Committee Reports > List of Committees > Dáil > 1971 > Committee of Public Accounts > Final Report - Northern Ireland Relief Expenditure

MIONTUAIRISC NA FIANAISE

(Minutes of Evidence)

Dé Máirt, 30 Márta, 1971

Tuesday, 30th March, 1971

The Committee met at 4 p.m.

DEPUTY P. HOGAN in the chair.

ORDER OF DÁIL OF 1st DECEMBER, 1970.

Mr. E. F. Suttle (An tÁrd-Reachtaire Cuntas agus Ciste) was in attendance in an advisory capacity.

The Committee went into public session at 5.40 p.m.

Mr. Eoin Neeson sworn and examined.

10484. Chairman.—You are Director of the Government Information Bureau?

—I am.

10485. And that is the position you held during all this matter we have under investigation?

—It is.

10486. Of this grant-in-aid vote? I have read your submission and there is nothing you want to add?

—No.

10487. Or take away from that, is there?

—I do not think so.

10488. There is no point you want to amplify?

—Well, nothing that occurs to me just off the top of my head. The only point I might make at this stage is, first of all, I would like to apologise that I was not available when I was first notified. Through no fault of my own I could not attend and I would like to apologise to the entire Committee for that. The second point I would like to make is that I do not think there is anything, as I said in my submission, to which I can contribute on this. I had no function or no knowledge of the matter under investigation by the Committee. It did not come within the sphere of my activities at all.

10489. There was some move to tie up your bureau, the Information Bureau, with the publication Voice of the North?

—So it would appear from what Mr. Brady has said, submitted to the Committee, but this attempt to tie up the publication the Voice of the North is, you know, meaningless really, to me, because in point of fact I would have had no authority of any description to agree to the kind of arrangement outlined by Mr. Brady.

10490. And you told Mr. Brady that and——?

—No, I did not tell him that at the time for the reason I have put forward in my submission —I did not know who his principals were and he had indicated to me that he had discussed this entire matter with the then Minister for Finance and I did not know what authority, if any, other than what Mr. Brady said, that he had from the Minister for Finance and I was anxious to find out what the Minister for Finance’s views were on what Mr. Brady had said to me.

10491. Well, did you receive any impressions from Mr. Brady that he was, as to where he was to get the money?

—No. It was not at all clear to me except that he was clearly trying to involve the Government Information Bureau in his activities in some way or another. But it was all rather vague. The suggestions made by Mr. Brady, both orally and in his submission would seem to indicate that he was under the impression that the Government Information Bureau would support his activities in this capacity, as it were, financially as well as giving him moral support of any kind, but I cannot for the life of me see how he could have arrived at this conclusion.

10492. So, neither financially nor functionally any help was coming from the Government Information Bureau?

—No, not at all.

10493. On the basis that his efforts were propaganda and yours was just a news service?

—Well not only on that basis but on the basis that he had resigned from the Bureau and I had no authority and still have no authority to employ people directly in any kind of capacity like that. I would have to seek sanction, prior sanction, for anything of that kind.

10494. When you mentioned this matter to the Taoiseach, the matter of the Voice of the North and Mr. Brady’s approach to you—did you mention that to the Taoiseach?

—I mentioned the circumstances to the Taoiseach as well.

10495. And he agreed with you?

—Yes.

10496. Chairman.—Before we go on, have we your permission to publish this submission of yours to the Committee?

—Yes. I do not see why not.

10497. Deputy E. Collins.—Mr. Neeson, as you are probably aware, Mr. Brady received £5,000 plus from the £100,000 Grant-in-Aid which was for financing the publication the Voice of the North. He claimed that he had Government support at least initially in the matter. This had now, of course, according to your evidence, turned out not to be so. Is that correct?

—That is correct.

10498. If I may refer to your submission on page 1?

—May I refer to it too?

10499. Yes, indeed, You said:

The first information that I had about Mr. Brady’s selection and appointment to the Government Information Bureau temporary extended service was as a result of a casual meeting on Friday, August 15, 1969, with the then Minister for Finance, Mr. C. J. Haughey ….

If you were director of the Government Information Bureau, surely it would have been your responsibility to recruit staff?

—Yes that is true, but the circumstances at that particular time were rather extraordinary, as I do not have to point out.

10500. I appreciate that fully.

—The situation was that the demands on our resources exceeded our resources enormously and the arrangement for the recruitment of Mr. Brady is something that I know nothing about. Mr. Haughey informed me that it had been arranged that Mr. Brady would join the Bureau staff and that this had his approval and had been agreed with the Department of the Taoiseach and, while I might have had some reservations had I been consulted before that about this particular appointment, I felt that well at least here was another helping hand which we could make good use of.

10501. If it was left to your own discretion would you have taken on Mr. Brady? You need not answer that if you feel it is a reflection on a professional colleague.

—It is a very difficult question to answer at this time, because so much has happened in the meantime. I would prefer not to answer that question.

10502. That is fair enough. In relation to the money offered, a fee of £200 a month, would this be a normal trade figure?

—This was a fee which I was instructed by the then Minister to include in the note which he asked me to send to him in reference to Mr. Brady’s appointment.

10503. Was it in line with the moneys which you were giving to other journalists?

—No. The arrangement with the other temporary staff was quite different. They were all recruited from State or semi-State bodies on secondment.

10504. They would have been on different salaries? Would you describe the figure as excessive?

—No, I would not. It was in line with current figures.

10505. On page 2 you said:

When, on August 29, it was agreed at a re-assessment conference at Government Information Bureau headquarters that any further emphasis in this respect would be mere propaganda, it was decided to withdraw this reporting team and establish a general production unit in headquarters …

Who decided this? Were there any Ministers involved?

—No. That was a decision taken at a conference which I chaired and it was, in fact, a re-assessment conference which was reassessing the effectiveness of the work that we were doing in terms of providing information. The initial purpose of sending a team to get human interest stories from refugees, and so forth, seemed at that point to have been fulfilled. There is a limit to the value of that kind of material and we felt at that stage that this limit had been reached.

10506. Apparently Mr. Brady did not attend these conferences?

—My recollection is that he attended only one. He may have attended two but——

10507. Was any reason given?

—No. He was invited to them and did not attend.

10508. Around the end of September Mr. Brady broached the subject of the newspaper. I think it was termed People in the North. What did he say in relation to it? What was the context of the conversation?

—This is the conversation on the 18th September?

10509. The week after the 18th September, I think. Oh yes, the 18th September. That is correct?

—I said in my submission that the meeting, such as it was, lasted about two minutes. I think that is an exaggeration because in point of fact I was half way into my coat with my brief case in one hand when he rushed into my office and said he wanted to talk to me. I told him I did not have time. I had a taxi waiting. He said he wanted to talk about a paper, the People in the North. This, to the best of my recollection, was the phrase he used. He said they were starting it and they had asked him to advise them on it.

10510. Did he name anybody?

—No.

10511. Did he name anybody specifically in the North?

—No, he did not.

10512. Did he name anyone in the South?

—No, he did not name anybody at all.

10512a. At that meeting or at any other meeting?

—No.

10513. Of course, you would not allow this? In your official capacity you would not allow official moneys to be spent on such a publication?

—Not only would I not allow it, but I would not have the official authority to sanction it.

10514. Page four: the last paragraph reads:

I mentioned to the then Minister for Finance that Mr. Brady had resigned from the Government Information Bureau (extended service) and he said that he knew this. I asked the Minister if he had any idea what Mr. Brady intended to do. He said that Mr. Brady was going to start a paper, the Voice of Ulster and possibly a mobile radio station to beam across the Border.

Mr. Haughey, the then Minister, knew about this and he said this to you?

—He said this to me, yes.

10515. From your own information would it be legal to beam radio information from the Republic to the North?

—I do not know. Beaming in this sense of the word is a very loose kind of term. If you have a radio station anywhere which can be received anywhere else which is not within the State I suppose this could be called beaming, but frankly I do not know the answer to that question.

10516. You state here that the Minister for Finance knew that Mr. Brady was going to be involved in the Voice of Ulster which turned out to be the Voice of the North?

—Yes.

10517. Did you have a discussion with him in the matter?

—No, I had no discussion with the Minister. I had gone to see him about something else entirely which concerned problems that I had in the Bureau. These problems were basically the question of staff, the question of accommodation and the question of equipment. As I was leaving, I informed him that Mr. Brady had left and this information materialised.

10518. Did you mention at any time to the Taoiseach that Mr. Haughey had discussed with you Mr. Brady’s involvement with the Voice of the North?

—Subsequently, when I went to the Taoiseach with the material that I had received, the bills I had received and so on, I did——

10519. What did he say about it? What transpired?

—Pretty well what I have said here. He asked me to leave it—the documents with him and said he would pass them to Mr. Haughey.

10520. What documents?

—The bills I received.

10521. In relation to the ordinary work——

—The bills I received from Mr. Brady.

10522. What date would that be?

—Speaking from memory, that would have been the end of October. I would put it at 28th, 29th or 30th October, 1969.

10523. The Taoiseach knew Mr. Haughey knew that Brady was involved with the Voice of the North and possibly a mobile radio station?

—Well, yes, from what I said to him he knew as much as I did, which was that Mr. Brady said he had discussed this with Mr. Haughey and Mr. Haughey had told me that he understood Brady was going to start this paper.

10524. He already knew about it? Did the Taoiseach already know or did you inform him?

—I informed him, to the best of my knowledge.

10525. In relation to the luncheon which you had with Mr. Brady—on page six—

At the conclusion of the luncheon interview I asked him to put his entire proposals in detail in a written memorandum to me, which he agreed to do.

Why did you ask him to do this?

—Because I had no notion at all—the conversation I had with the Minister was of the briefest. I would compare it to the conversation I initially had with Mr. Brady on the 18th. It was a very brief conversation as I was leaving the Minister’s office, having discussed the other matters which were of real relevance to me. Mr. Brady had introduced a whole knew concept to me over lunch and the Minister had asked me to meet Mr. Brady and to discuss this with him. During the course of the lunch, as I have indicated, Mr. Brady said that the scheme had been discussed in detail between him and the Minister, and accordingly I asked him to put the entire proposals in writing to me.

10526. Which he did not do?

—No.

10527. You then went to the Minister for Finance and asked him his views?

—Yes.

10528. Which you did not receive?

—No.

10529. And which you did not pursue?

—No, I never heard anything further from him at all.

10530. So far as you were concerned Mr. Brady was left in your service?

—Anything that happened between Mr. Brady and his principals, who ever they might be—I don’t know really——

10531. Did he give you any indication as to who his principals might be?

—No.

10532. Or that he had Ministerial approval?

—He implied he had Ministerial approval. I would not read into that implication that he did have it, in fact.

10533. I quite see your point. When you received these bills, you gave them to the Taoiseach, who would not entertain them?

—No. My recommendation was that we should have nothing to do with this. He said he would pass them to Mr. Haughey.

10534. The Taoiseach said?

—Yes, and I am aware he did this.

10535. He passed them? At the end of your submission, apparently Mr. Fagan undertook to deal with the matter?

—Yes.

10536. What discussions did you have with Mr. Fagan?

—This was one of the bills in relation to the publication from “The Voice of the North” and he brought it to me. I cannot recall exactly the amount involved, but it was fairly substantial. I explained to him what the situation was—that the Taoiseach had said these were to go to Mr. Haughey and Mr. Fagan took the bill away and subsequently came back to me with a note that the Minister for Finance had approved payment for it and that it should be charged to the vote for the Department of the Taoiseach. So I accordingly brought this, together with repeat bills which I had received from Mr. Brady about the same time, to the Taoiseach for a second time. This would be early December and he again said he would pass them to Mr. Haughey. I am aware that he did that also.

10537. Are you aware that Mr. Haughey subsequently got these bills paid?

—No. My knowledge of the thing ends at that point.

10538. Thank you.

10539. Deputy FitzGerald.—There does seem to be quite a conflict on some points between yourself and Mr. Brady if we refer to the account of the luncheon—have you got his submission there?

—I have—what page is it?

10540. Page 5.

—Yes.

10541. At the top of the page, he says:

Mr. Neeson arranged with me that my fee would remain at £200 per month and that I should submit a weekly true bill to him of all expenditure in connection with the newspaper; but, he also instructed me to submit to him a covering bill each week for the amount made out as against “preparation of manuscripts for the Bureau”. He also offered to provide pictures and material from the propaganda unit, if required, for the newspaper.

Would you like to comment on those statements?

—Yes, I would. The suggestions contained in that paragraph—if you leave out the last sentence for the moment—I will deal with that separately—were all suggestions made by Mr. Brady. Whether they were made in precisely the kind of concrete terms he has indicated here or not is something I would not like to comment on, but I doubt very much because he was, according to my recollection, discussing something which he had claimed to have discussed with the Minister for Finance, and this kind of arrangement—I would have had no authority whatsoever to pay him a fee of any kind, once he had resigned from the thing, and the idea of submitting two bills and a cover arrangement is the kind of thing I would not lend myself to under any circumstances.

10542. May I just take you up on that because there is this question of the two pamphlets, quite separately from the Voice of the North in which such a cover operation was engaged in and where, I understand, Mr. Brady was eventually paid on that basis?

—I think, Deputy, with all respect, you are saying that Mr. Brady said that such a cover-up operation was engaged in—I do not agree— but at all events, I would suggest that since these publications were paid for from the Vote of the Department of the Taoiseach, they do not seem to me, with due respect, to be relevant to the subject of the Committee’s inquiry.

10543. Their relevance was that you said that you would not lend yourself to that kind of cover operation?

—Yes.

10544. And it has been alleged by Mr. Brady that you did in fact lend yourself to such a cover-up operation for the two pamphlets and we do know that the two pamphlets were paid for by the Government, so I would like you to clarify what happened with regard to them?

—I do not want to appear to be niggling, but you did not use the word “alleged” earlier on. You said that the cover operation had taken place; in fact, it had not.

10545. That Mr. Brady had said so?

—Yes. What happened with these two publications—and I welcome indeed the opportunity to set the record straight on this— was that the first knowledge the Bureau had of either of these publications came, I think, on October the 3rd. We had no knowledge of either of these booklets before October the 3rd when the decision was taken to purchase copies of the booklet attributed to Mr. Corrigan. That decision was taken because I thought it was a useful publication and an attributable publication. The other publication arrived in the Government Information Bureau without any prior knowledge or warning, and having had a look at it and read it, I decided that it was inflammatory material of a totally propagandist nature which we could not possibly distribute, and we held it. The reason we held it—and perhaps I was in error in doing this—the reason we held it was because again I did not know what authority Mr. Brady might have had from the then Minister for Finance for supplying this to the Government Information Bureau. The Minister for Finance at that time, to the best of my recollection, wasnot available to get that information from him, so we held that, but it was not distributed. The other booklet, Mr. Corrigan’s booklet, was distributed.

The Committee adjourned at 6.00 p.m. until 7.00 p.m.

Mr. Eoin Neeson again examined.

10546. Deputy FitzGerald.—We were just talking about the two pamphlets and I was raising the question that it had been alleged by Mr. Brady that they were produced on a kind of undercover basis, similar to but not identical with that which he proposed for the Voice of the North, and he does appear to have been paid for them. Could you tell us something about that and the basis on which he was paid for them?

—Yes. To begin with, there was no question of its being an undercover arrangement at any stage, either similar to or anal gous in any way to the suggestions that he made in relation to the Voice of the North. He discussed neither of these publications with me in advance.

10547. In advance of what?

—In advance of the time when we became aware of the fact that Corrigan’s booklet was in production and that Corrigan was preparing a booklet. When we became aware of the production which was attributed to Mr. Corrigan we decided to order it, which we did. The other booklet, the one entitled Terror in the North, which has no attribution on it at all, was not ordered by the Government Information Bureau and I have checked this with the officer who is in charge of ordering publications and who handles such matters, and it arrived without any prior notice on or about the 16th October, 1969. I cannot understand how Mr. Brady could have arrived at the conclusion that he did but I can only assume that it was due to some confusion in his own mind about discussions which he may have had with other people. I do not know. The reason he was paid was because we accepted, ordered and accepted, one of these booklets and retained although we did not distribute the other one.

10548. I do not understand why you paid for it if you never ordered it. People send me things through the post and I do not pay for them unless I order them.

—As I mentioned earlier on, I think, before the Recess, the booklet arrived at a time when the then Minister for Finance was not available and personally I did not know whether he had instructed Mr. Brady to send this along to the Bureau. As I have already indicated, I may have been somewhat at fault in retaining this and not returning it. But it is not—again, I think Mr. Chairman, or Deputy, I should indicate the fact that this was paid for and had been disposed of would seem to me to render it irrelevant to the subject of the Inquiry.

10549. Well, it is only relevant because of what you said about under-cover arrangements because the only arrangement that was different, as he describes it, is the arrangement under which half the print was to be bought by the Government and the balance to be given free to the author in lieu of any fee. The price to the Government was to cover the entire cost of printing?

—Yes, I have read this, but an arrangement of such rather extravagant deviousness would have been quite pointless because as early as August, 1969 the Government Information Bureau already had a procedure in operation for ordering publications on the North and did so on a number of occasions.

10550. Did you not, in fact?—He sent in accounts covering the cost of their printing— the 29th October—and these were subsequently paid and these accounts were furnished, apparently, on this extravagantly devious basis. Is that wrong?

—Well, I could not comment on that. I do not know on what basis they were furnished, but since one of the publications to which you are referring was ordered and distributed, I cannot relate that at all to any question of deviousness. We ordered it and it was delivered and distributed. There is nothing devious about that.

10551. Well, I read out what Mr. Brady said was the basis on which he sends in the bills. You described it as an extravagantly devious basis——

—No, I did not.

10552. I thought you did.

—No. I said that such an arrangement as described by Mr. Brady——

10553. Yes, quite?

—Would be extravagantly devious.

10553a. Right. He described this arrangement as the arrangement. You describe it as extravagantly devious. The bill is sent in on that basis apparently. I am open to correction on this—and paid on that basis?

—No. They were not paid for on that basis. They were paid for on the basis that we ordered one of these publications. It was delivered. You do not order something which you are not prepared to pay for—at least the Bureau does not. That was the reason that one was paid for. The reason the other one was paid for was because it was accepted by us, even though it was not ordered.

10554. You keep saying “paid for”, Mr. Neeson, but we are talking here about the amount paid. What is extravagantly devious about the arrangement I described to you is that the Government pays for the entire cost of printing but only takes half and gives the other half to the author as a fee. That is what I read out and you described it as extravagantly devious. Is it the case that the bills submitted to and paid for by you were on that basis as claimed by Seamus Brady, that is, that you paid for the full amount although you only got half? It is either true or not true?

—No, we paid for what we received and we received bills for what had been delivered to us to the best of my knowledge.

10555. Did those bills cover the cost only of those you received or did they, as he described it, cover the cost of the entire amount printed?

—So far as I am aware, what was paid for was what we received, but this is something I would have to check. I am afraid I cannot answer that.

10556. He wrote a letter to you on 15th January which sets out the basis and says that half were being given to the CDC people in Belfast. It is explained in great detail. He encloses the bill and the bill is then paid?

—Just a second.

10557. If you look at document No. 2 of 15th January, 1970?

—Of course, I do not accept what he says in this letter.

10558. What do you not accept?

—That we agreed to print 15,000 copies of Terror in Northern Ireland. We never agreed to do anything of the kind because Terror in Northern Ireland was something I did not know existed until it landed on my doorstep.

10559. What I am talking about here is the arrangement in the next paragraph.

—(quoted). This is just not so.

10560. He sent in a bill on that basis for £243?

—If you want to pursue that line of questioning, Deputy, I would have to refer it back to the Department and get information.

10561. You appreciate the reasons why I put the question to you. You dismiss the suggestion as a devious arrangement and one which you would not contemplate and yet, on the evidence before us, a bill is sent to you with a covering letter explaining that it is on what you describe as an extravagantly devious basis and the bill is then paid without being halved or anything. On the face of it, my questions are reasonable, although there may be an explanation which you can give us when you have looked into it?

—This may be so. I cannot give you an explanation in those terms just at the moment.

10562. All right. Fair enough. You say there was no discussion in advance. Mr. Brady says half way down in page 3—the end of the previous paragraph refers to “sometime early in September” and discussions with Mr. Haughey: “Some days later—” which would still be before the middle of September, I presume—“I discussed this matter with Mr. Neeson and with his knowledge I made inquiries with a number of printers to work out costings for a weekly newspaper. At the same time I was instructed by him to arrange for the printing of two booklets dealing with the northern situation.” There is an allegation that all this was arranged in early or mid-September. I think you said that it was only in October you heard about this for the first time?

—That is right.

10563. That account is fictitious?

—Yes. As far as I am concerned, it is.

10564. Then he goes on in the following paragraph to say that you instructed him to arrange to have both booklets printed privately on the basis that the Government would purchase half the print order in each case and distribute these copies abroad through the propaganda unit. That is entirely fictitious, because one booklet you did not know about until it arrived and the other you did not instruct to have printed on that basis?

—Quite right.

10565. Completely imaginary also?

—It is not true, certainly.

10566. Right. Just to continue on with his statement. The next paragraph quotes the statement given to us which is in the pink book on page 13, the submission by the Department of Finance in which we are told that the Director of the Bureau, that is yourself, had stated that the Bureau had no advance information of the proposed activities of Mr. Brady in the period subsequent to his resignation from the Bureau and that, consequently, the question of support, financial or otherwise, for any of his subsequent activities did not arise. From what you have told us, it would appear that you did have a discussion, though brief, with Mr. Brady before he retired in which he described what he intended to do and that you thought it wise in the light of that to have lunch with him and he there described his plans in detail to you. You did not agree to these plans but took them away and did not discuss them or go back to him again on them. Can you reconcile that knowledge on your part with the statement we were given that in fact you had no advance information on his proposed activities?

—Yes, with respect, Deputy, I think that what you have said is not an entirely accurate reproduction of what I have said.

10567. I may have recollected it wrongly.

—I would think so. If I could refer you to page 3 of my own submission—you see from it, if you take it from the top, paragraph one and paragraph two, that we did not have a discussion. He mentioned to me that he wished to talk to me about a newspaper which the people in the North were starting and on which they had asked him to advise them. There was no question at that stage of his involvement in it. He did not mention it to me. I asked him to give me a note about this. Obviously it was a matter which I would like to have information about—that is, the production of the newspaper the people in the North were starting, and any advice which he as a member of my staff might be going to give them but there was not, as I understood you to suggest any discussion which made it clear to me he was going to be actively involved in the production at all.

10568. Yes. The next thing is that—page 4 of your statement—in a discussion with another temporary officer who shared an office with Mr. Brady, he told you he was of the opinion that Mr. Brady intended to take an active interest in the production of a newspaper, which he assumed to be the one which he had mentioned to you casually on the previous Thursday.

—Yes.

10569. This is the first indication you had of Mr. Brady’s intention to engage actively in the production of a newspaper. Then came his resignation.

—No, his resignation had come immediately before that. We are talking about the Monday following the Thursday on which he came to my office and we had that brief conversation we were talking about.

10570. 22nd—you got the resignation?

—Yes, and on my desk was his letter of resignation.

10571. At the conference?

—Yes.

10572. Following the conference you got this information?

—Yes, immediately following it.

10573. You wrote to him on the following day?

—Yes.

10574. In your letter you say:

“I assume that you have decided on this course in view of the work which will arise from the other matters which we discussed all too briefly at the time, I am afraid, due to factors outside my control”.

You got on to make a luncheon engagement to discuss them further. What were the other matters discussed?

—The only matter we discussed—“discussed” is perhaps a misuse of the word—the only matter that was talked about between us at all—I have summarised that “discussion” in those two previous paragraphs—the only matter we touched on was the question of this newspaper.

10575. He held a discussion with you in which he said he was asked to advise on this newspaper. When you write to him you assume he has resigned because of the other matters you have discussed with him. If you felt it was only a question of advising and did not involve active consideration, why should that be the reason for his resignation?

—This was because—what I had been told by Colonel Breen, who is the officer in question, about his activities and the fact that he intended to participate in this thing—I was jumping to a conclusion perhaps—putting two and two together.

10576. You came to a conclusion?

—Also in the meantime I had seen the Minister for Finance—as you will see on the second paragraph on page 4,—before I wrote the letter, in the meantime before I wrote the letter.

10577. That comes in your submission after the reference to writing the letter, but it occurred before it?

—Perhaps I did not put it down in proper sequence.

10578. You had lunch with him and he put forward these plans and your suspicion was correct—he was proposing to engage directly in the production of the paper and that was why he had resigned?

—Yes.

10579. You then had full information about what he proposed to do. That is what puzzles me about the statement given to us which said that the Bureau had no advance information of the proposed activities of Mr. Brady in the period subsequent to his resignation from it and that consequently the question of support or otherwise for his activities did not arise. One could interpret the first part of that as meaning that you did not know before he resigned, but when you go on to draw the conclusion that consequently the question of support for his activities did not arise, that led me to the conclusion that you did not know about these activities in advance of the activities at all.

—No, I am sorry——

10580. Otherwise the statement does not make any sense. The “consequently” does not make any sense.

—Perhaps the sentence is not as happily phrased as it might be. The sense of that to me—I can see how it could be interpreted as you are interpreting it. Perhaps, Deputy, you are applying a very particular interpretation to this.

10581. It is easy enough at hindsight to see the position. We were presented with this document. We knew nothing about this document when we saw it.

—Hindsight is one of the things which is difficult to cope with in these kind of circumstances as you appreciate better than I do. The purport and intent of this at the time it was written and issued was that I had no information before Brady resigned of any activities— in fact, I did not even know he intended to resign until I got the letter of resignation. Accordingly, any information which I got came after he resigned. The question of support, financial or otherwise, for his activities did not arise at all, either before or after his resignation.

10582. You think the word “consequently” is perhaps misplaced there?

—Perhaps it is.

10583. It misled me completely. When we came to examine Mr. Brady I examined him on the assumption that your statement meant what I thought it meant and found myself in difficulty in reconciling these statements.

—I hope I have helped to clarify the point. I think that will clear it.

10584. Mr. Brady, in paragraph 7616 of the evidence, volume 14, page 567, said when I was putting the point to him that while he granted that you had agreed to finance him, this was on the basis of a verbal discussion but that in fact he had no direct documentation about it, though he subsequently submitted other documents about it. His reply was:

I gave some papers at the time to Mr. Neeson. He may have them. I do not know. I have not discussed this matter with him.

What papers, if any, did he give you?

—He did not give me any papers.

10585. Did he give you papers at any other time on this matter?

—No.

10586. That statement is also untrue?

—So far as I am concerned it is absolutely untrue. He gave me no papers.

10587. I see. Immediately after the luncheon he sent you a letter setting out his expenses to date on the payroll and suggested that he came off the payroll as from that date and worked on the basis which he claimed had been discussed. What reply did you make to that?

—I did not make any reply to the letter. Here I must rely on my recollection. There is no record of a reply to that letter in my files. I can be pretty sure about this. I do not recall having replied to it. The reason is again the reason that I did not know what the attitude of the Minister for Finance was. I had already asked him for information on this, which I did not have. I took it that the matter was in abeyance until it was discussed between Brady and his principals. The only other person that I knew of, from what Brady told me and what the Minister himself told me, was Mr. Haughey and, I took it that this matter would be discussed between them and whoever else was involved, so I took no action on that letter.

10588. You said that you thought it was agreed that it would be left in abeyance pending discussion between Brady and his principals?

—Yes.

10589. When was that suggested? You say that it was agreed, you think, that the matter be left in abeyance?

—No, not agreed. I said “I thought”.

10590. If you thought that, something Mr. Brady said must have led you to believe?

—Not necessarily. As I have tried to indicate as clearly as I could in my submission, Brady’s whole scheme was one to which I could not give any support. Clearly Mr. Brady was trying to in some way involve the Bureau in a fashion which I did not understand or comprehend and equally clearly, according to Mr. Brady and what the Minister had said to him, there was some discussion of his proposal between Mr. Brady and the Minister but to what extent or what either understood out of it, I still do not know, but certainly there was no concrete proposal or activity of any kind that involved me or the Bureau.

10591. Could I understand your reference to the thing being in abeyance, pending Mr. Brady going back to his principals? Could you develop that? I did not understand where they came in, but clearly it must be something he said?

—No. He had given me details of a scheme. This scheme involved some other parties. I had asked for information from the only other person I was aware of who had any information at all about this scheme, namely, the then Minister for Finance. I didn’t get any information from him and I did not get the written detailed information I asked for from Mr. Brady and I have no reason to suppose that any further action was going to take place until I got either of these two bits of information, whether they involved me or not.

10592. The reference to Mr. Brady and his principals still beats me.

—I do not know who his principals were and I still do not know who his principals were.

10593. When you say that the scheme was to be left in abeyance, you thought, pending consultation between Mr. Brady and his principals, what led you to believe that. After all, Brady had a discussion with you at lunch. He puts a scheme to you and then writes a letter to you?

—I see what you are getting at—maybe I am a bit obtuse. What he had discussed with me over lunch was notional, as I took it to be, completely. It was what I would describe as a wild scheme and to be quite frank with you, I could not see anybody of any responsibility involving himself in a scheme as wild as this at that juncture.

10594. This may be so, and I appreciate your position—and I would probably share your view in the same position—but next day you come into your office and there is a letter from this man about this wild scheme which records on his part that he is putting across an agreement that would involve payouts. He says: “I enclose my expenses … the other cover arrangements.” If I got a letter like that I would be tempted to reply to it very firmly if I was not going to agree to it before bills started to come in, as they did five months later.

—I suppose that indicates, perhaps, one of the differences between you and me.

10595. All right; I should not have commented?

—I was in a difficult situation in as much as I had asked—I had asked the Minister for Finance for information about this whole thing. The first part of that letter in which he refers to his expenses to date is fair enough. This is related to what he was doing for the Bureau. The second part of the letter was part of this scheme which he had outlined to me over luncheon and on which I had asked for information, both from him and from the Minister, which I did not have and I had no reason to suppose that he was going to go ahead and do what he subsequently did do without that information.

10596. You have to distinguish two different things here—he says, “I can submit my fee and expenses … which I shall furnish to you under the other cover arrangement.” He is saying in that “I have one arrangement with you and I will be sending in a weekly amount in that regard and as regards the newspaper, I can shove in my fee for that as well,” but there was a clear statement there that there was agreement between you that he would furnish under another cover arrangement a weekly account. I don’t know whether that has to do with the paper or the pamphlets, but it is stated as a firm intention, and an agreed one, and in fact five weeks later in comes the bill.

—The only answer I can give to that is that I did not accept what he said in his letter as any kind of firm agreement of any kind. I can only repeat that I had asked him for a detailed written document giving full details of this thing, which I had not at that stage received and was still waiting for.

10597. And he sends in a bill dated 15th October … I am not too clear how that £750 is to be reconciled with the £200 a month?

—That makes two of us, Deputy.

10598. But the thing is, he sends in this letter. When you received, on top of a letter which speaks of an agreement reached under which he would be furnishing a regular account, a bill, did you at any stage write back to him?

—No, not at that point. When I got these bills, I then went to the Taoiseach.

10599. Could you describe what happened after that, because I have been trying to plot it out on a diagram and you can correct me if I am wrong. The bills come from Mr. Brady to you: you send them to the Taoiseach; and he sends them——

—I did not say “send them”. I took them.

10600. He takes them or sends them to Mr. Haughey, who takes or sends one bill at least to Mr. Fagan, who brings it to you, who send it back to Mr. Fagan, who sends it back to you, who send it to the Taoiseach, who sends it to Mr. Haughey. This is what happened if I have traced it from your statement correctly and it seems a curious procedure?

—In at least one instance, this apparently did happen. I cannot speak for what happened after they left my hands or before they again reached me, but we are going back two years or more.

10601. Deputy Keating.—Less than two years.

10602. Deputy FitzGerald.—We are talking of things that ended up in January of last year?

—Some of the bills were coming in this time two years ago, were they not?

10603. A matter of 13 to 17 months ago— not that it makes it that much easier.

—It does not. There were duplicate bills in some cases. The bill which speak you about, handled by Mr. Fagan—I do not know how Mr. Fagan came by this bill at any stage; all I do know that he came in with the bill. I explained the situation to him and he took it away again and it was returned to me with a note written on it saying that the Minister for Finance had approved payment of this from the Department of the Taoiseach. So at that point, having returned it to Mr. Fagan, I thought, having disposed of it according to the instructions the Taoiseach had earlier given or the manner he had earlier indicated. It came back to me again and this was some time in December. I sent it back to the Taoiseach. I could not dispose of it—he was the only person who could.

10604. But the Minister for Finance had authorised payment on the account of the Department of the Taoiseach?

—Yes.

10605. Had you an indication that this had been agreed with the Taoiseach?

—No.

10606. Have you any idea how Finance can authorise payment on somebody else’s Vote?

—No. The fact is that these bills, in any event, were not paid by——

10607. When was Mr. Brady finally told that he was not going to be paid?

—I have no idea.

10608. Was he ever finally told?

—I cannot answer that, Deputy, because I have no control over moneys at all.

10609. Still, you did receive letters and bills and, if they were misdirected to you, one would normally expect an acknowledgment or a rejection or something at some stage?

—Misdirected—that would imply that somebody had accepted responsibility for them. What bills are you speaking about?

10610. Well the bills he sent to you, you tell us you did now acknowledge his letters, you did not acknowledge the bills——?

—Oh no, I said I did not acknowledge the letter that you referred to earlier on.

10611. Yes and you did not acknowledge the bills sent to you, am I wrong?

—I cannot answer that off-hand, but I think you are. I will have to check on that.

10612. Do you think you did acknowledge them?

—I do.

10613. In what terms?

—That they had been received. I would have to check on this. I am not certain in what terms.

10614. But at no stage, though the bills were sent to you in accordance with a letter sent to you setting out the terms of an agreement purported to have been entered into, at no stage did you ever write back and say “I am sorry, I do not accept responsibility for this because there is no agreement?”

—No. As soon as I got the bills, which came to me towards the end of October, as I recall it, I took them straight away to the Taoiseach and advised him on this, bearing in mind the fact that the only information I had about this whole project was that it was something known to Mr. Brady and to the Minister for Finance and since I am not in the Department of Finance or attached to the Department of Finance, I could see no reason why these bills should come to me.

10615. But you did not think of saying that to Mr. Brady? I mean, Mr. Brady was sending you the bills on foot of a letter he had sent to you claiming the existence of an agreement. You thought there was no agreement and the bills should go to Finance. You did not at any stage say that to him?

—I did not because I still had not got any information from either Mr. Brady or the Minister for Finance which I had sought earlier on. The bills just arrived, as I indicated in my submission on page 7. “Though I received neither the memorandum from Mr. Brady nor information from the Minister, I subsequently received bills from Mr. Brady without any accompanying or prior explanation for the Voice of the North publication.”

10616. Right. There is another matter which is more or less explained in the process of the cross-examination by Mr. Brady but just to make it quite clear, I would like to go over it. On page 563 near the top of the first column, he said “I was aware from my contacts”—sorry— “I had no knowledge of any accounts anywhere at that time. I was aware from my contacts in the propaganda unit from the work I did there that moneys were being provided through different trustees in accounts which I understood had been opened either on this side of the Border or the other, but I was not sure where”. If you turn to page 568, I raised with him the question of the “funds”. What funds are they?

—Where is that?

10617. Page 568, at the bottom, 7634.

—Yes.

10618. Actually, it goes a bit further back: 7631. “You made reference to the bank accounts and the trustees that you became aware of through the Government Information Bureau. I made a note of that”. “Is that in my statement?” And so on. Then he ends up by saying, “I do not think I said that. If I did, I was in error. I would not know from the Government Information Bureau about bank accounts. It was from Mr. Haughey that I knew anything about bank accounts, but I did not know why they were specifically open”. Then I come back again to 7637 and say “You may have said that it was through the contacts you had while you were in the Bureau and there may have been contacts in the North that you met”. “I was working in the Bureau at the time and it was from contacts in the North that I was aware—”; 7636. In reply to Deputy MacSharry, he said: “From my contacts in the North, I was aware they were getting money from other sources.” Now, we seem to have got that down to that while he was with you, he was up in the North and he heard about these funds there. But I want specifically to ask you, that you had no knowledge in the Bureau of any funds of this kind?

—No.

10619. That I think is reasonably clear, from the end of his evidence——?

—Yes.

10620. I just wanted to make it——?

—No, we had no knowledge of that at all. I would like to take this opportunity—perhaps it is a non-sequitur—but I notice that Mr. Brady has referred throughout to the propaganda unit. It was not a propaganda unit in the normally accepted sense of the word. If I were to make a distinction between propaganda and information, I would refer you to on the one hand Mr. Brady’s submission and on the other hand my own.

10621. I take your point. In 7668 he is replying to a question about this mobile radio station: “I do not think you should get the impression that went any distance. It was only a very preliminary discussion and how it arose was after my first meeting with Colonel Hefferon, at that time the Voice of the North project was really being processed with Mr. Neeson and myself.”

—Sorry, 7668?

10622. Yes?

—, I am lost.

10623. Page 572?

—Yes.

10624. Just read the first eight or ten lines of his reply.

—Yes.

10625. Again there is the assertion that the Voice of the North project was being processed with yourself and himself before “I resigned from the Bureau”. That again is incorrect?

—Absolutely.

10626. Did you know anything about this radio project?

—Only the passing reference made by the Minister when I spoke briefly to him.

10627. The Minister for Finance?

—Yes.

10628. 7774, page 580. In reply to a question there, he says: “I do not think he”—that is Mr. Neeson—“was refusing to support them, as you put it, I think what happened was that after the third issue the Taoiseach decided not—whether the Taoiseach saw any earlier issues or not I do not know—but I made sure that issues went to the Bureau from the very start. I regarded it as a Bureau operation”. Did he in fact send copies for the Bureau?

—Well, I am not sure whether he sent the first copy or not. I do not ever recollect seeing the first issue and I remember looking for it at some length about a year ago. I did see two subsequent issues or perhaps three but the quantities that he sent were I think one or perhaps two copies of each issue. That was the size of that one.

10629. Deputy Keating.—Perhaps I should say by introduction that we appreciate the reason for some delay in talking to you and we wish you well and we are glad to see you well Mr. Neeson. You will bear with me if I say some obvious things, or things that may seem to you to be obvious. You will appreciate again that in matters of expenditure of money, validating this money, the chain of authority is very important in our eyes. I would like to ask you therefore, at the start, the general question about precisely in whose Department—well, the first question is in whose Department is the Government Information Bureau in?

—The Taoiseach’s Department.

10630. Do you have a chain of command, to come back to a word or a phrase that we used in another context?

—In what sense, Deputy?

10631. From the Government Information Bureau, who is next senior to you? Is it entirely in the Taoiseach’s Department or do you have, is it understood that you have, a responsibility to other Departments also and that you may communicate directly with other Departments also?

—Oh yes, I may. It is, as its name would suggest, an information centre for the Government as a whole and, in that sense, we handle material and are in daily contact with all Departments as the need arises. Chain of command, administratively, would be to the administrative section of the Department of the Taoiseach. Does that answer you question?

10632. Yes. On the matter of appointments, how are appointments handled?

—To the Bureau?

10633. Yes?

—In the usual Civil Service fashion. If there is a vacancy or a new appointment to be considered, it is, depending on the seniority of the appointment, done in one of a number of ways. Usually if it is a senior appointment, it is by public competition. If it is a junior appointment, it is done by circular within the Civil Service as a whole.

10634. The decision in regard to one of the junior appointments, would that reside with you or with somebody else in the Department of the Taoiseach senior to you, or who would make the decision?

—It is usually done as a result of an interview board on which I would sit.

10635. I see, yes. This is approximately as I thought it was, but I thought there might have been something that I was overlooking. The point of this question was that in your own submission to us on the first page you say: “As a result of a casual meeting on Friday, August 15, 1969, with the then Minister for Finance, Mr. C. J. Haughey, who informed me that he had arranged for Mr. Brady to join the Bureau ‘for the duration’ at a fee of £200 a month.” How could the Minister for Finance arrange for somebody to join the Bureau and tell you about it? You were the Director.

—A question I have often asked myself, I suppose, but I think the significant phrase here is “for the duration”. The number of temporary staff we had at that time exceeded the full-time staff by a ratio of about, at least four to one. All of these officers were acquired, if I may put it that way, by unorthodox methods of one kind or another to cope with a very unusual situation. I think this would be the basis on which that would also have been done.

10636. The next sentence is: “Mr. Haughey instructed me to write him a note in respect of Mr. Brady’s appointment.” Tell us a bit more about that note. What sort of a note were you instructed to write?

—A note saying something to the effect—I cannot remember it verbatim—that Mr. Brady was seeking or had been appointed to the Government Information Bureau for a period at a salary of or a fee of.

10637. Yes?

—It was, so far as I understood it, an administrative procedure with which I was asked to comply by the Minister.

10638. In fact, your writing of this note would validate Mr. Brady’s appointment, or would indicate your concurrence and approval of that appointment?

—I could not really answer that question, because it is open to a number of interpretations.

10639. I see. The point I am trying to get at is the point of Mr. Haughey. He was then the Minister for Finance and he was the person under whose auspices this £100,000 fund was initiated and under whose responsibility it was expended, but my experience is that people are rather jealous of who can give instructions to whom in the public service, very properly. I am not going to ask you for an opinion on this?

—I am glad.

10640. I take it that you were in fact being issued an instruction?

—Yes.

10641. By the Minister for Finance?

—It was a fait accompli.

10642. I will not ask you to comment, but I do note it. Many of the matters I wanted to raise have been raised by Deputy FitzGerald. That is always a problem coming immediately after him. On page 4 of your submission, you say that if it was suggested that you were in conversation with the Minister for Finance—?

—Sorry, Deputy. I did not quite get that.

10643. In the last paragraph you say: “I mentioned to the then Minister for Finance that Mr. Brady had resigned from the Government Information Bureau extended service, and he said that he knew this.” He said he knew about this. I just wanted to be clear. The information about Mr. Brady’s intention of starting a paper, did that come from the Minister to you, or could it have gone from you to the Minister?

—No, it came from the Minister to me.

10644. What date would that be approximately?

—That would have been either 22nd or 23rd September.

10645. Did this corroborate information that you already had in part from Mr. Brady?

—No, it did not corroborate evidence that I had or information that I had from Mr. Brady at all. If it did anything, it corroborated the information I got from Colonel Breen.

10646. The mention of a mobile radio station, did that come from Mr. Haughey to you?

—Yes. That was the first I had heard of it.

10647. So that Mr. Haughey on this date, on 22nd or 23rd—we will take these as being approximate; I am not holding you to the exact day—was in possession of these facts in regard to Mr. Brady’s intention both in regard to a paper then called the Voice of Ulster and also the possibility of broadcasting into the North?

—Apparently, yes.

10648. Without being so informed by you?

—Yes. I should like if I may, at this point, Deputy, to emphasise that that discussion— discussion is a desperate word to use in this context—it was an exchange of half a dozen sentences or less. To me it meant nothing except that Brady had resigned and was going to do something else, until the Minister asked me to meet him and get more information.

10649. You then met Mr. Brady for a luncheon which we have dated?

—25th, I think.

10650. And you said in talking to Deputy FitzGerald that he developed to you what you considered to be a wild scheme. We know at this stage that that was to produce the “Voice of the North,” but could you tell us in a few sentences, perhaps, how it was presented to you then. We have this problem all the time, of seeing a thing from this end now with what we know. What did he in fact present to you? What was the wild scheme?

—Deputy, you are making this very difficult for me and I will tell you why, if I may, without appearing to be flippant. You have had Mr. Brady here giving evidence and I have read some of his evidence. I noted in one or two places that he has gone on for more than a column non-stop. This luncheon was rather like that and you asked me to summarise this in a couple of sentences. In effect, I got the impression from Mr. Brady that he was going to become—I did not get the impression that he had already become, and on this I am quite clear—involved in the production of a newspaper which he expected to be economically viable very shortly; that he was looking for financial support for it from some source and he indicated to me a method by which this financial support could be forthcoming. That would summarise it.

10651. I see, yes. You say on the same page, and I feel it is fair that these matters are in fact the matters we have just been talking about—the last sentence is that he also claimed to have discussed these matters in detail with the Minister for Finance?

—Yes.

10652. “In detail” suggests to me finance, distribution, things like that? Is that fair?

—It suggests the same thing to me. It does not necessarily follow that the then Minister for Finance would interpret any discussion I had with Brady the same way that Mr. Brady did. This is what Brady said to me.

10653. Following the same subject on page 6 you say.

At the same time I had no indication of the extent of any authority Mr. Brady might have for such a project from the then Minister for Finance.

How could Mr. Brady have authority for such a project? The question I am asking is how could the Minister for Finance, under any mechanism that you understand or know to exist, have given any authority for the publication of the paper?

—I don’t know the circumstances of the time—I don’t know why Mr. Brady resigned. At that stage I was getting bits and pieces of information which were entirely new to me. The first indication I had that anything had been discussed between Brady and the Minister was what the Minister said briefly to me. I had Brady’s remarks in extension of that. Accordingly, I know that some exchange of information had taken place between the two. As you pointed out a moment ago, Mr. Brady claimed that these matters had been discussed in detail. I have no means of knowing any more than that. It is conceivable—and this maybe hindsight on my part—perhaps, I should not volunteer that kind of information—that they discussed this thing on a commercial basis with backing from some other source. I don’t know.

10654. You said on page 6:

I sought the view of the then Minister for Finance on Brady’s scheme.

There were a number of Ministers on the special Cabinet sub-committee to deal with the North. Mr. Haughey is not a person with any special association with information or journalism. Was the basis of your contacting him, rather than a number of other people, the information that you had received from Brady? Why go to Mr. Haughey rather than to one of three or four other people?

—I think the basis would be that Mr. Haughey asked me to discuss this with Brady and, having discussed it with Brady, I came back and asked him for further information on the basis of what Brady had said to me.

10655. On the last page you say, about one third of the way down:

I recommended to the Taoiseach that neither the Government Information Bureau not the Government should have anything to do with it. The Taoiseach agreed with this view.

Did he agree by indicating so to you in conversation or have we any check-back over these events?

—Would you mind rephrasing that question? I am not quite sure what you mean?

10656. You are referring to, I take it, what is the conversation between the Taoiseach and yourself. You suggested that this was something that the GIB should not touch and that he concurred with you in this. He indicated to you he agreed with you?

—Yes.

10657. Then he asked that you send the bills to him? Is that correct?

—I had them in my fist at the time.

10658. You were in each other’s presence? You were not on a telephone?

—Yes.

10659. He said he would give them to Mr. Haughey. I can’t ask you what was in other people’s minds at the time, but I would like to try to follow these bills around in the circles that Deputy Fitzgerald has already referred to, because again this is a place where the ultimate payment and ultimate use of this £100,000 is absolutely clear. It is what is in between that is not clear. Mr. Brady sent the bills to you? I assume they did not all come together but were spaced out in time?

—So far as I can remember, yes.

10660. Firstly in October you got the first, and immediately you gave them to the Taoiseach?

—Yes.

10661. Giving them to the Taoiseach was on the occasion of this conversation which we have referred to?

—It was.

10662. He said he would give them to Mr. Haughey—we have evidence he did in fact do so?

—I am aware that he did so.

10663. Mr. Haughey gave them to Mr. Fagan. We are not sure of that, but we know that one of them was given to you by Mr. Fagan?

—That’s right.

10664. You sent them back to Mr. Fagan?

—I did.

10665. Then it came back from Mr. Fagan to you with a note.

He returned it to me with a note on it to say that the Minister for Finance had approved payment of it and that it should be charged to the Vote of the Department of the Taoiseach.

That note existed at some stage? There was a note pinned to the bill?

—No, it was written on the document itself.

10666. Do we have that? If it is on the document—the reason I would like to see it is, that is maybe that my understanding of civil service procedure is inadequate. I don’t see how a Minister for Finance—perhaps he can—can instruct a bill to be paid out of the Vote for the Department of the Taoiseach. Mr. Fagan would know. Did this strike you as proper and correct thing to do?

—I did not consider that aspect of it, to be frank with you. When it came back with this note on it my attitude was that these bills should not be paid by the GIB and preferably not by the Government at all, so I took it back to the Taoiseach.

10667. In the meantime others would have come in?

10668. Deputy Nolan.—Was this actual note between Mr. Fagan and yourself and the Minister for Finance prior to your handing over all bills to the Taoiseach?

—No.

10669. It is after that?

—It was after.

10670. Deputy Keating.—You say:

I gave this bill together with others I had received——

These “others” were bills which had come in since you handed over the first?

10671. Chairman.—I might be able to help you, in so far as the Secretary of the Department is the accounting officer. That may be the explanation. The secretary of the Department of Finance is the accounting officer for the Taoiseach’s Department. That explains the channelling around.

10672. Deputy Keating.—You say:

Some of these bills were again sent to me. This means that they went from the Taoiseach and they had gone around the cycle again?

—I phrased that badly. At a later date Mr. Brady sent in——

10673. You gave these to the Taoiseach and he said again he would pass them on?

—Yes.

10674. That chain of movement of the bills is fairly clear. Deputy Fitzgerald has done a good deal of this, but I would like to turn, if you have a copy of James Brady’s submission, to give you the opportunity of rebutting, if you so wish. On page 3 of his submission, the second last paragraph, he says:

Mr. Neeson instructed me to arrange to have both booklets printed privately on the basis that the Government would purchase half the print order in each case and distribute these copies abroad…. The price to the Government was to cover the entire cost of printing.

Am I correct in thinking that this is not, to the best of your belief true?

—You are.

10675. That rebuttal applies to the third last paragraph on page 4 when the same thing is stated as it applies—that paragraph is repudiated.

—It does.

10676. This matter at the top of page 5 about the two bills—the clear inference was, that on your instructions to him, that he should submit two bills The reason it is a clear inference is that he says;

Mr. Neeson arranged with me that my fee would remain at £200 per month and that I should submit a weekly true bill to him of all expenditure in connection with the newspaper; but, he also instructed me to submit to him a covering bill each week …

Is this a fact?

—I gave him no such instruction.

10677. Did he say to you that he wanted to operate this mechanism?

—He suggested something of this kind.

10678. You understood he was going to do it, but you did not instruct him to do?

—I did not understand he was going to do it. It was a suggested method he had put forward. I have explained that luncheon meeting. I have explained the nature of it. I did not come away with any notion that he was going to do anything as a consequence of this at all.

10679. He discussed the possibility, but you did not instruct him to do so?

—Yes.

10680. On the same page 3, the last paragraph, he has clearly suggested about the nature of the luncheon meeting and he says:

He said that on 25th September, “the day on which I met Mr. Neeson for lunch at his invitation to go into details of the Voice of the North”. Is that statement about the nature of the luncheon meeting untrue?

—Well, it is untrue in the sense that …

“untrue” is hardly the word I would use. He met me at my invitation and the invitation was extended as a result of the Minister asking me to talk to Mr. Brady about this thing and get more information from him. I would say that the sentence as it is here is misleading.

10681. Finally, I wanted to turn to the evidence that Mr. Brady gave here before us and I am back again with volume 14 of our proceedings, starting at the beginning, on page 562. He is talking about payments from Captain Kelly to the printer for the Voice of the North, and at the top of the second column of his testimony on page 562, he says: “… because I was under the assumption from the start that this was to be an official underground operation on behalf of the Government propaganda unit”. You have already made the point about the word “propaganda” as distinct from “information”, but, if he assumed this, do you know of any document or any briefing or any statement by you or any statement by any person senior to you which could have led him to believe that this was an official underground operation on behalf of one section of the Government Information Bureau?

—No.

10682. Do you believe there was any such statement or document which could have led him to this belief?

—I do not.

10683. He says, on page 565, at Question 7610, when talking about these two booklets— the questioner was Deputy FitzGerald at this stage—and he indicates that Mr. Brady says: “I was instructed by him …”—the “him” being you in this case—“to arrange for the printing of two booklets”. Is this totally inaccurate, in your recollection?

—It is, yes.

10684. You said that in one case the first you knew of the booklet was its delivery to the Government Information Bureau?

—Yes.

10685. Deputy Keating.—I am a little slow here, because I am omitting the bits which Deputy FitzGerald has already covered and, in fact, there is very little more. That is all I wanted to ask.

10686. Deputy MacSharry.—Did I understand you to tell Deputy Keating that the first you heard of this newspaper was from Mr. Haughey?

—It was, yes. Sorry—correction—no: the first I heard of a newspaper was from Mr. Brady when he ran into my office and mentioned a newspaper, but at that stage I had no notion that he was actively engaged in it in any way. What he said was that he had been asked to advise the people in the North about a newspaper which they proposed to produce. That is in my submission on page 3.

10687. Yes—that be wanted to talk about a newspaper that the people in the North were starting and on which they had asked him to advise. I wanted to correct that point because you have already said, in answer to Deputy Keating, that the first you heard of the newspaper was from Mr. Haughey?

—If I did, it was an error, and I am glad you have brought it up. I understood that the question was about when I first heard of a radio.

10688. I took a note of it because it is contradicted in your submission.

10689. Deputy E. Collins.—In fairness to Mr. Neeson, he did, in answer to me, say that Mr. Brady said that the people of Ulster wanted the name the Voice of Ulster.

—The first I heard of the title of the paper was from the Minister.

10690. Deputy MacSharry.—Of the title?

—Yes, the Voice of Ulster. I do not know when the title was changed or why, but if you are referring to the title—yes, it was from Mr. Haughey I first heard it.

10691. I am not referring to the title, but it is in your submission that insight, that you heard it first from Mr. Brady? Then there is another point, which I have not got clear in my mind, and that is the question of Mr. Brady’s resignation on 21st, received by you on the 22nd, and he wrote to him again on the 23rd. Now, from what you are telling us, I take the meaning that, from the time you received Brady’s resignation until the time you wrote the letter, in that period you must have met and discussed this project with Deputy Haughey?

—Discussed it is not the word I would use but we, we exchanged the views or the information, or whatever you like to call it, that I indicated there, Deputy, yes. I spoke to him about it.

10692. You spoke to him or he spoke to you?

—We spoke to each other about it, at the end of a discussion about other matters altogether which I was more concerned with, which I was concerned with; I was not a bit concerned with this at the time.

10693. You brought the matter up?

—I did. As I have outlined in my submission there; page 4, second paragraph.

10694. We are to take it that if you had not this discussion with Mr. Haughey, that you would not have written to Mr. Brady and have lunch with him to discuss these points?

—No, I would not have.

10695. In your submission also you talked about, or in your evidence you talked of the wild scheme this was—in so far as, this is how you described this particluar project “It was a wild scheme”—and the letters that were exchanged, particularly your letter to Mr. Brady after his resignation—“Dear Seamus, thank you for your letter, which came as a surprise” to you and you go on to tell him how you are extremely short of writers, more or less suggesting to him “stay on”; however, he is otherwise engaged. Then you would have us believe that he, that Brady, was of little use to you while he was there—on page 2 of your submission: “little of Mr. Brady’s material was distributed as his approach tended to be propagandist”?

—Yes, I—

10696. Are you condemning him? He was not suitable for the job? You would have sacked him? Is this the kind of attitude we are to accept? That he was on the way out?

—No. I think, Deputy, you are reading far too much into it.

10697. Yes, but I mean they are important things. He resigned, or is he going to get sacked, or what is the position?

—Well, I do not think the question of sacking has arisen until now.

10698. It is from your submission, I take it. There is not much point in paying a man £200 a month if little of his material is any good to you?

—Well, again we are talking, you know, with remarkable amount of hindsight.

10699. Well, I have no hindsight at all, only just what is put to me here in this document.

—Yes, particularly in this context I have and I have asked myself this particular question: If Brady had not resigned, would I have kept him on?

10700. And you would not have?

—I cannot find an answer. I do not think I would, no.

10701. Deputy Nolan. Were any moneys paid out of the Taoiseach’s Department towards the cost of this production The Voice of Ulster?

—No, as far as I know.

10702. And no moneys were paid towards the cost of that, apart from Mr. Brady for his activities in gaining, getting information?

—In connection with it?

10703. In connection with it?

—No.

10704. Deputy Treacy.—We have heard earlier you tell us of the manner in which the Bureau functions with particular reference to the recruitment of staff. Then, I take it, that in the normal course of events you would recruit the staff yourself?

—Yes, by and large I would, or I would have a considerable amount to do with the recruitment of staff.

10705. Yes. To what extent did Ministers interfere in what you would consider to be your functions or the internal affairs of the Bureau?

—Do you mean during this particular period? Very, not at all, really. Interfere with— I cannot think of an instance in which a Minister interfered, to my knowledge, with the workings of the Bureau at that time. We were working under the, I was working directly to the Taoiseach in this entire matter from start to finish. I reported to him, discussed what we were doing with him and took my directions from him.

10706. Yes. Seemingly, Deputy Haughey, the then Minister for Finance, felt inclined to interfere from time to time?

—Perhaps you could develop that a little bit, Deputy. I do not quite follow.

10707. He did, in fact, recommend that Mr. Séamus Brady be taken on your staff?

—Yes, this was at the very outside before anybody else had been taken on, and if I might develop that a little bit. The situation blew up as it were, on the 11th-12th August and the Bureau was totally ill-equipped to cope with the kind of situation with which we were faced. From that until the end of October, I think, the full-time staff of the Bureau were working something of the order of 16 to 17 hours a day, Saturdays and Sundays included, which will give you some idea of the pressure and when I was told that Brady was going to join the Bureau, it was an additional bit of manpower, as far as I was concerned at that stage.

10708. You did, in fact, have a conversation with Deputy Haughey about this about the time. Did, perhaps, the Minister indicate to you the kind of role which Brady should play in your organisation?

—No.

10709. As, say, a propagandist?

—No.

10710. A propagandist role?

—No.

10711. Did he give you any hint at all as to the part this man would play in the Bureau?

—None.

10712. In what capacity was he employed?

—I employed him as a reporter, together with two others. He was a professional journalist for many years and he was a reporter, first and foremost, and I was anxious to get what would be called human interest stories from refugees, from people who were coming into the various hospital centres and refugee camps and stories from people who were actually in the North in the situation as it then was and together with two other officers I employed him in this capacity until I brought them back after the reassessment conference which I have indicated in my submission and at that point I employed him in a capacity of producing factual documentation, some of which he did, but it was not the kind of material that I was looking for. It was propagandist material, which was not what I wanted.

10713. Yes. I am glad you mentioned that because I was going to advert to it. He did not provide much material of use for you, in any event. Little of the material he produced was distributed as such, and I observed, too, that he did not attend what you referred to as conferences?

—No.

10714. Would you elaborate on that, Mr. Neeson, as to what your conference, who would a conference comprise of and what kind of business would you discuss?

—I could. This is extremely useful and interesting, but, with respect, is it relevant to the inquiry? I do not really think it is.

10715. I am anxious to find out the role which Mr. Brady played in the organisation which he was paid £5,000 for out of this fund. I am trying to find out the intrinsic worth of the man to the organisation?

—While he was on the staff of the Bureau he was not paid out of this fund. While he was on the staff of the Bureau he was paid in the same fashion as the other temporary officers who were attached to the Bureau were paid, from the moneys which eventually went to meet the expenses which were incurred during this entire information exercise. But what he was paid during his period on the staff of the Bureau has nothing to do with the subject of the inquiry.

10716. Did you regard him as an ordinary reporter on your staff?

—Yes.

10717. Did he play a far more important role?

—He did not, so far as I was concerned.

10718. In respect of his resignation, I observe he used the phrase which, perhaps, we might have some clarification on if possible. He said: “I feel I can no longer contribute usefully to the exercise as presently operated.” What exercise was he referring to?

—Well, Deputy, I would say that your guess is as good as mine. I would have interpreted that as meaning that he did not feel he was able to contribute to the work that the Bureau as a whole was doing at that time.

10719. This is the exercise?

—That is how I would have interpreted his use of the word.

10720. Did you regard the interference, if I may say so, of Deputy Haughey as affecting your position or your personal role?

—Well, what interference are you talking about, Deputy?

10721. Did you regard it as interference?

—What are you referring to?

10722. I am referring to the talks you were obliged to have with Deputy Haughey from time to time, (a) in respect of the recruitment of Mr. Brady, (b) in respect of his resignation and (c) in respect of his remuneration?

—I do not think I had any talks with Deputy Haughey particularly in respect of Mr. Brady’s remuneration. The first one you referred to, that is with Deputy Haughey on the question of Mr. Brady’s employment was, as I said, a casual meeting with him at the time when we were vastly overworked. It was a very short discussion and he told me that Brady was being attached to the Bureau. I could not at this stage tell you how I regarded it except that, as I have already mentioned, it seemed to me to be an additional piece of manpower, which I sadly needed. There was no interference by anyone in the working of the Bureau.

10723. You say, Mr. Neeson, that you had no discussions with the Minister in respect of remuneration, but is it not a fact that the Minister did fix the monthly salary scale for Mr. Brady?

—This was all done at the one time.

10724. Thank you.

10725. Deputy Tunney.—You have been here for quite a while, Mr. Neeson, and as far as I would be concerned, your opening statement, the first sentence in your submission, would be sufficient for me to have you come and repeat that and have you released. That is a personal observation which I should like to make. You know nothing at all about the expenditure of this £100,000?

—Nothing at all, Deputy, no.

10726. And there is nothing which you feel that you want to tell us about it?

—There is nothing that I know that I could tell you.

10727. Thank you very much.

Mr. Neeson withdrew at 8.40 p.m.

The Committee went into private session.

The Committee adjourned at 10.10 p.m.