ROSS ATTACKS FF ‘PRISONERS OF PUBLICANS’
Minister tackles Opposition over drink-drive Bill
SHANE ROSS has hit out at Fianna Fáil for being ‘prisoners of the publicans’ as he gears up to tackle the country’s drink-driving laws.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Irish Mail on Sunday, the Independent Alliance
Minister tackled the lead opposition party on their position against automatically banning drivers caught with a blood-alcohol reading of between 50 and 80mg per 100ml.
He also attacked Fianna Fáil – the party that is propping up the Fine Gael-led coalition of which Mr Ross is a member – for its opposition to the Judicial Appointments Bill, calling FF justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan ‘the voice of the law library’.
In the interview, Transport Minister Mr Ross tells the MoS:
Individual gardaí should be prosecuted and sacked if criminal conduct is found to have occurred in the scandal over the falsification of breath tests.
He was ‘surprised’ at the controversy to the reopening of Stepaside Garda station.
It took time to learn to trust former taoiseach Enda Kenny and initially he and his colleagues were viewed as the ‘enemy within’.
Mr Ross believes that his Bill to strengthen drink-driving laws will pass and is vital to public safety.
‘If I can save one life, I’ll die happy, because it is just about saving lives. Safety is paramount,’ he argues.
Fine Gael will support the new Road Traffic Bill, and the party’s parliamentary chairman Martin Heydon will meet Mr Ross to look at ways of improving rural transport.
Mr Ross said his department is looking at issues related to insurance, to make it easier for publicans to provide cheap transport for customers.
The Bill could now be debated in the Dáil as early as this week.
The legislation would see those found to be over the blood alcohol limit disqualified automatically.
It would impose a three-month driving ban for those caught with a blood alcohol reading of between 50mg and 80mg per 100ml.
Currently, first-time offenders in this category face a sanction of three penalty points, rather than a driving ban. Fianna Fáil TDs oppose the move. However, Mr Ross said: ‘I’m very hopeful that it will be passed now.
‘It is really regrettable that Fianna Fáil and now Labour [are against]. Fianna Fáil are opposing and Labour appear to be wobbling back and forth and to be split.
‘I can’t understand anybody being against it but I think the numbers are moving very much in our favour.’
He believes Fianna Fáil is succumbing to pressure from interest groups. ‘I think that they’re the prisoners of the vintners, the publicans,’ he said.
‘The polls the RSA have taken show that, overwhelmingly, people in all parts of Ireland are in favour of tougher drink-driving laws. It is 90% in rural areas and that’s where the opposition is meant to be.
‘People are behind the Bill. But there are really powerful vested interests, notably the publicans who are lobbying very hard with TDs. With rural TDs in particular.’
He also believes that Fianna Fáil have bowed to pressure from powerful interest groups in relation to his Judicial Appointments Bill. The legislation allows for a lay chairman and a lay majority on an 11member board to oversee the appointments of judges.
Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan, the party’s justice spokesman and a high-profile barrister, has proposed that a retired judge chair the body.
However, Mr Ross explained: ‘We specifically put in the Programme for Government that there should be a system to take the appointment of judges out of the political arena. The pillars of that were that the chairman should be a lay person and that there should be a lay majority on the board selecting the judges. Those points are not negotiable. Fine Gael, to their credit, have been very supportive.
‘The suggestion put forward by Jim O’Callaghan was to dilute that in some ways. Fianna Fáil seem to be – in the case of both the Judiciary and in the Breathalyser Bills – bowing to vested interests,’ Mr Ross said. ‘Jim O’Callaghan is the voice of the Law Library and the voice of the judges. And other members of Fianna Fáil, notably people who are lawyers, are acting as such as well. They’re really acting on behalf of legal interests. He’s a barrister and I understand his inclination to be on their side.
‘We can’t accept that the vested interests, whether they be the judiciary or the publicans, can dictate the course of legislation. And once it is in the Programme for Government it is holy writ, as far as the Independent Alliance and Fine Gael are concerned.’
Last night, Mr O’Callaghan responded: ‘[Mr Ross] is 100% wrong. I’m elected by the public to the Dáil and I represent what I believe is in the public interest. Shane has consistently failed to explain the public benefit of his proposals in the Bill. Fianna Fáil believes his proposals will damage the judiciary and the administration of justice. That is why we oppose them.’
And on behalf of Fianna Fáil, TD Niall Collins said: ‘It is typical of Minister Ross to engage in namecalling and a smear campaign against Fianna Fáil. Minister Ross relishes in lecturing people from the high moral quicksand. He has obviously decided to speak out for the first time in a long time as he is angry that Fianna Fáil has exposed his blatant stroke in relation to Stepaside Garda Station.
‘Minister Ross clearly hopes that attacking Fianna Fáil will in some way distract from his unprecedented failure to deliver anything in his department. He is wrong.’
In the interview at his offices in Government Buildings, Mr Ross also tackled the thorny issue of falsified breath tests, saying that if gardaí are found to have acted criminally in falsifying alcohol breath tests they should be prosecuted and sacked.
A draft report of the Police Authority’s investigation into the breath-test scandal is with the body’s board and is expected to be published next week, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned. An internal Garda audit into the exaggeration of breath tests found 1,458,221 bogus drink- and drug-driving checks between 2009 and 2016.
‘What was happening was completely and utterly wrong,’ said Mr Ross. ‘It was absolutely terrifying. What we saw was a systemic involvement of gardaí in doing something that was utterly wrong.
‘It is something that has now stopped, I’m sure it’s now stopped, but it was horrifying that you would see that the gardaí were obviously stimulating the figures.’
He was asked whether he thought gardaí should be sacked over their behaviour.
‘I think that it should be properly investigated,’ Mr Ross said. ‘If gardaí are breaking the law, or if they are distorting the figures then there should be serious penalties taken against them. If they are committing criminal offences then they should be prosecuted. That would lead to automatic dismissal.’
The internal Garda audit, by Assistant Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan, cited three factors in the gross exaggeration of statistics – recording issues; suspected inflation of numbers; and the estimation of numerical data.
Now the MoS has learned that the independent investigation by the Policing Authority, under Josephine Feehily, is complete. A draft report will go before a meeting of the authority in Dublin next week, on Thursday. It is likely to be published on Friday.
On the issue of garda stations, the Dublin Rathdown TD said he was taken aback by the controversy over Stepaside Garda Station. ‘I’m kind of puzzled by it,’ he said at the decision to reopen the garda station
‘Fianna Fáil are opposing and Labour appear to be wobbling back and forth’ ‘Jim O’Callaghan is the voice of the Law Library and voice of the judges’
in Mr Ross’s own constituency, as per the recommendation of a report prepared by An Garda Síochána. ‘The Programme for Government was followed to the letter. When the report came out there wasn’t too much surprise at its conclusion because the case for Stepaside was absolutely compelling and I was always happy about that.
‘I was just surprised at the sudden burst of outrage at me promoting a policy. Stepaside was never specifically mentioned in the Programme for Government which people have forgotten about. I’m absolutely staggered... for me supporting a policy that was made clear in the Programme for Government. I campaigned for Stepaside for years and years: do people expect me to drop it once I get into government?’
Mr Ross added that he has an ‘excellent’ relationship with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. ‘The Government is working very well now, partly because we accept that we have responsibility for putting each other’s legislation through. My relationship with the Taoiseach is excellent. He’s extremely cooperative and understanding. We have differences, because we come from different points of view but Leo is very approachable and extremely accommodating without diluting what he believes in.’
Mr Ross said that after joining Fine Gael in Government in 2016, his relationship with them was initially tense. ‘I was to blame, when I got into Government first, and I’m not speaking for other members of the Independent Alliance. I kind of felt like I was still in opposition. And I sat around the Cabinet table with these guys and we were looking at each other with extraordinary suspicion,’ he said.
‘And there was a kind of culture of: “How are we going to outwit Fine Gael?” and they were the same. They regarded us as the enemy within. I think I was at fault there, and it took a few months for me to get know and trust Enda Kenny. And I think vice versa.’