TDs criticised in Morris Tribunal report

A massive Garda corruption inquiry was tonight wound up with a stinging attack on the two senior politicians key to its being set up.

Judge Frederick Morris, who headed the six-year investigation which has cost taxpayers more than €60m, said it was initially based on false allegations.

Yet, the 685 days of hearings uncovered a web of wrong-doing among the Garda in Co Donegal during the 1990s which rocked the force and ushered in its most radical and sweeping overhaul since being founded.

The Morris Tribunal was set up in March 2002 after senior opposition politicians, Fine Gael’s Jim Higgins and Labour’s Brendan Howlin, passed allegations about two Garda Assistant Commissioners to the then Justice Minister.

But Judge Morris ruled in his final report that the claims were made up to help push for a public inquiry into the harassment of a publican and his family.

“Throughout this process, the legitimacy and status of the allegations was enhanced without furnishing a scintilla of evidence,” he said.

“In this way false and unscrutinised allegations acquired an unwarranted momentum and destructive force of their own.”

Publican Frank McBrearty Snr invented the bogus accusations that Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty and now-retired Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey were involved in perjury, blackmail, the cooking up of evidence and the framing of innocent people, the inquiry found.

He and a retired Garda, who was working at his business in Raphoe, Co Donegal, forwarded the claims to the politicians to spark a public hearing into rogue officers who wrongly fingered the extended McBrearty family for the murder of a cattle dealer, later found to have died in a hit-and-run.

“The Tribunal is satisfied that they set about this task by drawing together a series of rumours, half-truths and untruths on to which the core allegations of corruption against the two Assistant Commissioners were then grafted,” said Judge Morris.

“The tribunal is also satisfied that both deputies (Higgins and Howlin) should have returned to their sources of information and pressed them for further information or evidence backing up the very serious allegations made against the two Assistant Commissioners.”

The former High Court president, who was the sole member of the Tribunal, said both politicians should have properly investigated the sensational claims that could have destroyed the careers of the senior officers.

“It would have been entirely reasonable for the two deputies to indicate that they were not going to make allegations of such a wild kind... and put them and their careers under a cloud of suspicion without something more than a facsimile or a late night phone call,” he concluded.

“Politicians must be attuned to the possibility that they may be used to advance a wholly false agenda by constituents who may be unscrupulous, deceitful or have an agenda against the person or persons against whom they make the allegations.”

Mr Higgins, now an MEP, rejected the findings that they acted irresponsibly and insisted the corruption that was laid bare during the tribunal would not have come to light without their action.

“For example, the wrongful arrest and detention of 12 members of the immediate and extended McBrearty family for their alleged involvement in a murder in which they had no hand, act or part would not have come to light,” he said.

Mr Howlin said: “I was clearly not in a position to carry out an investigation into the allegations myself and it would have been irresponsible of me to have ignored such serious allegations.”

Several senior officers resigned in the wake of disclosures during the hearings, some officers were fired and others in the rank and file in Co Donegal were found to have been negligent, corrupt or to have lied.

The inquiry ushered in more accountability and transparency with the setting up of an independent Garda Ombudsman, a Garda Inspectorate and a whistleblowers’ charter.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said the disgraceful behaviour of a small number of Gardai uncovered at the tribunal should not be allowed to overshadow the work of the vast majority of members down through the years.