Farrell denies being chief instigator of garda contact
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.
Ms Farrell said there were “so many meetings and so many gardaí” she only later recalled signing blank pages in Ballydehob Garda Station. She agreed she told the McAndrew inquiry she never made a statement in Ballydehob but made statements in Schull. She said she could not remember what she told the McAndrew inquiry and was under huge stress at that time.
When counsel put to her she had not signed blank statements, she said she had. She also denied she signed a statement dated February 14, 1997, and denied that statement was true. When counsel said Garda Kevin Kelleher will say a video he gave Ms Farrell did not feature Mr Bailey reciting poetry but showed a Christmas day swim in Schull, Ms Farrell said Mr Bailey was reciting poetry on the video.
She denied she courted publicity but agreed she contacted the Irish Mirror in March, 2012. She was unhappy about aspects of a story in that paper but could not remember exactly what those were, she said. She also agreed she had been pursued in court over debts.
When counsel suggested she “didn’t come down with the last shower” and it was not credible she believed she was under serious threat if she withdrew a statement that she saw Mr Bailey on the morning of December 23, 1996, she said gardaí had told her, if she withdrew the statement, she could be prosecuted for wasting garda time and making false statements. She took that seriously, she said.
