The Government would gain credit for itself if it were to respond positively to the campaign being waged by Mr Donal de Roiste. Mr de Roiste, a brother of presidential candidate Ms Adi Roche, was discharged by presidential order from the Army in 1969.
Mr de Roiste claims he was never given reasons for his discharge, although he admits that he was sometimes in the company of members of Saor Eire, a violent republican group, active in the late 1960s and early 1970s and which was responsible for the murder of Garda Dick Fallon.
In this newspaper on Saturday, the respected journalist, Don Mullan, reported details of an incident in 1967 which Mr de Roiste believes can account for his discharge. The young lieutenant was pressured to give false testimony in a drunken-driving case against a commandant. He refused to do so. In consequence, it is implied, he became a marked man.
That Mr de Roiste acted with exemplary probity in regard to the drunken-driving incident is clear. If this and this alone led to his dismissal, Mr de Roiste has clearly been the victim of a monstrous injustice. If his claim is correct, Army officers at successive levels, civil servants and members of the Government either colluded or were remiss in the process that led to his discharge from the Army.
It can only be in the interests of justice - and of the State's reputation - that any such imputation be cleared up. Mr de Roiste asks that the files on his case be made available in order that he may answer whatever charges were laid against him. That is reasonable and it is consonant with principles of natural justice. There is also a recent precedent in the case of former Garda Superintendent Mr William Geary who was dismissed in 1928 and whose files were made available to him two years ago after the intervention of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
There may be considerations of security. If the young Lieutenant de Roiste was keeping company with dangerous subversives there may well be, even yet, an issue of protecting intelligence sources. But it is not beyond the wit of man to devise a procedure by which files might be released with names deleted (as in the Geary case) or with emendations, where, perhaps, a judicial figure might determine it appropriate.
Ireland has moved on since the 1960s and so has the law on individuals' rights. Donal de Roiste would not be discharged in similar circumstances today. He is entitled to the chance now to know what he was accused of and to clear his name.