When the Seanad adjourned proceedings on this Bill last week I was making the point that the Government, having committed a gigantic legal error, had an obligation to rectify the position of any citizens prejudiced by that legal error. The point has been made that nothing happened to people that would not have happened in any event, but in answer to that I said that people are entitled to expect to be dealt with, not just according to the facts of their case, but according to the law relevant to their case. Because of the legal mess that the Government's action created, there was no law for many of the people dealt with during the course of the invalid 12 months or so. The result was that a considerable number of citizens—I do not know how many—whether they be members of the force who were disciplined, or who were promoted, or members of the public, who occasionally make applications to the Garda for one thing or another, who found themselves being refused their application or, indeed, even granted the application, or citizens who were convicted in the courts, who possibly are now serving jail sentences, have all been prejudiced because the Government made a gigantic legal mistake.
The Government were also guilty of a gigantic breach of injustice against the then Commissioner, and I will deal with this matter later.
The people who have been prejudiced, by reason of the Government's action—I mean prejudiced in law and not necessarily in fact—are entitled to have their position rectified. The Government have an obligation to come out of this sordid affair with clean hands. It is not enough for the Government to come before the Houses of the Oireachtas and say: "Here is a Bill and when it is passed the status quo will be restored.” That is not sufficient. The Government must be seen to come out with totally clean hands and the only way they can do that is for them to take an initiative in searching out cases where persons were prejudiced during the term of the invalid appointment and rectifying the position so far as those citizens are concerned.
It is not enough for the Government to say in this House that they are providing the law and if any citizen feels aggrieved by what happened to him he may proceed to the courts. I submit to this House that that is not sufficient; it is putting an unfair onus on a person who may not be in a position, for financial or social reasons, to take up that onus and rectify his own position. Because the State made a legal mess it is up to it to cure the consequences of that mess and be seen by all the citizens of the country to want to come out of this sordid affair with clean hands. For this reason I urged the Minister last week to consider that proposition in the hope that he would come back to this House today and tell us that he was agreeable to it and that he was arranging for the law officers of the State to investigate these matters with a view to rectifying them.
I put forward the case, namely that the State had done an injustice in law to many citizens through the term of the invalid appointment, with total confidence in its correctness. Unfortunately, I cannot anticipate with the same confidence that there will be a similar reaction on the part of the Government. It would be out of character with the injustice that was perpetrated earlier on an individual citizen and out of character for a Government who showed themselves careless about the norms of justice and proper standards of procedure where citizens are concerned. I regret that I cannot look forward with confidence to getting a satisfactory answer to a case the correctness of which is beyond dispute. However, we shall have to wait and see if my gloomy forebodings are justified.
In the course of this debate last week it appeared, from what I read subsequently in newspapers, that the Minister was relying on what he called a "background" to imply justification for the action of the Government, and he referred to certain papers being available to me, lest my memory might be faulty. I am well aware of the background, but the difference between the Minister and myself is that I was not prepared to do other than support the head of the national police force against suborning tactics by certain elements to have him removed from office. I did not consider that this so-called background justified anything less than total loyalty to a man who was giving good service to the State, whose ideas were right and who was implementing them. The Minister, on the other hand—my successor—possibly because of constraints that preempted him, from his days in Opposition, felt that he had to treat this so-called background in a different way. Instead of giving support to a loyal servant of the State he collaborated in his subornation. The proof of that is contained in a statement in The Irish Times of 25 March 1978 where it is actually printed that the Representative Body of the Garda had written to the Minister to discharge their chief officer. That is an appalling state of affairs and it is the background to which the Minister was referring. That is a sordid background. It is regrettable that the Minister, instead of supporting the chief officer of the national police force, who has been guilty of no misconduct, to use the Taoiseach's words, chose to treat him unjustly and in an appallingly harsh way.
I want to make it quite clear that so far as background is concerned I am aware of this so-called background but it was not one that would have persuaded me to have anything less than confidence in the then Commissioner. This leads me to make one further point: to reiterate a call that I made in March of this year for the establishment of a police authority. It is important that some body should be interposed between the police force and the Minister of the day. What I said when I spoke in March of last year was that the changes that have taken place in the development of the force and the development of the relationship of the Minister with that force, now in the light of what happened over this unfortunate incident, make it imperative that there should be a police authority or an independent body. At the moment, the day-to-day running of the force is conducted by the Commissioner, but there is a constant input from the Department of Justice, there is no doubt about that. The extent and nature of that input varies from time to time. It can be influenced by contemporary events and by the personalities that happen to be present in each place at a particular time.
While the day-to-day running of the force is the prerogative of the Commissioner, it would appear that the interventions that are made by the Department are based on the legal position that the Minister has overall responsibility. The difficulty is to decide, from time to time. what is day-to-day and what concerns the Minister's overall responsibility. There is a quite understandable and proper tendency on the part of the Department to take a deeper interest in the affairs of the force than overall responsibility would involve, in order to keep their Minister right. This tendency involves interference—that is not an ungracious word—in day-to-day matters. This is a relationship which can be difficult and has led to difficulties. Many of these difficulties would be obviated by the presence of a police authority, an authority that would be appointed and be manifestly free from political influence and would operate entirely without political considerations. I do not think the overall control that must remain with the Minister would be prejudiced, or diminished, by such a development; he would retain legislative and, above all, financial control.
At this stage coming to the end of this whole sordid episode, I would plead again with the Minister to reconsider his views on the merits of establishing a police authority. I will again express regret that the Government and the Minister treated Commissioner Garvey in the fashion in which they did. His record, from the time he joined the force until he was summarily dismissed from it, was without blemish. His many positive achievements do him credit, all designed to make the force better and more efficient and, consequently, to serve the public in a better way. It is regrettable in the extreme that he was treated in this way. The fact that he has been vindicated so far—more proceedings have yet to come—has highlighted the wrongness of what the Government have done. As far as he is concerned, in the public eye his reputation stands as high as it always did and he has been totally vindicated. I will conclude by again appealing to the Minister to consider what I have said as to the necessity of the State coming out of this matter with some credit. The only way that the State can do that now is by being generous towards the people whom it has unjustly and unlawfully treated.
