Vol. 352 No. 3
asked the Minister for Justice if he will confirm that on 5 January 1983 he directed that an official investigation, being conducted since 20 December 1982, by the then Deputy Commissioner into a breach of the Official Secrets Act, should cease immediately, and if so, the reasons he issued such a direction to the Garda Commissioner.
327.
asked the Minister for Justice if he will confirm that he appointed a Deputy Commissioner to carry out an investigation which began on 30 December 1982 without obtaining the prior agreement of the Garda Commissioner.
, Limerick East): I propose to take Questions Nos. 326 and 327 together.
As the first question refers to "the then Deputy Commissioner" I should perhaps make it clear that at the relevant time there were three Deputy Commissioners in the Force.
As regards the first question, the facts are as follows. In the course of an investigation that was being carried out at my request into the allegations of improper telephone tapping, the senior Deputy Commissioner, who was the officer conducting the investigation, had occasion to interview and take statements from a number of members of the staff of the relevant section in Garda headquarters. It then came to notice that at least some of those members were being separately questioned by another Deputy Commissioner, namely the officer in charge of security. That questioning appeared to be designed to elicit whether any of the members concerned had been responsible for "leaking" information about the tapping to somebody outside the Force. The House will appreciate that those members were people whose full co-operation was being sought, in the public interest, in the main investigation.
Apart from the fact that the carrying out of two overlapping investigations was understandably causing confusion and resentment, I was not prepared to accept that an investigation of any aspect of the matter should be carried out by an officer whose own role in relation to the tapping of those two telephones was the subject of inquiry. I had a message conveyed to the Commissioner to that general effect.
As regards the second question, the answer is "no". It was the Commissioner who made the appointment in question and accordingly the question of my acting without his prior agreement did not arise. It has however been on public record all along that I asked the Commissioner to make that appointment. In the statement which I issued on 20 January 1983 concerning the tapping of the telephones of Mr. Bruce Arnold and Miss Geraldine Kennedy I said the following:
I then asked for an investigation to be carried out within the relevant section of the Garda Síochána by the senior Deputy Commissioner who was the most senior officer who had no involvement with the matter.
