A legal challenge by 36 garda∅ to the Oireachtas sub-committee inquiry into the shooting dead of John Carthy at Abbeylara, Co Longford, is a "full-frontal attack on parliamentary democracy" with "far-reaching" consequences, Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter yesterday told the High Court.
Mr Shatter, a member of the sub-committee, said neither the garda∅ nor the courts had the right to decide what form an investigation should take after either the Government or Government and parliament together had decided on the necessity for an inquiry.
He argued the High Court was bound by other judgments which upheld the rights of Government and parliament to conduct inquiries into matters of public importance.
The seven-member sub-committee of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights was set up following the shooting dead of Mr John Carthy in controversial circumstances outside his home on April 24th, 2000. Mr Carthy was shot four times by members of the Garda Emergency Response Unit after a siege at his home.
Last May, 36 garda∅ initiated proceedings challenging the operation of the sub-committee. Those proceedings began last July 17th, before a Divisional three-judge High Court.
The garda∅ have argued the sub-committee does not have the power to investigate these matters and also contend that, as elected representatives, politicians are not sufficiently independent to conduct such an enquiry and that the sub-committee is only entitled to examine the Garda Commissioner's report on the shooting.
In court yesterday, Mr Shatter said the sub-committee had been established by both the Dβil and Seanad. The Commissioner's Report had been sent to the Minister for Justice who furnished it to the sub-committee. The implication of the Garda challenge was that the Oireachtas sub-committee was unlawful; that parliament could not appoint such a committee or other persons to conduct such an enquiry.
If that logic was to be followed, then parliament could not appoint anybody to enquire into matters of public importance. But the country had had the benefit of the Beef Tribunal as well as the McCracken, Flood and Moriarty Tribunals, all of whom had been established on foot of a resolution of parliament. Their legality had been upheld by judgments of the Supreme and other Courts, and the High Court was bound by such judgments, he argued.
Mr Shatter asked whether it was appropriate for the High Court to take onto itself a jurisdiction it did not have to examine the terms of a committee established by the Oireachtas. Was it entitled to interfere in the work of parliament? he asked. If it did so, the court would be usurping parliament and exercising powers not conferred on it by the Constitution, a position that was untenable, he argued.
The hearing continues today.