EXTENDING THE powers of Oireachtas inquiries would open the door to politically biased judgments against individuals, a lawyer involved in the Abbeylara case has said.
Peter Mullan represented the family of the late John Carthy, whose fatal shooting in April 2000 ultimately gave rise to a constitutional amendment to be voted on tomorrow.
The amendment arose out of the High Court action which stopped an Oireachtas inquiry into Mr Carthy’s death at Abbeylara, Co Longford, during a stand-off with gardaí.
This was confirmed by the Supreme Court, which effectively halted any Oireachtas inquiry where a citizen’s good name might be affected. What is known as the “Abbeylara amendment” would give that power to committees of the Dáil or Seanad.
“Marie Carthy, John’s sister, is aware that I’m here, but I speak very much in a personal capacity,“ Mr Mullan said at a public meeting organised by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties in Dublin yesterday.
“Our judges who have headed tribunals of inquiry over the last number of years take an oath of office under article 34 of the Constitution that they will be independent in the exercise of the judicial function and ‘without fear or favour, affection or ill-will towards any man’ uphold the laws and the Constitution in Ireland.
“Our politicians don’t have to take such an oath. Unfortunately our politicians in the past have been partisan and are capable of being partial and unfortunately of making wrong judgments for political reasons.
“I am casting no aspersions on any of our current members of the Oireachtas. The difficulty and the concerns that we have are in relation to the fact that we’re putting this into our Constitution, it’s going to be there for generations to come.”
He added that there had been insufficient time to consider the amendment: “We have essentially had a week of debate, in fact less than a week, in relation to the matter; it has been very, very rushed.” On the possible role of Oireachtas committees in probing the banking crisis, he said: “I want answers as to what happened during the banking controversy but do we want our politicians, some of whom were involved in those decisions, examining the very people they are claiming to hold to account?”
Speaking at the same event, former senator and chairman of the National Forum on Europe, Dr Maurice Hayes, said quick legislation was generally bad legislation and “not very useful in the end of the day”.
He added: “What we want people to do is to calm down and say, ‘Look, hold on, have a decent debate about the thing’.”
Former attorney general Peter Sutherland said on RTÉ that his opposition to the amendment had “nothing to do with lawyers or the rights of lawyers, it is only about the rights of individuals who are held up before a committee of the Oireachtas”.
Barrister Vincent P Martin, director of the Public Access to Law Group of Lawyers, also called for a No vote. Seven Fianna Fáil councillors from the Dublin region have also called for a No vote.
