The unprecedented nature of the political crisis in which the country now finds itself originates in the determination of the Fianna Fáil Party to reward political favours by appointing to one of the highest judicial offices in the land a person who it has now been clearly established was unsuitable to hold that position. It then developed through a refusal of that same party to acknowledge that the Dáil had a right to know all the circumstances which led to the appointment and subsequent events and to the making of false statements to this House. It has reached its climax in the exposure of a deliberate, well organised and premeditated plan, built on duplicity and deceit, to mislead the Dáil on matters of crucial importance.
The extent of the deception is breathtaking. Repeatedly during the past few weeks the Dáil and the public have been fed a diet of half truths, mistruths and downright lies. What is most alarming is that Fianna Fáil almost got away with it. If it had not been for the investigative journalism of Geraldine Kennedy, the Dáil would, in all probability, at this very moment have been voting on the election of Deputy Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach and the return to ministerial office of many of the Fianna Fáil Ministers who were at the heart of the deception in the House two weeks ago.
We now know for sure that Fianna Fáil Ministers were made aware of the existence and significance of the Duggan case on the Monday, before the Dáil resumed on the following day. Indeed, the Taoiseach admits as much in his statement in which he said:
Later than afternoon the Attorney General met with Ministers and mentioned a number of difficulties that had emerged relating to his predecessor's report particularly his discovery of another case, established at the meeting to be the Duggan case.
Later in his statement the Taoiseach went on to say he did not understand what this was all about.
We now know that far from it being a question of having forgotten it or failing to appreciate its significance, a number of them were provided with documentary material about it.
We now know that the Attorney General conveyed a message to Mr. Harry Whelehan on the Monday that on the following day the Taoiseach and two other Fianna Fáil Ministers would be making speeches to the House which referred specifically to the Duggan case, a move clearly designed to pressurise Mr. Whelehan into resigning. We now know that the Taoiseach came into the House on that Tuesday and made a speech which he knew to be untrue.
We now know that the story he concocted the following day about him only really becoming aware of the significance of the Duggan case when he received the letter from the Attorney General on his return to his office, after the debate in the Dáil on the Tuesday, was a falsehood from beginning to end.
What is curious about this matter is that the acting Tánaiste told us today there were two letters; that the letter the Taoiseach read into the record was different from the letter he had in his file. We have not yet been given a copy of the other version of that letter. One must ask how the Attorney General of the day would present two letters, apparently significantly different, one to the Tánaiste and one to the Taoiseach. In his statement the Tánaiste said:
During the Taoiseach's speech I heard, for the first time, the contents of the Attorney General's letter. I have since learned that seemingly the letter passed to me in the House, among other documents, and the letter read into the record by the Taoiseach differed materially. I understand the Attorney General modified his position.
We need to know, and perhaps we will find out by questioning tomorrow, what precisely that means. We need to know also why, when I referred to the letter which the Taoiseach read into the record and the draft reply which accompanied it, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Deputy Woods, got very excited and denied this was the letter the Taoiseach had read into the record. In fact he said there were two letters, much to the mystification of everybody on this side of the House. He did not at that stage or since offer an explanation as to how he knew there were two letters.
We now know that if the Taoiseach had not resigned three weeks ago the disclosures of the past few days would have left him with no option but to stand down. We know now also that two other Ministers, Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn and Deputy Dempsey, were accessories before and after the fact, share in the Taoiseach's culpability and should now in the circumstances resign and go to the backbenches.
We now know some of the answers to the questions I put to Fianna Fáil members last week, but there are other questions to which we are still awaiting replies. How many of the other Fianna Fáil Ministers were made aware of the details of the Duggan case on Monday? The Taoiseach admits that Minsters were advised. He does not tell us who those Ministers were or in whose office they were advised. Were they advised in his office and in what circumstances? Geraldine Kennedy's front page article was not the only interesting story in The Irish Times of 5 December 1994. On an inside page, Vincent Browne gave the following account of events on that Monday as he knows them:
At noon the following morning, Mr. Fitzsimons telephoned Mrs. Geoghegan-Quinn in the midst of an informal gathering of Fianna Fáil Ministers in a room off the Taoiseach's office at Government Buildings. He told her that new information had come to light on the case and she asked him to join her and the other Ministers immediately.
Essentially, Mr. Fitzsimons gave the Ministers two pieces of information. The first was that, contrary to what Mr. Harry Whelehan had told them as recently as the previous Friday afternoon, the Smyth case was not the first time that a section of the Extradition Acts had been considered by his office; it had arisen in a previous case.
The second piece of information was that in his opinion, this section of the Extradition Acts could not be the basis for refusing the extradition request...
We need to know — and this House is entitled to know — which Fianna Fáil Ministers were present at this meeting and which other Fianna Fáil Ministers knew the circumstances and the information concerned.
It has now been confirmed, as I suggested last week, that the draft reply to the potential supplementary question regarding the lapse of time provision, was the enclosure referred to in the letter from the Attorney General which was read into the record by the Taoiseach on 16 November. However, we are entitled to know who decided to add to the draft reply the advice: "If pursued on this question, keep repeating exactly the above".
There are also questions to be answered by the new Attorney General, Mr. Fitzsimons. It is now clear that the Attorney General must have been aware that the Dáil and the public were being misled in a series of statements made here in the House and elsewhere.
That would be an explanation as to why the draft reply did not match the letter given to the Taoiseach in relation to the lapse of time provisions. Yet he did nothing, until asked to produce the report yesterday, following the publication of the article by Geraldine Kennedy. I accept that Mr. Fitzsimons was in a difficult position. As Attorney General he is legal adviser to the Government but he also has a role as defender of the public interest.
He may have been fulfilling his obligations as law officer to the Government but surely that does not extend to turning a blind eye to deliberate attempts to mislead the Dáil. Who, therefore, was defending the public interest behind closed doors of ministerial meetings? The latest events reinforce the case of splitting the two distinct functions of the office of the Attorney General — which I advocated a number of times in the House — and allocate them to two separate legal figures.
As politicians we have our concerns and priorities. Careers are being made and careers have been destroyed. We should not lose sight of the fact that those who suffered most in this sorry saga are the child victims of the paedophile priest, Fr. Brendan Smyth. Through three weeks of intermittent Dáil debates, ministerial statements and reports from the Attorney General, they and their families have been waiting for a straightforward reply to the question: "Why did the warrants for the extradition of Smyth lie virtually untouched in the office of the Attorney General for seven months while this paedophile was allowed to remain at large?" They are still awaiting a reply. It is extraordinary that the acting Tánaiste simply wants to put that question aside because he argued in his speech that we all agree it is unacceptable. It is not acceptable to put it to one side, it has to be investigated fully and, if necessary, criminal proceedings should be brought against any person who may have deliberately hidden that file or deliberately conspired to ensure it did not see the light of day.
Anyone who expected satisfactory replies in the detailed report of the Attorney General into the handling of the Smyth warrants must have been sorely disappointed. Apart from painting a frightening picture of incompetence and mismanagement in the Office of the Attorney General, it failed to provide a satisfactory or believable explanation for the delay in processing the Smyth warrants.
The report shows that with regard to extradition matters, the person referred to as "official A", Mr. Matt Russell, was effectively operating as Attorney General, making all the crucial decisions and deciding which matters were to receive priority. Officials can be blamed, but their political masters must accept the responsibility. It is interesting to note that one report indicates that a blazing row took place between the Attorney General and official A, Mr. Matt Russell. Surely the bottom line is that there is only one Attorney General and that, as far as decisions of that office are concerned, the buck stops with the Attorney General. It is not good enough that we should receive letters from the Attorney General stating his view as one thing and the official's view as another. That is not satisfactory. The report suggests a virtual abdication of responsibility by the previous Fianna Fáil Attorney General, Mr. Whelehan. Official A is indicted for failing to keep the Attorney General informed, but no explanation is offered as to why Mr. Whelehan never apparently inquired about those matters.
The report also raises serious questions about the judgment of the two parties in Government who agreed to Mr. Whelehan's appointment in the first place, and why there was no proper supervision of the Attorney General and his office by the Cabinet. Not only was Mr. Whelehan unsuitable for nomination as President of the High Court, he was clearly not suitable to remain in office as Attorney General.
It now appears that the inevitable outcome of the events of the past few weeks will be that, with or without a general election, Fianna Fáil will go into Opposition, and that can only be a good thing. Indeed, given what we know, the reaction of many will be that the longer Fianna Fáil spends in Opposition, the better.
I read the comments at the weekend of the Government Chief Whip, Deputy Dempsey, who spoke of the pain caused to his family by the trenchant criticism of Fianna Fáil over the past few weeks. I understand and appreciate that hurt. From time to time I, too, have had to endure much abuse during my political career, most of it from Fianna Fáil. As I stated here on 22 November, the problem with Fianna Fáil is not the merits or shortcomings of individual members of that party, most of whom are decent people, but the secretive political culture of that party. Individually, the Fianna Fáil members may be fine people, but collectively they constitute a party, which recent events have confirmed, in the words of Deputy Spring in November 1992, "that has gone so far down the road of blindness to standards and of blindness to the people they are supposed to represent that it is impossible to see how anyone could support them in the future without first seeing them undergo the most radical transformation".
The Fianna Fáil Party appears to have lost all touch with its roots and with the principles which motivated its founders. Cronyism has replaced the concept of public service. The pursuit of the quick buck and the speculative profit is looked upon much more favourably than productive economic measures to benefit the entire community. The stroke and the stratagem have now become the norm.
It is unfortunate that Deputy Spring did not recall his November 1992 words about Fianna Fáil when these events broke. The decision by the Labour Party to enter into negotiations with Fianna Fáil, despite all that had happened, represented the triumph of naive optimism over bitter political experience. I heard Deputy Burton state on radio this morning that these events would never have been forced into the open were it not for the position taken by the Labour Party. That is possibly true, but it is certainly true that these events would never have taken place had the Labour Party not defied the lessons of political history by putting Fianna Fáil back into power in January 1993.
Valuable time was lost while talks between Labour and Fianna Fáil dragged on. The Dáil last had a normal sitting day on 3 November, almost five weeks ago. It is almost three weeks since the resignation of the Taoiseach. Social and economic problems are growing and a considerable body of legislation and other work is awaiting completion in the Dáil.
The political options are constrained by the onset of the Christmas period. It is essential that the Dáil should now set about getting replies to the outstanding questions about the Whelehan affair, and thus allow the parties in the House to determine whether an alternative Government can be formed or whether a general election will be required to resolve the crisis.
I said yesterday that a general election may now be the only way of resolving this crisis. I still believe that this is the most realistic assessment of the situation, but there is clearly an obligation on the parties in the House to examine all the options and particularly to establish whether, in the current circumstances, an alternative Government can be formed without a dissolution of the Dáil.
If it is established that there is a genuine possibility of such an alternative Government being formed, my party will enter into negotiations in a constructive manner. Our aim would be the formation of a three party Government, which would implement a left of centre programme. As I told the House on 22 November, we will enter any such negotiations as an independent party, with its own policies and with a set of key requirements which we would seek to have implemented by a new Administration.
Our approach would be to seek a genuinely reforming Government which would put people first. It would be based on four key elements, namely, institutional reform to bring about greater openness, accountability and public participation in public life; a national crusade to tackle unemployment which would mobilise the institutions of the State and the economy to that end; an all-out assault on poverty and the causes of economic alienation in society; and, as all parties are agreed, on full support for the Northern Ireland peace process based on the Downing Street Declaration and continuation of the work of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
My understanding is that the negotiations between Fianna Fáil and Labour, which have now foundered, were based on the premise that the outgoing Government was a good one, that the problem was a breakdown in trust and that the Programme for Government was sound and would require little renegotiation. I do not accept either of these propositions. I do not want to go over all of the failures of the outgoing Government, but I want to refer to one measure taken by the previous Government which has turned out to be a disaster.
Whatever new Government emerges from the present political crisis must review the measures introduced in the last budget providing for the taxation of unemployment benefit, as they are now resulting in people who find work and leave the dole queue being financially worse off.
The new measures are penalising casual and seasonal workers, and married women are particularly badly hit. When these measures were introduced earlier this year I warned that they would lead to considerable hardship for the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society, but their full extent is only now being felt.
My colleague, Senator Joe Sherlock, told me yesterday of a woman in his area who has been offered a job from 1 January next, which she is anxious to take. The gross salary for this job is £110 per week. That woman has been in receipt of unemployment benefit of £74.20 for the past six months. As a result of that the £1,929 she got in unemployment benefit will be regarded as taxable and before she starts work she will owe £666.25 in tax. Her prospective employers have told her that under the regulations on taxation and social welfare, this will have to be clawed back at the rate of £51.25 per week. For the first 13 weeks of her employment there would be a weekly tax clawback of £51.25, a weekly tax of £43.39, and she would pay £8.40 per week in PRSI, making a total deduction of £102.04 per week. That would leave her with a net sum of £7.96 out of a gross pay of £110 per week. The taxation of unemployment benefit in this way is wrong in principle. The way it is being imposed penalises those who get jobs and is ludicrous. The Government claims to want to end income and poverty traps; instead, they are creating new ones. This ludicrous position must be ended and the taxation of unemployment and disability benefits lifted in the next budget.
I do not regard this caretaker Government as having the power to make decisions on appointments or the spending of moneys unless done with the authority of this House.
I wish to refer to the way the peace process has been abused by the Fianna Fáil element of this Government. The Taoiseach quoted today from the Belfast Telegraph which stated that it would be a disaster if he were to be removed. Would the acting Taoiseach confirm — as I have been informed — that senior people in the Fianna Fáil Party were requested to make contact with republican and loyalist organisations in Belfast requesting them to make statements to the effect that if Deputy Albert Reynolds had to resign it would be bad and a disaster for the peace process?
