Vol. 191 No. 9
I move:
That a sum not exceeding £94,770 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1962, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Attorney General, etc., and for the Expenses of Criminal Prosecutions and other Law Charges, including a Grant in Relief of certain Expenses payable by Statute out of Local Rates.
I move:
"That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration."
This is the Estimate which provides for the law services of the Government and it is the Estimate therefore, upon which it is proper to consider whether the Government have carried out their duties in an appropriate manner. I want to make it perfectly clear that so far as I am concerned the failure in this regard is a failure that I consider should be laid at the door of the Government rather than at the door of any individual officer concerned. It is the Taoiseach, and the Taoiseach alone, who has the right under the Constitution to appoint the Attorney General. Of course, to that extent the Minister here as the accounting Minister is speaking not as a member of the Government but for the Taoiseach himself. The Taoiseach when he was appointing the Attorney General had the duty of laying down the appropriate conditions under which whoever was going to be Attorney General should take office on the one hand, and on the other hand of making a choice of a person suitable to carry on the business of the Attorney General.
I say "a person suitable to carry on the business of the Attorney General" because no matter how competent a lawyer may be in certain branches of law, it does not follow at all that his métier under whose aspects is the particular type of law necessary for the due performance of the Department that is being considered under this Vote. As everyone knows, we live in an age of specialisation and a good chancery lawyer may not be a good criminal lawyer. A good common law lawyer might not be a good chancery lawyer, but the fact is, as we know, there are certain things in respect of which this Department are primarily concerned. They are primarily concerned with the duty of ensuring that the Government operate within the Constitution on the one hand and, on the other hand, that the Government as the Executive bring to the Judiciary, and place before the Judiciary in proper form, the various necessary facts in respect of which our courts have to pronounce a judgment.
If therefore, a person is selected by the Taoiseach, no matter what may be his qualifications in other branches, if he is not particularly accustomed to or experienced in those two branches of the law—and not everybody can be experienced in every aspect of law— if the Taoiseach chooses that person, someone who is not experienced in those aspects, then the blame must be laid at the door of the Taoiseach and at the door of no one else.
In the particular cases to which I want to refer two matters arise. In one case, which is being canvassed regularly in this House already, the question arises in respect of the conditions which the Taoiseach laid down when he was appointing the Attorney General. I want to make it clear beyond question that I am not offering a view on either side as to whether it is right or proper for the Attorney General to carry on private practice. I have my own views on that; other people in different Parties have different views but I am not challenging in any way—far from it— the right or the propriety of the Taoiseach to provide that the Attorney General when he was appointing him, would be entitled to carry on private practice. But I do say and I say it without fear of contradiction, that the Taoiseach when he was making that appointment should have laid down that if the Attorney General was engaged in private practice, and if he was permitting him to engage in private practice—as he did—it must be private practice that could not in any way conflict with his duty as the chief law officer of the Government.
In the recent insurance case—and again I am passing no comment whatever on the bona fides of either of the parties, the plaintiff or the insurance company in that case—it was perfectly clear to anyone who looked at it, and it should have been perfectly clear at a very early date, that a person acting on behalf of the insurance company, the defendant in that case, might have to defend at a later date a claim under the Insurance Act, that the company concerned was acting in breach of the provisions laid down in the Insurance Act, 1936. It is perfectly clear, and should have been perfectly clear to anyone at a very early stage, and certainly as soon as the briefs were delivered, that in that case there was a definite conflict of interests between the chief law officer of the Government, on the one hand, and those concerned for the insurance company on the other because a breach of the Insurance Act, 1936, was involved and it might —not necessarily—be the duty of the chief Law Officer of the Government to prosecute. There was more than a probability that the chief Law Officer of the Government would be called upon to offer an opinion as to whether the facts disclosed in that case did or did not justify action by the Minister for Industry and Commerce under the Insurance Act, 1936.
No man can serve two masters. The person who, in the ultimate result, would have to act as the chief adviser to the Department of Industry and Commerce should never have been permitted by the Taoiseach—and it is the Taoiseach I blame—to act in a case in which he would appear for the defendant when it was clear on the face of it that there had been a breach of the Act of 1936.
As I said, I make no suggestion impugning the bona fides of the plaintiff or the defendant in that case. I am just making it clear that the facts were such that the question was bound to come up for decision as to whether it was incumbent on the Executive, in the person of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, through the chief Law Officer to the Government, to take action. In those circumstances it was highly improper for the Taoiseach not to have laid down conditions when he was making the appointment that would prevent any possibility of that happening.
The second matter to which I want to refer is in respect of a recent trial. I want to make it clear beyond question that I am making no comment of any sort, kind or description in respect of the charges for which the Court of Criminal Appeal has directed that Dr. Singer should again be arraigned before a judge and jury in respect of some £2,500. My comments have nothing whatever to do with those five charges that are sub judice and for that reason I do not wish to refer to them.
The fact is, however, that, leaving those charges aside, the whole history of the Shanahan legal actions on behalf of the State has caused the very greatest public uneasiness. The public are gravely concerned to know why it is that the legal formulae on foot of which a person should be arraigned in respect of sums covering £796,514 were so badly framed that the court was not allowed to express its verdict. To say that there is public uneasinesss in this matter is putting it in the mildest form.
Everyone knows it is the duty of the Executive, as the guardian of the public interest, to bring matters, about which it considers there is a case, before the courts in proper legal form. I think it is accepted also that once they are brought in proper legal form before the courts it is for the courts, and the courts alone, to decide on the the facts whether the charges are justified.
I certainly shall not offer any comment in this House as to whether the charges were justified. I think it would be a very bad precedent if we were to try a case here in Dáil Éireann. My comment is purely related to the fact, and unfortunately it is a fact, that the Executive so failed in their duty to bring the charges before the courts in the proper legal form that the courts have been unable to give an effective judgment in respect of them.
The Leader of the Opposition asked on two occasions for the judgment on the Singer case to be placed in the Library. It has not yet been placed there. Again, I want to make it clear that I am mentioning that purely to show that I have to rely on newspaper reports because the Judgment is not yet in the Library. I do not think any fault is attributable to the Taoiseach for the delay. It is just in the ordinary, shall I say, nature of the methods of the courts administration. I am not making any charge, so to speak, against the Taoiseach for having failed to put it there. I think he is trying to put it there at the earliest opportunity but it has not got there and I have to refer to the newspapers.
I understand just now from the Leader of the Opposition that he has received a letter this afternoon from the Taoiseach saying he is having the judgment copied and that it will be put in the Library to-morrow. Unfortunately, I shall not have the opportunity of reading it before this Estimate is concluded. The fact, from the newspaper accounts and from the accounts of those who were listening to the Court of Criminal Appeal giving their judgment, is that the Court of Criminal Appeal decided, in relation to charges covering £796,000, that the Department presided over by the nominee of the Taoiseach had failed to put the indictment in the proper form, had failed to put the charges, to use a commonplace word, in the ordinary manner of the appropriate legal formulae. The fact that the indictments were incorrect and that because they were incorrect, the court was not able to come to a proper conclusion, to an effective conclusion, in respect of these charges covering over £750,000, surely lays on the Taoiseach, on the Government and on all concerned a very serious degree of blame, and one requiring a most serious explanation.
As I say, this is the last of the series of botches that have been made in relation to this case. It is not for me or for this House to say whether, if the indictments had been properly framed by and on behalf of the Government, there would have been a conviction or there would not. That matter does not arise. What does arise is the fact that the courts have not been given and can never be given an opportunity of judging this, perhaps the most serious matter in point of money that was ever brought before the courts since they were established here 40 years ago.
The Government must be aware, as we are aware on these benches, of the very grave public uneasiness in relation to these matters, public uneasiness which has been growing because of the unnecessary cost that had been put upon the taxpayer in other cases such as the Electoral Bill, public uneasiness because it has become a commonplace for the Executive not to be beaten on the facts—anyone can understand that—but to be beaten because the appropriate facts have not been put in proper form before the court to enable the court fairly—and I use the word "fairly" as meaning fairly in the proper judgment of the court— to come to its decision.
The last one, as I say, is that judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal given on 23rd June, and it is a matter that is quite deplorable that the Executive should have failed to ensure that the court was free to come to its verdict on the facts properly presented, with an indictment made according to proper form, filed and put forward in the ordinary way that has been drawn up over the years to ensure that as between prosecution and defence, there is complete fairness and that every prisoner will get a fair trial, while at the same time the public interest represented by the Attorney General will put the facts appropriately before the court. That the Government have failed to do, and because of that, because of the sum of over £750,000 involved, a very serious responsibility rests on the Taoiseach as the person who made the appointment and who laid down the conditions under which it was to be held.
It is a great business. There is plenty of money in it. I wish I had got into it.
I did not follow this case as a lawyer, but I certainly have not got the same impression as a person might get from Deputy Sweetman to hear of these cases for the first time. My recollection is that when the case was first rejected on appeal, there was practically equal division of high legal opinion on whether it was right or wrong. I am not saying any more than that. Secondly, in the case of the last Criminal Appeal Court, I do not know how he personally could be blamed in that particular case if long afterwards it was discovered that a person was on the jury who might have been prejudiced.
That has nothing to do with it. That arose only in one case, but every single indictment, except five, was so botchily drawn that the court had to throw them out. That is what happened, they were drawn up so badly. I did not want to put it so crudely as that but the Minister asked for it.
That is worthy of Fine Gael, that suggestion of something in the way of money, that we were bribed by Singer.
No such insinuation was made.
There is no such insinuation. The Minister is trying to avoid the issue.
That was the gibe there, the suggestion that he gave us a good subscription. That is always the Fine Gael line of propaganda.
The Minister is getting very hot under the collar.
