The Supreme Court has found that the Government was entitled to make a policy decision that persons jailed in connection with a robbery at Adare, Co Limerick, in 1996 in which Det Garda Jerry McCabe was killed are not eligible for early release under the provisions of the Belfast Agreement.
"I am satisfied that this was a policy choice which it was entirely within the discretion of the Executive to make and could not be characterised as capricious, arbitrary or irrational," the Chief Justice, Mr Justice Keane, said, when rejecting a bid by two men jailed in connection with the Adare robbery for their release.
He was delivering the decision of the five-judge Supreme Court dismissing an appeal by Michael O'Neill and John Quinn - both of whom are detained in Castlerea Prison - against the High Court's rejection of their challenge to the Government's failure to grant them early release under the provisions of the Belfast Agreement.
O'Neill, an unemployed general operative, is serving a total of 11 years for the manslaughter of Det McCabe, the malicious wounding of Det Garda Ben O'Sullivan at Adare on June 7th, 1996, and possession of firearms for the purpose of a robbery at Adare. Quinn is serving a six-year sentence for conspiracy to commit a robbery at Adare in June 1996.
Proceedings by two other men jailed for the manslaughter of Det McCabe in which they are seeking their release under the agreement stand adjourned before the High Court pending the Supreme Court decision in the appeal by O'Neill and Quinn.
Pearse McAuley, originally from Strabane, Co Tyrone, and Jeremiah Sheehy, from Limerick, are serving 14- and 12-year terms, respectively. In January 2002, they initiated proceedings for their release under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
Some 57 prisoners here and 444 in Northern Ireland have been released to date under the agreement.
Last March, the High Court rejected the application by O'Neill and Quinn for their release. It found there was no obligation on the Minister for Justice to consider the men's application to specify them as qualifying prisoners or to seek the advice of the Release of Prisoners Commission on their release.
In the unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court yesterday, the Chief Justice said the Government, as had been made clear by the Minister in statements in the Dáil, decided as a matter of policy that the release of prisoners' provisions of the agreement would not be operated in the case of persons convicted in connection with Det McCabe's killing.
While it was conceded on behalf of the State that the provisions had been operated in the case of other prisoners who had been convicted of equally or even more serious crimes, including the murder of gardaí, it was not suggested that any of the persons released were in the same position as the applicants, who at the time the British-Irish and Belfast Agreements were entered into, had been charged with the killing of Det McCabe but whose trial had yet to take place.
If they were to be treated as persons entitled to the benefit of those provisions, the consequence would have been that their trial would have taken place in circumstances where, irrespective of any verdict reached, the entire of any sentence imposed on them would have been remitted by the Executive, he said.