If there is one area in which this Government have shown competence it is in the manner in which they can project their image to the best possible advantage and the image of each individual member of that Government. To use the Taoiseach's oft repeated phrase, now they have their hands on the loot and they are now using the resources of the State in order to project that image, using the resources of the Government Information Service to put a gloss on anything they feel or think they have done well and, to use a phrase of the moment, to cover up anything that they know they have not done well and to cover up their defects.
It will need all the resources of the Government Information Service to explain away their neglect and their incompetence in this particular instance and to explain away the neglect and incompetence of the Ministers immediately involved. I will come to that in a minute or two.
It is poetic justice that a helicopter is now at the heart of the Government's embarrassment and in the centre of their dilemma. Indeed, it was hard to blame the prison officer who observed that he thought it was the Minister for Defence paying an informal visit to Mountjoy Prison yesterday because, of course, we all know the Minister for Defence is wont to use helicopters, as somebody observed already, as other Ministers are wont to use State cars.
Having mentioned prison officers I should like to say at this stage from the knowledge I have of the incident they can be in no way to blame. First of all, they were unarmed and they were faced with men who brandished guns, or a man who brandished a gun —I do not know which—at them and I am sure that in the course of their duty they did take whatever steps they could to prevent this escape taking place.
Neither is it proper to blame the guards in any way because the guards were not there and it is on that score that I should like to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of this Government and I will come to that later also.
To repeat what I said, that the helicopter is at the centre of this dilemma, I am reminded of only last week when the Minister for Foreign Affairs deliberately misled this House as to the use of a helicopter last January when he linked the permission given for a helicopter to cross into our national territory with two other occasions when permission was given to British helicopters for purely military purposes. The purpose of the incident last January, as the Minister knew then, was purely a mercy mission, as has been pointed out, for the purposes of bringing a young student who was seriously injured in a road accident from the town of Monaghan to a hospital in the North where he would get appropriate attention.
It is poetic justice also that this incident has followed so closely on the incident of Mr. Daithí O'Connell attending and leaving the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis some weeks ago. I remember only too well how vehemently and how relentlessly the Opposition then were in their criticism of a similar incident—a number of incidents but one in particular—when the same gentleman left a meeting that he attended in a hall in Parnell Square.
I know well the difficulty that the Garda have on occasions like that when hundreds of people pour out from an assembly hall in order deliberately either to divert them or to confront them so as to facilitate the escape of a person wanted by the Garda, but we did not make any point about the difficulty that we knew the gardaí faced when Mr. O'Connell left the Mansion House where he attended the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis but it is well to recall to the members of the Government now in office and to those who sit behind them that their unjustified criticism was indeed as unscrupulous as it was unjustified.
Coming to the suggestion of incompetence and neglect, the first question one asks is: where was the Minister for Justice when this incident took place; where is the Minister for Justice now? We are told he is in Turkey celebrating, if you please, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the modern Turkish State and laying a wreath on the tomb of Kemel Ataturk. This may be all well and good for international relations but if it was necessary to send a Minister to such a function—and I question that and I will give the reasons why I question it—why not send one of the less ubiquitous and less busy Ministers to such a function, or even a Parliamentary Secretary many of whom I feel have little else to do anyway? I question the need for the Minister for Justice to represent us at this 50th anniversary celebration in Turkey. There were two similar type celebrations in this country in the recent past: in 1966, when we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising: in 1968, when we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the First Dáil. There was no Minister representing the Turkish Government at either of these celebrations. What obligation, then, did the Government feel there was on them to send an important Minister to Turkey on such a mission?
Of course, I do not wonder that no resentment might be felt by them that nobody represented Turkey or some other countries at the 1966 celebrations, because one member of this Government, the Minister for Posts and Telegraph, regards 1916 as futile and unnecessary and contributing nothing to our political development. I would not make any comment on the fact that they were not represented at the 1968 celebrations, but the fact is that I question this unnecessary gadding about by many of our Ministers. I know some of them have to go to Europe, some of them have to go to the United Nations, to Japan on industrial promotions. But we have witnessed recently two Ministers, members of the same party, being in Canada within days of each other. Surely one could have done the job of the other. We witness them travelling abroad—at this very moment the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Welfare is in Abjidan or somewhere in Africa, two weeks already, I believe.
I want to submit to the House that the continuous attendance of the Minister for Justice at his job is necessary and more particularly in present circumstances. At the time of this incident he was half way across the world. The possibility of his getting back in a day or two were very remote. His predecessor, Deputy O'Malley, with the exception of a visit to the United States which was directly concerned with the problems in Northern Ireland at the present time, was never more than three hours distance from his desk.
