With the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 53, 54 and 55 together.
The question of a pardon for a convicted person arises only where it is shown that the person was wrongly convicted, that is to say, that he was not guilty of the offence or offences of which he was convicted. There has been no such case in relation to convictions by the Special Criminal Court.
As regards mitigation or remission of penalties, the position is that there has recently been a general amnesty under which 24 prisoners convicted by the Special Criminal Court (as well as five others convicted of similar offences by the ordinary Courts) were released, the balance of their sentences being remitted. Before that, there had been three individual cases where the balance of sentence was remitted.
Apart from penalties that may be imposed by the Court, Section 34 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, provides, in substance, that any person convicted by the Special Criminal Court of scheduled offences automatically forfeits any employment under or pension from the State, a semi-State body or a local authority and is disqualified for a period of seven years from the date of conviction from holding any such employment. Accordingly, all Government Departments have been notified by my Department of the names of the persons convicted and their attention has been drawn to the provisions of Section 34. Each Department was also asked to arrange to convey this information to the semi-State bodies or local authorities with which it is concerned.
This notification was, of course, an ordinary administrative act which was necessary to enable Departments and other bodies to discharge their obligations in the matter. These obligations, as I have indicated, are statutory— they arise from the terms of the section itself and not from the notification that emanated from my Department.
The duty to give effect to the section rests with the particular Department, semi-State body or local authority that may be concerned and, apart from the issue of the notification mentioned, I have no function in the matter. Accordingly, my Department's records do not show with certainty how many persons were affected. They do show, however, that the list of convicted persons includes three employees of semi-State bodies and one employee of a local authority. All four were amongst those who got the benefit of remission of balance of sentence. It is unlikely that there are any others. I am not in a position to say if there is any case where a pension is affected but no such case has come to my notice.