Conroy defends arrest failure

Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy said today it was unfair to blame the force for failing to execute a bench warrant for the man suspected of killing Donna Cleary.

Dwayne Foster, the man believed to have fired the fatal shots that killed the 22-year-old mother-of-one in Coolock, was at large despite a bench warrant being issued against him.

But Mr Conroy said that while he greatly regretted all loss of life, it was not fair to blame the Gardaí for failing to arrest him before the murder took place.

“The warrant for that gentleman was for a traffic offence. We didn’t have the committal warrant in our possession that would commit him to prison,” he said.

“And when you look at the number of people that were involved in trying to locate him for the crime that we suspected him for, it took a lot of man hours. You’re talking about anything in the region of 50 personnel searching for that individual and that was the difficulty we were faced with at the time.”

Foster, 24, from Woodbank Avenue in the Finglas, was one of five people arrested in the wake of the murder and was taken to Coolock Garda station.

But he became ill and died in Beaumont Hospital.

In the Dáil yesterday, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said that if the Government had given the resources to the Gardaí, the bench warrant for Foster’s arrest could have been executed and Donna Cleary would still be alive.

“She was gunned down by a criminal who should have been in jail,” he said.

At a conference in the Waterford Institute of Technology on the future of policing, Commissioner Conroy said that gardaí were executing bench warrants on a daily basis and most of them were for offences such as driving cars without insurance.

“Where you have individuals that are wanted for serious crime, you will find that they will go up the list and they will be targeted very quickly.”

He appealed to criminals who were wanted on bench warrants to turn themselves into their local garda station.

“Of course it would be helpful. It would save man hours if people who are wanted on warrant would actually comply with the law.”