McDowell abused office

Had Sean Doherty, while Minister for Justice in 1982, used the contents of a Garda file to have a journalist driven from his employment, he and the government he served would have been driven from office in what would have been regarded as one of the worst scandals of that era. Doherty's fate and that of the then government, led by Charles Haughey, would have been even more reviled had it emerged that Doherty had leaked a document from that Garda file to a journalist and then claimed he did so to protect the institutions of the State against subversion.

Nothing Michael McDowell has said in the week when he first used the device of an answer to a written parliamentary question to put further information from the Garda files into the public domain, has begun to answer the obvious question: in what way was Frank Connolly, as director of the Centre for Public Inquiry, a threat to the security of the State?

If, as director of the Centre for Public Inquiry, Frank Connolly was not a threat to the security of the State, then why the assault on his position there through the representations to the financier of the Centre, Chuck Feeney, and the leaking of information that has damaged the reputation of the Centre and caused its imminent closure?

Is it suggested that the likes of the former High Court judge, Fergus Flood would be part of subversion, or the Maynooth moral theologian, Father Enda McDonagh both members of the Board of the Centre? And, in any event, how could the investigation of public issues by the Centre be regarded as subversive and, if so, is all investigative journalism now to be so regarded?

The substance of Michael McDowell's case against Frank Connolly is that Frank Connolly applied for and obtained a false passport, used that passport to travel to Colombia in the company of a senior member of the IRA, and while in Colombia arranged for the IRA to train FARC members in the manufacture and use of explosives,in return for considerable sums of money, to be used in Ireland for subversion by the IRA.

If this is true, then Frank Connolly should be facing several charges, including charges related to applying in a false name for a passport, conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to subvert the state and treason. Also, one presumes, membership of an illegal organisation. One can see why the DPP might have declined to prosecute on the passport charge because of the difficulty in obtaining evidence that it was Frank Connolly who made the application, but is the law so helpless that not even a single charge could be preferred? Not even membership of an unlawful organisation? After all, that charge can be supported by the evidence of a chief superintendent that it is his/her opinion Frank Connolly is a member of an illegal organisation.

And if it is not the opinion of a chief superintendent that Frank Connolly is a member of an illegal organisation, then is it believable he would be entrusted by the IRA to engage in such a seemingly sensitive mission?

There are good reasons why any police force would gather information on a citizen for the prevention, detection and prosecution of crime. A lot of information gathered by police forces is unreliable, based on "informer" evidence, on speculation, on hearsay. There is no harm, in that because any attempt to use such information in a prosecution would be tested by the laws of evidence in the courts. The reason we have rules of evidence is precisely to rule out such unreliable evidence.

But to use such evidence, without the filtering and testing process that would apply in a court case, for the purpose of blackening the reputation of any citizen is quite outrageous.

Michael McDowell simply does not know whether Frank Connolly applied for a passport in a false name. He knows there was application in a false name accompanied by a photograph that has some resemblance to Frank Connolly but that is far from establishing that Frank Connolly made the application. Neither does he know that Frank Connolly went to Colombia for any purpose, still less that he went to Colombia for the purposes stated.

All he knows is that gardaí believe Frank Connolly applied for a passport using a false name and that the Colombian police believe or say they believe he was there for the purposes stated.

To use it to subvert an organisation that, through its investigative prowess enabled by the generous funding by Chuck Feeney, would have enriched the process of democratic accountability here, is an outrage.

The Progressive Democrats have been opposed to the Centre for Public Inquiry from the outset for reasons that have nothing to do with Frank Connolly. Mary Harney said recently it was not acceptable that a group of citizens, financed from outside the State, would set up an organisation to enquire into other citizens. Is she therefore opposed to the operation of, for instance, the Sunday Times here, which is financed from outside the State and engages in investigations into then doings of Irish citizens? How about Independent Newspapers, which is controlled by a person who is not an Irish citizen, insists on being address by a foreign title and lives in the Bahamas?

It is simply not believable that Michael McDowell has not deliberately used a document or documents from a Garda file on Frank Connolly, not for the sole purpose of confronting subversion but to subvert the Centre for Public Inquiry, to which the PDs have an ideological objection.

Never before, as far as we are aware, has a Minister for Justice used information on a Garda file against a citizen in the way that has been done here. It is an outrageous abuse of his position.

Also abusive was this answer to the Dáil question. He knows full well that had he tried to give this answer orally in the Dáil he would have been prevented by the Ceann Comhairle because it breaches a convention that named persons outside the Dáil are not attacked in the chamber. He circumvented this convention by the written reply.

Michael McDowell has given prominence to his role to "safeguard the security of the State and prevent the subversion of our democracy". How does that sit with his refusal to have American airplanes coming through Shannon inspected to ensure the State is not being subverted to facilitate the illegal kidnapping of suspects and their torture in foreign secret jails? Yes, we do not know for certain that Shannon is being used for that purpose but we know, as surely as Michael McDowell "knows" about Frank Connolly, that there is reason to believe the airplanes coming through Shannon have been used for that purpose elsewhere, so why the objection to inspection on the part of a Minister, so fired up with his security responsibilities?