Gardaí threaten to walk out of tribunal

GARDAÍ involved in the Abbeylara siege are threatening to walk out on the Barr Tribunal when it resumes this morning unless chairman, Justice Robert Barr, makes a peace offering to their senior counsel, John Rogers, who quit the hearings in protest last month.

The 36 uniformed gardaí and members of the Emergency Response Unit have written to Justice Barr demanding assurances that Mr Rogers can continue his cross-examination of witnesses without interference from the chairman and that the gardaí collectively will get a fair hearing.

The stand-off could jeopardise the entire tribunal which is about to enter a key phase, examining the training and experience of members of the gardaí and ERU in handling situations such as Abbeylara, and comparing their approach with that of police abroad.

After 90 days of public sittings and evidence from 136 witnesses, the tribunal is less than halfway through its investigation of the shooting dead of 27-year-old psychiatric patient, John Carthy by members of the ERU following an armed siege at his home at Abbeylara, Co Longford in April 2000.

Recent sittings were marked by heated exchanges between Justice Barr and Mr Rogers who refused to attend the last day of hearings before the Christmas break, leaving word that he had withdrawn from the tribunal because the chairman’s attitude to him made his position “untenable”.

Mr Rogers had accused Justice Barr of coming to conclusions without waiting for evidence to be completed. Justice Barr accused Mr Rogers of attempting to bully him.

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) insisted last night that they did not want to disrupt the tribunal but had to make a stand.

“We may very well continue to participate in the inquiry. We would like to see it coming to a conclusion. But there are issues that must be addressed before we can move forward,” said GRA vice-president Chris Lee.

Mr Lee said he could not envisage the gardaí continuing to co-operate with the tribunal if Mr Rogers did not return as their senior counsel as he had represented them since the original hearings at the Oireachtas Justice Committee in 2001 which were aborted after Mr Rogers won a landmark Supreme Court ruling.