Norris says Seanad plea was not for partner

SENATOR DAVID Norris has said he never made representations on behalf of his former partner, Tevfik Akin, in Seanad Éireann or elsewhere.

Mr Norris last night described as untrue a report in yesterday’s Irish Sun that he intervened in the Seanad in 2007 on behalf of Algerian-born Mr Akin’s citizenship application.

“Tevfik already had his residency and his passport before I even met him. The report refers to an intervention I made on behalf of another individual altogether,” he said.

The report stated Mr Norris raised the case of Mr Akin, who was his partner at the time, in an adjournment debate in April 2007. When the report appeared yesterday, Mr Norris said he was initially taken aback and did not respond until he read the transcript of the 2007 debate.

He said he then realised that the article referred to an unnamed third party, also an Algerian, on whose behalf he made the intervention. He said the man was in the Seanad gallery for the debate.

His version is borne out by the transcript of the debate during which Mr Norris stated he was involved in the case. He stated “the man is a friend of mine and my partner, Tevfik”. He said that this referred to the man being a friend of both himself and Tevfik, and was not a reference to Tevfik alone.

“When you raise individual cases like this, you are absolutely prohibited from using their name. It is the rule of the Seanad. The person could not be named. You supply the name to the Minister for Justice in complete confidence. I merely referred to him being a friend of both Tevfik’s and mine. If it were Tevfik, I would not have been allowed to name him.”

It was absolutely appropriate to raise the case, which revealed a real unfairness, he said. “I never made an appeal or an intervention on behalf of Tevfik in the Seanad or elsewhere,” he added.

In the course of the short debate, Mr Norris said if the response of the government was unsatisfactory, he proposed to pursue the matter through the courts because an extraordinarily dangerous precedent had been set by the Department of Justice.

He told the Seanad the man had been told to base the arguments of his appeal on the reasons why his citizenship application had been refused. But the Department of Justice had refused to tell him those reasons. Then minister of state Tim O’Malley responded on behalf of the government, saying it was open for the young man to appeal.

UNDER WRAPS: NO RELEASE OF NORRIS ARCHIVE

THE NATIONAL Library will not be releasing any of the personal archive of Senator David Norris without his “express permission”, it said last night.

A library spokeswoman said staff had not yet catalogued the archive, which was donated in December 2007, and did not know whether copies of the controversial letters, written by Mr Norris seeking clemency for his former partner, were among the papers. The letters, which Mr Norris has refused to publish, citing legal privilege, were written in 1997. “We have no idea if the letters are there,” the spokeswoman said. Asked whether the public would be granted access to the archive, she said: “We don’t know. That is a matter for Senator Norris.”

A spokesman for Mr Norris, when asked the same question, said: "That is a matter for the library to consider." - KITTY HOLLAND