§ MR. DAVITTI beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will consent to an open sworn inquiry in Mayo into certain charges and allegations (to which attention has been drawn in detail) by the honourable Member for South Mayo against police officers, magistrates, and officials of that county, that they have acted illegally on repeated occasions, and with gross political partisanship on others; and have, together with certain landlords and other persons, conspired to implicate the United Irish League in the perpetration of crime by means of forgery and the planning of bogus outrage?
§ MR. GERALD BALFOURI have received from the honourable Member a lengthy statement containing charges and allegations against police officers, magistrates, and officials of the County Mayo. With one of these charges, which relates to the imprisonment of Mrs. Brennan for contempt of court, the Executive have nothing to do. Others are frivolous, and the most important of the remaining charges refer to the case of Sergeant Sullivan, who was tried at the recent Sligo Winter Assizes on the charge of having forged a letter in the name of the president of the United Irish League of West Mayo, inciting to the commission of a Whiteboy offence. The sergeant was acquitted by the jury without having been called upon to enter into his defence, yet the honourable Member asks me to have a further sworn inquiry into the case. With this measure of the degree of credence to be attached to the honourable Member's allegations, I must decline to consent to a sworn inquiry into charges which in so far as they allege culpable conduct against the police or other authorities, do not appear to me to have even a prima facie case to sustain them.