Call for McCabe to receive apology from the State

The vindicated Garda whistleblower, Sgt Maurice McCabe, should receive a state apology and have his access to the force’s Pulse computer system restored immediately, opposition parties have argued.

Following a damning report about inadequate responses to Sgt McCabe’s complaints about gardaí, questions have been raised as to why the Coalition backed former justice minister Alan Shatter.

Mr Shatter resigned this week after the Government received the Guerin Report, but only after facing months of scandals involving gardaí.

Independent TD Clare Daly — one of the first to raise the whistleblower’s claims publicly in the Dáil — yesterday said that he deserved a state apology.

The Dublin North TD also called for department’s secretary general Brian Purcell to resign, and for a complete new police force.

“It would be difficult to see many of those in the higher echelons of the force maintaining themselves in the type of new force that is necessary,” said Ms Daly.

She said “at the very least an apology and acknowledgment of the role” of Sgt McCabe was needed. “It’s given great hope to citizens around the State that one person can make such a difference,” she added.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams urged the Government and acting Garda commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan to restore full rights to Sgt McCabe on the Garda Pulse system.

He also pointed out how both Fine Gael and Labour had stood behind Alan Shatter until recently, despite the controversy surrounding how Sgt McCabe’s complaints were handled.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin called for the speedy setting up of a full statutory commission of investigation into Sgt McCabe’s concerns about Garda actions.

All opposition parties called for a debate on the report next week, and said the findings vindicated the position of the Garda whistleblower.

Former European affairs minister Lucinda Creighton said all past ministers and secretary generals needed to account for their actions amid the concerns raised in the Guerin report.

“We did not need a senior counsel report to show us that former Minister Shatter failed to fulfil his duties with regard to sergeant McCabe’s allegations, but what the report has shown is that successive secretary generals of the department have also failed to fulfil their duties,” said Ms Creighton.

Excerpts from the report

- The process of determining Sgt McCabe’s complaints went no further than the minister receiving and acting upon the advice of the person who was the subject of the complaint.

- The whistleblower is seen as someone who is not on the team.

- No complex organisation can expect to succeed in its task if it cannot find the means of heeding the voice of a member whose immediate supervisors hold him in the high regard in which Sergeant McCabe was held.

- Confidence in the effectiveness of the policing service is important not just to encourage a necessary sense of security amongst the public, but also to ensure that there is a measure of public confidence in the likelihood of detection, prosecution and conviction where offences have been committed. The deficiencies identified in the investigations considered in this review, if they were widely replicated, would be a challenge to public confidence in the criminal justice system.

- “Youth discovered in house arrested at scene. Nothing taken or damaged” — the Pulse entry recording murderer Jerry McGrath’s break-in, assault, and attempted abduction of a child from a house in Tipperary.