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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 30 Oct 1973

Vol. 268 No. 6

Adjournment Debate. - British Army Helicopters.

Because of the misleading information given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs in reply to Questions Nos. 24 to 27 on the Order Paper for Tuesday, 23rd October, 1973, I asked permission to raise the subject matter of these questions. I thank the Chair for accommodating me and I would remind the House that a couple of the questions referred to were in my name. The questions concerned the operation of British Army helicopters on active service in our land. The Minister, with your permission, Sir, decided to take all four questions together. I would refer the House in particular to Question No. 25 and to show clearly that the Minister set out deliberately to mislead the House in replying to me. The question, as reported at column 312 of Volume 268 of the Official Report for 23rd October, was to ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs "the date on which he received the first request from the British authorities to permit their helicopters to carry out surveillance across the Border". There was no doubt as to what was intended by that question. We are all anxious that no troops other than our own would carry out surveillance duties on this side of the Border. This is work they are well equipped to undertake. In his reply the Minister said, and I quote from the Official Report referred to already:

Permission has been granted on three occasions for overflights by helicopters, two involving landings. The reasons for granting permission were to save lives....

Further on, the Minister stated and I quote:

The first occasion was on 27th January, 1973, when I had no authority to give permission in the matter. The second was on 4th May, 1973, and the third occasion was on 28th August, 1973.

In a reply to a supplementary the Minister stated:

It has been the practice to give permission where lives are at stake. The previous Government did so on 27th January, 1973, and we have done so on two other occasions. I propose to continue that practice where there is a question of human life being at stake.

The Minister set out deliberately to mislead the House by saying that the Fianna Fáil Government gave permission on the 27th January to the British authorities to send in helicopters to this part of the country for the purpose of carrying out surveillance.

(Interruptions.)

Order. This is a limited debate.

I am raising the matter now so that the record can be put straight. There has been much comment on the subject both in the newspapers and on radio and television and I hope the media will give as much publicity to what I am saying now. The Minister mentioned three dates on which permission was granted. On the latter two the Coalition Government were in power. Whatever permission was given or was not given on January 27th can be ascertained by anybody who reads the newspapers for the following day. I would refer the House to The Sunday Press of January 28th, 1973.

(Interruptions.)

Order. Deputy Meaney, without interruption.

When I was discussing this matter last week the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs continued to snigger and Deputy Paddy Belton interjected a number of times. Time will be allowed this evening for a reply from the other side of the House. The Sunday Press item to which I referred stated that the British Army on the previous day helped the Garda and the Irish Army in a special mercy airlift for a young County Derry clerical student who had been injured in a car accident on the previous Friday night. The item stated that these authorities came together to help in transferring the student to Belfast for further treatment. This student had not engaged in any kind of military activity on this side of the Border. Perhaps he was injured to a greater extent than the other people involved in the accident and was being removed because of a decision taken by him or by his family. However, the point is that the Minister deliberately misled us when I asked when permission was first given for British helicopters to fly across the Border on surveillance duties.

Would the Deputy read the question to which I made the reply regarding the 27th January?

The Minister replied——

Let us have the supplementary question which the Deputy has not read out.

I am quoting from column 312 of the Official Report for October 23rd.

Let the Deputy read the supplementary question that he has suppressed.

The Minister is not on the Late Late Show now.

(Interruptions.)

The replies were based on Question No. 25.

And on the other three questions also.

The Deputy should read the supplementary.

The truth is being given many a queer twist at the moment by the way in which Ministers are answering here. Both the Ministers for Local Government and Finance have misled the House on other occasions but why did the Minister for Foreign Affairs choose to do so? He is our representative abroad and as such we depend on him to give an accurate account of what is happening in this country but how can we have confidence in him to do this when he has deliberately misled the House in reply to question 25 of 23rd October, 1973?

(Interruptions.)

Deputy L'Estrange is welcome back after his absence of the past few weeks. If the Minister will admit to having made a mistake and to having given the wrong reply, I shall be satisfied; but it must go on the record of the House that any permission given by the Fianna Fáil Government in respect of British Army helicopters concerned a mercy mission involving the transfer of an injured clerical student to Belfast.

Fianna Fáil were in power during the war years. At that time there were air raids on Belfast and we sanctioned the sending of such help to that city as fire brigades and ambulances so that lives might be saved and fires quelled. The Minister was well aware of the circumstances when he was replying to my question last week, but we shall say no more about the matter if he will stand up now and say he made a mistake and deliberately misled the House.

He is not suffering from loss of memory.

The Deputy should not invite interruptions.

The Government have said they made a mistake by sanctioning the incursion into this part of the country of British aircraft on active military service, but the Minister tried to justify that by endeavouring to blackmail the previous Government by saying they did the same on January 27th. The Minister should apologise now. If he does that he will have done a good day's work. I will now give way to my friend on my right who wishes to say a few words.

As you know better than anybody else in this House, under the rules of order I am obliged when referring to certain incidents to use the phrase "mislead the House". You also know, as do all other Deputies, what I mean. I want to make it quite clear that when I use that phrase I mean what is meant as the phrase is used outside, and I want nobody to be under any misapprehension about what I mean when I say that the Minister for Foreign Affairs misled the House.

(Interruptions.)

Order, please.

Go and get the Oxford Dictionary again.

It is quite clear that the Minister for Foreign Affairs in replying to the questions referred to by Deputy Meaney tried to mislead this House and the country.

And he succeeded.

Indeed he endeavoured to give the impression that the action of the Coalition Government in relation to permitting British Army helicopters into our territory—either to overfly or to land—was of the same kind as the action taken by the previous Fianna Fáil Government, and, as has been pointed out behind me, it was of course a successful effort at deception. If anybody has any doubt about that he has only to look at the record of that debate to see the interjection by Deputy Belton. He said Fianna Fáil had given permission in January. Deputies have also only got to look at the Press reports the following day to see that a number of political commentators were taken in by the misleading statement of the Minister.

What are the facts, however? Deputy Meaney has outlined them but I think they bear repeating. They are that in the case of the present Government's approach, they were, on their own admission, in the position where they had purported to give permission to foreign troops on active service to carry out that active service in our territory and the Minister for Foreign Affairs tried to convey that the Fianna Fáil Government had done the same.

Twenty-seven times in 18 months.

The facts are that the Fianna Fáil Government agreed, to a mercy mission, referred to by Deputy Meaney.

(Interruptions.)

We must have order.

I know Deputy Harte does not like this. I am sorry for his trouble.

(Interruptions.)

I appeal to Deputies' sense of fair play, in a limited debate of this kind, not to interrupt.

The facts, of course, are —and I suggest the Minister for Foreign Affairs knew these facts; if he did not know these facts we will accept his apology and he will have to look to his officials—and there can be no other explanation but that he tried to mislead the House and that he knew when he gave the information to this House that the facts were that in the case of the permission given by the Fianna Fáil Government on 27th January what was involved was a British Army helicopter being allowed to land at Monaghan County Hospital to pick up a clerical student who had been injured in a road accident in County Monaghan and to transfer him to a hospital in Belfast.

I do not care what effort the Minister for Foreign Affairs will make to try to slide out of this one, either on the terms of the question or the terms of the reply, but the facts are that he deliberately, and successfully as I have shown, conveyed that what happened was the same in the case of the Coalition as in the case of Fianna Fáil. I suggest that the difference between the two approaches is not merely one of degree but is one of kind. There is a fundamental difference between the two matters. The Minister knew it, and he tried to conceal this fact from the House and from the Irish public. I suggest that a Government which cannot or will not defend the sovereignty of this State, a Government which have no confidence in our Defence Forces and therefore calls on foreign forces to carry out within this State the functions assigned to our Defence Forces, are a Government on which we cannot rely to defend the national interests in the very difficult circumstances which obtain today and perhaps the even more difficult circumstances which will obtain in the future. I, for one, cannot have any confidence that the national interests are in safe hands when I see that a Government which have done what is now disclosed are looking after the interests of this country.

Sack Jack immediately.

Will Deputies please cease interrupting?

I suggest that this matter is even more significant because in connection with the same incident the Minister for Defence also, in his references to an Air Navigation Order which he said was signed by the late Seán Lemass, also tried to mislead the House. We intend to bring that matter up again later. However, it is significant that two members of the Government tried a cover up in relation to this incident. The cover up that is involved is significant.

You are daft.

Will Deputy L'Estrange please allow Deputy Colley to proceed. Let him have a good hearing.

We know that in these times "cover up" is a term that conjures up certain unsavoury facts, and in this context very unsavoury facts are being conjured up.

The Deputy is well used to that. You are experts at it.

We have come to expect from certain Ministers of this Government this kind of misleading of the House. Indeed we have it on the record in an adjournment debate some months ago in relation to the Ministers for Finance and Local Government. It now appears that in this incident we have the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defence engaging in cover ups and misleading the House and apparently, judging from the records, aided and abetted by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. I wonder are there any members of this Coalition Government who are not prepared to sell out the sovereignty——

Deputies

Oh!

——who are not prepared to back up the Defence Forces of this country. I wonder how many members of this Government—I believe there may be one or possibly two——

You had five.

——who would not when put in an awkward position try to mislead this House. I remind you, Sir, of what I said at the beginning that I am using the phrase "mislead the House" because of the Rules of Order. Everyone in the House knows what I mean when I say Ministers are trying to mislead the House. That is what I mean. As far as I am concerned and I believe as far as many people are concerned, one cannot have anything but contempt for this kind of weakness in dealing with the national interests, this kind of deceit in covering up or trying to cover up the weakness. I believe this matter is of considerable significance in so far as it reveals the attitude of many members of this Government both to the national interests and to this House. It reveals the kind of characters who in a tight corner will not bat an eyelid about misleading the House.

The significant thing in this debate is the dog that did not bark. That is to say that the significant thing is the question asked me which Deputy Meaney twice refused to repeat to this House. The Deputy's complaint is not in respect of my reply to the questions asked but is about the reply I gave to the first supplementary.

(Interruptions.)

The Minister has less than ten minutes to reply. The Chair sought to secure the best of order for the Deputies to make their case and the same good order must apply for the Minister.

There was no order when we were speaking.

Change that name before you disgrace it.

Even talking quite fast there is a problem in getting across all that I have to say. The Deputy refused twice to read out the supplementary, the reply to which he complained of. He endeavoured to convey to the House that the reply he quoted was the reply to the original questions. It was not. It was the reply to a singularly badly framed supplementary by Deputy Meaney. He asked the wrong question, and he has got the right answer to the wrong question. That is what he is complaining of now. When he was speaking the Deputy said he wished to further question the Minister but he did not say what the question was.

On the 23rd October four questions were put down to me, Nos. 24 to 26, from Deputies Loughnane and Meaney. In those questions I was asked if I had granted permission to the British Army to land helicopters in this State and, secondly, by Deputy Meaney, the number of occasions on which British Army helicopters crossed the Border with my permission, the dates and locations of the crossings.

The Minister missed one.

Will the Deputy please desist from interrupting?

Minister, where is your integrity?

In my reply I stated that permission has been granted on three occasions for overflights by helicopters, two involving landings. The reasons for granting permission were to save lives et cetera. Deputy Meaney's supplementary, which he is not prepared to read out because he is ashamed of it, asked me to state how many times on the three occasions I mentioned I personally gave permission or delegated somebody to give permission. He said nothing about surveillance as answered to Questions Nos. 24 to 26. I replied to that singularly stupid supplementary that the first occasion was on 27th January, 1973, when I had no authority to give permission in the matter. I then went on to give the dates of the second and third occasions. I replied to the question asked. I know Deputy Meaney should not have asked that question. He should have asked a question about surveillance, but because of lack of experience in Opposition he did not do so. I replied with precise accuracy to the question asked of me.

The Minister is the Artful Dodger; he has been caught out.

Trick of the loop.

I do not know why Deputy Meaney wishes to expose for a second time to the Press Gallery the particular incompetence of the Opposition in dealing with this matter, something which I exposed on the first occasion. I am very glad to have a second opportunity to do so. We have been accused of covering up. Are we covering up by saying that Fianna Fáil gave permission for something on 27th January? How could we cover it up unless Fianna Fáil forgot what they gave permission for?

(Interruptions.)

Am I to go on the basis that the entire Fianna Fáil Party this time forgot what they did on 27th January? Could my reference to it be a cover up because once I mentioned that date it was obvious that it was the responsibility of the previous Government? They must have known what they did and all they had to do was to say that their decision on that day was based on the fact that this was a mercy flight.

The Minister is not fooling the people.

The Minister is a lost cause.

Who is going to believe that rubbish?

The position is that all three occasions involved the saving of life. On 4th May, 1973, permission was given, not for a landing as in the Fianna Fáil case, but for a possible overflight. The problem was that an object was lying just north of the Border and this could have been an incendiary or explosive device. If it was not dealt with it could have caused loss of life. The problem was that in photographing it there was a danger that the helicopter in flying over it to take these photographs might have touched across the Border. We were asked for permission in case that happened.

The Minister said different in The Sunday Times which reported that there was a danger of an ambush.

Order, the Minister has but five minutes left to reply.

All I can say is that the Fianna Fáil Republican Party wishes to draw full attention to its republicanism but in doing so is drawing full attention to its incompetence. I do not think we are all that impressed with Blaney Mark II either. In the future, as in the past, I will reply to the questions asked me and not to the questions Deputies should have asked but had not the wit to ask.

You should come straight.

The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 31st October, 1973.

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