question. I am hoping that he will come to that quickly because the time of the debate is limited.
Mr. Boland
I intend to do that. You will remember that I asked the Ceann Comhairle for an opportunity to deal with this whole matter because it was not my question, as you are aware, but I am an ex-Minister and very serious charges were made against me.
I shall give the Deputy an opportunity of developing his point, but I suggest he should come to the point without delay.
Mr. Boland
I have not been two minutes speaking and I have already been interrupted.
Let us not waste time.
Mr. Boland
You cannot suggest, Sir, that I am wasting it. Five months later, on the 24th June last, I tried to raise this matter on the Estimate for the Minister for Justice and I was told it was still sub judice. That is, from September 27th to the 24th June, the case had not been finished. That was a period of nine months and if there was undue delay, this Government took at least as much time after the election as we took before to deal with the case. The Minister said to-day, in reply to supplementaries—I took a note of it—: “On re-examination, I must admit that there was undue delay,” but he admitted that, on the day the charge was made, I gave the letter to the Chief Superintendent of the Detective Division on that very day and therefore he could not charge me with delay.
I should like to know if he is charging the Guards with delay in investigating this matter and, if he is, what action he proposes to take or has taken of a disciplinary kind to deal with it. He also said that I was wrong in giving this letter to the Chief Superintendent of the Detective Division, that I should have given it to the Commissioner. Of course, if the chief superintendent had not been on the premises at the time that is what I would have done, but, as it happened, I saved time by giving him the letter there and then, because it was eventually to him as head of the section that it would have come back to complete the investigation.
In regard to the statement about there being no file in the Department of Justice dealing with the matter, my recollection is that there was no such file in the office of the Minister and I did not think there was one in the Department itself. The Minister tells me there was one in his Department. Of course, I accept that, but I was not aware of it. I am still of the opinion that there was not one in the Minister's office, because I handed the letter to the chief superintendent. I knew there was a police file being built up then, but I have no recollection of ever having seen that file. If there was one there I must repeat what I said to-day, that I have been caught out by my memory, but my memory, I think, is fairly good and I have no recollection whatever of it. I know it is the practice in criminal cases, after the cases are dealt with in the courts, that finally the files reached the Department of Justice, but that very often takes months and months, until the case is dealt with. I knew, of course, there was a police file, but I did not know there was a file in the Department. As I say, if there was one in my office, I did not know about it and I am surprised to hear it.
To come to the other question as to the statement by the chief superintendent, the question put by Deputy Lehane suggests that I stated that he said that there was no evidence against persons. I made it clear when I raised this matter on the 22nd March that he only said there was no evidence against one particular person. If I was reported in the Press, as I was, as having said that the chief superintendent told me that there was no evidence against persons, that is not correct. I was reported in the Press as saying that in this House but I did not say any such thing. I should like to quote in that connection from the debates of the 22nd March, column 1442. The Minister then stated:—
"Indeed Deputy Boland surprised me when he said that this efficient police officer assured him in less than five days after the letter was written that there was not a scintilla of evidence."
The report goes on:—
"Mr. Boland: Against one man.
General MacEoin: There is more than one.
Mr. Boland: I was referring only to the Senator."
I knew there was likely to be a case against several people who were involved in this. I was reported in the Press as having said that there was no evidence against persons but that was wrongly reported and my statement, as reported in the Official Debates, is the correct statement.
The Minister admitted to-day—a thing I was glad to hear and I thank Deputy Lehane for raising the matter in order to have it made clear—that no file had been interfered with in the Department of Justice, but the impression created by his statement last week was that it was in the Department of Justice that the file had been interfered with.
He might not have intended that, but certainly that was the impression left on my mind and my colleagues' minds; and when I spoke to a Press man he said that was definitely his impression—that I had ordered some people to burn files. If nothing else has been done, I say again that it is due to Deputy Lehane, whether he meant it or not, that that point has been cleared up. If I may quote once again, from column 1443, covering the same debate:—
"General MacEoin: ... This officer did his best and he informed me. I will say in regard to my predecessor, that the biggest difficulty that he had in securing evidence was that the documents were not forthcoming, the documents had been destroyed.
Mr. Boland: Where?
General MacEoin: In Government offices.
Mr. Boland: In Government offices?
General MacEoin: They were not forthcoming and were not available.
Mr. Boland: I do not believe it.
General MacEoin: I told you this morning and I will give you the information privately. I will show you the file if you like.
Mr. Boland: I should like to see it."
That is what gave that impression, and it disturbed me and ex-members of the Government and members of this Party, that I had given some such instruction. I am glad that that point has been cleared up, that the Minister admits there was no interference with files in the Department of Justice.
To-day he also said, when asked another question about the Departments in which files were interfered with, that an official in the Department of Industry and Commerce, about a week after some committee was set up from different Departments—from the Board of Works, the Department of Industry and Commerce and, I think, the Department of Justice—an official was suspended and subsequently prosecuted for interfering with a file.
Mr. Boland
That is what I understood him to say.
Read my reply.
Mr. Boland
That is what I took from it. I would like to clear that up. That is what I understood from the Minister. I have not got a copy, as it was not to me that the reply was given. I understood that an official in the Department of Industry and Commerce was suspended and subsequently tried and convicted for something he had done with files in connection with petrol.
Petrol rationing offences.
That is a charge of corruption, I suppose?
Mr. Boland
Is not that the same thing?
No, not in connection with the destruction of files.
Mr. Boland
I understand it comes down to this. Is it a fact that the Government still cling to the charge that files were deliberately interfered with? Is that the Government's position?
Is it not the Kildare speech that is the trouble?
My reply is that on the 11th November the Department of Industry and Commerce appointed an officer for the same purpose. This officer, however, within a week of the appointment, himself fell under suspicion of offences relating to petrol rationing and was suspended from duty and later was prosecuted, tried and convicted for offences. That is the reply to Deputy MacEntee.
Mr. Boland
Then does the charge still stand that, on the orders of myself or some other Minister of the last Government, files were destroyed? Am I to take it that that is the charge?
That charge was never made, surely, against the Deputy.
Mr. Boland
It is a bad thing for this country, for any Government and for any people, to have charges of that kind thrown around without some way of substantiating them. I was hopeful that the very fullest investigation would be given to all these charges when we went out of office. That was one of the things which made me glad we were out, that the public would know whether there was any foundations for them or not. That ought to be done, if it can be done, now in specific cases. Surely to goodness, for all our sakes, for the sake of the country, it should be done. We can fight here and throw insults in the heat of the moment, but in calmer moments surely we ought to want to keep the honour of the country up and not keep constantly charging the Government, as we were charged, with corruption, until we were sick of it and some of us were glad to be relieved of office in order that these things could be investigated? Surely we can find now a calm way of having these things investigated and having a stop put to them unless a specific charge can be made? If there is a specific charge made, let it be dealt with; but general charges of corruption thrown at a Government, now that the former Opposition is the Government, are very, very damaging, not only to the Government but to the whole country. I am going to sit down now, having appealed to the Government to have something done to settle the whole question and not have us blackguarding one another and hurling false charges at one another for which there is no foundation.
I hope Deputy MacEntee has heard that.
Mr. Boland
We all say things in the heat of the moment.
I have said nothing.
Mr. Boland
I have said things in the heat of the moment that I would prefer I had not said. We are all human and though no one could call me a saint, I do my best to be fair to everybody; but nothing I heard so much during my term of office made me wish to be relieved as these constant charges of corruption.
The reason that moved me to put down the four questions that stand on the Order Paper in my name to-day was that I felt there was a matter of grave public importance involved, arising in this manner that allegations had been made of irregularities in connection with the carrying out of contracts placed by Government Departments. Secondly, allegations had been made—this is the less serious charge, I presume—of illegalities and improprieties, on the part of a Senator, a member of the Fianna Fáil Party—let me refer to him as Senator X—and the chairman of a Government-sponsored public board.
The charge the Minister for External Affairs made was that they were persons connected with the Government—and he did it on the eve of the election, although he has admitted that action was taken on the 27th of September, four months before the election.
With the permission of the Chair, I propose to deal with the matter.
The Minister is entitled to some time, of course.
I appreciate that, Sir. The persons concerned were a Senator, a member of the Fianna Fáil Party and, secondly, a person who was a close associate of the Senator and closely associated with Government circles. Involved in charges and allegations concerning irregularities in respect of Government Department contracts were firms with which one of these gentlemen, if not both, were closely associated in business. In these circumstances, and in view of the confusion that arose as a result of the questions and, to my mind—I say this with all due regard to the Minister for Justice—in view of the unsatisfactory and incomplete answers given by him on the last occasion when this matter was raised by Deputy Boland, I put these four questions down.
I would suggest that one thing does arise from all this matter, one thing has come plainly from it, that Senator X was not approached for a statement in connection with these offences until two days after the polling had taken place in the general election.
Is that an accusation against the Guards?
It is a statement of fact and, no matter how unpalatable it is to Deputy Aiken, I am making it. The Guards got documents on the 27th September.
And waited five months.
That is an accusuation against the Guards.
It is a statement of fact.
You like attending Guards' funerals, of course.
——almost five months after the original complaint had been made by the firm of solicitors.
On a point of order, I object to slander against Guards being made by Ministers or Deputies on the Government Benches. They would be safer to shoot Guards than to be murdering——
I call on the Minister for Justice.
The notice I got was that the debate on the Adjournment was to be on Question No. 11. Deputy Boland, I submit with respect, has roved a good bit from that. The question he puts is whether there was a file or not in his office while he was Minister. I said to-day that there was a file opened in his office on 27th September, 1947. Here are some of the relevant matters in that file.
In the office or in the Department?
In the office and Department.
Was there one in the Minister's private office?
If you want this clarified will you please let the Minister answer, and have some manners for once in your life.
The Minister is surely entitled to speak without interruption.
The office of the Minister for Justice includes his Department. There is no other title.
Ah, ha!
There is no "ah, ha", or anything else about it. The office of the Minister is the office in which he works himself and his Department, but this file was opened in the Minister's private office, if that makes any difference. It was opened, in the first instance, by a letter dated 27th September from the Taoiseach's office and signed by M. Moynihan. The second document in this file, addressed by the chief superintendent to the private secretary to the Minister for Justice, is dated 2nd October, and Deputy Boland was, therefore, quite right when he said that he had had a conversation with the chief superintendent five days after he handed the letter to him.
Mr. Boland
I thought it was about five days or so.
The next is a minute from the office of the Minister for Justice to the Commissioner of the Civic Guards, dated 3rd October, 1947, and a very reliable official of the Minister has written across that minute: "Approved by Minister". That official is not 1,000,000 miles away now.
Mr. Boland
I will not deny that.
Would the Minister read the minute?
I was not there.
No, but you have the minute there. Read it.
I will make my own speech in relation to whether there was a file or not. The next is a letter from the Minister's office to the Taoiseach's office, dated 21st October, on the same subject. The next is a letter from the office of the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána to the Minister's private secretary, dated 22nd October. The next are letters from the Minister's office to the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Office of Public Works on 22nd December. Then there is a letter addressed to the Minister from the Commissioner's office which is again endorsed "Seen by Minister".
Mr. Boland
"Seen by the Minister"?
Obviously a Departmental file.
That is clever.
This letter is addressed to the private secretary of the Minister.
There seems to have been plenty of action but it did not wait until the eve of the election.
That is why I said that the ex-Minister was unfair to himself when he said he never saw the file again and that he did nothing.
Was it not an unfair charge to say that there was no action taken on the eve of an election? Corruption! Slander!
The file is there and I said I would show it to Deputy Boland. I repeat now that, if Deputy Boland comes to my office to-morrow or the next day, I will show him that file. I cannot go any further than that
Mr. de Valera
May I ask the Minister if there is anything in the file that indicates that there was any action taken by any member of the Government to shield anybody?
I do not propose to get into that debate.
You want to slander by innuendo.
I am not a slanderer like you.
You certainly are.
You have a low, mean mind. The former Minister for Justice asked me to-night from what Department were the documents missing. There were no documents missing from the Department of Justice. Even the one the Deputy says was given to the superintendent is not missing, but they were missing from the Department of Industry and Commerce, from the Office of Public Works and from the Department of Defence.
When Deputy Boland asked me last June what was the position of the case I said that the matter was still sub judice. The reason for that was that, in May, the cases were tried in the District Court and convictions secured against three firms. They were then appealed against by two of these firms and the appeals were pending in June. My hands were still tied, but the proceedings were initiated very early after the change of Government. I want to conclude on this point: The ex-Minister for Justice said in Kildare that I approached the Attorney-General but the Deputy knows thoroughly well that the procedure is that the Civic Guards report direct to the Chief State Solicitor's Office. I did not interfere with the Attorney-General and it would be an impertinence on my part to do so. There was no interference whatever with the Attorney-General, but the file I have here shows in the police report that the whole matter was referred to the Attorney-General's office after the change of Government.
And the Attorney-General found there was no case.
The Attorney-General ruled that, in two cases, there was not sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.
That is to say, that there was no evidence.
That is what you would like to say. On that, I should like to say that there was the evidence of the man who gave evidence against the three firms and on which convictions were secured.
The evidence of an accomplice.
Deputies opposite have described that witness as a disgruntled employee. I think it is a mean thing to attack a witness——
A dismissed employee.
——who enabled convictions to be secured and whose evidence was accepted by two courts in three big cases.
Mr. de Valera
Is there evidence on the file as to the instructions given to the police officer or the action the police officer took?
There is evidence on the file to show that on 3rd October the Office of the Minister for Justice, where no file was supposed to have been kept, and where there was supposed to have been only this letter, wrote to the Commissioner saying that the matters should be investigated under the ordinary police procedure.
Mr. de Valera
And, therefore, it passed out of Governmental control? Is that not so? I am anxious to get the truth about this.
I will show Deputy Boland that file. I am not going to establish a precedent by quoting from the files the reports of police officers. All I can do, because of the particular circumstances surrounding this case, is to say that I am prepared to show this file to Deputy Boland for his satisfaction.
Mr. de Valera
That is all right.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 5th April, 1949.