Unanswered questions in Cooke report

LET’S get Alan Shatter back his job. Let’s start a campaign here for a man who has been grievously wronged. Isn’t that the implication of the Cooke report into alleged bugging of the Garda Ombudsman’s office? Shatter was right all along. There was bugger-all bugging going on.

The greatest minister of them all was done down by supine elements of the media, who now have egg on their pasty faces. Let’s stand up and fight this political correctness that saw group-think hound a good man from office. So say all of us.

The above is a mish-mash of the sentiment expressed in some corners of the media and politics following the publication of Cooke last Tuesday. Among another element of the media — let’s call it the paramilitary wing of the Garda press office — they don’t really give a fiddler’s about Shatter, now that he’s gone. They are, however, thrilled to have a little order restored to a world in which the ombudsman doesn’t mess around with their sources.