Mary Lou McDonald
Question:8. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when Cabinet committee G, justice and equality, last met; and when it is scheduled to meet again. [37664/18]
View answerTuesday, 16 October 2018
Questions (8, 9)
Brendan Howlin
Question:9. Deputy Brendan Howlin asked the Taoiseach when Cabinet committee G, justice and equality, last met; and when it will next meet. [39904/18]
View answerOral answers (23 contributions)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 8 and 9 together.
Cabinet committee G was established in January this year to provide for political oversight of developments in respect of justice and equality issues, including implementation of the Government's programme of reform for the justice sector. There have been two meetings of Cabinet committee G since: one on 18 January and one on 16 April. The next meeting of Cabinet committee G will be held later this month, when the Minister for Justice and Equality will be in a position to bring to us his response to the recommendations of the O'Toole commission. The work of the committee is informed by recent reports of the effectiveness and renewal group, ERG, the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland, the O'Toole commission, and the Charleton tribunal, which published its most recent report this week.
Several important steps have been taken to reform the justice sector. Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll has been appointed as Secretary General of the Department and a new management team is now in place, as recommended by the ERG, which I know has a different meaning in the neighbouring state. It is clear from the group's second report that the building blocks highlighted in the first report have been established and that a strong start has been made to implementation of the necessary reforms. The third report of the group will be submitted to the Government by the end of the year.
The report of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland was published on 18 September. As I mentioned, a high level implementation plan will be brought to the Cabinet committee with a view to it being taken to the Cabinet for approval in December.
The conclusions made in the Charleton report published last week will also inform the development of the implementation plan. They will also be taken into account in the Department of Justice and Equality's restructuring plan.
I thank the Taoiseach for his response. To respond to his previous contribution on Sinn Féin's financing, he has his desired result because journalists are-----
I ask the Deputy to stay on the matters raised.
I believe I have the floor and the freedom to speak unfettered. By all means, Fine Gael should organise in the North, but the Taoiseach already knows that.
The key finding of the Charleton tribunal is that Sergeant Maurice McCabe has again been vindicated. Mr. Justice Charleton has found that he was "repulsively denigrated for being no more than a good citizen and police offer." We owe Sergeant McCabe a huge debt of gratitude. He has done an enormous public service, as the Taoiseach has acknowledged. Mr. Justice Charleton has established that the then Garda Commissioner undertook a most disgraceful attack on Sergeant McCabe, aided and abetted by the then press officer Mr. David Taylor. As the Taoiseach knows, there is a lot of anger at the fact that it looks likely that Mr. Taylor will be able to retire on a full pension and with full entitlements and, it seems, without being subject to disciplinary proceedings, despite the findings against him. Does the Taoiseach agree that we need to look at a mechanism to appropriately sanction those who have been found by the tribunal of inquiry to have acted in the most appalling fashion?
I wish to ask the Taoiseach about the report on the future of policing. In his initial reply he has given us the sequencing as he sees it. There is a divergence in the views taken by some members of the commission on the internal governance remit, which some members, including Mr. Eddie Molloy, with whom many of us are familiar and have worked for many years, believe must be separate from the structure of An Garda Síochána. I agree with this view. Has the Taoiseach or the Government taken a view on the recommendations of the oversight board of An Garda Síochána, the new independent complaints body that would supersede GSOC, and the new body to replace the Policing Authority and the Garda Inspectorate, the policing and community safety commission? At the heart of all of the issues of policing in recent decades has been the lack of a separate and independent oversight body. The Policing Authority is relatively new, but it has done a good job to date.
I would be very concerned if its functions were to be subsumed back into a committee surrounding a Garda Commissioner. Such a measure would indicate that we are moving back to the kind of internal system that has led to serious problems in the past. I would be interested to hear the Taoiseach's personal views on this, if he has had a chance to form them. Should we have a debate on these matters? They are at the kernel of ensuring we have effective oversight of policing into the future.
It has been quite striking that the Government's response to the Charleton report has focused on the political domain-----
It has not, actually.
-----rather than on the shocking-----
Quite shocking.
-----campaign of slander against an Irish citizen by the head of our police force. The extraordinary conclusions reached in the Charleton report are quite shattering and go to the core of our justice system. If we are honest, none of us could have comprehended that such a thing could happen. The overwhelming majority of the report focuses on that matter and on the failures of our national child protection agency, particularly the shocking manner in which it treated the McCabe family when it failed to deal with a report of rape and sexual abuse that had been completely falsely attributed to Mr. McCabe. It is quite shocking that this was left in the north-eastern police division for three years without being corrected. I think those two issues go to the core of what has emanated from Charleton so far.
I accept that the Taoiseach and others have a position on the former Tánaiste. He believes she was grievously wronged and should still be in the Cabinet. She is not still in the Cabinet. The fundamental point is that Deputy Fitzgerald claimed at the time that she had no knowledge of events of which it turned out she had clear knowledge. That was the problem. If questions that were tabled in the Dáil had been answered properly, transparently and honestly, we would not be where we are. The Taoiseach will recall that he admitted to the Dáil that it had been misled and he apologised for that. Is it now his position that it is okay for Ministers to fail to give accurate information to him or to the Dáil? The trawl that was initiated by the Taoiseach on foot of the failure to answer questions in this House led to the discovery of emails that we would never otherwise have found out about and Mr. Justice Charleton would not otherwise have received. There is nothing personal in any of this. Dáil Éireann holds Ministers to account. That is its fundamental role. As the Taoiseach knows well, the reasons I have given led to the resignation of the former Tánaiste. The issues in question were not explicitly addressed by the tribunal.
That is wrong.
Most of the people who are baying at the Opposition today accepted last year that the resignation in question was regrettably necessary. The shambolic manner in which this was treated over four or five weeks is a textbook illustration of how things should not be done. That is why a group was formed to oversee the reform of the Department. At the time, the Taoiseach expressed enormous frustration about having been given wrong information, which he then had to give to the Dáil and so on and so on. I think that is something that has to be put on the record from the perspective of the Opposition. The Opposition lost confidence. This is a political domain. That is the issue.
On behalf of the Government and the House, I thank Mr. Justice Charleton and the members of his team for the work they did on the disclosures tribunal. I think it is a really good report. The tribunal did its work in an expeditious amount of time. Mr. Justice Charleton's findings are eloquent. My first response today, which is the same as my first response last week, is to thank Maurice McCabe. I have always believed that he is a distinguished public servant. I hope the report will give him and Lorraine and their family some comfort into the future. Sergeant McCabe was in touch with me over the weekend to thank me for my support of him. I was in touch with him again to express my view that he has done enormous service to the State and to wish him and Lorraine the best into the future.
The Government's response to the Charleton report has to be about Tusla and about Garda reform. The Minister, Deputy Flanagan, is very much leading up our whole programme of Garda reform. A new Garda Commissioner is in place. He will be enabled to bring in a new management team around him. We now have additional resources for the Garda. There is more money and more equipment. There are more gardaí. We have a plan, as set out by Kathleen O'Toole in her commission report. We are very determined to follow through on what has been recommended by Mr. Justice Charleton.
The same of course applies to Tusla. The tribunal was extremely critical of Tusla's engagement with it. We discussed this at the Cabinet today. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, has written to and spoken with the chair of Tusla to express her concerns regarding the adverse recommendations and commentaries in respect of Tusla. She will meet the board of Tusla shortly to underline the need to deal with these issues and the other serious shortcomings that have been identified in the report with regard to Tusla. We believe the apology that Tusla has made to the McCabe family is the very least that can be expected. We will need to see more done to improve the situation at Tusla.
As I have said, the Government intends to respond to the Charleton report by introducing further Garda reform and by helping to fix Tusla. I believe Members of the Oireachtas need to respond to the report as well. In relation to Keith Harrison, a number of Members of this House raised false allegations in this House and in doing so gave them credibility. Those allegations were taken up by the media, which took them to be true even though they were not. That caused a lot of damage and a lot of hurt to some innocent gardaí and eventually cost the State a lot of money. The point I would make about this section of the tribunal is that some Members of this House need to correct the record with regard to what they said about Keith Harrison.
An allegation was made by a party leader that the former Garda Commissioner, Nóirín O'Sullivan, was part of a conspiracy to smear Maurice McCabe.
That is not true.
We know the tribunal found that not to be the case.
That is not true.
I was not referring to the Deputy.
On a point of order, if the Taoiseach was referring to me, it is certainly not true.
I was not referring to the Deputy.
The Taoiseach should have made that clear.
I was not referring to the Deputy. I believe the comments in question should now be withdrawn from the record of the House. While the former Garda Commissioner, Nóirín O'Sullivan, did not do everything right, the tribunal has clearly found that she was not part of such a conspiracy. I believe that allegation should be withdrawn and the record should be corrected.
Who made the allegation?
The central charge that was made against Deputy Fitzgerald - that she was aware of the alleged legal strategy of the former Garda Commissioner and that she failed to act on it - was also false. Mr. Justice Charleton has found in his report that Deputy Fitzgerald's response to that information was considered, appropriate and correct. He has found very much in her favour in that regard. He has also found that she resigned selflessly to prevent this House and this Government falling and to avoid a general election. All I would ask of Deputies is to do what I had to do during that period. When I was given inaccurate information during that period, I came in here and I did the decent and right thing by correcting the record of the Dáil. All I would ask of the Deputies opposite is to do the decent thing by coming into the House to correct the record regarding the false allegations made by Keith Harrison, the false charges against Nóirín O'Sullivan and the unfair allegations and accusations made against Deputy Fitzgerald.