The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said he was surprised that there was not a legal team willing to represent any party at the Morris Tribunal on the basis that all other parties were represented.
That was that if their clients behaved in a co-operative way with the tribunal their costs were virtually guaranteed. "I am surprised that among the legal profession, both branches of it, there are not a group of people willing to act in this manner on a basis which has been applied to members of this House in other tribunals and right across the board. I am surprised and a little bit disappointed."
The Minister was responding to a call by Mr Jim Higgins (FG) for the State to guarantee the legal costs of the McBrearty family at the tribunal.
Mr Higgins said that the tribunal was regarded in the public perception as the McBrearty tribunal. It was about the manner in which the State had deliberately set out to accuse some members of the family of a murder that they had never committed. It was about a vendetta against the McBreartys. It was also about the emotional trauma and torture visited by the State on an innocent family who had been left psychologically scarred, scars that would never be erased.
Mr McDowell said that favouritism could not be shown to any particular individual, nor could the case of individuals be pre-judged. "Equity requires that all parties to the tribunal be treated equally."