Some months after he left the Taoiseach's Office, Mr Jack Lynch prepared two private records of his state of knowledge of the events leading up to the Arms Crisis in 1970. Mr Charles Haughey had succeeded him as Taoiseach in December 1979 and the publication of the diaries of Mr Peter Berry, then secretary of the Department of Justice, was imminent when the editor of Magill magazine, Mr Vincent Browne, met him in Leinster House on May 6th, 1980.
The two statements, released posthumously to The Irish Times as an historical record yesterday, are entirely consistent with the public position taken by Mr Lynch since 1970. The inconsistency between his record, however, and the diaries of the late Mr Berry published in Magill in June, 1980, remains. There are major differences in their respective accounts of the events of the time.
The first concerns the meeting between the Taoiseach, Mr Lynch, and Mr Berry - at Mr Berry's request - in Mount Carmel Hospital, Dublin, on October 17th, 1969. In the Berry Diaries, written after his retirement as Secretary of the Department of Justice in January 1971, Mr Berry maintains that he informed Mr Lynch of Capt James Kelly's promises of money to members of the IRA for the purchase of arms in Bailieboro on October 4th, 1969.
The entry from Mr Berry's diary for October 17th, 1969, as published in Magill, stated: "Unfortunately, the medical tests commenced at about 8.30 a.m. and I had been given an injection and rubber tubing had been inserted through a nostril to the stomach before the Taoiseach arrived some time after 9 o'clock. There were two doctors and two nurses in the room and while they left to make way for the Taoiseach a nurse kept coming in and out, every couple of minutes, to syphon off liquid through the tubing. After our conversation was interrupted a couple of times, the Taoiseach said petulantly: `This is hopeless, I will get in touch with you again.'
"He never resumed the conversation or referred to it afterwards.
"I did not have a 100 per cent recollection of my conversation with the Taoiseach as I was a bit muzzy and bloody from the medical tests but I am quite certain that I told him of Capt Kelly's prominent part in the Bailieboro meeting with known members of the IRA, of his possession of a wad of money - £50,000 - that would be made available for the purchase of arms. I remember a conjecture of the Taoiseach as to where could they possible get it and my suggestion that perhaps Mr Y or Mr Z, two millionaires of the Taca group, might put up the money and the Taoiseach's observation that those boys didn't give it up easily.
"In the aftermath of that discussion, the Minister for Defence, Mr Gibbons, sent for Col Hefferon, the Director of Military Intelligence, and questioned him about the Bailieboro meeting and Capt Kelly's part in it. Col Hefferon's versions are given extensively in his evidence before the CPA (Committee of Public Accounts) in booklets No 7, 8, 15, 16, 19 and 33 while Mr Gibbons's evidence, which is contradictory, is given in booklet 24 para 11150 . . . `I am absolutely certain that I was never informed of the Bailieboro meeting and that the reference to it in the Four Courts is the first reference I can recall'; and at para 11168: `There was no question of a complaint from the Taoiseach that I can recall - absolutely none.'
"Compare that with Col Hefferon's at para 11167: `I am not clear specifically on the date - it could be November - Mr Gibbons asked me to see him and told me that the Taoiseach had had a report from Mr Berry and Captain Kelly had attended a meeting at Bailieboro . . . at which there were IRA people present, that he had there waved a wad of notes around, promising money to them.'
`NO PERSON with a scrap of intelligence could doubt that the Taoiseach was made aware by me on October 17th - the date of my medical tests is verifiable in the hospital records - of information of a most serious kind in relation to a plot to import arms and that he avoided making any more than a cursory inquiry. Indeed, I formed the impression from time to time that he was consulting me to find out how much I did not know and that he was not thankful to me for bringing awkward facts to his notice", Mr Berry said.
In his papers yesterday, Mr Lynch categorically rejects the assertion that Mr Berry had then informed him of the alleged complicity of ministers in the illegal importation of arms.
Mr Lynch's categorical statement that the first time he knew of any alleged involvement of "my Ministers" in an attempt to import arms was on Monday, April 20th, 1970, is also at variance with the Berry Diaries.
Mr Berry's entry for April 13th, 1970, states: "I had a phone call from the Taoiseach - the first in some months - to say that he had been unable to contact Mr O Morain (then Minister for Justice). I replied that it was the Minister's practice to go to his constituency, Mayo, at each weekend and that, this being Monday, he might not return to the office until the morning. The Taoiseach said that I should come to Government Buildings that evening, that he wanted a run-down on the IRA situation vis-a-vis the North.
"Before I left to see the Taoiseach, I learnt that the Minister had arrived. I told him of the Taoiseach's phone call and said that I could not give a full picture without recounting the police information as to the involvement of Mr Haughey and Mr Blaney. The Minister said: `Tell the Taoiseach whatever you feel you should tell him.' The Minister appeared to be in a very fatigued condition; he muttered and was listless. I felt that he was scarcely conscious of what we were talking about.
"When in the course of conversation with the Taoiseach I mentioned the Minister's meeting with the Commissioner and the head of the S Branch in the previous December, and the police information about the participation of Ministers in supplying arms to the IRA, he seemed to be genuinely surprised. (Up to then my feeling was that Mr O Morain simply couldn't have kept the Taoiseach in the dark but that it was not polite to let me know.) The Taoiseach told me that he had been asked who were the IRA leaders in the North, the men who really mattered, that an eminent church leader felt that a direct appeal from person to person might achieve a good result in bringing an end to violence. I said that I would find out. Later on - on 16th May - the Taoiseach was to ask me if Mr O Morain would remember his conversation with me on 13th April".
