Government backed bid to get Connolly sacked

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell got Government backing for a campaign to have Frank Connolly sacked as executive director of the Centre for Public Inquiry (CPI).

The Green Party and Sinn Féin called on Mr McDowell to resign, saying he had “recklessly abused power”. Fine Gael and Labour were also fiercely critical. But Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Tánaiste Mary Harney fully supported Mr McDowell.

Vigorously defending his actions in the affair, Mr McDowell told the Dáil yesterday the CPI, an independent group established in February to investigate political and business issues, was a body “which, in subversive hands, has the capacity to gravely undermine the authority of the State”.

Mr Connolly is alleged to have travelled to Colombia on a false passport in April 2001 together with his brother Niall - arrested later that year as one of the Colombia Three - and a senior IRA member, Padraig Wilson. Gardaí were fully satisfied that Mr Connolly had participated “in an important way” in an IRA plot to provide explosives training to Colombian rebels, Mr McDowell said.

The minister had already admitted leaking to the Irish Independent a copy of the bogus application allegedly used by Mr Connolly to obtain the passport. He had also admitted to briefing Chuck Feeney, the Irish- American billionaire whose philanthropic organisation was funding the CPI, about the allegations against Mr Connolly in September. Mr Feeney’s organisation subsequently cut off its funding.

Earlier yesterday, the Taoiseach denied there had been a campaign against the CPI itself. But Mr McDowell made clear the Government was agreed on targeting Mr Connolly.

“I discussed the matter with my colleagues in Government and undertook to raise the matter with Mr Feeney with a view to persuading him to discontinue his support for Mr Connolly in his role as chief executive of the CPI,” he said. “I was hopeful ... that the CPI would replace Mr Connolly.”

The Green Party’s Ciaran Cuffe said Mr McDowell’s actions had “a dangerous similarity to Senator McCarthy’s witch-hunts in the United States in the 1950s”.

But Mr McDowell said the opposition had “a blind spot” if they could not see the threat to the State. The IRA plot in Colombia, he said, was “designed to net the provisional movement tens of millions of euro to assist in [its] bid for political power in Ireland, north and south”.

“If it was not being used for military purposes, I must come to the conclusion that it was being used for the purpose of fighting elections.”

Mr Connolly has denied the allegations against him, saying he has never been to Colombia. However, he has not made clear where he was in April 2001.