Deputy O'Malley gave notice of his intention to raise the matter of a Press conference held by members of the Provisional IRA in a hotel in Dublin.
Adjournment Debate. - IRA Press Conference.
I am obliged to you for allowing me to raise this matter tonight. I regard it, and this party regard it, as a matter of some importance not so much that this conference took place in itself, because as I have said already and as I freely repeat now, the police and the Government clearly cannot guarantee at any given time that a group of five or six men will not surreptitiously get together and hold a meeting, whether it is with or without members of the Press being present— I fully acknowledge that—but we are disturbed, and many people in the country are disturbed, that this sort of people are at large in this part of the country at this time. I may be met with a reply to the effect that people like them were at large in this country, for example, prior to 1972, and that they gave Press conferences and held what they saw fit to describe as ardfheiseanna. I fully accept that, but I think there is a very clear distinction to be drawn between the present situation in this country and the situation that existed prior to the 4th December, 1972, because prior to that time it was impossible for the police, no matter how anxious the Government of the day were, to arrest and prosecute people whom they knew to be members of the IRA or any other illegal organisation unless they could catch them in the act, catch them with some incriminating documents on them, or unless they could catch them with firearms or explosives in their possession.
I can recall recently explaining to this House from the other side of it that the leaders of the IRA today make very sure they are never caught, as perhaps some of their predecessors were, with incriminating documents or firearms or explosives on them. I was faced with that very frustrating situation and the Government of which I was a member were faced with that frustrating situation for nearly three years, that there were people whom we knew to be prominent members of an illegal organisation, whom we knew were just stirring things up, acting through other people, and we were powerless under the law to lay a finger on them unless, as I say, we could catch them redhanded, which was very rarely possible and which today is very rarely possible.
The situation as of now and post-3rd December, 1972, is a very different one. I noticed myself the immediate change in atmosphere that took place in this country when the Offences against the State (Amendment) Act, 1972, was passed. There are many things I could say tonight here or at any other time or place about the circumstances in which that Act was passed and the opposition which it then met. I do not propose to do that because, in spite of what I have already been accused of, I do not want to treat a matter of this nature as something fit for the normal political give and take. I believe that the only people who could, in the long run, gain from treating the matter in that way would be subversive elements in our society against whom I would hope and know that Members of this House on all sides are equally adamantly opposed.
Therefore, I shall not go into the history of the circumstances of that Act, but I shall simply go back to the day on which it was passed or the day after it was passed. I myself, in the position I was in then, could almost perceptively feel a different atmosphere. You had a situation in which the day of the Press conference was over; the day of people of this kind, prominent members of the IRA, thumbing their noses at the Government and at the police and at law-abiding citizens was over. From that time until the time we went out of office on 14th March, 1973, there was little or no difficulty of that kind. In fairness let me say there was little or no difficulty of that kind for six or eight weeks after the present Government came in.
However, the feeling must have gone abroad to members of the IRA and such people in April or May of this year that things were not as tight as they used to be. These people began to reappear; they reappeared, at first, perhaps, surreptitiously, ducking in and out of functions or meetings, but then they began to appear more openly. The first of these that I recall particularly was the appearance of a man who was known to be a leading member of the IRA at Kilcrumper Cemetery at Fermoy, County Cork, about eight weeks ago. He made a speech which I shall refrain from commenting on in the hope he might at some time be prosecuted for that speech. He made that appearance and speech on a Sunday; on the previous Friday it was widely advertised in Cork, in writing, by leaflets and brouchers which were distributed, that this particular man was going to appear at that place at that time and he was going to give what was known as an oration. He delivered that oration, and he both arrived at and left the cemetery unhindered.
Although at the time I made some comment that that situation was disturbing, I thought, perhaps, it was just a thing that would happen once and would not happen again. That is why I was very disturbed to find that, two or three weeks after that, a man who was convicted in 1972 under the Offences Against the State Act of membership of the IRA appeared at another cemetery, to which unfortunately, in this country we all seem to be so addicted, this time Bodenstown, County Kildare——
The Chair hesitates to interrupt the Deputy in a limited debate of this kind, but he desires very much that the Deputy would confine his remarks to the subject matter he raised with the Chair, that is, the recent meeting to which he adverted——
I am coming to that. There are a few preliminaries.
We ought not to stray too far from that fundamental issue.
However, another speech was made on that occasion in the course of which, among many other inflamatory things which were said, a desire was expressed to see the overthrow of both Houses of the Oireachtas, indeed, even the Presidency as an institution. That in itself is a highly seditious sort of speech. No action was taken at that time. I agree there are definite practical problems for the police at these functions where there are, perhaps, a very large number of people. Obviously, they will not—they cannot and would be foolish if they were to attempt it—move in on these occasions.
My doubts about the situation and my feeling of disquiet were brought to a head by the Press conference which was held last Friday night, which was the third major event, if you like, in the chain. The Press conference of itself was, perhaps, not very significant. I think there were only six IRA men present and the meeting was held under very surreptitious circumstances, and unless the police had information in advance about it, clearly they were not going to be able to do anything about this Press conference as such. I have already made that situation clear: I assumed that because nothing was done they did not have any advance information about it. Nonetheless, we have a situation where at least six prominent members of the Provisional IRA are at large in this country at a time when legislation is in force which could allow people of that kind to be arrested and prosecuted, and, presumably, if the courts are satisfied in relation to them, to be convicted and imprisoned.
I find it disturbing that that is not happening. The Minister did make the point—and, of course, this is a slightly unreal debate inasmuch as much of the reply to it was delivered yesterday and before I started to speak—and possibly will make the point that five of these people are from Northern Ireland in the sense that they are natives of Northern Ireland. It does appear that they spend a fair amount of their time down here and whether they are from Northern Ireland or the Twenty-Six Counties is immaterial so far as membership of the IRA is concerned.
These three main incidents I referred to are not the only incidents of this kind. They are symptomatic of the difficulty which exists at the moment. There was a funeral of an IRA man from the Richmond Hospital about six or seven weeks ago in the course of which shots were fired in the public street outside the hospital. There have been a number——
The Deputy should not bring in extraneous matters of this kind.
To a great extent these sort of things are tied up together. It is difficult to make the case as I would wish to make it without making at least some passing reference to them. Over the past three years, while I was Minister for Justice, there was very strong criticism of me and of the then Government for allowing, as it was put, these sort of matters to happen. The point I want to make tonight is that I cannot criticise the present Government for allowing any one incident in certain circumstances to happen, but I can return criticism that I think was unjust and which was levelled at me and at the Government of which I was a member by pointing out the vast difference there is between the situation that obtained up to 3rd December, 1972, and the situation which pertains since then.
I have pointed out also that until these three incidents took place—the three principal ones to which I have referred, although there are a number of others in which there was parading in paramilitary uniform, a matter which was thrown at me in this House on numerous occasions over the past few years, but about which very little could be done, or can still be done— we had a situation in which this type of thing was building up in the past couple of months. I seek an assurance from the Government—and the Minister gave it at the Press conference which he gave yesterday—that there will be no letting up in the enforcement of the existing law and particularly the new law passed by this House in December last against these people.
This party are firmly of the belief that the longer members of the IRA or any other people who wish to use force to solve, or allegedly solve, political difficulties in any part of this country are on the loose, the longer those difficulties will continue and the further they will be from the solution. So far as enforcement of the law is concerned, I had, up to March last, an almost microscopic knowledge of the provisions of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939. I was regularly accused in this House, and the Government of which I was a member were regularly accused, of not enforcing the provisions of that Act. I was satisfied at the time, and I am still satisfied that the police at all times then enforced every section of that Act which was in force, with one exception. The one exception was section 10. I was interested to read in a newspaper this morning, arising out of the Minister's Press conference yesterday, that the newspaper in question was very glad to see that the Minister did not propose to enforce section 10. The report in The Irish Times of the Minister's Press conference quotes the Minister at some length. It suddenly changes from what “Mr. Cooney said” to “last night an informed source denied” that the Government intended to invoke the Offences Against the State Act against newspapers to ensure that IRA statements would not be used.
The point I was making—and it is curious the way the truth of what I used to assert against tremendous tirades of strong language in this House for three years is now proved— is that the one section of that Act that I consciously decided could not be enforced in present circumstances and in present-day Ireland was section 10. We had my successor last night, or at least "an informed source", telling us that it was not proposed to enforce that section. I think that the Minister's decision, as expressed last night, is the right one. It was the decision I came to often, with a great many misgivings over the past two or three years. In the long run it is the best decision to come to. The people who advocate flagrantly that there should be no restraint whatever on newspapers and that there should be no use of section 10 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, often use as part of their argument—and I heard it used in this House by the present Minister for Foreign Affairs and it has validity up to a point—that with people like the IRA and other ruthless and violent people, the more publicity you give them the better, because they will only discredit themselves and they will only turn the ordinary normal, law-abiding citizen more strongly than ever against them.
That argument is true and valid as far as it goes. But, in my opinion, there is more to it than that. All of us in public life or in the newspapers should bear in mind that the more of this sort of publicity given, whether it is through a Press conference such as we had the other night or a Press release in a newspaper or on television, probably the more people will be revolted. Possibly 98 per cent of the people in the Twenty-six Counties will be revolted, but there will be about 2 per cent in this society or in any other society who, because of immaturity, lack of balance, lack of education or simply lack of discretion, will not be revolted; and if one in ten of that 2 per cent are attracted to the cause which these men of violence espouse then that is a gain for those men of violence and a loss to the cause of peace and the cause of justice and of unity in this country.
Like the present Minister, I hesitated to clamp down, as I could have, to enforce the very letter of the law in relation to section 10 of the Offences Against the State Act, nevertheless I often earnestly requested those who were in a position to disseminate these releases and these statements and speeches to think very carefully before they did so.
I intervene to intimate to the Deputy that the time in which he can make his contribution has nearly concluded.
Once again I want to reiterate that I do not criticise the Government or the police for the fact that this Press conference which we are talking about tonight took place, but I urge the Minister—and in saying so I speak on behalf of 99 per cent of the people of this country— not in any way to relent in the pressure that should be kept up against the men of violence.
The Deputy in his concluding remarks regretted the publicity which illegal organisations sometimes get by reason of their activities being reported. If the Deputy was sincere in his regret, he would have refrained from requesting this Adjournment debate. His reason for asking for the Adjournment debate was to have the recent Press conference debated here in the most public forum available in this country. There is a certain inconsistency there that I cannot refrain from pointing out.
It appears that the burden of the Deputy's argument was not to criticise the Government or the police for the fact that this Press conference happened. He concedes that something like this can happen despite the best efforts of the police. He concedes this also in the case of the other incidents which he mentioned at Kilcrumper and Bodenstown. These can take place without any reflection on the Garda.
I deduce that the point of the Deputy's remarks is, in some way, to criticise the Government for not moving as strongly against subversive organisations as he and his Government did in their time. Yet, the three incidents which he chooses to put forward to illustrate this thesis he concedes, while putting them forward, were well-nigh unavoidable. I find this strangely illogical but not altogether surprising.
I would just like to give the Deputy some statistics. He indicated that he did not have the powers he wanted until December. After December his Government were in office for 2½ months. I would like to compare what I might call the achievements by the Garda during that period with the achievements by the Garda during the first 2½ months of this Government's being in office. From January to mid-March of this year 24 persons were arrested under the Offences Against the State Act; from mid-March until May, the next 2½ months, exactly twice that number, 48 persons, were arrested. I suggest that that statistic alone shows either better police work during the 2½ months or that, perhaps, the police were luckier. If the Deputy wants statistics those are significant figures.
On the question of the seizure of arms we will compare the same two periods. From January to mid-March, 10 rifles and one pistol, a total of 11 weapons, were seized; from mid-March to the end of May two machine guns, 25 rifles and 12 pistols, a total of 39 weapons, more than three times as many weapons, were seized. The Deputy, on the strength of three events which he says were unavoidable, seeks to criticise this Government for lack of action. It is an argument which will not stand up for one second. The Deputy is trying to nail the colours of his party to a law and order mast, a mast to which they are not inclined to adhere. The first example I give of that is that he was impliedly critical, and rightly so in my opinion, of a national custom of graveyard celebrations, these lugubrious ceremonies we seem to have every Sunday in this country. He mentioned one of them, Bodenstown. May I remind him that his party parade to Bodenstown with all the trappings, the same atmosphere——
Not in para-military uniforms.
The personality is the same as the other organisations that parade so solemnly and hypocritically to Bodenstown.
(Interruptions.)
It is beginning to hurt.
(Interruptions.)
Order, please. Deputy O'Malley had 20 minutes to make his case. The Minister has less than ten minutes to reply. I appeal to Deputies' sense of fair play in this matter. Allow the Minister to make his concluding remarks without interruption, please.
In connection with this business of graveyards and funerals—this unfortunate Irish habit of turning what should be sacred places into occasions for political demonstrations by political parties, legal and illegal—there were questions to me last week from Deputies on the other side of the House, critical of the fact that persons whom the Garda wished to arrest on suspicion of being engaged in crime might be arrested at funerals, the funerals in question not being funerals as we normally think of them but clearly being funerals designed as political demonstrations.
Deputies on the opposite side were critical that the Garda were doing their duty under the very Act which the Deputy accused the Government of being soft on. They have the gall to get up, through their spokesman, and suggest that this Government were not as active or as keen as they were on this subject. Again, we must have some doubts as to the bona fides of the party opposite on the question of law and order and support for the Forces of the State in their difficult battle, as the Deputy concedes, against these people.
Now, I will refer to the incident of the Claudia. The Deputy who has just spoken came into this House and unequivocally stated that he had information that was correct beyond question, that the arms found were only a small fraction of the arms found on this vessel. He stated in this House unequivocally: “I have information that is correct beyond any question”. That was his statement to this House. He did not go to the Garda with that information but when they went to him that information was not forthcoming. This is from the Deputy who alleges we are not enforcing the Act.
The information was forthcoming.
What the Deputy told the Garda was precisely nothing whereas what he told this House was that he had hard information, correct beyond doubt. I compare this with statements made by a former Deputy of the party opposite, a Deputy who was expelled from the party opposite, ex-Deputy Leneghan, but who was brought back within the fold of the official Fianna Fáil ranks and who ran as an official candidate during the last general election.
What about Deputy Thornley and Deputy Coughlan?
(Interruptions.)
Order. The Minister, without interruption.
He was a man who said that the IRA got away with it. He was a man who said he had always been in favour of the IRA, a man who was endorsed and accepted by Mount Street as an official candidate of the Fianna Fáil Party.
(Interruptions.)
Ex-Deputy Leneghan went on further—this is the real significance in view of Deputy O'Malley's failure to tell us here in the House or to tell the Garda what he knew—and said: "We would not hand over any information to the Garda. If they come to me the answer they will get is ‘no'." This is the same spirit, the same mentality: if you are with us you are completely with us; if you are not, do not be hypocritical about it.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 18th July, 1973.