I move: "That the Dáil do now adjourn."
A Cheann Comhairle, in asking your leave earlier on this afternoon to move this motion I set out what I considered to be the recent events that merit examination by this House. They were, and I repeat them now, the shipment of arms, ammunition and explosives from Libya apparently destined for subversive organisations on this island; the similarity of the explosives used in the bomb outrage in Enniskillen last Sunday to those explosives which were found on the vessel Eksund; the apparent acquiescence of the Government in a move to pay a ransom in the O'Grady kidnap case; and the apparent willingness of citizens of this State to give aid, assistance and shelter to kidnappers and to the perpetrators of other violent and subversive crimes. I indicated that this House should call on all the elected public representatives of all parties and on all Irish people to repudiate violence, to reject and condemn all organisations committed to violence and to co-operate fully with the police forces in all parts of this island so that those who commit crimes of violence can be brought to justice.
On that last point I do not think any of us in this House can stress strongly enough the importance of making it clear to everybody on this island just what the consequences of any other course of action may be. We have seen some of the consequences. We have seen over a period of several weeks a man taken from his family and mutilated. We have seen last Sunday 11 people killed and many more injured and all of this can be directly attributed to the fact that there is ambivalence, double talk and double think about the processes and the organisations involved in violence on this island.
Last Thursday the Minister for Justice indicated to the House what the shipment of arms contained. He spoke of at least 20 SAM 7 surface to air missiles, 1,000 AK 47 Kalashnikov rifles, 600 F1 grenades, two different types of machine gun in substantial quantities, anti-tank rifles, rocket propelled grenades, mortar shells, ammunition and explosives with detonators and fuses. Last week, as I said in the House, there was an indication that one other vessel might have been involved in the same deadly business. there are two suggestions from French police sources that there may have been four other vessels all engaged in the same deadly business, all going before the Eksund, landing God knows where. If that is the case we are faced with the appalling prospect that the weapons, explosives and ammunition contained in any previous shipments are now in the hands of terrorists and the men of violence ready to be used.
The indications are that the Eksund was loaded in Tripoli. We are all familiar with statements made in the past both by Colonel Gadaffi and by senior colleagues of his in support of the IRA. They now appear to have taken that support even further because the quantity of arms, ammunition and explosives on the Eksund would equip some thousands of terrorists and would enable a campaign of violence on a huge scale to be mounted. In the light of what has emerged and in the light of what has been reported as a result of the French investigations into the activities of that vessel there can be absolutely no ambivalence. It is clear beyond any doubt that we must sever diplomatic links with Libya and there must be no expenditure of Irish taxpayers money on sending official groups of any kind to that country. The Libyan leader has in the past expressed his friendship for the Taoiseach and has personally met with the Taoiseach. There again, there can be no ambivalence. All of that must end and there must be no doubt whatever about it.
The outrage carried out in Enniskillen last Sunday appears to have been carried out with the same kind of explosives as were found on the Eksund. Those explosives as far as I can ascertain appear to be of a type not previously believed to be available either in Libya or to the IRA. That is a sinister new development. Perhaps, we should now suspect that the Eksund, after all, was not the first shipment of materials of that kind. As I have said, there may already be on this island arms, ammunition and explosives which have come from the same source and by a similar route.
Whatever the source of the explosives used in Enniskillen last Sunday, 11 more people have been killed and many more have been injured. I was personally appalled yesterday morning and I think every Member of this House would have been, to listen to the account given by a man who lay trapped in the rubble holding the hand of his daughter who was also trapped nearby and dying. Nobody with any human feelings who listened to that man's account could possibly believe that there was any valid reason or justification for such brutal killings. Nobody with any human feelings who heard that account could be in any doubt about the callousness or the inhumanity of those who planted the bomb. Our feelings of outrage, sorrow and sympathy for the bereaved and injured are sincere and deeply felt but even that sincerity is not enough because it is up to us to make it a positive force in supporting action in every possible way to bring and end to this violence.
The President of Sinn Féin, Mr. Gerry Adams, had the effrontery to extend sympathy and condolences to the families and friends of those killed and injured in Enniskillen. That is a hollow, meaningless and shameful statement from a man who has played and continues to play a major role in advocating and perpetuating violence. The IRA too issued a statement regretting what had occurred. It was published in the newspapers this morning and it makes some of the most sickening reading that we have seen for a long time. There is one paragraph in that statement with which I agree. It states:
... in the present climate, nothing we can say in explanation will be given the attention which the truth deserves, nor will compensate the feelings of the injured and bereaved.
That much is true. In no climate will anything that the IRA say be given the attention that truth deserves because the IRA have no truth to tell the Irish people. Nothing the IRA can say will compensate the feelings of the injured or the bereaved because we all know very well that unless they are stopped the IRA will have no compunction about doing the same thing again.
What we have seen is the disgusting spectacle of Sinn Féin and the IRA trying to distance themselves from murders which they encourage other people to commit. The rats are now scurrying for cover in the sewers of their own filthy violence.
I turn now to the question of ransom. In replying to questions in this House on Thursday last, the Minister for Justice said that there had not been any decision by the Government that ransom should be paid. He said it was Government policy that no ransom would be paid in any kidnapping case, that he was more than satisfied that no money was paid, that there was no question of any ransom being paid and that the Garda are in no doubt whatsoever as to the attitude of this Government and past Governments with regard to the payment of ransom. In the light of subsequent information, I wonder if there was any particular significance in the Minister's emphasis on the words "paid" and "payment". The Minister also said last Thursday in response to a question as to whether the Garda were aware that attempts were being made to pay a ransom, that he could not say what the Garda were or were not aware of. That remark was, at the very least, disingenuous.
It now appears that £1 million in sterling was brought from Belfast to Dublin by air and received under guard at Dublin Airport. A half million punts were added to this and the whole lot, weighing apparently about half a ton, was put into the back of a car and driven to Cork. As far as I can ascertain, this car was escorted by gardaí. At one stage, some reports had it that the car was stopped 20 minutes before arriving in Cork. Later information suggests that the car arrived in the car park of the rendezvous hotel.
I am being somewhat careful because I do not want to go into what I have been told about operational aspects of the matter. I am very conscious of the fact that although we speak under privilege in this House we should be careful not to put other people in danger. I will not give all the information I have in that regard but I can safely say that the gardaí in Cork were prepared for the arrival of that car. In the light of all that, I do not know how the Minister could claim in this House last Thursday that he could not say what the Garda were aware of or were not aware of. Surely the Garda would have found a means of telling the Minister by then or of letting it be known to him that £1 million in sterling had arrived at Dublin Airport, where it was met under guard, driven 160 miles to Cork under Garda escort and brought back again to Dublin under Garda escort. The car was brought to an underground car park in the Bank of Ireland. That much we know for certain because pictures appeared on television and in the newspapers of a car with the money arriving back to the underground car park escorted by gardaí. The car and its Garda escort were apparently followed from Cork to Dublin and into the underground car park by an ITN camera crew.
A number of questions arise in this connection. Did one man alone load a half ton of bank notes into the back of the car, or was he assisted by gardaí? If the gardaí assisted in this whole operation, under whose instructions were they operating? Gardaí do not suddenly appear out of the blue and help somebody to load £1 million sterling and half a million punts into the back of an ordinary car without operating on the basis of some very clear instructions. Whose instructions were they operating under? When were they given and why were they given? How was the cash assembled? Whatever one's resources it takes a lot of assembling to get together £1 million in sterling in Belfast and bring it to Dublin. It also takes a lot of assembling to put half a million punts together. How was the cash assembled and where did the half million punts come from in this jurisdiction to be put together with the £1 million sterling? Was that movement supervised by the gardaí? Did they know about it? If so, under whose instructions were they operating?
What exchange control regulations would apply to the movement of £1 million in sterling notes from Belfast to Dublin? What role, if any, did the Central Bank play in this affair? The Central Bank is the operator of our exchange control regulations. Was there an exchange control dimension in this? If so, was the Central Bank involved and what exactly was its involvement? What role did the Government play? What contacts, if any, took place between the Government and the Central Bank? Who gave instructions for those contacts, if any, to take place and who was guiding that operation?
It is clear beyond any doubt that this whole operation was extremely hazardous from many points of view. A large sum in cash was brought 160 miles from Dublin to Cork in an ordinary car and was brought back again. If an ITN camera crew could follow the convoy from Cork to Dublin, who else might have followed it? If an ITN crew could apparently latch on by accident to the rear of that convoy going from Cork to Dublin, how many other people and what kind of other people knew that £1.5 million had been sent down to Cork? Were there any other people in a position to know that the £1.5 million was being sent back from Cork in an ordinary car with a Garda escort? What risks were being run by the driver of that ordinary car during the whole operation? What risks were the gardaí running? Who else knew about it? Who gave the instructions for that escorted convoy to go from Dublin to Cork and to come back again?
One cannot find out all about these things but on Thursday I heard two news bulletins which stated that money had been delivered to Cork and there was a question that the money was going to be secured once Mr. O'Grady had been safely taken out of the arms of the kidnappers. In a later news bulletin it was stated that the money was now secured. I have some acquaintance with the kind of language used by the Garda in operational matters. Everyone in this House has some acquaintance with the kind of language used by journalists to describe these but the phrase "the money is now secured" is not a journalistic phrase. That is what many people in the Garda Síochána and elsewhere call "depot speech". What Garda information was given that money was going to be secured and then that it had been secured? Does the use of that phrase in briefing journalists indicate that there was ever a feeling that the money was not secured? If there was, from what did it arise?
The Government must surely have known that there was a huge risk involved in bringing this sum of money to a hotel in Cork, no matter what kind of precautions had been taken. Do the Government not know there is no case in which the hostage would be found at the place the money was to be delivered? Do the Government not know that even if the money were handed over and even if those who collected it were let move away and were traced and followed, that the hostage would never be handed over until those who had the money felt secure? Were the Government not aware of the risk, the very serious risk, of finding themselves in a situation where the kidnap gang, who had already shown beyond any doubt that they were quite prepared to use firearms and to mutilate their hostage, would have both the ransom and the hostage. Such a situation would be far more dangerous than anything that had arisen up to then during the course of the kidnap. It is very clear that the very act of moving all that money from Dublin to Cork created the most appalling dangers and created a potential for disaster that should have been foreseen, and that must have been foreseen, by people with experience of that kind of operation.
In at least one newspaper article which appeared over the weekend there was an implication that the leaders of the Opposition parties in this House were aware, in some fashion, that the money was removed. That is not the case. I do not know how that impression got about. What I am about to say is to make sure that if there was a misunderstanding or if people misunderstood what they were told in a briefing, that that misunderstanding is completely cleared up. The only indication given by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice to the leaders of the other parties in the matter of ransom was that the demand had been increased to £1.5 million. My knowledge is that there was no further discussion of that matter between the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice on the one hand and the leaders of the other parties on the other.