This debate is now into its final stages and because I feel that almost everything that can or needs to be said about the general principles of this Bill has been said already, I do not intend to repeat or rehash the arguments of the past week. My comments will be brief and, I hope, to the point.
The Bill which we now have before us is a better Bill than that which left the Cabinet table. I believe the two major Fine Gael amendments accepted by the Government in the Dáil have strengthened and improved the Bill considerably. I welcome the review clause and, in particular, the assurances of the Taoiseach that the Government intend, and are determined, that this legislation will be effective and the assurance that, if it is not, necessary steps will be taken to make it so and in particular that the workings of this Bill will be reviewed in both Houses at the end of its first year.
I welcome also the new safeguards surrounding the role of the Attorney General. I do not believe that the Attorney General relishes the onerous and awesome responsibilities which this Bill shoulders him with. The discharge of these functions will require from the Attorney General and his successors, if the Bill is still on the Statute Book, courage and judgment. It is vital that the Attorney General should be insulated from any untoward pressures or from representations of any sort. The amendments in the Bill now ensure that this will be the case.
I should say, of course, that we still believe the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions would be a better office to discharge this function. It appears to be the view of the Government that the Attorney General is preferred. There was no agreement amongst the other Opposition parties that the Director of Public Prosecutions was preferable to what they were proposing. There was no agreement. It now looks as if the Attorney General will fulfil this role. His office needs to be protected and insulated. The discharge of the task will require judgment and courage; given the personality of the incumbent and the tradition of that office I believe he will rise to the requirements.
The worst fate which could befall this legislation is that it could become ineffective because of a continuing series of constitutional challenges. I believe that such challenges are more likely than not. We could find ourselves in a prolonged Limbo with the Act on the Statute Book but where it is not effective and cannot be put into operation. For that reason I earnestly hope the President will refer the legislation to the Supreme Court as a matter of urgency.
Doubts have been expressed about the constitutionality of the role of the Attorney General. These doubts have come from learned sources whose good faith cannot be doubted. For that reason it is vital that the constitutionality of this Bill be settled in the most authoritative way possible, that is, in the Supreme Court and that this be done as a matter of urgency. Clearly, under our Constitution, the President has sole discretion in this matter.
I note that an amendment in the names of Senator Philip Hogan and myself, which in effect would urge the President to exercise this role, has been disallowed by the Cathaoirleach this morning. Nonetheless while I accept that under the Constitution the President has sole discretion in this matter—it is one of the few areas where he has sole discretion—I contend we are not trespassing on his discretion in urging him to use his prerogative in this way.
It is open to the Government to request him to refer the Bill to the Supreme Court, as I believe was the case on a very tricky matter of landlord and tenant law two or three years ago, when the President did refer the legislation to the Supreme Court and when parts of it were found to be unconstitutional. The advantage of that is that, at this early stage, any constitutional imperfections will be discovered. If it is unconstitutional it is struck down without leading to a whole series of challenges in the courts which could be found to be unconstitutional or which could lead to delays of some great length and which would create an air of confusion.
One aspect of this legislation which emerged publicly in the past couple of days only — yesterday specifically — was that in regard to the practical worries expressed in a very frank and forthright interview on the RTE radio programme "This Week" with the British Ambassador, Mr. Fenn. It is unusual for a diplomat to be as open and specific as was the British Ambassador though it is entirely proper that he speak in this way. On a matter like this I believe his intervention is welcome. It does at least let us see what is the thinking of the other sovereign State involved, or which would be involved, for the most part, in this process.
The British Ambassador raised questions yesterday on which I would like to have the thinking of the Minister and his Department. One question related to the difficulties in practice of the working of the legislation. Apparently, his feeling is that the process is or will be cumbersome, that the timescale within which it will operate will be too short. The problem was outlined as follows: a person is arrested, there are then 48 hours within which a warrant can be endorsed and served. At present that warrant would come down from Belfast to Dublin, it would be signed by the Garda Commissioner, or a senior Garda officer, and served. It is a reasonably straightforward process, although — as we have seen in recent weeks — not all that straightforward, not all that foolproof. In the new circumstances, as described yesterday, all prosecution papers would go first to a Northern Ireland court, a warrant would be issued, the papers would have to be read by the Attorney General in London. He would then have to provide papers and send a certificate to our Attorney General. Apparently that would be done through the diplomatic channels — London to the British Embassy in Dublin, to the Department of Foreign Affairs, to the Attorney General, who would then tell the Garda Commissioner if the warrant could be served. As this process is seen by the British authorities, it is a cumbersome one. It could lead to circumstances in which one or other Attorney General would not be easily available, where difficulty could be encountered in getting the relevant paperwork across to London, back to Dublin and so on. Therefore, there is a worry. I do not know how valid it is. But, since it was expressed publicly yesterday and obviously is causing concern I would be interested to hear the views of the Minister on the practicality of the new arrangements given that extradition is rarely a neat black and white, open and shut operation; there can be delays, there can be difficulties. There could be fog at one of the airports which could lead to delay in getting the papers over and so on. I should be interested to know whether the Minister foresees any difficulties in relation to this matter.
There is one disquieting feature of this whole debate that is taking place in this House, and that has taken place in the other House and in the public press generally, that is, the generalised lack of confidence in the British legal system as it affects Irish nationals. Virtually every speaker in either House has referred, in one way or other, to what now amounts to an almost national consensus on the lack of confidence which ordinary fair-minded Irish people seem to have in the British system of justice as it affects Irish people. Over the last few days some things were said in both Houses which were extreme, excessive and perhaps, on reflecting, offensive about a legal system in which very many fair-minded British people take what objective viewers would see as a reasonable pride. However, I believe that the views expressed in both Houses reflect, rightly or wrongly, this generalised, almost universal, view held here. It is a view which offends many fair-minded British people who wish this country well. But it is a fact. How to change that view, how to change whatever reality may underlie it is a major problem for the British Government but also a problem of perception which people who want to see genuinely better relations between our two countries must address.
I have two further final points. If there is one lesson to be learned from the whole extradition process over recent years it is the absolute need for common sense and basic competence in the carrying out of the process. Over recent years we have seen one fiasco after another when, invariably, the fault lay in slipshod, careless work on the British side, when there was a basic lack of understanding of the way in which Irish courts operate, an inability to accept that Irish courts are independent of the Executive, indeed frequently a carelessness which was mind-boggling in simple matters, such as accuracy in the filling in of documentation. Invariably, when that happened, we had a position in which the British media, or the worst elements in the media, turned in full cry on this country, on our courts, our judicial system, on our political process. As I said earlier, some of the things said in both Houses and in our media here about the British system of justice have their parallel in the patronising, insulting and offensive way in which the institutions of this country and the bona fides of our political leaders have been dragged through sections of the British gutter press on this matter over the years. What we need, most of all, in the carrying out of the extradition laws and processes, is basic competence, basic common sense, a climate of courtesy and communication prevailing between the relevant officials, so that difficulties can be sorted out before they become a matter of public controversy so that the good faith of each side can be accepted and leakages of untrue or harmful reports to the papers will not inflame the position out of all proportion.
The penultimate point I would like to make is that, to put the whole question of extradition in its proper context, extradition is and should only be the first stage in a process whereby somebody who has a case to answer is brought to answer that case in a court of law with the full due process of law. It is only the beginning of that process. Yet over the years, we have been told time and again by senior members of the RUC, by Loyalist politicians and by sections of the British media that extradition was itself virtually an answer to our problems. We were told that if only there was a proper effective extradition process in action then all sorts of miscreants and people who were fugitives from justice could be brought to trial.
The point that was missing in all of that was of course the question of evidence. We have seen where extradition did work that where very little evidence was available to back up the charges people rightly, given the state of evidence, walked free. The absence of what is seen as an effective extradition process has been a great excuse over the years for a police force which did not have and was not going to get proper evidence. It was an easy insult to hurl at the Garda and the authorities in this part of the country. It was easy to say we were a haven for terrorists when the people who were making these charges knew full well that the evidence did not exist upon which charges could be made. Indeed, it is very tempting to think over the years that if there was sufficient evidence and if the authorities did want to make their case then they could very easily have availed of the procedures under the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act, 1974, whereby these people could have been tried in courts in this jurisdiction.
After this legislation is passed and after the President has cleared its constitutionality with the Supreme Court and the processes are working, I hope that the easy jibe or the recourse to the excuse that if only there was extradition will disappear, and that the process will be seen for what it is — the first step in a process which brings a person to answer a case before a duly constituted court of law.
The final point is to go back to fundamentals. We in Fine Gael did not think this Bill was necessary. We felt that the administrative safeguards which were involved in the 1987 Act were sufficient. However, we recognise two things. We recognise the very real sense of unease which many people had in this country that the extradition process needed to provide greater safeguards than appear there at present. The unease may be real; it may be exaggerated, but that it existed cannot be doubted. This Bill goes a considerable way towards meeting that sense of unease. We also recognised that the whole question of extradition constituted a major crisis internally for Fianna Fáil.
I believe that the debate of the past 10 days and the national debate on extradition have been an important educational process for many people in this country. For the first time there has been a debate at an informed level, where there was a willingness on the part of the Government to listen to reasonable amendments put forward in a constructive way. I believe we are seeing a Bill which I did not think was necessary but now that it is here it is going through and it will be a better Bill at the end of its passage through both Houses. Most important of all, the passage of this legislation allows us to focus on the much wider context in which all of this has taken place, that is, the process established by the Anglo-Irish Agreement. We can ensure from this point on that we concentrate our efforts on seeing that that process works and works effectively.
