Vol. 438 No. 3
1 Mr. G. Mitchell asked the Minister for Justice the events surrounding her refusal to submit to the Government for approval the name of a member of the Garda Síochána who was recommended for promotion to Superintendent rank by the Garda Commissioner.
The Deputy will appreciate that however much I would wish to accommodate this House on this particular matter, I am constrained in discussing the events in question because they may become an issue in civil proceedings.
I can confirm that I received correspondence from a solicitor acting on behalf of one of the parties involved and I have been in contact with the Chief State Solicitor in the matter.
However, I must deal with certain comments concerning this matter which are the subject of understandable concern.
First of all, there was no question of any telephone being tapped. I am advised by the Garda Commissioner that conversations made and received on a telephone in the Garda Anti-Racketeering Unit were taped by an officer engaged in those conversations. There is nothing in law which prevents anybody from making a recording of his or her own telephone conversations and, therefore, no question of authorisation by me or any of my predecessors arose.
It would be recognised also that there are circumstances in which gardaí, for valid operational reasons, might need to tape certain telephone conversations. It would be odd to insist on a rule that the gardaí, who have the difficult job of enforcing the law, should never tape a conversation, even when there were sound operational reasons for doing so, while everybody else in society is perfectly free to tape their conversations with others, with or without their consent. I am not referring simply to 999 calls, which are taped as a matter of routine, primarily as a protection to the citizen. There can be other circumstances in which the gardaí need to have a record of conversations, where neither the accuracy nor the fact of the call can subsequently be disputed.
However, I emphasise that I am talking only of taping conversations where there are valid operational reasons for doing so.
The general public need assurance that their telephone conversations with the gardaí are not taped willy-nilly on the whim of individual gardaí. I assure the House that I would utterly reject and condemn any such practice if it were found to exist. I am sure Deputies on all sides of this House agree with me. The fact that the Garda treat it as something which may be permissible only where there is operational justification for it, is evidenced by the fact that a thorough investigation is now under way concerning the circumstances and the justification for the taping of certain conversations by the anti-racketeering unit. I have asked the Garda Commissioner to let me have a full report on this matter without delay, and if it appears that any changes in practice are required in this area I assure the House that changes will be made.
The most deeply worrying aspect of this case of course was that taped conversations were wrongfully removed from the offices of the anti-racketeering unit and passed on to a third party. This is a most serious matter and it, too, is the subject of investigation by the Garda authorities. It is beyond doubt that the public has a right to expect that their dealings with the Garda will enjoy confidentiality. We are fortunate that serious breaches of this nature by our police force are a rarity but when they occur we clearly must do all in our power to see that the culprit is found and dealt with.
People on both sides of this argument have attempted to contact me to represent their cases. I have not spoken to parties on either side and I do not represent any view or any disgruntled member or members of the Garda Síochána. Will the Minister agree that in regard to this matter there is a serious possibility that section 98 of the Postal and Telecommunications Act, 1983, was breached and that an offence was committed? Section 98 reads:
(1) A person who—
(a) intercepts or attempts to intercept, or
(b) authorises, suffers or permits another person to intercept, or
(c) does anything that will enable him or another person to intercept,
telecommunications messages being transmitted by the company or who discloses the existence, substance or purport of any such message which has been intercepted or uses for any purpose any information obtained from any such message shall be guilty of an offence.
I must dissuade the Deputy from quoting at Question Time. It is not in order.
Will the Minister agree it is possible that the Official Secrets Act has been breached since Garda records on tape have been bandied about? Will she indicate who has been tapping whom and what has been happening in the former anti-racketeering unit? Why is the Minister now telling the House that she has called for an inquiry into the matter when there has already been a Garda inquiry into the matter by the Chief Superintendent?
The Deputy raised a number of questions and I will attempt to answer them. I understand that the section of the Act to which Deputy Mitchell referred has not been breached in that this matter did not involve the interception of a call, but the taping of telephone conversations by an officer in the former anti-racketeering unit who taped telephone conversations. In relation to the supposed breaches of the Official Secrets Act, there are no suggestions, other than those made by Deputy Mitchell today, that the inspector whose proposed promotion did not proceed was involved in any breach of that Act.
I did not name anybody.
I did not mean that the Deputy accused that person of a breach of that Act.
I said a person.
Deputy Mitchell, let us hear the reply.
There is no suggestion that there was a breach of the Official Secrets Act. I became aware of difficulties in relation to this issue when a senior member of the Deputy's party contacted the secretary of my Department to give him information regarding the existence of a tape containing a number of conversations, including that of a Deputy who at the time was a member of Deputy Mitchell's party. As a result of that information, the secretary of the Department, on my instructions, informed the Garda Commissioner who instituted an internal Garda inquiry. As a result of information which has since come to light I have asked for a thorough investigation based on the facts at that time and accusations bandied about since.
I did not suggest any person may have been responsible. I asked if any persons were responsible; it may not have been the person whom the Minister suggested was responsible for distributing that tape. Does the Minister consider it ethical, if she does not consider it a breach of the law, that a Member should have his telephone conversation with a Garda officer recorded and that that recording and one of a telephone conversation with a journalist and two businessmen should be widely circulated? Moneys were paid to members of the Garda Síochána by the organisation called INFACT, which were refunded and described as expenses. To whom were those moneys paid? Were they paid to members of the former anti-racketeering unit or to gardaí brought in from outside that unit? In what circumstances were they paid? Why is it not considered unusual that these moneys were repaid? Were these moneys refunded in full?
Let us not dwell overlong on this question. We have dwelt on it for some eight minutes out of 20.
In answer to the first question, I do not consider it ethical. In relation to payments, I have to be conscious that the circumstances surrounding this whole business are most likely to become the subject of civil proceedings and I must be careful that anything I say here in no way interferes with any aspects of those proceedings. In relation to payments to the anti-racketeering unit, when that question was raised the Garda Commissioner had an investigation carried out, on foot of which he took certain steps including the transfer to other duties of all members of the anti-racketeering unit from the rank of inspector down.
May I ask——
Sorry, let us have a reply to Question No. 2.
I wish to ask one brief supplementary.
Sorry, Deputy.
I will be happy to take the time from my next question.
If the Deputy will agree to facilitate me in completing the number of questions before us I will be happy to facilitate him.
The Minister referred to the possibility of civil proceedings in this matter. Will she tell the House if there are likely to be criminal proceedings in the matter? Would the Minister agree that the taking of a phone call from a Member of the Oireachtas, then a Member of the Dáil, should be the subject of an inquiry by the Committee on Procedure and Privileges of this House?
As to whether this should be the subject of an inquiry by the Committee on Procedure and Privileges, that is a matter in the first instance for that committee. I would certainly assist in any way possible with any such investigation. As to whether any aspect of the matters under discussion today will be the subject of criminal proceedings, that remains to be seen on foot of the inquiry which I asked the Commissioner to conduct on my behalf.
