Former Taoiseach Mr Jack Lynch stated categorically that the first time he knew of "any alleged involvement of my Ministers" in an attempt to import arms was on Monday, April 20th, 1970, in two private records released posthumously to The Irish Times yesterday.
The personal statements were prepared by Mr Lynch in 1980, 10 years after the Arms Trial and a few months after he resigned as Taoiseach. They became mixed up with a small number of Government papers returned to the Department of the Taoiseach by his wife, Mrs Mair in Lynch, some months after his death in October 1999.
Mr Lynch's private papers are not Government records because they are not contemporaneous accounts of events. They fall outside his period in office. They were entrusted by an official in the Taoiseach's Department to Dr Martin Mansergh for Fianna Fail.
Mrs Lynch and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, agreed last Friday to release them to The Irish Times, believing that they belonged to the public record.
"They relate to Jack Lynch's defence of his reputation which is clearly entitled to be taken into consideration during the revived controversy over the arms crisis," Dr Mansergh said.
Mr Lynch's record of his state of knowledge as Taoiseach of the events leading up to the Arms Trial in 1970 was written after Vincent Browne, then editor of Magill magazine, put assertions to him from the diaries of the late Mr Peter Berry, secretary of the Department of Justice, "which if published in the form they were put, would completely misrepresent me and misconstrue the facts".
Mr Lynch met Mr Browne in Leinster House on Tuesday, May 6th, 1980, as the publication of the Berry diaries was imminent.
This Irish Times reporter also met Mr Lynch in his home in Rathgar, Dublin, to discuss the Berry disclosures around the same period and, in the event of him refusing to speak on the record, encouraged him to put his own account on paper for posterity.
In the private records, Mr Lynch stated emphatically that it was "untrue" that he knew in October/November 1969, of the alleged attempt to import arms and that some members of the Government were involved.
He accepted that he met Mr Berry, "who was obviously very ill", in Mount Carmel hospital in late October 1969, but denied Mr Berry informed him then of the alleged complicity of ministers in the illegal importation of arms.
He also said it was "not true" that the then minister for justice, Mr Micheal O Morain, ever mentioned the involvement of ministers. The assertion that the then minister for defence, Mr Jim Gibbons, had kept him informed of the alleged complicity of ministers was "untrue and one on which I knew I could get immediate corroboration of my denial".
