The Dáil's Public Accounts Committee tried to untangle the events of the Arms Crisis in 1969/70 as the death toll in the North rose in the early weeks of 1971. Nell McCafferty described the mood in the committee room as Capt James Kelly, the Army intelligence officer at the centre of the affair, appeared before it.– JOE JOYCE
WHETHER OR not bullets, thousands of them, cost 8½d [old pence] or 9d each was a matter of conjecture at the Public Accounts Inquiry in Leinster House, Dublin, on Wednesday. Coursing ahead of the watchdogs, turning on the tracks of his memory, was Capt James Kelly, former Army intelligence officer. Within the enclosure of the Dáil itself, some corridors away, condolences were offered from half-empty benches for all who had died recently in Northern Ireland.
Fear thrives on ignorance, the Fine Gael leader [Liam Cosgrave] said, referring to the North. We are trying to separate truth from lies, an inquiry deputy echoed, referring to the South. During this dual postmortem, the fine difference between Northern ignorance and Southern lies was contained within coffins passing through Belfast.
In the Dáil, Charles Haughey sat aloof, silently facing the assembled deputies, like a latter-day Cochise. In the inquiry room, Capt Kelly faced the assembled deputies, talking, constantly talking. He was asked if he had consulted his authorities before taking a certain action.
“Yes, he said three Hail Marys,” his wife Sheila uttered furiously from the public gallery. She has been with him continuously, willing him on at his back, since he took the stand some days ago. Their 14-year-old daughter is staying home from school to look after the younger children, while Sheila Kelly, for the second time in a year, watches her husband undergo public scrutiny.
In the short, narrow, high ceilinged room, the 12 deputies sit around three tables. Facing them, on a raised dais, is the man being questioned. Behind the man, facing the deputies also, are the seated rows of press and public. On Wednesday, Capt Kelly was surrounded on all sides. His words were recorded on tape and by a man with rubber keys on his typewriter. (Rubber bullets stun, they do not kill, the British Army says in Belfast. . . unless they hit a sensitive spot at close range.)
Whatever their official commitment to finding the truth, there is some sympathy among the deputies for Capt Kelly’s physical and mental marathon. It is very hot in the room. . . The pace of the questioning is at times deceptively desultory. The implications are anything but.
In the unreal atmosphere of Leinster House, one gets the impression of public secrets waiting to be officially confirmed. Name what we know already and if you don’t, you will be, perhaps, jailed. But I heard freely quoted outside the inquiry room the names of Northerners alleged to have signed the cheques which are now being traced. Inside the committee waits for Capt Kelly to officially identify them. He refuses, for he will not play the role, as he sees it, of informer.
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