I agree that the words "prejudicial to the safety of the State" do not cover all the cases that might arise because the Minister, when replying to Deputy Dillon—who had observed that the matter of this type of certificate had not been adverted to in the White Paper—said it had been overlooked and at the same time he made a plea that he should not be asked to disclose in court certain matters more particularly where the safety of the State is concerned. For that reason I put down that amendment couched in the terms "prejudicial to the safety of the State", in the Minister's own words.
Official Secrets Bill, 1962—Committee Stage (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following amendment:
In subsection (1), page 4, line 16, after "not" to insert "in any manner prejudicial to the safety of the State"—(Deputy McGilligan).
I want to draw the attention of the House to the terms of this amendment in the context in which we are discussing it. This section is supposed to re-enact the corresponding provision of the Official Secrets Act, 1911. I invite the House to look at that Act. We are in process of repealing it and of repealing the Act of 1920 and re-enacting the substance of these Acts for Ireland, but if we look at the Act that we are purporting to re-enact for Ireland we find that Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act, 1911, provides penalties for spying. That is the note at the side of Section 1 and it is in the context of a Bill designed to deal with spying and the entrance of persons who are foreign agents or working for foreign agents on confidential plans and information that the whole Act of 1911 is drafted.
There is an amendment of the original Act of 1911 in the Official Secrets Act of 1920 which provides that after paragraph (a) of sub-section (1) of Section 2 the following paragraph be inserted:
uses the information in his possession for the benefit of any foreign power or in any other manner prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State.
In the process of redrafting this legislation for our country we propose to widen its scope to bring in all sorts of documents, one of the extremest incidents being, I think, examination papers disclosed before the students sit for the examination. I suggest to the Minister that he is completely confounding two distinct disciplines. It is true that every civil servant, entering on a contract of service to the State, gives wide undertakings to maintain the confidence which it is manifestly his duty to maintain but that obligation belongs to a discipline quite apart from, although parallel to, the criminal code. It would be quite proper if a civil servant had access to confidential information even though that confidential information in no way prejudices the safety of the State, and it was established that casually or carelessly or wrongly he communicated that information to an unauthorised person, to call on that civil servant to render an account of his stewardship, and in an extreme case to dismiss him from the Civil Service. That would be an appropriate remedy.
There is plenty of material at the disposal of quite minor civil servants who occupy posts as private secretaries to Ministers or Parliamentary Secretaries which is in no way inimical to the safety of the State but might be of very great embarrassment to the Minister concerned if it was communicated carelesly or maliciously to an unauthorised person. It would be quite proper in such circumstances that a civil servant be called to account and if it was a grave case or one of many offences that he should, if necessary, be dismissed from the Civil Service. But it is quite another "cup of tea" to say that you are going to translate not only that course of conduct but a variety of things that an ex-Minister or an ex-Parliamentary Secretary might do and encompass them all within the scope of the criminal law when you cannot even aver that what has happened in any way prejudices the safety of the State.
It is bad enough to dismiss a civil servant but it is quite a different thing to put a citizen of this State, whoever he may be, in the dock in a criminal court under an Act where you have removed from him the opportunity in many respects of effectively defending himself. Any one of us might find himself in the dock charged with the communication of a confidential document to an unauthorised person and when he says: "I maintain it is not a confidential document," the Minister can present a certificate to the court saying: "I certify that it is", and that means there must be no further argument about it.
Can he certify it afterwards?
Before, and he can certify it now.
Can he certify it afterwards?
He can. I could have a document in my pocket to-day as an ex-Minister for Agriculture which I believe I have a perfect right to use in controversy with the present Minister for Agriculture, and use it, and the Minister, so far as I understand, can simply say that the original of that copy was a confidential document, that I published it, that he refused to produce it, that he certified it to be secret and that the only question was did I publish it or did I not, and if I say I want the original document and say there is nothing secret in it, nothing which the public should not have full knowledge of and access to, the Minister can certify that it is secret and that ends it. Surely that is going far beyond the purposes of any Official Secrets Act that ever was passed by the British Government or that was ever operated in this country?
I think the confusion that has arisen here is that we are trying to mix up two disciplines. It may be perfectly right to say to a civil servant: "It does not matter whether your communication of the contents of a document is prejudicial to the safety of the State or not; it is a breach of trust. You have done what you promised not to do and you must go. You are no longer fit for the Civil Service".
But he might not be a civil servant.
The Minister will agree with me that that would be no more appropriate conduct in that circumstance.
The Minister's plea up to date is that they would all be members of the Civil Service.
I think the Minister did convey that he was speaking only of the Civil Service and I did not mean it in that sense. I meant: did it relate only to civil servants? I am taking the Minister on that line that we are confounding two disciplines and we are trying to turn something into a criminal offence which really is not of that character at all, but, if you insert the words that somebody has communicated something which is prejudicial to the safety of the State, you lift it into an entirely different arena. It is one thing for a civil servant to commit a breach of trust. That, I say, is a disciplinary matter. But, if he commits a breach of trust prejudicial to the safety of the State, now he is in another arena and there it is reasonable and proper that the criminal law should operate, always provided that he is given a reasonable chance to defend himself before the appropriate tribunal, which is the court, and that he will be free to go before that court and say: "although the Minister, the Executive, charges me with conduct prejudicial to the safety of the State, I want to argue that my conduct is not prejudicial to the safety of the State".
Therefore, I suggest to the Minister that we should not allow ourselves to be carried away. We are not living in a society besieged by spies and foreign agents who are under every bed. We have no reason to believe that there is any fearful emergency upon us. Any Communist agent or "pinko" who is roaming around the country, the police have pretty exhaustive knowledge of. I could tell stories here of the extent to which we have knowledge of all their goings-on to the point where we had so many spies in their councils that the spies began spying on one another. Any poor conspirator in this country that wants to conspire against us will almost always find he is conspiring either with a Civic Guard or else with a member of Army Intelligence and frequently ends up with a Civic Guard conspiring with a member of the Army Intelligence and both are so good at their job that they regard each other as a most serious menace to the safety of the State. So far as my information goes, we have these fellows riddled with spies of our own.
So, we are not living in a situation in which we need be apprehensive or which calls for special powers to deal with a present and unmanageable menace. There is no menace in existence which I know of over which we have not got pretty adequate control. I do not deny that there are operating in this country, as there are in every country in the world, little cliques of fellows who imagine they are Communists or crypto-Communists but, as I say, half of them are secret service agents of our own and we know there is nothing seriously amiss and there is no danger in existence which would justify us in going to wild extremes in order to protect the safety of the State.
The Minister said on a previous occasion that some Deputy in the Independent benches held him up to ridicule because he was too reasonable and accepted suggestions from the Opposition. The Minister really must grow a thicker skin than that if he is to be pushed to courses of folly because irresponsible Deputies suggest to him that to listen to argument and on occasion to meet it and concede a point is evidence of weakness.
I have time and again accepted suggestions.
That is all right. I am not making the suggestion to the Minister that he has not. I would expect that far from apologising to anybody for doing that, it is evidence of a rational approach. I am putting to the Minister this quite rational case that we are in danger, in very real danger, of allowing the view to prevail upon us that in order to adopt a procedure which is convenient, we should compromise in certain fundamental matters. My suggestion to the Minister is that if we were in the presence of a national emergency and felt ourselves in real peril of a danger which we found it hard to control, I would be prepared to hear arguments to the effect that we would have to suspend certain fundamental rights until the imminent danger was removed. I know of no such danger and I urge on the House not to accept as a norm that we should suspend fundamental rights for convenience sake.
I do not deny that the preservation of fundamental rights often does cause inconvenience to the Executive. It should be the proud boast of our Executive that it has to suffer inconvenience, it has to follow long and tedious processes, to achieve relatively simple ends because the Oireachtas is solicitous to ensure that the Executive will not be furnished with short-cuts which might prejudice—which might prejudice—the fundamental interests of some utterly obscure person; the Oireachtas is determined that no matter how obscure, how defenceless, an individual is, he will always have access to the court and that the court will be left in a position to interpose itself with all the majesty which we have attached to the independent judiciary of this country between the obscure individual and the full power of the Executive.
I do not want to score a debating point, but the Minister heard before we left Question Time that the Tánaiste had challenged Deputy Ryan that he had access to a confidential document and had rebuked him for it. Deputy Ryan is an old practitioner now.
A young practitioner.
He is old in experience of the procedure of this House and he was very readily able to demonstrate to the Ceann Comhairle and to the House that the very words he used could be shown to have been taken from an answer given by the Tánaiste. It shows how lightly a charge of that kind can be formulated. I am prepared to concede that the Tánaiste in the first reaction of indignation to Deputy Ryan's question did think that somebody had communicated to Deputy Ryan a confidential report which he thought was confidential and had momentarily forgotten that in giving a Parliamentary reply a couple of months ago the substance of that report had actually appeared in his own Parliamentary reply. There you have evidence.
Suppose that was some person who wrote a letter to the paper and a Guard came knocking at the door and said: "I want to question you. Where did you get this information? This is a confidential document." I want that person to feel that he is perfectly safe to reply to the Guard: "I shall answer this question in the presence of my solicitor. Unless you arrest me, I shall answer nothing and if you do arrest me, my answer to any of your questions will be: `I have no comment', and that he would have the full certainty that he could then go into court, that the courts would be there to defend him from any attempt by the Executive to use an omnibus piece of legislation of this kind to intimidate or even victimise.
I am not suggesting the present Minister has some dark conspiracy on foot to victimise a particular person. I am just as much appalled that a Fine Gael Minister for Justice would be given power of this kind as that it would be given to a Fianna Fáil Minister or a Labour Minister. It is a power no Executive should have and I am urging the Minister to let us get this Bill back on some basis of reality and that is that the criminal section for the disclosure of confidential information shall relate to the revelation of confidential information which would be prejudicial to the safety of the State. If we have that at least we have some reasonable restriction of the scope of the Bill and some reasonable basis for the whole purpose of the legislation which, after all, the British when they were passing these Acts took care to provide, namely, that there should be prejudice to the safety of the State.
There is nothing in our situation to-day which calls for more circumspection than the British felt necessary in 1911 or 1920. On the contrary, from my experience as a member of an Irish Government and from my experience as an ordinary man in public life, I would say there is much less justification for extreme legislation of this character to-day than there was 40 years ago. Let us rejoice in that fact and act accordingly. If the situation should hereafter deteriorate the resources of civilisation are not exhausted and the Oireachtas will be able to employ them when the safety of the State requires.
This is a Bill which provides a field day for the legal men. Having listened very attentively for a number of hours on the last occasion, I received a very satisfactory education in respect of the operation of the law and the implications of this Bill. I must confess I was somewhat perturbed at the suggestions that were made in respect of the sections. There has been a reiteration by Deputy Dillon of a number of things that were said on the last occasion, a reiteration of things that must be disturbing to each and every one of us. This is a very serious matter and it is regrettable that we have not a fuller House to discuss it. Deputy Dillon, Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Seán Collins very ably put their points of view and the point that strikes me most is in regard to the liberty of the subject. If the submissions they are making are correct, I should like to ascertain how this Bill fits in with the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms to which we as a nation subscribe.
The Deputy is travelling away from amendment No. 11, which is the only amendment before the House.
Could the Minister say if this particular amendment is in keeping with the Convention to which I have referred? I am more than anxious to ensure that the fundamental principle of a man being innocent until he is proved guilty is maintained. That is something to which every Irishman and Irishwoman subscribes. Deputy Dillon suggested during the course of his speech that a Minister will indicate or certify whether or not a man is guilty, that the Minister is the sole judge.
No.
I may be wrong but I submit that is interfering with one's liberty. It is placing too much power in one man's hands.
It is not in the Bill; that is the only point.
I should like the Minister clearly to state that because I am very perturbed about it. I would not subscribe to any Bill or any section of a Bill which would prevent a man being able to prove himself innocent or which would not afford him every opportunity of defending himself in court. It has been submitted to-day and published in the Official Report in relation to the previous discussion that this Bill interferes with that freedom. I should like the Minister to state in his reply whether that is true or not.
I am afraid Deputy Mullen may have been influenced by a rather fatuous editorial which he read recently in one of our daily newspapers. The liberty of the subject or the presumed innocence of a man until he is proven guilty is not in any danger as a result of this section. We are dealing at the moment with Section 4 of the Bill and in particular with sub-section (1) of that section. The simple purpose of this section is to stipulate that where a person, whether he be a public servant or an ordinary individual, has in his possession official information, it shall be an offence for him to disclose that information unless he is authorised to do so in one of different ways which are set out in the Bill. There is nothing sinister about it. It does not in any way attack the fundamental freedoms or human rights. It simply stipulates that if you are a person who received official information and you disclose it without authority you are guilty of an offence under this Bill and you can be prosecuted in court.
Who determines that?
The judge.
Deputies
No.
The question as to whether or not you received the information in the course of your official duties, whether or not you disclosed it without authorisation, all these matters will be matters which the prosecution will have to establish in open court to the satisfaction of the judge. The only way in which Ministerial or Executive power interferes in the process—this has already been disposed of in the House; it is not involved in Section 4 but now that Deputy Mullen has adverted to it I shall deal with it—is that the Minister will be entitled to certify that a particular type of information is secret and confidential. The Minister's intervention is confined purely to that one aspect and I have already argued he should be entitled to do that. As regards the other questions of criminal responsibility and so on, these will all have to be established in open court to the satisfaction of the judge.
This Bill is in two parts. In Part III we deal with the situation to which Deputy Dillon referred, namely, the situation in which the safety of the State is involved. That is in Part III of the Bill and it is not in any way connected with Part II. Part II is devoted to the less serious type of offences, simple disclosure of official information in breach of one's duty. In other words, what is involved in Part II is, for example, the case where an official of the Department of Education or a national school teacher or a printer would disclose wrongfully and wilfully the contents of examination papers in advance of examination day. That is the sort of thing we are dealing with in Part II and the effect of Deputy McGilligan's amendment, and I think Deputy McGilligan now admits that the amendment he has put down goes too far, would be that such a disclosure could not be an offence, unless it was prejudicial to the interests of the State. That is nonsensical and I think Deputy McGilligan himself now admits that he is going too far.
I do not. It is taken from the Minister's own words.
I thought Deputy McGilligan had come to the stage of admitting that his amendment goes too far; he said he would frame another one which would meet the situation. In my opinion, the amendment does go too far because there is a type of disclosure which should, I think, be capable of being penalised as a criminal offence, even if the safety of the State is not involved. I have mentioned one such disclosure. I am sure Deputies can think of many others. That is all we are concerned with here in Section 4.
Deputy Dillon put forward a plausible argument with regard to civil servants in particular. I immediately pointed out that there are more people involved in subsection (1) of Section 4 than civil servants. The subsection could also apply to an outside person who has had access to official information; in other words, a person to whom a civil servant might have disclosed the information. But, even ignoring these outside persons, Deputy Dillon has suggested that the way to deal with civil servants who are in breach of their duty is within the Civil Service regulations. I am the first to admit that that is, in all probability, the normal way in which breaches of discipline of this sort by civil servants would be dealt with, but I still think it is desirable to have this provision to meet the odd case.
Have we had many cases of disclosure of information improperly?
There have been some.
There was one.
I still think it is desirable to have this provision. Over and above the ordinary disciplinary provisions of the Civil Service code, a situation could arise where disclosure of information by a civil servant would be so serious and so grave that it should be regarded as a criminal offence. At least, those guilty of the disclosure should be capable of being prosecuted for a criminal offence in our courts.
May I ask a question? If there is a disclosure of the contents of an examination paper, and the pupils taking the examination get the paper in advance, can a charge be brought against those pupils under this Bill?
Yes.
Yes.
If a pupil is found with an examination paper in advance of the examination, or with information with regard to an examination paper, information which should not be available to him prior to the examination, can that pupil then be prosecuted?
It would be an offence if that person communicated the information to someone else.
Look at subsection (3). What about "obtaining"?
The offence normally would be committed by the person who had access to the official information by reason of his office; and the offence would be that he would communicate that information to some other person. If that other person communicated it again, that would be an offence.
So each pupil would be victimised and the originator would get off scotfree.
The child who got the information first would not be prosecuted.
He would. The child who passed on the information would be prosecuted. Is that not the sum and substance of it?
The position is that a person would commit an offence under this Bill if he either obtained or communicated the information. As I say, the normal offence would be by a printer, or teacher, or someone of that character, disclosing the information. That would be the normal offence. But the section is drafted in such manner that anybody who obtains the information is also guilty.
So that each pupil in a class who obtained such information could be prosecuted under this Bill?
Yes.
Of course.
Did the Minister ever "cog" at an examination?
Never—I never had any reason to.
Ministers do not have to pass examinations.
Might I ask the Minister another question?
The Minister might be allowed to make his statement. Deputies may ask questions afterwards.
I think the questions are helpful.
Supposing a member of the Garda is engaged in the investigation of a crime and he makes inquiries from certain individuals, individuals who have co-operated with the Garda and who can be trusted, and mentions to them the particular crime and his suspicions of certain people, is that member of the Garda liable to conviction for disclosing official information?
No, because the sub-section stipulates "unless he is duly authorised to do so or does so in the course of and in accordance with his duties"; surely that covers the type of case the Deputy has in mind?
It might not.
As I have said, the incorporation of the phrase "prejudicial to the State" in Deputy McGilligan's amendment is a mistake. This subsection is designed to deal with a limited number of cases. I think it is a sensible and reasonable sort of provision and I cannot see that it interferes in any way with fundamental liberties or that it is in any way prejudicial to the interests of the citizen. I suggest, therefore, that the amendment should be withdrawn.
I put this amendment down in the terms in which it is of set purpose. Why I chose those words—"prejudicial to the safety of the State"—was because, speaking here on the Second Stage of the Bill, at column 690 of Volume 194 of the Official Report on 28th March, the Minister said certain things. He was questioned as to why he had not drawn attention to subsection (3) of Section 2 in the explanatory memorandum; this is the subsection which gives him power to certify. He said he had forgotten about it. He said: "One of the most endearing characteristics of this House is its unexpectedness." He went on to say at the end of the column:
The background is that in proceedings for the unauthorised disclosure of official information which did not happen to be expressed to be confidential, the prosecution might be placed in an extremely difficult position without having such a provision. The public interest would be prejudiced if the information was disclosed but, if the accused denied that the information was confidential, the prosecution would have to disclose it in court. That would be an impossible situation, especially where the safety of the State would be involved.
I say: "Prove the safety of the State is involved, and you need not bother disclosing the document."
I was referring to Part III.
I am referring to this Part. The whole thing carries forward. Deputy Mullen has asked if the liberties of the individual are in any way prejudiced in this. They are. The example was given here today with perfect clarity. There has been only one trial in this country for a breach of the Official Secrets Act. That was in 1933. I mentioned this before Question Time. Let me summarise that case. People were charged with disclosing official information. As far as the people were concerned, they admitted they had got the information; they had it on the files of the Crimes Division of the Garda Síochána. It was also admitted that they had given that information to a professor in Cork who was writing a pamphlet about communism. Two out of the three points were proved. It had got into the hands of someone not authorised to get it; it came from the official side. There was one thing to be proved. Was the information secret and confidential? The case lasted three days. One of the defendants, giving evidence, described the document as "tripe". The word was an unusual one in the court in which it was used and the judge queried its use. The witness repeated it. At the end of three days, the jury stopped the case. They must have accepted that the documents were "tripe", and the judge agreed with the jury. The next day the judge suggested that, as the whole prosecution had been a mistake, the State should make amends by paying the expenses of the two men who had been put on trial, and the case was scouted out of court.
Today, in this House, the Minister said he thought that that case was wrongly decided, and he would not have a similar case decided that way again. Am I speaking correctly? For the future, the Minister will certify. The missing point! Is the document secret and confidential?
He never suggested he would certify.
Oh, yes, he did.
He said the case was wrongly decided. He said the documents were clearly official documents.
And they were improperly disclosed.
And a jury said there was nothing to answer. That is the fundamental right that is taken away, trial by jury, in connection with that particular point, because the Minister will in future say : "There is my certificate and you need not bother your head arguing about secret and confidential. I say they are, and that finishes it."
The Deputy is making one fundamental mistake. As the law stands, and as the law stood when that case was decided, it is not necessary at all to prove the documents are secret and confidential.
And that is the proper situation, is it not? Is that the situation you want?
That is the law under which the case you are talking about was decided.
And it was decided by scouting it out of court. What was in issue? The men agreed the documents had come from the Detective Division. It was agreed that they had gone to Professor Thomas Hogan of Cork who was not an authorised person to receive them. Two out of three points were proved and the last to be proved was whether the documents were "tripe" or were of any real substance. A jury fired it out in 1933. Fianna Fáil had got their biggest political victory in 1932. They went for election again in 1933 and they were returned once more.
Keep politics out of it.
Politics were entirely in their favour. Nevertheless, a Dublin jury, after three days, asked a judge to let them retire and, after 15 minutes, they said: "We are satisfied with this case," and they handed up the paper saying, in effect: Not guilty on every count. On that case, I read the editorials from the different newspapers today. Not merely were the charges not proved of offences against secrecy but, in respect of stealing the papers, which would come under the Larceny Act, a jury scouted that out of court.
They admitted the offence.
They thought it was nonsense and they said so.
But the offence was admitted.
What offence?
Stealing the document.
Listen. Any civil servant who gets a bit of paper on which something is written and sends it to a Deputy can be charged with stealing a document. I challenge you to put him on trial for that sort of thing.
There is another case of an Army officer who was tried for stealing a piece of paper.
What case? I do not know of that case. I know of only one case and it was fired out of court with contumely. The Minister today confessed that that case was wrongly decided, that the jury was wrong and that what he wants to do is to prevent a jury from ever making such a mistake again. That is the beginning and the end of this whole business.
The Guards are in trouble with the Minister. He wants them to form sports clubs. They think he had better attend to the matter of their salaries. According to one report, they sent a circular and put up a notice. I ask this question. If a member of the Civic Guards wants me to be briefed so as to know what his case is, that I might argue for him that he gets no enlargement of salary or an insufficient one is it an offence to send me a document of that type which comes from an official source, as I am not an authorised person? The Minister will certify that that is secret and confidential. The people cannot meet to draw up a memorandum about their grievances——
Of course they can.
—If it can be certified that it is secret and comes under the Act, if it comes to me and I am not authorised and it comes to them by virtue of their office. I submit that that is a form of tyranny. I would not mind such a matter in a time of revolution but I would remind the House that since the establishment of this State, only one case has occurred. It happened in 1933 and, after three days, the jury said they had enough. I quoted from the editorial saying that the Government had made a perfect blunder. The counsel for the men addressed the court on the basis that it was political persecution—and, obviously, that was believed.
Deputy McGilligan is making a fundamental mistake in trying to adduce the 1933 case as evidence in support of his point of view.
It is the only one.
He said to us-that two of the main aspects of the case were admitted by the defence and that therefore the only issue before the court was whether or not the document was secret and confidential. That is completely false because, under the present law, which is the law as it was in 1933 when that case was decided, you do not have to prove that the information is secret and confidential for it to be an offence. I want to point this out to Deputy Dillon—before he leaves the House—that, under the 1911 Act, to which he has adverted, even as amended by the 1920 Act, it is not necessary that the information should be secret and confidential. The whole question of the information being secret or confidential, or being certified as such, does not arise under the present law, and the Bill, therefore does not worsen the position of the accused in any way.
Indeed, there has been a great deal of complaint in Britain down the years about the operation of the 1911 and 1920 Acts. Many people have suggested that they should be confined to espionage cases, but that view has never been accepted in Britain. The law there is the same as it is here at the moment, namely, that once you disclose information to which you have access by virtue of your official position—it does not matter whether it is secret and confidential or of a military character—you are guilty of an offence. Therefore, Deputy McGilligan's interpretation of the decision in the 1933 case is completely erroneous. You do not have to prove that the documents are secret and confidential at all.
You mean the jury were wrong?
Your interpretation of the case was wrong.
Completely?
Deputy McGilligan has said that the third point of the case was decided on the issue that the documents were not secret and confidential and that the jury threw it out on that basis and that if the case were to be heard again after the passing of this Bill, the verdict would be different because the Minister could simply certify that the documents were secret and confidential and that that would be the end of the matter. That was the basis of the case he made here this morning and repeated this afternoon—that the verdict in this 1933 case would be completely different if this Bill became an Act in its present form. That is a completely erroneous interpretation of that case. The present law is that the documents do not have to be secret and confidential for an offence to be committed. The law here and in Britain—and in 1933 it was the same—is to the effect that, whether it is secret and confidential, if you disclose information to which you have access by virtue of your office, you commit an offence. Therefore, what Deputy McGilligan says about secret and confidential is irrelevant because whether or not a document is secret and confidential is not an issue at the moment.
The incorporation of the idea of "prejudicial to the safety of the State" into this Part of the Bill would be a mistake. Part III of the Bill deals with offences which are committed where the safety and security of the State are involved and where people do things prejudicial to the interests of the State. Part II, here, is limited to a very specific type of offence, namely, a simple disclosure of information. where the safety of the State is not involved. The penalties prescribed in Section 13 for offences under Part II are correspondingly less than those prescribed for offences under Part III.
On this point, could I question the Minister in connection with the disclosure of information which might take place in the Department of Education? The Minister's reply did not satisfy me completely. The position might arise where a printer or an inspector or a superintendent or a teacher in charge of examinations may have information concerning certain answers submitted in respect of an examination question. Now, if such an individual makes that information available to any member of the public, an offence is committed by him and he is liable to prosecution under this section. What I cannot understand is that if the identity of the person who discloses such information about the examination is not established, the person to whom the information is disclosed, or a pupil who uses that information to help him in his examination, can be prosecuted, under the same section.
I do not think it was ever envisaged that pupils who take part in an examination would be prosecuted, or be liable for prosecution for what a Deputy described as a simple "cog". Naturally enough, we all deplore the idea of "cogging" in school. It is something to be frowned on, but no matter how serious it may appear to the examining authorities, there is certainly no justification for a prosecution on the part of the State for such a simple misdemeanour. After all, young people cannot be expected to have the solid, respectful type of approach that the Minister would suggest he has himself in this matter.
That he would like to think he has.
He is speaking now as Minister for Justice, but I should like him to throw his mind back to Charlie Haughey at the age of 17 and consider——
You are not suggesting that the Minister would "cog"?
I believe he was young at some stage.
Young in limbs; in judgment, old.
If Deputy Haughey, 15 years ago, had information available to him that would enable him to pass an examination, I do not suggest for a moment he would use it but it might be that in the softness of his heart, he would pass it on to a colleague sitting beside him at another desk. By so doing, Deputy Haughey, as a boy, would be leaving himself open to prosecution and also his pal who might have utilised the information. The Minister should make it quite clear that under those circumstances it would mean that the parent of a minor could be prosecuted. There is a chain reaction and you could have an entire classroom prosecuted or the parents of an entire classroom prosecuted because their sons or daughters had access to information in an examination to which they were not entitled. That could not be described as an offence against the State in any circumstances. I know the Minister will refer me to Part III. That is all I have to say on that except that the Minister should not compare the legislation in operation in Britain in this connection with his proposals here. There is a great difference and the fundamental difference is that there is no written Constitution in Britain.
As far as the present law in Britain is concerned, there is no state of emergency there but we at the present time are working under a state of emergency. I have asked the Taoiseach on half a dozen occasions in the past five years when the Government proposed to revoke the declaration of emergency passed here in 1939. Under that resolution of emergency passed by this House in 1939, the Government of the day have full power under the Offences against The State Act to pull in any citizen for any alleged offence the Government may presume him to have committed. I do not think there is any necessity for this section at all.
There is no use saying that similar legislation is in operation in Britain if there is no state of emergency existing in Britain. When there is a state of emergency existing in Ireland, there is no need for this legislation to be invoked at all. I suggest to the Minister that if he wants legislation of this nature, the first thing he should do before bringing it in is to consult with the Government and bring a motion before the House revoking the state of emergency. Then there might be some sense or reason attached to a Bill of this sort.
I feel the Minister in his approach to this is dealing with official information as if it was a ton of potatoes. Even today we had the situation of the spoken word in Parliamentary Questions and the exchange between Deputy Ryan and the Minister for Health which showed, if you want to take that sort of thing, that the spoken word is not like a ton of potatoes. Very often, it is not just a question of being all black or all white and there may be many shades of grey in between. The certificate by the Minister really means that you will have government by Ministerial order as distinct from government through the court itself.
Reference was made to leading articles in newspapers. I think sufficient time has passed since 1933 to enable us to look on these leading articles as expressions of opinion by bodies or newspapers. You can even assess whether they were with or against the Government at the time but I do not think that it is very brilliant for somebody who was playing ball at that stage, like myself, to regard them as fatuous because he did not understand what the situation was. I think Deputy McGilligan's amendment gives the citizen an insurance policy. After all, if the information is some silly bit of information which is not prejudicial to the safety of the State, why should the Minister have the right to certify it as an official secret and almost have a person sent to the court guilty?
That is not what is involved in this amendment.
The man who would say that he was guilty is the Minister for Justice. It is perhaps unconstitutional. I do not know whether that point has been argued or not but certainly it is not in the spirit of the Constitution.
Deputy McQuillan mentioned two points with which I should like to deal. First of all, with regard to his point about the declaration of emergency, I suggest that in this matter he should really be on my side. Surely from his point of view, it is more desirable that we should proceed in this type of case under legislation of this sort than under emergency procedures, in normal circumstances.
You are going to have both now.
From his point of view, it should still be preferable to have this type of legislation. Secondly, I admit he has, to some extent, a point as regards pupils at examination times. However, I should like to direct his very careful attention to the wording of subsection (3). It reads:
A person shall not obtain official information where the communication of such information to him would be a contravention of sub-section (1).
That clearly envisages that before you could possibly establish a charge of obtaining official information, you would have to establish a similar charge against somebody for the disclosure of that information. The wording of the subsection means, it seems to me, that it would be almost impossibly difficult to establish a charge against a person for obtaining the information, unless you were also able to establish that a person was committing an offence under subsection (1). I want to go on record as saying that I would regard it as ridiculous to bring a prosecution against school children because of the fact that they happened to have such information and indeed subsection (3) is not meant to cater for such a type of case. It is meant to cater for the type of case where a printer would disclose information to somebody else who would in turn disclose it.
Deputy Donegan referred back again to Section 3 and to the Minister's certificate being conclusive. The House has already disposed of that and it is not at issue here under Section 4. Neither is it at issue in Deputy McGilligan's amendment, which I consider to be misdirected. I fully agree with the point about the disclosure of information being prejudicial to the interests of the State as being proper to Part III, but in Part II of the Bill, we are dealing with a different type of situation, a different kind of offence, and it seems to me that it is important to make it an offence to disclose official information, even though the interest or safety of the State might not be concerned. Here I want to point out that the people who would normally be concerned in this sort of thing would be public servants and we have, in fact, consulted the Civil Service staff organisations with respect to the Bill. They are quite satisfied with Section 4. They agree it is proper there should be such provision with respect to the disclosure of official information, even in circumstances where the safety of the State is not concerned.
I agree with the Minister that there must be protection in respect of official information of a certain class, but on this subsection the matter with which I do not quite agree is that subsection (3) would necessitate disclosure of a person who would fall under another subsection before the person with whom this subsection is concerned could be charged.
I take it the Deputy knows we are dealing with amendment No. 11.
This point arises in that connection. Once a prima facie case has been established, it must be, first of all, because of the fact that the particular information was confidential information within the meaning of the Act. Having gone so far, the onus of proof can be shifted by showing that the particular person was in possession of the information, and if the surrounding circumstances are such as to coerce the inference that he could only have got that information wrongfully, then the burden of proof is shifted and he could not be convicted on that without the disclosure of the person who gave that information to him. In other words, if he or anybody else decided to sing dumb, the court could conclude——
That is a complete change of the criminal law. That is not shifting the onus. I never heard of it.
That is not what I said. The Deputy has misunderstood me. What I said was that the case stands proved by virtue of the fact that a person was in possession of information and that no reasonable person could find any alternative conclusion except that he got that information wrongfully. It is not what Deputy McGilligan says.
It is.
Amendment put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 51; Níl, 60.
Tá
- Barry, Richard.
- Belton, Jack.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Browne, Noel C.
- Burke, James J.
- Burton, Philip.
- Byrne, Patrick.
- Clinton, Mark A.
- Connor, Patrick.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, Declan D.
- Costello, John A.
- Coughlan, Stephen.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donegan, Patrick S.
- Dunne, Thomas.
- Esmonde, Sir Anthony C.
- Everett, James.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Gilhawley, Eugene.
- Harte, Patrick D.
- Hogan, Patrick (South Tipperary).
- Jones, Denis F.
- Kenny, Henry.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Lynch, Thaddeus.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McLaughlin, Joseph.
- McQuillan, John.
- Mullen, Michael.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- Murphy, William.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donnell, Patrick.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.K.
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- O'Sullivan, Denis J.
- Pattison, Séamus.
- Reynolds, Patrick J.
- Ronney, Eamonn.
- Ryan, Richie.
- Sweetman, Gerara.
- Tully, James.
Níl
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Lorcan.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Blaney, Neil T.
- Boland, Kevin.
- Booth, Lionel.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Brady, Seán.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Brennan, Paudge.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Burke, Patrick J.
- Carter, Frank.
- Carty, Michael.
- Childers, Erskine.
- Clohessy, Patrick.
- Colley, George.
- Collins, James J.
- Cotter, Edward.
- Crinion, Brendan.
- Crowley, Honor M.
- Cummins, Patrick J.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Davern, Mick.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Dooley, Patrick.
- Egan, Kieran P.
- Egan, Nicholas.
- Faulkner, Padraig.
- Gallagher, James.
- Geoghegan, John.
- Gibbons, James M.
- Gilbride, Eugene.
- Gogan, Richard P.
- Haughey, Charles.
- Hillery, Patrick.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Kitt, Michael F.
- Lalor, Patrick J.
- Lemass, Noel T.
- Lemass, Seán.
- Leneghan, Joseph R.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- Lynch, Celia.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Meany, Con.
- Medlar, Martin.
- Millar, Anthony G.
- Moher, John W.
- Mooney, Patrick.
- Moran, Michael.
- Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Malley, Donogh.
- Ormonde, John.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Timmons, Eugene.
Tellers:— Tá: Deputies O'Sullivan and Crotty; Níl: Deputies J. Brennan and Geoghegan.
Amendment declared lost.
Amendments Nos. 12 and 13 not moved.
Question proposed: "That Section 4 stand part of the Bill."
On Section 4, the question was put and not answered as to what is the position of a pupil who gets an examination paper through the hands of some manager or authority in the school. The point was raised by a member of the Labour Party as to whether such a pupil could be charged with obtaining official information. I believe such a person could be so charged and I did not hear an answer to that question.
I thought I dealt with it fairly fully in reply to Deputy McQuillan. First of all, subsection (3) speaks of obtaining official information. There would, therefore, have to be a positive act of obtaining information by the person concerned.
Deputy McQuillan was concerned with the case where he suggested it would be possible that a pupil could be prosecuted even though the person who actually disclosed the information to him would not be prosecuted. I argued, and I still argue, that that is unlikely. The wording of subsection (3) is such that you would almost certainly have to be in a position to establish a case against a person disclosing the information before you could bring a case against the person who obtained the information. I submit there would have to be a positive act of obtaining. Mere reception would not in my opinion be enough to make a person guilty of an offence under sub-section (3). Mere receiving of information would not be enough to bring him within the ambit of these words.
I have also indicated that we have to be realistic about these matters. A prosecution would not be taken against a pupil in those circumstances. I cannot possibly imagine any responsible Government undertaking such a prosecution. I want to point out that Section 14 stipulates that the consent of the Attorney General must be obtained before any such prosecution can be instituted. For what it is worth——
That is a good phrase.
An excellent phrase.
That phrase is the beginning of a new sentence. For what it is worth my opinion is that no prosecution would be taken or should be taken under this section against a pupil who obtained information in those circumstances. I merely mentioned the question of examination papers as an instance. It is possible to think of many others. For instance, would not any member of this House consider that a civil servant, say, in the Department of Industry and Commerce who came by important commercial information and disclosed it to one businessman to the detriment of a competitor, or for some other wilful purpose of that nature, would be guilty of a criminal offence?
Are they not trustworthy people?
They are, but there is a large number of civil servants and the laws of human probability being what they are it is not inconceivable that at some stage or other a civil servant might disclose information.
The present law has prevented them from doing so, so far.
The very fact that the section is there will act as a valuable deterrent in circumstances in which the House would regard the disclosure as being a criminal offence. I do not for one moment want to convey that the section is framed exclusively against civil servants. It is not. The wording of the section makes it clear that other persons apart from civil servants are involved.
On the specific question as to whether or not a pupil might be prosecuted in such circumstances my answer is simply: Yes, providing the pupil made a positive act of obtaining information, he is caught within the wording of the section as framed. In my opinion it would be ridiculous to prosecute——
The fact that the Attorney General would have to give his permission——
Do not be controversial.
——rather spoils it because it makes the matter a whole lot worse than it was first. Does the Minister know of the situation a few years ago where a copy of an examination paper fell into the hands of a certain person during printing and was passed around on a pretty wide scale?
Not in the Christian Brothers' schools.
I will not make any comment on that. I do not want to be controversial. It was passed around on a fairly wide scale and, as a result, people got it innocently, and not too innocently. The position now would be that they would leave themselves liable to prosecution if they came into possession of examination papers beforehand. The fact that the Attorney General's advice has to be obtained does not help matters at all. We are a little bit scared about this whole thing because the Minister is now asking for powers which in our opinion are not really needed.
The Minister referred to civil servants. In fact, so far as I can find out there has been no case in which a civil servant had to be prosecuted for doing something like this. If the law was adequate over the years, why now is there any reason at this stage to make such a drastic change?
There is no change. We are not making any change.
Why then is the section included at all?
If the Deputy will permit me to answer, in this regard we are making no real change in the law. All we are doing is writing into the statues what is the law at the moment.
Was it not written in before?
If I am asked: "Why bring in this Bill?—the answer is quite simple. In the main, we in the Law Reform Division of the Department of Justice are carrying out a programme the object of which is to ensure that all our Irish statute law is contained in Acts of this Oireachtas. At the moment the law governing this whole matter is contained in two British Acts, the 1911 Act and the 1920 Act. I do not regard it as a satisfactory situation that we should continue to operate under these British Acts, particularly as the phraseology is, to a large extent, archaic and not suited to our time and circumstances. For that reason alone it is desirable to incorporate the law on this subject in modern Irish Acts of this Oireachtas.
On this particular matter we are not really changing the situation one bit. At present the law is that if a civil servant discloses official information he is guilty of an offence if he is not authorised to do so.
From what the Minister has now said it is manifest to many of us who have some experience in this House that he is busily trying to consolidate the law from the existing British statutes. I ask Deputies to advert to the statute that he is purporting to consolidate. The principal statute is the Official Secrets Act, 1911. Here is the note to Section 1 of the Act of 1911: "Penalties for Spying." That Act was passed by the British House of Commons to deal with spies, secret service agents and people who went into docks and took photographs of secret installations.
Might I remind the Deputy that we are now dealing with Section 4?
We heard the Minister explain how this Bill came into being. He said that his Department wanted to get rid of these two British statutes and to substitute an Irish statute to cover the whole thing. The two original statutes he is trying to get rid of are two statutes designed to deal with spies and foreign agents. That is the dominant purpose of these two Acts. Section 2 deals with the passing of documents which comprise a sketch, a plan, a model, an article, a note or a document to any person other than a person entitled to have such documents or to retain in his possession a sketch, plan, model, article, note or document or to have it in his control without authority.
That has nothing to do with spies.
The section speaks all the time of sketches, plans, models, articles and notes. Section 3 deals with the definition of fortified places such as a place of defence, an arsenal, a factory, a ship, a telegraph or signal station or any office building in His Majesty's possession for the retention of stores, or any place not belonging to His Majesty where a ship, arms or materials or instruments of war may be stored, or any place declared to be a prohibited place, or any railway or channel or other kind of communication, again with reference to the place where a ship, arms or instruments of war may be stored.
There is no reference anywhere or no implication anywhere that reference is to be had to school rooms or to examinations. In my opinion what has happened is that in taking these Acts of 1911 and 1920 some zealous person, probably the Minister himself, said "Do you not remember the case of the examination papers. Let us put in a bit about that". Between the spies on the one hand and the fortifications on the other hand we are putting in this bit about examination papers. The plain fact is that examination papers have no place in this Bill.
The Minister pictured a case in which a business man may confide confidential information about his business to an official and the official subsequently passes on that confidential information to his rival in trade. He asks us ought not that man go to jail. I say he should not. What power has the Minister if a confidential clerk in his own accountancy office reveals confidential information? His only power is that he can sack him. Does the Minister claim that he ought to have the power to lock him up in jail? He has no such power but he is trying to confound in this Bill two distinct and separate difficulties. It is one thing to call in a public servant and say to him that he had taken a salary on the observe certain confidences, to tell him that the penalty for breaking that undertaking is that he is sacked and if there is an inquiry for a reference in his case that the inquirer will be told that he is an untrustworthy person. That is undertaking that he would honourably the cost he brings upon himself for his failure to keep his bond.
If you go back to the 19th century articles of indentures of apprentices you will find there the provision that the apprentice must keep his employers' confidence but there is no implication that he can be put in jail if he does not do that. That is the way these things happen. We drift along until we find ourselves empowering some Minister, I do not say the present Minister, to put a child in the dock and send him for four years to Borstal because he had access to unauthorised examination papers.
For six months.
You cannot send a child to prison for six months but if he is found by the magistrate to be suitable for Borstal treatment he can be sent there. I do not believe anybody wants to do that. I do not believe that anybody thinks it right that anybody should have the power to do it. The Minister recoils from the concept that it is possible to do so and his defence to that is that no responsible executive would ever use that power. The real fact is that this is a lazy reformation of the legislation. In the process of reforming these two statutes we have tried to deal with a separate and distinct problem, that of examination papers escaping from the printers. It is by follies of that kind that we find ourselves drifting into doing things that nobody wants to do and that make us look and feel ridiculous and make us lose respect for the care it is incumbent on us to take when we are legislating for the people of this country.
I have a holy horror of creating situations in which respectable people can find themselves in the dock. Leave out the question of the penalty altogether. I cannot imagine a situation arising in which I could be arraigned by any Executive and put in the dock but it is a horrible concept that we should create any situation or circumstances in which such a thing could happen. The reaction of all Deputies would be to recoil from any situation in which his neighbour could be put in the dock. It is a detestable exper- ience and so I say that Part II of this Bill has no place in it.
Personally, I think we are making very heavy weather about the one incident in which the examination papers escaped from official control. The appropriate procedure to take in such a case would be to see that, if the printers did not take reasonable precautions to ensure that such a thing would not happen again, they would never get another Government contract. The truth is that the one case in a million happened and the fact that it only happened once in the memory of any of us is a remarkable tribute to the standards that were maintained heretofore. All that points to the fact that penal provisions of this kind are not necessary to deal with such situations as the Minister manifestly has in mind.
There is nothing of great substance between the two sides of the House in regard to the proper matter for an Official Secrets Act. We are all prepared to say that if there is a conspiracy against the safety of the State, adequate powers must be vested in the State to protect the State from such conspiracy, but do not ask us, in our readiness to give the Executive that power, to give them wide, general power to deal with matters which have no connection whatever with the subject-matter of the two Acts, the Act of 1911 and the Act of 1920, which the Minister himself said are the fons et origo of this Bill which is no more than a consolidation of the British statute law which already operated here. If reason would prevail and all of this section—in fact, I think all of Part II—of the Bill were dropped, leaving Parts I and III, we would probably have a reasonable chance of agreement if we could get a more reasonable approach on the question of the Minister's powers of certification. But the whole approach on Part II is inappropriate, excessive and, in fact, in my opinion, dangerous.
Lastly, I should say, in regard to the words contained in subsection (3) of Section 4,
A person shall not obtain official information where the communication of such information to him would be a contravention of subsection (1)
there is no use in the Minister saying he does not think that a child who got that information, unless he did some positive act to seek it, would ever be caught by the terms of that provision. I do not agree. I think he would be caught and would be liable. The Minister says that even if he were caught, no sane Executive would ever invoke the subsection against a juvenile. That shows that the Minister himself regards it as inappropriate. Remember we are not only dealing with little children in primary school nor with children in the secondary school going on for their Leaving Certificate: we may also be dealing with undergraduates, boys and girls of 18 and 19. Does any of us want to provide in such circumstances, having in their possession an unauthorised copy of an examination paper, they can be sentenced to six months in jail? I do not think that is appropriate. I do not believe anybody in the Dáil considers it to be appropriate. I do not think the Minister considers it appropriate——
Agreed.
And yet the Minister is trying to pass a law to say it should be the law of Ireland. That is all I am saying. I detest the whole process of passing a law which all of us agree is wrong simply because somebody says: "It is too much trouble to change." If it should not be there, let it be gone. I think if the Minister agrees, we should let Part II drop and get on with Part I and III which deal with spies and foreign agents, the appropriate material of an Official Secrets Bill. Then we can pass a reasonable Act of Parliament. We may not be in unanimous agreement about it but at least we shall all know what we are talking about—that we are not talking about children in school or undergraduates in University halls.
I am not happy about this section. If Amendments 11 and 12—particularly No. 11—were included, it would be much more acceptable. In this section, I am not concerned with spies or espionage agents, although I think it is right to mention them in relation to this section, but I am particularly concerned with official information. I start off on the basis that everything a civil servant in any Department communicates to a Deputy, Senator or member of the public is official information. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what are the general instructions given to civil servants in regard to the publication or communication of information to Deputies or Senators or to members of the public.
There has been so much discussion on this section and so much publicity has been given to it that I wonder what frame of mind the civil servant will have when he approaches the business of communicating information in future. With all the publicity in regard to this section and the wording of it, I think the civil servant will now be reluctant to give information either to public representatives or to the general public. It seems to me he may be afraid to give out certain information in case it may be regarded as official information and subject to this legislation. Subsection (1) of Section 4 states: "A person shall not communicate any official information..." It is ridiculous that all information within the civil service should be embraced in these three words, "any official information", without any qualification——
Look at the definition section.
" `Official information' means any secret official code word or password, and any sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information which is secret or confidential——"
Or is expressed to be either.
——"or is expressed to be either and which is, or has been in the possession, custody or control of a holder of a public office by virtue of this office or to which he has or had access, and includes information recorded by film or magnetic tape or by any other recording medium."
That does not do much in the way of limitation.
I do not know what point the Minister wants to make.
That the information must be secret or confidential.
Or expressed to be either.
Deemed by whom to be secret or confidential?
By the Department.
By the Minister. The Minister does it.
No, not necessarily. It is either secret or confidential per se or it is regarded as such by the Department.
Would there be a list of such things?
We had all this on Section 2.
I am entitled to raise it on Section 4. I was not here for Section 2.
That is the Deputy's worry.
I resent the impertinence of Deputy Booth.
That is a mild reaction.
In reply to Deputy Corish, we are not really changing the situation at all. On the 5th July, 1932, a gentleman named H.P. Boland—I think he was Secretary of the Department of Finance at that stage—issued a circular from the Department of Finance. It was headed "Official Secrecy and Integrity". It went on to give a summary of the Official Secrets Acts of 1911 and 1920 and the following words are included in it:
Any person is guilty of a misdemeanour punishable by imprisonment or fine or both who having in his possesion or control any article, note, document, secret code word, sketch (including a photograph), plan, model or information which he has obtained, or to which he has had access, owing to his official position
"communicates the same to any person"—and so on. So that, as far back as 1932 this situation obtained and, in fact, we are retaining this situation.
Can a civil servant tell me without being liable to prosecution if Mary Murphy has an old age pension?
Of course he can because the wording of the section is "unless he is duly authorised to do so or does so in the course of and in accordance with his duties".
Nobody in the Board of Works could give it.
If the Parliamentary Secretary has forbidden the giving of information about gullets——
You must accept that the political head must be in charge. If he refuses information, you can make him answerable in Parliament.
No. He can refuse to answer.
You will have thousands of Parliamentary Questions.
I want to reiterate to Deputy Dillon that Section 2 of the 1911 Act does not deal with spies or fortifications or munitions of war or anything of that nature. It deals with this simple business of disclosure of official information. So much so that there was a test case taken in 1919— admittedly, before the passing of the 1920 Act; but the 1920 Act did not affect the Section 2 of the 1911 Act in this regard——
Will the Minister say that again, please?
The 1920 Act did not affect Section 2 of the 1911 Act in this regard. A test case was taken in 1919 in Great Britain under the 1911 Act where a clerk in one of the British Ministries was prosecuted for disclosing information about contracts. It had nothing to do with Russians or foreign governments or spies or Mata Hari's or anything of that nature—a simple disclosure of commercial information. The clerk was fined. That established the position in Britain whereby Section 2 of the 1911 Act applied to the disclosure of information not necessarily involving espionage. That is still the position in Britain and it is the position here. So much so that I can quote from this Finance circular of 5th July, 1932, the terms of which I have just read out that it is an offence punishable by imprisonment—and every civil servant knows it—if a civil servant discloses information without due authorisation or not in the normal course of his duties.
I like to be a reasonable man and Deputy Dillon knows that from time to time I have listened to arguments from his side of the House and have accepted them. Indeed, I am sure that certain measures have been improved by reason of my accepting these arguments. But there is a fundamental difference between us on this point. I think, and most reasonable people will agree with me, that if a civil servant or other person wilfully discloses information which has been entrusted to him in the confidential position he occupies, that person is in certain circumstances guilty of a criminal offence.
Deputy Dillon quoted to me the case of a clerk in an accountant's office who might disclose information about a client. There is this difference between the ordinary commercial accountant and the civil servant: all citizens from time to time have willynilly to go to Government Departments and give information, whether they like it or not—for instance to the Revenue Commissioners, the Department of Industry and Commerce and other Departments. On the other hand they do not have to disclose to a commercial accountant anything that they do not want to disclose to him. Surely in this respect a Government Department is in a separate and distinct category? Government Departments are empowered to demand information from any of us, and get it. Surely we are entitled as citizens to see to it that when they do get that information, in such circumstances, they will not be permitted to disclose it in any unauthorised fashion. There would be chaos if this House were to endorse the prin- ciple that civil servants should be free to take their own decisions as to what they will or will not disclose.
The proper way to deal with this matter is, as has indeed been the way up to now, to provide that a civil servant who discloses, without due authority, official information will be guilty of an offence, admittedly, a minor offence, a misdemeanour, but nevertheless an offence, and that he will be capable of being brought before the Court and convicted of that offence. If we do not have such a provision, we will be looking for trouble in the future.
May I put a question? A point has been raised here about the necessity for secrecy, as far as Government Departments are concerned. It may be reducing the matter to the farcical stage to make this suggestion: There were a number of questions put down on the Order Paper today dealing with bog roads, for instance. I understand that the Deputy in question and the Parliamentary Secretary take different views as to whether or not a civil servant in the Board of Works should disclose information directly to a Deputy when he writes to them rather than have the information disclosed over the signature of the Parliamentary Secretary.
The Minister now states that the Parliamentary Secretary is the political head of the Board of Works and as such is the authority. I accept that he is the authority. The normal procedure has been that if a Deputy from a rural constituency takes up the phone—I speak from personal experience—and phones the Special Employment Schemes Office about rural improvement scheme No. 459, Roscommon, and asks the officer in charge whether that scheme has been inspected; if so, when; if a grant has been sanctioned; if so, the amount of the grant; and when the work is likely to be put into operation. That information is made available to facilitate the people in rural areas who are very anxious that their bog roads and drains should be maintained.
Is it a fact that if a civil servant in the Board of Works now discloses that type of information, he is committing an offence under this section? If a decision has been taken that all such information must be disclosed through the Parliamentary Secretary, that means that all that has to be done in regard to special employment schemes, rural improvement schemes, minor employment schemes, bog development schemes, is that a rubber stamp should be used on the file and the civil servant can say, "Deputy, I am very sorry; I cannot disclose this information; it is confidential information"—information about a bog road in Roscommon or Mayo is, if you do not mind, confidential—"and unless you go to the Parliamentary Secretary and get his permission, I cannot disclose it. It is a State secret." Theoretically, that is the position under this Bill.
That is the position at the moment without this Bill.
And under this a civil servant can be prosecuted if he does disclose the information—is that not a fact?
Yes.
I will answer when the Deputy has finished.
I am putting it to the Minister now that whatever has been the position, whether or not it has been dormant up to the present, under this Bill all this is coming to light as far as every Government Department is concerned. We all know civil servants are very cautious as a body. They are so cautious that in many instances they are responsible for a number of questions being put down in this House. The Civil Service as a body is most unpopular with the public because civil servants do not disclose information——
I do not think civil servants, individually or collectively, fall for discussion here.
I do not intend to cast any aspersions on any individual member of the Service. I am merely pointing out that as a body the Civil Service is not popular with the public, mainly due to the lack of good public relations, lack of savvy as to information that should be made available. I am afraid that, apart from anything else, under this Bill there will be a tightening up and there will be further misunderstanding between the Civil Service and the general public of each other's position.
When this Bill becomes an Act, in about three months' time, the Minister should inquire as to the number of new rubber stamps being purchased by the Department of Finance for issue to Government Departments, because that is what it can amount to. I do not think it is right that we should be here wasting time and money discussing legislation of this nature.
On the examination issue, irrespective of the Minister's opinion and although he may consider it nonsensical to suggest that a prosecution might take place, I am asking him to consider what would be the position in 10 years' time. Does he suggest that every Attorney General spends his time reading up the Dáil Debates to find out what was the mind of the particular Minister at the time the legislation was passed? Those of us who have been in this House for a number of years have too much experience of being told one thing by a Minister in the course of a discussion on a piece of legislation and finding that six months after that becomes law the courts and the Garda Síochána take a different view.
Whatever is embodied in legislation here will empower somebody, from the date that becomes law, to take action. It is no good saying it depends on the Attorney General. I am not going to make any play about any individual who is Attorney General but no Attorney General is bound by an opinion of a Minister expressed in this House. He can act on his own and is supposed to be there in a neutral position to decide at the particular time what is in the best interests of the State. Therefore, even though I agree with the Minister and I think the whole House does that it would be nonsensical at the present stage to suggest that there would be a prosecution in connection with the primary certificate, an examination in the university, a post-graduate course, or under the Local Appointments Commission or anything else, the power is there and in five years' time the discussion that took place in this House will not perhaps impress the then Attorney General or some very nosey member of the law who is anxious for promotion. It is necessary to set the public mind at ease that there is no power to witchhunt in a matter of this nature. We are providing through this type of legislation plenty of possibilities for people who wish to indulge in a witchhunt.
The Minister has suggested that in the case of a civil servant who might disclose information in regard to contracts to a rival, there should be the power there to prosecute. I think Deputy Dillon answered that fully but it strikes me there is a complete lack of balance in regard to what is just in matters of public interest. I have experience of a certain person in this State who exported goods to the value of about £500,000; a certain proportion of the goods exported were of the standard which had been agreed upon with the country to which they were exported.
I do not see how that can arise on this.
Would you allow me to finish?
The Deputy will have made the statement then.
The same person then sent an article that was substandard and got away with it. As a result of his activity practically the entire market that year and the next year collapsed and the good name of this country was put in the mud by the activities of this person.
I do not think that has any relevance.
The question of what is prejudicial to the safety of the State could be brought in with far more relevance there. More damage is being done by a person in that position who is not subject to prosecution by the State in the normal course of events but who gets away through slickness. No case was made that the safety of the State, the security or prosperity of the State——
That is not relevant.
I shall say no more on that. I would suggest to the Minister that when he does agree that the power is there in the section to prosecute minors or to prosecute parents through the type of cases that have been mentioned, he should be able, with the assistance of first-class draftsmen and advisers in his Department, to change that position before we reach the next stage of the Bill.
Would the Minister look at the amending Act of 1920, Section 9 of the Official Secrets Act of 1920 which amends Section 2, Paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of the 1911 Act. Subsection (1) (a) of Section 2 of the 1911 Act provides that where a person:
communicates the sketch, plan, model, article, note, document, or information to any person, other than a person to whom he is authorised to communicate it, or a person to whom it is in the interest of the State his duty to communicate it...
The 1920 Act now says in paragraph (a)(a):
or uses the information in his possession for the benefit of any foreign power or in any other manner prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State.
Once you put in that amendment you must read the whole section in the original Act as though that amendment had been in it from the beginning and I want to suggest that Mr. H.P. Boland misread the Act when he issued that Finance circular, and this House is not controlled by the Finance circulars issued by Mr. H. P. Boland. I think he was wrong because the terms of the amendment in Section 9 of the Official Secrets Act 1920 which brings in——
What about "or"?
Exactly. This is an additional offence. One is to communicate it. The new offence created is "or use the information..."
(a) is still an alternative to (a)(a).
(a)(a) is an addition. It is a new offence.
But the word "or" still stands.
"or" is a new offence —"or uses the information".
But (a) still stands.
(a) stands as it stood in the original Act but there is another offence added.
An alternative.
Not an alternative, in addition to communicating it. If he communicates it he commits an offence——
That is right.
——under Section 2 (1) (a) of the 1911 Act. The 1920 Act comes along and provides that in addition to communicating it, if he uses it for the benefit of a foreign power——
Yes, but (a) still stands.
But there are now added other words and an additional offence is to be read with the original subsection: "or uses the information in his possession for the benefit of any foreign power or in any other manner prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State". Now there is imported into this whole offence the very concept we are urging on the Minister, namely, that in order to make an offence of this kind, you must prove——
No, no.
——that it is in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State. There is the kernel of the offence.
But it is a new and separate offence.
I do not think so.
Yes, because (a) still stands.
You must read (a) now as if there was (a) and (a)(a), and (b) in the original Act. Surely you must bring the two Acts together.
(Interruptions.)
We will allow the beam of Deputy Leneghan to illuminate us all and then, when it is quenched, we will resume our discussion. I think you must read the two Acts together.
Yes, but you must leave the word "or" there.
But there is now imported into the Act the creation of an offence which is in any manner prejudicial to the safety or the interest of the State.
I rise to defend H.P. Boland, and say that his interpretation was perfectly correct.
I should like the Minister to pause for a moment before he proceeds to answer me. If he goes on to read the amendments provided by the Act of 1920 he will have to confess, I think, that in every case the amendment is designed to import into the original Act the concept of something which is prejudicial to the safety or interest of the State. I believe these amendments must have been brought in because the British House of Commons thought at that time that it was sought to extend the application of Section 2 of the original Act in a direction in which it was never intended it should extend. These two Acts deal with spies and espionage. This Bill deals with the communication of confidential information in a manner prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State. That is what an Official Secrets Act is for. It is not designed, and cannot be designed, to deal with the improper use of examination papers. The Minister's only defence is that, in so far as it applies to these things, he cannot conceive of any rational Executive prosecuting the parties who are caught under subsection (3) of Section 4. The plain truth is that part II of this Bill ought to be dropped. Parts I and III can then be legislated intelligently and, if there is an evil sufficiently great to justify legislation by this House, we can deal with it if appropriate legislation is brought before us. But everybody knows now that there is not any evil.
I do not think I am guilty of any breach of confidence here—I do not think I can be charged with publishing the contents of a secret document— when I say that I think the Minister for Justice took a very much more sensible course when his attention was directed to the practice of blackmarketing cinema tickets on the streets. He agreed then it was a bad practice, but he said he would like to get the views unofficially of the leaders of the other Parties in the House as to whether the practice was so bad that we should legislate about it. I took the view it was not. It would be using a 40-ton hammer to crush a nut. I think that view was shared by others. The Minister did not proceed. I think that was sensible.
The same conditions exactly apply to Part II of this Bill. We are agreed as to the substance of Parts I and III and, if the Minister thinks it is necessary to replace the Official Secrets Acts of 1911 and 1920, all right—well and good, that can be done. It is to the injection of Part II, which is not proper to this legislation at all, that we object. The Minister is tearing this from its context because the original context, I think, must be understood to be the Act of 1911 as amended by the Act of 1920, which amendment brings back clearly and explicitly the concept that the offences envisaged are offences which are in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State. The wise course is to drop Part II and proceed with Parts I and III. If the Minister then later wants to come back to Part II and deal with examination papers, or any other minor matter of that kind, he can come back to it in due time.
One can state any extreme case one likes one way or the other, but it is true to say, and it shows how fantastic we can become, that owing to the absurd folly of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, Deputy O'Malley, he can, by caprice, create a situation in which all the senior civil servants in this country are liable to imprisonment if they communicate to me the facts in relation to a minor relief scheme in County Monaghan, except over the signature of the Parliamentary Secretary. People may say: "Well, we all know the Parliamentary Secretary is daft——".
That particular matter is not in order.
How do you mean?
Acting Chairman
I am informing the Deputy that discussion of that matter is not in order.
I am telling you that we are now faced with a situation, under Section 4 of this Bill, in which, if any civil servant in the Board of Works communicates a fact to me in relation to a drainage scheme in County Monaghan, he commits an offence under Section 4, an offence for which he can be imprisoned.
Only if it is secret and confidential.
The Parliamentary Secretary said it could not be disclosed.
He could make it secret.
All he has said is that, if it is going to be disclosed, he will disclose it.
But he could say it is secret.
He could, but it is not an offence at the moment.
And similarly with an old age pension.
(Interruptions.)
What we are doing by this section is creating statutory offences, offences which can be created by the caprice of any foolish person like the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. We all know we ought not to do that, and there is a perfectly simple way of escaping this; drop Part II and proceed with the rest of the Bill.
I have been informed that H.P. Boland was not Secretary of the Department of Finance. He was the Chief Establishment Officer. He interpreted the situation correctly. Deputy Dillon, with all respect, is wrong in his interpretation of the amendment made by the Act of 1920. Section 2 of the 1911 Act laid it down that it was an offence merely to communicate the information. The British Parliament came along in 1920 and added a new offence, but it did not derogate one iota from paragraph (a) because the word "or" still stood. The fact that the word "or" is there at the end of paragraph (a) means that paragraph (a) and paragraph (a)(a) are alternative offences. One does not take from the other.
I do not think that is correct. They are additional offences.
Is it not possible that any information within the Civil Service can be deemed to be secret?
At the present moment, any civil servant who discloses any information of any sort, unless authorised to do so, and does so in the course of his duties, is guilty of an offence. We are changing that situation to the extent that in future any civil servant who discloses information which is official information will be guilty of an offence only if the information is secret or confidential. Information can become secret or confidential in one of two ways. It can be shown to be secret or confidential in itself, or, if it is stamped secret or confidential, then it is secret or confidential, as the case may be.
Surely any civil servant who would have a document stamped secret or confidential and who would deliberately disclose that information is looking for trouble? You cannot say he is innocent or is putting his head in a noose. Let me put the situation with regard to the Office of Public Works.
Before going on to that, will the Minister not agree that the information can be deemed to have been secret after the information has been given?
No.
That is not clear from the section.
It is.
I fail to see it.
It is absolutely clear that the official information must be secret and confidential at the time of disclosure.
That is not so. It is not in the Bill.
Where is it in the Bill?
It is quite clear that that interpretation——
It does not appear there. There is no specific mention of it.
I will put it this way to the Deputy. I could not possibly visualise anybody establishing otherwise from what I am saying. In other words, if that definition section, Section 2, means anything, it means that the information must be confidential information at the time and at the point when it is disclosed.
"Or is expressed to be". That is the expression that is used.
"Or is expressed to be". In other words, the information which is disclosed is expressed to be official information. It would be stamped "Confidential". That would have to be at the time prior to its disclosure. Some situation, which is alleged to exist with regard to the Office of Public Works, has really nothing to do with this situation. It seems to me that any Minister or any Parliamentary Secretary in charge of a Department is entitled, as of right, to instruct his Department as to what information shall be disclosed and what information shall not be disclosed and also to go farther and say who shall be authorised to disclose information. Surely that is a normal ministerial safeguard and protection?
This, as the Minister knows full well, is an operation by the Parliamentary Secretary who has just gone off the deep end and cannot get back.
I am sure Deputy Dillon does not for a moment expect me to accept that. It has nothing whatever to do with this situation. All that we are concerned with here is that a Department, at whatever level, would decide that certain information inside that Department is confidential information or is secret and confidential and would stamp it accordingly. We are providing that if a civil servant subsequently comes along and discloses that information he is guilty of an offence. If the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance wants to stamp any particular document in his Department "Secret and Confidential" then that stamping will bring the document within the ambit of this Bill. I will admit that. But, surely, any civil servant who would go ahead and wilfully disclose the contents of a document which was expressly stamped "Secret and Confidential" is looking for trouble?
Even if the document stamped "Secret and Confidential" contains only frivolous information? For instance, information about a bog road in Laois or schools in Thurles can be made secret and confidential now. I, in Limerick, can be told that some information which I am seeking is secret and confidential and the official must not let me have that information. Will that not be the position now?
I am the first to admit that. No matter what the document contains, if it is stamped "Secret and Confidential", then it is secret and confidential for the purposes of this Bill.
Even though it is of a frivolous nature?
I have said that. I am reasonably intelligent. If the Deputy says a thing once, I can understand it. Even if the information in the document may not be of any importance, once it is stamped "Secret and Confidential" then it is secret and confidential for the purposes of this Bill. But that has nothing whatever to do with what information Departments will disclose to Deputies.
That could be abused.
It could be used for the purpose of cutting out information to the Opposition.
It does not cut across the privileges of Deputies, one way or another. All that it does is to determine whether or not the disclosure of the contents of a document can be capable of being made an offence under this Bill.
The Parliamentary Secretary is in charge of his Department. He is entitled to say to any civil servant in it, apart altogether from the question of offences, what information shall or shall not be disclosed. I understand that there have been Ministers from time to time under all Governments who have said to their Departments that no information is to be given out from the Department except through the Minister's office. That is a privilege which we must leave to Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries—how they will run their Departments. If they run them wrongly or capriciously they can be brought before this House to answer for their misdeeds, but it is not relevant to this Bill.
What about the Teachta Dála who was told in a Department that land was going to be given——
I always count ten when I have a similar interruption from the Deputy. It reminds me of an occasion down the country when I was constantly interrupted by an individual at a meeting. I counted ten and decided to ignore him. I was glad afterwards when the people present told me that he was the local idiot. As far as the Minister is concerned, when he gave his evaluation of what the duties of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries are, I accept his evaluation but does the Bill not give the power to the Parliamentary Secretary in charge, for instance, of the Office of Public Works to have one of his officials prosecuted for disclosing information about, for instance, bog roads to a Deputy, unless that information is disclosed directly by the Parliamentary Secretary himself? Does that not mean that if such a prosecution is made in court, the judge would not be in a position to decide whether or not the prosecution was in relation to a flimsy matter? He would not be entitled to look at the inside of the file. He could not ask to have the file produced. He would simply have to accept the word of the Parliamentary Secretary that that file was secret and confidential. The civil servant involved could get six months for such a disclosure although the only information inside the covers of the file might be to this effect: "I regret that no grant is being made available for the bog road serving John Murphy and Pat O'Brien" in some townland in County Roscommon, County Mayo or County Galway.
Is that not a nonsensical situation? If every Minister of State took up that position then he has the power, under this section, to ensure that not alone will the civil servant be reprimanded but can be brought into the public court. The same thing applies in the Department of Social Welfare. If a position is reached here whereby some Minister, in his wisdom or very foolishly, decides that certain information should not be made available to Deputies, when they make inquiries in the normal course of their duties, is it not a serious matter? It is bad enough to have the power of discipline overused but when discipline means that, for an alleged offence of that nature, there can be a prosecution, I think we are going too far altogether.
I want to get back to the point which I started to make here before all these other points were raised for discussion. An attempt is being made here by the Minister to phrase these two Official Secrets Acts of England as if they were intended to deal with civil servants. That is not the way the Civil Service has been disciplined over the years. There are Civil Service Regulation Acts: we have a couple of our own. Under them, a civil servant is put under certain conditions with regard to information he gets by virtue of his office.
I have quoted from editorials and I shall quote again now from the editorial of the Irish Independent which I quoted this morning: “A British Act of Parliament, passed during one of the hysterical spy-scares in pre-war days,...” That is what the Official Secrets Acts were. This matter was raised recently in the British House of Commons—in March of this year. A Private Member tried to bring in a Bill to bring what he called the Official Secrets Acts back to the purport of the Official Secrets Act of 1911. I am not going to quote the whole thing. He spoke of things of a different character dealt with in the main Act, in regard to spying, and one of the things was in regard to people going into prohibited places, people who were saboteurs and wanted to get into Admiralty dockyards and things like that.
The whole atmosphere of these two Acts had to do with things prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State and most of the things were tagged on to those two conceptions. I raised this point in regard to a matter to which the Minister himself directed our attention. He said he was bringing into this Bill matters with regard to examination papers. It was he who directed our attention to that. Speaking at column 692 of the debate on 28th March he said, breaking up his phrases, that it had been said that it was absurd to include in a Bill dealing with matters concerning the security of the State the question of the leakage of examination papers. He went on to say that he thought it was good to bring in these matters.
I want to come back to the child. An examination paper is passed out by a press which does the printing and eventually it gets to a certain number of pupils. Are they open to prosecution as being people who have obtained official information? The answer I got was no, that there would have to be some activity on the part of the pupils in getting it. From the phrase used I do not see that. The two phrases used in Section 4 are, on the one side, that a person is not to communicate the information, and on the other side, is not to obtain it. In my opinion, these two phrases may be open to the interpretation of being passive. I thought obtaining information was correlative to the information. A person has information in his possession and it is found in somebody else's possession. It immediately arises that the person who had the information in his possession has communicated it or somebody else obtained it. I took it that these two things would be correlative.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted and 20 Members being present,
I am dealing with the question of obtaining information, and I put it simply that if a person is found in the possession of certain information he could be charged with having obtained it. I do not see how any other meaning could be attached to it. There is a well-known offence of obtaining something by false pretences and the matter would be adjudged on the basis of whether the person exercised any false pretence in getting it. I have had no satisfactory explanation that the word "obtain" would not be wide enough to bring in pupils found in possession of information and that they could be charged.
There are two other small points. It has been said that no offence can be charged under this Act unless by or with the consent of the Attorney General. That is in subsection (1) of Section 14. It should also be remembered that by subsection (2) before such consent is obtained a person charged may be arrested, or a warrant for his arrest may be issued and executed, and he may be remanded in custody or on bail. The person can be brought to court and discharged either in custody or on bail. I mentioned this morning the case in 1933 when there was the astounding situation of the Army Colonel and a Guard. The State opposed letting these two men out on bail even though in the end the case was thrown out of court by the jury.
The last point is whether a certificate by the Minister might not be retrospective and attention was directed to the fact that official information means a variety of things, the main thing being a document or information which is expressed to be either. The end of it is subsection (3) of Section 2 where a Minister gives a certificate. The Minister certifies that the information either is or was secret or confidential and that finishes the matter. You cannot argue it was not secret and confidential at the time it was passed out because the Minister's certificate is final and conclusive and there is no substance in saying that the information must be secret and confidential at the time it was communicated.
The Minister says that there are two kinds of secret information, one which is secret in itself and one which is stamped secret. I hope I did not take him up incorrectly. I should like to know the position in relation to this information. I am not quite sure what he means by secret in itself. I presume that it is obviously secret. I can quite accept the point that where a document is marked secret and confidential it would be very wrong no matter what it contained for the individual to divulge that information. Can we take it that information other than that which is marked secret and confidential and information which he says is secret in itself may be disclosed by a civil servant in the course of his job without contravening an Act? What scope does that allow a civil servant in the discharge of his duties? Would the Minister allow or accept that in these circumstances anything not marked secret or confidential may be disclosed by a civil servant to any outside person? As I say, I am not sure what he means in regard to information that is in itself a secret, say in the innocuous Departments of Local Government or Health, as distinct from, say, the Department of Defence. In that regard what would he mean by the type of information that is secret in itself?
I do not really see the necessity for this section except in regard to matters secret and confidential which could mean Cabinet documents or things like that. It seems to me that the section tends to facilitate the establishment or growth of bureaucratic practices in a Department in so far as there would be the canalising of information by the careful civil servant through a Parliamentary Secretary or a Minister. That would mean a serious slowing down of the work of the Department and that would be a bad thing from the point of view of the State. I wonder would the Minister clarify that position? Is it permissible for a civil servant to disclose any information other than that which is secret or confidential or is secret in itself?
Acting Chairman
Minister to reply?
Perhaps the Minister is withdrawing the section.
Did the Minister hear my question?
I did not hear a word the Deputy said.
I am afraid that is not my fault.
I mean that quite seriously; I do not mean to be discourteous to the Deputy.
It is the acoustics. I shall repeat the question.
I thought repetition was not allowed.
I do not regard the Deputy as the best judge of propriety. The Minister seemed to make two points. One was that if a document were obviously secret, or secret because it was stamped so by the Minister's Secretary, it is not permissible for a civil servant to divulge it without reference to the Minister or his Secretary.
In this Bill, we are concerned only with official information, and official information is defined as information which is secret or confidential or expressed to be such. If it is not, then it is not within the ambit of this Bill at all. Of course, the ordinary disciplinary regulations of the Civil Service would apply in the case of disclosure of such information and whether or not a civil servant would be at liberty to disclose information would depend on the normal regulations within his Department. The only information with which this Bill deals is defined as:
Any secret official code word or password, and any sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information which is secret or confidential or is expressed to be either.
But the Minister has the authority to declare as secret and confidential any information. He has the power to do so retrospectively, and it does not matter what the information is. It could even have to do with an old age pensioner.
If it is stamped.
Does the Minister not think there is justification for including that qualification in the section, or is it covered in any other part of the Bill? This is not official information at all but any information that discloses prejudice to the State. Does he not think there is need for inclusion of that in the Bill?
The Bill is quite specific in what it says—that official information means any secret official code word or password, and any sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information which is secret or confidential or is expressed to be so.
And as I pointed out already, the Minister can express any information to be confidential.
Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 60; Níl, 50.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Lorcan.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Blaney, Neil T.
- Boland, Kevin.
- Booth, Lionel.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Brady, Seán.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Brennan, Paudge.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Burke, Patrick J.
- Calleary, Phelim A.
- Carter, Frank.
- Carty, Michael.
- Childers, Erskine.
- Clohessy, Patrick.
- Colley, George.
- Collins, James J.
- Cotter, Edward.
- Crinion, Brendan.
- Crowley, Honor M.
- Lemass, Seán.
- Leneghan, Joseph R.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- Lynch, Celia.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Meaney, Con.
- Medlar, Martin.
- Cummins, Patrick J.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Davern, Mick.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Dooley, Patrick.
- Egan, Kieran P.
- Egan, Nicholas.
- Faulkner, Pádraig.
- Flanagan, Seán.
- Gallagher, James.
- Geoghegan, John.
- Gibbons, James M.
- Gilbride, Eugene.
- Gogan, Richard P.
- Haughey, Charles.
- Hillery, Patrick.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Kitt, Michael F.
- Lalor, Patrick J.
- Lemass, Noel T.
- Millar, Anthony G.
- Moher, John W.
- Mooney, Patrick.
- Moran, Michael.
- Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Malley, Donogh.
- Ormonde, John.
- Timmons, Eugene.
Níl
- Barry, Richard.
- Belton, Jack.
- Browne, Michael.
- Browne, Noel C.
- Burke, James J.
- Burton, Philip.
- Byrne, Patrick.
- Clinton, Mark A.
- Connor, Patrick.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, Declan D.
- Costello, John A.
- Coughlan, Stephen.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Dunne, Thomas.
- Esmonde, Sir Anthony C.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Gilhawley, Eugene.
- Governey, Desmond.
- Harte, Patrick D.
- Hogan, Patrick (South Tipperary).
- Jones, Denis F.
- Kenny, Henry.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Lynch, Thaddeus.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McLaughlin, Joseph.
- McQuillan, John.
- Mullen, Michael.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- Murphy, William.
- O'Donnell, Patrick.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.K.
- O'Keeffe, James.
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- O'Sullivan, Denis J.
- Pattison, Séamus.
- Reynolds, Patrick J.
- Rooney, Eamonn.
- Ryan, Richie.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Tully, James.
Tellers:— Tá: Deputies J. Brennan and Geoghegan; Níl: Deputies O'Sullivan and Crotty.
Question declared carried.
SECTION 5.
Amendment No. 14 not moved.
I move amendment No. 15:
In subsection (3), page 4, line 42, to add at the end of the subsection "or that the confidential nature of the information had not been brought to the notice of the employee of the contracting party".
Subsection (3) of this section provides:
It shall be a good defence to a prosecution for a contravention of this section to prove that the communication was authorised in writing by the Minister or State authority or by the party contracting on behalf of the Minister or State authority.
I want to enlarge the defences. This relates to, say, a firm who have a contract with the Board of Works. I am thinking in terms of an employee who may be regarded as part of the contract. He is gathered in by this section. One can easily understand the circumstances in which a document might, to the knowledge of the employer, be of a confidential type. But suppose in the course of the operations of the firm an ordinary employee gets information which he happens to pass on to somebody else? I think he should be allowed to have the defence that the confidential nature of the communication had not been brought to the notice of the employee. This is an effort to save the employee.
When I look at the most drastic piece of legislation ever passed in this country, the Offences against the State Act, 1939, I see it is an offence for a person to be in possession of treasonable, seditious or incriminating documents. One does not mind treasonable and seditious — they would disclose their own nature—but the incriminating document may be a document referring to an unlawful organisation. But where a person is charged with an offence under Section 12 of this Act, it is a good defence if he can prove that he did not know the nature or contents of the said document. I want to apply that type of defence to an ordinary working man employed by a firm with a Government contract and who, as a result, gets certain information. If inadvertently that man says something which is supposed to be a disclosure of confidential information, he should be allowed to get out if he can say that the confidential nature of the document was not made known to him.
I cannot accept this amendment by Deputy McGilligan because, first of all, there is a technical objection to it. As drafted, it would mean that the employer would be able to have a good defence to a prosecution brought against him if he were able to show that he did not communicate or indicate to the employee that the relevant information was of a confidential nature. It seems to me that what Deputy McGilligan has in mind is to provide a defence for the employee, in other words, that the employee would be able to have a good defence to a prosecution if he were able to show that the employer did not communicate to him the confidential nature of the information. Deputy McGilligan's amendment, as put down, means something else. It would, in fact, provide a good defence to a prosecution brought against the employer.
Apart from that technical objection, the amendment is not acceptable in principle because it seems to me to go too far. We must presume that any printing contractor carrying out printing of confidential documents for the Government would take all the necessary steps to bring to the notice of an employee the confidential nature of the documents. It would certainly be a very ready defence for the person accused if he were able to show that the employer had not brought to his attention the confidential nature of every single item which he would be printing. For that reason, I cannot accept the amendment.
I cannot accept the Minister's reading. There are two sets of people who may commit an offence under Section 5. One is a person who is a party to a contract and the second is a person who is employed by such party. My amendment aims only at giving a good defence to the person employed. If he can say the confidential nature of the document has not been brought to his notice, it does not benefit the employer or exclude him.
It does, of course.
In any event, let me concentrate on a single point. Does the Minister think it right that an employee should be found guilty of the offence of disclosing confidential information if he can prove that the confidential nature of the information had not been brought home to him? Surely that is ordinary justice. I shall put down the amendment again on Report Stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Section 5 agreed to.
SECTION 6.
I move amendment No. 16:
In subsection (2), page 5, lines 2 and 3, to delete line 2 and the word "Minister" in line 3.
We could take amendments Nos. 16, 17, 18 and 19 together.
Perhaps amendment No. 19 is cognate with amendment No. 18.
We could take them all together. This section makes it an offence to retain any official document or anything which constitutes or contains official information when a person has no right to retain it or when not required by his duty as the holder of a public office to retain it. Subsection (2) provides:
A person shall comply with all directions issued by a Minister or the Secretary of a Department or any person authorised by a Minister under seal as to the return or disposal of any official document or anything which constitutes or contains official information and which may be in his possession...
I think he should be asked to comply with directions given by the Minister himself under seal. That is a minor point.
A person has to comply with directions under seal as to the return or disposal of anything which constitutes official information and which "may be" in his possession. Surely there must be an allegation that a person has a document of a particular type. The documents should be specified when directions are given.
Under the system which has grown up with regard to civil actions, the State are entitled to claim privilege in respect of certain documents. The courts agree with great reluctance. Most of them have expressed views agreeing that there is such a system but they have passed very severe comments on it. One very eminent judge said that it was not merely a matter of justice being done but quite clearly justice did not seem to be done in a particular case. Judges in England have limited these applications for privilege. They object to what are called blanket certificates. If privilege is claimed for certain documents, they insist that the documents must be put up specifically and they say: "X, Y and Z have been examined and declared to be privileged." If a person is asked to obey directions in regard to the return of official documents, it should be clear that the documents are in his possession. There should not be a general demand. You should not be asked to give up a document which "may be" in your possession.
In the Offences against the State Act, there is a provision that in certain circumstances people may be asked to give an account of their movements at a specified time. That of course has been evaded in practice by saying: "Over the last six months or over the last year". There is also a provision whereby people may be asked to give information about other people's movements. I do not want a habit to grow up under this Act by which the Taoiseach or a Minister would be able to send off directions to ex-Ministers or ex-Parliamentary Secretaries saying: "I want all the documents you may have in your possession", covering, say, five years. In my opinion, there should be a specified time and there should be some limit. Directions should not be sent unless a person has certain information or is suspected of having it. That is the purpose of these three or four amendments. The Minister should give the directions; certain documents should be specified in the directions; and it should not be possible for the Minister to throw out a dragnet and say: "I want any documents you may have." They should be specified.
It is unreasonable to suggest that a Minister should act personally in all these cases. The normal departmental procedure should apply, namely, that a direction should be issued by a Minister or the Secretary of a Department or any person authorised by a Minister. I feel that that is a reasonable, workable arrangement. I am prepared to agree with Deputy McGilligan in amendment No. 17. We are accepting the amendment and substituting the word "is" for the words "may be", in the last line of subsection (2).
Regarding amendment No. 19 I feel it would be unreasonable to expect the Minister or his agent to specify every particular document in question. The Department might not always know precisely what documents a retired official or some-such person might have. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the request addressed to such a person should indicate merely that he should return all official documents in his possession.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment No. 17:
In subsection (2), page 5, line 5, to delete "may be" and substitute "is".
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment 18 not moved.
I move amendment No. 19:
In subsection (3), page 5, line 7, after "documents", to insert "specified in such directions".
On this amendment, I would say that it is absurd that a person should be asked for unspecified documents.
They have to be official documents.
The Minister can designate any document to be official.
The Minister may ask a person to return all official documents or any document that contains official information.
I wish the Minister would come up to my press and look at the files of the Department of Agriculture which I brought out of the Department. They are the personal files of the Minister and they are all motheaten now, but I invite the Minister to look at them.
Subsection (2) does not apply to Ministers or ex-Ministers.
There is a subsection that applies to Ministers.
Subsection (2) does not apply to Ministers.
Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply but subsection (3) does. A general direction for any document is not sufficient when you are dealing with a criminal offence. It could be that such a directive might be issued as a fishing directive, in order to find out something.
In the case of subsection (3), it must be original documents.
Surely if the Government wants a person to return a document under penalty of imprisonment, they ought to refer to the specific document. They ought to mention some particular document and tell the person concerned that he is not entitled to have that document and that he must return it at once to the Government. If the person refuses to comply with that direction, then the Government can take action against him. To issue a general fishing order to return any document could be used as a means of prosecution.
The request might be made, for instance, to a retired civil servant, to return to the Department concerned all documents which he might have in his possession which were the property of the Department or which contained official information. How could you expect the Department or the Minister to specify every document? If, for instance, the retired civil servant had a particular file a request might be made to him to return the file by reference to the subject matter of that file. However, to expect the Department or the Minister to specify every document in the file would be unreasonable.
It would not be unreasonable to ask the Minister or the Department to request the return of specific documents. If the Minister or the Department specifies the return of file number so and so it would be a fair request.
It would not be unreasonable for the Minister to request the return of any specific original documents or specific documents containing official information in his possession.
I will look into it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed: "That Section 6, as amended, stand part of the Bill".
I want to ask a question on Section 6. The section exempts anybody who has previously held office and to which subsection (3) applies. Directions cannot be given to such a person as a member of a previous Government in respect of official documents. I have discussed this matter with some of my colleagues and I found a misapprehension with regard to it. They thought that the exclusion applies continuously throughout the Act but it does not. Under the Constitution speeches made in this House are precluded from examination by any court or by any body outside but the House itself and the ordinary law of defamation, slander or libel does not apply. That is the case with regard to statements made in this House.
There is now the further exclusion in this Bill in respect of members of previous Governments. There is a misapprehension that this also exempts members of the House from being involved in Sections 4 or 5, but, of course, there is no such exclusion. If I say anything about official information which is passed to me as a member of this House I may speak about it in this House and I cannot be restricted in that regard by any court. But where an offence is committed is that if I, as a member of this House, have received official information from a civil servant, then I am guilty of an offence. Any statement I may make about it would be privileged and could not be challenged by anybody outside this House but when it comes to the receipt of a document a Deputy or a Senator would be caught by the dragnet of Sections 4 and 5. I want to refer to this matter so as to make it known that there is no protection for any Deputy or Senator in respect of Sections 4 and 5. I think that is wrong.
Question put and declared carried.
Question proposed: "That Section 7 stand part of the Bill".
I want the Minister to answer this question. Does the Forgery Act of 1913 not cover everything in this Section? Why is it necessary to bring in this section?
As I am advised, it does not cover everything. I would like to hear Deputy McGilligan as to why he suggests that it does.
Because everything in this section is in terms included in the Forgery Act of 1913. It covers everything that is here.
The essential difference is that a forgery, to be constituted an offence, must be intended to defraud or deceive.
Here is a case which illustrates the practice which the Minister is adopting in this consolidating Bill of widening the scope of the original Act. This is copied substantially from paragraph (e) of Section 1 (1) of the Official Secrets Act, 1920 and the note says: "Unauthorised use of uniforms; falsification of reports, forgery, personation and false documents". The next paragraph begins and is governed by these words: "If any person, for the purpose of gaining admission or of assisting any other person to gain admission to... or for any other purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State ..." It goes on, "uses or has in his possession or under his control ..." When we come to the section now before the House there is no provision at all about the person having a purpose in his mind prejudicial to the safety of the State. This section simply says:
A person shall not——
(a) use or have in his possession or under his control, without lawful authority, any official die, seal or stamp or any die, seal or stamp so nearly resembling it as to be calculated to deceive,
The note on the Bill here is: "Offences in relation to official dies, seals and stamps [cf. 1920 (c.75) s. 1 (1) (e)]"
I want to direct the attention of the Minister to the fact that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, his recapitulation of Section 1 (1) of the original Act is stripped of the governing words of the original Act and, as a result, the effect of this section is a good deal wider than the effect of the section which it purports to reproduce because there must be the intention to do something prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State in order to make it a crime under the 1920 Act to have in your possession or under your control without lawful authority an official die, seal or stamp, whereas no such intention needs to be proved under the Bill we are now dealing with.
There is here a distinction to which I referred earlier. The section covers something which I regard as being an offence even if it is done in a manner which is not prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State. If the acts are done in a manner prejudicial to the safety of the State they attract the heavier penalties provided for offences under Part III of the Bill. I still think that it should be an offence, liable to lesser penalties, for a person to do any of the things set out in Section 7.
What does "official die, seal or stamp" mean? It does not normally mean a stamp indicating the authority of a Minister or the Government. It includes "a die, seal or stamp of or belonging to, or used, made or provided by a Minister or State authority or any diplomatic or consular agent or other authority appointed by or acting under the authority of the Government". I do not know to what that extends. Does it include CIE or the ESB? What do the words "other authority appointed by..." mean? I assume it means the Pigs and Bacon Board and An Bord Bainne or are these Boards excepted because they have not been set up by Statute. It is pretty wide. If you have in your possession or under your control, without lawful authority, any official die, seal or stamp of any of these people you commit an offence. You could quite conceivably have such an article in your possession without being aware of it. Surely there should be some evil intent?
Once you take that section of the Official Secrets Act, 1920, away from the words "prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State" you are in error, because the Forgery Act covers it generally. This is completely divorced from the Official Secrets Act, 1920. These things were solely related to matters prejudicial to the safety of the State and as regards that nobody would complain.
Does the Minister want to say that if a person happens to have in the junk, which he has taken away, a seal relating to the Pigs and Bacon Board or to some other authority appointed by, or acting under, the authority of the Government he has committed a misdemeanour under this legislation for which he is liable for six months imprisonment? I do not think the Minister wants that——
Without lawful authority.
If a person finds in his junk such a stamp or seal which is not a ministerial seal but a seal of some subsidiary body, does the Minister want to provide that such a person has committed a misdemeanour under this legislation, even if the Minister is satisfied that he has no evil intention at all which renders him liable to imprisonment for six months and that he is not entitled to go into court and say: "This was in a box of junk. I was not even conscious that I had it——"
An official seal?
An official seal, die or stamp.
You will not find those casually thrown into your briefcase.
It can happen. For instance, there is the stamp that is clapped on at general elections on the ballot paper. That would be such a seal.
That is a pretty vital thing.
It is, but I presume it is changed every election.
It can make the ballot paper valid or invalid.
Presumably it is changed after the election and not used at the next election. One can well imagine a seal or die or stamp of that kind being in the possession of somebody quite innocently. What I am suggesting is——
There is no conclusive certificate by the Minister in this case.
No, but there is an absolute offence in having possession of the thing without any intention being in question. The Minister purports to take this section from the section of the 1920 Act. You are not taking it from the 1920 Act; you are taking something quite different. The 1920 Act provided that if for the purpose of gaining admission, or of assisting any person to gain admission, to a prohibited place or for any other purpose prejudicial to the safety or interest of the State within the meaning of the principal Act, a person did any of these things, he committed an offence. Very well; that is all right. Quite casually, you are vastly extending, and I think you are doing it simply because you thought it would be tidier to do it that way. We are not dealing with tidiness. We are dealing with people's rights and with their liability to criminal prosecution.
Surely it would be no disfigurement of this piece of legislation if you provided that "a person shall not for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State within the meaning of the principal Act use or have in his possession or under his control, without lawful authority, any official die, seal, stamp——"
What is the Deputy's suggestion?
In Section 7, instead of:
A person shall not——
(a) use or have in his possession or under his control, without lawful authority, any official seal or stamp or any die, seal or stamp so nearly resembling it as to be calculated to deceive, or
to say:
A person shall not for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State within the meaning of the principal Act,
(a) use or have in his possession or under his control, any official die, seal or stamp or any die, seal or stamp so nearly resembling it as to be calculated to deceive, or
I do not think we should incorporate "prejudicial to the interests of the State" into this Part.
Can you put in any words which will imply an unlawful purpose, that he had an unlawful purpose in mind?
Could you say "had no lawful authority"?
That does not cover a person who had no evil intent at all. There must be some words you can employ which would put on the State the onus to prove that he had it in his possession for an unworthy purpose, not just that he had it in his possession?
Can the Deputy make a suggestion?
Take the phrase in Section 9—put that in after "shall not".
I have an amendment down to Section 8 which brings in the phrase "lawful authority or excuse". I will see whether some such words could be put into this section.
That is all.
On Section 7, subsection (2), Deputy Dillon has been speaking of the "other authority". I read that when it came in general words after the phrase "diplomatic or consular agent" as meaning any other authority of that type. I am not sure after the argument whether that is right or not. Is it intended merely to cover other authorities of the diplomatic or consular agent type or is it at large? There is a rule of construction that general words that follow special words are limited by the special words. Is it intended to control people like, say, Bord Bainne——
And the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Board.
Is it intended to protect any seal they may have?
Yes.
It is? Then I am wrong in my interpretation and you are right—any body appointed directly under the authority of the Government?
"State authority", referred to in the subsection, is clearly defined in the definition section.
Is it any authority appointed by or acting under the authority of the Government? A person finds himself inadvertently in possession of a seal that resembles something, and he has committed an offence.
Does the Dublin Health Authority act under the authority of the Government — a health authority which is set up by statute?
Surely the health authority's seal would be one of the most important ones to protect?
I have not the faintest notion of the value of the seal of the health authority of Dublin.
Suppose it affects a vaccination certificate — the seal a doctor puts on vaccination?
I do not know. All I want to know is what we are doing. I do not know whether it covers a health authority. I doubt that it does. I think a health authority is set up under its own statute and not by the Minister, but suppose I were Minister for Agriculture and established a Pigs and Bacon Commission or appointed a member of it, I think it would cover them.
Yes, it would.
I think it would cover any commission which a Minister might under his general powers set up. Oddly enough, I think it might cover an agricultural instructor who was sent out and had a stamp of any kind. That is why I think the thing is too wide but if the Minister comes this distance and says: "I will have words put in here to make it clear that the duty will devolve on the State to prove that you had it for a bad purpose", that meets the situation, provided the person does not find himself caught in the net.
I am not going that far but what I am prepared to say is this: if I can find a form of words which would take out of the ambit of the section a person who found himself accidentally or inadvertently in possession of one of these seals or stamps and was not aware of the fact that he had it in his possession and as soon as he discovered it, made it known. I will see what I can do to give expression to that idea.
We have to bear in mind that you can get carried away here. You can think of the Minister's seal. The Minister's seal weights about three cwt. It is the important seal, the seal under which he is judicially recognised, but that is not a thing to be carried on the fob of your watch-chain. One would want a horse and cart to bring it around.
Question put and agreed to.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted and 20 Members being present,
SECTION 8.
I move amendment No. 20:
In paragraph (b), page 5, line 32, to delete "lawful authority" and substitute "lawful authority or excuse,".
This amendment is being put forward to meet a point raised by Deputy Tully on the Second Stage. It is a very great pity that Deputy Tully is not here to receive graciously this offering on my part. He was concerned with regard to Section 8 about the position of a person who quite innocently would be in possession of a forged or altered official document, such as a birth certificate. He wanted to ensure that such a person would not be subject to the penal provisions of the section. I think the amendment I am proposing will meet his point of view in that regard. I am proposing in paragraph (b) to insert the words "lawful authority or excuse,". I think this is very generous of me, indeed.
When the Minister is finished shaking hands with himself, would he ask himself why he did not do that in respect of Section 7 or was it that he was sleeping when he was reading Section 7?
There is a different point involved there.
None whatever. It is identically the same point in every detail and in every respect and if the Minister knew his Bill, he would realise that. He has the Report Stage in which to mend his hand.
I am glad the amendment was put in. I do not see why it should not be put in Section 7. Courts have a habit of analysing legislation coming before them and they see "lawful authority or excuse" in respect of one section and they see there is only "lawful authority" in respect of another and they are apt to say that is deliberate. An excuse, which is somewhat different from an authority, may be all right in respect of Section 8 but it is not all right in respect of Section 7. Deputy Tully, as far as my reading of the Dáil Debates goes and from what I heard said, poses the question as to the position of a person who innocently comes into possession of a forged passport.
A birth certificate.
I think some other Deputy raised the question of a passport. Supposing a person is innocently in possession of a die or seal, he is not allowed to make the same defence in respect of those things. The courts will say: "There is another provision excluding that." It will be deemed to have been excluded because the courts will say: "These people knew what they were doing" and they will only take this in respect of one thing.
I have already undertaken with an excess of sweet reasonableness which at all times is characteristic of me to have a look at Section 7 and see whether or not I can frame in the profundity of my ingenuity some form of words which will meet the case put forward by the Leader of the Opposition.
Section 7 is not the only place where "lawful authority" ought to be balanced by "or excuse".
Will the Minister bear in mind that when the Central Criminal Court and the Court of Criminal Appeal come to interpret this statute they will not advert to the fact that at 7.44 on this day of grace the Minister for Justice embraced himself, complimented himself and expressed his full confidence in his own capacity to find adequate words in which to express the law? They will read what is in the statute of Oireachtas Éireann and interpret it according to the rules of evidence and interpretation. That much having been said, we might with advantage pass on to Section 9.
Amendment agreed to.
Section 8, as amended, agreed to.
SECTION 9.
Question proposed: "That Section 9 stand part of the Bill".
Now we are coming to the provision in relation to the safety and preservation of the State. Section 9 is specially related to that and I have no objection to it.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 10.
I move amendment No. 21:
In subsection (1), page 6, line 18, to delete "or with a member of an unlawful organisation".
Amendments Nos. 21, 22 and 23 may be discussed together.
All these amendments aim at the one point and I should like to put my point of view very briefly. There is, when we come to Section 10, a very definite confusion as between foreign agents and members of unlawful organisations. In so far as Section 10 deals with foreign agents I would pass it without much comment but we bring in unlawful organisations and, of course, the minute the phrase "unlawful organisation" is used people begin to think in terms of young men scattering across the Border with arms in their hands or of a time when people with arms did not even go across the Border and did not confine their activities to taking human life or the robbing of property outside the State. Anyway the expression "unlawful organisation" would seem to apply to people who are out to destroy the State. That is not the case. "Unlawful organisations" is defined in the Offences against the State Act, that is the original Act of 1939, and a variety of categories of people are mentioned as unlawful organisations. With regard to most of these there can be no objection. An organisation which promotes treason or any activity of a treasonable nature can certainly be accepted as being an unlawful organisation. Secondly, in regard to people who advocate or attempt to procure by force, violence or other unconstitutional means an alteration of the Constitution, again with great enthusiasm I accept that that is an unlawful organisation. The next group are people who raise a military or armed force, in violation of the Constitution. Again we can accept that as an unlawful organisation. Paragraph (d) provides:
Engages in, promotes, encourages, or advocates the commission of any criminal offence or the obstruction of or interference with the administration of justice or the enforcement of the law,
I will also accept that any group that engages in that type of activity ought to be labelled an unlawful organisation and I do not mind the sections of this Act we are discussing applying to them. However, we come to paragraph (f) which provides:
promotes, encourages, or advocates the non-payment of moneys payable to the Central Fund or any other public fund or the non-payment of local taxation,
Again I would accept that any group of people who advocate such a policy should be termed an unlawful organisation but I think we are getting near the borderline. I do not think that ought to be confused with foreign agents to which there is reference in Section 10. However, in between there is another group in Section 18. Paragraph (e) says:
engages in, promotes, encourages, or advocates the attainment of any particular object, lawful or unlawful, by violent, criminal, or other unlawful means,
I want to separate that. If there is an organisation which advocates the attainment of an unlawful object by violent or criminal means I would certainly stamp this also as an unlawful organisation and have the provisions of this new Act applied to them but there is the less heinous type of organisation which is gripped by this section. It means that an organisation which engages in or advocates the attainment of an unlawful object by unlawful means is to be stamped as an unlawful organisation. I do not know if the Minister has been advised on this but this all comes from the old law of conspiracy about which judges have been very critical. The law of conspiracy was in the main developed by the British in an effort to deal with the rebellious and unruly Irish.
From that developed the whole system of conspiracy. Over and over again judges have complained about any extension of the offence called "criminal conspiracy" and I read here quotations from an ordinary textbook on criminal law in which reference was made to Judge Fitzgerald. It was said that his wise words should be attended to, and his wise words were that people should not see any extension of this but that they should be rather keen to limit the whole area of conspiracy. This was taken from the old law with regard to conspiracy. There are many cases dealing with what unlawful means. It does not necessarily mean what illegal means. An illegal means would not necessarily be inside the section, but an unlawful means, certainly anything against morality and, more particularly, anything against public morality, would count.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted and 20 Members being present,
I am stripping this down to the real details. The "unlawful organisation" phrase covers any organisation which promotes a lawful object by unlawful means. I understand there have been cases in which that matter was considered. Such a thing as, say, a few people going to a theatre in order to show their disapproval of a play could be considered an unlawful means. There is certainly no doubt that the giving of certificates to certain types of people so that they might either hold themselves out as members of a profession, say the legal profession, or members of universities, is regarded as unlawful means, but it is not illegal. A group of people might advocate something that is perfectly lawful, but the means they use to achieve their lawful objective might turn out to be unlawful and they would, therefore, be an unlawful organisation. Surely that is not what is aimed at in this particular piece of legislation?
Suppose I am in touch with a member of an unlawful organisation— the whole idea at the back of this section is the prejudice of the safety or interests of the State—then I am deemed to be acting unlawfully. There is a great deal in the word "deemed". Activities are deemed to be "for" or "against" the preservation of the safety and interests of the State. If a person is in touch with an unlawful organisation or, worse than that, if a person happens to have his address used as an accommodation address by somebody who turns out to be a member of an organisation trying to achieve a lawful objective by unlawful means, then whatever he does is deemed to be hostile to the safety and security of the State. I do not believe that was ever meant.
I have tried to achieve a limited objective by saying we should confine unlawful organisation to an organisation against which a suppression order has been made by the Government. Under the Offences against the State Act, Section 19 provides that, if the Government are of the opinion that a particular organisation is unlawful, then it shall be lawful for the Government by a suppression order to declare that that organisation is an unlawful organisation and ought to be suppressed. There are provisions then that people who belong to that organisation are entitled to go to the courts to seek a declaration of legality. The matter can be thrashed out in court. That has to be done inside a stipulated period. I think it is incongruous to have people who are deemed to be an unlawful organisation, and in relation to whom the Government have made a suppression order, put in the same group as foreign agents. The whole idea of the Official Secrets Act was intended to grip the national at home who was treasonable enough to help foreign agents to the detriment of the security and interests of the State.
I have tried to limit that by amendment No. 23. All this matter about unlawful organisations should be limited to such organisations as have been declared to be unlawful by the Government and in respect of which a suppression order has been made. That is my objective in all this. I think it is quite wrong to have certain conclusions following from the fact that my address is used as an accommodation address by somebody who turns out to be a member of an unlawful organisation under the terms of the Offences against the State Act. He is pursuing a lawful objective, but using unlawful means. I do not think that was intended.
May I point out that obviously was not intended.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted and 20 Members being present,
This playacting, a Cheann Comhairle, of ringing bells is more important for some people than a deliberate discussion on legislation in the House.
I have not heard the Deputy discussing much in the last fortnight.
I wonder is that a Lenten pastoral or a Lenten lecture?
Law reform is very praiseworthy. It is very desirable to set up a sub-committee of the Department of Justice and embark on large programmes of law reform. But it will not do—it is not right—under the guise of law reform to take two British statutes, amalgamate them and, without any regard or understanding of the underlying purpose of the original Act, which it is proposed to consolidate in this Bill, and certainly without any care to preserve the safeguards that were provided in the British Acts, to simply copy those Acts into this Bill word for word, having omitted the urgent and essential safeguards, and then quite casually adding some features which the Minister seems to think proper merely because we are living in the Republic.
There is no reference in the original Act of 1911, or the amending Act of 1920, to unlawful organisations. I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that what motivated the Minister was: "Let us have a belt at the IRA, as well as foreign spies, and so forth". Of course, you never refer to the IRA if you are a Fianna Fáiler when you are putting them in jail; you refer to illegal organisation. Therefore, you would not name the IRA in this Bill. You simply call them "unlawful organisations" without any advertence to the definition of what "unlawful organisation" could be interpreted to mean.
I direct the attention of the House to the fact that when you come to Section 10 of this Bill it refers back to Section 2 of the Act of 1920. Section 2 of the Act of 1920 reads as follows:
In any proceedings against a person for an offence under Section 1 of the Act of 1911 the fact that he has been in communication with or attempted to communicate with a foreign agent whether within or without the United Kingdom shall be evidence that he has for the purpose of the prejudice of the safety or interest of the State obtained or attempted to obtain information directly or indirectly useful to an enemy.
That is the purpose of the Section of the Bill and that is the section which the Minister purports to reproduce in this Bill. But what we have in the Irish Bill is not a section directed at somebody who wants to have contact with a foreign enemy but with anybody who makes contact with an unlawful organisation. Surely that is an extreme departure from the fundamental basis of the British Act, which I do not invoke: it is the Minister for Justice who invokes it and who puts a note on his own Bill the significance of which is: Section 10 of this Bill is substantially a reproduction of Section 2 of the Act of 1920. But it is not. It is much wider. It goes much further. It is stripped of very important reservations that are incorporated in Section 2 of the 1920 Act of the British Parliament.
Deputy McGilligan has analysed the matter with an analysis which I do not believe the Minister ever dreamed of when this Bill was being drafted. I suggest to the Minister that this business of law revision is becoming a public menace. It is not good enough simply to take British Acts of Parliament and reproduce them in an Irish Bill and stick in bits without any advertence to the true significance of the bit you are sticking in.
Deputy McGilligan has gone to the trouble of explaining to the House the full significance of an unlawful organisation within the meaning of our law. It certainly carries you to a point as far removed from a spy or a foreign agent as it is possible to imagine. I put this to the House. I am in a position to put it to the House because I have been opposed to illegal organisations in this country ever since I entered public life. Fully conscious of that fact, and speaking as one who has been opposed to them all my life, I say the Minister is making a great mistake in seeking to identify them with foreign agents.
Remember, no statute law of this Oireachtas functions satisfactorily if it does not carry with it the approval of the mass of the people. The Official Secrets Bill deals with spies and foreign agents. In my opinion, it is wholly inappropriate by our legislation to identify what we have come to call unlawful organisations in this country—no matter how sternly or consistently we have reprobated them and continue to reprobate them—with spies and foreign agents. The mass of the people do not make that identification and they will not support it. They will reprobate, and rightly reprobate, and will sanction stringent measures to deal with people who claim the right to overthrow the legitimate Government of this country at every stage of this country's history. Our experience proves that nobody has successfully attempted to do it any time—in 1921, in 1922, in 1932, in 1942 or at any other time. Several attempts have been made and they have been fairly dealt with but never on the basis that they were foreign agents or spies. They were dealt with effectively and firmly by our people on the basis that they were elements of our people temporarily misled by misguided men.
I recognise fully that that is entirely different ground for deploring the form of this section from the ground on which Deputy McGilligan stood. But, on both grounds, I want to sound this note of warning to the Minister. This is not satisfactory law reform. This is slovenly law reform. The great danger of these kinds of Bills is that the Minister comes in with this kind of document in his fist and, having once put it before the House, is very reluctant to admit that it has just been slung together with a pitchfork and without due advertence to the significance of what he intends to do, whereupon he becomes married to it and it becomes a matter of face and prestige to stand over it.
I do not believe the Minister appreciates the significance of this section at all. He believes it to be in substance a reproduction of Section 2 of the British Act of 1920. It is no such thing. It goes far beyond Section 2 of the Act of 1920. It now purports to deal with categories of persons who were never envisaged by Section 2 of the Act of 1920. It withdraws from those to whom it now applies the important qualifications which is set out in Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act of 1920 that a person must have been in communication with or must have attempted to communicate with a foreign agent. Under our Bill, it is proposed to provide that, where a person is charged with contravention of Section 9, the fact that he has been in communication with or attempted to communicate with a foreign agent or with a member of an unlawful organisation shall be evidence that the act in respect of which he is charged has been done in a manner prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State.
That is just slovenly work but, unfortunately, it is slovenly work with a much wider implication than I believe the Minister himself has realised and both on the grounds described in detail by Deputy McGilligan and on the broader lines referred to by me I think this section requires careful revision. On the whole, I think the best remedy would be to delete the reference to an unlawful organisation as being completely irrelevant to this section which would be much better if left in its original form as providing suitable remedies against a person who is in contact with a foreign agent in a manner prejudicial to the safety or preservation of this State.
I want to rebut any suggestion that this is a document which has been slung together with a pitchfork or that it is a Bill which has been carelessly drafted or that it represents the fruits of an operation which consisted of amalgamating two British Acts and sticking in bits here and there more or less at random. This measure has been very carefully conceived. It has been given a very great deal of thought. It has been very carefully drafted.
We have set out in this measure to bring the law on this subject up to date. We have set out to make it appropriate to our time and circumstances. We have set out to ensure that the Bill will do what it is intended to do, namely, to provide us with the necessary machinery to ensure that Government Departments, in their ordinary day to day administration, will function properly and efficiently and that, coming to more important and more fundamental matters, the security of the State will be safeguarded adequately. In Part III of the Bill, we are dealing with an entirely different set of matters from that with which we were concerned in Part II. We are dealing with the disclosure of information which will prejudice the safety or preservation of the State. Part III is concerned, as set out in Section 9, with, in effect, military information, that is, information dealing with the number, description, armament, equipment, disposition, movement or condition of any of the Defence Forces or of any of the vessels or aircraft belonging to the State——
Or any other matter whatsoever.
——any operation or projected operations of any of the Defence Forces or of the Garda Síochána or of any vessels or aircraft belonging to the State, any measures for the defence or fortification of any place on behalf of the State, munitions of war or any other matter whatsoever, information as to which would or might be prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State.
That is pretty wide.
I agree that it is pretty wide but these are very serious matters. We are not now concerned with the disclosure of the contents of examination papers or commercial information but with matters which are fundamental to the existence and security of the nation as such. I repeat what I said on the Second Stage, that there seems to be some confusion with regard to Section 10. Section 10 does not create any offence. It is devoted entirely to the question—prima facie evidence—that an act which amounts to a contravention of Section 9 has been done in a manner prejudicial to the safety of the State. The fact that the act constituting the offence under Section 9 had been done must be fully proved by the prosecution. Subsection (1) of Section 10 says:
Where a person is charged with a contravention of Section 9, the fact that he has (whether within or outside the State) been in communication with or attempted to communicate with a foreign agent or with a member of an unlawful organisation shall be evidence that the act in respect of which he is charged has been done in a manner prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State.
There is no question of its even being conclusive evidence. It is merely something which is capable of being adduced as evidence—
This is all copied from the 1920 Act.
On the one hand, you accuse me of slipping things into the 1920 Act which were not in it and on the other, of copying from the 1920 Act.
This is all copied.
Not entirely. As I said, it is Section 9 which creates the offence. Before there can be any offence at all in this regard, there has to be a disclosure in breach of Section 9 of this fundamental type of information and only when there has been such a disclosure will Section 10 come into operation at all. The effect of Section 10 is to say that if the person charged has been in communication with a foreign agent, or a member of an unlawful organisation, then that shall be evidence of the fact that what was done was done in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the State. That is a very reasonable provision.
As I said, in the main, we are dealing here with military information and in our circumstances, the disclosure of this information is as likely to be made to unlawful organisations as to foreign agents and certainly as likely to be prejudicial to the interests of the State if it is disclosed to unlawful organisations. But we are concerned with establishing whether or not what is done is done in a manner prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State and I think the activities of the unlawful organisations are, in our circumstances, as likely to be prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State as anything that any foreign agent might contemplate with regard to us.
When this Bill was drafted, I was fully aware of what constitutes an unlawful organisation. We had in front of us the six definitions of types of unlawful organisations which are laid down in Section 18 of the Offences against the State Act. Deputy McGilligan may argue that Section 18 of that Act should be amended; that is something which is debatable. He may argue that paragraph (e) of Section 18 should be altered but that is a separate argument from this Bill. If he wants to do this, it can be done in another context. This Bill is concerned only with the disclosures to members of unlawful organisations as defined in the Offences against the State Act and if the definition of unlawful organisations in that Act is defective in any way that can be considered on its merits but it is not something that would arise in regard to this Bill.
I want to reiterate that Section 10 is mainly concerned with providing what shall be evidence. It does not create any offence in itself. With regard to amendment No. 23, Deputy McGilligan suggests that there should have been a prior suppression order made by the Government in regard to unlawful organisations. I suggest that would be unworkable. The existence of these unlawful organisations might be brought to light only in connection with the particular conspiracy which would be uncovered and which would give rise to a prosecution under Section 9 but I cannot accept that we should delete from the provisions of Section 10 the reference to unlawful organisations.
As I say in the first instance, the provisions relate entirely to evidence that a particular act was done in a manner prejudicial to the safety and preservation of the State and, secondly, disclosure of this type of military information to a member of an unlawful organisation is capable of being just as prejudicial to the safety and preservation of the State as disclosure to a foreign agent. I do not accept Deputy Dillon's argument at all. I feel that the type of unlawful organisation of which unfortunately we have experience would be and in our circumstances might be more likely to be detrimental to the safety and security of the State than any foreign power.
I want to take this in a series of backward steps. This section deals with the disclosure of information prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State and the information is described as information relating to a number of matters and "any other matter whatsoever which might be prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State." A person is to be charged with any matter which might be prejudicial to the State.
I want, again, to get at the most innocent person in the whole thing, the person who encourages an object which is lawful but who does so by unlawful means, and I come to Section 10 in which, according to subsection (4), a member of an unlawful organisation means any person who is or has been or is reasonably suspected of being or having been a member of an unlawful organisation, that is, an organisation which is advocating a lawful object by unlawful means. We can cut out all the traitorous things and come to the lawful object of an unlawful organisation. It is the insertion of lawful objects of unlawful organisations into this Bill that I am objecting to.
In the 1939 Act, it is made an offence to be a member of an unlawful organisation and it is a good defence that the person charged did not know the organisation was unlawful or that when he became aware of it, he ceased to be a member. Here, it does not matter whether a person has dissociated himself from the organisation. If he has at any time been a member, he falls under the definition section of this Bill. Subsection (3) says:
Any address (whether within or outside the State) reasonably suspected of being an address used for the receipt of communications intended for a foreign agent or a member of an unlawful organisation, or any address at which such a person resides, or to which he resorts for the purpose of giving or receiving communications, or at which he carries on any business, shall be deemed to be the address of a foreign agent or a member of an unlawful organisation and communications addressed to that address to be communications with a foreign agent or a member of an unlawful organisation.
Your first difficulty in proof is got over here by a series of "deems". Under subsection (2), a person is deemed to have been in communication with a foreign agent or a member of an unlawful organisation if he, and it goes on:
...has (whether within or outside the State) visited the address of a foreign agent or a member of an unlawful organisation or consorted or associated with such agent or member, or if (whether within or outside the State) the name or address of or any other information regarding a foreign agent or a member of an unlawful organisation has been found in his possession or has been supplied by him to any other person or has been obtained by him from any other person.
Then we climb up to subsection (1) which says:
Where a person is charged with a contravention of section 9, the fact that he has (whether within or outside the State) been in communication with or attempted to communicate with a foreign agent or with a member of an unlawful organisation shall be evidence that the act in respect of which he is charged has been done in a manner prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State.
Is that all required in connection with official secrets and the preservation of the State? If the unlawful organisation is of a traitorous type and is contrary to the Constitution, or even if it had anything to do with the promotion and encouragement of criminal offences, I would accept it, but it is absurd to label with the tag "unlawful organisation" a body which is lawful. All these things flow from these three subsections. It is, as Deputy Dillon pointed out, the steam hammer to crack the nut. It is not right that these things should be written into a piece of legislation which was primarily directed at dealing with foreign agents.
Before we come to a division, I do not know if the House realises where we are going or if we care. I want to direct the attention of the House to Section 10 in the light of Section 11 which deals with a person knowingly harbouring any person whom he knows or has reasonable grounds to suspect to have contravened or to be about to contravene Section 9. It leaves you to familiarise yourself with what is in Section 7 of the Act of 1911 which deals with the harbouring of spies. Section 7 of that Act says:
If any person knowingly harbours any person whom he knows or has reasonable grounds for supposing to be a person who is about to commit or who has committed an offence under this Act, or knowingly permits to meet or assemble in any premises in his occupation or under his control any such persons, wilfully refuses to disclose to a superintendent of police any information which it is in his power to give in relation to any such person he shall be guilty...
Section 11 deals with spies, too.
Section 7 deals with spies.
So does Section 11.
But it does not deal only with spies.
That is all.
Section 7 of this Bill deals with a person who knowingly harbours any person contravening Section 9. In any case, what I am drawing the attention of the House to is that the Minister has picked up two British statutes that were originally enacted in the British House of Commons to deal with spies and foreign agents and has just injected casually the IRA.
It is the Deputy who is being casual. Section 11 does not deal with other than spies.
It does.
It deals with spies.
The blueshirts.
Is that the searchlight for all the intelligentsia? If so, we must excise it.
Section 11 is more specifically directed to spies than Section 7 of the 1920 Act which the Deputy was quoting.
I was quoting the 1911 Act just now and I am trying to point out the penalties under the 1911 Act for harbouring spies. In Section 7 of that Act, they are dealing with foreign agents, with citizens of Great Britain who receive agents of a foreign Government and harbour them. Now the Minister casually injects into his reproduction of these sections unlawful organisations and applies them in this legislation to categories of persons and categories of offences which were never envisaged in connection with the Official Secrets Acts at all, and he does it because he has been trying to show what a busy Minister he has been and how he has been endeavouring to produce law reforms.
I have had plenty of experience of consolidation of statutes. You take the British statutes and copy them and of course the invariable thing is to start inserting the IRA because it is convenient to include them with spies and other malefactors. I suggest to the Minister that even if he disregards the grounds which I have advised and which he may learn some day have more substance in them than he thinks, on the more specific and informed argument of Deputy McGilligan, I suggest to him he ought to take another look at this section and see whether he is achieving the purpose he has in mind by his reference to unlawful organisations or whether it is not carrying him much farther than he meant to go or that we ought to go.
It is encouraging to find Deputy Dillon so anxious at this stage to preserve the rights of the individual under the Constitution. I put it to the Minister that no matter what amendments are brought in to this Bill and even though this amendment may, on the face of it, appear to be directed towards protecting the rights of the individual, the Bill and the amendments do not count. They are completely unrealistic at present. Over 20 years ago, this House, in its wisdom, adopted a motion brought in by the Taoiseach declaring a state of emergency. As a result of that motion, we have on the Statute Book two of the most notorious Acts ever passed in any parliament, the Offences against the State Acts. The powers the Minister is being criticised for taking in this Bill are already in the hands of the Government and have been used by them within the past 12 months. I cannot see how a man's freedom can be restricted any further by this legislation, no matter how undesirable this section may be.
Under existing legislation, if a citizen is questioned by a member of the Garda Síochána, who quotes the Offences against the State Acts, and is asked, for example, to account for his whereabouts at 9 a.m. on October 10th, 1961, if he fails to do so, he can be charged, tried and given six months. If Paddy Murphy, who is believed to be a member of one of the illegal organisations referred to in this measure, appears to have a chat with a friend of his in the next parish who is not known to be associated with an illegal organisation and if that friend fails to disclose the subject of the conversation, he can be charged, tried and given six months. That is the law. Some of us are so full of oratory about protecting the rights of the individual that we lose sight of that fact.
At present we have a proscribed illegal organisation. All our newspapers are prohibited from publishing a manifesto or a press release from that organisation, or even from mentioning its name. We were always told that the press here were free. Is not the press restricted even in regard to announcements about such matters? Could there be any greater restriction than that we have at present?
Let me give another example. If a young man in Leitrim happens to have three rounds of .22 ammunition in his pocket and if he is questioned as to the reason he has it and fails to give an explanation that meets with the approval of the authorities, he can be arrested, tried before a military tribunal and given six months. Young people have been given three months——
May I remind the Deputy we are dealing with the amendments now?
I am talking about the purpose of the amendments.
Acting Chairman
On the amendments, we cannot have a speech on general topics.
The Government already have the power to limit citizens in any way they choose. Let me finish. The young man found with three rounds of ammunition can get three months or six months, but that is not the end. At the end of his sentence, he is debarred from getting work with any State or semi-State authority for a period of seven years.
I suppose the Deputy is worried because we stopped the Border campaign.
That is the position under the law at present. I do not know what all the fuss is about in regard to this section.
Which side is the Deputy on?
As a result of pressure brought to bear on them, the Government in the case of the recent group of men on trial very ungraciously decided to invoke the authority given to them and allow these young men back to work. They do not deserve any thanks for that at this stage. It should never have been in our legislation.
Acting Chairman
May I remind the Deputy again that we are dealing with amendments Nos. 21, 22 and 23?
The whole Bill and the amendments should be considered in the light of our present position vis-á-vis the Common Market countries. In the international framework, it will be necessary for any country seeking membership of E.E.C. to put its house in order, so far as legislation is concerned. This is an attempt by the Government to try to show the European nations with whom we hope to be associated that we are a civilized community. There is only one possible way this Bill can get the approval of the House, that is, that the Government have the decency to introduce at this stage a motion declaring that a state of emergency no longer exists, that our laws are based on the Constitution and that we can no longer suspend certain Articles of the Constitution to suit the Government of the day. It is only in that context that legislation such as this should meet with the approval of the House. Anything else would be a waste of time because the powers under this Bill need never be invoked. Much more serious powers have been granted to the Government under the Offences against the State Act, which should be wiped off the Statute Book.
Amendment put and declared lost.
I move amendment No. 22:—
In subsections (2) and (3), page 6, lines 23 and 24, 25 and 26, 29, 34 and 35, 38 and 39, 40 and 41, to delete "or a member of an unlawful organisation" where these words occur in these lines.
Amendment put and declared lost.
I move amendment No. 23:—
In subsection (4), page 6, line 52, after "organisation" to insert "declared to be such by a suppression order".
Amendment put and declared lost.
Question put: "That Section 10 stand part of the Bill".
The Committee divided : Tá, 58; Níl, 49.
Tellers:-Tá: Deputies J. Brennan and Geoghegan; Níl: Deputies O'Sullivan and Crotty.
Question declared carried.
|
Aiken, Frank.Allen, Lorcan.Bartley, Gerald.Blaney, Neil T.Boland, Kevin. Burke, Patrick J.Calleary, Phelim A.Carter, Frank.Carty, Michael.Childers, Erskine.Clohessy, Patrick.Colley, George.Collins, James J.Cotter, Edward.Crinion, Brendan.Crowley, Honor M.Cummins, Patrick J.Cunningham, Liam.Davern, Mick.de Valera, Vivion.Dolan, Séamus.Dooley, Patrick.Egan, Kieran P.Egan, Nicholas.Faulkner, Pádraig.Flanagan, Seán.Gallagher, James.Geoghegan, John.Gibbons, James M. |
Booth, Lionel.Brady, Philip A.Brennan, Joseph.Brennan, Paudge.Breslin, Cormac. Gilbride, Eugene.Gogan, Richard P.Haughey, Charles.Hillery, Patrick.Hilliard, Michael.Kennedy, Michael J.Kitt, Michael F.Lalor, Patrick J.Lemass, Noel T.Lemass, Seán.Leneghan, Joseph R.Lynch, Celia.McEllistrim, Thomas.MacEntee, Seán.Meaney, Con.Medlar, Martin.Millar, Anthony G.Moher, John W.Mooney, Patrick.Moran, Michael.Ó Briain, Donnchadh.Ormonde, John.Sherwin, Frank.Timmons, Eugene. |
|
Barry, Richard.Belton, Jack.Browne, Michael.Burke, James J.Burton, Philip.Carroll, Jim.Clinton, Mark A.Connor, Patrick.Coogan, Fintan.Cosgrave, Liam.Costello, Declan D.Costello, John A.Coughlan, Stephen.Crotty, Patrick J.Dillon, James M.Dockrell, Henry P.Dockrell, Maurice E.Dunne, Thomas.Esmonde, Sir Anthony C.Farrelly, Denis.Flagan, Oliver J.Gilhawley, Eugene.Governey, Desmond.Harte, Patrick D.Hogan, Patrick (South Tipperary). |
Jones, Denis F.Kenny, Henry.Kyne, Thomas A.Lynch, Thaddeus.McGilligan, Patrick.McLaughlin, Joseph.McQuillan, John.Mullen, Michael.Murphy, Michael P.Murphy, William.Norton, William.O'Donnell, Patrick.O'Donnell, Thomas G.O'Higgins, Michael J.O'Higgins, Thomas F. K.O'Keeffe, James.O'Reilly, Patrick.O'Sullivan, Denis J.Pattison, Séamus.Reynolds, Patrick J.Rooney, Eamonn.Ryan, Richie.Sweetman, Gerard.Tully, James. |
SECTION 11.
Question proposed: That Section 11 stand part of the Bill.
On this section, I understand from what was said by the Minister in reply to Deputy Dillon that it is intended to be restricted entirely to spies.
Restricted to the sort of information in the section.
For the time being, we will pass it.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 12.
NEW SECTION.
I move amendment No. 24:
Before Section 12 to insert a new section as follows:
If in the course of proceedings, including proceedings on appeal, for an offence under Section 9 or for an offence under Part II committed in a manner prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State, application is made by the prosecution, on the ground that the publication of any evidence to be given or of any statement to be made would be prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State, that any part of the hearing should be in camera, the court shall make an order to that effect, but the verdict and sentence (if any) shall be announced in public.
I am proposing this amendment to meet some objections made by Deputies Tully and O'Higgins on the Second Stage of the Bill. As Section 12 is at present drafted in camera hearings must be held if the prosecution so applies. Some Deputies have taken objection to that rather sweeping provision and the new section modifies it to the extent that the requirement that the hearings must be in camera at the request of the prosecution will apply only where the security or preservation of the State is concerned and that only the part of the proceedings which might be prejudicial to the security or preservation of the State need be held in camera.
What it says is "any part". The third line from the bottom says "any part" except the verdict and sentence. I understood the Minister to say that only certain parts could be ordered to be heard in camera.
Any evidence the publication of which would be prejudicial to the security of the State.
"Any part of the hearing" is not what the Minister said.
What is now proposed is that where the prosecution indicates that the publication of the matter referred to would be prejudicial to the security of the State, then that part of the hearing would be in camera, not any other part.
The sentence and verdict must be in open court, but if an application is made that publication of the evidence will be prejudicial then any part of the hearing may be heard in camera.
If the Deputy reads the whole matter together, he will be able to see what is intended. The prosecution would have to apply that a part of the hearing would be heard in camera because its publication would be prejudicial to the security of the State.
That is not what is there. Once that case is made, any part of the evidence can be heard in camera.
That is not the way I read it.
I am looking at it from the way the courts may interpret it. They will go by the words.
Is it not agreed between us that what the Minister desires to say is that if the State says that if there is a part of this hearing the publication of which would be prejudicial to the security of the State they can ask for that part of the hearing in camera? Will the Minister have a look at it and see if it requires any re-phrasing to make the meaning clear?
Agreed, but it seems to me absolutely clear that the prosecution may apply that any part of the proceedings be held in camera on the grounds that their publication may be prejudicial to the security of the State. However, I will have a look at it.
Amendment agreed to.
Acceptance of this amendment involves the deletion of Section 12 of the Bill.
Section 12 deleted.
Section 13 agreed to.
SECTION 14.
I move amendment No. 25:
To delete subsection (2).
The section provides at the moment for the restriction of prosecution so that no prosecution may take place, except by or with the consent of the Attorney General and secondly, that before the consent is obtained—it does not say in any circumstances in which it is impossible to obtain the consent— a person charged may be arrested, or a warrant for his arrest may be issued and executed and he may be remanded in custody or on bail. I do not think that is necessary. Certainly, no case has been made for it.
Would the Deputy not agree that the subsection would be necessary in cases where the safety of the State is concerned, that is, in the case of offences under Part III?
No. Is the Attorney General not available when the safety of the State is affected to give instructions or consent to prosecution? I know that one might have to make arrangements, where the Attorney General was absent or ill or something like that, but that is not here. Surely the Attorney General must be on duty most of the time?
Is this not another case where the Minister has taken over a section of the 1911 Act and where the 1911 Act spoke of felony the Minister has brought into Part III of this Bill a category of offences which are not envisaged by the 1911 Act and is trying to apply to them the same criteria as the 1911 Act applies to felony or quasi-high treason.
I do not think it is an unreasonable provision.
Without the Attorney General's consent to a prosecution, there is authority given to arrest.
But no proceedings would be taken.
Surely that is no protection as far as the individual is concerned? If he is arrested, he is under arrest. The whole purpose of this is to provide that he cannot be charged until consent is given by the Attorney General, but he can be held under arrest in this case without anybody's consent.
Not indefinitely.
Why not? Is there a time limit in this?
So far as I can see, he can be held indefinitely without any charge.
And his remand may be in custody, even though there is no consent to proceedings.
There can be a habeas corpus application.
So you would put him to that, even though no proceedings may eventually be brought?
Take a case where the authorities decide they want to bring a charge against somebody. Under this section, it is necessary to get the consent of the Attorney General but in the meantime, they can arrest him. They can issue and execute a warrant. They can put him in jail, refuse him bail and hold him in custody. At the end of all that, they may go to the Attorney General who may refuse consent to proceedings, on the ground that it is not a case proper to be brought before the courts. That man may be in jail for a couple of days or for a month before that decision is reached. Under the subsection as it stands, he could be in jail indefinitely.
Not indefinitely.
What is the limitation?
The practical aspect of this is that we may be dealing with a man boarding a boat or an aeroplane and it might not be possible from a practical point of view to get the consent of the Attorney General. We are concerned in this section only to deal with that situation. The safeguard is the provision that no proceedings can be taken until the fiat of the Attorney General is obtained.
No. He must consent to the proceedings.
Proceedings shall not be instituted without his consent.
No further proceedings shall be taken except merely his arrest.
Except to stuff the fellow in jail.
That surely is an important thing. The man is arrested.
It can be very important to make an arrest in certain situations.
This is the dilemma the Minister has got himself into. The original Act dealt with spies and foreign agents.
The Deputy is fascinated by spies.
If you put the case to the House that you want this provision to prevent a fellow from boarding an aeroplane, that is a pretty good case, but this Bill applies to people who have access to official examination papers.
Children.
Does the Minister realise what he is doing?
Fully.
He is trying to apply to a category of offences that have no relation to the Official Secrets Act a code of conduct that might be appropriate to a spy, a person who, if he once got outside the jurisdiction, could not be caught and who ought to be caught and brought to justice. He is trying to apply to schoolchildren and printers' apprentices and journeymen remedies appropriate to a foreign agent or a spy and the two categories are not susceptible to similar treatment.
When we were pressing him on the stringency of the provision in regard to schoolchildren or undergraduates who improperly came by an examination paper the Minister said: "But nothing can be done without the prior consent of the Attorney General." That was one of his alibis—that the thing was not as bad as it sounds because no reasonable Attorney General would prosecute a child. But there is nothing to prevent a juvenile being arrested and held on bail——
Nothing except common sense.
Or in custody.
We are not legislating for the convenience of the Executive. We are legislating for the protection of the fundamental rights of the individual and we have no right to say as a Legislature that we will put somebody's liberty improperly in jeopardy of the common sense of the Executive of the time being, or any Executive. The Minister himself said he wanted to reinforce the precautions against the Executive acting capriciously by providing that no proceedings could be instituted under the Bill except with the consent of the Attorney General. Now he claims the right to put somebody in jail and keep him there almost indefinitely.
Purely as a holding action.
That does not appear in the Bill. That is what the Minister says.
The whole process of the common law is there to ensure that you do not keep people in jail indefinitely.
I may have to refer to an occasion when very urgent measures were taken to prevent somebody spending a night in jail. Why? Because it was not felt, rightly or wrongly, that it would be an agreeable experience to spend a night in jail. Now, we are legislating that people may spend a week or a month or even two or three months in jail, while the Executive is trying to persuade the Attorney General to authorise proceedings. If, in the heel of the hunt, the Attorney General says he will not authorise them, the person is allowed out but, in the meantime he has spent, not one night but perhaps a week, or even two or three months in jail. We say that is going beyond what is reasonable.
If you segregate these two categories of persons and say in respect of the foreign agent or person acting for a foreign government that he can be arrested, then I think we will be prepared to agree to that but to apply it to every offence envisaged by this Bill which deals with a whole category of offences unknown to the Official Secrets Act——
I put that suggestion. I asked would you agree that it is reasonable in the case of offences against Section 9 and Deputy McGilligan said no.
I do not know. If you are dealing with a foreign agent, I can see a case could be made for it.
It is not limited to that.
No, it is not.
I press the Minister to look at it again, even to the extent of the suggestion he threw out a minute ago. This section is not limited to the safety or security of the State. It refers to "any offence under this Act". That brings in everything— the various offences Deputy Dillon has been referring to. I can see the Minister's difficulty. This subsection might be quite proper—I would go as far as to say it would be quite proper —in dealing with the particular case the Minister had in mind when he referred to the possibility of someone endangering—I assume he meant endangering the security of the State— about to step on a boat or plane and it was necessary to arrest him immediately and it might not have been possible to get the consent of the Attorney General.
Would you agree to confining it to offences against Section 9?
I think it would improve the Bill considerably if the Minister limited the subsection to offences against the safety or security of the State.
Would that be acceptable to the Opposition?
It would certainly improve the Bill; it would not go the whole way.
It would be a great improvement on the Bill.
Would the section be acceptable if that alteration were made in it?
I suggest the Minister would put down that amendment and see how it appears on the Report Stage.
I am not prepared to go out on a limb like that.
Let me put it to the Minister as reasonably as I can. He is making a suggestion which offhand appears to me to be a reasonable effort to meet the case here. It certainly would remove one of the major objections to this subsection. He is asking for an unconditional guarantee that it will be accepted.
The issue is clear, is it not?
Let him put down the amendment and let us have a look at it and come to it with fresh minds on Report Stage.
The Minister knows quite well that we are not simply trying to put over a hot one. If he confines it to spies and foreign agents, we answer categorically we accept that. If he says "Section 9" he is over-looking the case made by Deputy McGilligan with regard to unlawful organisations and we cannot give unqualified approval on the grounds set out in our opposition to Section 9 but, whether we agree entirely with it or not, it will be undoubtedly an improvement, subject to the reservations we have made in regard to the question of incorporating unlawful organisations in this Bill.
Unlawful organisations are not in Section 9.
Unlawful organisations can be brought into Section 9 of course.
Only as evidence.
Yes, that is the way they can be brought in. They can be brought in, of course.
I am asking the Opposition as a reasonable man whether if I made this change and confined the operation of subsection (2) of Section 14 to offences contemplated under Section 9, that would make the section acceptable to them or not. Surely that is a reasonable question?
Section 9 in relation to foreign agents?
I am making a reasonable request and cannot get a straight answer.
We do not legislate with a hayfork. We like to know what we are doing. We are trying to tell the Minister explicitly what we believe to be right and that is that if it is confined to foreign agents and to spies, the answer categorically is yes. If he confines it to persons who come under Section 9, we believe it would be an improvement but cannot until we see the Minister's amendment categorically say whether it is accepted or not.
I cannot see why you cannot say now.
If it is the right thing to do, put down the amendment for Report Stage and whether we approve of it or not let you do what you believe to be right.
I know what is right. I think that the section as it stands is perfectly all right and that the fears the Opposition are expressing with regard to it are completely unrealistic but once the fears are expressed I am prepared to offer this palliative, not that I would believe very greatly in it myself.
Put it down and trust in God.
Amendment No. 25 withdrawn?
Subject to that.
The Minister will put down that amendment?
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed: "That Section 14 stand part of the Bill."
It was brought forward in the course of argument on earlier sections as a great protection that the consent of the Attorney General must be obtained. The Minister should let his mind go back only three weeks to a prosecution brought against a very reputable establishment in this country for selling liquor because they were selling chocolates in which there were some liqueurs and the Attorney General must consent to that prosecution. It was a terrible thing.
No doubt the Deputy will be delighted to learn that in the Liquor Bill which we will be dealing with next that situation will be taken care of.
In any event, that situation is there still—a cod prosecution, one that should have been scouted out of court and very nearly was—charging the Monument Creamery with selling liquor because they sold chocolate with some liqueur in it.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 15.
I move amendment No. 26:
To delete all words after "section 9" in line 25 down to and including the word "section" in line 27.
The section is that there may be arrest without warrant in certain circumstances. I do not mind seeing being arrested without a warrant a person found contravening Section 9 but the subsection goes on to say "reasonably suspected of having, or having attempted to, or being about to, contravene that section may be apprehended and detained in the same manner as a person who is found committing a felony". I do not think that is right. In the case of a person who is contravening, where there is a clear case against him, arrest him without a warrant if you like but not the other person.
The justification of course for this is that it is confined to the Section 9 cases which, to use the simplification of which Deputy Dillon is so fond are really spying cases, in effect.
It says any person, whether there is a felony or not.
I think it is reasonable.
It is a copy of Section 6.
Yes, but in a different setting.
And it is appropriate in the Official Secrets Act, 1911; it is inappropriate in Part II of this Bill.
It has nothing to do with Part II.
It only affects people under Section 9?
Yes.
Section 9 has been tremendously enlarged.
That is the trouble.
Is the amendment withdrawn?
Put it, if the Minister wants to have it put.
Amendment put and declared lost.
Section 15 agreed to.
SECTION 16.
I move amendment No. 27:
In subsection (2), page 7, line 36, after "necessary" to insert "and a Justice of the District Court is not then available."
This is the very important matter of search warrants. Up to the passage of the Offences against the State Act, 1939, in relation to a search warrant there had to be the interposition between the police who want the search warrant of somebody of a judicial type. In the old days it might only be a magistrate or in latter days it might be a peace commissioner. In 1939 that was changed and in Section 29 of that Act the whole matter was brought inside the control of the Gardaí. An officer of the Gardaí was entitled to issue a search warrant. It had to be a Garda not below the rank of Chief Superintendent. He had to be satisfied of certain things and then he could issue to a Garda not below the rank of Inspector a search warrant. Here we get back to the District Justice who may issue a warrant to any member of the Garda to search any premises and so on. Subsection (2) of Section 16 states:
Where an officer of the Garda Síochána not below the rank of chief superintendent has reasonable grounds for believing that in the interest of the State immediate action is necessary, he may issue a search warrant having the same effect as a search warrant issued by a justice of the District Court.
I want to put in after "necessary" the words "and a Justice of the District Court is not then available." I want to preserve the position established by subsection (1) of Section 16. However, if a district justict is not available the superintendent may deal with the matter on his own. I have another amendment in respect of subsection (3) about which I shall speak in a moment. It refers to a member of the Gardaí not below the rank of inspector being authorised to enter premises and so on.
Again I would refer the Minister to Section 9 of the Official Secrets Act, 1911 which provides at subsection (2):
Where it appears to a superintendent of police that the case is one of great emergency and that in the interest of the State immediate action is necessary, he may by a written order under his hand give to any constable the like authority as may be given by the warrant of a justice under this section.
I would suggest that under British law that would have imposed a very heavy responsibility on the superintendent of police to satisfy the court that the matter was one of minutes rather than of hours. The effect of Deputy McGilligan's amendment is that if there is a district justice available he should repair to him and go through the ordinary procedure and only if none is available shall a chief superintendent be free to authorise the entry himself. That seems to be the effect of the amendment.
I do not think it is. It places the police in an impossible position that they would have to spend some time ascertaining whether a justice was available and the very ascertaining of that fact might cause critical delay. If you look at the wording of subsection (2) you will see it is hedged around with reasonable protection. It must be a chief superintendent, in the first place, and secondly, he must have "reasonable grounds for believing". That means he would have to satisfy the court that he had reasonable grounds and an aggrieved person would be entitled to sue for damages if the superintendent were not in a position to satisfy the court that there were reasonable grounds for so believing. I want to direct the attention of Deputies to the fact that it is not "is of opinion" here. He may be challenged in court afterwards on the question whether he had reasonable grounds. Furthermore, he must be able to establish that immediate action is necessary. Given all these things, I think the provision is reasonable.
Supposing all the reasonable grounds in the world and the district justice is sitting beside him, why should he not apply to the district justice?
That is a reasonable proposition but Deputy McGilligan's amendment goes much further than that. The effect of Deputy McGilligan's amendment would be this. Suppose a critical situation arises in the middle of the night. Do not forget we are concerned here only with people contravening Section 9. A person of this nature is about to get on an aeroplane. Deputy McGilligan would expect the police to satisfy themselves that there was no district justice available. That in itself would take time.
You find out if the district justice is not available.
How long would that take?
How many of them are there around the town?
Suppose there are ten district justices in Dublin.
All of them on the phone.
I think Deputy McGilligan is being unreasonable.
All I am asking is that if a district justice is available, he should be called upon to issue the warrant.
How does the Minister envisage that the need of a search warrant would be one of such extraordinary urgency that the time spent in calling on the district justice would result in irreparable harm? I can see the Minister making a case that the power to arrest must be immediately available to the police but——
The evidence might be about to be——
Destroyed?
Destroyed or exported out of the country. Deputy Dillon was saying earlier on, when we were dealing with Part II: "If this were Part III I would grant the Minister——
I admit the Minister is entitled to greater power but I direct his attention to the fact that in the British Act they have put in the proviso, first, that the case is one of great emergency, and, secondly, that in the interests of the State immediate action is necessary.
Ours is the same.
I think the Minister's words are weaker.
Not appreciably. Our words are more appropriate: "immediate action is necessary". What could be clearer or more specific?
Even though there is no great emergency.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment No. 28:—
In subsection (3), page 7, line 40, after "Síochána" to insert "(not below the rank of inspector)".
I have already argued this.
The British Act entitles a constable to act.
That is in times of great emergency. In our Offences against the State Act even where the search warrant is in the hands of the police they must name a person not below the rank of inspector.
It is a reasonable proposition. Suppose you are raiding a house——
It would be difficult, taking a remote area of the country——
You scarcely have to raid a house at the drop of a hat. The warrant must be signed by the superintendent.
Amendment agreed to.
Section 16, as amended, agreed to.
SECTION 17.
I move amendment No. 29 :
In subsection (1), page 8, line 26, to delete "Minister for Justice" and substitute "High Court ex parte in a summary manner”.
I should like to press this rather strongly. The side note to Section 17 says: "Obtaining information as to suspected offences" and Section 17 (1) provides:
Where an officer of the Garda Síochána not below the rank of chief superintendent has reasonable grounds for suspecting that an offence under Section 9 has been committed and for believing that any person is able to furnish information as to the offence or suspected offence, he may apply to the Minister for Justice...
It is bad enough to get things like this taken out of the protection of the judiciary, even the minor judiciary, but here we have an application to the Minister for Justice to enable an officer of the Garda Síochána, not below the rank of chief superintendent, to exercise the power conferred on him by this subsection. If the permission is granted, what happens then? He may authorise a member of the Garda Síochána, not below the rank of inspector, to require the person to give any information. Why should that be handed over to the Minister for Justice? I want that to be done by way of application to the High Court ex parte in a summary manner. The Offences against the State Act provides for an application ex parte to the High Court within a certain period. Where an application is made requiring a person to give information, it ought to be kept entirely out of the Administration and completely in the hands of some member of the judiciary. no matter how minor.
First of all, the operation of this section is confined entirely to cases in contravention of Section 9. As framed, it gives more protection to an individual citizen than does the existing section in the 1920 Act, because, in that Act, under Section 6, the police can exercise this power without referring to anybody.
And that is given immediately underneath this.
I am inserting here that they must apply to the Minister for Justice. I am putting that brake on them. Another point is that Section 6 of the 1920 Act applies to any offence committed under the Act; in other words, an offence not necessarily involving the safety or preservation of the State; whereas in Section 17 we are confining the operation of this power by the police to Section 9 cases only. We are, therefore, including two restrictions not in the existing law at the moment.
Again, I hold that where permission is sought to require an individual to give certain information, the application certainly ought not to go outside the ranks of the judiciary, and I do not care how minor the judiciary may be. The first subsection says the Minister for Justice grants permission, and the other says that any officer, not below the rank of chief superintendent, if he has grounds for believing, can work on his own, without going near the Minister for Justice. Surely that is outrageous?
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment No. 30:
In subsection (1), page 8, line 29, to delete "inspector" and substitute "superintendent".
If this power is to be given by the Minister to anybody, it ought not to be to any person so low in rank as an inspector. It should certainly be a superintendent. The section says "authorise a member of the Garda Síochána not below the rank of inspector to require the person believed to be able to furnish information to give any information."
I think this is splitting hairs.
Is a superintendent, who is a more important person, not likely to be more responsible than an inspector? We have climbed up from its being a member of the Garda Síochána to its being an inspector. I think it should go higher. How many superintendents are there?
127.
There would be no likelihood of a superintendent not being available. If it is a power given to the Minister, then we should, at least, I think, protect to the extent of providing that a superintendent will ask the questions.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment No. 31 not moved.
Section 17 agreed to.
Section 18 agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported with amendments.
Next Stage?
Tomorrow week.
Oh, no. There is a great deal to be considered in connection with all this matter.
If I said this day next year, that would not suit, either.
Say this day fortnight.
We will have to read the debate. There were a great many statements made which will have to be considered.
What about tomorrow week provisionally?
It is no good putting it down for tomorrow week, if we cannot take it. Say tomorrow fortnight.
Would the Minister mind making it Wednesday instead of Tuesday?
Not at all.
Report Stage ordered for Wednesday, 11th July, 1962.