McDowell stretches principles of justice
IN autumn 2003, Michael McDowell was engaged in yet another war of words, this time with the Garda Síochána.
Members of the force were furious over provisions contained in the Garda Síochána Bill (subsequently signed into law this year) under which they could be fined or even imprisoned for leaking information to the media.
Defending the bill, Mr McDowell implied a small number of “rotten apples” in the force were content to accept bribes in return for information, saying: “A professional police force does not tolerate within its ranks people who sell stories to journalists.”
Outraged, the Garda Representative Association [GRA] effectively told the minister to put up or shut up. If he had information that individuals were accepting bribes, he should provide it to the Garda Commissioner so that it could be investigated.
But the GRA had “the complete wrong end of the stick”, a spokesman for Mr McDowell said. “The minister couldn’t go into more detail because if he did, he would be in the same position as that which he is trying to stop.”
Two years later, that comment appears laughable, for Michael McDowell seems to have performed a volte-face. He was perfectly content to release to the Irish Independent details on the case of Frank Connolly, even though he knew at the time that Mr Connolly was not going to face charges.
The question is why.
Mr McDowell insists it was “to defend the security of the State”. According to the minister, Mr Connolly has many questions to answer about his activities in 2001, and so far has been “reticent” in answering them.
In this, he has a point. Frank Connolly, it is alleged, travelled to Colombia on a false passport in April 2001, together with his brother Niall and Padraig Wilson, a senior IRA member. A few months later, Niall Connolly was arrested together with Martin McAuley and James Monaghan - the so-called “Colombia Three” - by the authorities in Bogota. Frank Connolly has denied he ever travelled to Colombia, but made no effort to date to explain his whereabouts in April 2001.
Mr McDowell believes he knows why. Last week, he informed the Dáil that gardaí were fully satisfied “as to the accuracy of the identification of all the members of both parties” which travelled to Colombia. “It clearly strains credulity to suggest that the two visits were unconnected,” he added.
“On the basis of intelligence reports furnished to me, the visits appear to have been connected with an arrangement whereby the Provisional IRA furnished know-how in the use of explosives.”
Mr Connolly says he will answer those allegations if he is ever prosecuted. The reality is that he won’t be. Mr McDowell knows this. He knew it when briefing Chuck Feeney, whose charitable organisation subsequently stopped funding Mr Connolly’s Centre for Public Inquiry.
He knew it when briefing the Irish Independent. And he knew it when further putting the allegations against Mr Connolly into the public domain via the information he released under Dáil privilege.
“What I’ve said to the public and Dáil Eireann is perfectly right, and I’m just saying that’s the beginning, middle and end of it,” he said yesterday. Except it’s not.
The reality is that, by ignoring the fact Mr Connolly was not going to be charged and outlining the case against him anyway, the minister has left himself open to accusations that he abused his office. And possibly infringed Mr Connolly’s human rights.
Were the case against Frank Connolly that strong, he would have been charged by now. That he has not been is clearly a source of much chagrin to Mr McDowell.
Yet a central plank of our democracy is the principle of innocence until proven guilty. Mr Connolly has not yet said where he was in April 2001. But does that justify Mr McDowell acting, as Labour’s Joe Costello put it yesterday, “like jury, judge and executioner”?
The last time we looked, none of those were functions of the minister’s office.
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