There is something unsavoury and unwholesome about the exchange of allegations between Minister for Justice Michael McDowell and Frank Connolly, the executive director of the self-styled Centre for Public Inquiry, which has resulted in the centre's source of funding being cut off by Irish-American philanthropist Chuck Feeney. Mr McDowell has been characteristically robust in laying serious charges against Mr Connolly and he, in response, has offered a limp and partial denial.Why will Mr Connolly not provide an explanation as to how, or why, a passport application contained his photograph?
Mr McDowell has claimed, with legal immunity under Dáil privilege, that Mr Connolly travelled to Colombia in April 2001 using a false Irish passport, and that he was in the company of a convicted senior IRA figure and Niall Connolly, his brother, who was Sinn Féin's representative in Cuba who subsequently admitted using a false Irish passport to enter Colombia with two others (the so-called "Colombia Three") on a later date. The Minister asserted, again under Dáil privilege, that Frank Connolly was thereby involved in a deal under which the IRA gave military training to the Colombian terrorist organisation, Farc, in return for the payment of cocaine money to the IRA. It is instructive that Mr McDowell's claims have been aired inside and outside the Dáil.
Mr Connolly went beyond being an experienced journalist when he became executive director of the Centre for Public Inquiry. The centre's mission is "to independently promote the highest standards of integrity, ethics and accountability across Irish public and business life and to investigate and publicise breaches of those standards where they arise". So if he wants to point the finger, he has to be beyond public reproach himself. There is a legitimate public interest in calling upon him to account for these matters. He cannot stand back and call on Mr McDowell to prove his case when he represents a body that has, as its objective, public confidence in public life.
Mr Connolly has not met these high standards in his attempts to rebut the Minister's allegations. Many will have noted the bluster and obfuscation when he was asked detailed, and legitimate, questions about his photograph allegedly forming part of a false passport and the Garda investigation into him. It is not tenable for a journalist to respond to questions from another journalist by complaining he is being interrogated and to say he will deal with allegations if and when the authorities formally charge him.
Has the Minister put his concerns before the Director of Public Prosecutions? If there is sufficient evidence, Mr Connolly should be charged. If there is not, police intelligence should not be used to assassinate a character in the Dáil, even where there are peculiar things to be explained. Mr Connolly has a public duty to give a credible account of himself. But the Minister has a more onerous constitutional responsibility to protect all citizens from unjust attack and to vindicate their good name. There is a smell about this controversy.