McDowell unfit for office

Michael McDowell's racist remarks about asylum seekers and his spectacular volte face on crime raise renewed questions about his fitness for office, writes Vincent Browne

A Fianna Fail member of the Justice Oireachtas Committee wondered why Joe Costello of the Labour Party had not confronted Michael McDowell. A senior Fianna Fail figure thought McDowell had veered close to racism.

It was not so much the substance of what Michael McDowell said at the Oireachtas Committee on Wednesday (18 May), although on one reading of his substantive remarks he might himself be branded racist, it was the extravagant terminology and how what he said could inflame racism.

His reference to trying the patience of Irish people if they knew the scale and nature of bogus applications, his regret that he had to comply with the requirements of "due process" under the Geneva Refugee Convention, the possible interpretation of his remarks as referring to most asylum seekers. Also, his avoidance of any acknowledgement that many asylum applications were grounded in real fears of murder or torture.

This new controversy came just a day after he had engaged in a spectacular reversal of his claimed success of four weeks previously in coping with crime. On Tuesday (May 17) he said: "I have been concerned for some time that serious offences which have been taking place have made evident the emergence of a gun culture in Dublin. This, sadly, has been manifest in the number of fatal shootings that have taken place, particularly in recent weeks."

On 11 April last he had claimed an 11 per cent reduction in the level of "headline" crime in the first quarter of 2005. He welcomed "the reduction in the number of violent deaths… from 21 to 9, when compared with the same quarter in 2004 and a reduction from 46 to 44 in the year ended 31 March, 2005, compared with the year ended 31 March 2004". And he said: "We should not lose sight of the fact that this country has an extremely low homicide rate. The CSO's recent report, 'Measuring Ireland's Progress 2004', shows that in 2002 Ireland had the lowest homicide rate per 100,000 population of all the EU countries for which figures are available. We are frequently told that the rates of violent deaths are going up, yet the figures tell us otherwise."

On the day of his announcement of "Operation Anvil" (Tuesday, 17 May), Joe Costello of the Labour Party made the following intervention: "It was in November that the Minister came out with the rather flamboyant expression: 'I don't believe there is any new energy in crime in Dublin'. That was in November 2004. The Minister said he believed the situation then was 'to some extent, the sting of the dying wasp'. Since then, there have been 10 or 12 gangland-type killings."

Michael McDowell replied: "It is true that I believed last year that, as a result of Operation Crossover (another anti-crime initiative), the organisations of major (criminal) players had been broken up and that they were effectively on the run. However others have stepped into their shoes."

In further reference to organised crime gangs he made the following observation: "It is true that depending on one's definition of a gang, there are between 15 and 30 groups of people here who confederate to commit offences. At this stage I do not want to say much about them, but in case the Deputy thinks these figures are conjured up, I have seen spreadsheets with the names of people involved, an elaboration, a map, so to speak, of how these gangs are organised and inter-related. It is not as if the Garda is blundering about with no strategic view of the problems." However the uncertainty over whether there are 15 or 30 such gangs raises questions about the extent to which the Garda is aware of the scale of the phenomenon.

It has also emerged (in answer to a Dail written question) that the conviction rate for this type of gang-land killing is low. Since 1998, there have been 83 murders involving firearms, while there have been only 14 convictions in connection with these murders. For instance, there were 30 such murders in 2000 and only one conviction – proceedings have been commenced against three over persons in connection with these offences in 2000.

The evidence is that the phenomenon of organised crime in Ireland is almost exclusively connected with the drug trade, which flourishes primarily in deprived areas of Dublin and other urban centers. There is evidence that hard drugs are available even in remote parts of rural Ireland but the problem remains primarily one associated with deprived urban areas. A task force report on the drugs scene in 1997 recommended that the issue would be dealt with best by dealing with deprivation in the areas most affected. Partly in response to that, the RAPID (Revitalising Areas through Planning, Investment and Development) programme was initiated

As Hilary Curley reported in Village in the issue of 13 November last, between 10 to 25 per cent of actions in the RAPID plans have been implemented four years on. Two billion euro that was committed by the Government in 2001 to help regenerate disadvantaged communities never materialised. Three years on, communities are still waiting for their projects to be funded.

Michael McDowell's remarks about asylum seekers echo his initiation of and participation in the debate on citizenship, leading up to the citizenship referendum in June of last year. Throughout that campaign he repeatedly asserted that the entitlement to Irish citizenship on the part of children born on the island of Ireland was a key factor in encouraging illegal immigrants to come to Ireland, in the expectation that their Irish citizen child would entitle them to residency here. This was in spite of an explicit Supreme Court decision of 18 months previously that there was no entitlement to residence here arising from parentage of Irish citizen children. The Court ruled that where such parents were here illegally they could be deported with or without their Irish child.

He further claimed in the course of that campaign that a case before the European Court of Justice, the Chen case, meant that illegal immigrants could abuse not just Irish residency law but the residency regulations of our European Union partners, and he inferred there was pressure from other EU member States to regularise the situation here. Again this was a serious misrepresentation of the situation.

The Chen case involved a Chinese woman, living temporarily in Britain, going to Belfast to give birth to a child. That child, by virtue of being born on the island of Ireland, was entitled to Irish citizenship and the mother claimed a right to remain in the European Union by virtue of her parentage of an Irish citizen child. The European Court of Justice found she had such an entitlement (the actual final decision came after the citizenship referendum). However this was subject to a major qualification. She could remain in the European Union provided she was not a burden on the member state concerned. In other words, she had to have independent means. This means clearly that the precedent arising from the Chen case had no relevance at all to the vast majority of illegal immigrants in the European Union, almost all of whom had no independent means or wealth.

NGOs dealing with asylum seekers and refugees here reported a rise in racism during the course of the citizenship campaign and subsequently.

While Michael McDowell has been very active in announcing anti-crime initiatives and sponsoring further criminal legislation, he has failed to act on what, arguably, is by far the most significant challenge facing his Department, reform of the culture and organisation of An Garda Siochana, arising from the first Morris Tribunal report, published in July of last year.

Shortly after the publication of that report he said he was glad to see the "immediate and determined" response of the Garda Commissioner to address "each and every one of the issues (raised in the report)" and to devise proposals to remedy the identified problems "as a mater of urgency". In fact almost nothing has been done in the interim, aside from the establishment of 10 working parties within An Garda Siochana to examine varies issues raised.

Although findings of gross negligence and incompetence were made against up to 20 gardai, many of them very senior, there were only two dismissals, although a few others took early retirement on full pension. Three gardai against whom very serious findings were made are still serving in the force.

In a recent reply to a Dail question, Michael McDowell revealed that only 18 gardai were dismissed from the force in 10 years, even though during that time there have been a succession of major scandals affecting the force.

On an issue that the Morris Tribunal regarded as crucial, the breakdown of discipline in the force, which the tribunal said threatened disaster, no changes have been made. Furthermore, there has been no review of the position of the Garda Commissioner himself, Noel Conroy, even though the Tribunal was implicitly very critical of his stewardship the intelligence arm of the force, Crime and Security, prior to his appointment as Garda Commissioner.

Michael McDowell's remarks on asylum seekers at the Justice Committee on 18 May

Michael McDowell: Numbers (of asylum applications) are going down and I intend to keep them going down and I intend to intensify the drive against bogus asylum seeking in this country and I just want to say on the record of this committee that I deal every day with files and if you saw the stories that I had to deal with. I can't reveal in any individual case the claim that was made by an asylum seeker.

I see people calling for publication of the decisions (on asylum applications). If the Irish people saw the stories given by most of these people as to why they came to Ireland, how they came to Ireland, how they thought they were in Canada when they arrived in Ireland. How anonymous people told them that the best place to go was Ireland and (religious) pastors and Irish priests got them here. Cock and bull stories about ritual sacrifices in the family; that they have to escape because they've been selected, they have been selected – the third son, the fifth son, the seventh son in the family – for sacrifice and they had to come to Ireland. If the Irish people had even the remotest idea of the nonsense that lies behind a huge amount of these bogus claims, the patience of a lot of people would be tried very hard and what I am saying is that I am making it clear that you don't get into Ireland on that basis anymore and you go home as soon as we've dealt with your issue and sorted you out and you bring your children home with you.

Jim O'Keeffe (Fine Gael): But that takes so long.

MD: Exactly, but it now doesn't take so long.

J O'K: Two, three, four years?

MD: In particular now and I am making this very clear, I'm making this very clear that you will be going home within ten weeks of making a claim in Ireland, ten or twelve weeks and I would much prefer to have a system where I could have an interview at the airport, find out the cock and bull stories that are going on in the next flight. But unfortunately the UN Convention requires me to go through due process in respect of tall of these claims. Can I say as well, we're talking about large sums of money.

There's a large amount of political correctness going on in Ireland and a large amount of this is bogus and is so manifestly bogus that I never see anybody who has been involved in the NGO sector ever admitting that there is a major problem with bogus and fraudulent and far-fetched nonsense masquerading as asylum seeking in Ireland.

JO'K: There also being a major problem with the system, Minister.

MD: Its time that we said it