Evidence on key witness ‘dismissed’
The witness, Noel McBride, had later retracted his statement, which incriminated the McBrearty family in the hit-and-run death of Mr Barron, admitting he was not in Raphoe that night.
Sergeant Martin Moylan told the Morris Tribunal that Superintendent Kevin Lennon, who was leading the investigation at the time, said it was not his job to test the credibility of witnesses.
He said the garda team had gone over all 500 witness statements taken in Raphoe and reported back that “in relation to McBride no one had seen him in Raphoe, not even his brother”.
He added: “I remember there was silence in the room; the next thing, Supt Lennon said ‘we are not here to test the credibility of witnesses, get on with it.’”
Sgt Moylan, who was part of the team which set up an incident room on October 16, 1996 - two days after the alleged hit-and-run - told the tribunal that at the time he was happy about how the investigation was conducted.
Asked if he was surprised that a murder investigation was being conducted without any involvement from the state pathologist, he said: “At the time I was not, to be honest, although now of course, I think differently”.
Sgt Moylan was part of a large group of gardaí who initially ran the investigation, and who were subsequently investigated by the Carty team.
Earlier, a Donegal family told the tribunal that Mark McConnell’s wife Roisín had phoned their home, looking for him on the night Richie Barron died.
Mr McConnell has told the tribunal he later went to a nightclub and then spent the night at a friend’s house with his wife.
The inquiry was set up to look into the garda murder investigation following Mr Barron’s death on October 14, 1996, in an apparent hit-and-run in Raphoe.
An investigation, headed by Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty, was then launched in 1999 after the McBrearty family alleged they had been harassed by local gardaí during the investigation.
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