asked the Taoiseach to state the date on which he was made aware that the British authorities had submitted an original warrant in the case of Mr. Anthony Duncan; to state who authorised the press briefing to the effect that the fault for the defective documents lay with the British authorities alone; to further state at what point it was noticed that the warrant was a copy and not an original; who informed the court that the document which arrived from England was the document which contained the flaw; who investigated these matters in order to reply to parliamentary questions asked first to the Taoiseach on 24 April and ultimately to the Minister for Justice, who is responsible for ensuring the proper conduct of extradition proceedings; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Private Notice Questions. - Extradition Application.
asked the Taoiseach if he will specify when he first became aware that the reason for the failure of the extradition application of Mr. Anthony Duncan lay with the Irish authorities; if he will specify when lawyers for the State in this case and the Attorney General became aware that the reasons given for the failure of the application were not valid; if he was consulted before Government spokesmen informed the media that the fault of the extradition failure lay on the British side; if he was aware such briefings were taking place; the reason he did not seek to correct the information given by Government sources to the media once he became aware of the full facts; and if he will make a full statement on the matter.
The subjects of these questions are within the functional responsibility of the Irish and British police forces and fall within the departmental remit of the Minister for Justice. It is not my function to be apprised of and accountable for the detailed operations of every Department of State.
Apart from media reports late last night, I first became aware that the reason for the failure on 13 April of the extradition application for Mr. Duncan definitively lay with the Irish authorities this morning when I received a copy of a Garda report on the matter dated 21 May. Lawyers for the State withdrew the application for extradition on 13 April after they discovered that the Garda Síochána had presented to the court an endorsed photocopy of the warrant rather than, as required, the original.
At that stage neither of the lawyers nor any representatives of the Executive knew how it had happened that a photocopy rather than the original had been presented in court, nor were they in a position to know. No submission was made by or on behalf of the State as to where the blame lay, nor did Government spokesmen inform the media that the fault for the extradition lay on the British side. That suggestion was made in open court by the solicitor for Mr. Duncan.
Following the court case the Government spokesperson on duty that weekend was contacted by a number of media representatives and asked if the Government would be commenting on the outcome of the case. He advised them that, in accordance with normal practice, the Government would not be making any statement on the case. Subsequently, he was again contacted by media representatives who told him that British sources were suggesting that responsibility for the failure of the extradition application lay with the Attorney General's Office in Dublin. He contacted the Attorney General who briefed him on the role of the Attorney General's Office in processing extradition warrants. The press spokesman then conveyed this information to the media, strongly refuting any suggestion of a failure on the part of the Attorney General's Office in Dublin.
I was not contacted by the Government spokesperson on that evening as it was regarded at that stage as a routine inquiry to which he was able to respond adequately on the basis of the information made available to him by the Attorney General. The full facts of the case only became available yesterday when the Minister for Justice received the report, to which I referred earlier, of the Garda inquiries into the case. The Minister conveyed these findings to the House at the earliest possible opportunity through a written reply to a parliamentary question and a public statement issued last night.
Observations reported to have been made by the District Court judge suggested fault on the part of the British authorities. No submissions to that effect were, however, made to the judge by the lawyer for the State. During the course of the proceedings in court on 13 April, it was noticed that the warrant produced by the Garda in court was a copy and not an original. We do not have available a transcript of the proceedings in the District Court, but I can say that the lawyer for the State did not suggest to the court that the document which arrived from England was flawed. That suggestion was first made by the solicitor for Mr. Duncan and was the subject of a subsequent observation by the District Court judge.
The question first addressed to me on this matter was transferred to the Minister for Justice because, as Deputies are aware, I am not answerable in the House for matters involving the Garda Síochána. These matters are within the remit of the Minister for Justice. The conduct of extradition proceedings necessarily involves the Attorney General, the Minister for Justice and the Garda Síochána. These different responsibilities have been specified in statutes passed by the House.
Neither I nor anybody acting on my behalf blamed the British authorities or anybody else for the failure. The Minister for Justice ordered a full inquiry into the events which led to the difficulties. The results of this inquiry became available on 21 May and were made available to the House the same day. I remind the House that Mr. Duncan is in custody, facing a serious charge under the Offences Against the State Acts, and I caution Members against saying anything which would prejudice either the prosecution of Mr. Duncan or his entitlement to a fair trial.
The sub judice rule was used previously.
The Taoiseach said he only definitively knew the position this morning. When he answered questions in the House on 24 April, did the Taoiseach know as a matter of probability that the fault lay on the Irish side?
No, obviously I did not.
When did the Taoiseach first know it was probable the fault lay on the Irish side?
I became aware definitively——
Probably.
——of the matter only this morning.
Probably.
As to what was happening in the matter, it was obvious from the earlier reply the Minister for Justice gave on 15 May that an investigation was being carried out by the Garda Síochána. No definitive finding had been made and I had no information on that. No definitive information was available until the report was presented.
Answer the question.
Answer the question.
The Opposition has wasted half a day chasing rainbows.
The Deputy was very quiet earlier.
The Deputy should be quiet now.
This is a rainbow of which the Deputy is not part.
A Deputy
He is a waster.
In chapter six of the guidelines the Taoiseach produced soon after he took office regarding the Office of the Attorney General, he stated that all important and sensitive cases, including extradition cases and cases involving minors, should be brought to the immediate personal attention of the Attorney General. Did that happen in this case? If so, and the Attorney General dealt with the file, was it not obvious to him that the warrant was a copy?
I substantially answered that question this morning when, as the Deputy will recollect, I made the point that the practice in regard to extradition cases is that the original warrant is passed from one police force to the other. A copy, not the original, is furnished to the Attorney General and the Department of Justice for their information and the exercise of their responsibilities. The Attorney General received a copy and on the basis of the material contained in it there was no problem with the details concerned with the extradition from his perspective and in respect of his responsibilities. The only difficulty was that the court was not presented with the original document. While there were plenty of copies available, the original was not. It was, as we now know, provided by the British police to the Garda Síochána.
It appears from the report presented to the Minister for Justice yesterday that while the Garda Síochána kept the copies they mislaid the original, probably, in the process of making copies. It appears that, where previously it might have been easy to distinguish a copy from the original, the copying facility is so good they made a number of copies and destroyed the original in the process with the result that when the matter was examined in court it was discovered that what they were presenting was not the original, but a copy.
That is not something the Attorney General for whom I am answerable in the House would have known about as he did not have custody of the original at any time. That was a matter for the Garda Síochána; he, simply, had access to a copy to satisfy himself of the validity of other matters affecting the extradition from his perspective.
I will call Deputies alternately in the order in which their names appear before me.
Will the Taoiseach indicate who investigated these matters in order to reply to the parliamentary questions tabled, first, to him and, ultimately, the Minister for Justice?
The only question asked of me was tabled by Deputy Harney. It related to the general responsibilities of the Attorney General.
No, both questions were tabled to the Taoiseach.
The questions transferred to the Minister for Justice were answered by her. The material would have been prepared by her office in consultation, as necessary, with the Garda Síochána and the Attorney General's office, if supplementary information was needed from them.
In the course of asking the Taoiseach a second supplementary question on 24 April I stated: "From my term of office in the Department of Justice, I know that any such tracking system would also have monitored the accuracy of documentation and so on". It is vitally important, and the duty of the Attorney General in politically sensitive extradition cases to personally monitor the accuracy of documentation to be presented to the courts.
The document was accurate. The only difficulty was that it was not the original, but a copy. There was no problem about its accuracy.
It was not accurate.
The problem was that it was a copy rather than the original. The question the Deputy is posing does not, therefore, arise.
Deputy R. Burke rose.
The Deputy will have to be brief. I said that I would be calling Deputies alternately.
There is a history of problems with so-called political and other extradition cases. The Government came to office on that basis. A system was established for monitoring and alerting.
A question, please, Deputy. This is Question Time.
The system outlined by the Taoiseach was found to be deficient by the court. In the light of the statement "from 10.55 in the morning to 1.45 in the afternoon when the court reassembled", I put it to him that the Attorney General did not do his duty in an effective manner.
I am sorry the Deputy is adopting this approach. It seems his party has some anxiety to attack the Office of the Attorney General.
Unlike the Taoiseach, I will not dump on the Garda Síochána.
A question has been asked, let us listen to the reply.
The facts of the matter were given to the House by the Minister for Justice in a written reply to Deputy O'Donnell. Unfortunately, it appears that the original document furnished to the Garda Síochána and no one else was destroyed in their custody because it was thought to be a copy. All that was retained were copies.
I do not think there is any conception of the role of the Attorney General that he is supposed to be present overseeing clerical operations in the Garda Síochána office to ensure a proper distinction is made between copies and originals. That is a matter for Garda management, not the Attorney General. I do not understand, therefore, why the Deputy is trying to bring the Attorney General's name into the matter in this way when he does not have a responsibility in the matter.
Who else is responsible?
The Attorney General does not bring it to the court.
After the Taoiseach said that he only became aware definitively of the position last night or this morning he was asked when he became aware, as a matter of probability, that the fault for this affair lay on the Irish side, but he did not answer the question. Will he answer it now and, in particular, tell us whether he knew before the Minister for Justice gave her reply on 15 May? He said this morning in reply to questions from me and others that anyone who read her reply of that date would have known what the real position was, that it was the Irish side's fault.
The Minister for Justice, in the course of a casual conversation with me at some date that I cannot remember, may have said something to the effect that "it may be that the problem is on our side".
On what date?
I cannot remember exactly when that was said to me. I cannot say whether it was before or after 15 May. It was, certainly, said to me after I gave answers in the House in April. While not saying definitively where the fault lay, I said that the Minister for Justice was investigating the matter and that I had no reason to believe at that time that the fault lay on our side. When the Minister for Justice said what I think she said to me in casual conversation the matter was the subject of investigation upon which she was to report definitively to the House. She did so yesterday. All the information was made available to the House.
She did not report to the House, rather she gave a written reply.
The definitive report from the Garda Síochána on this matter was not completed until yesterday, 21 May. It bears that date. There was no way that it would have been possible to give any definitive finding on the matter based on the Garda Síochána's inquiry until it had been completed. There was a doubt about where the responsibility lay, but it would not have been appropriate to make any definitive statement on a matter of this importance until the inquiries had been completed. As soon as they were completed that definitive statement was made.
I call Deputy Woods.
A definitive statement was made on 15 April: "The Government and Garda insist that the British authorities were responsible for the failure to secure the extradition of Mr. Durcan".
Order, I have called another Deputy who will be heard.
Therefore, the Taoiseach knew, as a matter of probability, because the Minister for Justice had told him.
The Deputy should, please, desist and allow us have an orderly Question Time.
Is the Taoiseach aware that a definitive statement was made in court as reported in The Irish Times on Monday, 15 April?
The report stated: "When the court resumed at 1.45 p.m. Ms Loftus apologised for the delay and told Judge Crowley that she now had new instructions from the Attorney General, Mr. Dermont Gleeson SC."
This is not in order at Question Time.
This is very relevant.
I am afraid we cannot change the precedent of the House as quickly as that.
The report also stated: "Ms Loftus said: I am instructed that it is now clear there is a fundamental flaw in the proceedings".
Quoting at Question Time has been deemed not to be in order by myself and my predecessors.
It is relevant in this case.
Standing Orders should be changed to permit this.
The fundamental flaw must have been known at that time.
By the Attorney General.
Will the Taoiseach accept that the Attorney General is responsible for the administration of his office as well as giving legal advice to the Government? This issue was teased out here on an earlier occasion.
Questions should not be too long.
The Taoiseach told us the Attorney General did not examine the original papers. If he did not, how could he say they were in order?
The Deputy should ask direct and relevant questions.
Does the Taoiseach consider the extradition of an Irish citizen a serious matter? Does he also consider that the request must be right in terms of the name and address of the person and the documentation and that it is a serious extraditable offence?
The Deputy has made his point. Let us conform to procedures at Question Time.
The flaw was known from the beginning.
As I said in response to the original question, it was during the course of the proceedings in court on 13 April that it was noticed that the warrant produced by the garda was a copy and not an original. That was not discovered or discoverable before then. I do not have a transcript of the proceedings of the District Court on that occasion so I cannot be definitive but I understand the lawyer for the State, contrary to the report which the Deputy quoted, did not suggest the document which arrived from England was flawed. That suggestion was first made in the court not by the lawyer for the State as Deputy Woods' quotation suggests, but by the solicitor for Mr. Duncan. The flaw — I do not believe that is the proper word — or the difficulty was not that there was anything wrong in terms of the legal information contained in the document but that instead of being the original document, it was simply a copy.
As I explained to Deputy Burke, the originals do not go to the Attorney General's office but to the Garda Síochána and stay with it until they are presented to the court. The function of the Attorney General in the matter is to look at the content as distinct from the originality of the documents. He did so competently and he was not in any way to blame for the fact that those responsible for the custody of the original document were not able to present it to the court. That was not a matter for the Attorney General——
It was.
——but for the Garda Síochána. The attempt to bring the Attorney General into the matter in this way is not warranted.
He is responsible.
Is it not the case that when a warrant is handed to the Garda authorities by an English police officer it stays in the custody of the Garda Síochána pending instructions as to whether it should be endorsed by the Commissioner and that while it is awaiting such endorsement, the day the document was received is noted on it? It must have been apparent from the Monday following this débâcle in the District Court that they could not find the original document on which they had originally written down the date it had been received and that from that day on, it was clear the original documents handed over by the British police to the Irish police were not available.
This House was entitled to be told by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice that the originals handed to the Irish police had gone missing and that the blame lay on this side of the Irish Sea. Is that not what happened? We have gone through six weeks of obfuscation and blame shifting when the Attorney General and the Minister for Justice could have told the House on the Monday following this case that the original document handed to the Irish police could not be found.
Obviously, one cannot say definitively that something cannot be found until one has looked exhaustively for it. When it was discovered that the original was not what had been presented to the court, a thorough search for the original was instituted by the Garda Síochána. It was only after that thorough search and after other possible causes of the problem had been exhausted that the Garda Síochána presented its report.
Given that individuals are involved, including members of the Garda Síochána, it is important that before a definitive report on the matter, which could reflect on individuals and how they did their work, would be presented to the House that the Garda Síochána would be thorough in its inquiries. It is as a result of its anxiety to be thorough in its inquiries that it did not complete its report and present it to the Minister for Justice until yesterday.
The implication of Deputy Michael McDowell's question is that before the report had been completed by the Garda Síochána and before we had satisfied ourselves that there was no other possible explanation other than that the document was irrevocably lost a preliminary report should have been given. From a political point of view, making preliminary leaps to judgment about matters may be satisfactory, certainly for those in Opposition, but when the Garda Síochána is carrying out an important investigation concerning its internal procedures and the adequacy of the application of those procedures by its members, it is important that it be thorough. Because the investigation was thorough, it was not completed until yesterday. Therefore, the Minister for Justice could not report on it to the Dáil until then——
The Minister knew the probability.
——which she did. The matter rests there.
One round of questions should suffice in this instance since we have been dealing with the matter for more than half an hour.
Will the Taoiseach agree that extradition matters involving minors are equally sensitive and important? Does he recall seeking the resignation of an Attorney General in respect of a case which it was agreed by everybody in the House the Attorney General had not personally dealt with? In the interests of political consistency does the Taoiseach recall seeking the resignation of a Government——
I dissuade the Deputy from going back to history.
For the purposes of political consistency I seek to ask the Taoiseach——
Let us deal with the question before us.
The Taoiseach spoke about preliminary leaps to judgment. How does he expect the Opposition to accept the excuse he has given based on a published report, which took one month to compile, about whether there was an original or a copy of a warrant in one case while on a previous occasion he insisted on the downfall of a Government because it was unable to give full and detailed explanations about every extradition case as far back as 1965?
That should be adequate, Deputy. Let us hear the Taoiseach.
Will the Taoiseach accept that he is advancing a double standard and changing the definition of openness, transparency and accountability, on which he and every other member of the Government insisted at a time when there were far fewer opportunities to come forward with a detailed explanation?
The Deputy may not continue in defiance of the Chair.
I do not believe that any insistence or calls from me were responsible for the fall of the last Government.
I would like to quote the record in that regard.
The last Government fell because the Deputy's party has no concept of how to work with other parties.
Is the Taoiseach suggesting there will be a different standard of accountability when Fianna Fáil is in Government from that upon which he insists? This is another example of a Coalition between three parties that have no idea what standards are.
Deputy Cowen should please desist. I am bringing these questions to finality. I will hear a question from Deputy Harney or Deputy O'Donnell and a final question from Deputy Dermot Ahern.
Since I originally raised the issue, I would like to ask a brief question.
If I allow Deputy Burke to intervene we shall have another row and I will not tolerate that.
The Taoiseach said he thinks he had a conversation with the Minister for Justice, that it was a casual conversation and that he cannot remember when it took place, but that is not good enough. This is an important issue. I am aware that people are laughing, but if the Taoiseach's predecessor had stood up and said that, I know what he would have said. I ask the Taoiseach to recall when he had the conversation with the Minister about this matter. Did the Attorney General tell the Taoiseach before 24 April that the fault was on the Irish side? Did anybody from the Attorney General's office, or anywhere else, contact the Taoiseach after 13 April to say "I think we got the original document"? Did the Taoiseach believe until this morning that the fault lay with the British authorities?
I do not recollect, any more than any other human being does, exactly when casual conversations take place. The matter was under investigation at that time. The investigation was not concluded and I was not called upon to make a judgment on the matter until it was concluded. Anything the Minister for Justice might have said to me would have been related to the possibility that contrary to public comment at the time, not from the Government but from others, including the judge in the case, that the fault lay on the British side, that might not be the case. That was said to me, but it was not a matter upon which I was called to make a record or take action because the matter was under investigation. I knew that when the investigation was completed, and not before then, a statement would be made to the House, as was done, giving the full position. I repeat, as I said previously to Deputy McDowell, that it would be inappropriate for the Minister for Justice to make a preliminary statement pointing the finger in one direction or the other if she was aware that a definitive inquiry was being undertaken and was not yet complete.
Nobody is accountable.
The Attorney General knew when the case was withdrawn from court.
From the point of view of this side of the House, this procedure has been totally unsatisfactory and the answers given by the Taoiseach have raised many questions. The so-called casual conversation the Taoiseach had with the Minister for Justice related to an issue that was anything but casual in view of the fact that British officials were asked to resign as a result and that it deals with the liberty of an Irish citizen. The Taoiseach said that no suggestion came from the Attorney General's representative in the court that there was something wrong with the documentation received from the British authorities, but, according to a report in The Irish Times, that is incorrect. When and by whom were the British authorities informed initially of the net issue, not the full facts of the final report, when it came to the attention of the Irish authorities, that it was an Irish mistake?
The position in regard to the first part of the Deputy's question is as I have outlined. I do not have a transcript of the proceedings in the District Court and, therefore, I cannot make a definitive——
The Taoiseach has the report of The Irish Times, as I have.
The Deputy asked questions, let him please listen to the reply.
I have the utmost respect for court reporters and newspapers in matters of this nature.
Did the Taoiseach speak to the Attorney General?
I am answering the Deputy's colleague and perhaps he will restrain himself to allow me to do so. In preparing my reply to questions tabled in the last hour or two I have not had access in that short time to a transcript of the proceedings of the District Court, but the information I have received from the people responsible is that the lawyer for the State did not suggest to the court that the document which arrived from England was flawed. That was not her suggestion, contrary to the report that appears in the paper. I am advised that that suggestion was first made by the solicitor for Mr. Duncan and was the subject subsequently of an observation from the district justice. That is the best information I can get and to some degree it differs from the information contained in the newspaper article. I am making no reflection on the professionalism of the people who prepared that newspaper article. I am simply giving the best available information in so far as I have it in the time I have been able to assemble it on that point.
It was not possible for the Garda authorities, who were the custodians of the original warrant, to say definitively whether they had received a copy rather than the original warrant, whether they had received the original warrant and mislaid it or whether they had received the original warrant, mislaid it and it had been destroyed. It was not possible for the Garda authorities conducting the investigation to answer those three questions without going into the matter with great care.
That careful investigation was concluded only yesterday and the report from the Garda authorities, which I have here and which runs to a number of pages, was only made available to me and the Minister for Justice on 21 May. It was made available to the House in response to a parliamentary question from Deputy O'Donnell on that date. I would further say there was nothing unanticipated about this because——
The Taoiseach knew what was coming.
——in the reply of 15 May the Minister for Justice had told the Dáil that such a report was being prepared, that it was not ready but that she would be looking for it in the next few days.
The Taoiseach was not prepared to wait for a report from his colleagues.
As a result of that, it was ready in the next few days and, as a result of the Minister for Justice having said on 15 May that it would be ready in the next few days——
That is not true.
——Deputy O'Donnell, naturally enough, tabled a question for the following week in the hope that the information would then be available, and it was.
I asked a question and the Taoiseach has not answered.
A Government of double standards. Do as I say, not as I do.
Let me be heard. That disposes of questions for today.
I want to ask a brief question.
A Cheann Comhairle, I asked the Taoiseach a question and he did not answer me.
If the Deputy wants to raise this matter further, that is his prerogative.
On a point of order, I asked the Taoiseach when and by whom were the British authorities first informed but he did not answer.
The greater part of the day was devoted to this subject. I am proceeding now to information appertaining to the Adjournment debate.
The Taoiseach made it clear in this House he had no reason to believe there was any error or omission on the Irish side.
The Taoiseach should resign.