Over half the TDs in the Dáil have made representations to the Minister of Justice since January last year, largely seeking favours for constituents charged with or convicted of crimes, according to information released by the Department yesterday.
The representations, an at average rate of almost four per week, were almost all fruitless. Those seeking favours for people before the courts were told routinely by the Minister that he could not interfere, as the courts are independent of the Minister. Those concerning prisoners were typically responded to with a letter stating that the Minister would not interfere with the normal operation of the Prison Service.
"But they don't care", remarked one official yesterday, who did not want to be named. "Despite getting these answers, they just keep sending the representations in again and again. It's a game. They get a bit of paper to give the constituent to show they did something."
The Department would not comment on this view yesterday, nor could a spokesman say how much it cost to process these representations. A total of 89 deputies, 10 senators and two MEPs made representations to the Department concerning court and prison matters during the period.
The adoption by the Department of a policy of issuing stock responses has done nothing to staunch the flow of such representations from deputies, senators and MEPs, according to documents released by the Department under the Freedom of Information Act.
Fine Gael's former justice spokesman, Senator Jim Higgins, made 15 representations, the highest number during the period. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, was second with eight representations.
In almost all cases, the politicians making the representations did not ask the Minister for a particular outcome but confined themselves to passing on representations from constituents and asking for the Minister's comments.
The information was released to The Irish Times by the Department yesterday on foot of a request following the resignation last April of Minister of State Mr Robert Molloy in the aftermath of representations made by his office in a rape case. The Department had refused such requests in the past, saying that the workload in searching prisoners' files for such information would be too high.
However, following the Molloy controversy, the Department decided to release the information dating from January 1st 2001, in relation to representations to the Courts Division, and January 1st 2002, in relation to the Prison Service. The Department said yesterday that this had been very time-consuming, but it had been deemed to be in the public interest in the wake of the Molloy controversy.