Kenny only adds to confusion surrounding Callinan's resignation

The Taoiseach didn’t kick Martin Callinan out the door, says Cormac O’Keeffe, he opened it and gave an encouraging cough.

The Taoiseach said yesterday “people may be confused”. He’s right.

But the cause of clarity wasn’t helped much by his interview on RTÉ radio yesterday.

Given what is at stake here — the shock departure of Garda commissioner Martin Callinan — it is important that answers are provided.

This is for the very reason that the Taoiseach himself has repeatedly stated: Faith and confidence in the justice system and policing.

Enda Kenny has said he learned on Sunday from Attorney General Máire Whelan about the existence of the recording of phone calls in Garda stations and its link to a civil case.

The Cabinet was meeting on Tuesday morning. But, not willing to wait until then and allow both Fine Gael and Labour ministers to learn of the matter and discuss it, he acted with amazing speed on Monday. He sent the secretary general of the Department of Justice, Brian Purcell, to Mr Callinan’s home that evening to express his “anxiety and concern” over the revelations.

Mr Purcell is the person through whom the commissioner is legally accountable to the Government. The following morning, Mr Callinan resigned.

As reported in the Irish Examiner yesterday, any decision to dismiss a Garda commissioner must be — under the law — done by the Government as a whole, not just the Taoiseach. And it must involve due process.

Asked by RTÉ did he want a head on a plate, Mr Kenny said: “I have been accused of doing things around this. The responsibility of the Taoiseach... the only people that the Taoiseach can fire are ministers and, with government approval, ministers of state... So it was the case of me having this information at my disposal.

“If I were to go through the debates in the Dáil on the Wednesday and the Thursday and not have informed the Cabinet in the knowledge that there are serious implications for some cases up ahead, then I would be failing in my duty and so I felt it was very important and that that should be conveyed to the Garda commissioner and the Garda commissioner made his own decision.”

He did inform Cabinet before the debates, so his concerns don’t arise. Given that, there was no great rush to go the commissioner at his home on Monday. He had time on Tuesday after the Cabinet had discussed it and before the Dáil sat.

Moreover, does he seriously expect people to believe his actions did not lead, at very least in part, to Mr Callinan’s departure?

Dermot Walsh of Kent University expressed the view the Taoiseach had effectively bypassed the laws of the land and that the manner of Mr Callinan’s departure suggested he was “pushed”. It is true the Taoiseach didn’t kick Mr Callinan out the door, but he opened it and gave an encouraging cough.

Asked what Mr Callinan had done wrong, given he himself informed the attorney general about the tapes last November and sent a letter to Mr Purcell two weeks previously, the Taoiseach had this to say: “The point was you were going to have a debate in the Dáil on the Thursday, originally on the inspectorate report and the issues about that from the opposition point of view were the former commissioner’s comment and the minister for justice’s comment, but in the knowledge that the 37 recommendations have already been accepted in full and will be implemented in full, and what was involved here was that I felt that it was important to do this properly and that I should convey, or have conveyed, to the commissioner my anxiety and concern at the implications of what the attorney general had informed me and so that the commissioner would be aware of that.”

No wonder people are confused.