I have the greatest respect for the Chair's conduct of affairs in this House. I will submit to your ruling, but I do so under protest, because in my view the whole question of the State taking a hammer to crack an alleged nut of untruth becomes ludicrous when viewed against the background of the fog of duplicity and deceit, of fraud and betrayal, of allegation and counter allegation, that the people have had to look at in the last year and a half. If anyone were to cite as authority for any proposition the fact that the Minister had given the information in reply to a question in the Dáil, he would be thought very naïve to believe it on that authority alone.
The Tribunal set up by resolution of this House and of the Dáil functioned well, so far as my information goes, and so far as its strictly judicial or quasi-judicial operation was concerned. I have heard complaints that individual members of the Tribunal treated individual witnesses with something less than the respect they felt was due to them, but reading the report of the Tribunal, and comparing it with my impression of the evidence, I do not complain, and I cannot complain about the material conclusions which the Tribunal reached.
It is only fair to say that from whatever contact I have with the people concerned with this programme, and I am not in any sense hand in glove with them, from my small contacts with them, my impression is that they recognise that this programme did contain faults. They recognise that it fell short, in the way in which it was prepared, of the perfect standard, and I think they frankly admit they have learned something—though they have learned it the hard way, a way in which I think very few of us would like to have to learn a lesson.
At the same time, the question arises whether the Act under which this Tribunal operated is a satisfactory Act and whether the kind of Tribunal which we get under it is satisfactory in a case of this kind. I have heard it said, and I share this point of view, that it might have been more satisfactory had the tribunal consisted not simply of three judges, although the conduct of the judges individually and collectively, so far as I am aware, was irreproachable, but of one judge and two lay assessors—for example, in this instance a journalist and a social worker. Because it can happen, and this case is a good instance of this, that a matter is being investigated by a judicial tribunal in which the issues at stake are ones which arise from a sphere of life which makes judges, by their nature—I make anyone who wishes a present of this, though the Labour Party are not here to exploit it—and by the social background from which judges are normally drawn, not unfitted but perhaps less than perfectly fitted, on which to give a convincing judgment.
The social problem which moneylending represents, and the existence of which, as a result of the Tribunal's work, has now been publicly recognised, might have been better ventilated, might have been better understood, and what the television team were trying to achieve might have been better understood, had the Tribunal, in this instance, been constituted in the way I suggest.
The present Minister in introducing his Estimate in the Dáil recently referred to the findings of the Tribunal, and I say in fairness to him that he did not go in for the kind of overkill which other Ministers, past and present, might have been tempted to try. He spoke in moderate terms of the Tribunal's findings and he did not unduly flog the media people who were affected by its findings. But the Minister left out something which was, I think, important. He left out from his speech—he may have been trying to compress his remarks in order to save time—a couple of important things, namely, that three separate allegations or insinuations which formed part of Deputy Ó Moráin's reply to Deputy Corish's question on 19th November, 1969, had been found by the Tribunal to be without foundation.
While I have no wish to flog Deputy Ó Moráin any more than a dead horse, I must point out to this House that the nastiest allegations made by Deputy Ó Moráin were precisely the ones which were found by the Tribunal to be untrue. The Tribunal found, and its finding can be seen in paragraph 93, that no actors were employed in the making of this programme. They found, and I refer to paragraph 53 of its report, that there was no such thing as stoking up with drink the participants in this programme. There was one instance, the Tribunal said—and I am sure the team accept it—where a person was allowed to be interviewed and was photographed during interview in a condition in which he ought not to have been photographed because he had too much drink taken, but the insinuation contained in Deputy Ó Moráin's reply clearly conveying that drink was given in order to loosen up the tongues or to extract statements from people which otherwise might not have been available, was in the Tribunal's view without foundation.
The implication equally clearly to be read from Deputy Ó Moráin's reply that people taking part in the programme had been paid to say things, was found to be without foundation. The Tribunal did say that they were satisfied that some people would not have taken part in the programme had they not had the prospect of being paid to take part in it. That is a very different thing from the allegation which Deputy Ó Moráin made, which was to the effect that the money they were getting was in consideration of their saying a particular thing—in other words, that they were being suborned by money into an untruth which would be publicly relayed. The tribunal did not find that allegation, that insinuation, substantiated.
Moreover—this is perhaps not a solid point, not quite so substantial a point, but it is worth making all the same—any moneylenders named as such on that programme were shown to be moneylenders, or to have been moneylenders, and many of them were already known to the Garda.
Finally, in regard to the discrepancy between Deputy Ó Moráin's onslaught on the television team and what the Tribunal subsequently found, it is worth pointing out this. Deputy Ó Moráin described this programme as a phoney programme. The reference is volume 242 of the Dáil Debates, column 1269. Deputy Ó Moráin said:
I do not think it will help to deal with the abuse by putting on what appears, at all events, on the existing evidence to be a phoney programme.
Now, Deputy Ó Moráin is a lawyer and he instinctively protected himself, I suppose, as I would or any of the Fianna Fáil lawyers would, by inserting the phrase "on the existing evidence, at all events".
The fact is that the Garda investigations into moneylending were not completed for at least a fortnight after Deputy Ó Moráin made this statement. The appendix in the Tribunal's report which sets out the Garda activities in the various divisions of the Dublin area shows that these inquiries into the existence or non-existence or prevalence or degree of widespreadness of moneylending was still continuing into early December, although Deputy Ó Moráin felt free to describe that programme on the 19th November as phoney.
I have said already that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, not intentionally, perhaps may have wished not to spend too much time on the "Seven Days" issue. But since he did take the trouble to mention it, and since he did take the trouble to refer to the Tribunal's finding that the programme in some respects was not authentic, I think he might have taken the trouble to say also that Deputy Ó Moráin's attack on it was not authentic either— that Deputy Ó Moráin's attack, in particular the nastiest part of the attack, was shown to be without foundation, by what the Tribunal established.
The question of the Garda is, of course, the most sensitive question in this matter. If I were a member of the Garda I should be very unhappy at finding the allegation made on television that the force of which I was proud to be a member was said to be lax in pursuing this serious crime and social evil. I would be very unhappy indeed, and I can understand entirely— and I approve entirely of—the action of various Garda officers immediately after the programme was shown in contacting each other, and contacting the men under their command, to see what the situation really was and if the programme had exaggerated the matter. However, I must add that I understand that the Garda themselves were invited to take part in the making of this programme, and that they declined to do so. I understand further that the Garda always decline to take part in television programmes. It cannot be because they have any idea that it would be a sinister thing for a man in uniform to appear on the screen, because they have their own programme, "Garda Patrol", and a good programme it is, and a valuable programme. However, I understand that the policy of the Garda, re-enunciated only very recently according to my information, is not to take part in any shape or form in the making of any ordinary television programme.
Although I am not in any way hand in glove with the television people, the impression which I get is that if the Garda had consented to take part in, or to collaborate in, the making of this programme a lot of trouble might have been avoided, and a lot of the exaggeration which the Tribunal established would have been cut short. It is not for me to advise the Garda on their policy in this respect—they may have good reasons for not allowing their members to collaborate in the making of television programmes—but it seems to me that if they are invited to help, or to comment, and they refuse to do so, in a sense they are asking for trouble, if they subsequently are unjustly held up to public odium, or if a mistake is made in regard to their activities. I do not want to lecture the Garda in any way. I do not understand their problems. No doubt they have their own reasons. However, it seems to me that you cannot have it both ways. If you stay away from the media people, if you do not tell them anything and do not collaborate with them, you are running a clear risk that you will be misrepresented by them, if not deliberately, then certainly by mistake, or innocently.
There are three more points that I want to make in regard to the findings of this Tribunal and the circumstances from which the inquiry arose. First of all, it seems to me that the State has entirely the wrong approach towards dealing with statements made, or representations communicated, through television or radio. I have said this before in this House and elsewhere and it has been the subject of frequent comment, that the normal way in which a Minister, or anyone on the Government side—and possibly, if we drew that much water, anyone on the Opposition side—interferes with a television programme is to take up a telephone and ring someone. That is wrong.
Through representations from the then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Deputy Hilliard, in 1960, the Oireachtas passed the Broadcasting Authority Act, section 31 of which specifically entitles the Minister either to direct the authority in writing to refrain from broadcasting something, or to direct the authority in writing "to allocate broadcasting time for any announcements by or on behalf of any Minister of State in connection with the functions of that Minister of State", and the authority, states the section, "shall comply with the direction". That section is copied, nearly word for word, from the corresponding section of the English Act. Like a great deal of our legislation, we go to the hated English for the guidelines when we find that the need catches up with ourselves. That section has been on the Statute Book for 11 years and it has never yet been used. We know that television programmes have been stopped. A programme on the Special Branch was stopped; a programme on planned development at Mount Pleasant was stopped, but not via section 31, which is the means the Oireachtas intended to be used in order to stop a programme.
It is not so much stopping a programme that I have got in mind as rebutting falsehoods in a programme, or what the State or a Minister takes to be a falsehood. I could see no objection in the world to the Minister writing to the television authority and saying: "We believe that such-and-such a programme has conveyed a serious and misleading and damaging impression, that is likely to undermine confidence in the Garda, or the judges, or some other institution of State which we think is important, and we want you to allocate ten minutes of time for a Minister, or someone delegated by a Minister, to rebut this allegation."
I know that this could be overdone and I am not hoping in any way that the day will come when a Minister will occupy the television screen for hours on end, like Dr. Castro, haranguing the people, and shoving everything else off the programme. I am not asking for that, but I could see no objection to its being done in moderation in exceptional cases. I could see no objection in the world to a Minister writing openly—that is the rub, writing, because then it is on the record—and saying: "I want an opportunity to contradict what has been said on this programme. It reflects unfairly and un-truthfully on people or on institutions under my charge and I want to rebut it." I could see no objection to that, but I see every objection to uisce faoi thalamh, such as has been employed in the past here with telephone calls. I can also see every objection to the lámh láidir, which is what the Tribunal of Inquiry represents. I cannot see why differences between the State and Ministers on one hand, and the Television Authority on the other, cannot be dealt with by means of the existing law. I have had to say that on former occasions. Perhaps the Minister, ably advised by his front bench, will be able to explain why it is that section 31, to this day, has remained a dead letter.
The second last matter I want to mention is the question of privacy, which arose in the context of the Tribunal's work. The Tribunal and the Minister showed a touching concern for privacy. The Tribunal spoke in strong language about the methods which had been used by the television team to collect information. They said that they were methods which horrified a lawyer. Of course they horrify, not just a lawyer—in fact lawyers are probably thicker-skinned than most—but they should, I suppose, horrify anybody; and I shall not defend, and I have never tried to defend even in private, the use of concealed microphones, or of telephoto lenses used in order to get shots of people, who are not, as it were, alert to the fact that they are being recorded or photographed. This matter was also mentioned by the Minister, and in the introduction to his Estimate in the Dáil he took over and repeated the point of view of the Tribunal. At column 2136, volume 251 of the Official Report of the Dáil, the Minister said:
One aspect of the "Seven Days" programme in question which disturbed many people was the use of concealed devices to record conversations and to film scenes involving certain persons without their knowledge,
and so on. The Minister also said in the following column:
The use of sophisticated modern technical devices in ways which constitute an invasion of privacy is at present engaging the attention of specialised bodies under the auspices of the United Nations and the Council of Europe. It seems probable that recommendations will be made to governments in due course for the control of the use of these devices.
I must suggest to this House that this tender concern by the State for individual privacy is another ostensible piece of concern. I do not want to wander from the subject of the debate, but privacy was a very central element in the work of this Tribunal. I should like to refer this House to an answer given in 1957 by the then Minister for Justice, Deputy Traynor, to a question asked by Deputy P. Byrne on the interception of postal communications and on telephone tapping. Deputy Byrne had asked whether this practice existed in this State to any extent and if the Minister would say how often postal messages or telephone communications had been intercepted within the previous five years.
Deputy Traynor said:
The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. Interceptions are made on the authority of the Minister for Justice in exercise of a long standing power the existence of which is explicitly recognised in section 56 of the Post Office Act, 1908. Each warrant is issued on the personal authority of the Minister for Justice which is given only where the warrant is required for security purposes or for the prevention or detection of serious crime, information as to which could not be got in any other way. It is against the public interest to give figures for the number of interceptions and like all my predecessors in office I am not prepared to do so.
Now this strict reply, let it not be forgotten, was issued only a few months after Deputy Costello had been in office as Taoiseach and it is possible that the standards which he asserted, defended and maintained rubbed off on the Government which succeeded him and still were showing in 1957.
The reference is volume 164, column 711 of the Official Dáil Report. In the last year it has become obvious that no such safeguard is applied by the State in order to protect the privacy of telephone communications, whatever about postal communications. When we hear, as we have heard in recent months, not alone that there are such things as scramblers in the country which are intended to——
