Maurice and Lorraine McCabe statement: 'Truth today - justice can follow'

Whistleblower Maurice McCabe has demanded that Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and other ministers reveal if they were ever briefed on false sex abuse claims peddled against him.
In a rare statement from Mr McCabe and his wife Lorraine, they also rejected the need for the imminent "secret" commission of inquiry into the "sustained campaign to destroy our characters".
Instead, the couple called for politicians and police to tell the truth immediately about who knew of the false allegations being spread about Mr McCabe as he tried to expose wrongdoing within the force.
"We have endured eight years of great suffering, private nightmare, public defamation and state vilification, arising solely from the determination of Maurice to ensure that the Garda Siochana adheres to decent and appropriate standards of policing in its dealings with the Irish people," they said.
The McCabes said their personal lives and family life - including the lives of their five children - have been "systematically attacked" in a number of ways by State agencies.
"We have also been the subject of a long and sustained campaign to destroy our characters in the eyes of the public and public representatives and in the eyes of the media," the couple said.
On the imminent inquiry, to be headed by Judge Peter Charleton, the McCabes said they are "definitely not agreeable" to their entitlement to the truth being postponed by a "secret investigation behind closed doors" which could take one and a half years.
"We are entitled to the truth today - justice can follow in its wake," they said.
"We wish to make it clear that we are definitely not agreeable to that entitlement being wholly postponed so that another Commission of Inquiry can conduct a secret investigation behind closed doors and make a report, into which we have no input as of right, in nine or eighteen months' time.
"We are entitled to the truth today- justice can follow in its wake," the statement said.