Mr Jim Gibbons (PD), son of the Minister for Defence at the time of the Arms Crisis, spoke in the Seanad yesterday about the "character assassination" of his father.
He said that throughout his career his father, Mr Jim Gibbons, had served the people of Ireland to the best of his ability and with the very highest standards of honesty and integrity. "He applied his strict personal morality to all facets of his public life and I am happy and proud to stand over his record of public service." Earlier, the Fine Gael leader in the House, Mr Maurice Manning, demanded to know why the Minister for Justice was "trying to limit matters" in relation to inquiries into the Arms Trial in 1970. He was speaking on his party's motion calling for the setting up of a small independent expert group to collect all available evidence relating to the Arms Trial and the events surrounding it, to examine and evaluate such evidence, to put all such evidence into the public domain and to publish its conclusions on the issues involved.
A Government amendment to the motion asked the Seanad to note the allegations which had been made concerning the preparation of the Book of Evidence in the Arms Trial, welcomed the inquiries which the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform was currently undertaking into the matter, and called on the Minister to make public the results of these inquiries as soon as possible.
Mr Manning said he was astonished the Government had put down such an amendment, which he believed was "flawed and even perverse". The arms crisis was one of the most important events in the life of modern Ireland and it raised huge issues.
A number of key questions needed to be answered. "Was the arms affair, as the official view has long had it, an attempt to subvert the government from within, an attempt by a cabal in the government to defy the authority of the Taoiseach, to, in effect, stage a coup d'etat. Was it the beginning of a move to stir up sectarian division in the country and to destabilise the institutions of State and to arm the enemies of the State? Was it such a threat that it took extreme measures to save our public institutions, salus populi, suprema. Or was the arms affair about a government which temporarily lost control, floundered about, caught up in a crisis it was ill-equipped to handle, and to save itself engaged in damage limitation, including cover-up, suppression, and tampering with vital evidence? Or was it about a power struggle within Fianna Fail, something which many people at the time suspected? Or was it the Irish version of the Dreyfuss case, where the power of the state was used to target and destroy powerless individuals, individuals then forced to live out their lives as broken, disgraced men. No Devil's Island, but a situation where an all-powerful state covered up evidence, tampered with evidence, engaged in the subversion of justice.
Describing the Government amendment as "cynical and perverse", Mr Manning said it confined the inquiry to recent documents. "More than that, the examination of these documents is being carried out by the Minister's own Department, the Department of Justice, and by the Attorney General. Can I point out that both of these Departments were up to their necks in the events of 1969-70? It will be hard for such inquiries to have any real credibility."
In his remarks about his father, Mr Gibbons said the RTE Prime Time programme, and subsequent media coverage relating to that fraught period in Irish life three decades ago, had had an impact on his family. By highlighting and devoting itself entirely to presenting one side of a very complex and critical period in our history, the result had effectively been "the character assassination of Jim Gibbons".
A disturbing element of last Tuesday's Prime Time programme had been the response of an alleged former juror from the Arms Trial. "Notwithstanding the highly inappropriate practice of actually interviewing a juror, my family and I are particularly appalled that RTE television would use written quotations from an anonymous person to level a scurrilous charge of perjury against my father." One would expect a certain standard of programming from the national broadcaster. But the contents of that programme had gone beyond acceptable standards, he said.
"The fact that this anonymous person was given virtually carte blanche to blacken my father's name without any contact or right of reply merely reinforces my belief that the programme portrayed a one-sided perspective on this very serious issue."
The focus of this sometimes frenzied media debate had centred on the statement of one witness and the alterations to it. He could only assume that there had been more than one statement in the Book of Evidence and that the contents of other statements would present a different view to that which had been expressed by Col Hefferon, and these should be afforded the same attention.
It was worthy of mention that archival material from Military Intelligence files released under the 30-year rule demonstrated a very different view of the events surrounding the period 1969-70. These had been reported in The Irish Times and in the Irish Independent in January last.
"I suggest to anyone who is genuinely interested in the truth that these files warrant further attention . . . This would represent a balanced approach in contrast to focusing on just one witness statement and the view of an anonymous juror. I would wholeheartedly welcome an overall investigation into all the relevant documents relating to this period in our history. I have no doubt that any such inquiry would vindicate my total belief that Jim Gibbons did not perjure himself in 1970," added Mr Gibbons.