Sergeant in extradition unit was moved, TDs told

THE Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, said she had acted scrupulously in giving the facts to the Dail in the extradition collapse controversy.

In an opening statement during a special debate, she said: "I accept that there was a delay in establishing those facts but there was no delay in bringing those facts to the attention of the House or, indeed, a wide audience."

The delay in establishing the facts reflected the necessity to praise with all the agencies involved in the proceedings in the Irish and British jurisdictions.

Mrs Owen told the House the Garda Commissioner had transferred the sergeant in charge of the unit which dealt with extradition matters because he felt this sergeant should not be responsible for extradition papers "until the circumstances of the present case had been fully cleared up".

She also confirmed that a substitute warrant from the British authorities was sent the day after the court case when the extradition proceedings against Anthony Duncan collapsed. That warrant was available for execution as and when the need arises".

Regarding a conversation with the Taoiseach about the controversy, Mrs Owen said it took place before a meeting of the Cabinet sub committee on Northern Ireland last Sunday night. She confirmed the Taoiseach's version of it - that it was "a casual conversation in which he recalls me as saying something to the effect that it may be that the problem is on our side."

Mrs Owen said she had a function in regard to the execution of warrants if she was of the opinion that the offence was a political or revenue one. A submission in this case was prepared by an official of her Department. "The file in the matter was brought to me by officials from my Department after midnight. I decided not to intervene in the case and my decision was conveyed to the Garda authorities shortly after midnight on the morning of April 13th."

The person concerned was arrested and brought to court later that morning "where it became evident that the warrant before the court was not the original document". It was decided not to proceed with the application for extradition and the person concerned was discharged.

"The first indication I received that a problem had arisen in regard to the proceedings before the district court was when an official from my Department, who was being apprised of developments, phoned me on the morning of April 13th. At that point it was not clear exactly what had gone wrong. The suggestion was that the warrant was incomplete, was not an original, or both. It will be appreciated that there was an element of confusion surrounding the events that had transpired at that time. I asked the official who had phoned me about these developments to convey to the Garda authorities, through the Secretary of my Department, that I wanted a full report on the matter as soon as possible. This was done."

Mrs Owen outlined her response to Dail questions from Ms Liz O'Donnell (PD) on May 15th and said a final report was received from the Garda authorities on May 21st, the day when a follow up question was put down by Ms O'Donnell. In a written reply she explained how the original warrant was "destroyed accidentally" and safeguards were being introduced to ensure this type of error did not recur.

She hoped deputies would accept "that I have acted scrupulously in seeking to present the Dail with the facts in this case as and when they became available to me.

"Some deputies have remarked that it must have been obvious long before now that it was premature to blame the British authorities for what happened. I want to emphasise again that I did not at any stage attribute blame. I decided - quite rightly I believe - to wait until I knew the actual conclusion drawn by the gardai from their investigation before I said anything. I did not receive that information until May 21st and I made a public statement that day based on that information. It would have been quite wrong for me as Minister for Justice to proceed to make statements attributing responsibility to anybody without the facts.

"All of the individuals concerned, including the sergeant who had custody of the warrant, have a right to fair procedures. This, as deputies know, applies to all employees. It would be quite wrong for the Minister or anybody else to proceed to attribute blame or cast doubt until all concerned had a full opportunity of explaining themselves."

It was not possible until last Tuesday, when she received the final report of the Garda authorities, to say where responsibility for the difficulties lay. She made no attempt to attribute responsibility for the difficulties in any of her public comments. In her Dail reply of May 15th she made it clear that the Garda at that stage had failed to establish the reason why the original warrant was not available to the court. "That obviously did not exclude the possibility that responsibility could have - as has now been established - rested with the gardai themselves."

It was not unreasonable that she should begin to wonder when some weeks had elapsed with no final outcome to the Garda investigation whether the fault lay with the gardai themselves. "The fact that I raised the possibility with the Taoiseach could, under no circumstances, justify any public statement by me mentioning such a possibility. The only correct course - the course I followed - was to wait for the facts to be reported to me."

Ministers could not rely on "the luxury of speculation but need to ideal with fact". That was all the more true in circumstances where the Garda review was concerned with procedures within the force and could reflect on the performance of individual members.

Regarding the transfer of the sergeant in charge of the unit dealing with extradition matters, Mrs Owen said she learned this from the Garda Commissioner with whom she was attending a meeting in London on Wednesday. He told her the sergeant had been "transferred to other duties" at his direction on April 18th/19th. "He was the officer who had custody of the warrant in this case and the Commissioner has informed me that he felt it would be inappropriate for this sergeant to have responsibility for the handling of extradition papers until the circumstances of the present case had been fully cleared up."

Mrs Owen concluded: "This is a case in which human error led to the collapse of proceedings. The procedures will need to be reviewed and tightened to avoid a repetition. That process is already well under way."

The Progressive Democrats leader, Ms Mary Harney, said the debate was not about a human error. It was about openness, transparency and accountability. The authorities in this State knew for the last five weeks where the responsibility for the extradition collapse lay. It was five weeks ago that a question was put down to the Taoiseach who transferred it to the Minister for Justice, while telling the Dail that he had no reason to believe the fault lay on the Irish side. The implication was that the fault lay on the British side.

Was it being seriously suggested that a member of the Garda could be transferred and disciplined without it being known where the fault lay? "If three parliamentary questions had not been tabled would the facts of this case ever have emerged?

Mr Michael McDowell (PD, Dublin South East), said any intelligent child could have concluded the document furnished to the court was a copy and that was known within a couple of days of the court case, which led to the suspension of a Garda sergeant.

He told the Minister: "I do no accept that in the intervening six weeks your Department got no report of what happened. Your statement today is a careful piece of prevarication."

He did not believe the Department of Justice was kept completely in the dark about what had happened until it got a definitive account from the Garda. The House of Lords had debated the issue and accused the British government of "getting it wrong again". They should not be doing that when our Minister for Justices knew what happened.

During a question and answer session, Mr McDowell asked the Minister if she had "any inkling" of the Garda investigation before May 21st when she received the final report. Mrs Owen said she did not. "There is no doubt about the fact that the case collapsed because the document produced in court was not an original. What required investigation was how it came to be the document present in court was not an original."

The Fianna Fail Chief Whip, Mr Dermot Ahern, said: "It is the paper-shoveller, the unfortunate garda, who is the one responsible in all this."

Mr Noel Trency (FF, Galway East) asked if the Government press secretary would be transferred for giving a briefing in which it was conveyed that the British were at fault.

Dr Jim McDaid (FF, Donegal North East), asked if there would be any action against the Chief State Solicitor's office for allowing a copy, rather than the original, of the warrant to be produced in court.

Mrs Owen said the Government press secretary was not ordered to give any briefing along the lines suggested. The production of the warrant was the responsibility of the Garda.

Aft Alan Dukes (FG, Kildare), said the allocation of Garda duties was a matter for the Garda authorities, "not like the days when you [Fianna Fail] thought you could decide where sergeants and gardai were to be allocated."