Skip to main content
Normal View

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 20 Nov 1975

Vol. 285 No. 13

Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill, 1975 [Seanad]: Second Stage.

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I want to recall at the very outset of the debate on this Bill what it proposes to do because its essential objective appears to have been lost sight of in the debates and comments made about it up to now. Broadly speaking this Bill makes certain criminal acts when committed in Northern Ireland offences against the law of the State and triable in the courts of the State. The offences concerned are broadly what can be termed terrorist offences and are all unquestionably of a very serious nature. They include murder, kidnapping, hijacking, various offences under the Explosive Substances Act and Firearms Acts—a horrifying catalogue. At the moment because of legal constraints perpetrators of these dreadful crimes can take refuge in the State and escape the consequences of their terrible acts.

It is wrong that criminals should escape the consequences of their deeds. It is detrimental to us to have such people at large in our society. In addition, it is a matter of grave scandal in Northern Ireland that fugitive offenders can find safe refuge in our jurisdiction. There is, I am satisfied, a strong feeling in this country that all the sanctions of the law should be visited on these people and that the law should, if necessary, be altered so that these sanctions can be made effective on them. People are disgusted and impatient with their philosophies and activities. There is in this island a great yearning for peace and one way we here in Parliament can respond is to show our abhorrence of violence in all its forms and to do something realistic to try and stop it. We may differ in our attitudes to the means proposed by this Bill to solve the problem of the fugitive criminal, but I hope those who speak on this Bill will, even if they do not approve of the scheme proposed, agree that those who murder in the North, bomb in the North, kneecap in the North are criminals and deserve to have the sanctions of the law visited on them. By doing so we can show to all the people of Northern Ireland that we are one with them in our detestation of terrorism.

The solution of the problem is a complex and difficult one and following the Sunningdale Agreement a commission of eminent judges and jurists from both jurisdictions was set up to devise a remedy that would take account of all the difficulties and that would be both feasible and effective. The possible solutions to the problem that had been thrown up and that were to be examined by this commission were the amendment of the existing extradition legislation so as to remove the political exemption; the creation of a common law enforcement area in which an all-Ireland court would have jurisdiction; and the extension of the jurisdiction of domestic courts so that they could try offences committed outside their normal jurisdictions.

The Law Enforcement Commission agreed that the all-Ireland court method did not offer a practical immediate solution to the problem. The contrary has been and may continue to be argued. However, the plain fact is that this method is simply not on at present.

Much as we would like to see an all-Ireland court as an ultimate solution, we must look at the practicabilities of establishing such a court. First of all, the Constitution would have to be amended. Secondly, an all-Ireland court would have to be agreed on and accepted in the North of Ireland. There are no prospects of such an agreement being reached in the immediate future. Are we then to say that, as we cannot get agreement on what we think the best or the ideal solution, we will do nothing in the meantime to see to it that fugitive offenders are brought to justice and that we will continue to tolerate the present scandalous position?

The commission were evenly divided on the extradition method and consequently made no recommendations on that method. However, they were agreed that there were no legal objections to the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction by domestic courts, supplemented by a procedure for taking evidence outside the State or Northern Ireland, as the case might be. So we are left in the position of accepting the solution recommended by the commission or having no solution at all. In other words, either we adopt the extra-territorial jurisdiction method or we do nothing and continue to allow one part of our country to become a haven for people who commit the gravest crimes against the Irish people, Irish property and Irish interests.

To put it in a different way, do we act as a responsible Legislature in an independent and sovereign state or do we contend that, in spite of our independence and our sovreignty, we are unable to legislate in order to protect the Irish people, North and South? As the commission have shown, there are well-accepted principles in international law justifying the exercise of extra-territorial jurisdiction by domestic courts—principles that are acted upon by every state worthy of a place in the community of civilised nations. Indeed, these principles are at the very basis of the concept of the sovreignty of the independent state.

At an early stage the constitutionality of this Bill was impugned by Opposition spokesmen. So far, I have heard no cogent arguments for the view that the Bill infringes the Constitution. Our advice is strongly that the Bill is constitutional. If it were otherwise, the measure would not, of course, have been introduced. The Government, naturally, are anxious that the Bill, like any other piece of legislation passed by the Oireachtas, would stand up constitutionally. Because of the objectives of the Bill, it is important that its constitutionality be tested, if tested it is to be, as soon as possible, and the Government would see much merit in a reference to the Supreme Court prior to enactment, provided substantial arguments to justify the claim of unconstitutionality are adduced during this debate. However, the reference of a Bill to the Supreme Court is a matter exclusively for the President, after consultation with the Council of State.

I shall return to the constitutional aspect in a moment but I should like to deal first with the concept of extra-territoriality. There is nothing novel or extraordinary in this concept. It has already been adopted in our legal system. It is not prohibited in international law and has been a feature for a considerable time of the legal system of the civil law countries. In our own law there are plenty of precedents for the assumption of extra-territorial criminal jurisdiction. We have the Offences against the Person Act, 1861, the Foyle Fisheries Act, 1952, section 38 of the Extradition Act, 1965, the Air Navigation and Transport Act 1973, and the Geneva Conventions Act, 1962. It is, of course, true that in spite of these precedents and its long-standing acceptance in civil law countries and in international law, the concept of extra-territoriality in criminal law is a little known one in these islands, even among lawyers.

The claim in international law to jurisdiction over acts committed abroad either by one's own nationals or by any persons, irrespective of nationality, is quite different and distinct from a claim to exercise jurisdiction over areas and territories other than one's own. Indeed, if this were not so, the well-established notion of the international crime or of the criminality of acts committed outside one's own jurisdiction would have no place in international law. It should be noted that though our Constitution in Article 2 specifies the national territory as the whole island, Article 3, while preserving the right to exercise jurisdiction over the whole of that territory, goes on to declare that the laws enacted by our Parliament shall have the like area and extent of application as the laws of Saorstát-Éireann and the like extra-territorial effect. The language used in these two Articles is of prime importance in the context of constitutionality in the light of what the Bill seeks to do. There is nowhere in these Articles, read together, any restriction on the creation of extra-territorial jurisdiction over the activities of Irish citizens or non-Irish nationals abroad. Indeed, it would be extraordinary if there were.

Piracy on the high seas has, for example, long been an international offence that may be tried in the courts of any jurisdiction: the same is now the position in respect of air piracy in all those countries that have ratified, as we have, the 1970 Convention of The Hague for the Suppression of the Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft—set out in the Second Schedule to the Air Navigation and Transport Act, 1973. Although it was not necessary for the purposes of the Convention, section 11 of this Act, which creates the offence of unlawful seizure of aircraft, applies to an act committed on any aircraft where the act is that of an Irish citizen or of a person habitually resident in the State or the aircraft is an Irish-controlled aircraft. The Convention itself applies only if the place of take-off or the place of actual landing is situated outside the territory of the State of registration, and it is immaterial whether the aircraft is engaged on an international or a domestic flight. Accordingly, the Convention does not cover the hijacking of an aircraft flying between London and Edinburgh which actually lands in Belfast. However, section 11 of the 1973 Act does apply if, for instance, the actual hijacking is committed by an Irish citizen or a person habitually resident here.

Section 11 of the Air Navigation and Transport Act, 1973, is particularly relevant in the context of the present Bill because it is a modern provision enacted by this very Oireachtas and also because an offence under that section is one of the offences specified in the Schedule to the present Bill. Another example of an extra-territorial offence is murder committed abroad by an Irish citizen. This is because of section 9 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861, as adapted in 1973. This provision will, by the way, be additional to the provision in the Bill making murder committed in Belfast an offence under our law, irrespective of the nationality of the offender. A further example of extra-territorial jurisdiction is to be found in section 3 of the Explosive Substances Act, 1883, which deals with preparatory acts and conspiracies to cause explosions and possession of explosives with intent. It is proposed in section 4 of the Bill to re-enact this section in modern form and in addition to extend the ambit of the substantive offence, under section 2 of the 1883 Act, of causing an explosion so as to cover explosions caused abroad by Irish citizens. I shall deal with section 4 of the Bill in more detail later on.

That territoriality has not been accepted as an absolute in our criminal law is clearly demonstrated in the enactments of the Oireachtas such as the Foyle Fisheries Act, 1952, section 38 of the Extradition Act, 1965, the Geneva Conventions Act, 1962 and section 11 of the Air Navigation and Transport Act, 1973, to all of which I have already referred and to which the Law Enforcement Commission refer in the footnote to paragraph 2 of their report. Except for the 1973 Act, every one of these statutes was enacted when the present Opposition were in office. As far as concerns the 1973 Act, the detailed proposals for the Bill of that Act were approved by the previous Government, and no objection was made to its provisions on constitutional grounds when the Bill of the Act was before this House or when it was before the Seanad.

Article 29 of the Constitution provides in section 3 that Ireland accepts the generally recognised principles of international law as its rule of conduct in its relations with other States. The Law Enforcement Commission in paragraph 20 of their report state in reference to the taking of extra-territorial jurisdiction that:

The jurisdiction can be justified in international law on several generally recognised principles.

If Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution prevent us from assuming jurisdiction over acts committed outside the State, it is difficult to see how we could have ratified a number of international conventions that we have ratified—and implemented in our municipal law— such as the Geneva Red Cross Conventions of 1949, the European Convention on Extradition of 1957 and the Hague Convention on Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft of 1970.

Before leaving the question of extra-territorial jurisdiction and international law, I would ask those who oppose the Bill to ponder on the fact that we are here dealing with crimes committed in Ireland and against Irish people. The Bill does not propose that our courts should have jurisdiction over crimes committed in a country a thousand miles away. To treat Northern Ireland as part of a strange and distant state for present purposes is not only artificial but inconsistent with the history of co-operation between the two parts of Ireland which has been practised over the years in so many respects, and which we hope to see enlarged in the future.

This leads me to an objection that has been made to the Bill based on the wording of section 3 of Article 38 of the Constitution which it is claimed confines the jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court to offences committed in the State. This section provides that special courts may be established by law where, in the words of the section, "it may be determined in accordance with such law that the ordinary courts are inadequate to secure the effective administration of justice, and the preservation of public peace and order". The Offences Against the State Act, 1939, is such a law. The present Special Criminal Court is operating under that law.

If the effective administration of justice, which clearly includes the trial of offences created by the ordinary law, cannot be secured by means of the ordinary courts, and if these courts are inadequate to secure the preservation of public peace and order, special courts may be established. How in this part of the country can public peace and order and, still more, the effective administration of justice be secured if juries are to be intimidated where extra-territorial offences are being tried?

Under the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, the Government may, whenever they are satisfied as to the inadequacy of the ordinary courts, make the necessary proclamation for the establishment of the Special Criminal Court. This is specifically provided for in section 35 (2) of the 1939 Act, which is clearly a law within the meaning of Article 38.3 of the Constitution. To suggest that the public peace and order of this State is not being affected by the activities in Northern Ireland is nothing short of ludicrous. It is for the Government to determine the situation in regard to the inadequacy of the ordinary courts to secure the preservation of the public peace and order and they are clearly entitled to make this determination in accordance with the law establishing the Special Criminal Court.

This determination has been made in a Government proclamation signed on 26th May, 1972, by the then Taoiseach. This was followed by a Government instrument dated 30th May, 1972 establishing the Special Criminal Court. On the same day the Offences Against the State (Scheduled Offences) Order, 1972, was signed by the then Taoiseach. Amongst the scheduled offences listed in the Appendix to the 1972 Order are offences under the Explosive Substances Act, 1883, which in section 3 provides for an extra-territorial offence. Moreover, the Attorney General may, under sections 46, 47 and 48 of the 1939 Act, certify in respect of any non-scheduled offence that the ordinary courts are inadequate to secure the effective administration of justice and the preservation of the public peace and order. Where the Attorney General so certifies, the trial takes place before the Special Criminal Court. Non-scheduled offences include, of course, a number of extra-territorial offences such as murder and the hijacking of aircraft. The Attorney General's certificate is a determination in accordance with the law establishing special criminal courts, i.e. the Offences Against the State Act 1939, for the trial of offences, and is thus clearly within the terms of section 3 of Article 38 of the Constitution. The functions of the Attorney General under the 1939 Act are, since the Prosecution of Offences Act, 1974 came into operation, now vested in the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Once it is accepted that it is proper to legislate for extra-territorial jurisdiction in respect of offences committed in Northern Ireland, how can one argue that Article 38.3 of the Constitution makes it impossible to provide for the trial of those offences by the Special Criminal Court when exactly similar offences committed in the State may be tried by the court? Such an argument becomes even more difficult to sustain when it is remembered that extra-territorial offences under the Bill include ancillary offences committed on one side of the Border in respect of substantive offences committed on the other side. Finally, the reference in Article 38.3 to "the effective administration of justice" must mean the effective administration of justice in respect of all offences under the criminal law of the State, including the trial of extra-territorial offences.

It has been contended that in this Bill we are "institutionalising" the Special Criminal Court as a permanent feature of our law. This is not so. Unfortunately, the court has to be a feature of our law as long as the present situation continues. Moreover, special criminal courts have been specifically provided for in Article 38 of the Constitution and the need for them is greater now than at any time in the history of the State. That that is so is fully recognised both by the Government and by the Opposition. However, if circumstances become such that a court is no longer needed, the present court can be disestablished. If and when it is so disestablished, the provisions in this Bill, other than section 11, will continue in operation, and the ordinary courts will take over the trial of extra-territorial offences created by the Bill. In addition, the reforms in the law as to robbery, burglary, etc., which I shall deal with later will continue to have effect. I should point out, too, that even while the Special Criminal Court subsists, an offence under the Bill could come for trial before the ordinary criminal courts, though, of course, the commission procedure would not be available for such a trial.

The Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill that is before this House is primarily designed to introduce extra-territoriality in the field of criminal law as between ourselves and Northern Ireland. The Bill proposes (1) to extend our criminal law and criminal jurisdiction so that they will cover a number of very serious offences committed in Northern Ireland by any person irrespective of his nationality and (2) to make the new jurisdiction operate effectively by supplementing the extra-territorial method with a satisfactory procedure that will contain adequate protection for accused persons. In addition to this, we are availing ourselves of this opportunity to propose several reforms in the ordinary substantive criminal law concerning explosives, firearms, robbery, burglarly and hijacking of vehicles. These are reforms that I, as Minister for Justice, would in any event have been recommending fairly soon as desirable law reforms in their own right, and I trust that they will be discussed on that basis.

I will now summarise the principal provisions of the Bill and in doing so I will deal with certain particular objections that have been raised to some of them in addition to the general question of extra-territorial jurisdiction to which I have already referred.

As many of the provisions in the Bill are necessarily complicated, the explanatory memorandum goes into a fair amount of detail, in particular in order to explain the reasons for the more complicated and technical provisions. For this reason I do not propose at this stage to go into great detail on each of the provisions, as no doubt the House will wish to examine the Bill section by section at the later stages.

Section 2 is the principal provision of the Bill. Its purpose is to secure that any act done in Northern Ireland that, if done in the State, would be one of the offences specified in the Schedule to the Bill will be an offence under the law of the State. The offender will be punishable as if he had done the act in the State. In other words, the offences will be made extra-territorial offences. This purpose is secured by subsection (1). The other subsections penalise participation in an offence by aiding and abetting, being accessory before the fact, etc. Some of those provisions are complicated, because the Bill has to provide for the case of being an accomplice in the State in respect of an offence committed in the North, that of being an accomplice in the North in respect of an offence committed in the North and that of being an accomplice in the North in respect of an offence committed in the State. The Bill has also to provide for the inchoate offences of attempting, conspiring and inciting.

Here I should mention a point that is important as regards the structure of section 2 and certain other provisions of the Bill. The point is that the Bill does not make any of the offences, if committed in Northern Ireland, felonies, even though some of the offences would be felonies if committed in the State. The division of offences into felonies and misdemeanours is an archaic distinction which I hope, will before long be abolished by other legislation. For the present, the fact that a particular offence is a felony has important consequences. One is that a person who knowingly assists a person guilty of felony to evade apprehension or prosecution is guilty of being accessory after the fact to the felony. Subsections (4) to (8) of section 2 penalise the giving of this kind of assistance to a person guilty of an extra-territorial offence. The subsections take account of the fact that the principal offence or the giving of assistance to the principal offender, or both, may have taken place either in the State or in Northern Ireland.

Section 3 makes it an offence for a person charged with or convicted of an offence under the law of Northern Ireland consisting of conduct of the kinds to which section 2 applies, whether committed in the State or in Northern Ireland, to escape from custody in Northern Ireland. The section also penalises a person for escaping from custody in Northern Ireland after having gone there in custody in order to be present at the taking of evidence on commission in the North for the purpose of his trial in the State under the procedure provided for by section 11. I shall refer to that procedure later. The maximum penalties for the offences of escaping will be seven years' imprisonment. To avoid any misunderstanding I should stress that the offence of escaping from custody in the North will apply only to where the escaper is in custody as a result of being charged with or convicted of an extra-territorial offence, whether committed in the North or here, or an offence ancillary to an extra-territorial offence. In other words, the escaper must have been in custody for the purpose of the proceedings in relation to the offence in question or while serving a sentence imposed on his conviction for that offence. The section does not apply to escape from internment and the Bill has nothing whatever to do with such an escape.

Sections 4 to 10 of the Bill make amendments to the substantive criminal law relating to certain acts involving violence or the possibility of violence. The offences in question are particularly important having regard to the present situation in Ireland. The community is offended by the level of violent crime and there is a widespread desire to see the law strengthened both as to the offences themselves and the penalties. All the offences except ordinary burglary under section 6 of the Bill are included in the Schedule to the Bill.

Section 4 modernises and extends the scope of the two offences under sections 2 and 3 of the Explosive Substances Act, 1883. The offences under section 2 is that of causing an explosion, and the offences under section 3 consists— to state it shortly—of planning to cause an explosion. So far as Irish law is concerned the offences under section 2 —that of causing an explosion— applies, as with offences generally, to any person, whether an Irish citizen or not, who causes an explosion in the State. The position as to the planning offence under section 3 is more complicated. Section 3, in its present form, is inappropriate for the State, because —having been enacted in 1883—it is expressed to apply to things done by any person in the British dominions, and to things done by British subjects elsewhere, for the purpose of causing an explosion in the United Kingdom.

Section 4 of the Bill proposes to replace sections 2 and 3 of the 1883 Act with two new sections. The new section 2 of that Act will still apply to any person, whether an Irish citizen or not, who causes an explosion in the State, but it will also apply to any Irish citizen who causes an explosion outside the State. The new section 3 will apply to the same kinds of preparatory acts as at present but it will apply to such acts if done by any person in the State, or by an Irish citizen outside the State, for the purpose of causing an explosion anywhere. I am glad to be able to tell the House that section 7 of the British Criminal Jurisdiction Act, 1975—the Act parallel to this Bill —makes similar amendments to the 1883 Act as it applies to Britain, except that the offences, instead of applying to explosions caused, or planned to be caused, anywhere in the world, will apply only to explosions caused, or planned to be caused in the United Kingdom or in this State. Since the British law will apply to explosions in the State, we have no ground for complaining that it will not apply to explosions in other countries, but, so far as Irish law is concerned, it is the Government's view that the offences under the two sections of the 1883 Act should apply wherever the explosion takes place, or is to take place, as the case may be. The Government have taken this view because of the seriousness of any offence involving the use of explosives and in particular having regard to the proposed condition that, in the case of offences outside the State, the offender will have to be an Irish citizen.

Section 5 replaces the offences of robbery and aggravated robbery under the Larceny Act, 1916 with a new and simpler offence of robbery. The change will not be great, but in future there will be the advantage that the definition of robbery will be found in the statute instead of depending on case law. To state it shortly, the offence will consist of stealing coupled with the use of force or a threat to use force. There will be a single offence of robbery, punishable with imprisonment for life, instead of an offence of simple robbery punishable with 14 years' imprisonment and offences of aggravated robbery punishable with imprisonment for life. The present distinctions make for unnecessary complication. Under the new law there will also be the advantage that the offence will be similar to the offence of robbery under the reformed theft law of Northern Ireland and England.

Sections 6 and 7 replace the present offence of burglary and the other offences under the Larceny Act, 1916 involving breaking and entering buildings with a simplified offence of burglary, punishable with 14 years' imprisonment, and a new offence of aggravated burglary, punishable with life imprisonment. The existing offences are extremely complicated. For instance, there are separate offences depending on the kind of building entered, whether the entry is or is not by breaking, whether the offence takes place by day or by night and so on. The maximum penalties vary between imprisonment for seven years and imprisonment for life. Section 6 of the Bill creates the new offence of burglary. This will consist of entering a building of any kind as a trespasser with the intention of stealing or committing any of certain other offences in it. The offence will also apply to stealing or committing any of these offences in the building after having entered it as a trespasser. Section 7 creates the offence of aggravated burglary, consisting of burglary when having with one a firearm or imitation firearm, a weapon of offence or an explosive. I have mentioned that the maximum penalty for ordinary burglary will be 14 years' imprisonment and that for aggravated burglary will be life imprisonment. The effect of the Bill will be that in some cases the offender will be punishable more severely than for similar conduct under the present law and in other cases less severely. Aggravated burglary is included in the Schedule to the Bill, but ordinary burglary is not.

Sections 8 and 9 are intended to strengthen the law as to possession of firearms by creating two new offences. Section 8 makes it an offence for a person to have a firearm or ammunition in his possession or under his control in such circumstances as to give rise to a reasonable inference that his purpose is not a lawful one; but a person will, of course, not be guilty if his purpose is, in fact, lawful. The maximum penalty will be five years' imprisonment. Section 9 makes it an offence for a person to have a firearm or imitation firearm with him with intent to commit an indictable offence or to resist or prevent the arrest of himself or another person. The maximum penalty will be ten years' imprisonment. The offences are included in the Schedule.

Section 10 creates a new offence of unlawful seizure of a vehicle by force or a threat of force by any other form of intimidation. The offence will extend to any other kind of interference with the control of a vehicle and to compelling or inducing some other person to use a vehicle for an unlawful purpose. The Maximum penalty will be 15 years' imprisonment. Nobody who bears in mind the many cases in which vehicles have been seized in Ireland in recent years, and the uses to which the vehicles have been put, is likely to deny the need to create this offence and to make it punishable with so high a maximum penalty. The offence is similar to that of unlawful seizure of aircraft under section 11 of the Air Navigation and Transport Act, 1973, but the maximum penalty for the latter is imprisonment for life. The British Act corresponding to the present Bill has created an offence similar to that under section 10. The offence under section 10 is included in the Schedule to the Bill.

Sections 11 to 13 establish a procedure by which the courts in each part of Ireland trying extra-territorial offences committed in the other part will be able to obtain evidence on commission in the other part for the purpose of the trial. The sections carry out the recommendations of the Law Enforcement Commission in this respect. This procedure will be an innovation, for in general all the evidence at a criminal trial must be given orally before the court, though, as pointed out in a recent Supreme Court decision, a statute may provide otherwise. I shall be referring to this decision later on. The proposal that the courts in each part of Ireland should be able to try offences committed in the other part involves a problem as to evidence. This is the question of how the relevant facts can be proved when, on the one hand, some or all of the witnesses are likely to be in the part where the offence was committed and not in the part where the court is sitting and, on the other hand, a court has no power to compel a witness outside its jurisdiction to come before it to give evidence. The solution proposed is that the court of trial should be able to issue a letter of request to the Chief Justice in the other part of the country for the taking of the necessary evidence on commission by a judge of the High Court in that part. It will be a necessary requirement that the evidence should be taken in the presence of the member or members of the court of trial. The accused will have the right to be present and legally represented at the taking of the evidence and also the right to cross-examine the witnesses. If he decides to be present, he will naturally have to be kept in custody while in the jurisdiction where the evidence is to be taken, as otherwise he could not be compelled to return for the completion of the trial. But while in custody he will be immune from any proceedings—including arrest or detention or questioning— in respect of any other matter, civil or criminal, in the jurisdiction where the evidence is taken.

The procedure, so far as it depends on the law of the State, is set out in sections 11 to 13. Section 11 applies to trials in the State and provides for the issue of the letter of request for the taking of evidence in Northern Ireland; section 12 provides for the taking of evidence in the State in response to a request by a court in Northern Ireland; and section 13 is ancillary. I need not at this point go into all the details of the procedure, but I shall mention certain points briefly and then deal with objections that have been raised against the procedure proposed.

First, in the case of a trial in the State, the procedure will be available only to the Special Criminal Court and to a court hearing an appeal from that court. It will not be available for jury trials.

Second, at a trial in the State the court will be bound to issue the letter of request, if either party so requests, unless the court is satisfied that it is not in the interests of justice to do so. The court might refuse to do so, for example, if it considered that the request was made frivolously or merely in order to delay the proceedings. The court will also be able to issue the letter of request of its own motion. On an appeal, the appellate court will be able to do so on request by a party or of its own motion. This is in accordance with the rule that it is a matter for the discretion of an appellate court whether to receive evidence for the purpose of an appeal.

Third, where a court in the State issues a letter of request, it will be obliged to inform the accused of his right to be present at the taking of the evidence in Northern Ireland and of his position if he exercises the right. In particular, he will be told that he will have to be kept in custody while in Northern Ireland. He will be told also of the rights that he will enjoy at the taking of the evidence and of his immunity from other proceedings in Northern Ireland. It is particularly important, in considering the procedure, to bear in mind that an accused person who exercises his right to be present at the taking of evidence on commission is guaranteed immunity from any other proceedings and is guaranteed that, on the conclusion of the commission, he will be returned to the State. His rights at the taking of the evidence include, of course, the right to be represented by his lawyers from the State and their right to cross-examine, and so on.

Fourth, the commissioner—that is to say, the High Court judge who is to take the evidence on commission—will have the same power to compel a person to attend as a witness and to produce documents as the power that a court has in the case of a witness at a trial, and a witness giving evidence on commission will enjoy all the privileges and immunities of a witness at a trial. These include the privilege of refusing to answer an incriminating question and immunity from being sued in respect of anything said when giving evidence.

I should mention here that the provisions of the new British Act as to the taking of evidence on commission are similar in effect to those of the present Bill.

Objections have been taken on several grounds to the procedure for the taking of evidence on commission. The objections have been taken partly in the debates in the Seanad and partly in discussion outside the Oireachtas. In some cases the objections, I think, must have resulted from a misreading, or misunderstanding, of the Bill; in others I can only suppose that the objectors have been simply out to oppose the Bill for purely political reasons and have seized on any arguments they can think of, however tenuous, in support of their objections. I shall try to deal with the objections that have been taken, being as fair to them as the absence of substance in them permits.

First it has been claimed that a person on trial in the State will not get a fair trial if part of the evidence in his case is taken on commission in Northern Ireland. The argument seems to be that the accused may be convicted on evidence given on commission by witnesses whom he has not had an opportunity to cross-examine. It is quite true that one of the fundamental requirements of a fair trial is that the accused should have a right to cross-examine the witnesses against him. This was made clear by the then Chief Justice Ó Dalaigh in giving the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case to which I referred earlier. The case is In the Matter of the Committee of Public Accounts of Dáil Éireann (Privilege and Procedure) Act, 1970, and in the Matter of the Courts (Supplemental Provisions) Act, 1961, and in the Matter of Pádraic Haughey. It is reported in [1971] Irish Reports at page 217 and the relevant section of the Supreme Court's decision begins at page 256. On page 261 the Chief Justice said:

As to the disallowance of cross-examination, an accused person has a right to cross-examine every witness for the prosecution, subject, in respect of any question asked, to the Court's power of disallowance on the ground of irrelevancy.

However, in fact both the Bill and the British Act expressly provide that an accused shall have the right to be present at the taking of evidence on commission and the right to cross-examine the witnesses. The latter right of course means that the accused's counsel or solicitor may cross-examine the witness on his behalf and that the accused, if unrepresented, may himself do so. The provisions are in section 11 (2) of the Bill and paragraph 4 (1) of Schedule 4 to the British Act.

Second, it is said that the right of the accused to be present at the taking of the evidence on commission in Northern Ireland and to cross-examine the witnesses for the prosecution will in practice be useless to him. The reason alleged is that the accused will be afraid to go in custody to Northern Ireland because of what he may suffer at the hands of the authorities there. But, as I have already mentioned, the accused while in custody there will be immune from any other proceedings—civil or criminal— in Northern Ireland. This is guaranteed by the British Act in paragraph 4 (2) of Schedule 4.

Some critics have affected to disbelieve the guarantee on the ground that the authorities in Northern Ireland cannot be trusted to carry out the British Government's undertakings but will take advantage of the accused's return to Northern Ireland in order to ill-treat him. But this argument is not only dishonest but also ridiculous. There is no reason whatever to doubt that the authorities in the North will abide by the requirements of their legislation or to suppose that they will do anything but keep the accused properly in custody for the purpose of the commission. I do not believe that anybody would seriously question this, and I feel sure that the reason why some people have pretended to do so is that they know that there is no valid reason for objecting to the procedure agreed on with the British authorities and are desperately trying to fill the gap in their case by ritual abuse of those authorities. Quite apart from anything else, it will obviously be in the interests of the authorities in Northern Ireland that persons who are tried here for offences committed in the North, should, if guilty, be convicted, and it would not help the case for the prosecution if the accused, when he again appeared before the court here for the resumed trial, were in a position to complain to the court as to the way in which he was treated when in Northern Ireland for the purpose of the commission. Moreover, any Government here would obviously make the strongest representations to the British authorities in the event of any abuse in respect of the procedure under the legislation. Indeed, the legislation would cease to be operated if the abuses persisted.

Third, there has been a great deal of nonsense talked about the position of the trial judges at the taking of evidence on commission in Northern Ireland. As already mentioned, that evidence will be admissible at the trial only if the judges of the court have been present throughout the time when it was taken. In order to avoid any misunderstanding I should point out that the taking of the evidence on commission is not part of the trial, though it is connected with the trial. The evidence taken on commission cannot be taken into account for the purpose of the trial unless it is read out when the trial resumes, and the court will have the same power or duty to forbid the reading of any evidence as it has to exclude oral evidence tendered at a trial. This will apply, for example, to evidence of a confession improperly obtained.

The requirement that the judges shall have been present at the taking of the evidence is included for the protection of the accused. The judges will see and hear the witnesses giving evidence. When I say that the judges will see the witnesses giving evidence, I am not forgetting the extraordinary suggestion made in the Seanad that our judges might be invited to listen to evidence being given by hooded witnesses and might listen to it. Scarcely less staggering is the suggestion, also made in the Seanad, that, if a witness gives evidence in the North that the accused committed an offence, the judges will have to convict the accused on the mere word of the witness even though they may doubt whether the witness has told the truth. I should have thought that everybody would have known that a person cannot be convicted of any offence unless the court or jury, as the case may be, is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he is guilty. In this connection I should mention that, while this Bill was being debated in the Seanad, the British Bill was amended, as a result of a suggestion made by me in order to meet objections made in the Seanad, so as to provide expressly that the commissioner will have to comply with a request by the visiting judges to put a particular question or questions to a witness, unless of course the question has to be excluded on the ground of privilege. The relevant provision is in paragraph 3 (2) of Schedule 4 to the British Act. Section 12 (4) of our Bill is similar. I do not doubt that the effect would have been the same if the British Bill had been passed in its original form, but I am grateful to the British authorities for meeting my wish that the matter should be made abundantly clear.

Fourth, objection was taken in the Seanad to the procedure for the taking of evidence on commission on the ground that the European Convention on Human Rights, 1950, was being infringed. Article 6 of the convention was specifically mentioned. This article provides for the right of an accused person to a fair trial. The article provides that the accused person is entitled to defend himself in person or through legal assistance and that he is also entitled to examine or have examined witnesses against him—an entitlement that is not limited to the examination of such witnesses at the actual trial. These rights are fully protected by the Bill and they have been established in the Supreme Court decision to which I have referred.

The right to early trial or to release pending trial enshrined in section 3 of Article 5 of the convention is not in any way adversely affected by the provisions in the Bill in regard to the taking of evidence on commission. It was argued in the Seanad that the Bill infringes the right to bail because a person who elects to go to the North to attend at the taking of the evidence on commission has to be in custody. There is no substance in this argument. A person who is returned for trial must always surrender to his bail in order to come for trial. There is no difference between surrendering to one's bail at the court of trial and surrendering to it at any place where evidence is being taken for the purposes of the trial. Of course, if the accused person does not wish to go to Northern Ireland, he is perfectly free not to do so, and instead have himself represented by his own legal advisers. The argument that the European Convention on Human Rights prevents the taking abroad of evidence on commission for criminal trials overlooks one important factor. The Council of Europe has in another convention—namely, that on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters 1959 —specifically provided for the taking abroad of evidence on commission for criminal trials. The European Convention on Mutual Assistance has been ratified by nine members of the Council of Europe and of these eight have ratified the Convention on Human Rights. As the Law Enforcement Commission have pointed out, the taking of evidence on commission is used in other countries in criminal cases and is no novelty in our law or in the law of Northern Ireland in so far as civil cases are concerned. As far as criminal trials are concerned, the law is quite clearly and succinctly stated in the Supreme Court decision in the Committee of Public Accounts Case to which I have referred. At page 261 of the report in the 1971 Irish Reports, the then Chief Justice Ó Dálaigh states:

In a criminal trial, evidence must be given orally; a statute may authorise otherwise....

Fifth, it has been said that the provisions for the taking of evidence on commission in Northern Ireland will be unworkable because of difficulty as regards the identification of the accused if he is not present at the taking of the evidence. The argument, as I understand it, is that, since the witness will be giving his evidence in the absence of the accused, the result will be that, when the witness's evidence is read at the trial, there will be nothing to show that the accused in court is the same person as the offender about whom the witness has given evidence. This, I suggest, is one of the kinds of argument that people think up when they are casting about to find objections to a proposal and that other people repeat without properly examining it, simply because it seems to reinforce their objections. It is in fact fallacious. For not all the evidence at a criminal trial is given by eye-witnesses of the offence, nor is identity necessarily proved by visual identification.

For example, one witness may prove that somebody committed an offence, say a robbery, without being able to identify the robber; a second witness may prove the hijacking of a car used in committing the offence or in escaping afterwards; a third may prove that finger prints were found on the car; a fourth may identify the finger prints as those of the accused and so on. In other cases there may be no dispute as to the identity of the person involved in an offence but the accused may claim that he was acting in selfdefence or that what happened was an accident. Moreover, it may be the defence that want a witness's evidence to be taken on commission. They may hope that the witness will say that he saw the offence being committed and that he will describe the offender in a way inconsistent with his being the accused. Again, the defence may wish to call a witness to prove an alibi for the accused. Even where the prosecution call an eye-witness to the offence he may be able to identify the accused as the offender because he knows him personally. Even if the procedure proposed may be ineffectual in some particular cases because of the difficulty of linking the witness's evidence with the accused, this is not an argument why the procedure should not be available for cases in which it will be useful.

Lastly, the provisions of section 12 by which evidence can be taken here for the purpose of trials in Northern Ireland have been criticised on the ground that it will be offensive and provocative to our people here that we should co-operate with the authorities in Northern Ireland in this way. In particular, it has been suggested that our judges have so low an opinion of the state of justice in Northern Ireland that they would be embarrassed at being asked to take evidence on commission for use in Northern courts. I hope no more will be heard of this argument and I mention it only to protest at the slur that is cast on our judges by imputing to them any such opinions.

There are two general considerations that I would ask any Members who are still disposed to object to the procedure for taking evidence on commission to examine before deciding to maintain their opposition to these provisions. The first consideration—on which I have touched already in relation to evidence of identification—is that the procedure will be available for the defence as well as for the prosecution. If the defence are anxious to put before the court the evidence of a person who cannot or will not cross the Border to give evidence at the trial, are we really willing to deprive them of the means of getting evidence which these provisions alone can provide? The second consideration relates to the idea of an all-Ireland court.

We have been told that the scheme of the Bill and the British Act by which the courts of each part of Ireland should have jurisdiction to try offences committed in the other part is all wrong and that instead an all-Ireland court should be set up to deal with them. Yet, even if it were feasible for such a court to be set up, just the same difficulties would arise as to obtaining the evidence necessary to prove an offence in a case where a witness was unwilling to go to the part of Ireland where the accused was being tried, say, the State, and the accused was unwilling to follow the court when it went to the North to hear the evidence. In fact, so far as I can see, provisions similar to those contained in the Bill would be necessary with an all-Ireland court method, except that there would be no commissioner. In particular, it would be necessary for the accused, if he wished to be present at the taking of evidence in the North, to be taken to the North and kept in custody there and the criticism that police or army evidence in the North is unsatisfactory would apply equally to the all-Ireland court system. I should be glad to hear how the advocates of an all-Ireland court method would deal with these difficulties otherwise than by provision on the lines of sections 11 to 13 of the Bill.

Section 14 is a very important provision. It enables a person charged in the State with an extra-territorial offence committed in Northern Ireland to opt for trial in Northern Ireland for the corresponding offence under the law there instead of being tried in the State for the offence charged. It will be a condition that there should be a warrant in force in Northern Ireland for his arrest for the offence under the law there. The right of option is an essential part of the scheme proposed by the Law Enforcement Commission. If the accused opts for trial in the North, he will naturally have to go there in custody. After that it will be for the Northern courts to decide whether he should be kept in custody pending his trial or released on bail. A person accused in Northern Ireland of an extra-territorial offence committed in the State will have a corresponding right of option under the British Act to be tried in the State. I need mention only a few matters in respect of the procedure. Subsection (1) provides that both the District Court and the court of trial shall inform the accused of his right of option. If he exercises the option, the court will make an order for his delivery in custody to the police of Northern Ireland.

In addition, the accused will be able to exercise the option before the High Court. If after having exercised the option, the accused escapes from custody, whether in the State or in Northern Ireland, and is found in the State, he will be brought before a judge or justice of any court, who, if satisfied as to the facts, will make a fresh order for the accused to be taken in custody to Northern Ireland. The judge or justice will be able, though not compelled, to act on a certificate by the appropriate authority in Northern Ireland that the accused escaped from custody there. If the accused is subject to other criminal proceedings in the State, his delivery to Northern Ireland will be postponed to the conclusion of the proceedings and of his sentence, if any.

Section 15 is a declaratory provision to make it clear that a person acquitted or convicted of an offence under the law of Northern Ireland may rely on his acquittal or conviction as a bar to being tried in the State for the corresponding extra-territorial offence under the Bill. This is obviously required by natural justice.

Section 16 provides that barristers and solicitors practising in Northern Ireland shall have a right of audience before our courts in proceedings in connection with an extra-territorial offence or with the taking of evidence on commission in the State for the purpose of trials in Northern Ireland. Barristers and solicitors practising in the State will have a right of audience before a commissioner taking evidence in Northern Ireland for the purpose of a trial in the State, but they will not have a right of audience at a trial in Northern Ireland. Notwithstanding the absence, for the present at any rate, of reciprocity as regards the right of audience at trials, the Government here believe that it is right in principle that persons charged in the State with offences committed in Northern Ireland should be able to be defended by barristers or solicitors practising in Northern Ireland. I should mention that in the North solicitors have not a right of audience at trials on indictment whereas here solicitors have a right of audience in all courts.

Section 17 empowers a court before which proceedings for an extra-territorial offence are being held to prohibit the publication of the name and address of a witness except to the court, the parties to the proceedings and other persons concerned. The power will be exercisable in respect of witnesses before the court and also in respect of the maker of any oral or written statement tendered to the court, for example, the maker of a deposition, and of any person whose evidence is to be taken on commission in Northern Ireland. A commissioner taking evidence in the State for the purpose of a trial in Northern Ireland will have a similar power under section 12 (2) (d) of the Bill. These powers might have to be exercised for the protection of the witness concerned.

Section 19 confers powers of arrest without warrant in connection with an extra-territorial offence. These powers correspond to the present common law powers of arrest in respect of felonies, and they are given by the Bill because the offences in question are not being made felonies. If, as I hope, provision is made by legislation here abolishing the distinctions between felonies and misdemeanours in the case of offences generally, these are the powers which I should expect to see conferred by the legislation in consequence of the abolition.

Subsections (4) and (5) of section 20 make certain provisions as to extradition between the State and the neighbouring jurisdictions. The provisions are mostly consequential on the extension by the Bill of the criminal law of the State to things done in Northern Ireland. Subsection (4) (a) ensures that a person acquitted or convicted in the State of an extra-territorial offence shall not be extradited to Northern Ireland for an offence under their law consisting of the same acts. Subsection (4) (b) makes it impossible for the authorities in Northern Ireland to claim that a person should be extradited to Northern Ireland for an offence committed in the State solely on the ground that this is an extra-territorial offence under the law of Northern Ireland as a result of the corresponding British Act. Subsection (5) ensures that a person extradited to the State for an ordinary offence shall not be tried in the State for an extra-territorial offence committed before his extradition unless either of two conditions is satisfied. One is that a warrant has been issued in Northern Ireland for the offence in question, in which case he will have the right under section 14 to opt for trial there. The other condition is that a period of at least seven days has elapsed during which he has been free to leave the State after the conclusion of the proceedings for the offence for which he was extradited to the State, and any other criminal proceedings pending against him, and the conclusion of any sentence passed on him, or he has returned to the State after leaving it.

Subsection (6) of section 20 ensures that a person convicted of an offence under section 2 consisting of murder committed in Northern Ireland shall not be liable to the death penalty even in a case where he would have been liable to that penalty had the offence been committed in the State. Instead, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment. Capital punishment for murder has been abolished in Northern Ireland, and it does not seem to the Government right that it should be possible even in theory for a person to be liable to the death penalty in the State for a murder committed in Northern Ireland.

Subsections (4) and (6) of section 21 alter the maximum sentences for three offences relating to firearms so as to bring those sentences into line with those in force for the similar offences under the law of Northern Ireland. In one case the maximum sentence is reduced, in the other two it is increased. The changes are considered by the Government to be desirable in themselves and also because the offences are included in the Schedule to the Bill.

This then is the Bill that is now before you. The Bill does not provide another form of extradition for those who have escaped that process. The Bill does not provide for the handing back of fugitive offenders against their will. The Bill does not provide for trials in the courts of another jurisdiction. It provides for trials in our jurisdiction under our Constitution and in accordance with our laws and procedures. It does not provide for trials in the absence of the accused. He is entitled as of right to be present at all stages of the trial and, where he goes temporarily to the other jurisdiction to be present at the taking of evidence on commission, he is guaranteed immunity there. What the Bill does is to make certain offences, when committed in Northern Ireland, offences against the law of our State, triable in our courts and on conviction punishable under our law and in our territory.

I regret that the solution the Bill proposes has produced such vehement and at times hysterical reaction. It has been criticised as divisive but quite frankly I have been puzzled by this criticism and it leads me to ask whom is it dividing? I cannot conceive that there would be any difference of opinion between any sections of our people down here on the need to bring to justice people who have perpetrated serious crimes in Northern Ireland. Does any person touched by civilisation, not to mention Christianity, condone the blowing to pieces of a fellow-human being merely because of the colour of the uniform he is wearing or the restaurant he is dining in? On a lesser scale of horror surely there is no difference of opinion down here that it is absolutely wrong to blow up the residence or business premises of a fellow-Irishman merely because he is a unionist by political inclination and that the person guilty of such an outrage deserves to be punished? I submit that failure to do what we can to bring such criminals to justice could with justification be pointed to as condoning their actions. I cannot agree that this Bill is divisive. Most certainly it cannot be alleged that the Bill divides the people of the South from the people of the North. On the contrary it should bring them closer together as an earnest of the concern of the people in the South for their brothers in the North. Again can it be alleged that it divides people in the North from each other? It may be said that these people are already divided politically but there is no doubt that they are united in one thing and that is their detestation of terrorism. This Bill is not going to interfere with that unity.

Another criticism that was made is that the Bill is untimely, but this too is a criticism that has been unsupported by a reasoned argument. If it is offered in this debate, I should like to be told exactly why the Bill is considered untimely. Terrorism is current and deadly and it requires a deterrent now.

Another criticism that has been made is that the Bill is repressive. Like so many of the criticisms, this criticism is made in the form of an allegation unsupported by argument. A criticism is, of course, only as strong as the argument that supports it. Every piece of legislation in the criminal law field must of necessity be repressive in so far as it seeks to repress crime. I submit that this Bill is neither draconian nor oppressive. The Bill seeks to close a gap that at present enables people to escape the consequences of their crimes. Such legislation must surely be welcomed by all who want to see an end put to these criminal acts.

It may be argued that the objection is not to the principle in the Bill but to the method it proposes. However, as I said at the outset, this argument imposes on those who raise it the duty, because of the urgency and the seriousness of the problem now facing us, to propound another solution that is immediately available to us. Let us pass this Bill into law and operate it with a determination to make it succeed so that it will become an important weapon in ridding this island of the scourge that has brought so much unhappiness to so many people. I would go so far as to say that those who criticise the Bill and condemn it run a serious risk of placing themselves on the side of the terrorists unless they can show convincingly and well-high conclusively that there is an alternative remedy immediately, and I emphasise immediately, available.

The solution in this Bill is not new and, as I have demonstrated, has good and ample precedent. In fact, it is a solution that was considered some years ago. The Bill offends no legal principle and is as recommended to us by a commission of eminent judges and lawyers. It is a particularly vital piece of legislation in the context of our relationship with our fellow-Irishmen in the North.

Before I conclude, I should like on my own behalf and on behalf of the Government to express sincere gratitude to the members of the Law Enforcement Commission for their valuable report. These men were given a difficult and complicated task and they performed their duties with distinction and with great despatch. I cannot urge too strongly that their report be studied carefully and that those who object so strongly to what is proposed in this legislation should read before they speak.

The agreed recommendations of the Commission are being implemented both in the Bill before this House and in the legislation which has recently been enacted by the British Parliament. The British Act makes the offences with which we are concerned, when committed in this State, offences against the law of Northern Ireland, thereby dealing, for the protection of the citizens of this State, with the converse of the situation being dealt with in our Bill.

When both pieces of legislation are in operation, no terrorist whether his hue be green or orange will be able to find refuge from the consequences of his crime in any part of this island by pleading political motivation for his dastardly acts. It is the fervent hope of the Government that such a situation will contribute substantially to the ending of the terror and the violence— an objective devoutly desired by every right-thinking Irishman, whether he lives North or South of the Border or on a foreign shore.

I commend this Bill to Deputies.

I formally move the amendment over my name on the Order Paper and reserve my right to speak on it later.

That is not allowed.

In that event, I will ask the Deputy to give way to me. I move:

To delete all words after "That" and substitute the following:—

"Dáil Éireann declines to give a second reading to the Bill on the grounds that it contains no provision for an all-Ireland Court, is unworkable and is inconsistent with Ireland's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, and is repugnant to the Constitution, in that it contravenes Articles 3 and 38."

I want to say at the outset that I totally support the objective which the Government have in mind in introducing this Bill. It is designed, as the Minister has said, to punish crimes of violence and to ensure that the men who commit them in Northern Ireland or the Republic shall have no refuge anywhere in Ireland. These objectives my party and I totally support. Every person who lives in this island has a common interest to see that the bombers, the gunmen and the assassins who have killed or maimed people in Northern Ireland, the Republic and Great Britain, who are trying to push the people of Northern Ireland towards civil war and who have disgraced the people of all Ireland in the eyes of the world, shall be brought to heel.

Yet I totally oppose this Bill and I do so on four grounds. However, before I spell out these grounds for opposing the Bill, I want to refer to the current wave of bombings being carried out in the London area. Those who are responsible are indiscriminate murderers and maimers of innocent people. If they are Irish or associated with the IRA, we here repudiate them and their dastardly campaign. They bring shame on our country and damage the cause of bringing unity to the Irish people.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

If the Northern Ireland majority cannot or will not be bombed into a united Ireland, so the the British people cannot be bombed into willing or supporting Irish unity. I hope the people of Britain realise that if those who deliberately place bombs under motor cars or indiscriminately throw bombs into crowded restaurants are Irish or in any way associated with the IRA, they are a tiny minority rejected by the Irish people at home and an even tinier minority of the Irish people resident in Great Britain.

Apart from the provisions of this Bill, there are two potential pitfalls concerning the debate on it. One is that the public will be led to believe that if the Bill is passed it will prove to be some sort of panacea for all the ills that prevail in this country, that it will be a cure for violence both North and South and that it will put to flight once and for all the men of violence. The second is that those who honestly criticise the Bill will be represented as giving solace to the men of violence. I want to make sure that that is not part of our intention or function or purpose.

In the course of the Seanad debate, as pointed out recently by Senator Michael Mullen, the approach of those who supported the Bill was "that only the men of violence opposed the Bill and there were clearly stated expressions of opinion that only Provo and cryptic Provo supporters were obstructing the passage of the Bill". I want to say to those who expressly or impliedly seek to put Fianna Fáil on the side of violence that we treat their efforts with absolute and total contempt.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

I hope it will not be necessary for me or any other Fianna Fáil speaker during the course of this debate to deal with further allegations to this effect, but if they are made they will be dealt with. I said this Bill is not to be treated as a panacea for all ills and I want to say further that the violence in Northern Ireland is by and large self-contained and I would not want the impression to go abroad that those who commit those crimes, whether bombing, kneecapping or otherwise, have a continuous refuge here in this country. These people in the main stay and live and are domiciled in Northern Ireland and are natives of that part of the country. That should be clearly understood. There should be no impression that these people are pouring over the Border looking for solace and succour in this part of the country.

I said I oppose the Bill on four grounds. I believe this Bill if enacted would be politically disastrous in the sense that it would not only not help to bring peace to Northern Ireland or promote reconciliation between the community in the North or between North and South: it would do the contrary. Secondly, this Bill would violate the Constitution of the Republic. I propose to deal with these two points later. Thirdly, I believe this legislation, even if constitutionally valid, would not be practicable in its working and even if it were it would bring the criminal law here into contempt. Fourthly, this Bill would compromise our judicial system in the South and, therefore, play into the hands of the men of violence who wish to disrupt all institutions of government in Ireland North and South.

We in this House have often said that violence in Northern Ireland should not be considered apart from the political causes which gave rise to it. Violence North and South is part of the price we all have paid for the partition of Ireland. In our view the only long-term solution to the problem of Ireland, North and South, is to unite all the people, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, in mutual trust and understanding. I realise that that kind of unity will take a long time to achieve and that in the interval we must all do what we can to heal the wounds of the past frightful years and to restore peace to the people of Northern Ireland and of all Ireland.

If, therefore, I thought this Bill would help to reconcile the community in Northern Ireland or help to promote goodwill and understanding between the people of all Ireland it would then have my support. At this stage, however, in its practical working it will not promote peace and understanding in Northern Ireland. It will be divisive in the worst possible sense. It will divide North and South, it will divide the majority from the minority in Northern Ireland, it will divide the minority in Northern Ireland from the people of the Republic, and it will divide the people of the Republic themselves.

The Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill, this Bill which is before the House, has to be seen in the context of policy towards Northern Ireland as a whole. This Bill is part of the Sunningdale package negotiated in 1973. At that time Fianna Fáil gave its support, in principle, to the broad outlines of the Sunningdale Agreement with some obvious reservations relating, in particular, to the constitutionality of paragraph (5) of the same agreement. I said before, and I repeat, that the path to Sunningdale had been charted by Fianna Fáil and I think it fair to repeat that there were many positive elements in that agreement as recorded in paragraph (3) and I quote:

None had compromised and none had asked others to compromise in relation to basic aspirations.

And it was further recorded in the same paragraph:

The people of the Republic, together with the minority of Northern Ireland as represented by the SDLP delegation, continue to uphold aspirations towards a united Ireland.

The only unity they wanted to see was a unity established by consent. These were elements which had been fundamental to my party's thinking on this issue since our foundation. In so far as the Sunningdale Agreement established a power-sharing Executive and envisaged a Council of Ireland it represented a link with the existing Fianna Fáil policy. That is why I regarded it at the time as offering a real chance of improving the situation. The whole agreement was characterised by understanding of the importance of the Irish dimension and of the aspiration for Irish unity. Supporting at the time the view that Irish unity is the only permanent solution to the Northern Ireland problem, the Fine Gael part of the Coalition were not being inconsistent. After all, the Taoiseach himself had said of his party, and I quote:

We have never deviated from our view that the ultimate and the only permanent solution is a unified Ireland.

And if that was not enough for himself and his party Deputy Cosgrave said at that time, and I quote again:

I believe the British could announce a timetable for the withdrawl of British forces from the North at some stage. Withdrawal must be done on the basis that a timetable is laid down and that certain consequential actions will follow.

At the time nobody regarded these views as irresponsible or inconsistent with the views held by all the parties in the Dáil or the views held by the vast majority of the Irish people. These were remarks made on October 20th, 1971. I assume that nothing happened between October, 1971, and, December, 1973 to alter the views of the Taoiseach or of his party.

What has happened since then? The Sunningdale Agreement has failed. The power-sharing Executive has gone, blackmailed as it was by the workers' strike. We have seen since then the gradual restoration of the old, hardline Unionist stance which brought down the Executive at the time and now has led to a total abandonment by them of power sharing. I did not consider that the Sunningdale Agreement was perfect, but my party and I gave it support because it attempted to reconcile the conflicting aspirations of the various communities in Ireland. To me, Sunningdale offered partnership between the parties in Northern Ireland, partnership between North and South, and civil rights guaranteed to every man and woman living on this island irrespective of political or religious convictions.

Had these principles been realised in effective political institutions I believe they would have laid the foundations for peace and prosperity of a kind which the people living on this island have not known in their tragic history. The Sunningdale communiqué hoped to realise these principles by a power-sharing Executive in the North, by the establishment of a Council of Ireland and by the creation of a common law enforcement area. The power-sharing Executive in Northern Ireland has been destroyed. The Council of Ireland has not been established. Internment remains, although we hope only for a short time further, and none of the reforms promised at Sunningdale has yet been carried through.

Following the fall of the Executive, we had a continuing period of direct rule from Westminister, and in the meantime the Convention was elected to consider and recommend to Westminister what form of government would be appropriate in Northern Ireland. The terms of reference for the Convention clearly envisaged a form of power sharing such as had operated in the fallen Executive, but the intransigent Unionists, who formed the majority of the members of the Convention, have again rejected any form of power sharing. They demand a return to the old-style Stormont in which one-party rule dominated for over 50 years, and that domination, as we all know, was used to discriminate against the minority population, which gave rise to the six years of violence that has scarred and disgraced our country.

The statutory life of the Convention is now at an end. It may be extended following consideration of this report by the British Government, although that is in considerable doubt, and I shall refer again to that later. As of now, the outcome of it is a recommendation to restore Stormont and all that that entails, and the only known action—and I emphasise "known"— of the Coalition Government is to introduce this unconstitutional, unworkable and divisive legislation. This negative response will do nothing to speed the day of reconciliation, or lead to even a temporary solution. It only widens the vacuum created by the failure of the political process.

Fianna Fáil's recent statement on the situation in Northern Ireland, which was intended to fill this vacuum, called on the British Government to declare Britain's interest in unity by agreement and then implement that declaration by an agreed process of disengagement. I think it is generally accepted, even by the Unionists themselves, that the British have no desire for continued involvement in Irish affairs. They find themselves trapped by the negative guarantee contained in British legislation about there being no change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland unless and until the majority wish it.

This, of course, might appear to be in accord with the tenets of democracy but, given the history of majority rule in Northern Ireland, we know that the ordinary tenets of democracy cannot be applied there. Either way, this guarantee, this negative guarantee as I have called it, tends only to make the intransigent more intransigent. If the British declared their interest in uniting the Irish people, I believe that intransigence would begin to disappear. It would be only then that discussion would commence on how we could move towards institutions and systems within which all of us on this island could work together to our mutual advantage.

We prescribed no formula and we set no time limit for this process. Our statement envisages that interim or intermediate positions would have to be negotiated but, running through it, was the idea that the entire process should be engaged in against a background of peace and that we should try to establish means of ensuring and enforcing that peace throughout the whole island.

The Coalition boast of their commitment to law and order as if this is the only justification for two-and-a-half years in office. Yet, a policy of law and order is something which any democratic Government are bound to follow anyhow. When the Taoiseach says: "We do not bargain at the point of a gun" he is merely asserting that the Coalition are prepared to do what they are sworn to do anyhow under our Constitution.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

Law and order does not constitute a Northern policy. Relying on it solely means either a total abandonment of any concern for the Northern minority, or else abject surrender to undemocratic elements who have been allowed, for two years now, to frustrate the wishes of the democratic majority. I repeat, it was to fill this vacuum that we in Fianna Fáil put forward our restatement of Northern policy. We did so in the full realisation both of the timing of the document and the necessity to maintain our determination that the desire for eventual Irish unity must not be obscured or lost sight of because of a total absence of Government policy in this regard.

Whether we like it or not the Convention has totally failed. Indeed, the events and statements since then have shown clearly that there will be opposition to the Convention being reconvened. I refer to The Guardian issue of Wednesday, November 19th, at page 5 under the title “Ulster Parties to Oppose Recall of Convention”. It reads:

Any attempt by the British Government to recall the Ulster Constitutional Convention next year will be strongly resisted by opposition parties in Northern Ireland.

This was made clear last night after further meetings between leaders of these parties—the mainly Catholic SDLP, the Alliance Party and Mr. Brian Faulkner's Unionist Party of Northern Ireland—and the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr. Rees.

I do not know beyond that what happened at that meeting. If this is a correct account of what did happen, obviously there will be opposition to the reconvening of the Convention which is presaged by many commentators as the outcome of consideration of the report of the Convention by the British Parliament and by the British Government.

Even against that background, if nothing else, is there not a need for some positive Government policy in relation to the North of Ireland? I have been criticised because of my lack of comment or explanation since the publication of our policy statement. I should like to emphasise that I stated clearly at my press conference, when I expounded the contents of the statement, in reply to a specific question by one of the journalists present, that I would not make that statement an issue in the recent by-election. I kept my word and I have not at any time run away from the critical response which this statement received in some quarters. A suggestion has been made that I ran away from it. By no means have I done that.

I have always believed, and I assert it here today, that the real test of a leader is not that he does what is popular but that he attempts to do what is right. I am convinced that, in announcing our determination to stand by our commitment to a United Ireland and, in the process, totally to reject the use of force, I and my colleagues in the Fianna Fáil Party were doing what was right.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

If the Taoiseach and his party, together with the new supplement to their right wing, the Labour Party, have abandoned their commitment to Irish unity, they should have the courage to admit it now or else accept the judgment of history on their failure to act. I might say here that, because of the breakdown in the photo-copying machine in the House, copies of my address are not ready but I believe they will be shortly.

The flooding, which was caused by a burst pipe, has been brought to the attention of the Ceann Comhairle. The Office of Public Works have responsibility for the maintenance of the premises and the necessity of restoring the mechanism to working order at the earliest possible moment has been stressed to them. The inconvenience caused to Members, as well as any damage caused to their possessions, is very much regretted.

I am not making a complaint in that regard, except to say for the convenience of the press that copies of the text of what I have been saying and what I am about to say will be available shortly. I understand the photo-copying machine has been restored.

Probably the most original and important idea to come out of Sunningdale was the common law enforcement area. To me, this envisaged a situation on this island where every person, be he Catholic or Protestant, Nationalist or Unionist, and whether he lived in west Belfast or west Cork, would be guaranteed the same basic civil and religious rights. It envisaged that the European Convention on Human Rights would be made part of the domestic law in Northern Ireland and in the Republic, that the police forces in Northern Ireland and in the Republic would operate under the same basic control, and that violence and the injustices which give rise to it would be eliminated side by side.

The concept of the common law enforcement area also envisaged the closest co-operation between the police force in Northern Ireland and the Garda Síochána in the Republic in bringing to justice perpetrators of outrages both North and South. This total trust and co-operation between the police forces could take place without either force being compromised only if all citizens in Ireland had the same civil rights and all policemen were subject to the same control. To me this meant not only that the basic law should be the same in both parts of Ireland but that the basic law should be interpreted in the final analysis by the same tribunal. The parties at Sunningdale were not agreed as to how the common law enforcement area should be established and, for that reason, a law commission was established to investigate the various alternatives.

The alternatives were: extradition, a scheme such as outlined in this Bill, and the all-Ireland court. In fact, the Commission never considered, or were advised not to consider, the full implications of the establishment of an all-Ireland court. They accepted that the all-Ireland court was a very attractive idea but declined further to consider that proposal on the grounds that it would require an amendment of the Constitution of the Republic. As a result, the commission had to choose between extradition and the scheme embodied in this Bill, neither of which in my opinion, can realise the concept of the common law enforcement area. Indeed it appears to me that without the court the whole concept of the common law enforcement area is destroyed.

It is tragic to think that the all-Ireland court was dismissed because of the time that would be required to carry through an amendment to the Constitution of the Republic while this Government, almost two years later with the rest of the Sunningdale agreement in tatters and ruins, introduce this petty and futile Bill which will achieve none of the objectives hoped for at Sunningdale.

At that point I should like to refer to the report of the Common Law Enforcement Commission. The Minister almost as peremptorily dismissed the all-Ireland court in his speech a few minutes ago as the commission did in their report. Let us examine the reasons why the commission dismissed the all-Ireland court. I will quote from paragraph 9, page 12 of the report—it is the only paragraph dealing with the all-Ireland court in a 70-page submission. However, the contents of that paragraph are very interesting in the light of the Bill being introduced now in the second half of November, 1975, following an agreement reached in December, 1973, setting up a commission that reported in April, 1974. The paragraph states:

We deal with his method very briefly, because we are agreed it is not practicable to deal urgently with the problem by this means. The method was interpreted by the Commission as involving the creation of a special uniform code of substantive law and legal procedure to deal with politically motivated crimes of violence, the institution of a new and separate court to administer that code, having jurisdiction over the whole island, and the appointment of judges to that court by a procedure to be agreed between the Governments. It was clear to the Commission that the method possessed certain advantages: for example, the court's ability to sit anywhere in the island and its jurisdiction over the whole island would solve problems with regard to attendance of witnesses. Moreover, full uniformity in the law to be administered has many attractions.

Here we come to the reasons why they dismissed it.

However, the setting up of such a court would require amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. This could be brought about only by a referendum, which would be attended by inevitable delays and by uncertainty as to the result. The Commission decided that, in view of the urgency of the problem, these practical matters were sufficient to preclude the further consideration of this proposal and also took the view that, if time had been a less important factor, the all-Ireland court method would call for a more careful and detailed examination. Accordingly, we do not recommend its adoption since it does not offer a practicable immediate solution to the problem.

Let us contemplate again the reasons why the all-Ireland court method was rejected. It would require an amendment of the Constitution with uncertainty as to the outcome of the result. I assume that the parties who were represented at Sunningdale would have supported an all-Ireland court if the commission were given the green light to examine it. We stated publicly our support for an all-Ireland court and, with the combination of the three main political parties in this country supporting this concept, how could there be doubt as to the outcome of the referendum that would be necessary to change our Constitution? On the question of time, I repeat that it is one and a half years since the commission reported and this is the first time a Bill to do something other than what was an obviously attractive proposition is being debated here. How can the excuse of urgency be justified in the light of this long delay?

I realise and accept the difficulties involved in establishing an all-Ireland court and making it acceptable to all the people who live on this island. Before I conclude I hope to give an indication of how the institution might be made more acceptable. I do not think I need answer the Minister's challenge that those who support an all-Ireland court should spell out how it could be justified. I need only refer to the commission's report in that respect and I hope to supplement it by what I shall say subsequently.

We should not be totally discouraged by the failure of Sunningdale. All people who live on this island have a common interest in maintaining the peace. The time must come when representatives of all communities who live on our island must sit down and devise institutions that will eliminate violence and guarantee peace and justice to every person living on this island. I am not now talking about a united Ireland in this context. I am talking about institutions designed to keep the peace and to guarantee the right to differ in politics about the ultimate political destiny of the people who live on our island. I hope the people of Ireland will tackle this problem sooner rather than later and that more people will not have to die before we face the reality of having to live together on one island.

When the time comes for such talks I do not think we should be inhibited by fear of amending our Constitution. I do not believe in going to the people on abstract and divisive questions of principle. I do not think it right for political leaders to ask people to make abstract decisions on matters of principle about which they feel deeply. If we wish to establish on this island new, positive institutions of government I do not think we should be inhibited from establishing them because of the fact that it may be necessary to change our Constitution. If we are to establish new institutions of government in Ireland, it is desirable and essential that we should go back to the people and ask them, North and South, if they are prepared to throw their authority behind the new institutions of government. Here was one case, certainly so far as people in the South were concerned, where the new institution of an all-Ireland court would have been assured of acceptance, but no attempt was made to set it up.

One of the great mistakes made at Sunningdale was that no referendum was contemplated, either in the North or the South, on the proposals agreed there. This meant that many people in Northern Ireland were misled into believing that institutions damaging to their interests were being imposed on them against their will.

To return to my constitutional objections to the Bill, there are at least two glaringly obvious respects in which this Bill appears to violate the Constitution—indeed, so obvious that I find it difficult to accept that the Government are serious in introducing it. The Bill is entitled "An Act to extend the criminal law of the State to certain acts done in Northern Ireland ..." and if one looks at Article 3 of the Constitution one finds that it effectively limits the extent of the laws passed by the Oireachts when it says that pending the reintegration of the national territory, laws enacted by the Oireachtas "shall have the like area and extent of application as the laws of Saorstát Éireann and the like extra-territorial effect". Note the similarity in the use of words "an Act to extend the criminal law ..." in the Long Title of the Bill before us: the words of limiting the application of our laws to the Twenty-six Counties under Article 3 are expressed in the same kind of language—that the laws enacted shall have the like area and extent of application. Even taking these two words together we see immediate conflict arises: had laws enacted by the Oireachtas, the Irish State the same extent of application as is contemplated by this Bill or the same extra-territorial effect? Surely the answer in most cases must be no.

Secondly, it appears to be contemplated that persons charged in the Republic with offences committed in Northern Ireland will be brought before the Special Criminal Court. Here, again, I should like to deal with the Minister's point in challenging those who would claim that the use of the Special Criminal Court for the purposes of this Bill is unconstitutional. I hope to demonstrate this. For one thing, it is thrusting upon the Special Criminal Court a job which it was never designed to do. Article 38.3.1º reads:

Special courts may be established by law for the trial of offences in cases where it may be determined in accordance with such law that the ordinary courts are inadequate to secure the effective administration of justice, and the preservation of public peace and order.

Surely this must mean the effective administration of justice and the preservation of public peace and order in the area to which by Article 3 of the Constitution laws enacted by the Oireachtas are confined, in other words, in the 26-county area.

Our Constitution never contemplated that while Ireland remained partitioned special criminal courts would be established in the South to secure the effective administration of justice in Northern Ireland. Incidentally, it is a strange irony that the practical effect of Article 3 of the Constitution to which exception is taken is not to extend the laws of the Republic but to confine them to the 26-county area until such time as Ireland is reunited. Indeed, the fact that Article 3 of the Constitution confines laws enacted by the Oireachtas to the 26-county area and prevents the enactment into law of a Bill such as that now before us may help to explain to people on both sides of the Border the real meaning and effect of Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution.

In my opinion there is a rather glaring error in section 11 of the Bill— this shows how ill-considered the Bill is. Section 11 refers to the establishment of the special criminal court as follows:

For the purposes of the trial by a special court established under Article 38.3.1º of the Constitution of an offence under section 2 or 3...

I shall not go any further. What I have read is sufficient to illustrate my point. The Special Criminal Court was not established under Article 38 of our Constitution. Article 38 permits their establishment by law. The Special Criminal Court was, in fact, established not under Article 38 of the Constitution but by the Offences Against the State Act, 1939 to make provision in relation to actions and conduct calculated to undermine public order and the authority of the State. It was never contemplated that the Special Criminal Court would be used to try offences committed in Northern Ireland.

In my opinion, if this Bill is enacted into law the very first person charged under it will challenge the constitutionality of the entire measure and the Act will be struck down by the Supreme Court. If, therefore, the Bill is passed, I propose to ask the President, after consultation with the Council of State, to refer this Bill to the Supreme Court under Article 26 of the Constitution for an opinion as to whether it is repugnant to the Constitution.

The Minister in his opening statement said that if the arguments adduced along these lines were convincing enough then the Government may—he did not commit himself—so refer the Bill. I ask the Government, if they are serious in bringing forward the Bill, to join positively with me in asking the President to have its constitutional validity tested. It appears to me that the people are entitled to know whether a Bill as significant as this one is, is or is not constitutionally valid. We in this House, however, have the primary duty to decide whether this Bill violates the Constitution or not. Our duty is not to pass legislation which we believe to be contrary to the Constitution or even about which we have doubts as to its constitutionality. The fact that the matter may later be discussed in the Supreme Court does not excuse us from fulfilling our primary responsibility.

When the Supreme Court comes to consider the constitutional validity of the Bill, it will act on the presumption that the Bill is valid until the contrary is proved. This presumption was established in a case under the School Attendance Act, 1942, which was submitted to the Supreme Court and the court made this presumption because it assumes that the Oireachtas would not pass a Bill which violates the Constitution. Therefore, if we believe this Bill does violate the Constitution or if we have doubts about it, we should not pass it.

Almost equally important is the effect which the Bill will have on the people's respect for the criminal law. The system of trial by jury is a fundamental part of our criminal law. The violence used by the IRA forced my Government—reluctantly, I admit—to re-establish the special criminal courts and to make evidence such as the opinion of a police superintendent admissible in certain circumstances when we enacted the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act in 1972.

I should like to refer to the Special Criminal Court. It may surprise Members of our party that there is a belief among British journalists that we are opposed to the Special Criminal Court. That opposition was attributed specifically to me quite recently. Whether this is as a result of well orchestrated propaganda in Britain or not I do not know but it is rather salutary that we who introduced the legislation in the first instance, and the Order in 1972, for the establishment of the Special Criminal Court, are being painted as people—for the purpose, obviously, of putting us on the wrong side of law and order—who opposed the introduction of that Bill and the establishment of that court.

I should now like to refer to the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act, 1972, which, when introduced, brought about the revision of the procedural law of evidence. It allowed a chief superintendent to give evidence of his opinion that an accused person was a member of an illegal organisation. Opinion evidence is admitted by courts in many cases; in the case of doctors, engineers, scientists and other experts. They are capable of being wrong; doctors differ in the witness box as they do everywhere else and thus a chief superintendent may be wrong. On occasion an accused has gone into the witness box when facing a charge of membership of an illegal organisation and the version of that accused, in preference to the version put forward by the prosecution, was accepted by the court. That was all we had in that Act, yet it drove the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, and, indeed, the Minister for Justice, to extremes of language. Certainly, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, who persisted in his opposition to the end, pledged that the next Government would repeal it but this Government operate that Act and find nothing obnoxious in it. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs shook his head and lest I do him any injustice I shall quote him—I cannot give the reference but I assure the House it is accurate. If the reference is required I can obtain it. The present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs said during the course of the debate on the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act:

I cannot possibly, without utterly discrediting myself, do anything save support a stand by our party, which was a unanimous stand by that party, against this Bill.

During the course of the same debate he said:

Unless a new Government comes in to repeal it, it could be law for a very long time ...

That is hardly a pledge to repeal it.

Would the Minister not agree that there was a commitment that some new Government would repeal it?

He never thought he would be a Minister.

In the context of not discrediting himself by supporting the Bill obviously, now given the opportunity, he will repeal that Act. However, as I said in another place, this is the principal Act the Government employ to prosecute subversives and members of illegal organisations. In the context of this Bill it is the principal deterrent to people, who, having committed crimes in the North of Ireland, would seek asylum here because they know that at least they will be caught under this piece of legislation.

It is worthy of comment that the Government operate that Act and find nothing obnoxious in it. Basically, the procedures in the Special Criminal Court—to come back to the alteration made by the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act—are the same as those in other criminal courts. The accused is present throughout the hearing, he is entitled to be represented by a solicitor and counsel and to challenge the witness for the prosecution by cross-examination, giving evidence himself or otherwise. Section 11 of this Bill contemplates that in certain circumstances evidence may be taken in Northern Ireland for a criminal trial in this State. If a person is charged in the State with an offence committed in Northern Ireland all the witnesses, apart from witnesses as to procedural matters—evidence of arrest and things of that nature—will be in Northern Ireland. In many cases, therefore, virtually all the evidence will be taken in Northern Ireland under procedures and rules of evidence which will differ from those in the Republic.

Here, again, I should like to highlight the impracticability of the Bill as we see it. The accused will have the right to go to Northern Ireland and to be there in the custody of the RUC while the evidence against him is being given. In this regard I want the Minister to get away from his legal verbiage and approach this as a reasonable person, cognisant of events as they are happening, cognisant of the mentality of people who might be charged under this legislation.

Is it likely that an accused person charged with a crime of violence committed in Northern Ireland or for escaping from lawful custody in Northern Ireland will voluntarily go to Northern Ireland and place himself in the hands of the authorities from which he has just escaped? He is given the questionable "right" to attend the taking of evidence on commission in the North provided he gives himself up into the custody of the Northern police. To appear to confer a right and then make it impossible of exercise is, in truth, not to confer a right at all but to impose disability, because the failure of an accused so to exercise the alleged right may lead to the comment that he had his chance to exercise and failed to do so. Thus, I believe his last position is worse than his first.

In these circumstances it would appear in many cases that all the vital evidence in the case will be taken in the absence of the accused. I suggest this is a travesty of what the people here have come to regard as a fair criminal trial. The Minister dismissed the failure of attendance by the accused as a trivial matter, as one of little importance but the Minister, as a lawyer and one who has experience of practising in court and of anti-court procedures, is aware of the existence of identity parades. In almost every case in which there is a difficulty of identification the police conduct identity parades. The witness in the box who is giving evidence in which he has a means of identifying the accused is always asked whether the person at the bar of the court, or in the dock, is the person he saw committing the crime or the person he saw in a certain place about the time the crime was committed. This will be denied any witnesses who appear before the commission sitting in Northern Ireland, and this, I submit, notwithstanding the rather trivial manner in which the Minister dismissed this aspect, is a serious matter in a criminal trial. It is a serious matter in our sense of giving fair play and justice to a person charged with an offence, no matter how heinous. No matter how strong the evidence may appear to be in our law a man is innocent until he is proven guilty. The means of proving him guilty include the important factor of evidence of identification. That will not be available in the event of an accused, for his own reasons, failing to avail of the "right" to attend before a commission in a jurisdiction from which he might have escaped.

If, therefore, the Bill is enacted into law it will have the effect of reducing respect for our criminal law and strengthening the hands of those who want to bring all institutions of Government in the Republic and in the North into disrepute. I suggest that it is a very serious matter to trifle with the respect our people have for the criminal law of the State. We in the South are fortunate in having courts which, and judges who, rightly command the respect and confidence of the people. If this Bill goes through, the Republic judges will be placed in a very compromising position. They will be invited to act on the evidence of police officers over whose activities they have no control, and to accept evidence procured by methods which they are powerless adequately to investigate or control.

The Minister suggested that our judges who might go North to attend one of these commissions might suggest to the commissioner certain questions he might put. It is a different matter for a judge sitting in his own court putting questions to a witness, because there will be supplementary questions. Consider the ineffectual condition of our judges sitting beside the commissioner who is a judge sitting in his own jurisdiction, with such limited powers of investigation. Also, the Minister mentioned in the Bill that witnesses will have all the privileges available to witnesses in the other jurisdiction. Our judges will have no power to decide against the person who claims privilege on grounds that are not justified. If a witness in our courts claims privilege, he will have to establish the reason he is claiming privilege. The presiding judge is the sole judge of whether his claim is justified and, therefore, whether he can withhold either sources or certain aspects of evidence. Our judges will have no such power before the commission sitting in Northern Ireland.

The judges from the Republic will have no powers to exercise in these courts apart from these questions. All they can do is sit in silence and watch while the taking of evidence is conducted by another judge, perhaps, in the absence of the accused. What will be the attitude of the minority in Northern Ireland if the judges of the Republic appear to be assisting in the enforcement of the Queen's writ in Northern Ireland and acting on the evidence of an unreformed Royal Ulster Constabulary? It appears to me that this Bill would place the Republic's judges in an impossible position. They would be called upon to act in a way never contemplated in our Constitution. They will be exposed to the smears and hostile propaganda of those who wish to discredit all institutions of Government, both North and South. For these reasons I think that this Bill, if enacted and put into practice, would have disastrous consequences for all who are concerned for respect for legal institutions and for restoring peace in Ireland, North and South.

However, the defeat of this Bill could do some good because it would expose to all of us, North and South, the nature of the problem with which we are confronted. This, I repeat, is a trivial and superficial Bill. The restoration of peace in the North, based on justice and respect for divergent political identities and aspirations, will require a much more fundamental reappraisal of our political and legal institutions than that contemplated in this Bill. Such a reappraisal will have to take account not only of the differing aspirations of the people who live on the island, but also of the almost insuperable technical problems of patrolling the Border areas in the present political climate.

One of the attractions of the idea of a common law enforcement area is that it can exist. Although the people living in the area have differing political commitments and aspirations, it is not concerned with their political allegiance but with providing security and maintaining civil and religious liberty. All communities in Ireland claim to believe in civil and religious liberty. The Orange Order claim to stand for it; those who call themselves Republicans have always made the same claim; the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, the Constitution of the Irish Free State and our present Constitution all guarantee it in almost identical words. There is no problem in getting agreement on the principles; the problem is creating an institution which can be trusted to see that the principle is realised in practice. Again, I submit that such an institution is an all-Ireland court.

The civil rights movement sprang up in the North because the Catholic minority believed that under the facade of civil and religious liberty the Protestant majority had manipulated the entire institutions of the Northern State in the interests of the Protestant majority. The Orangemen said that "Home Rule is Rome Rule" and they really believe that the Nationalist and Catholic majority on this island would manipulate the institutions of this State generally against the interests of the Protestants in the same way as the Protestants manipulated the institutions of Northern Ireland against the interests of the Catholics. The problem, therefore, is not to get agreement on principle but to establish legal institutions on this island which will command the trust of all sections of the people, North and South. That is why I think it necessary to ensure that not only the same religious and civil rights are guaranteed to the Protestant in Limerick as well as to the Catholic in Portadown, but also their rights and duties are ultimately interpreted by the same tribunal.

For my own part I am prepared to say not only that I believe in civil and religious liberty but I am prepared to be held to that belief by the tribunal on which judges appointed by the Government of the Republic will not have a majority. The British Government accept that the problem of Northern Ireland has an Irish dimension. We in this House by accepting that Partition can end only by peaceful means —and this involves willingness on the part of the majority in Northern Ireland—have accepted that the problem has a British dimension as well. Perhaps all of us, Catholic and Protestant, Nationalist and Unionist, should look outside this island and see what is happening in Europe.

The Republic and Great Britain are now members of the Common Market. Despite the setbacks and disappointments experienced since we entered the EEC, I think both parts of Ireland will remain part of the Community and share the increasing aspiration towards European unity. It would be tragic, when people elsewhere in Europe are trying to rid themselves of ancient fears and hatreds, if the people of this small island, North and South, allowed themselves to be dragged by ancient hatreds into a power struggle which the future will show to have been not only tragic but irrelevant. That is why I say that it would do us all good to cultivate the European dimension. The concept of the common law enforcement area, not as represented by this Bill but properly understood, gives us an opportunity to do this.

The European Convention on Human Rights provides a basis on which citizens' rights can be protected and police forces controlled. It would be a great thing if we in Ireland could agree among ourselves on a tribunal to interpret this convention and apply it to Irish conditions. I can see no objection to having on such a tribunal judges appointed in equal numbers from North and South. There might be difficulties in selecting a chairman. In present circumstances, the Republic may not accept a British chairman and a chairman from the Republic might not be acceptable by the North. We could ask our friends in Europe to appoint a chairman for us until such time as we had gained sufficient mutual confidence and trust to select our own chairman. In this way we can all be held, in practice, to those principles of civil and religious liberty in which we all claim to believe in the abstract. I am prepared to accept this challenge and I ask every man and woman on this island who claims to believe in civil and religious liberty: Are you so prepared?

What I had in mind is that this court could not be just a penal court to try people accused of crimes in any part of the country but a court that would have jurisdiction as well to ensure that the European Convention on Human Rights would prevail and be enforced throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. That would have a dual purpose. Apart altogether from bringing people who committed crimes in any part of the country to justice it would have the added attraction of ensuring that our basic tenets would be defended by the same court. The same civil rights would be everywhere in the island and if we can establish a juridical system with the same status of a security force North and South, and interpret that in the same way, and if the people of Northern Ireland are prepared to approve that system, then we thereby make the police force in Northern Ireland acceptable to all sections of the Northern Ireland community and remove all obstacles to total co-operation between the police forces North and South in the maintenance of peace and justice.

This is what the concept of the common law enforcement area means to me and this Bill cannot be reconciled with that concept. The Minister posed many other questions during the course of his speech. For example, he quoted a Supreme Court case about the attendance of an accused person before a tribunal. I have not had time to check what the former Chief Justice, now President of Ireland, said on that occasion and I do not know whether or not it was part of his judgment or an obiter dictum. He referred to the fact that oral evidence is required unless legislation otherwise provides. The Minister seems to suggest that this was a basis for establishing the kind of commission he has established. Later speakers on this side of the House will have an opportunity of examining that contention by the Minister against the report of what actually transpired in the case to which the Minister referred. The quotation was:

In a criminal trial evidence must be given orally; a statute may authorise otherwise.

I do not know whether this was an obiter dictum or part of the Supreme Court judgment.

I am not opposing this Bill setting up this system for the sake of opposition. I repeat we are not on this side of the House on the side of violence. On the contrary. We have clearly shown our stand. I think this Bill, even if it is constitutional, which I doubt, even if it is practical in its operation, which I think it will not be, will be of very little effect in any event and in this I am supported by no less an authority than The Belfast Newsletter of 18th April, 1975:

The present measure is unlikely to be a success probably because evidence will be difficult to obtain, coupled with the fact that witnesses will be reluctant to travel from Britain or Northern Ireland to courts in the South.

I think the same would apply vice versa.

Nevertheless, the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Bill now before the Dáil represents a gesture, if nothing more than that, of some willingness to act against those who resort to violence.

The gesture is futile and those who are responsible for violence will regard it only as a gesture. It can only bring our law and our courts into disrepute. I believe the Bill is neither constitutional nor practical and, therefore, ought not to be passed.

It is, I think, a pity about the pipe. I mean the pipe that burst and deprived us of the pleasure and utility of being able to read what the Leader of the Opposition said.

This is not a trivial matter. It is fact.

I am not finding any fault with the Leader of the Opposition about his speech.

This is not a trivial matter. However, I will not interrupt any more.

I did not interrupt. I am sorry—I interrupted the Leader of the Opposition only once. My point is that it is difficult enough to follow the Leader of the Opposition when he makes a written statement which one can compare but it is even more difficult when one rises to speak having just heard what he had to say. I should like to be able to take at face value that part of Deputy Lynch's speech with which he opened and in which he said he supported the motives and purposes behind this Bill but I find it hard to take at face value anything Deputy Lynch says in this autumn of 1975 when I remember recent statements falling into this general area by his spokesman on Northern Ireland and by himself, followed by the policy statement of his party. Let me read this into the report. On RTE radio on Tuesday, September 9th, on the News at 1.30, Deputy Ruairí Brugha, spokesman on Northern Ireland, in a reply to a question from Shane Kenny, who asked did he favour a British declaration of intent to withdraw from Northern Ireland, said: "It is up to the British, but I would see a declaration like that as even further overheating the atmosphere." The next question was: "You are against that?" And the answer: "I am not against the devolution of the British situation but the situation is too grave at the moment." That was 9th September. On October 13th, Deputy Lynch, Leader of the Opposition, repeated Deputy Brugha's sentiment that a statement of intent to withdraw now or at any time in the immediate future would overheat the situation but if Britain were to indicate interest in a solution to unity it would take Unionists away from their present intransigent position. That was followed less than three weeks later by the policy statement of 29th October and I quote from the statement:

Fianna Fáil calls on the British Government to (a) encourage the unity of Ireland by agreement in independence and in a harmonious relationship between the two islands and to this end to declare Britain's commitment to implement an ordered withdrawal from her involvement in the six counties of Northern Ireland.

What happened between October 13th when something like that would have overheated the situation, and October 29th when it was important and serious enough to merit inclusion and prominence in a Fianna Fáil policy statement?

Any chance the Minister will tell us what he thinks is wrong with that Fianna Fáil policy statement?

Oh, good.

There is every chance. I hope the Deputy will bear with me because I shall speak about that statement and other matters arising out of this Bill. What appears on the face of it to be wrong is that which was diagnosed as being wrong by Deputy Brugha and Deputy Lynch, that is to say, there would be a danger of overheating the situation and immediately every party in Northern Ireland, including the SDLP, which, I think, had understood that Fianna Fáil had no intention of doing anything of the kind, immediately said that Deputy Lynch was right the first time, it would overheat the situation. It did. It does.

Could the Minister tell us what the views of the SDLP are on this Bill, if he is concerned about their views?

I am concerned about their views. They deserve very careful consideration particularly in relation to a matter which would be regarded as putting lives in danger in Northern Ireland. I do not think anybody considers this Bill to have any such danger.

Is the Minister not in a position to tell us what are the SDLP views on the Bill?

Would Deputies please apply themselves to the Bill?

At the beginning of his speech Deputy Lynch said that he supports the motives behind this Bill. I accept that in a rather gingerly way regarding Deputy Lynch personally, but he went on to say that his party supported totally the motives behind the Bill: the apprehension of fugitive offenders, including fugitive IRA men in the Republic. He did not say that his total party supports him totally. I do not think they do, but I should like to come back to that. Deputy Lynch said that by and large the violence in the North was self-contained. I would agree with the Deputy if he were to say that the main sources of the violence were within the North, but it has to be admitted that much of the fuel for these flames came from down here and that much of it was supplied by people who usually sit on those benches over there, one whose seat is not occupied at the moment.

Has the Minister in mind something like the Deputy Thornley episode at the Mater Hospital?

Deputy Thornley has never been responsible for the misappropriation of money, the best part of £100,000, which most people believe to have been used to buy guns for the North.

Acting Chairman

Will the Minister please confine himself to the Bill and not indulge in total irrelevancies?

With respect, Sir, you have a duty to preserve order here, not merely by rebuking the person who is interrupted but by exerting some control——

Acting Chairman

The Chair will not be reminded of its duties.

I am glad to hear that.

It is a pleasant change for us to find that we are getting a fair deal from the Chair.

This idea of violence in the North being self-contained is one which we should not cherish. We should be conscious of what is meant by Kevin Street and Gardiner Place. I am not referring to the Labour Party offices in Gardiner Place but to the headquarters of the Provisional and Official Sinn Féin, IRA, movements which are vocal here. We ought to be a little more sensitive about the feelings of people in the North who note the fanning of the violence here, who note the comings and the goings of the IRA across the Border. We ought to be a little more conscious of that than to say merely that the violence is by and large up there, that it is not down here.

Deputy Lynch went on to say that violence is part of the price of Partition. This is a dangerous line to adopt. It is dangerous because the corollary appears to be that if Partition continues, the violence must continue; that we deplore violence, but it is all the fault of the people who created Partition and not the fault in any part of anybody else. That thesis must be understood as qualifying greatly the condemnations of violence which are heard from those benches.

The Deputy referred then to the Sunningdale package. He appeared to imply that since power-sharing arrangements have not proved attainable, not yet at any rate, it is wrong to apply the provisions of this Bill. That seems to say: "If you will not give us what we think is right for the North, that is, power-sharing arrangements, we shall not proceed against fugitive offenders down here: let them do what they like until you agree with us on these power-sharing arrangements." If we look, as we should try to look, at these matters from the other side, we see how that proposition must look from there. It has a touch of blackmail and a touch of collusion with violence. It seems to be saying: "All right, since you caused those arrangements to break down—you would not agree to them —you are responsible for the violence that ensues and we have no responsibility for it. Consequently we have no obligations to do anything about these matters."

Deputy Lynch referred, too, to a minority frustrating a majority. Unfortunately, I am deprived of the text of what he said, but so far as I could follow him by ear what he meant was that the majority in the North, seen as a minority in the entire island, is frustrating the will of the majority in the whole island. That is a traditional view which would appear to have been negated at the time this whole Dáil took the view that the country should not become united unless by the will of a majority in Northern Ireland. To see the majority there being back in the position of a minority frustrating a majority, that is, a Catholic and Nationalist majority, is going back to a traditional position and is getting very close to implying that if the minority so behave they are exceeding their legitimate rights, that they are disobeying laws which could properly be enacted for them by the majority on the island. This has implications regarding the eventual justification for the use of force, conclusions which are drawn by other people. The Deputy talked, too, about an all-Ireland court and he seemed to suggest that the Sunningdale Agreement was for the setting up of an all-Ireland court, whereas if one reads the text one will realise that that is not so. It says at section 10:

...Different ways of solving this problem were discussed: Among them were the amendment of legislation operating in the two jurisdictions on extradition, the creating of a common law enforcement area in which an all-Ireland court would have jurisdiction, and the extension of the jurisdiction of domestic courts so as to enable them to try offences committed outside this jurisdiction. It was agreed that problems of considerable legal complexity were involved,...

This is what was agreed as distinct from what was discussed. The paragraph continues:

... and that the British and Irish Governments would jointly set up a commission to consider all the proposals put forward at the Conference and to recommend as a matter of urgency the most effective means of dealing with those who commit these crimes.

Then the Law Enforcement Commission met and this Bill represents the best consensus that could be got there. Some efforts are being made now to imply that we were promised at Sunningdale an all-Ireland court but that all we got was this.

Who said that?

I did not say anybody said it directly. One can imply things.

Who implied it?

I understood Deputy Lynch——

The Minister would.

——to imply it, but if on reading his remarks I find that inference to be unjustified I am prepared to withdraw it.

We merely want to be clear on this.

It is unfortunate, but we have to discuss what he said on the basis of our own recollection, and Deputy Colley's or mine, either of them, could be at fault.

I indicated no recollection. I merely asked the Minister to clarify what he means.

The Deputy asks rather repeatedly questions of that kind and gets away with it with remarkable frequency. Deputy Lynch made one reference which was unpleasant and unfounded when he asked was there a well-orchestrated campaign to discredit Fianna Fáil in Britain. I am not sure what he was implying but I should like to assure him that no effort has been made from here to discredit any political party of this country outside this country. It is part of normal politics to seek to discredit policies and politicians but that is done here and we are not doing these things for export, as he appeared to suggest. He also made a number of points about the Constitution, most of which are best left to the Attorney General who will be replying later and who presumably by then will have a text of the speech which is particularly essential if legal matters are adequately to be discussed.

He said the Minister had not committed himself on referring the legislation to the Supreme Court. It is my understanding, I am open to correction, that the question of referring the Bill to the Supreme Court is entirely one for the President and that it would be impertinent, and perhaps unconstitutional, for the Government to advise the President to refer particular legislation to the Supreme Court. Deputy Lynch, as Leader of the Opposition, might so advise him and it is up to him to do so if he thinks that it is proper for him to do so.

At any rate, the Government believe the Bill to be constitutional, having been so advised, and this being a Bill based on the commission's report which embodied high legal authorities, the Government believe they are proceeding with an unusual degree of confidence because we do not always have that assurance in relation to every piece of legislation that we pass. This has evolved from the thinking of highly qualified legal minds and there is rather less reason to believe that it is unconstitutional than there would be in regard to the normal Bill.

Fianna Fáil's amendment in the name of Deputy Collins is technical and legal generally. The grounds given are that it contains no provision for an all-Ireland court, that it is unworkable and is inconsistent with Ireland's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and is repugnant to the Constitution. These objections do not explain the heat and the pertinacity with which Fianna Fáil have opposed this measure and for that reason I believe these technical and legal reasons are not Fianna Fáil's real grounds——

He knocks down the thing he is putting up.

Deputy Colley knows perhaps as well as I do, and indeed perhaps a good deal better, that this is so. The Bill contains no provision for an all-Ireland court. Deputies opposite know well and the country knows well that the necessary basis for an all-Ireland court does not exist at present. We know that a majority in Northern Ireland brought down, to our regret, the reasonable and moderate arrangements made at Sunningdale which contained nothing as far-reaching as an all-Ireland court but did include a Council of Ireland with very minimal attributions, and that was shot down as being too much by the Loyalists, the Unionists, the Protestants, that is to say, by that section of the people without whose agreement, we are all agreed, unity cannot come and all-Ireland institutions cannot come either.

Therefore, there can be, and Fianna Fáil know it well, no all-Ireland court. So the first ground they give for opposing a Second Reading boils down to a complaint that the Bill contains no provision for what we all know is not possible at the moment and, I fear, for a very long time to come.

They go on to say the Bill is unworkable. If it is, it is a pity, it is a waste of time. But it is also a waste of time to be making a great fuss and concentrating so much time on something which will have no effect anyway. If it is unworkable it is trivial and could be dismissed in a few contemptuous words. Fianna Fáil say it is inconsistent with Ireland's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. That was fully dealt with in the speech by the Minister for Justice and I do not think Deputy Lynch replied to that. I will quote from the Minister's speech where he says:

The argument that the European Convention on Human Rights prevents the taking abroad of evidence on commission for criminal trials overlooks one important factor. The Council of Europe has in another Convention—namely that on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters 1959 —specificially provided for the taking abroad of evidence on commission for criminal trials. The European Convention on Mutual Assistance has been ratified by nine members of the Council of Europe and of these eight have ratified the Convention on Human Rights. As the Law Enforcement Commission have pointed out, the taking of evidence on commission is used in other countries in criminal cases, and is no novelty in our laws or in the law of Northern Ireland in so far as civil cases are concerned.

That objection does not hold water either.

They say it is repugnant to the Constitution. We all know this is a matter that can be put to the test. Again, it would be possible for the Opposition, if they regard it as being repugnant to the Constitution, to put it before the President and he can decide. However, it is not in this manner that Fianna Fáil have approached this Bill, either in the Seanad or in the country. They have approached it in the manner in which Deputy Brugha deprecated, they became "overheated." One Fianna Fáil Senator described those who are supporting the Bill as "collaborators", meaning that not in the terms of people working together on a text but as people who are traitors to their country. There have been similar bursts of language.

I do not want to go over all the grounds of the Seanad debate, but the line taken there was interesting. Senator McGlinchey spoke in general along the lines I have indicated, lines used by the gentlemen opposite more often outside the Oireachtas than in it. They are on record and I do not want to overheat by going into that. Senator Lenihan is a different matter. He is leader of his party in the Seanad and a person of a mild form of expression. He laid emphasis not on charges against those who put forward this Bill but on the lack of need for it, and I quote from column 479, Volume 80, of the Seanad Debates for Thursday, 28th April, last: "Everybody asks the big questions: Why—in capital letters— at this stage when the Provisional IRA have been for two months enforcing very reasonably a cease-fire in the North, when there is a noticeable diminution in tension in that part of Ireland"—why in these conditions, when the Provisionals are acting so very reasonably, should we now introduce this Bill?

Senator Lenihan no doubt believed that at that time. The Government did not believe that either violence or the threat of violence had been removed, and we note from subsequent events, most recently the horrible butcheries perpetrated between themselves by the two wings of the IRA in the North, that the Provisionals are not behaving very reasonably, and I think no reasonable man should expect them to behave reasonably, judging by their past record. But that was it. The line in the Seanad was: "Play down the need for this Bill. Play down Provisional violence, and play up evil motives attributed to the Government and those who put forward this Bill."

Acting Chairman

I have a note here that it is not the practice to quote from the Seanad Debates in this Chamber.

I shall not offend against this canon of which I was hitherto unaware. I am done with that part anyway. The technical and legal motives given are the only grounds of argument for the opposition to this Bill and they do not hold water. Deputies opposite must be beginning to see that they do not hold water, and I think by the time others, including the Attorney General, have spoken here, it will be apparent that these arguments do not hold water at all. Then you must ask what is the real reason. I do not expect light over there from Deputies——

Then sweep away all the legal and technical arguments, and continue on. Could we have a serious contribution from the Minister?

Could we have a cessation of frivolous interruptions from Deputy Colley?

Acting Chairman

The Minister without interruption.

Let us have a serious discussion by which we hear arguments.

I should like to make it clear—I know I am getting near the bone and the bone is beginning to creak over there—that I have no intention of running away——

That is exactly what the Minister is doing.

——from the argument. I am getting near the real argument. I am getting near what is wrong with them and they know it.

The Minister is getting near what he says is our real argument but he is not dealing with the argument put forward.

(Interruptions.)

Acting Chairman

Would Deputies cease interrupting?

I have no hope that I will not be interrupted——

Acting Chairman

Unless the Minister invites interruption.

——but I would like to assure the Chair, which I am sure will restrain interruptions as best it can, that whatever interruptions are made I will proceed, as is my right, to make my speech.

Acting Chairman

On the Bill, please.

Very much on the Bill. There are those who hold that a Bill of this kind is wrong morally, patriotically wrong, for reasons other than those stated in the amendment. This is very strongly relevant to the Bill; it is relevant, by implication, to the amendment. There is a school of thought which holds this Bill is just wrong. You will hear expression given to that thought outside by people who speak frankly on these matters, and what they say is this: "The Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland are brave young idealists fighting for freedom. They are fighting a legitimate campaign for Irish freedom to complete the tasks begun by freedom fighters in other generations. They should be supported. They should, above all, not be hindered and not be punished in this State for military exploits in Northern Ireland." I wonder do Deputies opposite entirely repudiate that view. A long pause.

McCarthyism is another name for that tactic.

That is a question. Senator McCarthy usually did not ask questions. He suggested something. If a question is put and an answer not given by people who have been interrupting all afternoon, then I assume——

If the Minister wants interruptions, may I put a question to him? If Deputy Steven Coughlan is on the record of this House as saying that 80 per cent of the Irish people support the Provisional IRA, does that commit the Minister and his party?

No, Sir, it does not.

Then let us have an end to this nonsense and have a serious debate.

I am asking about the real reasons for opposition to this Bill.

The imaginary ones produced by the Minister. Let us have a real argument.

Acting Chairman

Order, please.

I shall answer the question put to me though it was disorderly.

Acting Chairman

If the Minister would confine himself to the Bill, it would serve the House much better.

Answer the question.

I am applying myself most directly to the Bill. I am coming to the heart of this matter, the reason why this Bill is being opposed and opposed with the frenzy with which it is being opposed, and the whole country knows it. The whole country knows the House is not half full because people were desperately concerned about an all-Ireland court or Ireland's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, of which most of them have never heard. They know why this Bill arouses passion.

Contempt and arrogance is what we are getting now. We are seeing the Minister in his true light.

I am not sure that Deputy Colley has the right to speak contemptuously——

I am talking about the contempt and arrogance we are getting from the Minister.

Acting Chairman

The Minister without interruption.

The important thing before us is the question of what this Bill is designed to do, which is to deal with fugitive offenders——

It does not do that.

——and the reasons why some people in this House do not want a Bill which will deal with fugitive offenders. That is what I am dealing with, and I am talking about, the view about idealists fighting for freedom in the North which is fairly widely held and, I would agree, which is not just confined to the Minister's party but is, though diminishing, still influential.

I do not believe that for a moment. I think the Minister is totally wrong in his assessment of that.

That it is diminishing or that it is influential?

That it has any influence.

Virtually none.

No one in this country who holds that these people are idealists fighting for freedom in Northern Ireland?

Would the Minister be accurate? I said "virtually none".

Virtually no people? Having looked at the objections and considered them——

Acting Chairman

The Minister, without interruption.

I do not take them as real and I have to see then what is the real reason. I have described a certain view of the reason, cogent enough in traditional terms, quite cogent, as to why fugitive IRA men should not be dealt with here. I believe it is a fact that there are people over there who think fugitive IRA men should be left alone, and that we should turn a blind eye to their activities provided they are done up there. That is the real reason.

Will the Minister give us his view of the other para-militaries? What about the other people? Are they ours too?

I thoroughly disapprove of all varieties of paramilitaries.

Give us the other picture. There are some people in the Minister's party who would give them freedom.

If there are any in our party, or any on this side of the House, who hold that view, no doubt they will vote against this Bill. If there are not, the opposition is confined to over there.

We have seen signs of a shift here. One of the signs of the shift is the vehement opposition to this Bill, not an attempt to mend it, not an attempt to put in amendments which would improve it, and not either a fairly brief and orderly opposition which would say: "We sympathise with the objectives for which this Bill was designed but we do not think them capable of attainment. We have doubts about the constitutionality of the Bill. We outline these doubts and we hope the President will refer it to the Supreme Court."

It has not gone that way. It has gone the other way. I believe these events are linked with the return of Deputy Haughey to the front bench over there, and with the recent shift in policy, whereby a policy which they themselves had described as dangerously overheating the situation in the North was then adopted. There must have been a division of opinion about that, and I think somebody won that division of opinion. Therefore, the opposition to this Bill is indicative of an influence which, according to Deputy Colley, virtually does not exist at all.

I should love to see some evidence in support of these smears. The Minister is making unsubstantiated allegations.

Your new policy is evidence of it. That policy does something which you yourself said would overheat the situation in Northern Ireland.

Will the Minister now give his views on the Fianna Fáil policy statement? He promised to tell us what was wrong with it.

I am talking on the Second Stage of this debate, on the opposition to this Bill, and what I see as the reason for that opposition.

The Minister is producing no evidence for his allegations. He is smearing away with no evidence.

I have produced the Fianna Fáil policy document and their leader's opinion of that policy.

Is that what you are relying on?

That and the return of Deputy Haughey to your front bench and your opposition to this Bill.

The Minister promised to tell us what was wrong with that statement. I should like to be clear. Let us be specific instead of just smearing.

Let me come to that.

I would ask the Minister to address his remarks to the Chair.

I apologise to the Chair and I will abide by his ruling.

Acting Chairman

I would also ask the other side of the House to desist from interrupting.

I apologise to the Chair and to the Minister for interrupting. I just want to ask the Minister to please give evidence for the allegations he is making and not indulge in MacCarthyism which I am sure he would repudiate if he thought about it.

The point under discussion was the Fianna Fáil opposition to the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill and my interpretation of that opposition. I indicated that I could not take seriously the technical and legal objections put forward in light of the Minister's speech, and I believe that will be pursued by the Attorney General. I indicated my belief, which may be wrong but which is a sincere belief, that this opposition is really motivated by the conception that IRA people who have been active in the North, and only in the North, should not be interfered with here, if they behave themselves here, for actions done in the North. I think that is the substance of the opposition to the Bill inside and outside the House. It is very rarely avowed. It is hard to avow in this House, but it is often heard outside. It is fairly often heard outside from people everywhere I would agree. I am discussing now the opposition to the Bill.

Deputy Colley asked me for evidence of this type of attitude in his party which might tend to justify the conclusion that this is their real reason. I then cited the adoption by the Fianna Fáil Party of a policy which, only a few weeks before had been described by their own leader as a policy which would have the effect of over-heating the situation in the North. Deputy Colley asked me to say what was wrong with that policy. I indicated that the main thing wrong with it was that which had been accurately diagnosed by his own leader and spokesman shortly before, that is, that it would have the effect of over-heating the situation in the North. Deputy Colley wanted to hear more in relation to that as to why this kind of action which he favours would have a good effect, while this Bill would have a bad effect on the situation.

I should like to say something briefly about that. The request for a declaration of Britain's commitment to implement an ordered withdrawal from her involvement in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland has been condemned by Mr. Gerry Fitt, leader of the SDLP, as placing Fianna Fáil squarely in the Provisional camp. I think Mr. Fitt was speaking under the stress of emotion but the fact of the emotion which he felt has to be taken into consideration. How does he see this and how do those who support him see it? The idea of getting a declaration of intent from Britain to withdraw from Northern Ireland has long been the main plank in the policy of the Provisional IRA.

And of the Taoiseach, Deputy Cosgrave.

We are not talking about statements made in different circumstances four or five years back.

Good. Tell us precisely where the difference arises?

We are talking about what is useful to say and do now. I am not saying that anyone on these benches, or on those benches, has been consistently right on everything in the past. What we are all talking about is not the past or several years ago, but about this autumn and what course of action is useful this autumn. Is it useful to pursue the kind of line we are pursuing which involves willingness to co-operate with the law enforcement apparatus in Northern Ireland? This is important and difficult. The policy which Fianna Fáil have adopted is increasingly a policy of, "the British must get out and then we must have unity". The objection from the point of view of the elected leaders of the minority—and I will confine myself to that for the moment—is first of all this.

This backing from the Opposition in the South strengthened the hand of their deadly adversaries in the Catholic areas—the Provisional IRA. Fianna Fáil were seen as having endorsed—I am glad I have heard no quibbles about the distinction between a commitment and a declaration—the main political demand of the Provisional IRA to get out. That weakens the minority leaders in Northern Ireland. I am not generalising on that, nor am I saying I am a person who has never disagreed with those leaders. I have. I certainly think they are the best judge of how they are affected by a given development.

I do not wish to interrupt the Minister but I wish to understand him. Is he objecting to the timing or the substance?

As the Deputy knows, timing and substance are very difficult to differentiate in politics. I am speaking about making this demand now and how they see it.

At this time?

I am not saying it would never be wrong to seek this. Certainly there could come a time, for example, if there was basic agreement between the main sections in Northern Ireland and if in those conditions British troops insisted on staying—I think those conditions most unlikely but I suppose it could happen—then such a declaration should and would be sought vigorously both up there and down here. However, those conditions do not exist.

Would it be the Minister's view that it was wrong to make that demand?

I have indicated that what I think it important to talk about is not who said what in 1971— that is an amusing game and two, three or four can play it—but what it is wise to do here and now. Let us admit this to one another. We have all learned something from what has been happening up there, or we should have been learning something. If I thought what I am saying now was exactly what I said in 1971, I would wonder if I had learned anything.

I am quite serious about this and I am not trying to score points. Is it the Minister's view that what we are saying now is wrong? Is he basing his argument regarding our opposition to this Bill on that point?

Will the Chair say who is to make this speech?

The Minister does not like to be pinned down.

Acting Chairman

The Chair was about to indicate to the Deputy and to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs that it wishes a departure from the interviewing that has been taking place.

Perhaps my departure would assist the Minister? I will assist him in that way.

Whose side is the Deputy on?

Deputy Colley accused me of running away.

Obviously the Minister would prefer me to go. He does not like what is happening.

I enjoyed every minute of it.

Acting Chairman

The Chair would prefer to hear the Minister making his own speech.

The points raised by Deputy Colley were important and relevant. He asked why it was important to act this way by this sort of Bill and this sort of co-operation rather than by taking another route towards the same end about which all of us are concerned—the restoration of peace and harmony. In his view the positive role that should be undertaken is this idea of getting a declaration of Britain's commitment to implement an ordered withdrawal. He asked what was wrong with that.

I told him that the first thing wrong with it was that it tended to pull the rug from under the elected leaders of the minority in Northern Ireland for the benefit of the paramilitaries—the terrorists and people of that kind. There is a second thing wrong with it. I appreciate that nobody there is calling for an immediate withdrawal from Northern Ireland of the British forces, not even the Provisional IRA. It does not mark off this policy from that of the Provisional IRA to say that it does not call for an immediate withdrawal. What would be the effect of commitment?

When Deputy Lynch came around to this in his remarks—I am speaking under the handicap of not having the text of his remarks—he suggested that once such a commitment was given the intransigent people, the loyalists in this context, would come to a realisation of their interest in building common institutions with the people of the Republic and, based on that, we would have a benign progress towards peace under which an all-Ireland court and so on would be possible.

I do not think many people who have seriously studied this believe that, nor does any section in Northern Ireland believe it. Certainly the elected leaders of all parties in Northern Ireland—all parties that go in for electoral politics—have condemned this. I am sorry that Deputy Colley who raised this point and repeatedly sought information on it is not present. The reason those leaders condemned it is that they think it much more likely that the effect of such a declaration and commitment on Britain's part would be a frenzied build-up of armed forces in Northern Ireland in order to fill the vacuum that would be left by a British withdrawal. In that build-up of force combined with consolidation of areas what would happen would be a speeding up of the progress of the disease, not healing it or bringing it under control, with the feeling on the loyalist side—especially with this demand coming from here, from the Provos and from Fianna Fáil and being complied with by the British Government—that it is now or never, that they must defend themselves. We know people frequently see the best means of defence as retaliation.

Deputy Lynch and Deputy Brugha must have had such a picture in mind when they said three weeks earlier that such a declaration would overheat the situation in Northern Ireland. We did not hear from Deputy Lynch why he considered his original diagnosis of an overheating effect had to be changed, why it became wrong. We have not heard that from Deputy Brugha but I hope very much we will hear it in this debate.

There is a basic difference here between two main lines of policy. One is that you move towards unity by emphasising its importance and primacy as a national goal, by not condoning the Provisionals but by turning a blind eye to them provided their activities are confined to Northern Ireland, by urging the British to get out and by assuming that in the subsequent developments, which none of us can predict with certitude, the result will be a united Ireland.

I think these combined events, the return to that front bench of Deputy Haughey with Deputy Haughey's history, and the recent new Fianna Fáil policy statement by Deputy Haughey bringing the unity issue to the fore again, shows that that view is now extremely influential among those who are opposing this Bill. I know that what I have said, which is based on the concept that the formal reasons given for opposing this Bill are not the real ones and cannot realistically be accepted by us on this side as real, and my quest for the real reasons are likely to be interpreted as being divisive. If by divisive we mean intending to stir up hate and acrimony I hope my remarks are not divisive in substance or in tone but if the word is intended to signalise the act of distinguishing between different policies and the direction in which different groups of human beings are going then I am concerned to divide, to distinguish.

I think it is difficult to cope adequately with statements made in this debate because many of them are not aimed at laying bare the real sources of opposition but at piling up structures of technical and legal arguments in which we on this side are supposed to involve ourselves. Formally, you get a very satisfactory debate, an exchange on what is possible and not possible and where I think the whole balance of argument is on this side of the House but I think we also need to distinguish between the way this Bill would have this country go, the Bill which says: we cannot tolerate any longer a state of affairs in which people can commit murder and other crimes in Northern Ireland and go in safety here. We say we will not tolerate that: Deputies on the other side find these technical, legal, constitutional, international reasons and technical reasons connected with workability for saying no to that but I fear that I have to say that their real objection or the real objection of enough of them to make them take this line is a substantial one, a recognition of the influence of the view that these young men are patriots risking their lives in Northern Ireland and deserving a secure haven in this State. That is the point of view once so widely held—a popular point of view—which we on this side of the House reject.

We hold that a crime committed in Northern Ireland is a crime against all the people of Ireland and we think that unless that point of view is consistently held and seen to be consistently defended by the Government and people here we cannot have progress towards understanding without which eventual unity is impossible.

Some of us believe—here, perhaps, I speak for myself—that insistence on how we must have unity is an actual bar to understanding and harmony to be achieved in the present without which eventual unity is forever impossible. We think this Bill is a helpful step towards harmony. We think it is divisive in the bad sense for one party here to claim to be the most nationalist party in the State, to claim, as I once heard Deputy Lynch claim —but that was long ago and I shall not hold it against him—that his was the party of reunification. We believe that competition among parties in the Republic in this area carries us further and further out of sight of any possible dialogue with the majority in Northern Ireland or even of an attempt to understand their view because if you make any attempt to understand their point of view, to use their language or to reach them, then, within the atmosphere of nationalist competition in the Republic you will be represented as a West Briton, as a collaborator and what not—and some of us have had those epithets thrown at us while that was the effort we were making.

I should like to try to reach, perhaps in a less polemical manner than I have been in the habit of doing—I would plead guilty sometimes to an excess of polemics—Deputies on the other side to ask them to try to see what we are trying to do in this Bill because we think that they do see it sometimes and do not see it at other times. We think that when they are in Opposition the temptation to beat the green drum comes over them and we think we hear the thrumming in those hills of that instrument at the present time. We know there are people over there who realise the danger of that —of this kind of competition in greenness in 26-county politics and we hope that even as they feel bound to oppose this Bill they can recognise the direction in which it is aimed and even if they think it is not a means well chosen for moving that way yet try to reach a kind of underlying agreement that that is the direction in which we should aim.

Parts of Deputy Lynch's statement —and again this saddens one—in opposing this Bill seemed to fit into that concept particularly the opening, but then he fell back on other things, this idea of the minority frustrating the will of the majority—the majority in this island must have their way; that is implied. But if we return to that idea that because we are a majority in this island we must be able to steamroll opposition—hopefully without force but in some way or other— into accepting something, all-Ireland institutions and eventually unity, then the course you are set on is civil war.

If it is for that reason—and I believe that among some people the underlying reason for opposing this Bill is that kind of thinking—then that is one of the reasons why I think it is very important that this Bill should pass. I shall pass lightly over that but there can be conditions in which the Opposition can be tempted to beat the green, green drum but an Opposition inside a party can also be tempted to beat the green drum and can do some stampeding.

In conclusion I should like to say something about what I might call— if it is not too pretentious a word— the philosophy behind this Bill. Firstly, it is based on a recognition of the complexity of the problem with which we have to deal; a recognition and a willingness at the same time to do the rather restricted and small things that can be done. It is more emotionally satisfactory to be able to call for an all-Ireland court, all-Ireland institutions. When I was living in Africa one of the slogans I heard chanted frequently at public meetings was: "African unity now". Of course there was not going to be African unity; that would have to be built over many generations but it gave people an emotional lift to say "African unity now". The unity would not do in 50 years or 10 years; it had to be now. Basically, I do not distinguish very much between the criticism of this Bill on the ground that it does not contain provision for an all-Ireland court and the "African unity now" idea.

The second element in this idea of a combined attack on violence by North and South, and is the essential novelty from which the real objections to the Bill as distinct from the formal ones derive, is a recognition of the solidity and intensity of the Northern majorities opposition to unity, and opposition is almost too weak a word. That recognition has been absent from our traditional thinking here and has been one of the weaknesses of that traditional thinking. The idea was: "Oh, the Northern Unionists are misled, they are duped. If Britain went away they would come around and go over to us". That is the thinking in this policy document and that is why that policy document represents a regression from a recognition which had been achieved and as expressed in Deputy Brugha's statement about overheating to the kind of thinking which prevailed about 1969-70 when aid and comfort was given to the Provisional IRA from down here, and money too. I am saying that not so as to delve into the past but so as to try to suggest to the Dáil that we should refrain from regressing into that past and I see strong elements of regression both in the kind of opposition we have had to this Bill and in that policy document.

The third element is a recognition that any attempt to enforce unity can only create violence and endanger the minority. I say any attempt because there are different schools of thought. Some think the IRA can do it on their own—I am not speaking of views that are widespread in this House because I know they are not but they affect thinking in this House. Some think the Irish Army will eventually be drawn in to do it and some think that the British can be got to do it. All those ideas of enforcement of unity have to be rejected as only a recipe for violence on the grand scale of which the minority—particularly the minority in Belfast—would be the prime victims.

The fourth element is that if one rules out an effort to bring about unity by force but one still wants unity what is left but persuasion. What means of persuasion has one unless one can talk to those who refuse unity in something like their own language; unless one can win and deserve their confidence? Do we have, can we even have the face to ask for the trust, the confidence of Northern Unionists in conditions where they know that people can commit murder in Northern Ireland and go at liberty in our State? Deputy Lynch quoted, rather contemptuously, from The Belfast Newsletter, which said that it did not think much of this Bill; it did not think it would work very well, but it was, at least, a gesture in the right direction. We are not as pessimistic about the working of the Bill as The Belfast Newsletter is but we are not unmindful either of the fact that the newspaper is at least acknowledging that some kind of effort is being made here, some kind of message is going through. Every time we can get through a message of that kind we are helping to reduce the tension in Northern Ireland, we are helping to relax the siege feeling of the Northern majority which has been at the bottom —it and its consequences—of much of the violence, the violence committed by those who feel themselves besieged and the violence which comes from frustration under the rule of those so besieged. Everything like this is, or should be, a turn of the screw in the right direction, making things a little looser and a little less tense up there.

The fifth element—I am speaking of the elements in the general pattern of thinking behind this kind of Bill—is that of consistency about the implications of all this. Not only must there be no support of violence, not only must there be disavowal of violence but all that must be absolutely unequivocally, continuous, consistent, excluding, and being known to exclude, any kind of covered collusion with what is secretly disavowed. One of the elements in this extremely bad situation is that of suspicion among the Northern majority that when we say we disavow violence we do not really mean it; we are turning a blind eye. Some people think it unimportant to dispel that suspicion; some people think there is something mawkish and even unpatriotic about being preoccupied with majority reactions to this. They think: "The majority in Northern Ireland are wrong; to hell with them we are reasonable and as soon as they come to their senses they will agree with us". That kind of thinking is very widespread and, of course, it is fatal because it is essentially tribal thinking and it prevails, to a great extent, in the other tradition and sometimes in even more hysterical forms. Of course, there is a difference in the two traditions in that when we think things we are apt to express ourselves a little obliquely, tentatively, meaning rather more than we say, whereas in their tradition they are apt to express themselves bluntly, fiercely and saying even more than they mean. It follows from all this the main principle of the Bill, that there must be no secure base in this State for acts of armed violence in Northern Ireland.

That is the central principle of this Bill, and I would like those opposite who will be commenting on this to indicate how they will propose to deal with it. Firstly, do they agree? I imagine they will all say they agree and some of them genuinely will agree. But how do they propose to do something, however inadequate, to ensure that there shall be no secure base here for acts of armed violence committed in the North, because there can be secure bases at present. This Bill, however inadequate, is designed to ensure that there shall be no secure base here for acts of violence committed in the North. I hope they will not tell us that the right idea is an all-Ireland court, because they know as well as we do that an all-Ireland court is not on for 20 years or maybe even more. In the meantime, since there is no all-Ireland court these men can be at large here having committed murder in the North. I do not think that will do and I hope that objection will be adequately faced without too much evasion and technicality.

Putting it very bluntly, this Bill is directed against the proposition less often heard in public than in private, which runs as follows: Let the boys alone so long as they keep quiet down here. That can be heard more often in a pub than in the Oireachtas, but I think it ought to be dragged into the light as the proposition against which this Bill is centrally directed. Wherever that attitude is clearly exposed, as I have sought to do here—I hope with charity towards persons but not towards dangerous ideas—I believe the people will reject it, because they have been horrified by what they have seen and heard in Northern Ireland and what they read every day. In a letter in The Irish Times of today, 20th November, 1975, Mr. John Cranshaw, Andersonstown, Belfast, said:

We who live in the midst of the obscenity and are able to escape momentarily to the South for a break (only the well-offs can do this, the poor with their infinite capacity for suffering must stay) are conscious of an air of unreality about the replies we get when we are forced into discussing our experiences. As we listen to the soft plámás in that Southern accent, and the half-hinted justification of terror——

"The half-hinted justification of terror", how often have we all heard that——

it is impossible not to return to the North with a feeling of disquiet.

But then not (yet?) for them the shot in the night and the cry of "Oh, Mammy!" and venture out to find a 16 year-old boy "kneecapped" by a group of boys and girls: not for them to know personally a youth who pleaded for his life as he had "dropped out a year ago" but was gunned down in front of his terrified workmates all the same; not for them to know the reality behind the televised interview, with all its glamour and prestige, of a so-called political party—

Sinn Féin——

and hear its "president" offering condolences to a man whose six year-old daughter was murdered by bullets fired by its "military wing" and intended for him (we are sorry your child was murdered instead of you).

There is a growing realisation of what that kind of thing means. In The Irish Times of Monday, 18th November, Mr. Eamonn McCann told us, when speaking of the shootings and knee-cappings, that we need not assume that this violence stems from the Northern character or is something endemic to the streets of Belfast, because the reason for this is not to be found in the putative madness of the participant, not in some sinister constituent of the Belfast air, but in the nature and organisational structure of Irish republicanism. He said that being so and the Republican Movement, as it is called, the IRA, being a movement that exists North and South, we can expect at some stage to have here what they have there. Although people may still express themselves in ways which the brave writer of that letter from Andersonstown did, although he was shocked by that “half-hinted justification of terrorism”, we who live in the South would be struck rather by the diminution in that attitude.

We think that people generally, including us in the Oireachtas, have been educated by events if we have the courage to admit the results of our education and begin to use not the traditional language but a language that fits the actual situation we now know and the dangers which it can cause. People have been horrified by what they have seen and heard of Northern Ireland and they are rightly apprehensive. For the sake of their children and their homes, their apprehension that this may spread here should not be contemptuously dismissed. We have all heard of the murders of the gardaí and the Herrema case and I need not dwell on them here. These men and women of the Provisional IRA, and those who split away, are dangerous in themselves and the Herrema case is a good example of that. These people are trained in violence which they believe to be justified in the conditions of Northern Ireland but, as they became hardened to violence they forgot all about the peculiar conditions in the North and regard themselves as licensed to do violent acts here in the Republic. I think they do regard themselves as being licensed to do violent acts, and if they refrain from them for the time being that is a purely tactical matter. These men and women are dangerous in themselves and in the retaliations they attract. We have seen horrible examples of this also in the bombings.

Before I sit down I want to say something briefly in relation to wider matters raised by this Bill. This Bill is a very mundane and limited measure. It is aimed at helping the law enforcement agencies here to show in practice that we are doing what we say we believe in doing, that is, that the law shall be enforced against people who commit crimes in Northern Ireland. It has of course a bearing, as suggested earlier, on much wider matters. Almost everybody in the Republic is committed to the doctrine of progress towards eventual unity by consent. But the whole point about progress is that it has to be attained by stages. Those who talk about progress towards unity often act as if they believed it could be obtained in one jump or by a series of leaps, or by the consent extorted under the pressure of some large, imminent change in the context—such as the withdrawal of British troops—rather than in a movement of minds meet minds, which is the only way unity could ever be attained.

I should like to make it clear that I regard unity as very remote. The verbal stressing of unity is counterproductive at the present time and will probably be so for many years to come. The first stage is necessarily the building up of mutual respect and confidence. I would emphasise that this is desirable for its own sake as a thing which is good in itself, irrespective of whether or not unity ever comes out of it. It is good for its own sake and good also because it tends to promote peace and remove the causes of violence. Certainly anyone who says we ought to move towards unity has also to say, if he is logical, that we must move now towards mutual respect and confidence. Then we must examine, not just the beam or the mote in their eyes, which we do rather frequently, but what we are doing that does not help. One of the things we have been doing is, of course, to allow this loophole to exist in our law whereby this kind of offender against them can go free among us. In short, the present state of affairs precludes this kind of confidence we need.

We are not saying that, if this Bill is passed, such confidence will then leap up to great heights. What we are saying is that, if this Bill is passed, a bit of help will have been given to building that confidence, towards reducing tension, towards diminishing the cause of violence and, of course, punishing appropriately those who commit it. I would also add that, if this Bill is defeated—and I do not believe it will be—that defeat and the events associated with it, like the new policy of demanding a British commitment to withdraw, will be interpreted in an adverse way in Northern Ireland, interpreted as indicating the renewal of what they see as a sort of siege. I do not believe this House will reject this Bill. I believe we will carry it. I believe it will become the law and be implemented and I believe we will then have taken a small but significant step in the right direction.

This debate got off to a very sensible start this morning in a very low key and not loaded with emotion. As far as the Minister for Justice's contribution is concerned, it can be said that in his efforts this morning he made his case as best he could and in as fair a manner as he possibly could. I compliment him on that. He realises, of course, that there is much in what he said with which I do not agree and on which I do not share the same views with him. We all have the right, as the Minister knows full well—it is a right we prize —of differing in debate. The Minister was followed by the Leader of my party who made his contribution in the same manner as the Minister made his and without being emotive, without any window dressing, as it were, in the hope that those who would follow would keep the debate on that same plain if possible.

I have now listened to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. He raised many hares and I would need many hours at my disposal if I were to make an attempt to try to catch them. I am not foolish enough to try to do this. I have no doubt, however, that my contribution would be regarded by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and some of his colleagues as an effort at filibustering.

I believe the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs deliberately misrepresented the contribution made by the Leader of my party and deliberately misrepresented the views of this party as he believes they will be on this Bill. It is possible the Minister for Justice may privately agree with me that it is unfortunate he was followed on his side of the House by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs because, to say the least of it, the approach of the latter to this Bill can only be regarded as most provocative. It is certainly open to the charge of deliberately overheating the situation. This typically provocative approach is characteristic. He made half charges because he was not man enough to come out and make full charges which could be contradicted. He has tried to sow the seeds of dissention by innuendo and half truths. The Minister has adopted an extremely harmful approach in what should be a very serious discussion. He obviously came in here this morning with one purpose, and one purpose only, namely, to do his damnedest to label the Fianna Fáil Party as members of the Provisional IRA. I reject his efforts to do this. As far as I and my party are concerned, there is no sympathy whatsoever with men of violence and no intention whatsoever of supporting them.

I regret the efforts of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and I regret even more the fact that he was not able to contain his personal venom and spleen for individual members of this party. We have witnessed once more the efforts of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to character assassinate individual members of my party. One remembers that a short two-and-a-half years ago the Minister tried similar tactics in the constituency he represents but his efforts were rejected by a very large percentage of voters in that constituency. It illbefits the Minister to make accusations against members of my party who, I am sure, will participate later in this debate in a reasonable and fair manner. The Minister accused practically all members of my party of beating the green drum—I think that was the expression he used—and went even further to suggest there appeared to be competition in this party in beating this green drum. It is a pity that the Minister could not have said what he himself thought he should say rather than to try to put himself in a position in which he thinks he knows what motivates people. It is only a couple of months ago since the Minister believed he knew what the people wanted.

I expect the Deputy will be resuming on the Bill after questions?

It would be rather boring to have to listen to him if he were to continue on this trend.

Debate adjourned.
Top
Share