Mick Clifford: The smear campaign that derailed Adi Roche's Áras bid
Dónal de Róiste and his sister Adi Roche. File Picture: Colin Keegan/Collins
The letters were anonymous, sent to many national media outlets. Some were followed up by phone calls. “Of course, you know the story with Adi Roche, her brother Dónal de Róiste, the whole damn family. Look it up. Do we want somebody so close to the Provos in the Áras?”
The smear campaign against Ms Roche’s presidential campaign in 1997 was vicious and entirely baseless. It was designed to do damage to her at a time when it looked as if she had genuine chance of winning the election. Somebody, somewhere decided her brother’s controversial, yet little-known theretofore, dismissal from the army 28 years previously would be the perfect weapon to smear her character.
“At the time, Ms Roche was the high-profile head of Chernobyl Children, which brought those affected by the fallout from the nuclear reactor accident in Belarus to Ireland for respite. Her work on the project was lauded internationally.”
The Labour party, which had caused an upset seven years previously with the election of the outsider Mary Robinson, was intent on repeating the feat. The party, along with the Greens and Democratic Left, nominated her for the presidency.
The election was highly unusual for the time in that it included four women, Ms Roche, Mary Banotti, Dana and Mary McAleese, and only one man, Derek Nally.
Ms McAleese, certainly the most qualified of the field, and backed by the powerful Fianna Fáil machine, was the favourite, but Ms Roche looked capable of an upset.
Then the smear. It is difficult to discern how much an impact it had on the candidate or the public, but it was a vicious character assassination at a time when the Provos’ actions had rendered them as pariahs among a large section of the public right across the island.
The idea that any of the candidates would have any association or sympathy with their killing agenda would have caused alarm in certain quarters.
In the end, Adi Roche came fourth out of the five candidates. She later spoke of the hurt the smear had on her and her family. Following the initial sense of grievance held when Dónal had been summarily dismissed without any proper explanation nearly 30 years previously, the attack on his sister had reopened the wound in the most public way possible.
The following year, Dónal de Róiste launched a High Court action against the decision to eject him from his role as a lieutenant in the Irish army in 1969.
That ultimately failed, but it began a long road that ended this week with the Cabinet finally agreeing to accept the recommendations of a review that the retirement was on foot of a fundamentally flawed and unfair procedure.
Mr de Róiste joined the Irish army as a cadet when he was 18. Six years later, he came under the focus of senior personnel as a result of reports he had been seen in company of a man who was associated with a subversive organisation.
In 1969, violence in the North, initially in response to the demand from the Catholic community for civil rights, was spreading. The IRA and associate organisations were active. There was a sense of paranoia in some quarters of authority in the Republic that any violence might spill over into the south.
Dónal de Róiste was questioned about his associations and he gave answers, but crucially he was never charged with an offence or subjected to court martial as would be the usual route.
Like any young person, he had found himself in company on social occasions, particularly through an interest in music, but there was not a scintilla of evidence he had any inappropriate association with the individual in question.
On June 27, 1969, he was told he was being retired and given 12 hours to leave his barracks. He left the country soon after, moving eventually to the USA, where he stayed for almost 20 years before retuning home. A career he had pursued since school was simply whipped away from him and a black cloud left hanging over his head.
He has always maintained there was more to his swift and unfair dismissal than simply a response to what was considered a security risk. The review published on Thursday references an affidavit Mr de Róiste swore for the process.
“The affidavit contains a number of matters extraneous to this review and a number of serious allegations of wrongdoing against a named officer who is now deceased.”
This matter was not examined, but it was also alluded to by ex-army officer and current senator Tom Clonan in an interview with RTÉ’s .
“He was the target of a campaign of reprisal,” Mr Clonan said. “He had made a statement prior to the procedure about an incident involving a senior officer. So he was in the frame, he was targeted and this was the outcome for him.”
The review, conducted by senior counsel Niall Beirne, did conclude that “the decision to retire Mr de Roiste could not be considered unreasonable” in light of the security concerns at the time but it was unlawful not to afford him due procedure where he could certainly have provided a defence that would changed the outcome.
That it took 53 years to finally come to that conclusion is a scandal in itself about a culture of both secrecy and the unwillingness to admit mistakes irrespective of the toll extracted from wronged individuals.
“I had never dared to hope that this day would ever come and now that it has, I feel a weight has been lifted from my shoulders,” Mr de Róiste said in a statement following Simon Coveney’s announcement on Wednesday.
Adi Roche added: “My brother Dónal’s life has been shattered by a wrongful decision made by the Irish Government in 1969. Our family were left with years of pain and incomprehension by that decision; that took away his integrity, his good character, his good name, and that of our family.”
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