The announcement by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, of his intention to change the law concerning the intimidation of witnesses may be welcome in itself. But its timing makes the minister vulnerable to the charge that he is seeking to deflect public attention from the outcome of the Garda Jerry McCabe murder trial of last week.
When forced by the opposition parties in the Dail to explain how the IRA killers in the case had escaped from the Special Criminal Court with a charge of manslaughter, Mr O'Donoghue found himself in a now in situation. And so he listed a few changes in the law and promised they would be added to the Criminal Justice Bill at present before the Oireachtas. In future, the Minister for Justice said, witnesses who might be subjected to intimidation would be allowed to give evidence by video-link; it would become an offence for people to try and trace witnesses who had been relocated as part of the witness protection programme; and a new statutory offence, with a penalty of up to 10 years, would be specifically targeted at intimidation of witnesses. Such changes in the law would obviously be of some benefit.
But the true measure of the Minister's approach became evident when he revealed that an investigation of "possible witness intimidation" had only been ordered by the Garda Commissioner on the previous day. And yet, the Minister was formally proposing to change the law to deal with witness intimidation.
Mr O'Donoghue must be complimented for having established and funded a special witness security programme, aimed particularly at the drugs trade, since coming to Government. But a full and adequate explanation of what went wrong in the McCabe case cannot be substituted by the promise of future legal changes. It would seem from what Mr O'Donoghue told the Dail that hostile witnesses - immediate relatives of the accused - and another who simply refused to testify, caused a fatal weakness in the State's case. He recorded that witnesses had effectively determined their own level of Garda protection. And he justified the decision by the DPP and the prosecution team to accept a plea of manslaughter on the basis that those charged with murder might otherwise have walked free. Finally, Mr O'Donoghue sought to reassure the opposition parties that those involved in the murder of Garda McCabe would not qualify for early release under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
Faced by a Sinn Fein threat of legal action to enforce the terms of the Belfast Agreement, which state: "the intention would be that should the circumstances allow it, any qualifying prisoners who remain in custody two years after the commencement of the (prisoner release) scheme would be released at that point", the Minister promised that such legal action would be vigorously resisted.
The opposition parties took the opportunity to underline the growing anti-Sinn Fein and anti-IRA sentiment in this State because of the McCabe murder and the failure to decommission weapons. In that regard, the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, questioned the commitment of the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, to the Belfast Agreement when he did not believe the IRA would decommission weapons. And he warned of the threat militant republicanism posed to the democratic system.