Garda Commissioner’s legal team ‘not instructed to impugn’ Maurice McCabe

Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan has denied her legal team was instructed to “impugn the integrity” of whistleblower Maurice McCabe or to claim he was acting maliciously.

Ms O’Sullivan has come under intense pressure to explain her role in reported orders to lawyers to undermine the credibility of Sgt McCabe, which were leaked in recent weeks.

The vast majority of his claims of negligence and malpractice were proven in the O’Higgins Report, which found him to be a man of integrity who should be thanked for his whistle-blowing.

As previously revealed by the Irish Examiner, transcripts from the O’Higgins Inquiry show Ms O’Sullivan’s legal team claimed Sgt McCabe was motivated by malice when he highlighted malpractice.

However, in a statement as she prepares to meet privately with the new Policing Authority to address the matter today, Ms O’Sullivan broke her silence to deny she or her legal team have done anything wrong.

“I can confirm that An Garda Síochána’s legal team was not at any stage instructed to impugn the integrity of Sergeant Maurice McCabe or to make a case that he was acting maliciously,” the statement from the garda commissioner said.

Garda Commissioner breaks silence on instructions to her legal team https://t.co/uVRS3ReUVJ pic.twitter.com/aatbJNqtLp

— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) May 25, 2016

She said she cannot provide further details on the case as there are “clear constraints around making public comment about this matter”. However, she added that it is unfair that “selective information purporting to relate to those proceedings has been put into the public domain”, claiming the allegations she is facing are based on “no more than three minutes” of a commission “which ran for 34 10-hour days”.

Ms O Sullivan said her role as garda commissioner means she has “a duty to all [an Garda Siochana] members and former members” and as such needed to interrogate the information put forward by Sgt McCabe.

Despite saying she does not have questions to answer, Ms O Sullivan said a separate malice allegation made by two officers — named by Mick Wallace in the Dáil yesterday as Supt Noel Cunningham and Sgt Yvonne Martin — who met Sgt McCabe in 2008 should be investigated by the independent Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission. She also agreed to work with Transparency Ireland to make sure garda whistleblowers are “welcomed and protected” in future.