asked the Minister for Justice the present position of the various members of the Garda Technical Bureau who were involved in the so-called "Fingerprints Affair"; and if he will make a statement on the case generally.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Fingerprint Identification Mistakes Allegation.
40.
I am not in a position to make any more than an interim statement at this stage. However, as the statement is a fairly lengthy one I propose with the permission of the Ceann Comhairle to circulate a copy of it with the Official Report.
The following is the statement:
Towards the end of 1976 and in early 1977 there had been allegations of mistakes in fingerprint identification in certain cases. A full investigation of those allegations and of other related matters was conducted by a senior Garda officer and he submitted his report to his own authorities towards the end of May. It is relevant to bear in mind that the report dealt with what was a complex situation and involved a review of highly technical material. It was, therefore, a detailed document which, including appendices, ran to some hundreds of pages.
The arrangement made by my predecessor which was in accordance with normal practice in relation to any investigation in the Garda Síochána in which the Minister for Justice would have an interest, was that the report, when completed, would be considered in the first instance by the Commissioner and then submitted to him, the Minister, with the Commissioner's observations. It was in fact so submitted, with observations, on 18 July, that is, roughly a fortnight after the change of Government. Owing to the size and complexity of the report, an advance copy, without of course any comments, had been given informally some time earlier to my Department so that a study of it could commence in the Department as early as possible in order to minimise the time that would be required afterwards for analysis in the Department and consideration by the Minister.
In the beginning of August, allegations of an entirely new character, namely, that criminal offences had been committed by a member or members of the Technical Bureau, were made to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Once that happened and until that matter is disposed of, other aspects have had to be left for later consideration. I mention this for several reasons but mainly to refute suggestions that I as Minister had the report before me and was doing nothing about it. There is of course one exception to the statement that, once the allegations of criminal actions had been made, other aspects have had to be left over. That does not apply to the taking of measures designed to strengthen safeguards against any possibility of a mistake in identification being made in any current or future case. I am assured that such measures have in fact been taken.
Returning to the matter of the allegations, I understand that the Director of Public Prosecutions, having made certain necessary preliminary enquiries which took some months to complete, then referred all the papers to the Garda authorities for investigation of the allegations that had been made to him. I am informed that the necessary report is being prepared as quickly as possible. Until it is submitted and the Director gives his decision on the allegations that criminal offences were committed, any further action or comment must be deferred. Furthermore, because the issues are, as I have already indicated, complex ones, it is to be expected that it will take some time to reach decisions on other aspects of the matter even when the allegations of crime have been disposed of one way or the other.
However, without commenting in any way on the issues involved, which of course I am not at present free to do, I would like, on a question of fact, to take this opportunity to place on record that there is no basis for suggestions that have been published to the effect that the Director of Public Prosecutions had found that the earlier Garda investigation was not properly or adequately carried out and that he therefore had to order a new and fuller investigation. I have the consent of the Director to say that he has not seen the earlier report at all and that he has at all material times made it clear to the Garda authorities that he would not consider it either useful or appropriate that it should be submitted to him before he has considered the investigation file relating to the allegations of criminal actions.
As regards the present position of various members of the Bureau, which is raised in the Deputy's question, this is, I am afraid, one of the matters about which different views have been expressed in the sense that there have been differences of view as to whether particular assignments did or did not involve a transfer from one section to another or an assignment to work that needed a lesser degree of skill. Even if it were proper for me to make a public statement about purely internal organisational matters of this kind, I could not do so at present as the position is, so to speak, "frozen" until the question of allegations of criminal action has been disposed of. I can say, however, that nobody has been either downgraded or transferred out of the Bureau so in that sense the position of all concerned remains as it has been.
Would it not be possible to have the statement read?
It is an extremely long one and I——
I have no control over what the Minister decides to do about that.
I think he was open to suggestion. The point is that if we cannot hear the statement we cannot pursue the issues that may arise from it.
Could the Minister give us a general synopsis of the situation or possibly the last paragraph, or the sense of it?
Before going into that, are we establishing a precedent here? The normal thing is that statistical information is relayed to the House frequently by means of a tabular statement. I think this is the first occasion that I have been here that a question was not answered giving information to the House, outside statistics.
No, it is the duty of the Chair to interpret Standing Orders as they appear and as the statement is a lengthy one, the Chair has no option but to permit the Minister to circulate it with the Official Report.
I am not disputing your rights but I want to know if this is the first time in the history of the House that a statement in answer to a question was not read out in the House even though quite frequently statistical information is given out.
It is out of consideration for the House that the Minister in this instance decided to circulate the statement rather than read it out. As I said, the statement is a long one and the position is, straight and fair, that if I were to read the statement, we would have used up the time available and there would be no time for supplementaries in any case.
How long is it?
Three long foolscap pages.
We would not worry about it.
Fair enough, but you will not have an opportunity of asking supplementaries.
That is our problem.
(Interruptions.)
Order, please.
By way of comment on procedure would it not be a better arrangement in such circumstances if copies were available to us beforehand and the Minister——
There is no precedent for such a thing. This is quite a common occurrence. If the House agree, I shall read the relevant Standing Order.
Perhaps the Chair would do that.
It is Standing Order No. 35 (2):
Where a Question put down for oral answer is of such a nature as to require a lengthy reply or a reply in the form of a tabular statement, the Ceann Comhairle shall, at the request of the member of the Government to whom the Question is addressed, direct that the answer be furnished in the Official Report of the Debates.
On a point of order, every Deputy in any Opposition has had the experience that the Minister hands out to the Press simultaneously with the reply the tabular statement in question, so that the Deputy who has asked the question and who has had no opportunity to ask supplementary questions gets the information from the evening paper or from the newspaper the next morning before he has actually seen the bit of paper——
It is not a question of the Press; it is the House. Let us be quite straight about it.
(Interruptions.)
On a point of order, the Chair mentions that there was no provision for statements being circulated. I admit that I am rather new to the House but since I have come in I have seen that done regularly, particularly when members of the Government were speaking and the statement was circulated at the same time. That would seem to me to represent the need here.
The circulation is the circulation that has been accepted and practised for years, and it provides for circulation with the Official Report.
In reference to your earlier statement in regard to the number of questions on the Order Paper and the need for brevity, I would suggest with due respect to you and the Minister that the opening up of a provision whereby questions could be answered by long statements, if there is a lengthy reply to every one of the questions, if one choses to make it, would in principle be a bad practice to encourage and would go against your expressed wishes and the views Deputies expressed earlier. On those grounds, I would ask that the Minister read out his statement so that we can listen to it rather than——
When I permitted the Deputy to speak I took it that he wished to make a point of order which this is not. I have no power to compel the Minister to read out a statement.
What concerns me about this practice—possibly it should be changed—is that in effect it gives an "out" to the Government to avoid answering questions by merely putting together three pages of foolscap. I am not suggesting that is the position in this case but it could happen and I believe that this is not——
We cannot have a discussion on Standing Orders now. The time has expired. The Deputy is new to the House and the Standing Orders have been Standing Orders for a considerable time——
Of course they can be changed.
I accept that the time for questions has now expired, but since this question has not been answered I think it should be the first question on Tuesday's Order Paper.
The Minister pointed out that it would be circulated with the Official Report.
I think that in courtesy to the House that should only be done with the agreement of the Opposition and I do not think we could give it in this case.
There is no question of the agreement of the Opposition being needed to circulate the reply.
I know that, but in courtesy to the House——
Would it be in order to allow supplementary questions at the beginning of Question Time next Tuesday?
No, the question is answered. The remaining questions will appear on the Order Paper of Tuesday next.
I must register my protest at something I consider most unsatisfactory. The Minister of State is in here answering on behalf of the Minister for Justice who should be here to answer the question. This is a very important question and presumably the information contained in the answer is very important and needs to be spelled out very carefully. Without Deputies on this side of the House being given a chance to question the Minister for Justice or the Minister of State answering on his behalf——
The Chair has no control over which Minister answers for another.
I offered to read it and the Deputy would not give me time.
(Interruptions.)
An offer has been made and we accept it.
Does the Minister not agree to suspend the Standing Orders so that he can really answer?
A Cheann Comhairle, I ask your permission to have this as No. 1 question on next Tuesday's Order Paper.
The question has been replied to.
The question is on today's Order Paper and will be in the Official Report. Therefore having it on the Order Paper again when it will already be in the Official Report does not make sense.
In the discussion which took place in the last five minutes the Minister of State offered to read the reply and in that sense the matter was not finished with when you, Sir, declared Question Time over.
On a point of order I ask permission to raise this matter on the adjournment.
I will communicate with the Deputy.
(Interruptions.)
I was not responsible for the hold-up in the 39 questions that came before it.
Where is the Minister for Justice anyway?
He is on an important job seeing a number of important law-keepers in Templemore.
(Interruptions.)
The remaining questions will appear on the Order Paper for the next sitting day of the Dáil.