§ MR. O'SHEEI beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in the case of alleged criminal conspiracy against Mr. P. F. Walsh, Chairman of the Waterford County Council, and others, to be tried in the City of Cork, Mr. Seymour Bushe, K.C., has been retained as special counsel for the Crown; can he state the circumstances generally under which special counsel are retained in addition to the Law Officers of the Crown and the usual Crown Prosecutors for each county; in how many criminal cases during the past five years special counsel have been brought in on behalf of the Crown, and whether there is anything to prevent the Irish Attorney General and Solicitor General from representing the Crown in this case; and will he say who decides 261 whether special counsel are to be retained for the Crown, and whether the fees payable are given as a separate item in accounts furnished to Parliament.
§ MR. ATKINSONPerhaps I should reply to this question. Mr. Bushe has not been specially retained by the Crown in this particular case, but owing to the unavoidable absence of the senior Crown prosecutor for the county of Cork, Mr. Ronan, that gentleman's briefs in all criminal cases have, by my directions, been transferred to Mr. Bushe. Special counsel is retained when in the judgment of the Attorney General of the day it is desirable to do so. There is nothing to prevent one of the Law Officers representing the Crown in this case, except that the crime is not of a sufficiently serious character, or the case of sufficient difficulty, and that they are engaged elsewhere on public business. I am not in a position to give the number of instances in which special counsel have been retained by the Crown, but what has occurred in this case takes place in some parts of Ireland almost every circuit, and notably at Limerick during the present circuit. The reply to the last paragraph is in the negative.