Retired judge defends stand on secrecy

RETIRED High Court judge, Mr Justice Rory O'Hanlon, is strongly contesting Mr Harry Whelehan's interpretation of the Supreme Court's judgment on Cabinet confidentiality.

He told The Irish Times last night there was no statement in the Constitution to justify absolute confidentiality of Cabinet where it was contrary to the public interest.

As the judge who ruled against the former Attorney General, Mr Whelehan, when he took the Cabinet confidentiality case to the High Court in July, 1992, Mr Justice O'Hanlon judged that it had not been unknown in other countries for totally corrupt governments to come to power and for their members to enrich themselves at the cost of the public purse.

In a letter in today's Irish Times, Mr Justice O'Hanlon takes Mr Whelehan to task for suggesting in an interview in this newspaper last week that such a proposition was "so far-fetched as to be unrealistic".

It was a period when, according to his interpretation of newspaper reports, the governments of France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Japan had all been swept from power, brought down in each case, by allegations of corruption and involving persons at the very highest seat of power.

If a member of the Government found his Cabinet colleagues were embarking on a thoroughly dishonourable course of conduct, the doctrine of collective responsibility requires that he should go along with it or resign from Government.

"If he takes the honourable course and resigns, then it would appear, under the interpretation put on the Constitution by Mr Whelehan as Attorney General, and by the Supreme Court in deciding the case, that the Minister who has resigned would be precluded from disclosing to the public his reasons for doing so," Mr Justice O'Hanlon says.

He concludes this was never intended by the framers of the Constitution and that to interpret it in this manner "has done a grave disservice to the public interest".