Michael Collins would be disgusted at how the reputation of the Garda Síochána has been "sullied by the criminal behaviour of certain gardaí in Donegal", the Fine Gael MEP Jim Higgins claimed yesterday.
Giving the oration at the annual Michael Collins commemoration at Béal na mBláth, Mr Higgins said he would be proud that his grandniece Nora Owen had been minister for justice, and that the Garda remained one of the few unarmed police forces in the world.
But in relation to the Donegal scandal, he said: "Under Collins, the perpetrators certainly would not have been allowed to retire with gratuities and full pension rights or be transferred on active duty with full pay. He would have booted them unceremoniously from the force."
He also maintained Collins would frown at the fact that "the natural gas find off the Mayo coast, is being given away . . . to a foreign company for literally nothing - no royalties, a derisory tax rate and massive write-offs". Collins "would turn in his Glasnevin grave that some of the inheritors of his unselfish legacy as Yeats called it 'fumbled in the greasy till' and took hundreds of thousands in bribes for political favours".
He said Collins would be proud the Ireland he liberated and founded is now "a full and equal partner in the most successful political experiment in history and which sees de Gaulle's dream of a united Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals on the brink of realisation".