McDowell stands over Amnesty apology claim

The Minister for Justice  is standing by a claim that Amnesty International privately apologised over an advertising campaign that he says depicted three Cabinet members as racist.

A spokeswoman for Mr McDowell  said he was standing by his claim today despite a denial by the director of Amnesty that an apology was made by him or any member of the organisation.

The Minister first claimed to have received an apology on RTÉ Radio yesterday while explaining the reasons behind the Government decision to hold a referendum on the automatic right to Irish citizenship from Irish-born children of non-nationals.

Responding to questioning, Mr McDowell denied the referendum was to encourage racist tendencies, as suggested by the Labour Party leader Mr Pat Rabbitte, and he also took issue with the Amnesty International advertisement.

He claimed: "Amnesty International privately apologised for those advertisements which attacked the Taoiseach, John O'Donoghue and Mary Harney, and they were  disgraceful allegations which were published at the time in my view."

Asked whether it was appropriate to reveal the alleged private Amnesty apology, Mr McDowell replied: "I am just saying to you that they did regret the tone of the advertisement that they published. I regarded those as outrageous advertisements . . . to suggest that Mary Harney and Bertie Ahern and John O'Donoghue were racist was just simply outrageous."

Mr McDowell said "the advertisement said, 'some say they are racist others say they are not doing enough to counter racism'".

But this view was flatly rejected by Mr Sean Love, director of the Irish section of Amnesty International, who told ireland.comno authorised member of the organisation had ever publicly or privately apologised to any member of Government for the campaign.

He said it was it was impossible to answer why the Minister would suggest there had been an apology. "I think the Minister is the only person who can answer that.

"I think not for the first time what we are seeing is a smokescreen being used to distract from the absence of debate on immigration," Mr Love said.

"The truth of it is Ireland's immigration policy is a mess. There is no immigration policy. There's been a long-promised immigration and residency bill for six years now which remains unpublished. Instead what we keep getting are ad-hoc measures being introduced which are ill-thought out, and the proposed referendum is one of them.

Mr Love also disputed the 2001 campaign accused Government members of being racist. "The campaign didn't anybody of being racist. It said there was a complete absence of leadership on racism in this country. That is still the case," said Mr Love.

He said the-then chair of the Fianna Fáil party, Mr Rory O'Hanlon, wrote to him within days of the advertisement appearing in May 2001 to express concern. Mr Love said he responded to Mr O'Hanlon defending the campaign.

Mr Love said he also received complaints from Fine Gael TD, Mr Jim O'Keeffe and the-then senator Mr Jim Glennon. The-then minister for public enterprise, Ms Mary O'Rourke, also wrote to Mr Love, but she was supporting the campaign for "improved leadership".

Mr Love said Amnesty considered this campaign one of their best. "We'd run it again tomorrow if we could afford it".

The Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against the advertisement on the basis "that the heading: 'Some say they're involved in Racism' implied to the casual reader that the three people photographed could be considered to be racist."

It also upheld a second complaint that the "use of such advertising will and indeed has already spread to other forms of advertising to the detriment of the supply of information to the consumer".