Have his family's personal experiences coloured the plans of the Minister for Justice to restrict Garda contact with journalists, asks Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent
The Irish Daily Star cartoon version of him as "Mad Mullah McDowell" is pinned to the McDowell family fridge, but the animosity between the tabloid newspaper and the Minister for Justice is more than a joke.
Relations between them could never have been described as close, but they took a major turn for the worse last April when the Star published details of an assault by a group of youths on the Minister's 14-year-old son near his home in Ranelagh, Dublin. This was followed by reports that McDowell had asked the Garda Commissioner to investigate the leak, that he had ordered the garda on duty away from the front of his house, and that €20,000 had been spent on new security gates for his home.
When McDowell then announced earlier this month that as part of his proposals to reform the Garda Síochána, including the institution of a Garda Inspectorate, he would jail gardaí who leaked information to journalists, this was interpreted as a vengeful attack on the freedom of the press and on the rights of individual gardaí to talk to the media.
Fuel was added to the flames of the controversy by remarks made by his wife, Prof Niamh Brennan, in the course of a Sunday Times interview last weekend on reform of the health system, in which she said she would be reluctant to report to the Garda a future attack on herself or a member of her family, in the light of what had happened in April.
Relations between the Minister and the Garda will not have been improved by his wife's comments. While at a human level it is understandable that she responded as she did to the question asked by the journalist, it indicates a certain naivety if she did not recognise the political reality that her remarks were bound to make headlines.
A flavour of the attitude of the Star newspaper to the Minister can be seen in Terry McGeehan's weekly column in that paper the week of the Fianna Fáil backbenchers' meeting in Sligo. Addressing them, he wrote: "Why don't you start by telling him [the Taoiseach] that you're sick of Mad Mullah McDowell landing you all in the slurry every time he opens his arrogant mouth.
"Just tick off the number of times he's cocked up - gagging the gardaí, needlessly tampering with the liquor licensing laws, criminalising decent law-abiding citizens with his draconian proposals, collaborating in the muzzling of the Freedom of Information Act, casting bribery slurs against gardaí and journalists - and then refusing to say anything except 'I know what I know'.
"And all the while organised crime is merrily flourishing and the gardaí are still missing the 2,000 extra bodies McDowell and his pals promised pre-election. The bare-faced, unapologetic arrogance of the man is breathtaking."
Star editor Ger Colleran is unapologetic. "This is political commentary in the vernacular. We are giving voice to the people. They [the Government\] lied. They were in possession of the facts before the election. We're entitled to have honesty and probity from our politicians."
However, most individual members of the Cabinet scarcely merit a mention in the Star, and those primarily responsible for the promises and the cuts, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, get off very lightly. What is it with Michael McDowell?
"Well, if The Irish Times or the Irish Independent were described as 'the methane that rises from the pond of Irish journalism', how would they react?" asked Colleran. "So yes, he has been critical of us in the most hostile way. Do we say he can give it out, but he can't take it?"
In a democracy, political criticism should be free to be robust, but many consider that using the children of a political figure in a war against that politician is going too far. Colleran defends the naming of the Minister's son as an assault victim, on the basis that it demonstrated the consequences of the decision not to increase the size of the Garda force.
"There are competing interests between the public's right to know the breadth of crime and people's right to privacy. The balance is on the side of the public's right to know. It was an enormous public embarrassment to him when his own son was a victim," Colleran said.
However, it is questionable how much further forward this brought the debate on crime. It can have come as a surprise to no one that a 14-year-old can be attacked anywhere in Dublin, and should the area where the Minister lives be safer than anywhere else? Surely if this were so, the Star would be the first to condemn it? But serious issues lie behind this verbal war between the Minister for Justice and the Star, concerning reform of the Garda, the right to privacy, the use of the media by elements within the gardaí to drive their own agenda, the freedom of the press and reform of the libel laws.
There is a danger now that proper debate on the new Garda Bill will be lost in this controversy, and that reform of the libel laws, promised in the Programme for Government and now at the stage of consultation based on an expert group report, will be discussed only against this backdrop.
The Minister is not blameless in this regard. He justified his proposals to punish gardaí who leaked information to the media on the basis of an allegation that certain gardaí were bribed by certain journalists. When asked to substantiate this, he said only that he knew what he knew from his days as attorney general. He also quoted a column from Sunday Tribune journalist, Diarmuid Doyle, who said he could name at least five journalists who bribed gardaí, in support of his claim.
Such a claim, if true, is very serious, and should merit investigation by Garda management. But three weeks later Doyle has not heard a word from the Garda asking him for details of this crime he has said he has knowledge of. No one else has publicly come forward to support his contention, and there was widespread surprise in journalistic circles about his statement that money changes hands between journalists and gardaí in this State.
However, a very close relationship does exist between certain journalists and certain members of the force. Without it, many important stories would never have come to light, including the Heavy Gang scandal of the 1970s when allegations emerged that certain gardaí were torturing suspects, and many of the revelations now at the centre of the Morris tribunal.
This week demonstrated that relationship very clearly, with Garda-sourced stories driving much of the news agenda. Following Brennan's remarks that her son had been identified by the gardaí, and that the boys who attacked him had not, Tuesday's Evening Herald boasted: "McDowell attack suspects revealed". While the body of the story pointed out that underage suspects could not legally be identified, it carried considerable detail about what was happening to them.
Then the Star carried a story about the mugging of the wife of Attorney General Rory Brady, and on Thursday the Irish Independent reported the accident involving Fianna Fáil TD, G.V. Wright, who exceeded the breath alcohol level. Later that day The Irish Times was able to identify and interview the victim, as did RTÉ yesterday.
But it is very unlikely that this close relationship between the media and the Garda is based on bribery. It is mainly driven by social contact and cemented by drink and meals. But this is no different from the relationship that exists between specialist journalists in many areas and their contacts, and indeed is similar to the type of relations that exist between business associates everywhere.
McDowell's bribery allegation is also a red herring, and has distracted attention from a serious discussion of what gardaí should be able to disclose to the media and what should be prohibited. If a member of the force gives out information that could jeopardisea fair trial, or cause further distress to a victim of crime, or threaten the safety of a public servant, or just cause embarrassment to a perceived enemy of the force, then it does not matter whether this is done for gain or because of a close relationship with the journalist concerned. It is wrong. If that wrong is compounded by a garda accepting a bribe, then that should be dealt with through Garda regulations on bribes.
But if a garda gives information to a journalist about wrong-doing on the part of a prominent politician, whose behaviour runs counter to his public proclamations, is that in the public interest? Should members of the gardaí be able to drive the political agenda and make or break political careers? What about wrong-doing within the force itself? A blanket ban on communications between all individual members of the gardaí and journalists could lead to the covering up of wrong-doing that should be exposed.
That is not to say that ordinary citizens should have their privacy invaded at the whim of certain journalists who elicit information from members of the Garda, whether through social interaction, lavish entertainment or anything else. It certainly should not mean that the rules of human decency that should protect children, especially child victims of crime, should be waived if those children happen to have prominent parents. Distinctions have to be made.
The European Court of Human Rights made this distinction in a ruling on the limits of the privacy of public figures. In upholding the right of a citizen to privacy, it qualified this right in the case of political figures, pointing out they presented themselves and their reputations to the public for scrutiny, and sought public office and reward on this basis.
All this needs to be codified both within the media and the Garda, with strong codes of ethics that can be policed. But it is dangerous if politicians alone can decide on the limits to be imposed on the media, and particularly if the politician concerned is perceived, even wrongly, to be driven by a personal agenda.
The focus of any discussion of relations between the Garda and the media should be on finding the right balance between the right of suspects to a fair trial, the right of innocent people to privacy and the interests of public safety on the one hand, and the public interest in seeing wrong-doing, including wrong-doing within the Garda, brought to book on the other.
There is a real danger that this may now not happen, and that the bribery allegations will fuel undoubted hostility among some members of the force to the idea of any external scrutiny. Already the proposals in the outline of the Garda Bill fall far short of what exists with the Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland.
The debate on this Bill, and on defamation law, urgently needs to be put back on track.