McDowell 'duty-bound' to publicise Colombia claims

The Centre for Public Inquiry has the capacity to undermine the authority of the state if it falls into subversive hands, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell warned TDs in the Dáil today.

In a statement, Mr McDowell claimed it was his duty to tell the public about CPI’s executive director Frank Connolly’s alleged role in an IRA plot to sell bombing information to Farc rebels in Colombia.

“Undoubtedly, the Centre for Public Inquiry … is one which has, in subversive hands, the capacity to gravely undermine the authority of the state,” he told TDs.

“I regard it as my clear and unequivocal duty to bring into the public domain the central role played in that body by a person [Frank Connolly] who the gardaí are satisfied participated in an important way in the series of visits to Colombia designed to exchange know-how in terrorism and explosives for massive amounts of cash apparently to be spent on distorting our democratic process.”

The US backers pulled funding from the CPI last week after Mr McDowell’s allegations about Mr Connolly surfaced in a written reply to a Dáil question.

The issue earlier dominated Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil as opposition party leaders asked the Taoiseach to spell out what the threat that existed to the state, as claimed by Mr McDowell, was.

Green Party TD Ciarán Cuffe and Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh both called for the minister’s resignation on the issue.