Vol. 271 No. 6
Deputy David Andrews has given me notice of his intention to raise a matter as follows:
The propriety of having an inquiry into the escape of two prisoners from Mountjoy Prison on 11th March, 1974, carried out by officials of the Department of Justice.
I asked the Minister for Justice the following question on Thursday, 24th March, 1974:
To ask the Minister for Justice if he will make a statement on the escape of two prisoners from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, on Monday 11th March, 1974, in view of the inquiry held into security after a previous escape and the reassurance then and subsequently given by him.
The Minister replied:
The circumstances surrounding the escape are being inquired into in detail and I am not in a position to make a statement at present.
On pursuit of the Minister, by way of supplementary questions, I asked who was conducting the inquiry and the House was informed that the Minister's own Department were conducting the inquiry, presumably ordered by the Minister. The whole issue is one of prison security and I am sure the Minister in his reply to this debate will include his views on what the terms of reference of the Department's inquiry will be.
We elicited from the Minister that the inquiry was being conducted by his Department and questioned the propriety of such an inquiry being conducted by the Department officials into the Minister's competence. The Minister then stated in the second part of the reply to my question that he was not in a position to make any statement at present. In further pursuit of the Minister we discovered that not only was the Minister not prepared to make a statement at present but that even when the findings of the inquiry are made known to him that will be the end of the matter and the Minister will not make a statement, as we understand it, at any time so the people and this House will be as much in the dark as ever they were. That would appear to be the position.
I stated that prison security is the issue and we charge the Minister with failure in his duty to the people in this respect. We say that he has completely undermined the confidence of the people in relation to his Government's capacity and the Minister's capacity to deal with the security of this State, more particularly in relation to the matter of prison security.
The Ceann Comhairle in very kindly allowing this question made the point that the propriety of the Minister's own Department in examining their own Minister raised eyebrows on the Opposition side of the House.
What the Minister's Department are doing, as we understand it, is adjudicating on the competence of their own Minister to do his duty in respect of the failures which we allege have occurred in the area of security. The Department inquiry is being conducted, we assume—because we have to assume and to speculate—into the matter of prison security. The Minister is examining himself and that is a practice which we consider wrong. We are told that we are not to receive the result of the Department's inquiry.
Equally in relation to the propriety of the Minister's Department examining the very serious matter before them, the mechanics of the workings of this House must also come into serious question. I will not in any way question the Ceann Comhairle's ruling in any matter during my short contribution on this question but the Ceann Comhairle is aware, and the House is aware, that I attempted to raise this matter by way of Private Notice Question some 24 hours after those two criminals escaped and the Ceann Comhairle ruled out of order my attempt to raise the question. He gave me two reasons for ruling the question out of order. One was that the incident was now over and the second that the question on proper notice would enable a more considered reply based on a full consideration of the security position in Mountjoy. I have—again not in any way questioning the ruling of the Chair—brought this ruling to the attention of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges because I felt I had a duty to do so and to ensure that matters of public importance, like the escape of those two inmates, should be brought up as a matter of urgency in this House and that I should not have to wait an excessive seven days to have my questions answered. In fact, I did not receive an answer to the question at all. What little information we did receive was elicited arising out of supplementaries asked of the Minister.
I shall quote now from The Irish Times of Tuesday, March 12th, 1974, what the Minister said about security. I quote:
Three days after the Taoiseach's announcement of a judicial inquiry into the State's security system, following the helicopter escape of three Provisionals from Mountjoy Jail last November, the Minister for Justice, Mr. Cooney, said that the inquiry would be wider in terms of security than the helicopter incident.
"Everything," he said, "should be foreseeable. Some things could not be foreseen, but that did not excuse them."
End of the Minister's quotation. It continued:
The security failure at Mountjoy was first apparent on October 31st last when Seamus Twomey, J. B. O'Hagan and Kevin Mallon escaped from the jail in a hijacked helicopter from under the eyes of the guards. The helicopter landed in the exercise yard...
I hesitate to interrupt the Deputy but he will appreciate that his case must be confined to the pros and cons of officials conducting this inquiry vis-à-vis some other body.
I hope that the officials will take into consideration my quotations and will examine what the Minister has said in relation to security.
On a point of order, I think the Deputy is quoting from a newspaper of 12th March something that I said some few months earlier.
That is what I said.
I think he should indicate when he is finished quoting what I was alleged to have said and when he is starting to read comment by the newspaper.
He said: "End of Minister's quotation."
Then he should not read newspaper comment on it. If he wants to make his own speech he should make his own speech.
It is all wrapped up in my contribution.
Make your own speech.
The Minister does not like hearing his own words.
I am asking that the Department of Justice officials take these matters into consideration during the course of their deliberations and when they are arriving at their conclusion to present to the Minister himself. The matter would be so extraordinarily comic if it were not such a serious matter. The idea of the Minister investigating himself. I shall quote the Minister's own words again from The Irish Times of 12th March:
"Quite frankly, this type of operation was not foreseen," he said.
Listen to this. This is important.
I shall continue with the quotation:
Whether it should have been foreseen is a matter which is receiving attention, but I think it would be difficult to say, even with the benefit of hindsight, that it should have been foreseen.
The contributor to The Irish Times said:
The day after the escape the Taoiseach announced in the Dáil that a judicial inquiry into the State's security system would be set up. Meanwhile, security in prisons was to be tightened as a matter of urgency, he said.
These are the Minister's own words. I would ask that the Department's officials, during the conduct of this inquiry, would take the quotations into consideration when they present the Minister with their findings. We know the Minister will not make public the findings and this is the tragedy of the situation. In view of the fact that information is not forthcoming from the Government on the matter unfortunately we have to speculate. I would ask the Minister to ask his officials to take into consideration an article in the Sunday World dated 17th March.
(Cavan): The Deputy must be bankrupt of arguments.
That is a serious charge against a newspaper.
(Cavan): I said the Deputy must be bankrupt of arguments.
Will the Minister comment on a report that these criminals were in possession of a briefcase or a small hold-all and that the wardens were officially forbidden to search the case?
Has the Deputy got a quotation from Dublin Opinion?
The Deputy would certainly be quoted in that.
Can the Minister tell the House if he was subsequently aware of the contents of the briefcase?
The Deputy is straying from the subject matter for which he received my approval to raise in the House.
I am asking the Minister a question.
The Deputy must not argue with the Chair on this matter. The matter of the propriety of having an inquiry into the escape by officials of the Department is the issue we are discussing. I hope the Deputy will not introduce extraneous matter.
I am suggesting the Department officials should consider these matters. I can only do that by putting my suggestions in the House. It is the only method I have of asking the Minister's officials to examine the question of the escape of the two prisoners. I would respectfully urge the Chair to take that view. In relation to the Sunday World story, I asked the Minister if he was aware of the contents of the briefcase. It has been suggested there were linen or cloth sheets in the briefcase, that there were hacksaw blades and some sort of grappling hook——
The Deputy is proceeding to raise the whole matter of the escape of the prisoners.
Did they get the £100,000 that was misappropriated?
Deputy Andrews will appreciate that the general matter of security at Mountjoy and the escape of all these prisoners is too wide a subject for a 30 minute debate of this kind.
Deputy L'Estrange does not want to hear the argument. He wants to make a nonsense out of a serious matter.
Was it serious when they were here for 1½ years as spies and when the former Taoiseach forgot about them?
We picked them up.
You gave them the ladder.
Order. I want to bring the Deputy back to the propriety of having the inquiry carried out by the Minister's officials vis-à-vis some other judicial body the Deputy may have in mind. This is a limited debate and it should be orderly.
There are a few other points the Minister might consider, or ask his officials to consider. Will the Minister say that this party were correct at the time of the helicopter incident when we said that Garda strength within and outside the prison was reduced at that time and that on this occasion there was only one garda at the main entrance to Mountjoy? Can the Department officials inquire into that? Can the Minister say if a visit by a member of the British Embassy staff a few days before the escape was investigated and, if so, the result of that investigation?
The Deputy is continuing to get around the ruling of the Chair.
The Chair has been most patient and I shall obey the ruling. Why does the Minister not refer this latest escape to a judicial personage for investigation? Have the Finlay Commission reported on security arising out of the helicopter incident and, if not, does the Minister intend asking the Finlay Commission to examine the latest incident? If the Minister is to be consistent, surely an independent body should have inquired into this latest escape? All these points need immediate arising and reply. We hope that the Minister, even at this late stage, will relent in relation to his own officials examining himself and his inadequacy as Minister in charge of the security of prisons and the State generally.
An important fact which the Department officials might take into account is that a new visiting committee have not been appointed since the previous committee's term of office expired on 31st December, 1973. Will the Minister explain why a new committee have not been appointed? If he intends appointing a new committee, who will be the members?
I cannot see how this can possibly arise. The Deputy is wrong in any event.
The fact that a visiting committee are not in existence at the moment is a breach of the statute. We must put a final question to the Minister although we do not wish to be unduly harsh on him. There was a general feeling inside and outside the House that the Minister should resign in view of his overall handling of the security of the State. Did he at any stage offer his resignation to the Taoiseach on account of the escape by the Littlejohn brothers from Mountjoy on 11th March? I know the Minister's Department will not discuss the matter of the Minister's resignation during their deliberations on the escape of these two criminals from Mountjoy Prison. The Opposition have made a very fair case questioning the propriety of the Minister's own officials inquiring into his competence or otherwise to do his job.
In view of the criteria the Minister established in his previous statement after the helicopter escape that the test was one of reasonable foreseeability, does the Minister now not acknowledge that in so far as this attempt and its success was entirely foreseeable it is obvious that an inquiry is not necessary to establish the fact that this escape should not have been allowed to take place? For that reason, in setting up the inquiry the Minister is trying to cover up his total incompetence in this area and, to that extent, the inquiry is being used as a smokescreen for the Minister's incompetence, even by his own stated standards.
The matter the Chair allowed to be raised on the Adjournment was the question of the propriety of having an inquiry into the escape of two prisoners carried out by officials of my Department. This is the net question and a very net question it is. In the few minutes at my disposal I want to indicate to you, Sir, and to the House, for the edification and knowledge of Deputy Andrews, that it was appropriate that such an inquiry should be carried out by my Department and that it was in accordance with well-established precedent for it to be so carried out.
First of all, Deputy Andrews in his suggestion that officials were really inquiring into me, was either being malicious, or mischievous, or both because he knew quite well that that was not the purpose of the inquiry. The inquiry was to ascertain the facts surrounding the escape of these two prisoners, to see how it happened and why it happened and to find out where the system went wrong, to see was it a fault in the system or was it a human error. The implication in the question that it was an improper task for officers of my Department in the sense that they would not bring an unbiassed view to bear on the inquiry is something that I must reject. It shows a lamentable lack of knowledge on the part of Deputy Andrews, who is the spokesman for Justice, of the functions of the Department and the officials of the Department in relation to the administration of prisons. I thought that the reason he failed to appear here the last day when he was granted leave to raise this Adjournment debate—this is what occurred to me at any rate — was that, when he discovered the very net question he proposed to raise, he found himself berefit of ideas on it and he did not appear to give himself an opportunity to consult his "think tank".
Order, please.
As a result of whatever briefing he got from his "think tank" to try to expand the dimension of the very net question he chose to raise we have had here tonight a mish-mash of newspaper quotations in an endeavour to make an alleged case. But this clearly does not cover up Deputy Andrews' ignorance of the administration of the Department of Justice, something he could have ascertained from my predecessor and something that he, as spokesman for Justice, should have known. He should know that the headquarters officers who conducted the inquiry have themselves no direct or indirect responsibility for the safe custody of prisoners. On the other hand, by reason of the fact that they are attached to the prison section of the Department, they have a knowledge of prisons, of the physical layout of prisons, of the prison régime, and of the day-to-day activities of the prison. Deputy Andrews should know that, because of that knowledge, they were peculiarly well qualified to sift the facts and investigate the position in order to ascertain what happened. This, as I say, was in accordance with long-established precedent.
Like Judge Finlay.
In 1957, Mr. Oscar Traynor appointed officers of his Department, the Department of Justice, to make an inquiry into an escape. In 1962 Deputy Charles J. Haughey appointed an officer of the Department to make an inquiry into an escape. That has been the position down the years and there are ample precedents for this type of inquiry.
The escapes never occurred with such constancy.
Order. The Minister has the right to reply in the limited time available to him. Would Deputies please allow the Minister to reply in that limited time?
Quite the most serious thing that happened in the history of Mountjoy was the riot that occurred two or three years ago when the prison was virtually destroyed and the prison system was literally on its knees and Deputy Andrews now has the cheek to come in here and accuse us of lack of control. A further extraordinary point about that riot in Mountjoy was that no inquiry at all was held into it.
The Minister for Justice visited it. He had the guts to do that.
There was no inquiry.
But the Minister for Justice visited——
Deputy Andrews had 20 minutes in which to make his case and he must now allow the Minister, who has only ten minutes, to reply.
Again, from the point of view of the security of the State——
Order. It is most unruly to utilise limited time in this fashion.
The next most serious incident was the defection of a member of the Garda Síochána who had a position in the most sensitive area of Garda headquarters——
On a point of order, is the Minister in order——
Chair.
Deputy Colley, I must appeal to Members' ingrained sense of fair play. When one side gets 20 minutes and the other has ten in which to reply barracking or constant interruption is most disorderly.
I am not barracking. I am making a point of order.
But Deputy Colley is utilising the precious time of the Minister. I am the judge of order. Please, the Minister, without interruption.
The Minister should stick to the question put to him. May we depend on you, Sir, to see that the Minister sticks to the question put to him and answers it?
Deputies must conduct themselves.
I am basing my case on precedent, on the precedent in the case of Garda Crinion, and the precedent in that case was an internal investigation and, if that is not relevant, then I am a Dutchman. That was the most serious defection and the most serious breach of national security and that was a matter that was investigated internally. We have the situation that the case now is being made by Deputy Andrews producing cuttings from Sunday newspapers and from daily newspapers.
The Littlejohns.
Deputy Andrews strayed off the motion and I am, I think, a Cheann Comhairle, entitled to stray off also in reply to Deputy Andrews; if I so stray it is as a result of Deputy Andrews straying. Deputy Andrews suggested there was something seriously wrong with security because two prisoners escaped from Mountjoy. Since 1970 there have been 50 escapes or serious attempts to escape—27 actual escapes and 23 attempts—and these did not all occur in the last year. About twenty occurred in the last year.
Our prisons were not designed as high security prisons and they depend for their security to a large degree on a human factor and Deputy Andrews has exemplified in the standard of his contribution here this evening the fact that the human factor is very, very variable indeed. I just want to make that point clear. Again, there is a distressing tendency on the part of the Opposition to come in here and criticise the Forces of the State, whether they be gardaí, members of the Army or prison officers.
Order. There are only two minutes left.
The extraordinary thing is that any praise comes on an occasion like that on which a prisoner escaped in a helicopter, but there was no praise when the escaper removed by helicopter was recaptured and when the chief conspirator who arranged that escape was also captured, tried and convicted, together with a fellow conspirator. That was something that did not get the headlines it deserved to get and it is an indication of the alertness of the security forces. I reject completely any suggestion that there has been any lack of security on the part of this Government and I also reject any suggestion of any impropriety in having this inquiry conducted by officials of my Department. The precedents are for an inquiry to be carried out in this way for the reasons I have indicated.
Order.
The difficulty about this whole area is that we have to look back for the cause of our sorry situation to the political history of the past four years and, when we look back to 1969 and 1970 we see what our Opposition now, then in Government, did; they founded what is now the Provisional IRA force, the most evil force ever to arise in this State, and they now have the gall to come in here and attempt to make criticisms at the expense of the security forces. I say to them: "Clean out your own stable before you attack ours."
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 27th March, 1974.
