The revelations of RTE's Prime Time concerning the arms crisis of 1970 are not mere academic footnotes to history. They bear upon the reputations of some people still living and of others, not so long deceased, who have shaped today's Ireland. They touch upon some fundamentals of what this State and this society have wished to believe about themselves over the past 30 years. Serious issues are raised and they should be fully inquired into.
When the plan to import arms into the State for distribution to Northern nationalists was thwarted in 1970, a sequence began which largely defined the subsequent course of public life in this State. The Minister for Finance, Mr Charles Haughey, Captain James Kelly, and others, were charged with a conspiracy to import arms illegally and were acquitted. The Fianna Fail government was riven in a struggle which saw the then Taoiseach, Mr Jack Lynch, and his supporters triumphant while Mr Haughey and others were sent into the political wilderness.
A substantial element of the defence case was that the Government approved of the plan to import arms. Mr Lynch and - crucially - the Minister for Defence, Mr James Gibbons, denied this. These conflicting versions have vied with each other for more than three decades. Enormous issues were at stake. If Mr Lynch and Mr Gibbons were being truthful, the defendants were subverting the functions of the State. If they were not, the Government stood accused of sponsoring insurrection in another state and effectively planning to arm the resurgent IRA.
The Army's Director of Intelligence, Col Michael Hefferon, told the first of the two arms trials that his Minister, Mr Gibbons, was aware of Captain Kelly's activities. What is shown in the Prime Time programme is that his written statement to Special Branch detectives was significantly doctored in the Department of Justice before it was passed to the prosecuting authority - then the Attorney General. The effect of the changes was to undermine Captain Kelly's defence and to put Mr Gibbons at a safe distance from the plot. The document reveals an attempt - ineffectual in the event - to interfere with the course of justice. It is difficult to imagine a more serious intervention in the preparation of a criminal case. Had Col Hefferon's original statement been forwarded to the Attorney General's office it must be likely that the arms trials would have taken a very different course - if they had proceeded at all. And if the re-writing of Col Hefferon's statement had been in the public domain, Mr Gibbons could not have credibly adhered to his disavowal of Captain Kelly's activities over the years. Other questions follow. If Mr Gibbons knew, did other Ministers know? Did the Taoiseach, Mr Lynch, know?
Captain Kelly and Col Hefferon suffered in their careers. Mr Haughey was exiled, albeit temporarily. This disclosure shifts the balance significantly in favour of their versions of what happened in 1970 and points to a decision somewhere in the State apparatus to scapegoat some of them, rather than implicate the Minister for Defence or possibly the Government as a whole in the attempted arms importation.
Salus populisuprema lex - the safety of the State is paramount. Mr Lynch and those who stood with him in 1970 brought the State back from a drift towards catastrophe. But it appears from this revelation that a decision was taken to insulate Mr Gibbons by tampering with crucial evidence. The Government and the Opposition have a duty - even after 30 years - to find out who did it and on what authority.