Farrell denies being chief instigator of garda contact

Marie Farrell denied in the High Court it was she who initiated most contact with Det Garda Jim Fitzgerald.

She said he had given her a State phone to contact him and sometimes left messages asking her to ring him. State counsel Paul O’Higgins SC also put detailed questions to her about her evidence of being pressurised by gardaí to make false statements and of signing blank pages.

Counsel put to her that there were inconsistencies between what she told the jury in this trial concerning the statements, her own statement to a 2006 Garda probe, the McAndrew inquiry, into complaints by Mr Bailey’s solicitor; her statement to the Garda Síochána ombudsman; and an interview she gave to the Irish Mirror.