Limerick East): Let me begin by thanking Senators for responding to the call to resume here this evening to discuss this urgent and important legislation. It is regrettable that a Bill of this nature has to come before the House in this way and with so little advance notice to Members but I want to assure the House that the Government consider that the circumstances are such as to leave them with no option but to proceed in the manner proposed. I would like to say that we appreciate the co-operation shown.
In the time available to me since I left the other House it has not been possible to prepare a separate statement for delivery here so I am sure the House will understand if the statement I make now is in substantially the same terms as the one made in the other House earlier this afternoon. I will of course be dealing with points arising in the debate in my reply.
The necessity for this Bill arises from a specific situation that has arisen and which has such serious implications for the maintenance of public order in this country that the Government have no option but to move with speed and decisiveness to deal with it. Information has been conveyed to me by the Garda authorities that a large sum of money which is the proceeds of criminal activity by the IRA — specifically extortion under threat of kidnap and murder — has found its way into a bank in this country and is being held to the use of and for the purposes of the IRA. In recent days it became apparent that those who are nominally the custodians of this money would find it necessary to make a very early move to transfer it. This necessitated urgent action by the Government to prevent the money becoming available to the IRA to fund their campaign of murder and destruction.
The Offences against the State Act, 1939 contains provisions which declare the property of unlawful organisations to be forfeited to and vested in the Minister for Justice but those provisions of that Act do not contain a sufficiently precise formula or mechanism by which the Minister can seize the property while at the same time giving anybody who may claim to be the legitimate and bona fide owners of it the right to have their claims determined by the courts. For this reason, the Government have decided to ask the Oireachtas for new powers — powers which will not only provide a mechanism for dealing with the instant case but which will also establish a framework for dealing with any future cases of this nature that may arise. Hence, this Bill, amending and extending the Offences against the State Acts, is now before this House.
In bringing the Bill before the House I am, as I hope the House will appreciate, necessarily constrained by security considerations from outlining to the House the full extent of the information supplied to me and to the Government. However, I believe it is both possible and necessary to give the House an indication of the nature of the evidence.
The sum of money involved is, as I have said, a large one. There are cogent reasons why I should not be specific or give even an approximate figure but, to give some idea of what I am talking about, I will say that we are speaking in terms of a seven-figure sum and I would not want anybody to infer from that that I mean the smallest possible seven-figure sum. It has already been moved across international frontiers and may, to an extent at least, have been "laundered"— to use a modern colloquial expression. Members at this point may legitimately wonder how firm is the basis for what I have said. The answer may be deduced from the following. The Garda Síochána received information of a very definite and specific character regarding the handing over, outside this jurisdiction and by people not resident within this jurisdiction, of a very large sum under pressure of Provisional IRA threats with "kidnap-related" background. The details covered the movements of the moneys from one foreign bank account to another and into the Irish banking system.
All the details, no matter how reliable the sources the Garda Síochána might have, would be taken with a due degree of caution. What seems to put the matter beyond any reasonable doubt is that, at a particular point in that series of transactions, the Garda Síochána obtained independent evidence that confirmed the accuracy, at that point, of what had been disclosed. That independent evidence is, at least in part, available to the Garda Síochána in documentary form because legal proceedings were taken by a public authority in one foreign country in relation to certain aspects of the banking transactions in that country.
I think I should make it clear to the House that I asked the Garda Síochána whether there was any possibility that the sources from which they received the details to which I first referred might have learned of those details from some foreign banking contacts or whether there was any other way whatsoever in which what I might call the two streams of information could have had a common source and were therefore not truly independent. I have been assured that no such possibility exists — that the Garda Síochána are aware of the precise nature of the contacts that made it possible for the initial information to be given to them and that the confirmation, in the sense in which I have used that term, is independent. On the information available to me, and given the assurances received from the Garda Síochána about the independent nature of the confirmation, it seems to me that the matter must be taken to be beyond any reasonable doubt.
It will be clear to everyone that, if this money were to be used for IRA purposes the consequences for human life on this island would be grave. I do not need to spell out what it would mean. In these circumstances, the Government and, I submit, the Oireachtas have a clear moral duty in the interest of the common good to intervene to stop this from happening. I believe it can be argued that there is also a legal duty to do so deriving from the Constitution itself. The Constitution, as the House is well aware, places on the State an obligation to safeguard the rights of all its citizens, to respect them and to defend and vindicate their personal rights whenever they are threatened.
I do not need to lecture this House on the evils of the IRA. I will simply recall, because it is important in the context of this Bill that I should do so, that since the IRA campaign began again in this country in the 1969-70 period thousands of people have been murdered and maimed on this island. In this part of the country 12 members of the security Forces — Garda and Army — have been murdered in the past 14 years. Millions of pounds have been taken in armed robberies. And, on top of all that, the tragic position of the people of Northern Ireland has become worse.
We now have to deal with the unusual and difficult problem of these funds. It is one for which a solution has not been easy to find. Although the 1939 Act clearly provides that the consequential effects of the Government making a suppression order against an unlawful organisation includes depriving them of property held by them, as I have said, the Act does not provide a clear mechanism whereby the Minister can take over property which becomes forfeited when the organisation is declared to be unlawful.
There is provision in section 22 which authorises the Minister to take all necessary steps including the initiation of legal proceedings to get the property into his possession but, apart from the fact that this provision is vague, it is not desirable — for reasons which I am sure the House will appreciate — for the Minister to have to initiate a court action in circumstances such as this where speed is of the essence. That is the kernel of the problem. The Bill before the House addresses itself to this problem in a direct and, I think, commonsense way. I will now deal with the main provisions of the Bill.
The effect of section 2 will be that, on production to a bank of a document signed by the Minister bearing the seal of the Minister and stating that, pursuant to section 22 of the 1939 Act, certain moneys described in the document are, in the Minister's opinion, forfeited as being the property of an unlawful organisation, the bank will be obliged to pay those moneys into the High Court as directed by the Minister. There is provision requiring the bank to notify the person, or persons, in whose name the moneys are held of their payment into the High Court. This provision is being brought in on a temporary basis only and will operate for only three months unless continued in force by Government order. The Government will be able to reactivate it but only for three months at a time. This is, I believe, an important limitation on the power of the Minister and will, I suggest, act as a safeguard.
When the moneys are paid into the High Court it will then be open to any person claiming to be the owner of them to apply to the court within six months for an order directing the High Court to pay the moneys, together with appropriate interest, to him. If the High Court is satisfied that section 22 of the 1939 Act has not had effect in relation to the moneys — this means that, subject to what is contained in section 8 of the Bill, which I will deal with shortly, if the court is satisfied that, loosely speaking, the moneys are not moneys belonging to an unlawful organisation — and if the court is also satisfied that the person claiming the moneys is the owner of them, the court will be obliged to order that the moneys be repaid to the person claiming them. In any such proceedings that might be brought, the Minister will be entitled to be heard and this will, of course, enable him to defend the action he has taken.
If proceedings are not brought within the six month period or if they are brought and are dismissed, the Minister may then apply to the High Court on an ex parte basis — this means that he will not be obliged to serve notice on any other party — for an order directing the moneys to be paid into an account for the benefit of the Exchequer. However, there is specific provision in this section for preserving the rights of any person claiming to be the owner of the moneys who does not apply within the six month period. It is open to such a person to bring an application anytime within a period of six years of the payment of the moneys into the High Court and if he can satisfy the court that there are reasonable grounds for this failure to bring an application within the six month period — he may for example have been abroad and unaware of the Minister's action — and if he also satisfies the court as to the other matters — namely that the moneys are not the moneys of an unlawful organisation and that he is the owner of them — the court is obliged to order a refund of the moneys to him. Where the High Court orders moneys to be refunded, either within the initial six months or pursuant to “late” applications, the court is empowered to award compensation to the person in respect of any loss incurred by him.
Section 5, which deals with evidence, provides that if a document is produced in court signed by the Minister and stating that moneys described in the document are — again loosely speaking — the property of an unlawful organisation the document shall be evidence of the fact. This does not, of course, mean that it is conclusive evidence of that fact but only that it is evidence and, like all or virtually all evidence, it can be rebutted.
Subsection (3) of this section will enable a party to proceedings relating to ownership of moneys paid into the High Court to apply to the court for an order directing the bank or a specified officer of the bank to produce and prove to the court documents or records in the bank's possession or capable of being produced by it relating to the operation of the account to which the moneys relate.
Section 6 is an important provision because it will have the effect of conferring full immunity on a bank for acting in compliance with a document of the Minister requiring it to lodge moneys in the High Court. The corollary of this, however, is that under section 7 if a bank fails to comply with a requirement to transfer funds into the High Court it will be guilty of a serious offence and any member of the bank's staff that is responsible will also be guilty of an offence and liable to be charged accordingly.
Finally I come to section 8. This does two things. First it removes any doubt there may be that all the property of an unlawful organisation is forfeited under section 22 of the 1939 Act and not just property held by it at the time a suppression order is made. Second, it applies section 22 — the forfeiture provision — to moneys held for the use or benefit of or for the purposes of an unlawful organisation. This widens the scope of the forfeiture provision and deals with what probably is in many cases the reality, namely, that moneys will be held by "front men" for unlawful organisations. I think that covers the main points of the Bill.
Before I conclude I want to say that the Government have not lightly brought forward this Bill and would not have done so were it not convinced that the Bill is essential and that there is no other way of dealing with the problem that now faces us. I do not deny that it is a strong measure and that the power it confers on the Minister is one that ought never to be used lightly. I can and do now give a firm assurance that I will not use it lightly but it may be more to the point if I say that I do not think that it can ever be used lightly, if only because any use of it is open to immediate challenge in the High Court and one in which the Minister of the day would face the hazard of having to pay compensation for any loss.
The provision for a confiscation or forfeiture of the property of unlawful organisations is there since 1939. To the extent to which this Bill expands its effectiveness, its main provisions are usable only for a period of three months initially and, after that, only for a limited period at a time if and as authorised by Government order. I have no evidence that would make it either necessary or appropriate for me to act under it at present except in relation to the one specific case I have mentioned but I think it right to say that the information available suggests that it may well be needed on occasion in the future though obviously, unless such a situation were to arise, within the initial three month period, it would require a Government order to authorise any ministerial action.
I commend the Bill to the House.
