The following is the edited text of a statement issued by Mr Desmond O'Malley yesterday:
The Arms Trial and the events that led to it were complex matters. To seek to simplify it all down to one document, and to the fate of that document, is to grossly oversimplify a most complicated affair. To draw major definitive conclusions from one single document is quite unjustified.
In order to respond fully to what appears in today's [Friday's] Irish Times, I would have to read all the relevant papers in the National Archive and probably a lot more besides. I cannot do this in a short time. Because departments and public offices are closed until next Wednesday, I will not be in a position to commence that process before then.
At this remove I have one clear memory of the Claim of Privilege matter. That is that Mr Berry, before he gave evidence, came in to me with his personal diary and showed it to me.
It contained a note of his telephone conversation with Mr Haughey in April 1970 relating to the proposed importation of arms through Dublin Airport. It also contained scores of other entries relating to various security matters and personal matters. He asked me to allow him to claim privilege for certain entries in his diary. I agreed. I thought that reasonable.
I appear to have signed more than one Claim of Privilege in this case. I cannot really recall the others fully, but I think they may have been ancillary to the main one which I have outlined above.
The Claim of Privilege that I do recall (i.e. in relation to the Berry diary) is a legal document. I did not draft it. But as far as I know it was not drafted in the Department, where there were no practising criminal lawyers.
It presumably was drafted in the Chief State Solicitor's Office, so the prosecution were aware of it and I assume approved of it. In the event, the Claim of Privilege was not used as far as I can recall.
I reiterate my initial statement of the 11th of April. If some form of inquiry is held into the events leading to the Arms Trial and into the trial itself, I will be happy to co-operate. The inquiry should cover all aspects of the matter and not a select few. It should be an inquiry in depth.
If such an inquiry is held, the Public Accounts Committee should resume its investigation into what happened to the £100,000 voted by the Dail for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland. That inquiry was stopped by court action in 1971 by Mr Jock Haughey. Under the new rules for committees of the Dail, it could now be resumed.
It is no harm to remind people of the atmosphere in 1970. About half our citizens were not born then. There was a most dangerous and volatile situation. Its like has not been seen since. The basic institutions were under threat if certain people got their way. A member of the Garda Siochana was shot dead on the streets of Dublin that year. Anarchy and widespread bloodshed would have followed.
With others, I was called on to help prevent the descent to anarchy. It was part of my job to uphold and maintain the rule of law, which could have quickly disappeared, as it did in parts of the North. It was part of my job to help defend the State and to help the State defend itself. The situation was made all the more difficult by my limited experience, the turbulence of the times and the constant pressure of events.
Nonetheless I am proud of what I did. I am proud we succeeded in our task.
We retain democratic government through the ballot box only. Justice is still administered by courts - not through the knee-cap in a back alley.