asked the Minister for Justice if he has seen statements from Amnesty International denying that they have been invited to submit specific details of alleged Garda brutality; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
12.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Alleged Garda Brutality.
11.
asked the Minister for Justice if, in view of Amnesty International's repeated demand for a public inquiry into allegations of Garda brutality, he will now consider holding an inquiry.
With the permission of the Ceann Comhairle I propose to take Questions Nos. 11 and 12 together. The Deputy is incorrect with regard to the Amnesty International statement. Amnesty International did not deny that they had been invited to submit specific complaints. What they said was that they had not been directly invited to do so.
The facts are that I issued a public statement last October and sent a copy to Amnesty. That statement, dealing with the complaints that have been made to Amnesty, pointed out that investigation of those complaints depended on the co-operation of those making them. The first step in such co-operation would be—as my statement made clear—the submission of specific particulars and my statement said that special arrangements to investigate would be made if specific complaints were submitted. If that was not an open invitation both to Amnesty and to those who had complained to them to come forward with identifiable complaints, I do not know what it was.
Incidentally, I should like to make it clear that I never suggested or implied that it was the duty of Amnesty to make specific complaints. I acted on the assumption that they might wish to do so and, had they done so, this would have been one way that would have enabled an investigation to be carried out. Another way would have been for the individuals concerned to make a complaint. Amnesty could be under no misapprehension about that if only because a letter from my office to the Secretary General, dated 11 November 1977, pointed out that persons with complaints to make were well aware that they were invited to make them but that they could not be compelled to do so.
In the Amnesty letter of 5 May, Amnesty made the point that in any event it is not their policy to represent individual complaints in national legal proceedings. The Amnesty policy in that regard is entirely irrelevant since nobody ever suggested that they should or could do so. The legal proceedings in question, as Amnesty themselves recognise, are criminal proceedings and, as I am sure some of the people advising Amnesty know very well, there is no such thing in our law as the representation in court of a witness in a criminal case. Since the letter in question came from their London office, it may be worth mentioning that the same obtains in that country. Consequently, I consider it necessary to say that I do not understand why they should have chosen to introduce such an obvious irrelevancy.
The question whether any further reply is called for to Amnesty's latest letter is one which I am considering but there is, as should be quite obvious, no question of the Government setting up a public inquiry to investigate what in fact have been clearly acknowledged by Amnesty themselves to be allegations of criminal offences.
I thank the Minister for that comprehensive reply but is he aware that a spokesman for the Garda Commissioner said that the matter of appointing a senior Garda sergeant was under consideration and that this indicated that even the Commissioner was of the opinion that the Minister intended to appoint such a person?
I regret to have to tell the Deputy that I am not aware of the statement to which he refers as coming from a spokesman of the Commissioner. However, if the Deputy wishes to table a further question on that aspect I should be prepared to deal with it.