Callinan exit ‘unfair’ as full facts unknown
She said: “You could read into it [that] there was a message sent to him that: ‘Look, it would help us if you were gone’.”
Ms Owen, who was minister for justice from 1994 to 1997, said Mr Callinan was an “excellent policeman” adding that “it’s sad to see somebody with that sort of service, leaving under a cloud”.
The opposition accused the Taoiseach of “effectively sacking” Mr Callinan after it emerged that Enda Kenny sent a senior official to his house on Monday night — the day before he announced his retirement.
Ms Owen said she was “prepared to take the word that he used in his own statement — he said he ‘retired’”, but noted that “when he said he had retired, we didn’t know that someone had gone to his house the night before”.
She told RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke programme: “If a minister got somebody sent out to his house saying ‘you are damaging the Government’ or whatever, that would be a message... that it’s time to walk.”
However, Ms Owen added that it was “hard to know unless Martin Callinan comes out” to give his version of events.
Ms Owen also said there’s a “big question mark” over the handling of a letter, sent by Mr Callinan to the Department of Justice, outlining the practice of phone records at garda stations — which Mr Shatter said he only received two weeks later: “There was a direct request: To bring it to the minister’s attention,” she said. “And if I was Alan Shatter, I would be very angry about that.”
Ms Owen also raised questions about why Enda Kenny did not inform the justice minister about the recordings until 24 hours after he was informed about them by the attorney general on Sunday night.
“We are getting 10 different stories [and], like any member of the public, I’d like to know what the real story is,” she said.
Ms Owen said that, during her time as justice minister, she had “no idea” about the practice of recording calls at garda stations.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said he did not know about this practice when he was in cabinet, and that he had not spoken to Dermot Ahern — justice minister from 2008 to 2011 — at the time about the issue.
Another former justice minister, Michael McDowell, has said he was not aware of the practice during his 2002-2007 tenure.
Former Fianna Fáil justice minister and now EU Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn said through a spokesperson that she “was not aware” of any widespread recording of phone calls in garda stations during her tenure.
She was in Justice from January 1993 to December 1994 and was succeeded by Nora Owen.
In relation to reports of gardaí in the anti-racketeering unit taping phone calls in the early 1990s, she said “this was a very specific case” and is on the Dáil record.
