When this matter was first raised in this House by a question from Deputy C. Lehane on the 14th March I must say that I was astonished when I read—I was not in the House when the question was put —that a document like this had come into the possession of the Deputy. I am not going into the question whether such a document should be made available to a judge or not. The Minister has his own views and I do not intend to raise that matter at all. What I am concerned about, and what everybody in the country should be concerned about, is that when a confidential document of that kind is given to a judge, it certainly should not be brought into this House.
Adjournment Debate—Garda Reports.
Even though it is an illegal document.
My point is that it is a confidential document, a police report. If that is given to a judge, there is an obligation on the judge to keep that document and return it to the people from whom he got it, namely, the Garda Síochána—I suppose to the chief superintendent. Probably a similar report was supplied in my time but the question was never raised. What I am saying is that the judge should keep that document unless he returns it to the police. If he gave it to an unauthorised person, I say he was lacking in his duty as a judge and if I were Minister, I would deem it my duty to bring in a resolution here that the judge should be dismissed, if it were established that he deliberately gave the document to an unauthorised person. Either that happened or else somebody abstracted the document from the judge's chambers—in other words, stole it.
When I saw that Deputy Lehane stated that such a document would be made available, I took it for granted that it would be made available to the Minister and that the Minister would find out where the Deputy got this document which was handed to the judge. Instead of that we find that the Minister, when I put down a question on the 23rd of March, said that he had not got the document and therefore the matter of the inquiries which I asked him to institute as to how the document came into the Deputy's possession did not arise. That was all right, but immediately after Deputy Lehane said, raising a paper in his hand: "Here is the document; it is available for the Minister." The Minister was speaking from the Front Bench and he apparently did not see it but several Deputies saw it. We do not know what it contained but he said that it was the document in question and that it was still available. I immediately put down a question suggesting that if the document was in the Deputy's hands, it should be available for the Minister and I asked the Minister would he find out how it came into the Deputy's possession.
As it is as well to be accurate in the matter, I had better begin at the beginning. When the matter was raised on the 14th March the Minister admitted that these reports were given to judges and he added that they contained records of the persons to be tried. It was Deputy Cowan who said: "And their records." To that the Minister replied: "I do not know exactly." It was at this point that Deputy Lehane said, as reported at col. 1744 of the Dáil Debates for March 14th:—
"If I can satisfy the Minister that the practice exists in some areas of supplying a short summary such as that described by the Minister, setting out records and observations as to character by senior Garda officers, will he then consider whether it is a practice to be continued?"
To that the Minister replied:—
"If any such evidence is available I would be delighted to have it but I very much doubt it because that is a confidential report and I do not know how it could be got."
Deputy Lehane then put in:—
"I will undertake to make it available to the Minister."
Apparently it has not been made available yet. I am not blaming Deputy Lehane as much as the Minister because I maintain that it is the Minister's duty, as Minister for Justice, to probe this matter. It should not be left to a private Deputy, whether on the Opposition Benches or on the other side, to urge the Minister to do a job which obviously is his duty. As I said in my supplementary question to-day, if the judge gave it away he should not have done it, and if he did not do it, there is only one other way in which the Deputy could have got it. There may be a third way of which I am not aware but otherwise it could only have been abstracted or stolen from the judge's chambers. Perhaps there is a third way and perhaps the Minister will be more precise than he has been in the information already given to us.
I think this is a very serious matter. I do not want to get too heated but it is a matter about which Deputies should be concerned, that a secret document of that kind, a State document, should be used in that manner. If a Deputy thinks that there is some practice in existence of which he does not approve or with which he does not agree, he has another way of dealing with it. He can approach the Minister either by writing to him or by a personal interview and tell him that he had discovered that this practice was in existence, that he objected to it and that he thought it should be stopped and that if it was not stopped he would take action in the Dáil to have it stopped. But actually to flaunt what amounts to a stolen State document in this House is something without precedent.
I do not want to delay the House much further but it is perfectly obvious to me and to every Deputy that this is a very important matter. We should like to know what the Minister thinks the effect of this business is going to have on the Garda Síochána, if they are not satisfied that a confidential report is going to be treated confidentially. I am sure the Minister gets confidential reports frequently. I always got them and I never heard of their being made public in this way. I feel that if they were made public you could not expect any Garda to make a confidential report because he would say: "How do I know who is going to get this and what are the consequences going to be for me of making such a report?" Surely, when a document of that kind given to a judge disappears from his possession and is brought up here in the Dáil it is a matter of the utmost seriousness. Certainly it is something into which it is the Minister's obvious duty to inquire.
I do not think there is anything more I can say on the matter. I am sure every Deputy who is a responsible member of this House must realise the seriousness of a matter of this kind. I think it is without precedent. I have been here since 1927 and I never remember anything like it happening before. If for no other reason than that this will make it impossible for it ever to occur again—I think it is well worth raising the matter in the Dáil. I should like to hear something more from the Minister than I have heard already. We do not know where we stand now; we do not know how Deputy Lehane got the document because the Minister was not able to tell us if the judge had it in his possession and he does not say that he made any inquiries. In that way we are left guessing. I asked the Minister why he had not taken the elementary step of sending to the judge and finding out from the judge what he did——
Which judge?
I do not know which judge but we are told it was a judge and Deputy Lehane knew that the document came from the judge's chambers. At least the Minister could tell us whether that is true or not. He could find out where the document came from as the Deputy said on two occasions that he would make it available.
I think Deputy Lehane deserves the congratulations of this House and of the public for drawing attention to something which no person knew existed. Deputy Boland has referred to the particular document as being a secret State document. If such a document was produced by a Garda officer to the judge, it was an illegal document which ought not to have been given by the superintendent of the Garda to the judge about to try the prisoner, telling the judge that the particular prisoner to be tried before him was a prisoner who had been, perhaps, convicted on a number of occasions, naturally prejudicing the mind of the judge in regard to that particular prisoner. Now, if, in the course of the trial, a Garda officer or a State prosecutor gave in open court information with regard to the record of the accused person, that would vitiate and nullify the proceedings. If there has been a practice over a number of years——
That does not arise on question No. 38.
And I did not raise that matter at all.
No, Sir, it does not arise, except in this way——
Is the Deputy acting as counsel for Deputy Lehane?
Deputy Lehane is well able to act as his own counsel.
He is not acting as a public informer.
It is the disappearance of the document I was speaking about.
I will not allow Deputy Cowan to proceed on that line.
Very well, I will not. I think I have made the point I wanted to make, very effectively. What is raised here is a question of considerable importance to Deputies. If any Deputy in this House is aware of a certain practice which he might consider objectionable, it is the duty of that Deputy to raise that matter here. Deputy Lehane has done that. The Minister to-day stated that that practice——
I told the Deputy I would not allow him to proceed on that line, but he still persists in doing so. The Deputy will confine himself to question No. 38 or sit down.
I am dealing with this particular question——
The Deputy must confine himself to the subject matter of that question.
It is the one before that he is dealing with—question No. 37.
I am dealing with this question. It is suggested here that if a Deputy refers to a document at Question Time the Minister is entitled to get that document from that particular Deputy—that the Minister is entitled to take some action, whether it is punitive or otherwise. I say as a Deputy that the Minister has no power to do that, that there is no power in the Minister to take any action against a Deputy who tells the Minister or the House that he has in his possession a particular document.
Stolen or otherwise.
No, Sir. To suggest a document is stolen is a very serious matter; to suggest a document has been handed over by the judge is also a very serious matter; to suggest that the judge who handed over the document is unfit to be on the Bench is a very serious matter. I say that Deputy Boland, having given those alternatives, might have given another one—that the judge who received such a document should in open court have condemned the practice. That is another alternative that Deputy Boland has not mentioned.
That is dealing with Question No. 37, not mine at all.
These are the observations that I wish to make in regard to this matter. I think that every Deputy in the House is concerned in regard to that. Can we, in the discharge of our public duties in this House, refer to a particular matter and state we have documents to prove it? The proof, in fact, was not required in this case, because the Minister has ascertained that the practice did exist and he has ordered it to be discontinued. I think every individual Deputy has a right in this House——
Privilege.
——and a privilege, to protect himself and every other member, and what Deputy Boland is suggesting here is something that no Deputy can accept—that Deputies of this House, in the discharge of their public duties, would be subject to inquiry by the Guards or by the Minister or by somebody else.
Deputy C. Lehane rose.
Is the Minister not being allowed in at all?
I did not propose to intervene in this adjournment debate, but I should like to say this, firstly, that I do not propose to satisfy Deputy Boland's curiosity; secondly, that I am satisfied I properly discharged my duty as a Deputy of this House; and, thirdly, that I am gratified that any effort of mine was successful in putting a stop to what I can only describe as a most pernicious practice.
Where did the Deputy get the document—stolen property?
Deputy Boland put down a very important question to-day and I want to say I appreciate fully the duty he performed in putting it down. That question was as follows:—
"To ask the Minister for Justice whether, in view of the fact that a Deputy produced at Question Time on March 23rd what he stated to be a confidential police report, which had been supplied to a Circuit Court judge, and which he indicated he was making available to the Minister, he will now set up an official inquiry to discover how this confidential document came into the Deputy's possession."
I replied to that:—
"If the document in question is put into my possession I shall consider what action, if any, I will take on the matter."
Deputy Boland was not satisfied with that reply and he has raised the matter now on the Adjournment. I am not going to follow either Deputy Cowan or Deputy Lehane, nor do I intend to follow Deputy Boland in all the points he has raised. I think some of them were not exactly in order, but, however, Deputy Boland, when he put down that question, and in the speech that he has made on the Adjournment, has not specified what sort of inquiry I should hold. He reproaches me for not inquiring from the Circuit Court judge how the document left his possession. How on earth would I find out what judge it was? I do not know which of the judges lost it and the Deputy reproaches me for not inquiring from them how it left a particular judge's possession. I am told that there is a document in the House, but I do not know what judge it was who parted with it. Does Deputy Boland or anybody else, or does the Government, expect me to go down to the judges and say: "Some of you did something"?
One of you.
Am I expected, as Minister for Justice, to go to the judges and say: "Gentlemen, one of you did something; which of you did it?"
How many are there of them?
Eleven.
How many in Dublin?
The Deputy should not follow that line.
I will not go to the judges and ask each one in turn: "Which of you did this?" If a question like that were to be put to the judges would Deputy Boland, my predecessor, put that question to them? He would not.
I would make full inquiries through the Guards.
I told you to-day that I would do my duty, and I am not disputing that you did yours, but the Deputy could not address such a question to the judges. I want to repeat now for the information of all Deputies what I said in the House to-day, that if a confidential document which should not have left official custody comes into the custody of a member of the House he should hand it over to the responsible Minister, whoever that Minister may be, but Deputies must be left to interpret their obligations in this as in other matters in accordance with their own view of what is right and what is fitting without any homily or lecture from me whatever.
I would say, in conclusion, that I think both Deputies have served very well by putting down the questions that they have put down. Deputy Lehane has stopped something which, I think, should not be done and which, I think, my predecessors were not aware of. I was not aware of it until the question was put down. Deputy Boland has brought a very important point to the mind of every Deputy in this House.
I am not in the Coalition yet.
And never will.
I hope you will serve the country to the best of your ability. I thank you for what you have done. I want to warn all Deputies that if a document like that comes into their possession they should remember that they have a duty to perform to the State by handing it over to the Minister —not waving it behind backs—and if I ask them how they got it they should tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.55 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 30th March, 1950.