I should like to say I am sorry if because of this matter the Minister has been inconvenienced; I realise that his time is valuable and that he has serious worries which many of us share. The reason which has led me to put down this motion is not my desire to make any difficulties on account of a simple slip on the part of one of the Minister's subordinates. I want to make it absolutely clear that I would detest the action of any Member of this House who would try to make political capital out of a simple human error on the part of an official who, perhaps, may be over worked, or insufficiently instructed or experienced, or who may be a victim of the kind of elements which make us all operate at less than our peak.
It is important to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the rules which the Prisons Act, 1972 contains, and contains at the instance of the Minister, were not complied with for many months. Section 2, subsection (6) states that:
where a direction is given under subsections (3) or (5) of this section that statements specifying the giving thereof and the names, the offences or the offences with which persons are charged and where appropriate the sentences of the persons concerned, shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be.
The House will recall that this was an unusual Act and an exceptional measure. It was represented to both Houses by the Minister as such, and its exceptional nature is signalised by the fact that it has a limited duration. Unlike most other Acts, it is due to expire on a given date: in 1974. The necessity for this Act, as the Minister explained —and nobody on this side of the House questioned the good faith of the Government in pressing their necessities to the point of legislation—was a serious riot in Mountjoy which meant that the prison was no longer adequate to contain the number of people there and that they had to be accommodated elsewhere. The "elsewhere" meant the Curragh. A number of them were shifted to the Curragh without legal authority, because the warrants of committal, under which they were being held, referred only to a prison and not to a military barracks. In bringing in this legislation, the Minister explained the position fairly and nn Opposition Member of the Seanad or Dáil questioned his bona fides or the emergency which had arisen.
There are several things in the Act which are here because, I presume, they were intended to act as safeguards. One of these was the subsection of section 2 which requires a statement to be laid before each House specifying the giving of a direction whereby a person is moved either into military custody under subsection (3) or out of military custody under subsection (5). During the summer I looked at the orders under the Prisons Act which had by then accumulated in the Library of the House and I found that although the first such order corresponded well enough with what subsection (6) of section 2 required, the subsequent orders did not correspond.
The first such order said that the Minister for Justice had given a direction in respect of 34 prisoners under section 2 subsection (3) which is the subsection dealing with transfers into military custody. It specified the prisoners and their sentences. The first statement made on 31st May is, I think, by and large, in order, although I am not entirely sure. There were subsequent statements on 2nd June, 23rd June, 29th June, 5th July, 12th July and 13th July which were not in order.
This may look like a technicality to Members of the House, but in fact the things lodged before this House and before the Dáil purporting to be statements laid before the Houses under subsection (6) did not specify the giving of any direction by the Minister, they simply said: "Statement pursuant to section 2 subsection (6) of the Prisons Act".
It was impossible to gather from these statements whether the prisoner concerned was being transferred into or out of military custody. The place of detention of the prisoner was mentioned at the bottom of the sheet, but it did not say whether this was the place of detention at the time when the direction was given and from which he was now going to be shifted, or the place of detention to which he was in the process of being moved. In other words, if I were relying merely on these statements in order to discover what exactly was going on in regard to specified prisoners I would not have known what was happening.
Apart from that, the form of the statements did not correspond with what the Act required, namely the specification of the direction given by the Minister; and had that statement being anything equivalent to a warrant it would not have been a lawful authority for holding a prisoner anywhere. I am not saying the statement was equivalent to a warrant, but it was a concomitant feature of legislation under which an unusual act in regard to a person's custody was being performed. I do not want to raise a scare to the effect that people were being illegally held. But the thing is sensitive, because it is too near the question of personal liberty to be treated lightly; and if the Act directs that the Minister must specify that a direction had been given, then the Act ought to be obeyed to the letter.
I am open to correction; I am sure the Minister's officials will be there to nail me if I am wrong. I put down a Motion in this House within half an hour of spotting this, and I tried then to raise it under Order 26 of the Standing Orders, and I did not succeed in doing so; but some message must have got through to the Department of Justice, because statements subsequently put in on the 31st July, 25th October and 31st October, represented a "mended hand" in some degree, because these subsequent statements said that the Minister had given the direction of the type specified and indicated where the prisoner was being brought from and where he was going to. Even these statements were defective, in that a couple of them did not conform with the requirement of the Act that the offences should be specified.
In the case of one prisoner, according to a statement laid before the House on the 31st October, he was serving a sentence in connection with an offence under the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, Part V. That might be anything, because under that part of that Act any offence can be scheduled for treatment by the Special Criminal Court, and that part of the Act itself creates a special offence in regard to failing to give an account of one's movements. There is no limit to the number of offences which that might have covered, and I find now that the prisoner concerned was convicted of offences under the Firearms Act and also of conspiracy to murder. The only information before either of these Houses was the general information which might have told you nothing but that he was imprisoned under the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, Part V.
A prisoner whose transference was stated to this House on the 31st July was noted as having committed an offence against common law. A lay man might know that there are innumerable offences against common law—for example, arson, murder or rape. That is not a specification of an offence on which anybody can be convicted; and if the Minister or myself or anybody else were indicated as having been "in breach of common law" the indictment would be held bad because it is no specific enough, nor is it specific enough for the purposes of this Act. The prisoner concerned was in fact—this is significant for the sloppy way the thing has been done—not convicted of an offence against common law alone. He was convicted also of an offence under the Vagrancy Act. Because of encounters which I have had with the Minister in the past I know he will. I do not wish to "soup up" this matter and that was not my intention when putting it down. I do not wish to pillory the slip on the part of an official who may be much overworked, and who may not attach a great deal of importance to the matter. However, before serious consideration can be given by this House the question must arise as to the legality of these transfers and if the concomitant conditions imposed on the Minister in regard to laying statements before this House had not been complied with, and also regarding the larger question of security.
The Minister's Department have mended their hand within the last 24 or 48 hours by lodging an amended statement before both Houses in which the whole matter is put right. Since 20th November, 1972, we now have a full statement of under which subsection transfers have been made, of where people were taken from, where they were brought to and what their offences were. I spotted this by accident in the Library a couple of hours ago, but without having gone through it with a fine comb I accept that this document now gives the House the information we need.
Let me put on the record of the House the way this document begins: "Some of the statements presented pursuant to Section 2 (6) of the Prisons Act, 1972 appear on re-examination to require amendment or elaboration in certain respects, e.g., in six statements the opening words were inadvertently omitted."—These opening words purport to confer legitimacy on the whole operation—"In others the offences were not in all cases described in sufficient detail. The following corrective statement has, therefore, been prepared. It supersedes the information given in the relevant previous statements."
I regard that as honourable amends on the part of the Minister's Department. So far as I can gather from this new statement the prisoners concerned in these transfers to and from the Curragh are political prisoners. I am not sure of that, as some convictions may be non-political. There is an absence at first sight of the kind of offence one would associate with the ordinary person who clutters up the District Court every day of the week. A cursory glance suggests to me that these are mostly political prisoners. If that is the case the question of security comes up.