And everyone stood up

A couple of months ago I attended a social function down the country – it was a work related event that the wife was obliged to go to and I had to go along for the ride. Usually these sorts of events are fairly innocuous affairs – lots of people mill around throwing back pints and sitting down for a large dinner before seeing some ropey band play Eagles covers in a hotel ballroom, and this occasion was pretty much exactly that. About 120 people decamped from around the country to stay at this hotel, including a load of journos from the various national newspapers. So far, this isn’t very remarkable.

On Friday evening, it comes time for the dinner and it turns out the guest speaker is none other than Michael McDowell, the current Irish minister for justice. Now, I’ll level with you. I can’t stand this guy. Really, I can’t. He is a disgrace to the office he holds. Why?

Well, in Irish law, there is such a thing as Dail privilege.

TDs and Senators may not for example, be arrested when going to, returning from or being within the precincts of either of the Houses of Parliament (the Dáil or Seanad). This privilege does not apply to arrest for treason, felony or breach of the peace.

TDs and Senators may not be sued for defamation because of any speech in the House. This privilege protects members both in the House and at Committee hearings.

(Taken from the Irish government website)

The Dail is the name for the Irish houses of parliament (for the benefit of foreign readers) and in a peculiar twist of the law, politicians are exempt from conventional libel law when they speak in the Dail. This privilege is rarely used– as I understand it, it was put in place to allow politicians to discuss the actions of the IRA in the past, without fear of being sued.

Last December, McDowell abused it shamefully, when he stood up in the dail and stated the following:

I am informed by An Garda Síochána that following the arrest in August 2001 of James Monaghan, Martin McAuley and Niall Connolly - who became known as the “Colombia Three” - the Colombian authorities had established that on April 10th, 2001, three people in possession of false Irish passports had earlier entered the Farc-controlled region in Colombia. The three persons who entered in April were subsequently identified as Frank Connolly, Niall Connolly and Pádraig Wilson.

Niall Connolly, who was identified as being part of both parties, is the brother of Frank Connolly and was described by the government of Cuba in August 2001 as the official Sinn Féin representative to the Cuban government and as resident in Havana.
The Garda authorities have informed me that they are fully satisfied as to the accuracy of the identification of all the members of both parties.

The story here is that an Irish journalist named Frank Connolly (who in the interests of disclosure I’ll say here that I know, having worked at the same newspaper as him in the past) was accused of travelling to Columbia on the business of the IRA using a false passport. Now the basis of my gripe with Mr McDowell is not over the accuracy of this accusation – I have no idea whether it’s true or not, but Mr Connolly has strenuously denied the accusation.

My point though is that Mr McDowell felt strongly enough about this issue that he stood up in the Dail and spectacularly defamed Mr Connolly. He says he did it because he knew it was true and he thought the Irish people deserved to know the truth.

Now, call me old fashioned, but I like to think that the entire basis of law is that we are innocent until proven guilty and that it’s better for guilty people to walk free than it is for innocent people to be jailed. In this case, the Irish police and Minister McDowell couldn’t prove the accusation - Mr Connolly wasn’t arrested or charged with anything - so what did Mr McDowell do? He hid behind a legal loophole and publicly made the comments.

It seems most obvious that the reason he chose to do this is that Mr Connolly was involved with a body known as The Centre for Public Enquiry, a sort of non-governmental enquiry body that aimed to investigate wrong doing in public life. I don’t think Mr McDowell is crooked or dishonest – I think he’s much more dangerous than that. I think he’s a zealot with strong self beliefs and an arrogant streak. In some areas of his political life I support the decisions he's taken, particularly those concerning facing off with prison warders earning spectacular overtime and introducing a Garda reserve police force. However, not in this case.

I’m sure Mr McDowell believes the accusations he’s levelled, and from that perspective I can see why he might find it hard to swallow that an ex-journo is heading up a body that aims to conduct enquiries into wrong doing but who may not be cleaner than clean himself.

Now I can’t stress strongly enough that I have no idea if Mr Connolly has done any of the things he’s accused of, but to me that’s really not the point. What is the point is that the government minister charged with running the police and justice system decided not to let the fact that he didn’t have any actual proof or any kind of actionable legal case against Frank Connolly stop him from publicly destroying his good name.

Back to the dinner, and Mr McDowell stands up and give the usual after dinner politician’s speech, talking about the state of the nation with occasional references to the particular interests of the group in front of him. At the end of his speech, the entire room gave him a standing ovation. I mean everyone. Including everyone at the journalist’s table, except me and the wife, who stayed seated and got glared at from the podium.

I was sincerely shocked. I mean really really shocked. I can understand the general public not understanding the implications of this guy’s actions, but for other journalists, people who tend to be more politically aware than average, to actually applaud this man.

Afterwards, one or two people actually asked me to explain why I had such a problem with him. After I'd finished, they looked whistful and said "yeah, I can sort of see where you're coming from.'

Well, I guess people really do have short memories.