Labour asks why drug charges struck out

LABOUR JUSTICE spokesman Pat Rabbitte has called on the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to say why charges were dropped in the Kieran Boylan drug-trafficking case.

“Since the DPP has announced that in certain circumstances he may be willing to provide public information in certain cases where he declined to prosecute, there appear to be compelling reasons why he should explain his decision in the Boylan case,” said Mr Rabbitte.

He said that the most controversial case on the desk of the new chairman of the Garda Ombudsman Commission, Dermot Gallagher, was the case of international drugs trafficker Kieran Boylan.

Boylan, he said, had been caught in possession of €1.7 million worth of cocaine and heroin, having already been convicted and imprisoned in the UK and Ireland, albeit for a surprisingly short sentence, for serious drug offences.

The charges relating to the seizure were struck out and only re-entered after members of the House raised the issue.

“On July 31st last, on the last day of the courts’ session before the summer recess, although not listed for mention and without notice, a nolle prosequi was entered on behalf of the DPP.

“Questioned by the judge, the senior counsel for the DPP stated only that ‘it is a matter for very, very careful consideration at a high level’.”

Mr Rabbitte said he understood that the inference from an RTÉ Prime Time programme was that Boylan was not a registered informant, but had a relationship with individual gardaí and, because of this, the criminal prosecution system moved to protect him.

“If there is an explanation why a man importing poison and death should be exempt from the criminal justice system, we should be told what it is.’’ Mr Rabbitte said the only reasonable inference was that “Boylan was saved from prison by the intervention of corrupt gardaí or he was protected because he is a Garda informant’’.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said that he had received an interim report from the Garda Commissioner on the Boylan case and it had been passed on to the commission.

An internal Garda inquiry was ongoing and the commission had indicated it had opened a public interest investigation on the case.

It would be inappropriate, said Mr Ahern, to comment further.

The House approved Mr Gallagher’s appointment and heard that he had offered to take on the job at an annual salary of €90,000, resulting in a saving of €153,000.

Mr Gallagher, former secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs, succeeds the late Mr Justice Kevin Haugh.

Fine Gael spokesman Charlie Flanagan said that Mr Gallagher’s appointment represented both a triumph and a failure for the Government.

While securing the appointment of a person of Mr Gallagher’s status and stature was a most positive achievement, the process was unsatisfactory. Fianna Fáil had a reputation for cronyism and the suitability of appointments should be vetted by the appropriate Oireachtas committee.

“We are still left in the league of perhaps some tin-pot South American dictatorship or some of the less democratic African regimes,’’ Mr Flanagan said.

Sinn Féin spokesman Aengus Ó Snodaigh said he questioned whether a recently retired, high-level civil servant could ever command the optimum confidence of the public in a role as an independent scrutiniser of other servants of the State.

The majority of people, he said, would see it as the appointment of a high earner who had retired from his Civil Service post with a large sum and an annual pension of €120,000.

Mr Ahern said that the Government had followed the letter and spirit of the law in making the appointment.