The House will recollect that when Deputy Lindsay was speaking on this motion on 26th February, 1958, certain allegations were made by him—serious allegations—to which, perhaps, I had better refer. I quote from column 771 of Volume 165 of the Official Report:—
I invite the Minister now to tell the House and the country whether he has any knowledge of whether in any year from 1954 to 1956, or even up to 1957, there seemed either not taken into account, or missing from the stores of Gaeltarra Éireann, thousands of yards of tweed, valued at anything from £10,000 to £20,000, of which the Minister has no record and cannot say where it is, how it went, who took it, or whether it was from wrong accounting, wrong auditing or a wrong assessment from the yields in wool. It is for that kind of thing I ask the inquiry.
That is, the inquiry he asked for in the motion before the House. Further, in the same column, the Deputy went on to say:
Lest it be alleged by the Minister that this motion of mine is in any way directed towards one person, I now want to tell him that I am about to give him information generally across the floor of this House that involves possibly the most consistent, most damning, and most longstanding fraud, certainly unilateral fraud, and a fraud which has been made possible through either of two things, negligence on the part of the staff of Gaeltarra Éireann, on the one hand, or conspiracy and fraud by some member or members of the staff of Gaeltarra Éireann, on the other hand.
The Deputy then produced two sheets of paper and went on to suggest a way whereby these "consistent, most damning and most longstanding frauds" were carried out:
How is this done? If anybody wants to make money quickly and if he has any knowledge of the wool trade and, with the full realisation that he has careless and willing hands to help him in Gaeltarra Éireann, one can get into it straight away. This is how it is done. You weigh 10,000 lb. of second-rate Irish wool and, having weighted it, you fill your consignment docket or invoice and make it out, not as second-rate Irish wool but as superwhite New Zealand greasy. In the weight column, you do not fill in 10,000 lb. but you fill in any figure up to 15,000 lb. The wool is transferred by someone in the public haulage companies and it reaches Gaeltarra Éireann depots either in Dublin or Donegal, where it is not checked, either carelessly or deliberately.
Of course, through no fault of the accountancy branch of Gaeltarra Éireann, the accounts branch pay on these fradulent invoices the rate obtainable for the better class wool and the higher weight. On that alone, the Minister has a serious responsibility in respect of the criminal code in this country, but on that alone he should hold an inquiry at once and put the public mind at ease. This is not a question of what the Minister thinks, what I think or what any Deputy thinks. These are figures, some of which have been proved already, some of which are capable of being proved beyond any shadow of doubt.
In view of these specific charges of a criminal nature—conspiracy, fraud, going on, as was alleged, over a very long period—when the Deputy finished that night I directed the officials in my Department to impound all the documents of Gaeltarra Éireann and on the 5th March, 1958, I moved in this House that further discussion would stop in this matter and that the Garda would be called in by the Minister for Justice to investigate the charges of fraud and conspiracy made by the Deputy in this motion and in the debate to which I have referred.
The Garda came in on 1st March, 1958 to investigate these allegations and intensive inquiries were made by them over a period of nine months, covering all the purchases of wool made by Gaeltarra Éireann from Messrs. Campbell and Walker from 1952 to 1958. As a result of the investigations by the Garda, certain charges were brought before our courts and dealt with by the court concerned. After, I understand, a long hearing of some 15 or 20 days, after investigating the evidence in respect of these charges which were brought, informations were refused.
Before dealing with that, I should deal with the first point—that is the allegation by Deputy Lindsay made on this motion that there was, I think it was, 20,000 yards of tweed missing from Gaeltarra Éireann and unaccounted for. I think he referred, speaking in connection with the same matter elsewhere, to some miles of tweed being missing from Gaeltarra Éireann. I want to inform the House that these allegations were fully investigated, not alone by the accounting officer concerned but by the Comptroller and Auditor General and that their evidence has been given before the Public Accounts Committee. I want to put on the records of this House that the explanations given by the Accounting Officer have been fully accepted by the Comptroller and Auditor General and that this evidence has already been given to the Committee of Public Accounts.
No doubt, in due course, when the Committee of Public Accounts produce their report, they will say what they think of this matter. The evidence given in respect of this alleged 20,000 yards of tweed, which, incidentally, referred to an amount alleged to be missing out of the total stock of tweed going over a period of three years, was that it is accounted for by the fact that on 75 yard lengths of tweed it is a practice in the trade to allow for an extra yard and that that alone, on the figures involved, would indicate that 16,000 yards of the alleged 20,000, was accounted for. The other amount alleged to be missing, on the figure that was given, was accounted for by patterns which had been sent out to the trade by Gaeltarra Éireann and these figures were accepted and have been accepted by the Comptroller and Auditor General. That is as far as the allegation about the missing tweed is concerned.
The other allegations made by the Deputy caused a very considerable expenditure of public time and money, the time of the Garda and others in investigating the charges made here. They were charges of alleged most consistent, most damning and most long-standing fraud, certainly unilateral fraud and fraud made possible by two things, negligence and conspiracy to defraud by some members of the staff. When the Deputy made these charges, he said or alleged that he had certain information which he would convey to the Garda. It would appear, however, from subsequent events at the trial, that when he made these charges he did not have documents which he alleged he subsequently got anonymously by post and documents which it transpires now were stolen from the companies concerned.
